For more than 20 years, LCL Banque has sponsored perhaps the coolest and certainly one of the most recognizable symbols of excellence in all of sports.

The maillot jaune — i.e., the yellow jersey — of the Tour de France.

First as Crédit Lyonnais, then as LCL Banque  (a subsidiary of Crédit Agricole), the French bank has paid millions in sponsorship money to have its name printed on the jersey worn throughout the Tour de France by the daily race leader and ultimately by the champion of the historic cycling race.

In this photo alone, LCL Banque has four logos visible on the maillot jaune of 2007 Tour de France  champ Alberto Contador, who has not been invited back to wear and defend the LCL Banque maillot jaune this year. AFP/Getty Images

The maillot jaune is beautiful and powerful, the crown jewel of professional cycling’s marquee event, and writers around the world wax poetic and build legends about the men who wear the jersey on the Champs-Ellyses in Paris. LeMond, Indurain, Armstrong, among those on LCL’s watch.

No other major sporting event or league in the world has its championship symbol imprinted with the name of a paying sponsor. NASCAR does with the Sprint Cup, but NASCAR is strictly a U.S. phenomenon. We’re talking sports of the world. The FIFA World Cup, the Hawthorn Memorial Trophy, the Borg-Warner Trophy, Olympic medals, the Claret Jug, the Green Jacket, the Davis Cup, the Americas Cup, the Ryder Cup, the Championships Trophies at Wimbledon, the Coupe des Mousquetaires and the Coupe Suzanne Lenglen at the French Open … and on and on.

None of them offer such value, let alone exposure, to a high-stakes sponsor.

Every time a photo of the Tour de France leader or winner appears in a newspaper, magazine or on the Internet, or a video clip of the leader streams online or appears on television, “LCL” is there, big as you please, as my pop used to say. And one of the prime fan giveaways from the TdF caravan are the yellow LCL caps passed out daily at the finishing line. (I’m still sour that I didn’t get one at my only Tour, in 2006).

LCL Banque pays a huge premium for this exposure, said to be 2 million euro ($3.15 million U.S.) this year for the maillot jaune alone. LCL also is one of the TdF’s select sponsors — les membres du Club du Tour de France — for 5.5 million euros ($8.65 million U.S..)

But for the past several years, the LCL Banque maillot jaune has turned jaundice, in a manner of speaking.

Two years ago, L’Affair Landis and the doping case against Floyd Landis led to the Tour de France stripping the title from the American even before he could file an appeal (which is still pending, by the by). 

Last year was another difficult year for the LCL Banque maillot jaune.

Last May, past winner Bjarne Riis admitted to doping en route to the 1996 TdF title as part of the systematic doping program of the T-Mobile team, which also won in 1997 with Jan Ullrich, himself implicated in the Operacion Puerto scandal. In addition, a Dutch bank, Rabobank, ordered the team it sponsors to send home race leader Michael Rasmussen, yellow jersey and all, because he allegedly lied to the Rabobank team and others about his whereabouts in order to avoid pre-Tour doping controls.

As the controversy swirled around Rasmussen, I wondered how the chief executive, chairman of the board and the board members of the Dutch bank felt about Rasmussen representing their company while shoo-ing away spectators with a one-armed flick as they berated him on the climbs. I wondered how the bank’s shareholders and customers felt, too. I figured it had to be embarrassing for the bank, and I wondered whether the company would take action to save its corporate name. I got the answer when Rabo ordered the team to boot Rasmussen days from the podium in Paris.

Now, I wonder about the executives of LCL Banque and the chairman, board members and shareholders of its parent company, Crédit Agricole. How do they feel about spending 2 million euros to sponsor a symbol of excellence for which the defending champion and the No. 1 cyclist in the world is not allowed to contend?

That would be Alberto Contador, who took over the maillot jaune last year after Rasmussen’s departure and secured it as his own with a big performance in the penultimate day time trial. Contador’s team, Astana, was not invited to participate in the Tour this year by the Amaury Sports Organization, which operates the Tour de France and makes 30 million euros thanks to the financial support of more than 30 sponsors, including TdF club members LCL, Skoda (Volkswagon), Vittel (Nestle), Supermarche Champion.

 ASO didn’t invite Astana because of the team’s past problems with doping. After the Opercion Puerto scandal broke before the 2006 Tour, the team had to drop out because too many riders had been implicated and it didn’t have enough others to field a team. Last year, the team was forced to withdraw from the Tour after team leader Alexandre Vinokourov failed a doping control test.

But that was a different Astana team. Vino and the old management team were cast aside, and former Discovery boss Johan Bruyneel was hired to clean house and run a clean program. Bruyneel, the architect of Lance Armstrong’s seven TdF LCL yellow jerseys and Contador’s win last year for Discovery, instituted state of the art doping controls, hiring one of the world’s foremost anti-doping experts to implement the testing. He also brought with him from Discovery Contador and Levi Leipheimer, last year’s TdF third-place finisher.

The un-vitation of Astana and the defending champ has shaken cycling to its core, with the ASO in a deep rift with the sport’s governing body, Union Cycliste Internationale, and basically finger-pointing, name-calling and bickering all through the elite level of the sport. So, as cycling moves beyond the doping era into the clean cycling era trumpeted by American teams Slipstream-Chipotle and High Road, American sponsored team CSC, and now Astana, there’s discord at the highest level of the sport.

For a sport struggling to mend fences, move forward and attract new sponsorship dollars (neither Slipstream nor High Road have primary sponsors, and CSC is bailing after this year, among other team sponsors), the operators of the Tour de France decide that now is the right time to basically banish the defending winner of its fabled LCL yellow jersey, its very symbol of excellence.

Yes, Tour organizers say its nothing personal re: Contador. And they say they’ll revisit the Astana situation for next year.

But what about this year? With a victory in the recent Giro d’Italia, Contador could be on the verge of something truly special in cycling, a potential sweep of the three grand tours — the Giro, the Tour de France and the Vuelta a Espana. Cycling needs this type of quest to recapture the imagination of fans who love the sport, and more importantly to attract new sponsors and to keep sponsors such as LCL Banque that financially support it.

Maybe LCL is on board and doesn’t want the defending champion and winner of two of the past three grand tours to compete for the symbol of excellence it pays 2 million euros to sponsor. But if I’m among the powers that be at LCL or its parent company, Credit Agricole, I have to ask serious questions about my company’s investment in the Tour’s fabled symbol. I’d want the LCL maillot jaune to mean something, to be a symbol of the very best cycling has to offer.

Unfortunately, this year it is not, not with Astana at home and Contador not allowed to defend his title. Imagine a French Open without Rafael Nadal being invited. Or any of the golfing majors without Tiger Woods. Or Lewis Hamilton banned in Formula One. Or Italy not invited back to defend the World Cup in soccer.

I don’t know how LCL or any of the other TdF sponsors feel about the value of their investment this year, but if I were in their suits, I’d work hard behind the scenes, build a coalition of sponsors and demand that ASO bring the highest value to our investment — and that’s to have a race in which the best rider and the best team in the world competes.

I’d want the LCL Banque maillot jaune to really mean something, to symbolize the very best competitor at the best and most important cycling race in the world.

Is that too much to ask for 2 million euros?

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