Jacques Marinelli

Jacques Marinelli was a French road cyclist, born on 15 December 1925 at Le Blanc-Mesnil north of Paris, who died in Melun on 3 July 2025 at the age of 99. He is remembered for the 1949 Tour de France, when he rode for the regional Île-de-France team rather than the national team, attacked repeatedly in the opening days and took the yellow jersey of race leader, which he kept for six days before finishing third overall. The race organiser Jacques Goddet joked that the budgerigar had become a canary, and the nickname la perruche stuck. Marinelli rode the Tour six times between 1948 and 1954 but finished it only in 1949 and in 1952, when he came 31st. He stopped racing at 28, ran a cycle shop and then a company with yellow delivery vehicles, and served as mayor of Melun from 1989 to 2001.