Despite being associated with cowardice and Coldplay, whose best- known song is named for it, the colour yellow has many positive connotations – sunlight, for instance, and bubble-permed Scottish goalkeeper Alan Rough, who wore a yellow shirt in the 1978 World Cup when Scotland bested the so-called "total football" of the Dutch.

Currently it's a different sporting discipline and a different sort of shirt which is giving the colour its praiseworthy lustre: the Tour de France, which since 1919 has awarded a yellow jersey to its overall leader. This year that leader happens to be one Bradley Wiggins, Ghent-born but London-raised.

As a boy, Wiggins had a poster on his bedroom wall of Tour legend Miguel "Big Mig" Indurain, a five-time winner in the early 1990s. Doubtless yellow jerseys have coloured his dreams ever since.

Should Wiggo, as he is known, still be in possession of the real thing as he glides up the Champs-Elysees in Paris on Sunday, he will make history by becoming the first Briton to win the cycle race. No small feat after well over a century of British effort whose low point came in 1967 when English rider Tom Simpson died of heart failure on the slopes of Mont Ventoux.

Wiggins's prowess in the saddle has been matched by a sense of honour not always evident in the upper reaches of the sporting world. When someone scattered tacks on the road during last weekend's 14th stage, bursting the tyre of one of Wiggins' main rivals, Australian Cadel Evans, the Briton instructed the peloton to wait for Evans to catch up. It was, as the French press and public duly noted, hardly the act of a coward and it won Wiggo the nickname "Le Gentleman".

As the title of the famous film goes, some of that ilk prefer blondes. For Bradley Wiggins, the colour-of-choice is very definitely yellow.