Selling the Yellow Jersey: The Tour de France in the Global Era 9780226206677

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Selling the Yellow Jersey

Selling the Yellow Jersey The Tour de France in the Global Era eric reed

The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London

Eric Reed is associate professor of history at Western Kentucky University. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2015 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 2015. Printed in the United States of America 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15

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isbn-13: 978-0-226-20653-0 (cloth) isbn-13: 978-0-226-20667-7 (e-book) doi: 10.7208/chicago/9780226206677.001.0001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Reed, Eric (Professor of history), author. Selling the yellow jersey : the Tour de France in the global era / Eric Reed. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-226-20653-0 (cloth : alk. paper) — isbn 978-0-226-20667-7 (e-book) 1. Tour de France (Bicycle race)—History. 2. Bicycle racing—France—History. I. Title. gv1049.2.t68r44 2015 796.6′20944 — dc23 2014020845 This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso z39.48 – 1992 (Permanence of Paper).

Contents

Acknowledgments vii Prologue xi

Introduction 1 1 Sport, Bicycling, and Globalization in the Print Era: Convergences and Divergences 8 2 The Tour, Greatest of the Turn-of-the-Century Bicycle Races 23 3 The Tour and Television: A Love-Hate Story 53 4 The French School of Cycling 82 5 The Tour in the Provinces: Sport and Small Cities in the Global Age 110 6 The Tour’s Globalizing Agenda in the Television Age 139 7 The Global Tour and Its Stars 168 Afterword: Doping and the Tour on the World Stage 194 Appendix 197 Notes 201 Bibliography 227 Index 241

Acknowledgments

I could not have finished this project without time and money. I would like to thank Syracuse University and the Embassy of France to the United States for funding my initial research with fellowships and grants. Western Kentucky University and WKU’s History Department funded my follow-up research and gave me a sabbatical leave that I used to write the first draft of the manuscript. French archivists and scholars welcomed me warmly. The staffs of the municipal archives in Caen, Brest, Strasbourg, and Pau were particularly helpful. Archivists Christine Juliat (Pau Municipal Archives) and Roger Nougaret (Crédit Lyonnais/Crédit Agricole/BNP Paribas Archives) helped me track down key primary sources. I am grateful to Patrick Fridenson of the École des hautes études en sciences sociales and Jacques Augendre of L’Équipe for the invaluable advice they provided when I first began my research. I have been fortunate to have talented, thoughtful mentors and colleagues. Michael Miller and Chris Thompson have encouraged and inspired my research from the start. Tony Harkins, Glenn Lafantasie, and Andrew McMichael offered me excellent advice about the publication process. Robert Dietle, Phil Dehne, Arwen Bate, and anonymous reviewers read an early draft of the manuscript and responded with insightful, brutal, useful comments that improved the book. I would like to thank Doug Mitchell, Tim McGovern, Susan Karani, Levi Stahl, and Margaret Hagan at the University of Chicago Press for shepherding the manuscript from proposal to book. I am grateful to Rich Weigel, Jeanie Adams-Smith, and Sarah Jameson for their help editing late versions of the manuscript. Beth Plummer and Patti Minter were kind enough to listen to me complain. My family has been patient and generous. My dad has shown unflagging,

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sometimes obsessive enthusiasm for my project and asked me hard questions about the Tour and France that made this a better book. My mom has inspired me to be a better teacher, which has improved my writing. Kathy Ames’s and Kenly Ames’s careful editing fixed many of the book’s weaknesses and errors. The remaining errors are mine. I cannot repay my many debts to Kenly Ames. Kenly has supported me without question since we met. I am lucky that she accepted my marriage proposal. I hope that our two beautiful boys will be proud of my book one day. I dedicate this book to Kenly and our sons.

f i g u r e 1 . Map of France with selected locations. Map by CJ Johanson, map data courtesy of Esri/AND Data Solutions, B. V. / European Environmental Agency.

Prologue

I saw the Tour de France for the first time on America’s Independence Day, July 4, 1992. I was traveling with my former college roommate, Craig, when we came upon the Tour by chance as we passed through San Sebastián, Spain. We were avid readers of Ernest Hemingway and had embarked on a literary pilgrimage to Pamplona to participate in the annual San Fermín Festival and the Running of the Bulls, which were made famous in the Anglophone world by the novel The Sun Also Rises. The festivities that brightened San Sebastián that day to celebrate the prologue, or ceremonial kickoff, of the 1992 Tour convinced us to stay and take in the first professional bike race either of us had ever seen. I grew up a Philadelphia sports fan, cut my teeth on professional hockey’s infamous “Broad Street Bullies,” and blossomed into a full-blown adolescent sports junkie during the heyday of basketball legend Julius Erving and baseball hall-of-famer Mike Schmidt. As a kid playing under my driveway basketball hoop, I attempted to mimic “Dr. J’s” amazing “finger roll” layups. I also enjoyed watching professional wrestling on television in the days when teenage boys still hotly debated its legitimacy as veritable athletic competition. I was fortunate to witness some classic Philadelphia sports moments at the Spectrum and Veterans Stadium, including a game of the Phillies’ 1980 World Series championship run. But the closest personal encounter I ever had with any of my athletic idols came during a connection stopover in the Pittsburgh airport in 1985 when I noticed rising World Wrestling Federation star “Brutus Beefcake” sitting across the concourse from me eating yogurt. The Tour’s intimacy was alien to my experience and impressed me. Before the prologue began, spectators gathered quietly behind the starting gate near the competitors, who were easily spotted by their loud, colorful racing uni-

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forms. Since I read widely about many sports, including professional cycling, I recognized the faces and jerseys of some of cycling’s famous champions as they warmed up in San Sebastián’s streets. French Tour hero Laurent Fignon, wearing his trademark blond ponytail and round, metal-framed glasses, rolled past me an arm’s length away as he warmed up. American Greg LeMond, the first non-European to win the Tour, pedaled by lazily with teammates and was so close I could hear his banter and laughter. Unusual events delayed the start of the prologue. Basque separatists used the Tour’s visit as an occasion to trumpet their political agenda to the world. They blew up a car near the race route to ensure that evening newscasts would note their activism. Unfazed, Craig and I retreated to a tapas bar in San Sebastián’s cramped old quarter near the port while we waited for the race to begin. Only in retrospect, as I racked my brain for a research project to which I could devote the first years of my career as a historian, did I realize that the Tour was living history worthy of serious academic inquiry. More than just an unusually intimate, spectator-friendly sporting event, the Tour carried immense cultural, political, and social meaning for those who experienced it, whether they were American hitchhikers, European cycling fans, or angry Basque separatists. What Is the Tour? In order to understand the Tour’s historical significance, it is important to grasp how the race works as an athletic competition and entertainment spectacle. The event’s distinctive traits shape its itinerary; determine which towns host the race, which businesses sponsor it, and which racers win and become heroes; and account for the Tour’s enduring popular appeal in France and elsewhere. Although the Tour has evolved greatly since Parisian journalists created it in 1903, many of the Tour’s basic characteristics remain constant. The Tour is a three-week, approximately 4,000-kilometer (2,500-mile) bicycle race staged on the roads of France and Western Europe in June and July. The Tour was the first road race of its kind and remains the most prestigious cycling event in the world. Its popularity and profitability spawned other “national” cycling tours. The race is also a major media and commercial event: By the 1980s, organizers claimed that the Tour was the third-largest televised spectacle in the world, behind only soccer’s World Cup and the Olympic Games. Since the Tour’s creation, sports journalists have organized the race. The journalist organizers choose the race participants and sponsors, create the itinerary and rules of the competition, and provide the infrastructure of cars, trucks, and communication equipment necessary to stage the event. By the

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1990s, the Tour’s caravan and entourage included approximately 1,000 vehicles and nearly 4,000 cyclists, team sponsors, publicity agents, coaches and managers, police officers, race officials and organizers, international judges, technicians, road crews, physical therapists, and journalists. Until 1987, the organizers wore two hats— they wrote for daily newspapers and planned the race. Prior to 1939, Henri Desgrange, founder of the sports daily L’Auto, controlled the Tour’s organization. After the Second World War, Desgrange’s associate Jacques Goddet, editor of L’Auto’s postwar successor, L’Équipe, directed the Tour along with Félix Lévitan, editor of Le Parisien libéré ’s sports section. After 1987, the jobs of staging and reporting on the Tour were nominally separated, although the Tour organization continues to draw journalists into its fold. The central principle of the Tour is simple: the rider who completes the entire course in the shortest time wins. Racers compete for the symbol of the Tour’s overall individual championship, the “yellow jersey” (maillot jaune), the most coveted and lucrative prize in cycling. Individuals also compete for other important prizes, such as the “polka-dot jersey” (maillot à pois), awarded to the strongest mountain climber; the “green jersey” (maillot vert), won by the fastest sprinter; and scores of other cash or symbolic prizes such as “most competitive rider” and even “nicest rider.” Cyclists can win glory and fortune on the Tour even without winning the yellow jersey. Riders’ Tour successes lead to fame, endorsement deals, and racing contracts. Prior to 1930, organizers sometimes invited individuals and sometimes entire teams to participate in the race. Since the late 1930s, however, organizers have always selected cycling teams, not individual riders, to compete in the Tour. Only members of these teams may race. Since the late 1930s, all participants have been professional cyclists selected by the Tour organizers. Prior to the 1960s, the Tour alternated between “national team” and “corporate team” formats. In the national team format, organizers invited most of the major cycling nations— France, Belgium, Holland, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, and Luxembourg— to send a team to compete under national flags. In these years, organizers complemented the national teams with several regional teams from France. Since 1969, the Tour has been organized in the corporate team format. Businesses or other entities sponsor groups of professional riders who participate in races throughout Europe during the cycling season (early spring through early fall), and elsewhere around the world throughout the year. Corporate team riders publicize their patrons by wearing the sponsor’s brand marks and colors in competition. The Tour selects approximately twenty professional teams according to the rankings determined by the International Cycling Union (UCI), the sport’s governing

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body. Nine riders compete on each team. The Tour’s team prizes promote intense competition among the cycling groups, and sponsors use their teams’ successes as important advertising tools. Thus, although the organizing principle of the Tour is simple— the fastest man wins— the reality of the race is far more complicated. Racers compete not only to win the individual title, but also to help the rest of their team to win and to publicize their sponsors. Individuals have no chance of winning the Tour without the help of their teams because the itinerary of the race poses arduous physical challenges to the riders. The event is broken up into approximately twenty sections, called stages, each of which is ridden on a different day. Every year, Tour organizers choose different communities to host each stage of the Tour. Potential host towns compete fiercely with one another for the favor of the Tour’s leadership before the organizers announce the itinerary in autumn. Each Tour consists of a combination of three types of stages—flatland races, mountain climbs, and time trials. The flatland stages are the longest of the Tour, up to 359 kilometers (223 miles) in the post– Second World War era. During the flatland stages, generally held in the West and North of France, riders battle against stiff winds and stifling summer heat. The mountain stages are shorter, averaging approximately 200 kilometers (124 miles), and are even more exhausting. Riders ascend out of green valleys on steep, winding roads while the hot summer sun burns their necks. Barren, windblasted rock replaces the lush vegetation at higher altitudes. Freezing temperatures, sleet, and snowblocked passes sometimes await them as they approach Alpine and Pyrenean summits, and dark storms boil out of the high mountain valleys with little warning. In the time trials, which are short stages of about fifty to seventy kilometers (thirty to forty-five miles) during which individual riders leave the starting gate alone and try to complete a course in the fastest time possible, each man battles wind, hills, and the clock without the help of his teammates. Because of the harsh natural conditions faced by the riders and the extreme efforts required of cyclists to overcome them, the attrition rate is very high. In some past Tours, up to half of the contestants dropped out of the race. The physical difficulties facing the riders, as well as the complexities of the Tour as a sporting competition, shape the racing strategies employed by individual competitors and their teams. The most basic strategic consideration is that an individual cyclist cannot ride as fast as a group of racers, no matter how strong he is. Whenever possible, cyclists race in groups, which reduces wind resistance and, thus, the amount of work done by each rider. Most contestants spend almost the entire Tour riding in the peloton, or main body of riders, in order to conserve enough energy to finish the Tour (see fig. 2 for an example of drafting). Because of the aerodynamic and manpower advantage

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f i g u r e 2 . The Belgian national team leads the peloton near La Roche-sur-Yon, close to the central French coast. Riders pedal in an echelon formation to draft off one another to protect themselves from the strong wind, July 9, 1938. Courtesy of National Archives.

gained by racing in a large group, the peloton can sustain very high speeds for long periods of time on flat roads, if many riders work together and share time pedaling at the head of the peloton. For perspective, Czech rider Ondrˇej Sosenka set a UCI individual one-hour world speed record in 2005 when he raced 49.7 kilometers in an hour on a Moscow track. The same year, the Tour peloton’s speed averaged between 45.1 and 48.6 kilometers per hour in the eight fastest mass-start stages. Thus, for eight full days of racing that year, the entire peloton of more than 150 riders traveled at average speeds very close to the individual world record for a single hour of racing. In order to win the Tour, a rider must find a way to separate himself from the peloton and his rivals during one or several stages of the race in order to win a time advantage over the field. He must then conserve the advantage until he reaches the finish line in Paris. Herein lies the main strategic goal of the Tour de France. Usually a team designates one rider as its sole contender for the yellow jersey and devotes all the efforts of the nine-man group to helping him win the Tour. The other riders pledge to act as the team leader’s

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domestiques, or “servant” riders: they pedal in front of the captain and allow him to conserve energy in their slipstreams; if the lead rider’s tire punctures, the nearest domestique exchanges his fresh tire for the flat one; if the leader becomes hungry or thirsty, a domestique offers the star rider his food and drink.* Since even a team of nine racers has only limited physical endurance, it must expend maximum effort only at key moments of the race. Competing teams often cooperate in order to conserve their energy or to demoralize or sap the energy of other teams. Since a team’s goal is to conserve its captain’s overall time advantage over his immediate rivals, often a team has to help its leader win only one or two stages of the Tour. It is possible to capture the Tour’s title without winning any stages, as American Greg LeMond did in 1990. The teams with captains who are in contention for the yellow jersey allow cyclists who are far behind in the overall standings to escape from the peloton and vie for stage victories, as long as they do not threaten the time advantage of the team leader. A team captain with strong domestiques to aid him, riding in front of a disorganized peloton that is unwilling to cooperate and expend the energy to pursue him, can build a lead in the flatland stages. The varied stage organization and terrain of the Tour’s itinerary complicates this basic strategy. Each yellow jersey contender competes in the time trials alone against his rivals, without the aid of his teammates to magnify his strengths or nullify his weaknesses. During the mountain stages, the aerodynamic advantages of team riding diminish since climbing speeds are much slower than flatland speeds and since cyclists must spread themselves out in order to avoid crashing during the winding descents. Leaders may have domestiques to pace them during the climbs, but they must nevertheless perform all the work of traversing the Alps and Pyrenees themselves. Mountains forge or destroy possible Tour champions. When a race leader “cracks,” or exhausts himself and becomes unable to climb quickly, his rivals can attack him and transform the race leader’s time advantage of several seconds gained during the flatland stages into a deficit of minutes or even hours. A Tour victor usually possesses several crucial qualities. He must be talented in the Tour’s three disciplines—flatland racing, climbing, and time trialing— and he must know how to lead the team. Only an extraordinary strength in one of the disciplines can overcome a glaring weakness in an* There are exceptions to this rule. Teams usually include some riders who specialize in sprinting, climbing, or time trialing. These riders attempt to win stages of the race that are tailored to their specialties in order to shower glory (and media attention) on the team and its sponsors. These specialists do not perform most of the tasks of domestiques.

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other. In addition, he must know through racing experience how and when to expend his teammates’ limited physical resources. He must know how to strike and when to break alliances with other teams in order to protect himself or hurt his rivals. The Tour de France is an individual competition that a racer cannot win alone.

Introduction

Around the turn of the twentieth century, the French embraced the bicycle as a mode of transportation and leisure and as a potent symbol of modernity and progress. The Tour was the greatest and most enduring of the turn-ofthe-century bicycle racing spectacles and embodied France’s love affair with the bicycle. A quintessentially French creation, the race very quickly “transformed itself into a tradition [and] rooted itself in the national rituals” after its first installment in 1903.1 French riders dominated the Tour for much of  the twentieth century. France’s star racers often became national heroes and their exploits exemplified French prowess, panache, and perseverance. The Tour was a celebration of— and central fixture in— French provincial life. The competition traveled through almost every region of France and became an occasion for the French to revisit, through sport, an idealized and stylized version of their nation’s geography and history. Each year, up to thirty million fans from around the world crowded France’s country roads and mountain passes to see the riders pedal by. The holiday atmosphere surrounding the annual, three-week race became part of the fabric of French popular culture. France’s national bicycle race has been a global spectacle since its creation.2 In the competition’s early years, fans around the world followed the race in the pages of their local newspapers. By the new millennium, millions of spectators followed the race on television and the Internet. The race quickly emerged as the world’s most prestigious cycling competition. The planet’s best cyclists and their sponsors made an annual pilgrimage to Paris to race for glory, wealth, and fame. Some competitors returned to their homelands as heroes. The Tour’s compelling format, star culture, and commercial

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success spurred imitators throughout Europe and elsewhere as professional road racing became a global sport. Some Tour-inspired races like the Tour of Italy (Giro d’Italia, created in 1909) and the Tour of Spain (Vuelta a España, created in 1935) became enduring classics in their own right. Others such as the short-lived Tour de Trump, founded in the late 1980s by American real estate tycoon Donald Trump, perished soon after their creation. Nevertheless, thanks to the enormous prestige, influence, and media footprint of the Tour, its stars, and French cycling around the world since 1903, competitive cycling adopted French traditions, athletic and commercial forms, and even language. The Tour’s history offers a fascinating case study in how the French interacted with the broader world in the global era. To explore these interactions, I trace three interrelated stories. 1. The Tour, France, and Globalization One way of looking at France and globalization characterizes the global age as one that began in the 1950s and was spurred by the rise of telecommunications, airline travel, television broadcasting, postwar international consumption regimes, and multinational conglomerates. Such an approach also stresses the dramatic rupture with the past caused by the emergence of digital media since the 1980s. It highlights the homogenizing tendencies of postwar globalization by exploring the ways that the process has seemed to erode cultural distinctiveness, increase consumer homogeneity, and undermine traditional frameworks of identity such as the nation.3 Undoubtedly, the rapid, often tumultuous cultural shifts of the postwar era represented a significant break from the past. In the popular imagination, such trends were epitomized by Hollywood’s hegemony, Coca-Cola’s world empire, the ubiquitous Golden Arches, and the frivolous, universalized, Americanized consumer culture they appeared to represent.4 I approach globalization as a longer-term, ongoing process that planted its roots in the mid-nineteenth century. Since then, globalization has continued to reduce or eliminate barriers of time and space and increase interconnectedness. Important trends that facilitated the process include the expansion and contraction of empires; increasingly rapid exchanges of goods, services, and people; and the rise of mass communication and mass consumerism since the Industrial Revolution. The proliferation of new networks of social and cultural interaction, loci of identity, and patterns of consumerism that transcended national and even continental frameworks also characterize the globalization trend. In other words, contemporary globalization can

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be understood as an integral element of the dramatic transformations of the “long twentieth century.” Although most commonly applied to the rise of capitalism and its associated substructures, the viewpoint can also be applied to the cultural and social sea changes associated with the rise of modern mass society since the mid-nineteenth century.5 The Tour’s evolution over time illustrates the unique ways that the French participated in and instigated cultural globalization. This process was not a recent phenomenon external to the French experience. Rather, the Tour’s story reveals that cultural and commercial globalization had powerful, indigenous, and particularly French roots that reach deep into the past, and that uniquely French circumstances drove the process forward in France and gave it meaning.6 The Tour’s century-long history as a global spectacle that was influenced and transformed by diverse actors and stakeholders in and outside France provides an ideal laboratory for investigating the globalizing process. Scholars have paid increasing attention to the Tour recently.7 The commercial history of the event, especially after the Second World War, has received relatively little treatment. The race was born from the cycling milieu, where spectacle, sport, and commerce mingled. It was a manifestation of the new relationship between business and culture that arose in France and throughout the modernizing world beginning in the mid-nineteenth century. Parisian journalists created the contest in 1903 as a promotional vehicle to sell newspapers and bicycles in France. The contest emerged as the crown jewel of French professional cycling. Yet the appearance of modern commercialism in sport and in other areas of entertainment and leisure around the turn of the twentieth century was not the end of the story of how business interests shaped popular culture. The Tour’s history illustrates the ways that mass media and business facilitated new kinds of interconnectedness since the nineteenth century. Globalization scholars are particularly interested in the phenomenon of “deterritorialization,” a process in which social and cultural space was no longer mapped solely according to territorial place and in which location, distance, and physical borders played a diminishing role in many social and cultural relationships and experiences.8 The rise of mass media, a process initiated in local and regional settings, spurred this transformation. Local, national, and global communities of Tour fan spectators blossomed after 1903. The race became an event that French people experienced in an increasingly simultaneous time frame as more and more of them followed it in local newspapers and, later, on national broadcasting systems. Many tens of millions more around the world read about it in their newspapers, as well, and followed

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the race in its entirety and in real time on international radio, television, and the Internet. Uniquely French circumstances drove the Tour’s global story forward over time, often with unintended consequences. Although the Tour was born as an unabashedly for-profit media event, its organizers struggled to limit and control the race’s media exposure and commercialization. In the television age, for example, the Tour resisted corporate sponsors’ demands for more publicity and fought a losing battle to limit television coverage of the race. During this time, the Tour was a touchstone for the broader French ambivalence toward the commercialization of the public sphere as the postwar consumer economy blossomed.9 Paradoxically, the Tour helped to instigate the commercialization of France’s state-controlled, not-for-profit radio and television networks because it was a wildly popular, publicity-soaked spectacle broadcast openly on France’s commercial-free airwaves. The event’s singular qualities and struggles in the French context determined how its organizers exploited the race for profit and developed the format, rules, traditions, and business models that the rest of the cycling world emulated. The Tour imbued global cycling with a particularly French flavor. The story of the event’s growing influence spanned the twentieth century. Very rapidly after 1903, the Tour emerged as the most famous cycling race on the planet and the fulcrum of road cycling’s globalization. The race’s preeminence afforded its organizers formal and informal power to shape the global sport. Since the early 1900s, French men, many of whom were Tour officials, dominated cycling’s international governing bodies and exerted vast influence on the rules, competitive schedules, ethics, and commercialization of European professional cycling. By the 1970s, the Tour’s parent corporation, the Amaury Group, owned and organized many of the most important and best-financed cycling races in the world, including the Paris– Roubaix, Paris– Nice, and Dauphiné Libéré classics. By the 1980s, the Tour’s leadership embraced an overtly globalizing agenda. The Tour’s influence penetrated into areas outside road cycling’s traditional core in Western Europe. The race’s athletes and leadership helped to build the foundations of viable professional road racing organizations in virgin territories like the United States. All the while, the Tour remained the brightest star around which world cycling’s evolving constellation of competitions orbited. The end result of these trends was that the Tour and its organizers succeeded in linking “France” and “cycling” in the popular imagination, much as French chefs and culinary schools had created such an association between “France” and “cuisine” in the nineteenth century and the French film industry established a particularly French

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cinematic brand and international cosmopolitan film culture in the twentieth century.10 The pitfalls of its prominence afflicted the Tour ever more deeply after the 1960s, as the event’s humiliating doping scandals came to epitomize the long-running crisis of the entire sport. 2. Small Communities in a Global Society The stories of Brest and Pau, small French communities that were significant Tour host towns, will unveil the many meaningful ways that small communities interacted with and reacted to globalization. Their stories demonstrate that globalization did not occur as a dialectical process in which new, global identities, cultures, and networks of exchange inevitably and inexorably displaced entrenched local ones. Rather, globalization is best understood as a deeply historical, uneven, localizing process in which local cultures and identities were continually reinforced and enriched, even in the contemporary period.11 In fact, the tension between globalization’s homogenizing tendencies and local cultures’ resistance to and selective appropriation of new cultural forms and practices helped to ensure and even promote heterogeneity, even in imperial settings.12 The Tour established an important place in annual summer leisure culture in France’s provincial communities. Nearly the entire race takes place on remote, picturesque byways deep in the French countryside and in the town squares of small cities. The cases of Pau, a regional hub and winter resort for wealthy Anglophones in the Pyrenean foothills, and Brest, a port town located at the tip of the Brittany peninsula, demonstrate how small communities, through sport, engaged the broader, interconnected world in novel ways and reveal the continuing role of small towns in actuating and facilitating the globalization process. Brest and Pau viewed the Tour through the lens of their unique, evolving identities and exploited it for their own ends. Beginning in the 1930s, as their needs and outlooks changed, these race host towns used the Tour, with its massive media coverage, to capture larger shares of the expanding mass tourism market and to promote their integration into the national and international economies. Although their efforts did not always achieve their desired goals, Pau and Brest recognized the ever-changing opportunities and dangers presented by the globalizing world. They tried to forge unique places for themselves in it. Their stories demonstrate that the construction of the Tour’s commercial and cultural traditions was a continuous but rather uneven process that was strongly influenced by the changing interests, economies, and identities of small communities during the twentieth century.

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3. Celebrity Athletes and “Frenchness” in a Global Age Finally, the Tour’s history offers an opportunity to explore the powers of celebrity in the global age. The race’s stars were instrumental in globalizing road cycling in the twentieth century and helped endow the sport with a particularly French character. This process began early in the twentieth century. The Tour stood at the pinnacle of a “French School” of cycling clubs, competitions, and business interests that identified, cultivated, and graduated into stardom many of world cycling’s greatest heroes. Because of the French School’s preeminence on the world stage, the French cycling establishment furnished much of the language, competitive and commercial framework, and celebrity heroes that became common cultural points of reference for cycling’s emerging global networks of competitors, fans, and consumers. In France, the star power of the race’s heroes helped to maintain the event’s enduring popular and commercial appeal. French cycling stars also served as cultural and social sounding boards as the French struggled to contextualize rapid change in turbulent times.13 Great riders appeared to embody certain universal, enduring ideals of sporting “Frenchness”14— especially the ability to perform superhuman athletic feats with panache and endure unimaginable suffering and competitive martyrdom heroically. Yet as the times changed, such heroic meanings were constantly contested, sometimes appeared anachronistic or irrelevant, and often conflicted with harsh, unsavory realities like cycling’s cult of celebrity, hyper-commercialism, and pervasive doping. As the Tour globalized, so, too, did the contested meanings and legacies of its heroes. Tour heroes became global stars and shaped international cycling culture. For example, as Anglophone audiences read about the Tour triumphs and controversies surrounding French star Jacques Anquetil, the world’s dominant rider in the 1950s and 1960s, they learned much about the nature of French athletic heroism and its tenets. Many of these readers joined the sport’s burgeoning global fan base. Even as the demographic cross section of professional cycling globalized beginning in the 1970s, and even as French riders won fewer and fewer races against international competitors, France remained the epicenter of professional development of cyclists and the preeminent proving ground for future champions. Tour winners Greg LeMond and Lance Armstrong, who captured a combined ten Tour titles after 1986, were not merely exported American athletes who dominated a French competition. Rather, they were cyclists trained in France, forged into champions on French country roads, and returned as heroes to the United States, where

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their victories helped to popularize the race. All the while, Tour organizers sold television coverage of their triumphs to American broadcasting networks and used sponsorship funds from American companies like Coca-Cola and Nike to pay for the race. These trends were symptomatic of the globalization of a quintessentially French cultural phenomenon. The stories of these cyclists serve as case studies in celebrity in the global era, and how athletes and mass media shaped visions of athletic excellence in the Atlantic world.

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Sport, Bicycling, and Globalization in the Print Era: Convergences and Divergences

The Tour de France was the greatest of the early twentieth century’s bicycle racing spectacles. The race was also one of the few professional sporting events that spectators could watch free of charge with their friends, family, and neighbors along country roads, in town squares, or even from the front doors of their homes. Writer Colette, in 1912, described the roadside as a “family picnic blanket” for the hundreds of spectators watching the Tour pass through the Paris suburbs in the last stage of the race.1 Nearly a century later, Jacques Goddet, the Tour’s organizer for nearly a half century, and important sponsors continued to characterize the spectacle as a “family event.”2 The author’s own experience in 1999 standing at “Dutch Corner” amid hundreds of raucous, orange-clad Dutch cycling fans as Lance Armstrong and his challengers toiled up the steep switchbacks of the Alpe d’Huez an arm’s length away confirmed the special character of the Tour. It is a singularly intimate sporting spectacle with no physical barriers between the spectators and the action. Nevertheless, only a tiny handful of people— a few hundred journalists, race organizers, sponsors, and racing team personnel— see the entire Tour de France in person. The Tour has always been a spectacle that most fans follow from start to finish only in newspapers or on television. The media audience of the race has surpassed the number of roadside spectators since the Tour’s first days.3 In the new millennium, Tour organizers claim an annual potential audience of two billion telespectators in 170 countries, although the number of actual viewers is much smaller.4 During the “print era” of the event, from 1903 to the Second World War, the French experienced the Tour in an increasingly simultaneous time frame as more and more of them read about it in their daily newspapers. At this

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time, too, the press lay at the heart of the Tour’s commercial strategies. It was through newspaper coverage and print advertising that the race organizers, bicycle manufacturers, sponsors, host towns, and cyclists associated with the event reached their audiences and reaped publicity, profits, sales, and celebrity. The Tour stood at the heart of an ever-expanding community of fan readers upon whose patronage the event’s commercial stakeholders depended. The Tour’s evolution in its early years demonstrates how the mass press helped to establish modern regimes of consumerism and leisure in France. The Tour’s history is one example of the new kind of interconnectedness that arose during the industrial era thanks to the rise of mass media and the increasingly rapid exchange of goods, services, people, and culture across vast distances. Similar, convergent processes were underway in France and elsewhere that fueled the emergence of modern, global sporting culture into which the Tour was born. Millions across the globe rode bikes, played soccer and baseball, and became spectators and fans of the professional sports that established themselves at the same time. But, of course, no “world headquarters” for globalization existed. Local histories of sport diverged, despite burgeoning interconnectedness and the emergence of common athletic practices and structures. Communities, nations, and regions catalyzed the globalization process as they managed their interactions with the broader world in accordance with their local desires, outlooks, and commercial or political imperatives. Furthermore, as the pace and scale of global interactions escalated over time, local practices and identities defined themselves and evolved in relation to such interactions. Despite the perceived homogenizing effects of exchange in the modern era— such as the adoption of common practices, language, and work and leisure regimes— often globalization reaffirmed the sacrosanct position of the local. 1. Modern Convergences The symbiotic relationship between mass consumption, mass leisure, and mass production drove the industrialization process forward and instigated a sea change in leisure and labor throughout the modernizing world. The emergence of modern sport across the globe beginning in the late nineteenth century illustrates these convergent trends, and not just in France. As millions began to ride bicycles and play soccer, baseball, basketball, and other sports, industries arose to satisfy the mass demand for sporting goods. Modern sport began as an urban phenomenon. Inhabitants of expanding cities spent more and more of their increasing cash incomes on new leisure pursuits, including

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buying tickets to sporting events. Both trends spurred the rise of commercialized spectatorship and athletic professionalism. More people traveled for work and play. In the process they disseminated their culture, world views, and leisure practices, including their sports, across distances. The history of modern sport, then, is tied to the broader commercialization of mass leisure culture that has taken place since the Industrial Revolution.5 Newspapers played a key role in these transformations. The mass press taught their readers about new sport and leisure activities. The press encouraged the practice of modern athletics and, through the advertisements they published, dictated consumer tastes and desires and stimulated mass consumption of sporting goods. In these ways, the press fostered sporting communities where none existed. American baseball historians, for example, have argued that journalists’ invention in the mid-nineteenth century of common statistical measures such as batting averages and pitching earned run averages established a common language that could be spoken and understood even by casual fans in and outside the ballpark. Fans followed the games in absentia thanks to the printed box score, a statistical narrative of how the game played out over time as well as the individual contributions of each player to the contest. The new baseball language created a common frame of reference that allowed supporters of teams in different parts of America to talk to each other about the sport in meaningful ways. It also stimulated the development of a self-referential, historical understanding of baseball, since reporters and fans could compare, contrast, and argue about players and teams of different eras using standardized statistical measures.6 Today, baseball is played on four continents and its unique statistical system and lexicon provide a common frame of reference and sporting language for the sport’s fans and players around the world. More broadly, the press helped to constitute new kinds of communities and connections among people where none existed before.7 The rise of modern communications systems, including the mass press, since the Industrial Revolution facilitated increasingly rapid and complex exchanges of ideas, languages, technologies, information, and culture. Important cultural and psychological changes also accompanied the elaboration of new communications structures. Scholars have analyzed extensively the centrality of the mass press in fostering modern national political identities— that reading, especially newspaper reading, helped to engender a consciousness of belonging to a community that shared a common heritage and destiny and that experienced a common history simultaneously, even though most members of the nation never came in physical contact with one another. The development of these new political identities accompanied and helped to spur the process of

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nation building that has gone on since the political and economic revolutions of the late eighteenth century.8 Sport and sporting competition embodied the emergent sense of the imagined national community and identity in many Western societies as the nation- and empire-building process moved forward in the nineteenth century.9 Even more, increasing specialization and commercialization of the press industry— including the rise of niche periodicals like those dedicated to sports— in the late nineteenth century helped to constitute new, increasingly specialized, transnational communities of readers based on common political interest and cultural outlooks.10 By the turn of the twentieth century, the feeling that technology and imperialism had condensed the world and erased the perceived distances among people created a feeling that Westerners existed in an “expanded living space” that included much of the globe.11 Sport occupied an important place in this increasingly interconnected world. Imperialism and expanding travel and educational networks seeded new sports around the globe and sparked unanticipated athletic and cultural exchanges. In the Francophone world, sport helped engender a shared sense of identity that was built on the diversity of experiences in the French imperial diaspora. Philip Dine argues that the development of modern, European-style sporting culture after 1870 in Algeria— a colony annexed to metropolitan France in 1834 — facilitated the “emergence of [a] self-aware and self-assertive settler culture in colonial Algeria.”12 European sports, brought by colonists and appropriated by North Africans, became memes in a perceived “pan-Mediterranean culture” and touchstones of postcolonial reconciliation and lingering animosities between France and its former colony after Algerian independence in 1962.13 The British, too, carried sports like cricket, soccer, and rugby with them as they expanded their formal and informal empires in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was believed that playing sports like cricket and introducing them to imperial subjects would instill in British males the manly discipline necessary to rule the empire, create a cultural bond that would hold the empire together in the competitive era of “New Imperialism,” and cultivate in Britain’s imperial subjects the moral character necessary to achieve the “civilizing mission.”14 Beyond the formal empire, British businessmen and bureaucrats brought soccer to nations that had significant commercial links to the United Kingdom— Argentina, Uruguay, Switzerland, Denmark, the Netherlands, and France.15 Tourism and migration also figured highly in the spread of British sports to other societies. British expatriates and tourists brought rugby to the French capital and provinces. British subjects living in Paris established the first French rugby club in 1872 and the “English

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Colony” of wealthy tourists who wintered in Pau, in southwestern France, established the section Palois rugby club and supplied many of its players until the Great War.16 Expanding education and travel networks also facilitated the informal proliferation of new sports. Cuban students who studied in Mississippi introduced baseball to Havana in the late 1850s. By the 1890s, the depth of Cuban baseball talent was so profound that dozens of Cuban baseballers played on American professional teams.17 In such trends lie the roots of contemporary global society. The longterm social and cultural reconfigurations that accompanied the rise of the mass press in the nineteenth century began the process of uncoupling the sense of community from a physical location, an important shift that underlay the development of national communities and a global consciousness. The press and, later, other mass media also facilitated the constitution and reconstitution of novel cultural and social networks and communities that transcended barriers of nations, time, and distance. More and more of these new communities developed around the emerging leisure and sports culture in modernizing nations.18 Sports that in the twentieth century became global ones with standardized rules, business practices, and transnational fan communities found their origins in nineteenth-century local settings. Soccer, the twentieth century’s most popular sport, was originally the pastime of English public school boys, whose alumni codified the rules of the game in London in 1863. By the early twentieth century, soccer clubs, associations, and leagues using the Englishstyle rules had been established across the planet.19 Baseball was codified in New York City in the 1840s by lower-middle-class merchants, clerks, firefighters, and coopers who enjoyed the “American Pastime” on a rented field in Hoboken, New Jersey.20 By the late nineteenth century, baseball was played widely in North America, the Caribbean, and Japan, spread by both American and Cuban travelers and refugees.21 The history of the bicycle illustrates many of these same convergent trends. The bicycle emerged as an object of mass consumption in many societies at roughly the same time— the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. German innovator Baron von Drais, the chief forestry officer of the Grand Duchy of Baden, invented the draisienne, the precursor to modern bicycles, in 1817 in an effort to speed his forest inspection tours. The draisienne featured a wood frame that linked two wooden wheels rimmed with iron. The rider pushed the machine forward and backward with his feet and braked by applying shoe pressure to the front wheel. Between the 1860s and the 1890s, Scottish, French, and American craftsmen invented and exchanged key technologies and industrial processes that

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contributed to the development of the modern, all-metal, two-wheel, pedaldriven bicycle. Bicycle innovators in different workshops knew of their rivals’ technologies and borrowed ideas freely from each other.22 Mass production of the bicycle led to a rapid decline in prices and a sharp increase in demand. By the mid-1890s, most people could afford bicycles. A “bicycle craze” erupted on both sides of the Atlantic, and Europeans and Americans bought tens of millions of machines. Annual bicycle sales in France grew from 203,026 units in 1894 to 3,552,000 in 1914.23 American sales peaked in the mid-1890s. Robert Smith estimates that Americans bought 400,000 bicycles in 1895 and had invested $500 million in bicycles and bicycle accessories by 1896.24 Adults rather than children comprised the first generation of cyclists. American suffragist Frances Willard learned to ride a bicycle in 1895 at age 53 and wrote of her experiences to encourage other women to ride. The learning process involved twenty-two hours of private lessons over three months, some of which were conducted under the guidance and protection of six strong young men and women who lifted Willard onto the machine, pushed her from behind, steered the bicycle, and hovered around her in case she lost her balance.25 The bicycle emerged as a potent cultural symbol that was synonymous with modernity and progress, for good or for ill. The technological evolution of the bicycle allowed humans to move faster than almost any creature or machine constructed by the 1890s. With Western society increasingly obsessed with speed and technology, the possibilities offered by the bicycle captivated the popular imagination. The bicycle symbolized the increasing democratization of society. More and more men and women from all levels of the social hierarchy gained access to the freedom and mobility that bicycles accorded. Since the act of riding a bicycle was the same for men and women— it was the only mass sport in which the rules and equipment were the same for both sexes— feminists hailed the bicycle as a sign of female emancipation and of the leveling of the social playing field. Frances Willard and her fellow American suffragists recognized the power of the bicycle and “rejoiced together greatly in perceiving the impetus that this uncompromising but fascinating and illimitably capable machine would give to that blessed ‘woman question.’”26 For others, the bicycle embodied many of the social and cultural threats of modernity, especially the dissolution of traditional class barriers and gender roles. British physician Arabella Kenealy, recounting the cautionary, fictitious tale of “Clara,” a young female bicycler, concluded: Clara the athlete was no longer the Clara I remembered two years earlier. . . . Where before her beauty was suggestive and elusive, now it is defined.  .  .  . Her movements are muscular and less womanly. . . . As the greatest charm

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of Clara’s face— the charm that she has lost in the suspicion of “bicycle face” (the face of muscular tension)— was incommunicable, a dainty elusive quality which could not be put into words nor reproduced on canvas, so the highest of all attributes are silent, as for example sympathy.27

Kenealy argued that medical evidence demonstrated that the bicycle and other sports “unsexed” women and led them to abandon motherhood and the domestic sphere.28 In Europe and the New World, debates about proper bicycling attire emblemized rapidly evolving dynamics of class, gender, and leisure around the turn of the twentieth century. In France, differences between men’s racing and recreational cycling garb became metaphors for class distinction; men who dressed for speed rather than genteel style risked being associated with the working classes, from which most competitive cyclists originated.29 Debates over female bicycling apparel carried profound meanings in the arena of gender politics. The “bloomer craze” that accompanied the bicycle craze in Europe and America challenged traditional notions of female respectability and comportment. Many women chose to mount their bicycles in pants-like bloomers rather than long skirts and corsets—Willard described a corset-clad rider as “miserable as a stalwart nun”— both as a political statement and to make riding simpler and safer.30 Although they looked to France for bloomer fashions in the 1890s, American women cyclists’ penchant for the puffylegged pantaloons endured after French clothing designers turned away from them. Furthermore, the American “bloomer craze” provided inspiration for more functional female clothing styles into the twentieth century.31 In both Europe and North America, professional, competitive bicycling matured into a popular spectator sport as the “bicycle craze” reached its peak in the mid-1890s. The capacity of bicycles to magnify human locomotive power captivated the public on both sides of the Atlantic. The short-distance sprint contests and long-distance road races created during the “bicycle craze,” and the star cyclists who survived them and triumphed, embodied the Western love affair with the bicycle. Thousands of contests sprung up across the Western world in this heyday of the bicycle. Competitive cycling was self-consciously internationalist. In the last decades of the nineteenth century, promoters and manufacturers sponsored numerous races that featured stables of professional riders from America, France, Britain, and elsewhere.32 It should be noted, as well, that the French invented and controlled the most important formal structures and governing bodies of international sport in this era, including the International Cycling Union, the International

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Olympic Committee, and the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA).33 In America, short-distance sprinting contests dominated the professional cycling scene. African-American pedaler Marshall “Major” Taylor vaulted to the top of American sprinting in the mid-1890s. Taylor grew up in Indiana, one of eight children and the son of a coachman. In 1891, bicycle entrepreneur Thomas Hay employed thirteen-year-old Taylor as a shop hand and trick rider in his bicycle store in downtown Indianapolis after Taylor impressed him with a riding stunt. The following year, Hay entered Taylor into a ten-mile race sponsored by the store, expecting the young rider to clown and inject some crowd-pleasing humor into the spectacle. Instead, Taylor won the race handily. It was the first of hundreds of victories for him.34 Taylor established dozens of records, including at least seven world one-mile speed records, and won several head-to-head national and world track cycling championships. Jim Crow laws and mindsets limited Taylor’s racing opportunities in America. He became an international star athlete who demanded enormous appearance fees and traveled to Europe and Australia— also embroiled in a “bicycle craze” at the turn of the twentieth century— to compete against the world’s top sprinters.35 During the peak of the French craze of the 1890s, sprint cycling contests became an entertainment staple and generated sizable gate revenues at urban venues like the Paris Buffalo velodrome.36 At the first modern Olympic Games in Athens in 1896, three of the six cycling events were short-distance sprint races. France, Belgium, and Italy were the cradles of road racing and Western Europe emerged as the world’s road racing epicenter in the 1890s. The intercity road race, which by the early twentieth century was the staple event of professional cycling, was invented in 1869 by Le Vélocipède Illustré, a Grenoble cycling newspaper, and sponsored by France’s most important bicycle manufacturer, the Compagnie Parisienne.37 Short-distance road races of less than fifty kilometers, many of which were sponsored by small cycling newspapers, sprung up in subsequent years across France.38 In the early decades of road racing, growing professionalism challenged the amateur ideal upon which many of the early road races had been founded. For example, the organizers of Belgium’s now-classic Liège–Bastogne–Liège road race excluded professional racers from participating in its first two editions in 1892 and 1893. Most of the early road races, however, allowed amateur and professional cyclists to compete against one another. Around the turn of the twentieth century, the modern sport of professional cycling began to take shape in Europe. Sprint and track racing con-

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tinued to flourish. Important one-day events like the Grand Prix de Paris sprint competition generated large gate receipts in the decade before the First World War.39 Many of the “classic” road races that today remain cycling’s most prestigious contests were established in Western Europe between 1891 and 1914. Sports newspapers in France, Italy, and Belgium created new and ever-more-spectacular races to entice readers to purchase copies. One-day competitions created during this time include the Bordeaux–Paris (1891), Liège– Bastogne– Liège (1892), Paris– Roubaix (1896), the Tour of Lombardy (1905), and the Milan– San Remo (1907). Following the creation of the Tour de France in 1903, the sporting press in other countries created “national” tours of their own, the most prestigious of which was the Tour of Italy (1909). Bicycle manufacturers, hoping victories in these races would lead to higher sales, hired teams of professional racers to carry their brands into competition. By the eve of the Great War, a rough calendar of competitions had been established. Thanks to their domination of emerging international governing bodies of cycling, French journalists and industrialists established a fairly unified competitive schedule and rule system that benefited French cycling interests.40 A corps of itinerant professional cyclists devoted themselves to racing full-time throughout Western Europe. Millions of fans followed the races and their favorite star cyclists in the pages of Europe’s sporting press. The formal and informal exchanges of bicycle technologies, debates about the meaning of the bicycle in the mass press on both sides of the Atlantic, and the rise of a transnational, professional spectator-oriented sport of competitive cycling illustrate many of the points of convergence in turn-of-thecentury Western sporting culture. Nevertheless, the period of convergence proved to be short-lived. At the moment when the bicycle became a mass transatlantic phenomenon, the regional histories of bicycling began to diverge starkly. Despite the globalization of the bicycle— by the 1930s, scores of Asian manufacturers supplied bicycles to tens of millions of Chinese, Japanese, and Indians— the national histories of bicycling were characterized more by difference than convergence. 2. Divergences: Bicycling around the World The meaning of the bicycle, as well as characteristics of the bicycling industry and the professional sport, differed significantly from place to place. It was the local context that determined how, why, and for what purposes change over time occurred. This rang true for all the emerging global sports. Soccer was played around the world with the same rules by the late nineteenth century, but its cultural and political meanings differed from place to place. For ex-

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ample, in metropolitan France dynamics of class and work shaped the sport. Middle-class Anglophiles founded early soccer clubs in the Belle Epoque, but by the interwar years working-class men joined clubs associated with the factories that employed them.41 In early twentieth-century Algeria, meanwhile, soccer became a “theater for a confrontation” between Muslim Algerians and French colonial authority.42 In Latin America, soccer emerged as a passionate pastime of the urban poor by the late nineteenth century, more quickly than anywhere else. Team rivalries expressed tensions of class, ethnicity, and neighborhood in the continent’s teeming cities.43 Local contexts shaped baseball’s history, as well. In the United States, the social and associative functions of baseball clubs were as important as the athletic experience of playing the game. The “baseball fraternity” of the 1840s and 1850s became a cornerstone of sociability for certain groups of middle-class men in New York and other growing cities in the American northeast. The class dynamic counted; young middle-class men’s membership in exclusive baseball clubs conveyed a kind of respectability that could distinguish them from other strata in the rapidly evolving urban social structure.44 Cubans began to play baseball in the 1860s, only shortly after the sport was invented in New York City. Baseball became a touchstone for Cuban discourses of revolt and national independence from Spain, even after the Spanish regime outlawed the sport in 1869. Baseball even had a place in Communist revolutionary culture in the 1950s and 1960s. It was widely believed that had talented pitcher Fidel Castro pursued a professional career— it was rumored that American professional teams had drafted him in the 1950s— the Cuban Revolution might never have occurred.45 In other Caribbean nations, as well, playing baseball took on anti-imperialist, especially anti-American, overtones.46 In Meiji Japan, which took up the sport in the 1870s, playing baseball enhanced Japanese virtue and manliness. Numerous Japanese victories against American teams in the 1890s were widely celebrated in the nation’s press as symbols of Japan’s rise to power on the world stage.47 The history and meaning of the bicycle also differed dramatically from place to place.48 For example, Catalonia’s failed attempts to establish and control a Tour of Spain just before the Great War mirrored larger struggles for national power and influence between Barcelona and Madrid.49 In the United States, the “bicycle craze” ended fairly quickly in the early 1900s and the professional spectator sport of cycling was short-lived. Ironically, the American bicycle industry may have been instrumental in ushering in its own demise. David Hounshell points out that the bicycle stirred the American obsession with rapid personal transportation but “could not satisfy the demand which it had created.”50 Instead, Americans turned to the automobile to satisfy their

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desire for speed and mobility. Many of the technologies and manufacturing techniques developed for the bicycle— such as rolled-tube metal framing, transmission chains, friction brakes, the inner tube, as well as the use of assembly lines, metal stamping, and interchangeable parts— served as the mechanical foundation and manufacturing model of the first generations of automobiles.51 The burgeoning automobile industry appropriated many business practices pioneered by bicycle manufacturers such as guarantees on equipment, nationwide distribution and sales forces, and planned obsolescence of models to stimulate sales. By the early twentieth century, and despite the surge in bicycle sales during the Depression and the Second World War, the bicycle in America had been reduced to the status of a child’s toy.52 The United States emerged as the most motorized society in the world, with approximately one car per American family on the roads by 1930.53 Europe’s transformation into a motorized society occurred later than in the United States, in part because the bicycle had been integrated into urban transportation networks and remained a primary mode of personal transportation for many parts of the European population. In 1930, for example, Britain and France, the most motorized societies in the world behind the United States, had per-capita ratios of thirty and twenty-eight vehicles, respectively.54 Denmark remained bicycle mad. A 1930s Copenhagen traffic study found that a third of the city population traveled on bicycles, more than walked, took public transportation, or rode in other vehicles.55 A Danish government survey indicated that 95 percent of Danish families spent money on bicycle repair, purchases, or accessories in 1939, a clear indication of the universality of bicycles in the Scandinavian nation.56 Finland’s motorization roughly equaled that of Germany and the Netherlands by the interwar years, yet bicycle sales peaked in 1938 and the machine remained deeply embedded in Finnish social, work, and leisure routines.57 Beginning in the aftermath of the Great War, Asia overtook Europe and the United States as the most bicycle-mobilized society on Earth. Asian bicycling did not develop amid the same class, gender, and athletic dynamics as it did in the Atlantic basin. Nevertheless, a human-powered, wheeled vehicle— the rickshaw, invented in Japan to move people and goods— crowded the streets of large Asian cities decades before the bicycle boom. It is estimated that by the early 1870s more than 25,000 of the conveyances crowded the streets of Tokyo.58 The importance of rickshaws and the sizable Chinese immigrant workforce that powered them in some Asian cities was underlined by an 1897 crisis in Singapore, when a rickshaw driver strike provoked a panic that forced British authorities to implement martial law.59 Western travelers and businessmen introduced bicycles to Asia in the late nineteenth century.

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Japan, where Western bicycles arrived in 1888, experienced somewhat of a “bicycle craze” around the turn of the twentieth century. A sizable domestic bicycle manufacturing industry grew, and numerous races and bicycle skills demonstrations took place around the country.60 By 1930, Japan’s six million bicycles equaled three times the number on American streets, even though the Japanese population was only half that of the United States.61 Elsewhere in Asia, the bicycle itself did not emerge as a significant mode of personal transportation until the interwar years. Before the Great War, foreign communities in large Asian cities brought bicycles with them, and bicycle riding in Asia remained a leisure activity practiced almost exclusively by Western elites. Popularization of the bicycle did not occur in China until the early 1930s, when indigenous manufacturing led to dramatic price drops.62 During the Great Leap Forward of the 1950s and 1960s, Communist leaders, as part of their rapid modernization program, dreamed of transforming China into a “nation of bicycles.” Much of the world embargoed trade with China until the 1970s, and a large domestic bicycle manufacturing industry blossomed.63 The world’s most populous nation quickly became the planet’s most bicycleoriented society. Only in Western Europe did a rich professional cycling culture endure long into the twentieth century. Complex networks of competition, spectatorship, commercial interaction, athletes, and media underlay the emergence of Europe’s professional cycling culture. These trends made the region’s sporting history unique and helped determine the shape and meanings of the Tour de France. 3. Cycling, the Press, and Mass Society in France: The Milieu of the Tour Beginning in the 1870s, French sports periodicals and bicycle manufacturers cooperated to support and publicize one another and to promote cycling. The events created and sponsored by newspapers made cycling a popular spectator sport in Paris and in the provinces. A nationwide audience of approximately 150,000 people read cycling periodicals regularly in the 1880s.64 The number of cycling events staged and the amount of prize money offered to contestants rose sharply in the 1880s. Between 1882 and 1885, the number of events held in France rose from 284 to 609, the number of competitors in these events increased from 328 to 481, and the prize money offered jumped from 20,000 to 67,000 francs.65 These trends culminated in the establishment of what Hugh Dauncey calls the “sports-media-industrial complex,” a nexus of relations that shaped cycling for the rest of its history.66 In the 1890s, popular interest in cycling led to a greater demand for bi-

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cycles. The number of bicycle manufacturers grew, and many builders began to employ mass production techniques. The size of the bicycle factories grew significantly, indicating the beginnings of mass production: the BayardClément factories near Bordeaux employed 2,000 workers by the mid-1890s.67 By 1894, more than 300 bicycle manufacturers displayed their wares at the first Salon du Cycle, the major industry trade show held annually thereafter in Paris.68 The number of bicycles in France increased dramatically during the 1890s from approximately 50,000 in 1890 to 203,000 in 1894 and to 981,000 in 1900.69 Mass production led to a drop in prices. Eugen Weber calculated that the cheapest bicycle on the market in 1893 cost the equivalent of 1,655 hours’ wages for a factory hand.70 However, the Hirondelle company offered several more affordable models of bicycles, the most inexpensive being the 185-franc “democratic” model, which was not equipped with inner-tube tires.71 Richard Holt pointed out that secondhand bicycles could be bought for as little as twenty or thirty francs by the early years of the twentieth century.72 Although even the cheapest models remained rather expensive luxuries to the working poor, the market for bicycles nevertheless expanded tremendously during the 1890s to the point that many members of the lower middle class, as well as relatively affluent members of the working class, could purchase a bicycle. By 1914, the French bicycle industry produced 3.5 million units per year.73 The blossoming of modern sporting association life fed these consumer trends. Millions of French men and women rode bicycles while up to half a million practiced gymnastics or joined the thousands of sporting clubs and associations around the turn of the century.74 The popularity of riding bicycles and watching races inflated the circulation numbers of the main cycling newspapers and enticed new publications to enter the market. The most important newspaper created during this period was Pierre Giffard’s Le Vélo, founded in 1891. Giffard gained fame in the 1890s as the editor in chief of Le Petit Journal, one of Paris’s largest and most influential newspapers, and as an outspoken critic of Alfred Dreyfus’s treason conviction after 1894. The newspaperman also pioneered sports entertainment in France by creating the Paris– Brest– Paris bicycle race in 1891 and one of the world’s first automobile races, the Paris– Rouen, in 1894. Giffard built Le Vélo into the premier cycling newspaper in France. Le Vélo appeared daily, and its initial circulation was 10,000 copies per day. Giffard’s paper succeeded so brilliantly that he decided to expand coverage to all sports. The size of Le Vélo increased from four small pages to six large ones, and by 1896, circulation had increased eight times to 80,000 copies per day.75 The bicycle industry and the press worked together to exploit growing mass markets. Bicycle builders and other concerns linked to cycling, such

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as tire, component, and clothing businesses, directly controlled several cycling newspapers, including Sport Vélocipédique (1880), Revue Vélocipédique (1882), Véloce-Sport (1885), Véloceman, and L’Echo des Sports (1890).76 The “independent” cycling newspapers also relied heavily on revenues generated from advertising purchased by the bicycle industry and associated businesses. In the January 19, 1894, issue of the bicycling magazine La Bicyclette, for example, seventeen of the magazine’s forty-two pages were devoted to publicity, and only two advertisements concerned products other than bicycles.77 Manufacturers also bought significant advertising space from some mainstream national newspapers. The sporting press and, to a certain extent, the general interest press entered into a mutually profitable relationship with bicycle businesses during the fin de siècle that endured for decades. From the 1870s onward, a spirit of radical promotionalism emerged and spectacularized the sport of cycling. Journalists and captains of industry concocted more and more extreme cycling challenges to captivate the French public. By the 1890s, the technology of the bicycle had advanced to the point that race organizers could envision road races covering fantastic distances. The Paris– Rouen race of 1869 was the first intercity contest and ran a distance of 135 kilometers. In the 1890s, newspapers created several major races that became known as the “classics” by the twentieth century. In 1891, Le Vélo and Véloce-Sport created two of cycling’s most enduring races in an effort to out-publicize competing newspapers and each other. Véloce-Sport, based in Bordeaux, announced the creation of the Bordeaux– Paris race, a 572-kilometer event that would pit the best riders in France, those of Bordeaux’s Véloce-Club Bordelais, against the best English riders. To promote the launch of Le Vélo, Pierre Giffard created an even more audacious race to be staged later in the year, the Paris-to-Brest-and-back race. The contest covered 1,200 kilometers, more than double the length of Véloce-Sport’s event. During the 1890s, newspapers created and covered several major intercity road races: the 250 kilometer Liège– Bastogne– Liège in 1892, the 407-kilometer Paris– Brussels in 1893, and the 250-kilometer Paris–Tours and 280-kilometer Paris– Roubaix (run on cobblestone roads) in 1896. These events became major newspaper circulation battlegrounds. Road races also emerged as the major arena for industrial competition, which quickly led to the professionalization of competitive cycling. Individual manufacturers attempted to monopolize the sport and its spectacle to corner publicity for themselves. Industry leaders considered success in competition to be the best possible advertising, and they went to extremes to ensure the victory of their bicycles and components. Michelin went so far as to create a Paris to Clermont-Ferrand race in 1891 in which only riders equipped

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with Michelin tires could enter.78 The most sought-after outcome, however, was not merely victory but comparative superiority to competitors’ products. A bicycle builder generated the best possible publicity for his products when they defeated those of another company in head-to-head competition. To this end, bicycle builders sponsored teams of professional cyclists to race their products in major competitions. Although an amateur philosophy dominated the bourgeois-only clubs and recreational cycling into the twentieth century, and despite many boisterous denunciations of the sport of cycling as mere “commercialism,” professionalism flourished in competitive cycling from the moment the first cash prizes were offered. Even before the “bicycle craze” the most successful French riders earned considerable amounts of prize money, and working-class riders filled up the professional ranks. Charles Terront, the best professional cyclist in France before the 1890s, grew up in Saint-Ouen, an industrial suburb of Paris. He won his first race in 1876 and quit his job as a bicycle messenger at the Agence Havas to compete full-time.79 Terront raced all over Europe and dominated competitions in the era of the grand-bi, the name given to bicycles with an enlarged front wheel; in 1885, for example, he won fifty-five of the sixty-five races he entered and earned 6,000 francs in prize money.80 Terront successfully adapted to the modern bicycle era and won the inaugural edition of the Paris– Brest– Paris race in 1891. The amount of prize money to be won increased tremendously: Edmond Jacquelin, who began his professional life as a baker, earned 15,000 gold francs for winning the Grand Prix de Paris in 190081; and the champion of the first Tour de France in 1903, Maurice Garin, a former chimney sweep, took home 6,075 gold francs.82 Manufacturers signed sponsorship contracts with these cycling champions, and the press lionized them. The urban working classes, a major growth sector in newspaper readership in the decades before the First World War, liked to read stories about people with whom they could associate.83 Newspapers molded the stories of rags-to-riches champions like Terront and Jacquelin to resonate with and captivate their increasingly lower- and workingclass readership. The Tour de France was born of this publicity-filled, profit-driven milieu of professional cycling.

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The Tour, Greatest of the Turn-of-the-Century Bicycle Races

Unusual drama, controversy, and scandal swirled around the Tour in its early years. Cheating was so rampant in 1904 that French cycling’s governing body disqualified the top four riders including Maurice Garin, the first-place finisher and champion of the inaugural 1903 race. The same year, organizers disqualified a dozen competitors for infractions that included traveling in trains, fighting, drafting behind cars, and accepting food and aid from spectators. René Pottier, the Tour’s first dominant climber, won the 1906 Tour by racing over the Ballon d’Alsace, the first mountain ever included on the itinerary, only to commit suicide several months later after discovering his wife’s infidelities. Widespread collusion among riders forced Tour organizers to alter the race rules, itineraries, and incentive systems nearly every year in an effort to make the race fairer and more competitive. The outbreak of war in 1914 forced the Tour into a five-year hiatus. Many cycling notables died during the Great War including Tour winners Lucien Petit-Breton (1907 and 1908), François Faber (1909), and Octave Lapize (1910), who were killed while serving France. During this time, the Tour de France became the most important European professional cycling event and a prime point of connection and exchange between French cycling and the sport in the broader world. The apparent dichotomy of the Tour— a quintessentially French phenomenon shaped and given meaning by the French context, as well as the archetypal spectacle upon which European and global professional cycling modeled itself— makes it a useful vehicle for investigating how the local, regional, and global interacted. The Tour’s emergence as a media spectacle offers an opportunity to explore the role of the French press in forming new kinds of communities in the age of mass culture.

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1. The Tour Is Born The Tour de France was the brainchild of Henri Desgrange and his cycling editor, Géo Lef èvre. Desgrange was the editor in chief of the Parisian sports daily L’Auto, founded in 1900. He was born in Paris in 1865 and was educated in law. Desgrange worked as a clerk in a notary’s office until 1890. On weekends, Desgrange competed in bicycle and tricycle races in the Paris area. His success as a cyclist, however, hurt his reputation as a clerk. One client complained that he was offended to see Desgrange’s naked calves while he raced.1 Unable to reconcile his desire to race with the standards of respectability demanded by his employer, Desgrange resigned his position with the notary and devoted himself to cycling. Desgrange played an important role in Paris’s cycling community, first as a competitor and then as an adman and race organizer. After leaving his job as a clerk, he was hired as a publicity agent for Adolphe Clément, a major manufacturer of bicycles and automobiles. Desgrange became modern cycling’s first speed record holder in 1893 and set the time record for 100 kilometers pedaled on a tricycle. After withdrawing his membership from the Paris bar in 1897, Desgrange became the director of operations at two of Paris’s great cycling arenas, the Vélodrome de la Seine and the Parc des Princes.2 Desgrange also established himself as an authority on the training of professional cyclists. In 1898, Desgrange published La tête et les jambes (The Head and the Legs), a fictional account of how his conditioning techniques and moral philosophy transformed an amateur cycling enthusiast into a professional champion. Desgrange wrote himself into the book as an authoritarian father figure who demanded strict physical and spiritual discipline of his young charge. Desgrange insisted that his disciple live an ascetic lifestyle, abstain from smoking, drinking, and any form of self-adulation, and avoid sex and even contact with women, whom he argued sapped the physical strength and will to win from male athletes.3 L’Auto and the Tour de France were born of the turn-of-the-century drama surrounding the Dreyfus Affair, a series of political crises and judicial scandals that divided the French Left and Right for more than a decade following the erroneous conviction of Jewish army officer Alfred Dreyfus for treason in 1894. L’Auto and the Tour modeled themselves after the cyclingrelated press ventures of the 1890s. Although police reports characterized him as politically neutral,4 Desgrange entered into publishing with the backing of right-wing agitators and businessmen who supported the Dreyfus conviction. The Count de Dion, an automobile industrialist who was jailed briefly

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because of his Dreyfus-related political activities, and Adolphe Clément, a bicycle manufacturer and Desgrange’s former employer, contributed start-up capital to L’Auto. They hoped the new sports daily, at first called L’Auto-Vélo, would undermine Pierre Giffard’s market leader, Le Vélo, as retribution for Giffard’s pointed and public criticism of de Dion and others over their support of the Dreyfus conviction.5 L’Auto-Vélo debuted on October 16, 1900. In the first issue, Desgrange underlined the commercial raison d’être of his newspaper: to promote the popularization of the bicycle and the automobile and to support their manufacturers: “The bicycle . . . owes it to herself to penetrate everywhere, even into modest homes. . . . Each day [L’Auto-Vélo] will toast the glory of the athletes and the victories of the Industry.”6 Desgrange’s fledgling paper fared badly against Giffard’s Le Vélo. Circulation of the new daily, which was printed on yellow paper, hovered around 50,000 copies per day during its first year of existence.7 A vicious battle between the two dailies continued for almost four years, with each undermining the other at every turn. In 1902, for example, Desgrange staged a Bordeaux– Paris bicycle race the day after Giffard’s, on the exact course followed by cyclists in Giffard’s competition, to steal Le Vélo’s thunder. Giffard, piqued by Desgrange’s choice of title for his newspaper, sued Desgrange for plagiarism. A judge forced Desgrange to drop the second half of L’Auto-Vélo’s title in January 1903. Despite Desgrange’s best efforts, L’Auto’s circulation dropped to approximately 30,000 in June 1902, the height of the outdoor cycling season, and to 20,000 by the beginning of 1903.8 Desgrange feared that the Count de Dion and his other backers would pull the financial plug on the newspaper.9 During the course of a meeting with his editors in L’Auto’s Paris offices at 10, rue Montmartre, a frustrated Desgrange demanded that his colleagues come up with ideas that would finally give them an advantage in the war with Giffard. Desgrange’s twenty-five-year-old cycling editor, Géo Lef èvre, suggested that L’Auto stage a race around France, fashioned after the existing Six Days of Paris event, but held on France’s roads instead of in a cycling velodrome. Lef èvre described Desgrange’s reaction the moment he suggested staging the race: A Tour of France? You must want to kill everyone brave enough to ride it. . . . [But] In principle, your idea isn’t stupid. . . . Giffard will be so angry! . . . That’ll cause a huge splash, and I’m all for creating huge splashes.10

On January 19, 1903, several days after losing the plagiarism suit to Giffard, Desgrange announced the creation of the Tour de France. The sheer audac-

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ity of Desgrange’s proposed event— 2,500 kilometers (1,500 miles) in length, divided into six stages to be raced over several weeks— raised considerably the bar by which subsequent cycling races would be measured. L’Auto barely managed to get the first Tour off the ground. Desgrange decided that the Tour would start on the 1st of July outside Paris and pass through Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, and Nantes before finishing outside Paris on July 19th. Initially, too few competitors signed up to make staging the race plausible. Unlike many long races of the day, Desgrange refused to allow riders to employ “pacers” (entraineurs)— vehicles driven before a competitor to lessen wind resistance and set a pedaling rhythm— except during the last stage of the Tour. Also, Desgrange forbade racing teams from colluding with each other, which was a common practice. To encourage participation, Desgrange simplified registration requirements by allowing any cyclist who appeared in person at L’Auto and paid a ten-franc fee to enter. L’Auto offered prize money to the top eight finishers of each stage and a grand prize of 3,000 gold francs to the overall Tour winner. Participants could drop out of the Tour in one stage and rejoin it at a later stage, although they would be ineligible for the overall title if they did not complete the entire course. On race day only sixty of the seventy-eight registered riders presented themselves for sign-in at “Le Réveil-Matin” (The Alarm Clock) café in Montgeron, just outside Paris. Race participants included some of the top professionals of the day, such as Maurice Garin, who moonlighted as a chimney sweep in Lens. Others were complete unknowns or novices, such as a white-bearded man named Dargassies, a former blacksmith from Grisolles in southern France, who signed up because the person from whom he had recently bought a grocery store commented that he seemed strong enough to participate.11 The first Tour was a disorganized affair. Although the finish of each stage was to take place in a specified café in each of the host towns, few of the race’s rules or arrangements had been determined by start time. The racers crossed the starting line at 3:16 p.m. on July 1st. They rode until they reached the first-stage town, Lyon, 467 kilometers (290 miles) away. Competitors pedaled all day and all night and stopped at cafés along the way to replenish their strength with coffee and generous helpings of red meat. Some required more than twenty-four hours to reach the finish line of the first stage, which created enormous differences in aggregate times among the racers. Riders rested and trained for several days between each leg of the Tour. The other stages departed in the middle of the night to ensure that riders had as much daylight as possible in which to ride. To mark the Tour’s fiftieth anniversary in 1953, Géo Lef èvre granted an

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interview in which he recounted his experiences during the first Tour. Desgrange dispatched his young cycling editor to work “all at once [as] race director, solitary referee, finish-line judge and special envoy” of L’Auto. To prevent riders from cheating or employing pacers, Lef èvre rode with the riders on his bike and set up unannounced, nocturnal checkpoints in key stretches of the itinerary. Lef èvre occasionally left the course, rode his bike to the nearest train station, caught an express train, and rejoined the itinerary farther down the road to keep riders on their toes. L’Auto colleagues Georges Abran and Fernand Mercier assisted Lef èvre so that Desgrange could truthfully assert that he had employed “three secret modes of extraordinary surveillance” during the Tour. Abran waved a giant starting flag, of the same yellow tint as the pages of L’Auto, at the beginning of each stage and waited “with a very full glass of Pernod” at the finish café for the competitors to arrive and sign the official registry at the end of the stage.12 Mercier traveled by car to each host town on the eve of the Tour’s arrival to make logistical preparations. Maurice Garin won the first stage of the Tour’s six stages with a time advantage of more than nine hours over the last-place finisher. The race proceeded pell-mell. Several instances of forbidden collusion among riders— some competitors in contention for the lead convinced those far behind in the standings to pace-set for them— forced Desgrange and Lef èvre to change the rules after the second stage so that competitors ineligible for the overall Tour crown would start each stage an hour after the eligible riders. On July 14th, Desgrange almost canceled the remainder of the Tour when the mayor of La Rochelle attempted to block the passage of the riders through his town because traffic was forbidden to circulate on Bastille Day. Only loud protests and threats of violence by La Rochelle’s inhabitants in front of town hall prevented the mayor from carrying out his promise. When the riders finally reached Paris on July 19th, Garin handily won the first-ever Tour with a time advantage of almost three hours over his closest rival. The 1904 race resembled the first— it included eighty-eight competitors and followed the same six-stage itinerary, but cyclists who quit one stage were not allowed to rejoin the race later. Large crowds lined the streets to watch the Tour, but despite the race’s growing popularity, Desgrange considered canceling the race for good. Several highly embarrassing and even violent episodes of cheating plagued the race. Some riders, perhaps inspired by race judge Lef èvre’s tactics, hopped trains. Others were towed with cables by friends and coaches. Several riders’ supporters became violent. Four unknown men in an automobile attempted to force Maurice Garin, the 1903 Tour champion, into a ditch and run him over. During the night of the second stage, near Nîmes, the supporters of a local man participating in the

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Tour physically assaulted their hero’s rivals. Only several warning shots from Géo Lef èvre’s starter’s pistol finally ended the ensuing melee. Following the Tour’s arrival in Paris, the Union Vélocipédique de France, French cycling’s governing body, disqualified Maurice Garin and the next three finishers for unspecified offenses— Garin may have taken a train during one stage, and may have received food and other forbidden support from his sponsor, but the truth about his misdeeds is unknown— and named the unknown fifthplace finisher, nineteen-year-old Henri Cornet, champion of the 1904 Tour. Desgrange lamented that “the Tour has been killed by its own success. . . . The second edition of the Tour . . . was its last.”13 Despite the debacle, the commercial boost the Tour gave to L’Auto was unmistakable and Desgrange convinced himself to continue staging the race. During the 1903 Tour, L’Auto’s circulation rose to 65,000 copies per day and averaged 45,000 copies per day for the year, and by 1904 Desgrange’s paper averaged nearly 50,000 copies per day. Desgrange won the circulation battle with Giffard. Le Vélo closed its doors in the summer of 1904, leaving L’Auto as the only sports daily in Paris. By 1912, Desgrange’s paper had grown to the seventh-largest daily newspaper in France.14 Between 1913 and 1924, L’Auto’s

f i g u r e 3 . Pellos, “Visions, Dreams, and Nightmares of the Rider” (detail). The cartoon depicts nature punishing a Tour rider in the mountains. The popular artist penned hundreds of images of the Tour, many of which anthropomorphized the event’s natural settings. Match, July 25, 1933. Courtesy of BN.

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f i g u r e 4 . Pellos, “Before the Smiling Pyrenees: The Dream of a Good Climber.” Match, July 14, 1938. Courtesy of BN.

average daily circulation rose from 120,000 to 277,000, and from 284,000 to 495,000 during the Tour. The fame accorded to the paper by the Tour became the backbone of L’Auto’s circulation. 2. Spectatorship and the Literary Tour In 1905, as part of his attempt to enlarge the Tour’s audience and spectatorship, Desgrange began the tradition of altering the race’s itinerary every year. He increased the number of stages from six to eleven and the length of the event to almost 3,000 kilometers. Desgrange sent the Tour to the towns of Nancy, Besançon, Grenoble, Toulon, La Rochelle, Rennes, and Caen for the first time. By 1910, the race covered 4,734 kilometers over fifteen stages. Between 1903 and 1914, L’Auto organized stage starts or finishes in thirty-one different provincial towns. During the same period the race passed through several hundred different cities, towns, and villages at least once. The Tour

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was not run during the Great War. Desgrange continued to expand the Tour’s itinerary after the First World War. The Tour comprised eighteen stages in 1925 and twenty-two stages in 1929. Between 1919 and 1929, the Tour stopped in twelve new provincial towns for the first time. The number of spectators was enormous. Richard Holt estimates that by 1919 between a quarter and a third of the French populace took in the race on the roadside.15 Yet only a small number of people, mainly the handful of journalists who covered the race, watched the entire Tour. Most French men and women could only take in a stage or two of the race in person. Because the riders passed by in a matter of seconds when one stood on the roadside, most fans followed the Tour’s spectacle in its entirety by reading about it in their newspapers. The race became a literary as well as a sporting event. Journalists who covered the race developed the sense of drama that characterized the Tour in the popular imagination. Desgrange continually revised the race’s format to maximize and draw out the narrative tension and to offer more interesting stories that would captivate spectators and readers. L’Auto was by no means the first mass publication to develop literary linkages among bicycling, the nation, athletic heroes, and nature.16 Nevertheless, Desgrange and his colleagues were masterful and artistic writers. Their efforts to develop a literary melodrama to serve as the Tour’s background illustrate how the press gave meaning to new spectacles in French mass society. Desgrange sought to enhance the event’s “gigantism” by challenging the riders in new ways. In 1905, he added the first mountain, the Ballon d’Alsace, to the Tour’s itinerary. In 1907, the Tour visited the Alps for the first time and in 1910 the Pyrenees. The mountains served two important purposes: to captivate the reading audience and to draw out for as long as possible the competition for the Tour’s overall crown. Prior to the 1905 Tour, no cycling competition had included any sizable hills at all; to climb the Ballon d’Alsace was considered “crazy” because only automobiles had raced on it before the Tour’s visit.17 L’Auto’s journalists discovered ever more exhausting climbs for the Tour cyclists to conquer. One cyclist even called the organizers “murderers” when they forced the riders to traverse four Pyrenean peaks of 1,500 meters or more on the same day during the 1910 Tour. The climbs through the Alps and the Pyrenees determined the victors of the race because leads were forged and destroyed in these mountain ranges. After 1910, Desgrange had fixed the general outlines of the itinerary that was to endure until the 1930s. Riders crossed the Pyrenees by the end of the first or beginning of the second week of the Tour and the Alps during the second or the beginning of the third week. Thus, the outcome of the contest, which had been determined during the first stages of the early Tours, could never be definitively known until the last days of the race.

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Desgrange also experimented with technical facets of the race formula and rules to make the contest more exciting. Between 1905 and 1912, he instituted a system whereby each racer gained points toward the overall crown according to his placement in each stage, in the belief that such a system would make the riders vie more ferociously to win each stage. When that system stagnated, Desgrange reinstituted the aggregate time standard of victory, which remains the competitive model today. To pit the more talented professional riders directly against each other, organizers separated the competitors into two categories, groupés (professionals) and isolés (amateurs or semiprofessionals). During the 1920s, the organizers instituted a number of innovations. After 1923, stage winners received time bonuses. In an attempt to circumvent collusion among the corporate teams, the 1927 Tour featured several team time trials. During the 1929 Tour, Desgrange even penalized the professional riders when the overall average speed of the race dropped to below thirty kilometers per hour by forcing them to race directly against the isolés. L’Auto increased the prize money steadily to entice riders to compete for the crown. Total prize money rose from 20,000 francs in 1903 to 45,000 in 1914 and to 150,000 in 1929.18 Desgrange fashioned the race into an event tailored to the needs of the press. He scheduled the stage starts so that the riders would arrive at the finish line in the mid- to late afternoon. Until the 1930s, starts generally took place at night between midnight and six in the morning so that L’Auto’s correspondents could write their stories and send them to Paris in time for the morning edition the following day. At first, Desgrange attempted to guarantee for L’Auto exclusive coverage of the race. Hoping to negate the ability of other newspapers to “scoop” L’Auto by simply rushing the results of each stage to press faster, during the 1906 Tour Desgrange mailed postcards with results directly to fans. Desgrange also attempted to conceal the Tour’s itinerary both to limit the cyclists’ ability to cheat and to give L’Auto a journalistic advantage over its competitors. Until 1909, L’Auto kept secret the location of the various checkpoints on the itinerary before the start of the race. Nevertheless, Desgrange could not prohibit other newspapers from following and covering the race, and since L’Auto had defeated Le Vélo by 1904 and dominated the sporting press ever since, there was little need to continue to try.19 In any event, Desgrange probably concluded that press coverage by competitors helped to further popularize the Tour. By 1921, Desgrange even began to encourage his confrères (“dear colleagues”) to follow the race by offering automobile transportation to journalists from Belgium, Italy, and provincial France. A key component of the “newspaper persona” of the Tour was the development by journalists of a writing and storytelling style that captivated read-

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ers and that created and then continually added to a body of popular lore. Tour journalists, led by Desgrange, developed a melodramatic narrative style that transformed the competitions into epic struggles pitting stylized caricatures of riders against one another and against nature. Everything about the race became gigantic in the hands of Tour journalists, who created a new lingo that French people employed when referring to the event. The Tour was not merely a bicycle race, but a “colossal rally” (le raid colossal) or the “Big Loop” (La Grande Boucle) that bound together the nation. Writers personified the countryside traversed by the race. Nature herself became a living enemy who “[threw] incredible obstacles on the road in front of the riders” while mountains like the “terrible col d’Aubisque [rose] to confront [the cyclists].”20 Journalists transformed cyclists into wondrous, mythical beings. Riders were “giants of the road” (géants de la route) who were engaged in a “grand calvary” (grand calvaire). They were distilled by athletic competition into basic typologies such as machinelike “pedal workers” and “unthinking and rugged sowers of energy.”21 The melodramatic, hyperbole-ridden writing style developed by Desgrange and others was later adopted by much of the press industry when sports coverage increased in mainstream newspapers in the 1920s. Perhaps as important as L’Auto’s dramatization of the race was gradual emergence of a self-referential, historical style of coverage, which helped to establish a sense of tradition around the Tour and which embedded the event in the popular historical and geographic consciousness. Desgrange and the other journalists continually referred to previous Tours in their coverage, evoked the great battles and the pantheon of cycling heroes from the past, and connected them to France’s physiognomy. The Nord, by 1920, became famous in Tour legend and in L’Auto’s columns for its cobblestone roads that had caused the dramatic crashes by Tour heroes Lucien Petit-Breton, Philippe Thys, and Eugène Christophe in prior years.22 The great Pyrenean stage from Luchon to Bayonne, and specifically the Tourmalet climb, became synonymous with Eugène Christophe’s incredible feat during the 1913 Tour. Christophe, nicknamed “Le vieux Gaulois” because of his penchant for wearing his moustache long, worked as a locksmith in Paris before becoming a professional racer early in the new century. By 1913, Christophe was a veteran rider on the powerful Peugeot professional team— Desgrange allowed corporate teams to compete as units that year— and a top contender for the Tour crown. He broke away from his rivals after leaving Luchon, climbed rapidly up the Tourmalet, and built a large time advantage that would put him in the overall race lead at the Bayonne finish line. An official vehicle swerved across his path and forced Christophe to crash, breaking the front fork of his bicycle

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in the process. Strict rules dictated that a rider could not change bicycles and could not accept any outside assistance whatsoever during the race. Christophe had to repair the machine himself or forfeit. “Le vieux Gaulois” hefted the bike on his shoulder and ran ten kilometers down the mountain to the village of Sainte Marie-de-Campan. He found the village smithy and got to work. Over the next four hours, under constant surveillance by Tour officials, Christophe forged a new metal fork for his bike. With his racing machine repaired, Christophe finished the stage but lost the Tour in the process. To add insult, race director Desgrange assessed Christophe a ten-minute time penalty for allowing a young boy to work the bellows during the repairs. The Tour also became an occasion for L’Auto and its readers to revisit, through sport, an idealized and stylized version of France’s geography and history. Desgrange viewed the Tour as both a sporting challenge and a pedagogical tool. He believed that the Tour, in addition to being a for-profit sporting spectacle, was obligated to visit as many corners of France as was logistically possible. Desgrange evoked the Tour’s larger purpose while writing about the return of the race to Alsace and Lorraine after the First World War: The Tour de France, as her name indicates, owes it to herself to ride along the periphery of our country and not to be run in zigzag. Our contest did not have her definitive physiognomy until the day where, abandoning stage towns like Bordeaux, Nantes, Toulouse, Lyon, we made her climb the slopes of the Pyrenees and the Alps.23

L’Auto’s coverage was as much a running commentary on French history and geography as it was a race narrative, with Henri Desgrange’s L’Auto in the role of tour guide. Desgrange often evoked the literary and military glories associated with the towns and regions traversed by the riders. For example, Desgrange reminded his readers that the 1920 Tour would follow the Gave River in southwestern France and would skirt “right along the land where our immortal [Edmond] Rostand wrote his most celebrated works” before climbing into the Pyrenees.24 Visits to Alsace and Lorraine in 1906 and 1919 evoked memories of the lost and reconquered provinces. The Tour’s 1906 incursion into occupied Lorraine provoked “sadness at the memories evoked by the innumerable . . . funeral monuments” of French soldiers who died in the Franco-Prussian War and “recalled the somber days of Gravelotte, Saint-Privat and Reichoffen,” sites of French defeat at the hands of the Prussians in 1870 – 71.25 Desgrange dubbed the 1919 Strasbourg-Metz stage the “Stage of Remembrance” (l’étape de souvenir) that would commemorate the reconquest of the lost provinces and the “triumph of French muscle . . . against Aryan barbarism (la barbarie

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boche).”26 With their tourist-brochure imagery, Desgrange’s articles evoked France’s traditional historio-geographic regions rather than the political administrative zones established after the Revolution. Grenoble was the “flowery-shorelined capital of Dauphiné, where the Mediterranean storms die” as they hit the Alps,27 while the Midi in south central France was the land of “olive groves, eucalyptus trees, mimosas, aloes, and orange growers.”28 As the general-interest press expanded their coverage of the event in the 1920s, more and more journalists participated in fashioning the Tour’s newspaper persona and narrative. The stories, personas, and feats of famous cyclists became integral, sometimes contested, components of the literary Tour’s lore. The Pélissier brothers, Charles, Francis, and Henri, were the top French Tour stars of the 1920s. In the 1924 Tour, Henri Desgrange penalized popular French rider and defending Tour champion Henri Pélissier for a minor uniform infraction before the start of an early stage. Pélissier had worn a second jersey early in the morning to protect himself from the cold. When the temperature rose, he threw the jersey away. The Tour director penalized Pélissier for discarding his sponsor’s property, even though Pélissier claimed that he owned the extra jersey. The punishment prompted Henri and his brother, Francis, to quit the race in protest. Journalist Albert Londres took up the Pélissiers’ cause in the pages of Paris’s largest daily newspaper, Le Petit Parisien. Londres dubbed the Tour riders “galley slaves of the road” who were forced into servitude by Desgrange, their draconian taskmaster. In Londres’s somewhat embellished recreation of his conversation with the brothers after they abandoned the race, Henri Pélissier described the pattern of humiliation endured by the Tour riders at the hands of Desgrange: [The Tour] is hard labour . . . . [Work] that we would not make mules do, we do it. . . . We accept the pain, but we don’t want humiliation! . . . I put a newspaper on my stomach, I started with it, I have to ride to the finish with it. If I throw it away, penalty! . . . When we are dying of thirst, before we can refill our bottles under a spigot, we must make sure that someone isn’t fifty meters away, pumping the water. Otherwise: penalty. To drink, one has to pump it himself! The day will come when they put lead in our pockets, because they find that God has made man too light.29

Londres’s 1924 articles transformed the Pélissiers and the other Tour contestants into veritable working-class heroes. Conflict and controversy continued to surround the Pélissiers after 1924. Henri often butted heads with Desgrange and other race organizers in the press. In 1929, in the sunset of his career, Henri Pélissier endured the disgrace

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of being sued by organizers of a minor race for allowing himself to be beaten too easily by lesser cyclists. A court in Quimper found against Henri and forced him to pay damages to the organizing club for ruining the event.30 After his career ended, scandal continued to follow Pélissier. His wife, filled with despair as the Pélissiers’ marriage deteriorated amid Henri’s infidelity, committed suicide in 1931. Four years later, Henri’s lover murdered him during a drunken fistfight in the same house and with four shots from the same pistol his wife had used to commit suicide.31 In 1927, Communist daily L’Humanité joined in the invective directed against Desgrange and infused its attacks on the Tour with imagery of work and the language of the workplace. The Communist daily evoked Albert Londres’s English-language term “hard labour” and characterized the Tour as a workplace and the conflicts between the riders and Desgrange as “class conflicts between employers and employees.”32 L’Humanité ’s editorialists nicknamed Desgrange the “Napoleon of the Big Yellow [L’Auto]” and described riders as “sandwich-board men” and “proletarians” involved in “class struggle” who could only combat Desgrange by striking.33 Long after the class conflict-infused imagery faded from the popular imagination, the infamous “galley slaves of the road” remained an oft-referenced chapter in the Tour’s history. 3. The Tour and Selling Things: Mass Markets, Entertainment, and Consumerism in Third Republic France The case of the Tour and L’Auto demonstrates how the mass press and modern industry sparked the transformation of France into a nation of consumers. Modern newspapers transmitted news, information, opinion, and entertainment to mass audiences. They were also commercial ventures that sought to sell themselves and the products of their advertisers in ever-growing quantities. These dual functions of modern newspapers helped to forge the links between public culture and mass consumerism in the modern era.34 The Tour, a mass entertainment spectacle located at the nexus of the press, manufacturing, and consumerism, provides an opportunity to examine this process in action. The early Tour and L’Auto were excellent promotional vehicles for the bicycle manufacturers. The commercial power of the Tour lay in its ability to allow manufacturers to contact their markets directly through newspaper advertising or, more simply, to publicize their bicycles to millions of roadside spectators as the riders raced their brand-name machines through the towns and villages of France. The event became a battleground for compet-

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ing brands of cycling equipment both on and off the road, and the race often kicked off important promotional campaigns. The Tour riders themselves were important figures in the advertisements, and their victories garnered fame and respect for the products that they employed during the race. The large automobile/bicycle manufacturers devoted much of their publicity money to sponsoring professional cycling teams and to paying for print advertisements that touted the successes of their machines. The publicity generated by the Tour shaped the business of building and marketing bicycles. For bicycle manufacturer Alcyon, whose sponsored riders won four Tours before 1914, the increased product visibility led to tremendous sales increases. Alcyon sold 9,772 bicycles in 1906, 18,458 in 1908, and 31,813 bicycles by 1910. Alcyon created a special line of products to maximize the impact of Tour-related publicity. Sales of the “Tour de France” line of bicycles depended on the name recognition generated among the millions of Tour spectators as the Alcyon team pedaled across the country during the race. Alcyon priced the “Tour de France” bicycle at 325 francs, equipped it with the “Tour de France” handlebar, and painted the machine the same “Alcyon Blue” color as the bicycles used by the team riders. Advertisements boasted that the name of the line of bikes was “not an arbitrary designation and without justification . . . Our ‘Tour de France’ bicycle is absolutely the same as the ones upon which Faber and Lapize won the Tour de France [in 1909 and 1910, respectively].”35 Alcyon and Peugeot, another top cycling team, both built automobiles. Desgrange carved an important niche for L’Auto as a primary publicity venue for automobiles as well as bicycles. L’Auto organized reliability trials, fashioned along the lines of cycling’s Tour de France, for the major brands of automobiles. Desgrange invited car builders to enter an annual competition— a 3,000-kilometer race, divided into fifteen 200-kilometer stages— that pitted machine against machine and machine against nature. Alcyon parlayed its success in L’Auto’s endurance races into advertising for its line of lightweight, economical, and slightly underpowered twelve-horsepower torpedo automobiles. In its 1911 brochure, Alcyon bragged that of the nine builders that entered, only its cars completed the race without breakdowns, crashes, or penalization.36 For decades, the reliability trials organized by L’Auto remained important competitions and a key source of publicity for the automobile builders and vendors in France and around the world. Newspapers in New Zealand, Australia, Britain, Canada, and the United States carried dozens of news stories and advertisements for cars that competed in the reliability trials. A New Zealand newspaper advertisement explained that the 1914 Tour de France re-

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liability tests were “considered by the Motoring World as the most severe test ever given” and trumpeted the prizes awarded to Buicks that year.37 Large ads in the Reading (PA) Eagle and at least a dozen other American newspapers in 1929 heralded the victory of the Hudson Essex Challenger over “a field of high priced American and European entries” in the Tour de France reliability tests as evidence to back up the vehicle’s claim to the title “Reliability Car of the Year.”38 The following year, large ads appeared in the Straits Times (Singapore) touting Hudson cars’ victories and accolades in the 1929 and 1930 Tour de France tests.39 After the Second World War, the bicycle Tour de France emerged as an even more important publicity venue for automobile builders who became primary sponsors of the entire competition rather than just of an individual team or cyclist. Thanks to the Tour, which Desgrange referred to as the “National Bicycle Festival,”40 and to massive press publicity, manufacturers expanded the bicycle market continuously. The unit sales of bicycles in France jumped dramatically from 981,000 in 1900 to 3,552,000 in 1914 to 6,371,000 in 1924.41 In addition to the boost given to bicycle sales by publicity generated by the Tour and in the press, the further infiltration of the bicycle industry by mass production techniques led to a substantial drop in prices. Advertisements in Le Petit Parisien on July 7, 1929, indicated that one could purchase a new bicycle for as little as 250 francs.42 Real wages had increased significantly by the interwar years, which meant that more French people, even those with very modest incomes, could realistically plan to purchase new bicycles. In 1927, for example, a screw cutter working at an airplane factory earned 5.09 francs per hour while a semi-skilled worker at the same factory earned four francs per hour.43 These laborers could purchase a new, 250-franc bicycle with approximately one week’s wages. By the late 1920s, the bicycle industry alone could no longer support the Tour de France. Despite the increasing affordability of bicycles, the growth curve of the bicycle industry flattened by the mid-1920s. While the number of bicycles in France increased 45 percent between 1920 and 1924, it grew less than 15 percent, from a little more than six million to seven million, between 1924 and 1936.44 As sales growth tapered off, diminished financial resources forced some bicycle manufacturers to renounce full-time team sponsorship. Professional racer Antonin Magne recounted that just before the 1930 Salon du Cycle, the annual bicycle trade show where manufacturers formally signed contracts with professional riders, the Alleluia brand of bicycles abruptly canceled its sponsorship for Magne’s team and announced that the company would withdraw from racing competition for lack of funds. In the era before sports agents, Magne was forced to shop for a new contract

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himself at the Salon.45 Even the top team in France, Alcyon, whose riders had won three Tours in a row, pressured its cyclists to accept a 10 percent pay cut in 1930.46 The bicycle industry found itself “without exterior alliances [and] without any publicity support (sponsors)” by 1930.47 With financial resources increasingly scarce, the bicycle builders tried even harder to monopolize the top riders and control the outcome of races. Two teams, Automoto and Alcyon, sponsored all the Tour winners from 1923 to 1929. The drama of the event grew stale, and the Tour became bad business for Desgrange. The Tour’s growing lack of competitiveness and the fact that team sponsors relied more and more heavily on Belgian and Italian riders to anchor their professional teams eroded to a certain extent the French sports fans’ interest in the Tour. During the mid- and late 1920s, no French riders contended seriously for the Tour’s crown. These developments hit Desgrange where it hurt the most: L’Auto’s distribution never again attained the huge volume of 1924, when the “galley slaves of the road” scandal provoked a large spike in circulation. In response, Desgrange tinkered with the Tour’s formula in the late 1920s. In 1926, L’Auto organized the longest Tour in history— 5,795 kilometers (3,601 miles). The next year, Desgrange staged sixteen team time trials in an effort to end the domination of the event by the powerful teams. In 1928, Desgrange added competition among regional teams from France so that spectators could root for their hometown riders. The following year, he reversed a rule change enacted in 1925 and outlawed all collusion among riders, even among those on the same team. None of these innovations seemed to work. Following the 1929 victory of Maurice De Waele, a mediocre Belgian rider for the Alcyon team whom critics said won only because of his team’s hegemony over the field, an exasperated Desgrange exclaimed, “We have let a cadaver win!”48 Desgrange decided to overhaul completely the organizing principles and business strategy of the event. In late 1929, Desgrange devised the national team formula and decided to implement it during the 1930 race. He predicted that professional cyclists would race for the glory of their nations rather than the profit of their corporate sponsors, finally rid the event of sponsorinspired collusion, reinvigorate the sense of drama, and create a new generation of French cycling heroes. L’Auto’s editor in chief personally selected eight riders from five major cycling nations— France, Belgium, Italy, Spain, and Germany— and grouped them into teams according to their countries of origin. “No more brands of bicycles, no more X or Y brands of tires, no more Z brand of accessories. Suppression of all commercial rivalry; no longer in anyone’s interest to tip the scales of victory to this or that side. No

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obstacle, truly, to a victory by the best man,” proclaimed Desgrange.49 The national team formula, according to L’Auto, would also highlight the innate qualities of each country’s populace, such as French “patience, tenacity of effort, inability to be discouraged,” Italian “discipline,” German “obedience,” and Belgian “cohesion.”50 In addition, Desgrange reinstituted the popular French regional team competition, which he created in 1928 but had not implemented during the 1929 event. These alterations of the Tour formula offered French fans a chance to cheer for their hometown heroes as well as for national champions. Desgrange’s reforms increased dramatically the cost of staging the Tour for L’Auto, which now had to pay for the housing, equipment, bicycles, and other costs incurred by competitors racing in the Tour. André Leducq estimated that by 1929 his Alcyon team spent 200,000 francs to sponsor a professional team in the Tour.51 To pay for the new expenses, Desgrange coupled his innovations with a novel mode of financing the race through corporate sponsorship and increased subsidy payments (subventions) from the host towns. Desgrange aimed to craft the Tour into a promotional event open to all interested parties, not just bicycle industry sponsors. The Tour evolved into a spectacle that combined even more closely and overtly entertainment, sport, and commerce.52 The publicity caravan (caravane publicitaire) and corporate-sponsored prizes were the most significant of Desgrange’s 1930 innovations. The publicity caravan was a motley assortment of vehicles that followed the race from town to town. Businesses provided the vehicles and paid a fee to L’Auto to join. Membership in the caravan accorded businesses the right to publicize their products to spectators along the itinerary during the passage of the race. The first publicity caravan in 1930 was tiny— only ten enterprises were represented, each with one vehicle. Because the 1930 caravan followed the race course after the riders had already passed, fewer roadside spectators remained to take in advertising than Desgrange and the caravan participants had hoped. After 1930, Desgrange allowed the caravan to precede the riders by one or two hours and thereby maximized the number of spectators in range of the caravan’s publicity. Thereafter, the size of the publicity caravan increased tremendously and quickly: in 1935, forty-six firms participated.53 Fees from the publicity caravan, in addition to larger subsidy payments demanded by Desgrange from host towns after 1930, helped the Tour’s masters pay for the organization of the race for the next thirty years. The publicity caravan enhanced the fun and enjoyment of the roadside fans, as well. The sheer variety of participants made the procession of Tour sponsors interesting. Anyone willing to pay the entry fee could join, includ-

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ing the “Fakir Birman,” a Parisian magician, fortune teller, and ladies’ underwear merchant; the Holo-Electron company, which produced an electric wrinkle-removal machine; and “La Vache qui Rit” (The Laughing Cow), a cheese maker. Advertisers built elaborately decorated, colorful, and often ridiculous conveyances meant to attract the fickle eyes of spectators. Many vehicles played festive music over loudspeakers. The creativity and showmanship of the participants endowed the publicity caravan with a carnivalesque quality. While the riders sped through villages on the itinerary in a matter of seconds, the advertisers’ colorful procession sometimes took up to an hour or more to pass. Sponsors worked the crowd into a frenzy with their manic bullhorn advertising and by occasionally distributing free gifts— pamphlets, toys, candy, key chains, collectibles, hats, or samples of their products— as they drove through the countryside. Several years after the creation of the publicity caravan, Desgrange concluded, “[When the caravan passes] it holds the public spellbound. . . . If the publicity caravan did not exist, we would have to create it; it is, first of all, of tremendous commercial benefit to all that participate in it. . . . Not only does it facilitate sales, but it provokes them.”54 Desgrange also encouraged businesses and other interested entities to sponsor the race’s prizes. Sponsors responded with tremendous interest, and the amount of prize money to be won on the Tour rose markedly after 1930. The prize money sponsored by L’Auto totaled 150,000 francs in 1929, including a 10,000-franc first-place award. By 1937, total prize money had grown to 800,000 francs, and the first-place award to 200,000 francs,55 all of which was sponsored by businesses, organizations, or other entities. Corporate sponsors also purchased advertising space in L’Auto. In return for sponsorship and ad purchases, Desgrange often provided the Tour’s corporate clients with free, seemingly unsolicited advertising, publicity, or product plugs. For the company’s contribution of 12,000 francs in prizes to the 1931 Tour, L’Auto plugged Cointreau as the “marvel of marvels of the after-dinner liqueurs  .  .  . that the entire world knows and loves.”56 After describing on page one of L’Auto the 15,000-franc contribution of the Belgian tire company Englebert in 1937, Desgrange informed readers that “Englebert Enterprises is currently building a very large factory in France, which will be inaugurated by December 31 of this year.”57 Desgrange and his writers sometimes incorporated sponsor plugs directly into their race narratives. For example, amid L’Auto’s reporting on the 1931 Tour’s third day of racing, Desgrange dubbed the Brest–Vannes stage “The Stage of ‘La Vache qui Rit,’” producers of “the most delicious crème de gruyère cheese that one can find . . . a veritable dessert as well as a first-rate, nutritious staple.”58

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A wide variety of businesses and organizations participated in the publicity caravan or sponsored prizes during the 1930s (see appendix, table 1: Classification of Tour Sponsors, 1930s). As one would expect, bicycle- and automobile-related businesses were heavily represented, accounting for slightly more than 14 percent of sponsors. However, the most important commercial partners of the event were alcohol-related businesses— brewers of beer, distillers of liqueurs, aperitifs, and digestifs, and wine makers— and food sponsors (meats, cheeses, candy, soups, and so on). Together, food and alcohol sponsors accounted for more than 40 percent of the Tour’s sponsors. The type of publicity afforded to sponsors by the Tour meshed well with the interests of the alcohol and food industries. The government placed restrictions on alcohol-related advertising in the media. Alcohol producers sought unauthorized “clandestine” advertising (publicité clandestine) that circumvented laws restricting alcohol-related advertising. Through the Tour, alcoholic beverages could be touted almost without restriction to a nationwide audience of millions of spectators. Likewise, the food industry seized the opportunity to participate in the Tour. The publicity caravan resembled a three-week, traveling foire, or agricultural fair, which was one of the traditional ways that food producers promoted their goods. Food-related businesses interacted with potential customers during the Tour in ways that could not be mimicked in media advertising— face-to-face, by distributing samples for tasting, and by creating word-of-mouth publicity. As France’s food distribution system became more and more integrated, the national reach of the Tour’s mobile foire helped regionally based food businesses break into new markets and contact customers in other parts of the country. An analysis of the Tour’s sponsorship demographics reveals an interesting gender dynamic at play in the 1930s. Henri Desgrange devised the event to showcase male honor, athletic prowess, and virility. Tour riders were expected to be role models of healthy masculinity for French men, especially those of the working classes, and journalists frequently employed the language of battle and soldiering when writing about cyclists to emphasize the athletes’ masculine, martial qualities.59 Nevertheless, female spectators and consumers occupied a significant position in the marketing and promotional strategies of the Tour and the businesses that sponsored it in this decade. Businesses in “female” product categories— chain/department stores, food products, furniture and housewares, cleaning products, beauty products, and pharmaceuticals— accounted for slightly more than 36 percent of the total number of sponsors. Other product categories— such as clothing manufacturers, producers of alcoholic beverages, and entertainment— carried no

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particular gender bent but probably hoped to reach female consumers. One wedding-related clothing company named “Nuptia” sponsored the Tour for several years in the 1930s. A look at the estimated budget of the 1938 Tour de France demonstrates how the event’s financing shifted after 1930. The total budget for the 1938 Tour was 2.5 million francs.60 Corporate-sponsored prizes that year amounted to 900,000 francs, or 36 percent of the budget. (Prior to 1930, L’Auto financed all prizes.) The stage towns provided approximately 525,000 francs, or 21 percent of the budget, if one assumes an average subvention of 25,000 francs to the Tour from each of the twenty-one stage towns.61 Although subventions varied greatly from town to town before 1930, it is safe to say that in the 1930s L’Auto demanded contributions that were between five and twenty-five times higher than in the 1920s.62 In addition, Desgrange generally insisted after 1930 that host towns pay for the service d’ordre— crowd and traffic control by police— out of their own funds, which passed on a significant portion of the pre-1930 cost of staging the Tour to local governments.63 The fees paid by businesses to join the publicity caravan that year are unknown, but can be estimated conservatively at 10 percent of the budget, or 250,000 francs. Thus, town subventions and corporate sponsorship accounted for at least 70 percent of the Tour’s budget by the end of the 1930s. Rapid, profound changes to the French press industry also influenced the Tour’s commercial and athletic evolution in the 1920s and 1930s. Above all, L’Auto’s monopoly on sports journalism began to dissolve in the early 1920s. By the mid-1930s, two Parisian dailies, Paris-Soir and Le Petit Parisien, dominated French publishing. Each of these dailies distributed on average more than a million copies per day during the 1930s.64 After the Great War, general-interest newspapers expanded and enriched their sports coverage to attract more readers. The Tour’s most important sponsors directed a growing portion of their advertising revenue to Paris-Soir and the other large dailies. L’Auto also faced new competition in sports journalism specifically: many sports-focused periodicals appeared during the interwar years, including Miroir des Sports, Match, Revue des Sports, Football, France Olympique, and L’Aéro-Sport.65 These publications covered the same sporting events as L’Auto and imitated the colorful, theatrical, and often hyperbole-ridden style upon which the popularity and marketability of Desgrange’s newspaper rested. Several of L’Auto’s direct competitors also possessed vast financial resources because they were members of emerging press “groups,” usually built around one of the large Parisian dailies. Miroir des Sports, a subsidiary of Le Petit Parisien, emerged as Desgrange’s main competitor in the late 1920s. With the support of Le Petit Parisien, Miroir des Sports could afford to send reporters

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all over the world to cover sporting events, just as L’Auto did. Furthermore, the Petit Parisien group offered potential advertisers a complete publicity package: its publications were complemented by a private radio station, Le Poste Parisien, whose signal blanketed the airwaves of the Paris region and large parts of northern France. Despite these threatening trends, Desgrange’s post-1929 business strategy worked effectively in the early 1930s. A steady stream of new and repeat corporate sponsors has financed the Tour ever since. Other cycling events in France and throughout Europe followed Desgrange’s example and established publicity caravans of their own to help defray their costs of organization. This strategy helped ensure that cycling remained the major outlet of sports-oriented corporate sponsorship funds in France. Moreover, the French national team and its riders dominated the Tour during this decade: Frenchmen won the race each year from 1930 to 1934 and again in 1937, and the national team triumphed four times. The national team formula and the French successes created a new generation of French sports heroes like André Leducq, Antonin Magne, Charles Pélissier, Georges Speicher, Roger Lapébie, and René Vietto and rejuvenated public interest in the event. This interest boosted L’Auto’s circulation significantly in the early 1930s. By 1933, circulation had rebounded to 730,000 copies per day during the Tour and 364,000 copies daily for the entire year (See appendix, table 1: Circulation of L’Auto, 1903 – 1938). Thus, the commercialization of the Tour advanced rapidly, thanks to the event’s nationwide media coverage and fan base and to Desgrange’s nimble management of the race. The success of Desgrange’s dramatic retooling of the Tour’s business and competitive underpinnings presaged the deepening and broadening of the ties among business, sport, and the media in France that would characterize subsequent decades. Furthermore, the penetration of the Tour by a broad range of business interests also mirrored the growing commercialization of popular culture in general. 4. The Early Global Tour Traces of the Tour’s global presence were evident even in the event’s first years. The Tour gave shape to professional bicycling around the world. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery; by the 1930s, competitions had been created across Europe that mimicked the Tour in conception, rules, financing, and culture. The Tour of Italy (Giro d’Italia, created in 1909), was the first major national tour outside France. The Giro was a three-week, multistage road professional race organized by La Gazzetta dello Sport, Milan’s major sports

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daily. Unlike the Tour, however, the Giro was dominated solely by the Italian professionals. No non-Italian won the Giro before 1950, when Swiss rider Hugo Koblet triumphed. The 1930s witnessed the establishment of other national tours— the Tour of Spain (Vuelta a España, 1935), the Tour of Switzerland (Tour de Suisse, 1933), and the Tour of Germany (Deutschlandtour, 1931)— that resembled the Tour de France. In 1933, Canadians and Americans even attempted to stage a 4,300-mile, transcontinental professional race— the “longest bicycle race in the world”— from Montreal to Vancouver meant to trump the Tour de France. The event included sixty-nine cyclists and was to visit hundreds of North American sites over the race’s thirty-three-day span, including the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair. The competition disintegrated, however, after only ten days because the organizers could not pay border crossing fees for the race bicycles and vehicles.66 Despite the failure of America’s first “Tour,” the Tour de France’s influence clearly reached across the Atlantic and beyond. The Tour was the model event that stood at the center of the professional road racing world. The athletes who participated in the event played an important role in broadening the Tour’s influence. Riders from France, Belgium, Italy, and Luxembourg dominated the Tour in its early decades and accounted for the vast majority of participants in the race. Between 1903 and 1939, riders from those countries won every Tour. Despite the predominance of these nations’ cyclists, the Tour welcomed an unusually diverse cross section of riders. During the pre– Second World War era, riders from fourteen countries besides France, Belgium, and Italy competed in the event. Contestants hailed from such distant places as Argentina, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Tunisia, and Algeria. Participants brought back stories of the Tour to their nations’ sporting communities. Furthermore, the national team formula of the 1930s cemented the place of the Tour as the epicenter of road racing, the place where the world’s best gathered to compete.* Even in the United States, which had no riders compete in the race in this era, the press acknowledged cycling as France’s national sport and the Tour as the unofficial world championship of the sport.67 The press played the most important role in transmitting knowledge about the Tour to global audiences in the pre– Second World War era. Even in faraway New Zealand, the most distant nation from France on the planet, * The number of participations in the Tour by country between 1903 and 1939, including repeat participations by the same rider in different years, were: Algeria (1), Germany (84), Argentina (3), Australia (7), Austria (5), Denmark (1), Japan (2), Luxembourg (49), Spain (37), New Zealand (1), Romania (4), Switzerland (120), Tunisia (2), and Yugoslavia (4).

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at least three newspapers carried coverage of the creation, departure, and conclusion of the first Tour in 1903. The Wanganui Herald, published in a small town on the North Island, characterized the Tour as “one of the sensations for the upcoming season” and a “monster road race.”68 News of the race traveled rather slowly, however. It was not until mid-September that the results of the Tour, which had concluded on July 19th, appeared in the Otago Witness, a weekly newspaper in Dunedin, on New Zealand’s South Island.69 In the race’s first years, reporting occurred in other New Zealand newspapers, as well. For the most part, coverage was limited to stories combed from British press agencies and relayed basic data such as the Tour’s distance, prize money, dates of competition, and the name of the overall winner of the race. Gradually, coverage expanded to include race analysis, some corporate advertising, and even seemingly esoteric subjects like France’s law and road racing culture. A story in the Otago Witness about the results of the 1908 Tour included descriptions of the race profile (fourteen stages, 2,788 miles); prize money paid to the top finishers; the individual stage results of the overall winner, Lucien Petit-Breton, who finished first, second, or third in thirteen of fourteen race stages; weather and road conditions during the three-week race; “fetes [sic], dinners, and excursions” in the fourteen stage towns; and the “enthusiasm” of the French crowds on the roads and at the finish line in Paris’s Parc des Princes stadium.70 Another article included discussion of the special prizes that Dunlop Tire Company offered to cyclists riding on their brand products.71 New Zealand cycling columnists even conveyed to their readers rumors about the Tour’s demise. One article on the 1904 Tour speculated that the numerous instances of cheating during the race, as well as the extended official inquiry into them, meant that “the days of the road race in France [might be] numbered.”72 Another article in the Grey River Argus speculated that a new French law forbidding road racing without prior government permission might mean the end of the Tour de France and other classic road races.73 The Tour attracted cycling adventurers from around the world even in its early years. Marlborough, New Zealand, papers carried coverage of a team of four star Australian and New Zealander riders who sailed to France in late 1913 to break into the European professional circuit. The four riders were captained by Don Kirkham, who had set world record times at the 25- and 100-mile distances and was “recognized as one of the finest road riders Australia has produced.” The team planned to compete in all the major French road races in the upcoming 1914 season, including the Tour de France.74 The Dunlop Rubber Company of Australia sponsored the trip and helped the four adventurers to recruit Georges Passerieu, an English-speaking French-

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man and a top Tour contender in the early years of the race, as a teammate and coach.75 The four fared poorly in the early season and abandoned plans to ride in the Paris Six Days race. The Phebus-Dunlop team selected Kirkham and his teammate, Ivor Munro, to compete in the Tour. The pair’s inexperience in European-style racing and mountain climbing made it impossible for them to keep up with the top contenders. Describing a mountain climb during the Tour in a letter to the Dunlop Rubber Company, Munro explained, “You just keep climbing up, up, up, thinking you will never reach the top. . . . The strain is worse going down. . . . You are stiff and numb with cold. . . . On one side of the mountain you feel as if you would melt— on the other side you are frozen.”76 Kirkham crashed early in the event and suffered a head injury that impaired his racing. The pair did not contend for the title and finished in seventeenth and twentieth places, respectively, more than nine hours behind winner Philippe Thys. Kirkham nevertheless made waves in the French cycling community. To resolve a dispute with French riders over the validity of his 25-mile world record time, Kirkham hopped on a bicycle and, without special preparation or training, beat his own mark.77 Upon his return, however, Kirkham himself characterized the voyage to Europe as a failure and a disappointment. The Australian won only £150 in prizes in nearly nine months of racing, called the cream of Australian cyclists “drafthorses” compared to European “thoroughbreds,” and urged competitive cyclists to “adapt themselves to Continental conditions and practices.”78 Kirkham did not race in Europe again, retired in 1925 after being hit and badly injured by a drunk driver during a training ride, and died of tuberculosis in 1930 at age forty-four. In 1928, bicycle entrepreneur Bruce Small corralled a contingent of four top racers from Australia and New Zealand and accompanied them to Europe to race in the Tour. Small built an Australian manufacturing and sales empire around his “Malvern Star” bicycle that included more than a hundred shops and a thousand dealers by the late 1920s. Hubert Opperman led the Australasian team, which raced under the banner of a Melbourne cycling club. The Perth Western Mail described the twenty-three-year-old Opperman as a “teetotaler” and “non-smoker” who consumed fifteen oranges a day while in training.79 The team departed by ocean liner in early 1928 and spent the entire racing season in Europe. Australian newspapers commented extensively on the global importance and dimensions of the Tour de France. In an article printed just before the contest began, the Melbourne Argus explained, Cycling is the leading sport of Europe, and each year the Tour de France attracts all the “crack” road riders of the Continent. . . . In the 25 years since its

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inception [it] has become the most important road race in the world, and interest in the contest has increased enormously, extending beyond the borders of France and the boundaries of Europe to many parts of the globe.80

A piece published a day before the Tour’s departure explained in detail the competition’s rules, conventions, and racing strategies, the importance of teamwork and corporate sponsorship, and the qualities of athletic consistency and “unbending resistance” that riders needed to survive the ordeal.81 The New Zealand Truth carried a large article on the 1928 Tour experiences of Harry Watson, a member of the team and New Zealand’s only participant in the pre– Second World War era. Although his talented team captain, Opperman, finished the race in eighteenth place, Watson and the other two riders endured a “perfectly hopeless” Tour. When the four riders disembarked in France several days before the start of the Tour, they discovered to their dismay that the Melbourne club had not prearranged an adequate welcome for them. The article castigated the Australian team sponsor, which “must have shoved its corporate head into a large bag, pulled the string tightly, and run round in hectic circles until it banged its head against the first sort of arrangement” it could find. The coach hired by the Melbourne club knew nothing about cycling and “guided [the] team into queer street.” No one had purchased any of the equipment that the racers would need to compete in the 3,000-mile contest. The lodging secured for them was remote and primitive. The French climate stifled the riders and the local cuisine did not agree with them. Watson and his comrades had to pedal three miles to the town of Versailles to bathe. While other competitors trained, Watson and the others spent the days before the Tour purchasing bicycles, inner tubes, food, tools, and the services of masseurs with money out of their own pockets. Watson and his teammates would have “floundered about in a state of complete bewilderment” during the race had it not been for the spontaneous assistance and encouragement of the Alcyon team and the French press.82 Despite the difficulties, Watson finished the event in twenty-eighth place, a solid result in a very difficult Tour in which only 41 of the 168 starters managed to complete the race. Australian newspaper coverage corroborated the New Zealand Truth’s account. It was clear that the four-person contingent was at a major disadvantage because of its small size, poor financing, and relative lack of talent. The Canberra Times lamented halfway through the race that the Australasians might have a better chance if they could add “half a dozen more Oppermans” to the team.83 The team suffered numerous crashes, saddle sores, equipment failures, stomach ailments, and even lacked adequate food during certain stages of the race. Despite the hardships, Opperman impressed European

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sponsors and coaches. He received numerous appearance-fee offers to race throughout Europe, and the powerful Alcyon team offered the Australian star a contract to appear in the 1929 Tour. Opperman did not race in the 1930 Tour but placed twelfth in the 1931 Tour, won the Paris– Brest– Paris race, and set several endurance world records, including one in which he raced a thousand miles on a track in just under 29 hours.84 Upon his return to Australia in late 1928, Opperman commented halfjokingly that “his legs had never felt so inadequate to the occasion.”85 Like Kirkham in 1914, both Opperman and Harry Watson argued that it was imperative for Australians and New Zealanders to adopt French racing styles and equipment. Watson derided Australian cycling equipment as “old fashioned” and called for Australasians to adopt French long-distance race training methods.86 “The only way we can improve the standard of road racing in Australia . . . is by introducing the French style of racing,” implored Opperman as he disembarked from a train upon his return to Melbourne. “The present [Australian] system is considered obsolete in France.”87 Opperman remained an influential apostle of French-inspired cycling in Australia after the Second World War. By 1953, Opperman was a member of the House of Representatives and used his influence to arrange financing for a nationwide series of multiday races that culminated in a five-day “Commonwealth Jubilee Tour.” The race “inaugurated many continental ideas into stage racing in Australia” and included features “adopted from the famous Tour de France,” including a caravan of race vehicles and in-stage sprinting prizes.88 Coverage of the Tour de France grew in complexity and depth in the United States during the pre-1939 era. Even before the Great War, Tour founder Henri Desgrange was famous enough in America to warrant a fourparagraph story in the New York Times about his victory in a 1912 “duel of honor” with a bicycle manufacturer, Edmond Gentil. Since dueling with swords or pistols was illegal in France, Desgrange, 48, and Gentil, 38, engaged in a three-lap footrace around the Bois de Boulogne, a large, wooded park at the western edge of Paris. Gentil collapsed and gave up halfway through the race, while Desgrange finished the eight-mile run in just under an hour.89 After the First World War, coverage of the Tour broadened to include not only race analysis and results, but also commentary on French sporting culture and the important place of the Tour in French leisure, community, and ritual. In other words, it was through the mass press that American readers learned to understand the unique “Frenchness” of the Tour. American newspapers echoed French journalists’ characterizations of the Tour as a mythically popular event in France, especially among young men. A 1926 article in the Saint Petersburg Times reported that most young French

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boys would respond “without any hesitation” that their greatest ambition in life was to become a “cyclist, and win the Tour de France race.”90 Time magazine compared the languid enthusiasm of American boys for the sport of cycling to the excitement of French schoolboys for the Tour, claiming, “Few U.S. schoolboys know or care who won Manhattan’s last six-day bicycle race. Nine out of ten French schoolboys know who won the Tour de France last year.” The same article even conveyed to American readers the basic caricatures of the main stars of the 1934 French national contingent, referring to Charles Pélissier as the team’s “dashing, excitable captain” and the “cameoprofiled idol of schoolboys,” and to eventual Tour winner Antonin Magne as the “laconic Auvergnat farmer” and “eternal runner-up.”91 The American press carried extensive coverage of the race in the interwar years and published lengthy articles about the race and its central position in French popular culture. Like French journalists, American reporters employed special language to evoke the arduous difficulties and oppressive conditions riders faced during the month-long endurance contest. Articles evoked the “grueling grind” of the “windy seacoasts” that sapped riders’ strength, the “burning Summer sun  .  .  . hills that no motor car can climb above first speed  .  .  . [and Alpine and Pyrenean] roads that seem steep as precipices.”92 American journalists also evoked the martial qualities of the riders who conquered the itinerary and fellow competitors, referring to the Tour as “hard sport” and a “race of heroes” so grueling that “nothing that men do in any sport” can compare, and to the racers as objects of “public worship” and “gladiators” who engaged in a “modern gladiatorial show” unlike any since the Roman Empire.93 Journalists evoked the singular popularity of the race, especially in the French provinces: The popularity of these men of the road is unparalleled . . . and millions of spectators throng the roads of France . . . to catch a glimpse of their favorites. . . . Along the route towns and villages offer prizes for spurts [sprints], &c., and the native sons always get a wild reception, whatever their standing the race may be.94

Such enthusiasm was infectious, and other hyperbolic accounts of the event’s popularity claimed: Crowds of thousands stand every day before newspaper offices waiting for the announcement [of the day’s racing results]. . . . People who one would never dream could get excited about any such event become helplessly addicted to buying evening newspapers.95

Reporters also explained to American readers that “towns fight for the honor of being stopping places for the wheelmen overnight.”96 The press

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characterized the arrival of the Tour in provincial host towns as similar to a “general picnic and regional faire.” The Tour’s visit was “the greatest event of the calendar year in the minds of the inhabitants” and an occasion to cheer the “home-bred” competitors, hear “speeches by ‘M’sieu le Maire,’” and witness the fire department turned out in full regalia.97 Undoubtedly, through such press accounts, American readers came to understand quite clearly the sacred character of the Tour and its riders in the French cultural pantheon. Like the French press, the New York Times rhapsodized about the historic and geographic wonders of l’Hexagone as they wrote about the race and incorporated extensive tourism guide-like portrayals of the lands through which the Tour passed. In a particularly eloquent article published during the 1931 event, journalist John Kieran explained, “Just to read the schedule [of the race] is as good as an educational trip through the country.” Written from the perspective of a member of the American Expeditionary Force returning to France to visit famous landmarks that would be familiar to American soldiers who had served in France, the article included passages describing rainy, windswept, inhospitable Brest; Vannes, with its “Shades of the Three Musketeers”; Les Sables d’Olonne, with its run-down port, dirty military billets, and delousing camps, well known to American servicemen who disembarked there during the Great War; Pau, the hometown of Henri de Navarre, whose castle still overlooks the Gave River; Marseilles, where the Count of Monte Cristo was imprisoned for fourteen years in the Château d’If; and Monte Carlo, with its famous casino. “The fascinating part of the Tour de France is the itinerary,” concluded Kieran, although he joked that seeing the sites in a military-train boxcar would be preferable to the exhausting bike ride the competitors endured.98 The similarities between the French and foreign newspaper coverage reveal the important role played by the press in globalizing the Tour. The world’s readers followed the Tour in their local newspapers, which were the sole conduit for timely news and information about the race. The volume of foreign newspaper reporting on the Tour was far lower than in France. Nevertheless, coverage abroad became more and more complex as the foreign press diversified the kinds of news it conveyed to readers. Beyond just race results, newspapers abroad helped to disseminate an understanding of the Tour de France’s competitive and commercial framework, the stories of the race’s stars, and the event’s unique place in French popular culture. As it had in France, the world press helped to constitute communities of readers that followed the Tour de France entirely in the newspapers.

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5. The Tour’s Hiatus during the Second World War L’Auto did not organize the Tour de France between 1940 and 1946. The Battle of France ended in June 1940, and Henri Desgrange died in his sleep in August. His death left Jacques Goddet, who was the son of Victor Goddet, a cofounder of L’Auto and who was being groomed as Desgrange’s successor in the 1930s, at the helm of the paper. In the late summer of 1942, the French authorities asked Goddet to stage the Tour de France, which they hoped would bolster fading popular support for the Vichy regime.99 Goddet, in what he referred to in his memoirs as his “most remarkable act of resistance,” refused to stage the Tour on the grounds that the undertaking was a logistical impossibility.100 Vichy officials decided in late September 1942 to mount their own version of the event, dubbed the “Circuit of France,” under the control of a collaborationist newspaper, La France Socialiste. Because of supply shortages, organizers limited the competition to 1,600 kilometers divided into six stages, with the start and finish in Paris. The event was a competitive and symbolic failure. La France Socialiste registered only sixty-nine cyclists to compete in the race, and few international riders participated because of wartime travel restrictions. The weather was awful: temperatures were below freezing at times, and rain pelted the riders almost constantly during the first three stages. Material shortages and the inexperience of La France Socialiste at mounting such a cycling event led to what L’Auto referred to as “irregularities” during the race. In an editorial after the race, Jacques Goddet labeled the race a “catastrophe that will add nothing to [the Tour’s] glorious history.”101 The French and the rest of the world waited another five years for the Tour’s rebirth.

f i g u r e 5 . Tour organizers (left to right) Élie Wermelinger, Robert Letorey, Jacques Goddet, Charles Joly, and Jean Garnault meet before the start of the 1949 event, June 21, 1949. Courtesy of the National Archives.

3

The Tour and Television: A Love-Hate Story

After the Liberation, Charles de Gaulle’s government dissolved the Tour’s founding newspaper along with nearly all publications that had operated during the Occupation. Jacques Goddet, the legal heritor of L’Auto’s property, created L’Équipe. The new sports daily printed its first edition in February 1946. The following year, Goddet and L’Équipe joined forces with Le Parisien libéré, one of France’s largest general-interest newspapers, to resurrect the national bicycle race. The reborn 1947 Tour was an immensely popular success: the lead changed hands several times during the three-week race. Diminutive Breton racer Jean Robic won the yellow jersey with a dramatic breakaway on the last day of competition. Robic took more than fifteen minutes from the leader, Italian Pierre Brambilla, on the flat run to the finish line in the Parc des Princes velodrome in Paris. The acerbic, combative Robic had proclaimed to his new bride just before the Tour began, “I don’t have a dowry to offer you because I’m poor, but in a month you’ll be the wife of the Tour de France winner.”1 The renascent Tour quickly reemerged as a powerful promotional vehicle. France’s evolving commercial milieu offered new opportunities for an enterprise like the Tour de France. As it had done before the war, the Tour continually transformed itself in ways that allowed its organizers and sponsors to profit from the changing marketplace and from new modes of communication and advertising. The Tour’s transformation occurred in a period of rapid change often called Les Trente Glorieuses (the Thirty Glorious Years). Unprecedented prosperity and population growth, rising standards of living, and increasing leisure time fueled the consumption that was at the heart of France’s postwar economic expansion. Between 1946 and 1975, France’s population increased by nearly a third, from approximately forty million to almost fiftythree million.2 Dramatic per capita increases in purchasing power revolu-

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tionized spending practices. Jean Fourastié estimates that the cost of living in France increased by a multiple of four between 1946 and 1975, but that average salaries rose by a multiple of between twelve and eighteen.3 As their incomes rose, the French purchased enormous volumes of manufactured goods and appliances such as automobiles, televisions, radios, refrigerators, and washing machines.4 French people also had more leisure time in which to spend their disposable income. Between 1946 and 1975 the average number of hours worked per year dropped by 10 percent, the number of hours worked during an average lifetime declined by 25 percent, and vacation time doubled from two to four weeks.5 By 1975, the average adult in France also had more than twenty-four hours of “free time” per week.6 The French devoted their increasing leisure time to vacations, playing sports, shopping, going to the cinema, and spending time at home listening to the radio and watching television. Many French did not accept easily the emerging shape of the postwar consumer economy and popular culture. Contemporary observers criticized France’s increasingly commercialized, consumer-oriented mass culture. They believed that “Americanization”— a term often invoked to contextualize the transformation of postwar culture— threatened to subvert French customs, artistic and intellectual traditions, and notions of community.7 The Tour did not figure directly in the debates on “Americanization,” but its tortuous transition into the television age reflected the larger public ambivalence to postwar mass culture. The race’s organizers struggled to reconcile their desire to profit from new commercial opportunities with the need to maintain the quintessentially French character of the event. For nearly twenty years, inspired by the desire to protect the Tour’s image, Jacques Goddet refused to abandon the national team formula or allow unfettered sponsor advertising to penetrate the peloton. At the same time, the Tour was well positioned to exploit the new opportunities presented by France’s evolving consumer economy. The Tour’s dual character as both a long-standing institution of French popular culture and a modern, publicity-generating spectacle allowed the event to act as a bridge between traditional and new forms of commercialism and mass promotion. Despite the perceived threats posed by overcommercialization, the Tour organizers expanded the event’s publicity and promotional apparatus as the scale of France’s consumer economy expanded after the war. 1. Commercialism and the Battle over France’s Airwaves Radio covered the Tour for the first time in 1929. Jean Antoine, a young journalist with the newspaper L’Intransigeant, offered to provide radio coverage

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of the Tour for the government’s official radio broadcasting service. Technology of the time was cumbersome and awkward. For each broadcast, Antoine’s team erected an enormous, sixty-six-foot tower topped by several forty-foot transmitter antennas. The journalists transported the broadcasting equipment and a large generator in a truck too heavy to climb the steep mountains on the itinerary. Antoine had to choose his transmission points carefully, since he could only set up his antennas, which took several hours to erect, at a handful of spots on the course. The quality of the 1929 broadcasts was poor: despite its size, Antoine’s transmitter was weak and broadcast only in shortwave frequencies.8 Initially, the truck directed its transmissions to the main Paris radio studios, which then retransmitted Antoine’s reports. Because of the poor quality of their equipment’s short-wave radio signals, Antoine’s team subsequently employed a combination telephone-radio liaison, transmitting to local radio stations, which then passed Antoine’s voice to Paris by telephone. Despite these difficulties, Antoine managed to make fifty-five broadcasts during the 1929 Tour,9 an average of two and a half per race day. The technological evolution, political milieu, and changing business strategies of the broadcast media in France exerted a powerful influence on how the commercial and competitive structure of cycling and of the Tour evolved. Several traits made French media evolution unique. First, radio and television developed later in France than elsewhere in the Western world. Before the 1930s, the French owned relatively few radios, and most receivers were bought by city residents. In 1929, only 600,000 radio receivers existed in France, as compared to more than twelve million in the United States.10 France also entered the television age more slowly than many other Western nations. In 1955, only three television sets per thousand people existed in France, compared to 95 per thousand in Britain and 170 per thousand in the United States.11 As late as 1957, only five major French cities received regular television programming.12 Television ownership expanded slowly. It was only in the late 1960s that most French families had televisions in their homes.13 Several reasons account for France’s slow entry into the broadcasting age. In the interwar years, the French government provided no financial incentives for radio purchases, unlike other countries like Nazi Germany.14 After the war, television sets were expensive, some consumers viewed televisions as unnecessary luxury items, and demand remained low. In addition, some French viewed the new medium as a contemptible symbol of “Americanization” and refused to purchase televisions.15 Second, the French government envisioned establishing a national broadcast media devoted to public service, not private profit. Since the 1936 Popular Front government, official state policy was to use its control of media to

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shape the evolution of France’s popular culture.16 Successive French governments before and after the Second World War engaged in a long-term campaign to limit the commercialization and manage the content of broadcast media. They erected a large, state-controlled, commercial-free broadcasting infrastructure that dominated radio and television in France for decades. Although private stations were free to do business as they saw fit, the government taxed their on-air advertising heavily and severely limited their transmitting power. Legal constraints hamstrung private radio stations, made radio advertising expensive for businesses, and led to a highly regionalized network of private French broadcasters in the 1930s. These policies led to the commercial domination of the airwaves by several powerful radio stations just outside French borders. The most important of them was Radio Luxembourg. The station was owned by Luxembourg’s government but managed as a for-profit business. Because of its enormous transmitting power, Radio Luxembourg could broadcast commercial programming from French advertisers to most of France despite the French government’s restrictions. In 1937, as French government restrictions on radio advertising tightened, Desgrange reached an agreement with station chief Louis Merlin to make Radio Luxembourg the “official” radio broadcaster of the Tour.17 Desgrange transported Radio Luxembourg’s reporters in Tour vehicles and allowed them special access to the riders and race organizers. That year, four stations broadcast 110 minutes of coverage each day of the Tour. Radio Luxembourg broadcast four ten-minute updates each race day and accounted for approximately 36 percent of the Tour’s national on-air coverage in 1937.18 Desgrange introduced several innovations to the Tour’s itinerary and formula that made the race more exciting and facilitated radio broadcasts. He staged the first-ever individual time trial in 1934. Time trials were well suited for real-time broadcast over the airwaves. Competitors left the starting gate at timed intervals and in descending order according to the overall standings. The time trial accentuated the “star quality” of the famous racers since it gave each Tour “ace” a grand moment in the spotlight. The drama and excitement of the time trials built over the course of the day as each rider attempted to beat the best previously posted times. Desgrange staged six individual time trials the following year. Desgrange also shortened the overall length of the Tour after 1929 and altered the daily schedule so that the vast majority of stages began in daylight and ended by the late afternoon. The total length of the Tour decreased from an average of 5,467 kilometers during the years 1919 – 29, to 4,543 kilometers during the period 1930 – 39. The number of hours raced per day also dropped considerably. In 1929, the stages

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averaged 8.5 hours in length but only seven hours in 1939. While six stages during the 1929 Tour lasted more than ten hours (including one of more than sixteen hours), only one stage lasted more than ten hours in 1939.19 This more compact schedule served radio journalists’ need for shorter stages that fit easily into predetermined, regular broadcasting schedules. The race’s growing national and international radio coverage pleased the Tour’s publicity-hungry host towns. In Pau, which endured a sharp contraction of its tourism industry after the Great War, radio coverage of the Tour offered the town a chance to reach new audiences. The president of Pau’s visitor’s bureau, responding to criticisms that hosting the Tour cost the city too much money, pointed out, “When you think about the interest generated around the sporting world by this great international cycling competition— and about its retransmission by all the [French] radio stations to other countries— you understand without any difficulty what splendid publicity it generates for a town like ours.”20 Postwar governments played an even more prominent role in shaping popular media. Immediately after Liberation, de Gaulle’s government reaffirmed the state’s radio monopoly and even went so far as to requisition all private radio broadcasting stations.21 De Gaulle created a new, state-controlled entity, Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française (RTF), to run the nationwide radio and television broadcasting networks. Postwar governments perpetuated and enhanced the official, anticommercial media policies of the early radio era. Government policy strictly forbade commercial advertising of any kind between 1944 and 1968. By contrast, advertising-funded television arrived in Great Britain in 1955, Italy in 1957, and West Germany in 1959.22 Paradoxically, the state’s policies established a media environment in which commercial popular culture flourished. The government’s policies spurred the reestablishment of for-profit, French-language broadcasters in neighboring countries. Shortly after the war, Radio Luxembourg, with the dynamic Louis Merlin still at the helm, resumed operations. Radio Luxembourg competed with two other quasi-public, for-profit stations, Radio Monte-Carlo and Sud-Radio, which broadcast from Andorra. In 1955, Merlin established Europe No. 1, a radio-television station that broadcast to most of Western Europe from the Saar region of southwestern Germany. The commercial stations broadcasting from outside French borders were extremely popular: between 1948 and 1968, they gradually captured half the RTF audience.23 Programming on for-profit radio and television differed significantly from programming on France’s government-run stations. Parties in power used radio and television to generate political support for themselves and

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their policies, such as during the anti-Communist campaigns of the late 1940s and the Algerian crises of the mid- and late 1950s.24 French media also aimed to cultivate and educate by exposing the French to the nation’s great intellectuals.25 RTF developed serious-minded programming in which educational programs, documentaries, theatrical dramas, interview or discussion shows, and light entertainment such as variety shows and musical performances figured highly.26 RTF also introduced the French to the nation’s new (and old) generations of artists. Young singers like Jacques Brel and Georges Brassens, as well as established entertainers like Edith Piaf and Maurice Chevalier, appeared frequently on state-radio variety shows. Programming on Merlin’s Radio Luxembourg tended toward light entertainment, game shows, and musical spectaculars, with less emphasis on educating or cultivating its listening audience. Radio Luxembourg pioneered the development in Europe of American-style radio game shows. They tended to be brief (fifteen minutes), funny, overtly commercial, and sponsored by a sole advertising client. In one of Merlin’s biggest hits of the early 1950s, “The Talent Show” (Le Crochet Radiophonique), sponsored by Dop Shampoo, audience members sang or showcased their humorous and unusual skills. Singer-host “Zappy Max” Doucet anointed contest winners with the catchphrase, “Dop, Dop, Dop, he’s adopted by Dop.” A loud gong dispatched losers while Zappy Max exclaimed his signature sendoff, “Now get out of here and wash your head, with Dop it’s always a pleasure.”27 The groundbreaking role of the private-station news services during the political crises of the 1950s and the growing reliance of French listeners on them for up-to-date, accurate information and entertainment forced a reassessment of the state media’s “public mission.” Merlin’s Europe No. 1 sent special correspondents to cover breaking crises in Hungary, Suez, and Algeria during the mid-1950s.28 RTF, by contrast, had no correspondents in Suez or Algeria and instead depended on communiqués sent from the field by French army officers for its on-site information.29 Beginning in the early 1960s, RTF responded to the success of private stations by developing more light television fare that appealed to popular tastes, such as game shows, comedies, and dramatic serials. RTF relegated many of the “serious” shows to time slots in off-peak hours.30 In 1964, the government transformed RTF into the Office de la Radiodiffusion et Télévison Française (ORTF), a state-funded but quasiindependent agency, and removed direct government controls over radio and television content. The history of the battle over the airwaves highlights a central theme in the development of mass culture in twentieth-century France. Beginning in the 1930s, the French state erected formidable barriers to the encroachment

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of commercialism in broadcast programming that, paradoxically, spurred the emergence of a powerful commercial broadcasting industry that succeeded in capturing a significant portion of France’s listening audience.31 In a sense, the state’s resistance to “Americanization” helped to build a cultural infrastructure in which commercialized popular culture could flourish. Thus, the French state’s media policies redounded to the benefit of enterprises, events, and spectacles that created opportunities for businesses to circumvent the government-mandated barriers to commercialization of the media, especially in the television era. The Tour, after some hesitation, transformed itself into just such an event. 2. Transforming the Tour into a Televised Spectacle, 1949 – 1974 Jacques Goddet guided the Tour de France into the television age reluctantly. Goddet took over the Tour directorship briefly in 1936 when Desgrange fell ill. The Parisian-born Goddet managed the Tour and L’Équipe for four decades after the war. In many of his wide-ranging, sports-related endeavors, Goddet acted as a forward-thinking modernizer. The sporting world recognizes Goddet as one of the prime movers of the internationalist movement in professional sport. Goddet inspired and helped organize the first European Cups in soccer and basketball in the 1950s and the first World Cup skiing championships in the 1960s. Yet his English education and sporting background— Goddet spent part of his youth at a private school in Oxford, where he rowed and played rugby— imbued Goddet with a traditionalism that tempered his innovative tendencies. These conflicted perspectives shaped how Goddet and the Tour navigated the entry of France’s national bicycle race into the television age. At first, Goddet and the other organizers feared that expanded television coverage would erode readership of L’Équipe and Le Parisien libéré. As early as 1953, Tour organizers characterized television coverage as a mere “distraction” compared to the press. Yet they requested that the government restrict television broadcasts of the race in order to preserve the primacy of print journalism and require state media to help pay for the event.32 Tour officials refused to provide television crews with adequate facilities and technical assistance.33 Prior to the 1962 Tour, the first to feature corporate teams since 1929, a press consortium opposed televising the race on the grounds that transmitting images of publicity-filled racing jerseys would subvert the state’s prohibition on commercial advertising.34 French television responded by refusing to air several live-broadcast stages.35 Despite these strains, Goddet and the other organizers recognized the power of television to increase the commercial im-

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pact of the Tour, and they eventually encouraged the growth of television’s coverage of the race.36 In the summer of 1949, Pierre Sabbagh, a young journalist at RTF, created the first-ever journal télévisé (televised evening news program) in Europe. To attract viewers, Sabbagh decided to make Tour coverage the centerpiece of the first weeks of his groundbreaking show. Under Sabbagh’s guidance, RTF enacted an ambitious plan to provide viewers with daily race updates and highlights during the journal télévisé. Sabbah had a tiny budget, “amateur” equipment, a small crew, and an army surplus jeep. One of the reporters loaned his Peugeot car to the project, and Sabbagh paid for some of the crew’s food and lodging out of his own pocket.37 The first journal télévisé aired on June 29, the day before the start of the Tour. Each night thereafter, France’s tiny viewing public— only 3,794 television sets existed in the country by 1950 — watched moving images that RTF had recorded in the provinces the previous day while on-air presenters in Paris provided live commentary.38 Throughout the early and mid-1950s, such filmed material accounted for the vast majority of race coverage that RTF broadcast on television. In 1956, L’Équipe guessed, optimistically, that two million viewers would watch Tour highlights each evening on France’s 400,000 sets.39 Camera technology made broadcasting live, direct from the race course, impractical on a large scale until the late 1950s. The cameras were heavy and delicate. They could not generally be used in inclement weather and they had to be set up at a fixed location and connected to bulky transmitters by cables. However, the Tour was French television’s technical laboratory, and the techniques developed to make direct broadcasting more feasible were later employed to televise other sports, including the 1968 Grenoble Winter Olympics.40 For the Tour, technicians developed mobile cameras that beamed pictures wirelessly to stationary transmitters; employed cameras with zoom lenses, some mounted on helicopters, to follow the race action more closely; and developed lightweight, color cameras for use during the competition.41 As technology improved, RTF transmitted more and more race coverage, much of it direct from the course, to France’s burgeoning television audience. By 1966, R.T.F’s total air time devoted to the Tour amounted to twenty-one hours and eleven minutes, and live, on-site broadcasts accounted for more than thirteen hours of the total. In 1970, the total air time for Tour coverage rose to twenty-eight hours and twenty-four minutes, of which live transmissions accounted for more than twenty-three hours.42 French television devoted more and more personnel and financial resources to covering the Tour in the late 1950s and 1960s as R.T.F’s management diversified the state network’s programming. French television’s Tour

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crew grew from eleven to twenty members between 1952 and 1956. By 1960, the RTF Tour crew’s size had more than quadrupled to include ninety journalists and technicians, thirteen cars, two busses, two equipment trucks, a helicopter, a jeep, and a radio-equipped motorcycle.43 Few exact estimates of the Tour’s television audience in the 1960s and 1970s exist. The percentage of television-equipped households in France rose from 9 to 80 percent between 1958 and 1974.44 A Goddet-commissioned survey of the event’s broadcast audience in 1973 concluded that close to twenty million French viewers tuned in to television coverage of the race.45 By 1980, according to Tour officials’ estimates, the race’s television audience dwarfed the estimated twelve million roadside spectators and international retransmissions of coverage reached approximately thirty million viewers in other countries.46 The transformation of the Tour into a televised spectacle illustrates how the audio-visual media forged for themselves a powerful place in postwar popular culture. The popularity of televised sport in France undoubtedly helped the new medium to flourish and to gain acceptance.47 The expansion of television viewership in France had profound, unanticipated ramifications. Television viewing began to replace traditional leisure activities and social traditions. In his ethnohistory of a provincial village that he visited in 1951 and in 1959, Laurence Wylie documented how television began to erode longstanding modes of sociability after the war. As more of the local residents purchased televisions, the village’s social life began to change. One farmer, whom Wylie described as a fixture at the village’s weekly boules tournament in 1951, explained in 1959 that he had stopped competing on Sundays because he preferred to stay home and watch television. A café owner also complained that fewer men played cards in his tavern after work because they chose instead to watch television at home. Wylie noted that watching television— especially televised sports— seemed to be replacing after-dinner conversation over coffee in the village’s households.48 Wylie’s insights, although based on anecdotal evidence, nevertheless highlight the subtle but powerful influence of television in shaping French community life and leisure practices after the war.49 3. How “Commercial” Should the Tour Be? French Ambivalence to Commercialization amid Les Trente Glorieuses At first, France’s quarter-century postwar economic boom did not benefit the Tour de France or French professional sports in general. More and more French people cycled and played sports. Active membership in France’s

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national cycling federation rose from 35,000 to 39,000 between 1926 and 1960, while the number of bicycles in France expanded from nine million to 11.5 million machines between 1939 and 1974.50 But the new shape of the consumer market and the rise of car culture hurt the French bicycle industry, one of the Tour’s most important business partners. In the 1950s, the automobile replaced the bicycle in the French eye as the primary symbol of personal freedom and mobility. Household consumption grew 40 percent between 1950 and 1957, but the French, once they equipped their homes with appliances, preferred to spend their rising incomes on automobiles rather than on bicycles.51 Demand for bicycles slackened and production plummeted from 1.3 million units in 1949 to 790,000 units in 1956.52 Many firms found it more and more difficult to finance professional teams and began to retreat from sponsorship.53 The teams were expensive. Jean Bobet, a professional cyclist and brother of three-time Tour champion Louison Bobet, estimated that the cost of assembling and paying the expenses for a top-echelon cycling team for a year had risen to at least twenty million francs by the mid-1950s.54 The Tour de France also faced financial difficulties throughout the 1940s and 1950s. As the Tour’s organizers feared, expanding radio and television coverage of the race eroded the readership of L’Équipe and Le Parisien libéré. The Tour ceased to be the powerful sales booster that it had been before the Second World War. Between 1948 and 1977, the average number of copies per day sold by L’Équipe declined from 421,000 to 262,000.55 The same phenomenon affected the Tour’s other organizing newspaper, Le Parisien libéré. In 1961, Le Parisien libéré even experienced, for the first time, a marked drop in circulation during the race.56 These statistics suggest that fewer people followed the race in the daily newspapers and that the French relied more and more on the broadcast media for coverage of the Tour.57 In the two decades after 1947, the annual event consistently lost money. Although no complete budget statistics exist, the organizers indicated that the race ran deficits in 1947, 1948, and 1949. The race’s budget deficit in 1953 amounted to twelve million francs.58 Presumably, the race operated in the red in other years, as well. Even though more and more fans took in the Tour on television, French television did not pay for the Tour’s broadcasting rights until 1960. That year, RTF’s 40,000-franc contribution accounted for just 1.5 percent of the Tour’s budget.59 Television’s share of the Tour budget increased slowly after 1960. Television fees did not constitute a significant portion of the event’s budget until the 1980s. Despite these struggles, the event’s organizers were reluctant to take advantage of the new promotional possibilities of the television age. Commercialization—how to limit, manage, and channel it— was the thorniest

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problem for the Tour organizers in the two decades after 1945. In particular, Jacques Goddet resisted the pressure of professional cycling’s biggest corporate backers to resurrect the pre-1930 corporate team race formula. He and other Tour officials feared that altering the event’s financial arrangements and publicity structure would lead to uncontrollable commercialization of the event. Although the Tour did not figure directly in the debates on “Americanization,” the race organizers’ attempts to embrace modernity while preserving the event’s traditional character shed light on the role of businesses in the process and on how this struggle played itself out in other areas of mass culture after the war. At first glance, it would seem difficult to imagine how the Tour could become a more commercialized spectacle. As in the prewar era, the Tour freely allowed promotion-seeking firms to enter the publicity caravan and aggressively courted businesses to sponsor the event’s prizes. Between 1948 and 1952, private enterprise sponsorship grew from a third to more than 60 percent of the Tour’s budget.60 Because of the highly visible presence of the race’s sponsors, many observers criticized the publicity-oriented character of the Tour spectacle, as they had before the war. Nevertheless, Jacques Goddet proclaimed, “As the organizer of the Tour de France, I affirm that all forms and all modes of publicity can express themselves during the race.”61 In France and elsewhere, the sport of cycling eagerly sought out new, wealthy corporate sponsors. More and more enterprises outside the cycling community’s traditional business circle (extra-sportifs) hungered to generate publicity for themselves and recognized the promotional power inherent in sponsoring athletes, teams, and sporting competitions. As television coverage of cycling grew, emblazoning corporate names and brand images on team jerseys in the hope of generating unauthorized “clandestine” advertising on the commercial-free airwaves became particularly attractive to the extra-sportifs. Bicycle firms that continued to sponsor cycling teams sought out these extra-sportif businesses to lighten their own financial burdens. In 1954, the organizers of the Tour of Italy (Giro d’Italia), allowed, for the first time, the participation of extra-sportif-sponsored teams in the race, including entries supported by Nivea face cream and a brand of Chianti. The Giro’s change of policy brought the contentious issue of extra-sportif involvement in the sport to a head throughout the international cycling community.62 In 1955, the Fédération Française de Cyclisme (F.F.C.), French cycling’s governing association, changed its statutes and allowed extra-sportif advertising to appear on riders’ jerseys and racing shorts. The same year, an agreement between the French branch of British Petroleum (Pétrols B.P.) and Peugeot bicycles created the “Peugeot-BP” team and opened the door to the wholesale

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penetration of French professional cycling by the extra-sportifs.63 Throughout the mid- and late 1950s, more and more extra-sportifs entered into partnerships with established cycling businesses to profit from the visibility, both on the roads and on the airwaves, that the patronage of famous athletes and major sporting events afforded them. The arrival of the extra-sportifs in the 1950s brought to the fore the issue of whether (and how) to restructure France’s national bicycle race. Undoubtedly, the Tour would have welcomed the new revenues that extra-sportif corporate team sponsorship would have generated. Corporate team sponsorship would have defrayed the costs of lodging, feeding, and caring for the competitors, which accounted for approximately a quarter of the Tour’s budget by 1948.64 Nevertheless, for nearly fifteen years Goddet steadfastly refused to revert to the corporate team format and maintained a strict division between the Tour’s competitive and publicity structures. Director Goddet and his lieutenants voiced many of the arguments put forward by Henri Desgrange against the pre-1930 formula. They pointed out that commercial sponsorship of the teams could lead potentially to collusion among riders, attempts by sponsors to manufacture victories for certain teams and racers, a general degradation of the competitiveness and combativeness of the race, and, ultimately, a dampening of public interest in the event.65 Even more, Goddet redefined the cultural imperative of the Tour after the Second World War and employed the race’s new mission as a weapon against the advocates of the corporate team format. The original cultural mission of the race as outlined by Henri Desgrange— the defense of the bourgeoisdefined social hierarchy and the moral instruction of the working class— no longer had the same relevance in postwar French society, since after the war new social mores had redefined or erased old class distinctions.66 Instead, Goddet characterized his opposition to the extra-sportifs as a struggle to save a national cultural institution from an invasion by crass commercial interests. The Tour, Goddet argued, was a powerful symbol of French heritage and a bulwark against the encroachment of vulgar promotionalism into traditional sporting culture. In Goddet’s vision, the Tour embodied a certain historic “moral” and “mystique,” and the event’s rebirth in its “traditional” form— the national team format, which was less than two decades old and had been used only ten times— in 1947 represented a return to normalcy for the French nation after the Second World War.67 Goddet believed that the national team formula endowed the race with a sporting character, style, and internationalist feel similar to the Pierre de Coubertin-inspired Olympic Games.68 Furthermore, Goddet contended, the prestige, glory, and luster of the Tour rested on the “solid framework” of the national team formula,

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which he considered the event’s “essential principle.”69 In the 1950s, Goddet argued that the battle over the extra-sportifs in professional cycling was a crucial facet of the wider struggle to safeguard the character of French sport and its heroes. “To see French champions transformed into sandwich-board men (hommes sandwiches) by extra-sportif interests, as has happened in Italy . . . we cannot let that happen.”70 Goddet recognized that his position as director of the Tour, the most prestigious race in the world, made him a pivotal influence in shaping the French bicycle industry and professional cycling: “[We Tour organizers] are conscious of the fact that we are defending more than just the Tour, that we are defending the entire sport of cycling.”71 Goddet deployed a variety of defenses to resist the movement in favor of the corporate team formula. He also used his considerable influence in the cycling world to prevent, or at least slow, the penetration of the extrasportifs into French professional cycling. L’Équipe’s near-monopoly ownership of France’s most prestigious bicycle competitions figured as Goddet’s most powerful weapon. By the mid-1950s, L’Équipe controlled the Tour de France, the Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré, the Critérium National, the classic Paris– Roubaix and Paris–Tours one-day races, and the Grand Prix des Nations time trial championship.72 Goddet simply refused to allow extrasportif participation in these races for most of the 1950s. The Tour organizers also transformed the question of the extra-sportifs into a turf battle for administrative control over the sport of cycling in France and abroad. Goddet and his lieutenants dominated this arena. In 1956, Goddet founded the Association Internationale des Organisateurs de Courses Cyclistes (International Association of Bicycle Race Organizers, A.I.O.C.C.). The bylaws of the A.I.O.C.C. indicated that the goal of the association was “the encouragement, development, and safeguarding of the sport of cycling” through increased cooperation among the organizers of major international bicycle races.73 The unwritten purpose of the organization, according to member Jacques Marchand, was to wrest, or at least loosen, the administrative control of cycling from the existing national and international governing bodies like the F.F.C. and the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), which had adopted the stance that the extra-sportif teams should be allowed to participate in sanctioned competitions.74 Goddet presided over the A.I.O.C.C., and L’Équipe’s staff contributed seven of the twenty-two members of the organization.75 The members of the A.I.O.C.C. worked to resolve some of the long-standing conflicts among international race organizers, such as agreeing on the annual competition schedule to avoid race overlaps. Such initiatives brought the race organizers into direct conflict with the F.F.C. and the UCI. In addition to these purposes, Goddet also used the power of the associa-

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tion to stem the “flood” of the extra-sportif entry into international cycling, which brought him into direct conflict with the other race organizers, especially the Italians.76 The Goddet-run A.I.O.C.C. adopted rules that inhibited extra-sportif entry into many of the international races until the late 1950s. Although Italian and Belgian race organizers, as well as many professional riders whose livelihoods depended on extra-sportif-paid contracts, refused to abide by many of the association’s guidelines on the issue, the A.I.O.C.C. nevertheless helped Goddet protect the Tour and other L’Équipe-managed events from the extra-sportifs. The Tour de France’s struggle against the extra-sportifs ended in the early 1960s. Powerful interests inside the Tour’s management and in the camp of the extra-sportif groups forced Goddet to accept a return to the corporate team format. His second-in-command, Félix Lévitan, publicly backed Goddet during the battles over the extra-sportifs throughout the 1950s but privately favored reinstituting the pre-1930 formula.77 Lévitan, editor in chief of Le Parisien libéré’s sports section, was the de facto voice of L’Équipe’s major financial partner in the Tour and his opinion possessed considerable weight. More importantly, the extra-sportif team sponsors held a crucial trump card— their contracts with star cyclists— that forced Goddet to reevaluate his opposition to the corporate team formula. The head-to-head battles waged on French country roads among cycling’s biggest stars fueled the drama of the Tour and maintained its popular appeal. Beginning in the late 1950s, several of the most powerful extra-sportif teams pressured their featured riders to forgo participation in the Tour de France. The dominant cyclists of the late 1950s and early 1960s, Belgian Rik Van Looy and Frenchman Jacques Anquetil, avoided competing in the Tour to honor contracts with their extra-sportif sponsors. The decision of Anquetil, the world’s leading rider between 1957 and 1965, to participate in the 1960 Tour of Italy but not in the Tour de France delivered a particularly strong blow to Goddet’s position. France’s 1960 national team found itself with no top-rank star riders since veteran racers Louison Bobet, Jean Robic, and Raphaël Geminiani had retired from the Tour. The following year, Antonin Magne, the former Tour champion and manager of the Mercier-BP team, convinced his rising star, Raymond Poulidor, to skip the Tour because racing in the national team format would undermine his young champion’s “commercial value.”78 Goddet and his supporters resorted to empty threats in an attempt to salvage the national team Tour. After the 1959 event, Goddet threatened to quit his post as race organizer and abandon the Tour to the F.F.C. The following year, several journalists insinuated that the French government might withdraw its support of the event and refuse permission to use the national

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highway system if the Tour’s organizers adopted the corporate team format.79 Nevertheless, the lack of competitiveness during the 1961 Tour— termed a “fiasco” by Goddet80— forced the organizers to reverse their stance on the extra-sportifs. After the race, Goddet and Lévitan agreed to reinstitute the corporate team formula the following year. In retrospect, Goddet characterized the return to the pre-1930 formula as “necessary” and “inevitable” since by the late 1950s bicycle businesses alone could no longer effectively “nourish” the sport of cycling.81 Nevertheless, Goddet effectively defended the Tour’s national team formula for nearly two decades during a period in which extra-sportif sponsorship became the major source of financing for professional cycling in most of Western Europe. After 1962, the Tour evolved into an even more formidable mechanism for generating large-scale commercial publicity, and scores of new enterprises entered into the business of sponsoring cycling teams and competitions. The return to the corporate team formula and inclusion of extra-sportifs in the mix were not the only, nor the most important, factors in the Tour’s evolution thereafter. The Tour’s traditional promotional structures— the publicity caravan, advertising campaigns in the pages of L’Équipe and other newspapers, and radio advertising on France’s peripheral broadcasting networks— could not generate the volume or style of publicity sought by cycling’s new business partners. After the return to the corporate team formula, the Tour organizers embraced the broadcast media as a publicity tool and employed television coverage of the race to increase exponentially the promotional power of the event. At the same time that he resisted the entry of the extra-sportif interests into the race’s competitive framework, Jacques Goddet embraced the event’s role as a commercial spectacle. The Tour’s organizers continuously transformed the event’s commercial structure and logistical operations to maximize the promotional power of the race after the Second World War. 4. Bureaucratization, Standard Operating Procedures, and State Assistance: The Tour Becomes a Modern French Cultural Enterprise, 1947– 1962 In 1947, Jacques Goddet entered into a partnership with a rich investor—Le Parisien libéré, one of France’s largest daily newspapers— to ensure that the Tour had a large, steady flow of financial capital. Subsequently, Goddet spearheaded an effort to modernize the business structure and production of the Tour. The event lost its artisanal qualities and took on the characteristics of a modern cultural enterprise. By the mid-1950s, the Tour became an annual event that ran like clockwork.

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Several factors influenced Goddet’s resolve to transform the Tour. First, the financial problems experienced by the race and its organizing newspaper in the late 1930s continued and intensified after the war. L’Équipe, like all periodicals, faced sharply rising production costs, price controls, and paper rationing. The price of a ton of pulp paper, upon which newspapers were printed, skyrocketed from 10,000 francs in 1945 to 84,297 francs in 1951. Government regulations limited the maximum price of newspapers until the beginning of 1949 and the maximum number of pages per newspaper per week until 1958.82 These restrictions undermined L’Équipe’s advertising revenue and, in turn, limited funds available for the Tour. At the same time, the cost of staging the Tour increased steadily after 1947. The event’s budget ballooned from approximately fifty million francs in 1948 to more than 150 million francs in 1953,83 and the race lost money consistently. Second, Goddet resurrected the Tour with a clean slate. Henri Desgrange and most of the race’s prewar staff had died or retired. All of L’Auto’s Tour records had disappeared.84 Goddet had no choice but to rebuild the Tour’s management and logistics from the ground up. In some ways, Desgrange’s death opened the door for Goddet’s long overdue modernization of the Tour. Desgrange’s iconoclasm and groundbreaking commercial philosophy helped the Tour to flourish in its first decades. Nevertheless, his overbearing personality and management style, his overarching presence as race director, and his deep-seated sense of the Tour as his personal domain made significant alterations of the event’s business structure impossible. Finally, Goddet considered himself to be a reformer. In a retrospective piece written on the race’s fiftieth anniversary in 1953, Goddet characterized the beginning of his tenure as the start of the Tour’s “overall modernization.”85 He described himself and his colleagues as “men resolutely oriented toward the future.” Goddet believed that his mission was to “resolidify the entire system of organization,” establish a new financial equilibrium for the event, and employ emerging technologies to enhance the race’s logistics.86 Goddet’s partnership with Le Parisien libéré was the centerpiece of the new Tour. The arrangement lessened L’Équipe’s onerous financial burden considerably because the two newspapers split equally the cost of staging the Tour.87 The partnership strengthened the commercial punch of the Tour since the race’s organizers could offer sponsors attractive publicity packages that included additional, free advertising in both newspapers.88 Undoubtedly, the Tour also helped both L’Équipe and Le Parisien libéré to bolster their advertising revenues. Goddet also passed on more of the Tour’s costs to the race’s host towns and sponsors. Between 1938 and 1949, host-town subventions grew from approximately 21 percent to more than 49 percent of the Tour’s budget.89

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Goddet transformed the Tour’s management structure. As part of the terms of the agreement with Le Parisien libéré, Goddet shared the responsibility for managing the Tour with Félix Lévitan, Le Parisien libéré ’s sports editor. Lévitan entered journalism in the late 1920s with L’Intransigeant, the newspaper that provided the first radio coverage of the Tour in 1929. During the 1930s, Lévitan worked as a print journalist and as an on-air commentator during the Tour and other sporting events for Radio-Cité, L’Intransigeant’s station, and for Radio-37, Paris-Soir’s station. During the Second World War, Lévitan, who was Jewish, spent seven months in prison before joining a maquis resistance group in the Dijon region.90 Initially, Lévitan’s role was to determine the race’s rules, help select the riders and host towns, and act as the on-course referee. Later, Lévitan demanded a larger role and by the early 1950s emerged as Goddet’s de facto codirector. In 1962, Lévitan became the race codirector. Lévitan and Goddet approached the Tour with different, sometimes conflicting management styles and business philosophies, and their professional rivalry aggravated the cool personal relationship between the two. Goddet sought to establish long-term, amicable, loyalty-based sponsorship relationships with important businessmen, whom he referred to in his memoirs as “fundamental clients,” “faithful,” and “veritable associates.”91 Lévitan, by contrast, envisioned reshaping the Tour into a more efficient moneymaking machine, which is one of the reasons he favored reinstituting the corporate team formula. Goddet often delegated significant organizational authority to trusted colleagues at L’Équipe. Lévitan, a “man of rigorous order,” developed a “somewhat monarchical” management style in the domains of Tour organization for which he was responsible. Although he delegated some tasks to subordinates, Lévitan almost always reserved the right to reverse their actions and decisions.92 Despite these stresses, both Goddet and Lévitan agreed that it was essential to modernize the Tour’s business structures. Like other enterprises after the Second World War, the Tour developed a technocratic management team to direct operations. Although journalists continued to play the most important roles in the event’s management organogram, many were also highly trained experts in key technical areas. There existed no grande école that trained people to stage bicycle races, so Goddet recruited the Tour’s top logistical officials from an even better training ground— the French military. The commissaire général (chief commissioner) directed most of the Tour’s logistical arrangements in the provincial host towns, including setting up the finish line, finding food and lodging for the Tour’s entire entourage, and facilitating communications among local government officials, race organizers, and the police. Goddet entrusted the job to two army veterans, René

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Beaupuis and Elie Wermelinger. Colonel Beaupuis became the commissaire général in 1947. The colonel had spent the interwar years as an instructor at and director of the Joinville military school, one of the top training academies for French military officers.93 Elie Wermelinger, who assisted Beaupuis beginning in 1948 and then succeeded him as commissaire général in 1954, had served as a lieutenant in charge of supply while stationed in Brest in the late 1930s and in the Middle East during the Second World War.94 The two veterans brought their military leadership experience and extensive knowledge of logistics to bear on the job. Goddet also recruited men with extensive experience in the sports and entertainment business, both within and outside the cycling community. Goddet met Wermelinger, for example, in 1948 when the Tour visited Biarritz, where the former army officer served as the chief administrative officer of several hotels and casinos.95 Charles Joly, the Tour’s assistant director in charge of administrative affairs until 1954, also served as director of the Vélodrome d’Hiver and the Parc des Princes, Paris’s largest arena, as well as several other velodromes in the Paris region. Joly maintained business contacts with sports venues throughout France and grasped the complexities of negotiating contracts for sporting events. Joly drew up and finalized the contracts between the Tour and the host towns.96 To market the Tour, Goddet built a “publicity staff adapted to modern times” with the help of a Paris advertising agency.97 Jean Dewas and Max Petit served as the commercial directors of the Tour in addition to working at the Inter-Régeis advertising firm. They handled the negotiations with potential corporate sponsors prior to the competition.98 Robert Letorey, the director of the Montlhéry automobile race track south of Paris, acted as the Tour’s commissaire général commercial (chief of commercial relations) and organized the publicity caravan. Goddet described Letorey as a “grand master of publicity.”99 Goddet selected Jean Garnault to be the Tour’s sécretaire général, or chief coordinating officer. Garnault had served since the beginning of the Second World War as Goddet’s office and correspondence manager at L’Auto and at L’Équipe. The Tour’s new expert management team established well-defined, uniform operating procedures that standardized the annual organization of the Tour. First, Goddet streamlined the host-town selection process by drawing up detailed guidelines and minimum requirements that potential host communities must meet. The Tour required approximately 1,200 beds for the cyclists, officials, and other members of the event’s entourage. Goddet also stipulated that each town place at the Tour’s disposal twenty telephone circuits (each of which could handle several conversations at once) so that the press could relay stories to their home offices quickly and efficiently. Each

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year, approximately sixty communities presented themselves as candidates to the Tour organizers, who selected approximately twenty towns to host the Tour.100 Finally, Goddet set a baseline minimum for the host-town subventions. All else being equal, the selection committee generally chose the candidate towns that could meet the subvention baseline and then built the race itinerary accordingly. Perhaps the most significant changes to the Tour’s organizational strategy occurred at the local level. Before the Second World War, Henri Desgrange relied on L’Auto’s network of part-time reporters to suggest or object to hosttown arrangements, but primary organizational responsibility lay with the welcoming committees of local boosters and enthusiasts. Under Elie Wermelinger’s guidance, the Tour’s bureaucracy took over most of the logistical decision making. By 1953, the race received a standardized welcome in each town it visited. Wermelinger created a sixty-page “Guide for Use by Local Organizing Committees” (Guide à l’usage des comités locaux d’organisation) that he distributed to each host town during the winter before the race.101 Wermelinger’s guide dictated exactly how a host town must prepare for the arrival of the Tour. The handbook covered general topics such as who should participate in the local arrangements committee, how the committee should fix its agenda, and what tasks had to be completed according to a strict timeline. The guide discussed how to coordinate preparations among local, regional, and national police authorities and how to establish a lodging plan for the race’s caravan. The handbook covered every facet of the Tour’s reception, such as the exact size, shape, wording, and placement of traffic signs (most of which were provided by the Parisian organizers) at the finish line and on the roads leading to the host town.102 Wermelinger’s book provided the exact wording of the special permissions and ordinances that the local mayor and the prefect of the département must issue to facilitate the Tour’s passage. The guide even specified the types of flowers and plants that must be placed around the stage winner’s podium and the food (a sandwich buffet that included chicken and beef cutlets) that must be served at the start/ finish line. Finally, the guide laid out strict rules about how towns and local businesses could and could not advertise and promote themselves during the Tour’s stay.103 The Tour’s postwar staff left little decision-making responsibility to the locals or to chance. Wermelinger and the other Tour officials did not simply describe logistical arrangements to local hosts— they oversaw them on-site. Wermelinger departed each spring on a three- to four-month trip, during which he visited each host town and directed logistical operations. The Tour’s commissaire général adjoint spent between two and four days in each community and fol-

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lowed a strict, predetermined agenda of meetings and activities to maximize the efficiency of his visit.104 During the 1950 Tour, Wermelinger estimated that, over the span of his 92-day voyage, he met with 50 prefects, 1,000 mayors or city councilors, and 1,500 hotel owners. Wermelinger also acted as the Tour’s on-site booking and travel agent: he reserved a total of 9,450 hotel rooms for the Tour’s caravan in 1950.105 New technologies played an important role in changing the way that the organizers staged the Tour in the 1950s. In 1957, the Tour created a mobile press room equipped with telegraphs, teletypes, facsimile machines, and other high-tech gear that traveled from town to town with the journalists’ caravan and facilitated their communications with home bureaus.106 The Tour caravan employed cutting-edge radio liaison technology that kept the police, gendarmes, the publicity caravan, medical emergency teams, and race organizers in constant communication while on the road. In addition, several short-wave radio operators on motorcycles followed the riders and transmitted updates to loudspeaker-equipped vehicles, which broadcast race updates to the hordes of roadside spectators. Finally, organizers employed a secret radio communication system to ensure that the state and private radio broadcasting networks could transmit their play-by-play analysis to their home studios without interference or piracy.107 The efforts by the Parisian organizers to disseminate the Tour’s spectacle to a wider audience helped host towns to generate publicity and to profit from tourism in new ways. In 1952, Elie Wermelinger created the “Historical and Touristic Guide to the Tour de France” (Guide historique et touristique du Tour de France), a guidebook to the regions that the race visited. Wermelinger’s annual guide resembled the Guides Michelin, the famous tourism handbooks published by the French tire manufacturer. In the Guide historique, the commissaire général included several pages of commentary on the cultural, gastronomical, and natural treasures of each host town and region through which the race passed, as well as anecdotes about the history of the Tour in the provinces. Usually, Wermelinger requested that the mayor of each new stage town submit a short piece on local culture and history, from which he fashioned the Guide historique. The Tour organizers also exploited the race’s growing national and international radio audience in new ways during the 1950s. Goddet reached a new agreement with Louis Merlin, the director of Europe No. 1, to retransmit the Tour. Merlin’s Europe No. 1 was a privately operated, for-profit enterprise that survived by generating large amounts of advertising revenue. Beginning in 1955, Merlin sponsored enormous traveling variety shows that Europe No.1 staged in the Tour’s host towns each evening after the race’s arrival. Mer-

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lin’s spectacles included performances by musicians, singers, orchestras, and dance troupes. The shows featured many of the top performers of the 1950s, including band leader Tino Rossi, chanteuse Dalida, Petula Clark, and Johnny Hallyday.108 Each show transpired after dinner on a large, public stage or in an auditorium in the center of town and lasted more than an hour. Merlin transmitted the performances live throughout Western Europe on Europe No. 1’s powerful transmitters.109 The French government played an important, expanding role in staging and facilitating the race and placed more and more state resources at the Tour’s disposal. In 1947, the chief of the state telecommunications service declared that the mission of his office during the Tour was to “facilitate the task of the French and foreign press” during the race. The service dispatched what L’Équipe termed a “brigade” of specialists to install more telephone and radio circuits in host towns around the itinerary.110 In 1952, the telecommunications team that followed the race included twenty-two engineers and technicians.111 The government often granted permission to the Tour to set up press rooms in local post offices, where reporters had ready access to public telephone lines. The national government also took over important policing duties. Beginning in 1952, the minister of the interior dispatched a motorcycle squad of between thirty and fifty soldiers from the First Infantry Regiment of the Republican Guard, an elite military unit that escorted the motorcades of the French president and other high government officials, to “protect” the Tour de France.112 The First Infantry Regiment’s motorcycle soldiers directed traffic and ensured the safety of the riders and race officials along the entire itinerary of the Tour. In addition, the Gendarmerie nationale (national police) took responsibility for placing hundreds of security officers along the course each day out of the hands of the Tour organizers and hosttown officials. Finally, the state civil engineering corps (Ministère de ponts et chaussées) employed its expertise and considerable manpower to manage and streamline logistics at the local level. For a single time trial stage of the 1958 Tour in Châteaulin (Brittany), for example, state engineers drew up a total of 102 large-scale maps and blueprints to be consulted by its work crews during the setup. The maps and drawings included descriptions of traffic signal placements (seventy maps), layouts of parking areas (twenty-six drawings), graphic drawings of the race course and of the finish-line layout, and a profile relief map of the climbs and descents along the route.113 By the late 1950s, Goddet’s management team, with the state’s assistance, had transformed the Tour into a streamlined logistical event and an even more powerful publicity machine. Goddet avidly pursued the promotional opportunities created by France’s new media structure, such as the chance

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to broadcast the race and publicize its sponsors throughout Europe on Louis Merlin’s networks. More significantly, the Tour’s logistical and organizational transformation during the 1950s endowed the event with a streamlined regularity that lent itself easily to televised broadcasting. Thanks to the tremendous commercial and promotional possibilities of television, the event became a publicity clearinghouse for the hundreds of firms that sponsored the race and its stars. 5. The Tour and New Modes of Corporate Promotion For corporate sponsors, the televised Tour offered the possibility of generating unprecedented volumes of publicity. The demand by enterprises for publicity— both in traditional sectors like the press and in new media— increased significantly after the war. According to a publicity trade journal, publicity spending by French businesses increased from 320 million francs in 1950 to 2.6 billion francs in 1962, though the amount spent on advertising in France per capita still lagged behind other Western countries into the mid-1960s.114 Despite the relative commercial underdevelopment of French television, potential advertisers recognized the power of the new medium and sought out ways to insinuate their publicity into television. Traditional venues of advertising— the press, radio, and the cinema— could not accommodate the growing demand for publicity because the audiences of the three media stagnated or declined during the 1960s and early 1970s. For example, a press industry trade journal estimated that although the French population grew 25 percent between 1939 and 1970, newspaper readership expanded only 3.2 percent.115 The television audience expanded rapidly in the 1960s. Sporting events like the Tour de France provided an entering wedge into the new medium for businesses hoping to generate “clandestine” publicity on the commercial-free airwaves. Many firms purchased cycling teams or otherwise participated in sponsoring the race. The race organizers took advantage of the trend and created new sponsorship opportunities. Goddet and Lévitan slightly increased the average number of teams in the race after the return of the corporate team formula in 1962,116 created new prizes and awards for purchase by interested sponsors, and sold the right to become official supporters and suppliers of the event.117 Carmaker Peugeot broke new ground when it became one of the first French companies to exploit systematically the opportunities for “clandestine” advertising made possible by television coverage of the Tour. In 1954, Peugeot became the exclusive provider of vehicles to the Tour. The automobile builder supplied the cars in which race officials, mechanics, and team

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managers followed the race, as well as trucks needed to transport supplies and equipment. Between 1954 and 1956, Peugeot also provided Tour officials sixteen specially outfitted Model 203 automobiles. The vehicles had bicycle racks on the trunks and were quickly nicknamed “bathtubs” (baignoires) because of their white color and custom, low-scooping doors that allowed for quick entry and exit.118 As television coverage of the race increased, so did the size of Peugeot’s caravan of Tour vehicles. By 1963, the Peugeot caravan totaled fifty-seven vehicles, including forty cars, fifteen trucks, and two vans. An unspecified number of Peugeot vehicles also participated in the publicity caravan.119 Peugeot repaired and maintained the vehicles that it provided to the Tour. The publicity generated by the company’s presence in the Tour’s caravan easily compensated for the investment, since cameras could not help but transmit images of Peugeot automobiles to the French television audience that watched the Tour. Peugeot credited television coverage of the race, in conjunction with traditional press and movie house advertising, with popularizing the silhouette and disseminating the brand image of its inexpensive Model 203 to the French population in the 1950s and early 1960s.120 Peugeot remained the Tour’s exclusive provider of official cars until 1989, when Italian carmaker Fiat outbid the French carmaker for the privilege. As the marketplace evolved, Tour organizers gradually abandoned the founding business precept of the event that the race served primarily to boost the circulation and advertising revenue of the newspapers that organized it. In fact, L’Équipe faced shrinking circulation numbers throughout the early and mid-1960s,121 which prompted Goddet to sell the newspaper and its subsidiary components (including the Tour) to his friend and Tour collaborator Émilien Amaury in 1965. In return, Amaury promised Goddet that he would retain complete editorial control over L’Équipe and his position as the Tour’s codirector for as long as he desired. Upon signing the deal, Amaury proclaimed, “Jacques, the only way you are going to leave L’Équipe is in a coffin.”122 The Tour served as the lynchpin of the business union of two publishing concerns. The first was the Amaury Group, a publishing syndicate headed by Émilien Amaury. After the war, the Amaury Group inherited the physical plant of Le Petit Parisien and its associated publications. The second entity, the Société Nouvelle de Publications Sportives et Industrielles (SOPUSI), was a consortium of newspapers, magazines, and sporting events managed by Goddet. The Amaury Group purchased 70 percent of SOPUSI’s capital in April 1965. 123 Between 1965 and the early 1980s, the Amaury Group established an ever-expanding commercial empire around dozens of local and national newspapers and periodicals, several televised sporting events, and the

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French capital’s premier sports and entertainment venues. The Tour emerged as the crown jewel of the conglomerate. Thanks to the union with SOPUSI, the Amaury Group also controlled many of the biggest sporting events and venues in Europe. The group organized most of the great French cycling classics, including the Tour de France, the Tour de l’Avenir (the amateur version of the Tour de France, created in 1961), the Paris– Roubaix, Paris–Tours, Paris– Brest– Paris, Bordeaux– Paris, and the Grand Prix des Nations. Goddet, as the legal successor to the property of Henri Desgrange and L’Auto, also owned or managed several of the major arenas and fairgrounds in the Paris region, including the Parc des Princes, Vélodrome d’Hiver (destroyed by fire in 1959), the Palais des Sports (built in 1960 to replace the Vélodrome d’Hiver), and the Parc des Expositions. These venues became parts of the Amaury Group after 1965.124 To coordinate publicity and advertising among its disparate components, the Amaury Group also owned and operated a full-service publicity firm. In the 1970s, Goddet, Lévitan, and Amaury placed legal ownership of the Amaury Group’s sports-related assets into the hands of several limited liability corporations (Sociétés à responsabilité limitée, or S.A.R.L.s). In March 1972, Goddet expanded the capital base of the Société Nouvelle Palais des Sports, a S.A.R.L. founded in 1959 that owned Goddet’s various sports and entertainment venues, and expanded the membership of its board to include other executives from the Amaury Group. In July 1973, Goddet created the Société d’Exploitation du Tour de France, a S.A.R.L. that owned the right to organize the Tour de France and the other sporting events controlled by the Amaury Group.125 The new corporate status of the Tour facilitated its interaction with other components of the Amaury Group and the event’s sponsors. Simultaneously, the financial fortunes of the Tour de France improved somewhat after several decades of breaking even or losing money: the Tour’s S.A.R.L. reported profits of seventeen million francs between 1974 and 1984.126 The Tour’s long-term partnership with Crédit Lyonnais, one of France’s largest banks, illustrates how the race’s new business apparatus facilitated the entry of French businesses into the arena of sports sponsorship and publicity. Crédit Lyonnais formed part of a new generation of sports sponsors— service-sector firms like banks and insurance companies that in the past had been apathetic to mass publicity— that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s as some of the most important extra-sportif benefactors of athletic competition. By the 1980s, companies like Crédit Lyonnais became powerful influences in France’s evolving commercial mass culture. Crédit Lyonnais’s first timid forays into sports sponsorship in the late 1970s yielded few measurable publicity gains and generated little enthu-

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siasm at the bank. Prior to 1980, the bank devoted a minute portion of its nineteen-million-franc publicity budget to sports-related advertising. In 1979, Crédit Lyonnais paid 70,000 francs to the organizers of a televised track and field competition and 150,000 francs to the Renault Formula One racing team for the right to place the bank’s emblem on the team’s race cars. The manager who oversaw the bank’s sponsorship of the Renault racing team, Michel Lefèbvre, termed the effort a “fiasco” with few measurable benefits. Nevertheless, Lefèbvre recognized that sports sponsorship could reshape a company’s public image in ways that traditional press advertising could not. Lefèbvre raised the possibility of increasing the sports sponsorship budget to two million francs in 1981.127 In 1980 and early 1981, Lefèbvre and his associates argued that Crédit Lyonnais must embark on a sustained, long-term sports sponsorship campaign. Lefèbvre insisted that the effort would disseminate a new public image for Crédit Lyonnais that resonated more closely with the sensibilities of younger generations.128 Bernard Normand, another executive at the bank’s Paris headquarters, predicted that “the 1980s will be marked by the sports wave” as more and more French men and women turned to sport to fill their growing leisure time.129 Normand explained that patronage of the arts, Crédit Lyonnais’s traditional mode of sponsorship, reinforced the bank’s image of prestige. Sport, by contrast, symbolized “dynamism, movement, action in all its forms,” as well as “health,” “virtue,” and “ethics.” Normand pointed out that “the enterprise that sponsors certain sports benefits from all of these positive connotations” and concluded that sports sponsorship would generate for Crédit Lyonnais a “younger, more dynamic, more vigorous” corporate image in the public eye.130 Crédit Lyonnais chose to pursue cycling sponsorship because of its promotional potential and out of the desire to undermine the successful sportsrelated sponsorship campaigns of its major competitor, the Banque Nationale de Paris (B.N.P.). The B.N.P. was one of the first large, service-sector firms in France to engage in sports-related publicity. In 1973, the B.N.P. became the exclusive sponsor of the French Open tennis championship at Roland Garros stadium in Paris. Crédit Lyonnais’s Lefèbvre characterized the B.N.P.’s sponsorship of the French Open as a “brilliant success.” Others also lauded the B.N.P.’s growing visibility in sports-related sponsorship. L’Équipe also praised B.N.P.’s sports sponsorship efforts and presented the bank with the newspaper’s annual “Most Sporting Enterprise” award in 1980. As Luc Derieux, a young Crédit Lyonnais executive who participated in his bank’s first negotiations with the Tour de France, pointed out, “The B.N.P. had its sporting event [the French Open]. . . . Crédit Lyonnais needed one to call her own.”131

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A flare-up in the Jacques Goddet-Félix Lévitan rivalry in 1980 opened the door for Crédit Lyonnais to embark on an ambitious, long-term advertising campaign centered on the Tour de France. That year, the Amaury Group named Lévitan the director of the Société du Tour de France (STF), the Tour’s new organizing body. Although he and Goddet remained codirectors of the race, Lévitan expanded his administrative control over the event and reorganized the Tour’s finances, sponsorship practices, and management structure.132 Gradually, Lévitan sought out new firms to replace many of the Tour’s long-term sponsors, most of which had been recruited by Goddet. In the mid-1950s, Goddet had recruited the B.N.P., the bank that held his personal accounts, to be the Tour’s “official bank.” Crédit Lyonnais executives characterized Goddet as a “fervent supporter” of the B.N.P.’s partnership with the Tour. Lévitan was a longtime Crédit Lyonnais customer.133 In all likelihood, Lévitan solicited Crédit Lyonnais’s sponsorship to replace the Goddetrecruited B.N.P. Nevertheless, Lévitan’s motivations meshed well with Crédit Lyonnais’s desire to undermine the B.N.P.’s publicity strategies. In early 1981, Lévitan and Crédit Lyonnais’s advertising gurus created an entirely new, season-long competition, the Crédit Lyonnais Gold Challenge (Les challenges d’or du Crédit Lyonnais). The competition became an integral component of the Amaury Group’s most prestigious races. Riders won Gold Challenge prize money in each of the eight sanctioned races, including the Tour de France, and earned points toward the season’s overall Gold Challenge championship according to how they finished in those events.134 Crédit Lyonnais agreed to sponsor the competition for three years at an initial base cost of 600,000 francs per year.135 Through the Gold Challenge, Crédit Lyonnais basked in the publicity that professional cycling’s star power and massive media coverage generated. The contract stipulated that the STF organize a televised press conference at the beginning of the 1981 season that included special appearances by French cycling hero Bernard Hinault and Joop Zoetemelk, the winner of the 1980 Tour de France. L’Équipe and Le Parisien libéré agreed to print stories on the Gold Challenge and numerous photographs of the winners throughout the cycling season. The Tour’s organizers used their connections in the French sports and entertainment industries to gain Crédit Lyonnais special advertising privileges, including special access to billboard advertising in the Palais Omnisports de Bercy, a new sports arena that was being built by the City of Paris and would be managed by Jacques Goddet.136 After the 1981 cycling season, Crédit Lyonnais executives concluded that the bank’s cycling sponsorship succeeded on every level, even though Goddet and Lévitan muted Gold Challenge publicity during the Tour de France

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to honor the race’s contract with the B.N.P. Popular French rider Bernard Hinault won his third Tour de France yellow jersey in 1981 and later claimed the overall Gold Challenge championship. A postseason evaluation by executives at bank headquarters pointed out that a significant number of Crédit Lyonnais’s local and regional branches experienced promising increases in business during the races. Perhaps more importantly, Crédit Lyonnais’s first foray into large-scale sports sponsorship left many of its competitors in the banking industry “concerned” about the success of the Gold Challenge. The massive television coverage of the Gold Challenge races provided exceptional visibility on the national airwaves. Bernard Normand concluded emphatically that Crédit Lyonnais’s sponsorship of cycling competitions afforded “excellent [publicity] quality for the price!”137 The bank fulfilled its contract and renewed its sponsorship of the Gold Challenge competition for another three years in 1984. The evolution of Tour sponsorship after the Second World War illustrates how the commercial relationship among mass media, business interests, and professional sports changed in the television age. Prior to the 1960 Tour, at the dawn of the Tour’s television era, Félix Lévitan summed up the race’s incredible popularity by invoking an oft-repeated catchphrase, “When the Tour passes, all of France is on its doorstep.”138 The Tour’s spectacle took place on country roads and in town squares, and the race’s commercial power rested on the face-to-face marketing opportunities the event afforded its sponsors. Television changed the way that businesses connected with consumers through the Tour. By the 1970s, many more French men and women followed the Tour on their televisions, in the privacy of their living rooms, rather than from their stoops. Through commercial spectacles like the Tour, business interests penetrated into the private sphere, as television transmitted more and more product publicity and corporate images into the living rooms of French men and women. It has been argued that television’s importance to the Tour and its sponsors altered the Tour’s sporting characteristics. Jacques Calvet, writing in 1981, asserted that the Tour organizers’ desire to ensure the race— and its sponsors— maximum visibility on the airwaves dictated that stages be scheduled in ways that would guarantee the largest possible television viewing audience. Calvet ascribed a commercial logic to the increasing scientific exactness with which Tour itineraries and racing schedules were designed: in the 1970s, most stage finishes occurred as close to five o’clock in the afternoon as possible. He argued that such plans accommodated, on one hand, the desire of sponsors to reach large television audiences and, on the other hand, broadcasters’ wish to transmit several hours of race coverage without disturbing

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their normal evening programming. Furthermore, Calvet argued, marketing considerations of the television age altered team strategies and the Tour’s racing rhythm. Since Tour coverage was only broadcast live during the last hour or two of each day’s racing, teams often conserved their energy and refused to race at high speeds until the last thirty kilometers of each stage. Only at that point, with live cameras rolling, did the battles begin: cyclists sprinted to the front of the peloton, launched dramatic breakaway attacks, and jostled one another for a place close to the camera-equipped motorcycles.139 It is difficult to substantiate Calvet’s observations, since Tour organizers and cyclists did not admit publicly that such considerations motivated their actions. Nevertheless, television undoubtedly influenced the Tour’s shape as a sporting event in subtle but important ways. No polls exist that specifically analyze the French public’s opinions of the Tour’s publicity-laden spectacle. It is safe to say that the event remained a lightning rod for criticism of profit-driven commercial culture. In a 1967 opinion piece, critic Pierre Debray claimed that although Jacques Goddet resurrected the corporate team formula of the Tour to save professional cycling, he was, in fact, destroying the sport by allowing business interests to undermine athletic “morality.” He derided five-time Tour champion Jacques Anquetil as a “champion of alcoholism” because of the cyclist’s sponsorship by Saint-Raphaël, a French aperitif maker. Debray predicted that the Tour, which he characterized as one of the last vestiges of traditional French culture, would disappear by 1980, the year that sociologists foresaw the completion of France’s transformation into a fully modern, industrial society.140 Yet in another sense, the growing visibility of sponsors in popular spectacles like the Tour de France during television’s infancy probably helped to acculturate the French, traditionally wary of mass advertising, to the omnipresence of publicity in the public sphere.141 Surveys that charted attitudes toward advertising indicate that the French gradually accepted mass publicity as an integral and useful component of popular culture. In a 1959 poll, 37 percent of respondents agreed with the statement that publicity had become “overabundant.” In a 1969 survey, however, in which pollsters asked respondents to rate advertising’s “usefulness” on a scale from one to ten, 56 percent of the pool accorded publicity a number higher than five, and 25 percent rated its utility as five.142 The growing public acceptance of advertising probably helped to erase hostility toward mass promotion in the business community as well, and spurred firms like Crédit Lyonnais to embark on new marketing campaigns that featured sports sponsorship.143 By the late 1970s, many large enterprises embraced a three-pronged marketing strategy in which sports sponsorship

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occupied a place equal to that of traditional media advertising and patronage of the arts. Companies like Crédit Lyonnais viewed sport itself as a “specific medium” akin to radio, television, and the press because of sport’s ability to act as a distinct “mode of communication” between businesses and the public.144

* The forces that resisted the penetration of commercialism into popular culture after the Second World War— the conservative state determined to maintain a monopoly on the broadcast media, a public and cultural elite wary of mass publicity, and tradition-bound businessmen who rejected modern advertising methods— also helped to establish the cultural infrastructure in which publicity culture and for-profit spectacles like the Tour de France flourished. In the context of France’s postwar economic boom, the commercial raison d’être of the Tour de France broadened significantly. The race developed into a television spectacle that most French people followed live, in real-time, and in their living rooms rather than in the newspapers. It evolved beyond its original purpose as a circulation prop and emerged as the cornerstone of a media and sports empire that controlled a significant portion of the sponsorship money private corporations devoted to sport in France. In the process, the Tour helped commercial interests shape the character of radio and television, the most dominant forms of postwar media. The mutually beneficial relationships that emerged among the French press and broadcast media, businesses, and professional sport had unforeseen consequences. The commercialization of public culture dissolved some of the barriers between the public and private spheres. As enterprises shaped public spectacles like the Tour in new ways, corporate publicity entered into and took an ever more prominent place in the private realm of personal and family leisure.

4

The French School of Cycling

Louison Bobet won three consecutive Tours in the 1950s (1953 – 55), a record believed at the time to be unassailable. Bobet explained his rise to cycling’s elite ranks in his 1951 autobiography, Me and My Bikes, written before his Tour victories. Born a baker’s son in a small Breton village, young Louison trained to be a mechanic because he didn’t like “studying math or dead languages.”1 Bobet scraped by as a small-town grocer after the Second World War and trained by making milk deliveries on his bicycle. Humble passion, hard work, grit, and determination helped Bobet to win and become a fulltime professional racer by 1948. Bobet’s brother, Jean, placed the three-time Tour champion’s successes into a larger context. In his 1958 “velobiography” of Louison, Jean Bobet explained that the French organized nearly 10,000 bicycle races and awarded approximately 450 million francs in prize money in 1957 alone.2 Businesses underwrote France’s vast network of races, sponsorships, and prize money for publicity but in the process helped to cultivate talented cyclists like Louison Bobet for the professional ranks and for possible selection to compete in the Tour de France. In the race’s first decades, the Tour de France became the keystone competition upon which the French road racing culture and business rested. Throughout the twentieth century, the Tour remained the brightest star around which global cycling’s evolving constellation of competitions orbited. Famous cyclists, many of whom were cultivated in the same manner as Louison Bobet, played a crucial role in maintaining the enduring popularity and commercial stability of the Tour in France and abroad. From its early days, the Tour welcomed riders from across the globe to compete. The peloton’s diverse demography endowed the event with an international flavor that was unique in the world of road cycling. The event’s re-

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semblance to the Olympics, including the national team competition format implemented between 1930 and 1961, made the Tour the model upon which other major international road races fashioned themselves. Perhaps more important to the development of global road cycling’s “Frenchness,” however, was the preeminence of the French School of cycling, with the Tour at its heart. Cycling’s French School was not a formal university with a campus. Rather, the “French School” is a term that denotes the institutionalized rider development system and competitive racing circuit elaborated by French cycling in the early decades of the twentieth century. The French School trained and developed France’s lionized Tour champions and served as a training ground for many of the world’s greatest professional racers who, for lack of adequate opportunities in their home nations, raced in France to seek fame and fortune. The French School maintained its preeminence for much of the twentieth century, and thus, it played a pivotal role in determining the shape and character of world cycling. It conferred to the sport particularly French ideals of athleticism, excellence, sacrifice, and suffering and provided the commercial model that the rest of the cycling world emulated. The French School provided expanding, global networks of cycling fans and consumers the common language, competitive frameworks, and celebrity heroes that became common recognizable frames of reference. In this way, French cycling’s global influence resembled the way that French cinema contributed a particularly French character to global film culture and French dominance of haute cuisine and chef training bestowed the world of fine food with Frenchinspired skills, tastes, and sensibilities.3 1. The French School of Cycling after the Great War After the First World War, French cycling flourished, despite the business challenges faced by the Tour de France. Bicycling’s rise occurred as associative life was blossoming in the Third Republic. Innumerable cycling clubs had been established across France since the 1890s. The ubiquity of road races in France, which had become a “fixture” of weekend leisure culture by the belle epoque, as well as the enduring popularity of the Tour de France, continually reinforced cycling’s popularity and provided fertile competitive training grounds for professional riders. As velodrome racing declined in France after the turn of the century, businesses involved in cycling shifted their sponsorship to road racing.4 The blossoming of cycling’s French School of organized and graduated clubs, races, competitions, and sponsorship money enhanced French cycling’s resilience at a time when professional road racing

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declined outside Western and Southern Europe. After the Second World War, the French School trained the world’s cyclists, and its signature spectacle, the Tour de France, popularized road racing around the planet. Professional cyclists were important cultural icons in interwar France. The mass press blanketed the nation with uncountable stories about and images of Tour heroes. Pierre Chany, who grew up in Auvergne and became a professional cyclist during the Second World War and later a Tour journalist, described the relish with which he and other young people devoured stories of cycling heroes: The daily newspapers constantly recounted to us the exploits of the racers. When at home or away, I read L’Auto, Paris-Soir, and Match, which published tons of brown-tinted pictures. I also read the biographical pamphlets (opuscules) that were published regularly about this or that champion. In fact, I read everything! At sixteen years old, there wasn’t much about the Tour de France that escaped my eye.5

Chany recalled how he and other children idolized the race’s heroes: “All the little kids fantasized about becoming a champion. Me, I dreamed about it so much that I began to enter races.”6 Antoine Blondin, who became a novelist and a journalist at L’Équipe after the Second World War, recalled responding to a professional questionnaire in grade school: Given the famous “Marcel Proust Questionnaire,” in which I was asked “What is your favorite occupation?,” I responded: “To follow the Tour de France,” which mildly astonished the literary community of Landerneau [in Brittany, where he grew up]. In their respective eras, Proust had responded “To love,” and, a little later, François Mauriac, “To dream.”7

Blondin entered a scholastic writing competition in which the winners were invited to ride in an official Tour car during a stage of the race, but the judges failed to select his essay. The stars of cycling were particularly tangible icons, not merely characters to be read about in the papers. Formal and informal networks of cyclist promotion encouraged more and more young men from the provinces to compete. Because of the extensiveness of road cycling competitions, “a familiar, some might almost say characteristic, feature of French roads” since the belle epoque,8 young men had frequent, personal contact with their heroes. Some even received one-on-one encouragement from sports heroes. Competitors often participated in the social life of the towns they visited and could be found relaxing after cycling events in the local cafes. After the Circuit de l’Ouest, an eight-stage race through Brittany created in 1931, a local reporter from Brest concluded that the excessive socializing of the Breton

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cyclists after the stage finishes impaired their racing: “Just about every day I found a good number of our Breton ‘aces’ strolling the streets, chatting on the terrace of a café, even though the clock had struck eleven in the evening.”9 As a boy Louison Bobet met his idol, Jean Fontenay, a Breton cyclist who participated in two Tours in the 1930s. Fontenay came to Bobet’s hometown to compete in the Grand Prix de Saint-Méen, one of the hundreds of local races in Brittany. After the finish, the fourteen-year-old Bobet talked with Fontenay, who promised to buy the teenager a new seat for his bike. Later in the summer, Bobet ran into his idol while training on Brittany’s country lanes, and Fontenay lived up to his promise.10 Antonin Magne, who won the Tour twice in the 1930s, grew up in a dairy farming community outside Paris. His father worked on a farm down the road from one owned by the parents of the Pélissier brothers, made famous by Henri Pélissier’s Tour win in 1923 and the Tour’s “galley slaves of the road” scandal of 1924.11 Since nearly 2,200 men competed in the Tour between 1909 and 1929, many communities could boast that a former Tour rider lived in their midst. Clubs and corporate sponsors also created the structured organization of apprenticeship and promotion during the interwar years that allowed large numbers of aspiring young cyclists to sharpen their skills and to test their mettle. The Union Vélocipédique de France, the major umbrella organization for competitive French cycling clubs, grew enormously. Between 1909 and 1939, the Union Vélocipédique expanded from 80,000 to approximately 200,000 members.12 The culture of cycling clubs changed significantly during the interwar years, as the clubs evolved from being social enclaves for the bourgeoisie into training centers for aspiring cyclists of all classes. For example, the Véloce-Club de la Belle Epoque was founded in 1888 in Cholet as an “association of progress” meant to promote patriotism and popularize new technologies like the bicycle, automobile, and airplane. It changed its charter in 1921 to focus the club on competitive cycling and created two types of membership to separate the social and athletic functions of the club.13 Many clubs dropped overtly exclusionist, classist language from their charters and became “popular” in character. This trend among cycling clubs mirrored the broader transformation of associative sports in the interwar years, as more and more French men of various social classes and profiles began to participate in sports clubs.14 During the interwar years, industrial concerns and professional racing teams became more directly involved in the cycling clubs and sponsoring amateur racing. The biographies of professional cyclists who grew up at this time make it clear that cycling clubs had become training centers for aspiring cyclists. The trainers and administrators of the clubs were often former

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professional cyclists and acted as intermediaries between young racers and professional teams. A formal, national network of amateur and semiprofessional races throughout the country supplied the proving grounds for young cyclists. The most important of these was the Premier Pas Dunlop, the junior championship of France, which was sponsored by the tire manufacturer Dunlop. The competition consisted of scores of races, first on the town level, with the winners moving on to regional and national championships. A victory in the Premier Pas or similar competitions often led to lucrative professional contracts. The clubs and racing circuits fed the ranks of the professionals with an ever-growing number of competitors. Marcel Bidot, son of a café owner, grew up in Troyes and realized the dream of many aspiring cyclists. In 1920, the eighteen-year-old Bidot, with the help of his father, found a clerical position at Crédit Lyonnais Bank. He soon quit the job, however, and became a bailiff ’s assistant to have more free time to train and race. In 1922, he joined the Véloce-Club de Levallois. While with the club, Bidot won the Paris– Rouen race after a long solo escape from the peloton. Club officers introduced Bidot to Ludovic Feuillet, manager of the Alcyon racing team. Bidot signed a contract with the team and was paid a monthly salary of 500 francs. Bidot’s first year as a professional was a great success: “In 1923, cycling won me 23,000 francs. I would have had to work at Crédit Lyonnais, where I was paid 200 francs per month, for ten years to accumulate such a sum.”15 Following the 1928 Tour, in which he won 5,500 francs, Bidot had saved enough money from his cycling winnings to buy a house in the countryside near Troyes. Although he never won the Tour, Bidot’s strong showings brought him lucrative racing and sponsorship contracts. André Leducq, eventual winner of the 1930 and 1932 Tours, worked his way up through the hierarchy of prestigious clubs and was also discovered by Ludovic Feuillet. Leducq began his amateur career with Montmartre-Sportif, a Paris club on the rue Poissonnière. The club’s founder, Charles Ravaud, was a journalist at L’Auto and helped Leducq gain membership in the VéloceClub de Levallois after the twenty-two-year-old rider won the French amateur championship. Feuillet employed the widespread practice of “sham amateurism” (amateurisme marron) and secretly offered money and equipment to the club’s top amateurs to ensure that they signed contracts with his Alcyon team. Leducq recalled that in mid-1925 Feuillet invited him and the two other top riders of the club to his office on the avenue de la Grande-Armée and signed each to contracts of 1,300 francs per month.16 The riders remained amateurs for the rest of the year and officially turned professional on January 1, 1926. The biographies of Brittany’s cycling stars attest that the system of promotion worked in roughly the same manner in the provinces, although it must

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be said that this region produced an unusually large number of competitive professional cyclists. The Circuit de l’Ouest, raced in Brittany and sponsored by the Rennes newspaper L’Ouest-Éclair, offered young Breton cyclists a highly visible proving ground and was a pipeline to selection for the Tour de France and to more lucrative professional contracts. Pierre Cloarec, JeanMarie Goasmat, Jean Fontenay, Lucien Le Guével, and Eloi Tassin translated high finishes in the Circuit de l’Ouest into invitations to compete in the Tour de France.17 The Premier Pas Dunlop competitions also helped Breton cyclists gain recognition. In 1938, future Tour winner Louison Bobet’s father bought him his first bicycle. Thirteen-year-old Louison lied about his age, claimed he was eighteen to enter the local Premier Pas Dunlop challenge in SaintMéen, placed seventeenth in the race, and gained a taste for competition that inspired him to become a professional cyclist.18 Bobet joined the Cyclo-Club Rennais in 1941 and was provided with a racing machine and a small contract with a regional professional team sponsored by Stella, a Nantes bicycle manufacturer. The Premier Pas Dunlop also launched the professional career of Jean Robic, the 1947 Tour champion. Robic won the regional competition in 1939, which allowed him to move to Paris to compete in lucrative velodrome races in the capital.19 The Tour de France stood at the pinnacle of the French School’s system of competitions. Young men became professional cyclists and dreamed of participating in the Tour de France for glory, profit, and social promotion. The Tour was cycling’s richest event. The lure of the Tour’s prize money enticed many riders, and a good showing at the Tour led to lucrative contracts to compete in other races. For example, André Leducq won a 30,000-franc prize for winning the yellow jersey in 1932, but after his victory he signed dozens of racing contracts, including a contract for 17,500 francs to compete in a velodrome race in Algiers and 25,000 francs to enter the Six Jours de Paris endurance track race.20 The number of individuals who earned their living as professional cyclists was minuscule, despite France’s expansive system of clubs and races. At most, several score were employed full-time per year. Those who were not the top riders on their teams struggled financially: cyclists who signed contracts with Peugeot, one of the top teams, in the early 1920s rarely made more than 200 or 300 francs per month.21 Even successful professional riders such as Antonin Magne endured periods of under- or unemployment. The son of a farmer from the Aurillac region, Magne entered races secretly during the mid-1920s to hide his cycling from his disapproving father. He raced well and, after a strong showing in the Circuit de Champagne race in 1928, won a contract for the 1929 season from bicycle manufacturer Alleluia.

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In the off-season, he performed odd jobs around his father’s farm to make ends meet. Desgrange named Magne to the Tour’s French national team in 1930. Although he finished third in that Tour, Magne could not find adequate sponsorship for the 1931 season because no professional team would hire him as its featured rider. Magne instead raced for Marcel Massoon, who owned a single bicycle shop near the train station in Gargan, a Paris suburb, and promised to provide Magne with racing machines and material, if not a salary, for the season.22 Despite his handicap vis-à-vis the better-compensated professionals, Magne was named to the 1931 Tour’s French national team and won the first of his two yellow jerseys. 2. Tour Heroes as Celebrities and Commodities between the Wars Fame itself had become a commodity with immense commercial value. Celebrity made star cyclists wealthy. In the hands of the newspapers, who lionized Tour champions and transformed them into popular heroes, and of the industrial sponsors, who used cycling champions to sell their products, sports celebrity itself was an object of consumption for the French public. Stories of the exploits of French Tour champions spurred sales of L’Auto and other newspapers, and the endorsements of these stars helped to sell entire lines of products, from bicycles that bore their names to other products completely unrelated to cycling. The commercial value of cyclists’ fame opened new paths to enrichment for Tour stars like the Pélissiers, Antonin Magne, Georges Speicher, and André Leducq. Two developments undoubtedly increased the star appeal and marketing power of the riders. First, French cyclists once again dominated the Tour in the 1930s after a long period of relative weakness vis-à-vis riders of other nationalities. Between 1911 and 1930, only one Frenchman, Henri Pélissier, won the Tour (1923). Following Desgrange’s creation of the national team formula in 1930, French riders won in 1930, 1931, 1932, 1933, 1934, and 1937, and the national team won four times between 1930 and 1937. Second, more and more businesses recognized what the newspapers had come to understand. In terms of marketing, the names, faces, and words of celebrities— athletic and otherwise— possessed considerable power; French men and women coveted and purchased the images of their favorite stars in the same way that they bought tangible products. Businesses sought to link the images of famous cyclists to their products to increase sales, even if the goods and services they offered had little relation at all to cycling or to sport. Bicycle manufacturers recognized this trend in public tastes and translated the fame of interwar Tour stars directly into marketing power. The tone

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and approach of bicycle marketing changed markedly since the first days of the Tour. Early in the event’s history, manufacturers like Peugeot and Alcyon hired talented professional cyclists in the hope that they would win to “prove” the superiority of their products to consumers. Advertising frequently centered on the machines themselves, rather than the athletes. This earlier style of publicity continued in the interwar years. For example, in a full-page advertisement during the 1922 Tour, the Labor brand boasted that its bicycles had won that year’s Paris– Roubaix race but did not mention the name of the racer who rode the machine to victory.23 L’Auto and other dailies often proclaimed victory by “a Peugeot” or “an Alcyon,” and journalists frequently substituted the name of a bicycle for that of the rider that rode it. For example, in a Petit Parisien reporter’s summary of the 1927 Tour standings, the leading racer seemed to be of secondary importance to the bicycle he rode: “The grand brand [Alcyon] . . . still holds, with Frantz, first place in the overall standings, as well as first in the team standings, and continues to reap the laurels of this race that is so difficult for the bicycles.”24 A new style of promotion emerged in the interwar years that relied solely on the personal star appeal of the famous French Tour riders. In the 1930s, the Mercier brand led the way among the bicycle manufacturers. Company director Emile Mercier marketed entire lines of bicycles in the late 1930s named after the stars of the Tour— Francis Pélissier, Georges Speicher, Roger Lapébie, André Leducq, and Antonin Magne. He paid enormous sums to the riders for the right to use their names and images: in 1937, Francis Pélissier received 300,000 francs and André Leducq was paid 150,000 francs. Riders received a percentage of the sale of each bicycle frame as a royalty.25 The first-place prize of the 1937 Tour de France was 200,000 francs. Interestingly, many of these stars were retired or past their competitive primes by the time that Mercier bought the right to use their names for the bicycles. Francis Pélissier, for example, had not competed in the Tour since 1927, and Emile Mercier did not contact Antonin Magne about creating a line of machines until 1939, the year of the rider’s retirement.26 Clearly, Mercier did not expect to promote the brand by hiring these over-the-hill heroes to win races. The mere association of their famous names with the machines publicized and promoted the bicycles. After 1930, Desgrange created the publicity caravan and opened the door to widespread corporate sponsorship of the Tour. New and different types of businesses involved themselves in sponsoring the “national bicycle race” and other sporting events during the 1930s. They used the star power of Tour heroes to sell products that were often completely unrelated to cycling. L’Auto, in which Desgrange had promoted the Tour riders as moral role models and the event itself as a campaign against physical degeneration, began to change

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its approach. In the 1930s, riders touted cigarettes and alcohol in the pages of L’Auto. In a 1930 advertisement, for example, Charles Pélissier, “the most popular of the French riders,” claimed that Lucky Strike cigarettes have “always been the brand that I prefer” because “It’s Toasted.”* Later, Antonin Magne also promoted Lucky Strikes: “Of course, I don’t smoke when I’m racing, that would be extravagant . . . but once I cross the finish line, what a great feeling to be like everyone else, to be able to smoke Lucky Strikes.”27 Alcohol and wine producers also hired Tour racers to promote their spirits. In Le Petit Parisien, Magne promoted Frileuse Wine as a “sports fortifier” in an advertisement during the 1935 Tour: “I drink Frileuse Wine every day. Nothing’s better for loosening up the legs.”28 René Le Grèves, the French professional champion in 1936, touted the aperitif La Quintonine as an “excellent sports tonic” in the company’s campaign during the 1936 Tour.29 Thirty riders, including almost the entire French national team, endorsed Le Bonal wine during the 1933 Tour: “In the opinion of the Giants of the Road, Le Bonal is a great and soothing wine.”30 In other advertisements in the 1930s, Tour riders promoted such products as spring water, paint, and cheese. 3. The Star System and French Cycling after the Second World War The marketing power of cyclists’ celebrity increased and the commercial uses for athletic fame diversified after the Second World War. More and more businesses sponsored professional cycling teams in the hope of engaging the vast audiences that watched bicycle races. A team was incomplete, however, without a star cyclist to lead it. The reason for this overriding imperative was simple: the media photographed, interviewed, and lionized winners and stars, not also-rans. As five-time Tour champion Jacques Anquetil asserted, “Second-place finishers are forgotten.”31 A star played the role of front man and marketing agent for his sponsors, as well as the athletic role of champion and team leader. It was primarily through the team’s lead rider that sponsors gained access to the media, especially television, the postwar’s most dominant medium. A cyclist’s victories made him famous and often translated into brand recognition and profit for his team sponsors. For example, bicycle manufacturer Stella hired young talent Louison Bobet in 1946 and developed him into a three-time Tour winner in the early 1950s. Bobet’s successes and growing celebrity helped Stella to grow from a small manufacturer with a regional customer base into a nationally recognized brand of bicycles with a nationwide clientele.32 Famous cyclists were especially important to the * The slogan “It’s Toasted” was printed in English. L’Auto, July 2, 1930.

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extra-sportif firms which began to sponsor teams in the 1950s. A star cyclist’s fame was more valuable to extra-sportif firms than his victories, since such businesses had no connection to the sport other than sponsorship. Because of these factors, the biggest stars and their teams participated in intensive promotional campaigns, often to the detriment of their training. Twelve-time Tour participant Raphaël Geminiani retired and became the manager of penmaker Bic’s racing team. He recalled that publicity was more important than endurance conditioning during his team’s early-season workouts in southern France in the mid-1960s. One of Bic’s marketing executives, Christian Darras, attended most of the camp and treated the Bic team as “publicity billboards” rather than world-class athletes and insisted that the riders attend “interminable” publicity photo sessions. In Darras’s mind, Bic’s cyclists served as the company’s public ambassadors, and he implored the team to “Think Bic, Be Bic!”33 Raymond Poulidor’s manager, Antonin Magne, attributed his young rider’s infamous failures in the Tour to a lack of preparation due to the heavy “commercial obligations” placed upon Poulidor by team sponsors Mercier and British Petroleum in the 1960s.34 Because of the singular importance of the sport’s stars, professional bicycle racing developed a body of rules and strategies that was unique to the sports world. Prestigious races usually offered prizes for the top teams but primarily rewarded individual achievement and victory. Furthermore, although racers vied for a myriad of individual prizes and titles during important competitions, the media lionized riders who won the overall titles in the year’s biggest races. As such, the goal for each team at the start of a racing season was to devote all of its collective energies to ensuring the team leader’s victory in famous races, the most prestigious of which was the Tour de France. Top riders demanded large salaries, and the vast disparities in compensation between famous riders and their domestiques, or “servant” support riders, underscored the powerful position of stars in the French cycling world. According to Mercier-BP team manager Antonin Magne, sponsors typically offered a first-year professional rider a salary of 25,000 francs per month in 1959. Meanwhile, French stars such as Tour winners Louison Bobet and Jacques Anquetil earned salaries of up to 300,000 francs per month by 1957, which was nearly double the salary of a senior business manager and almost nine times the salary earned by an unskilled worker.35 Star cyclists also garnered appearance fees when they competed in some of the thousands of local races staged throughout the country. Despite these disparities, the professional and financial interest of all cyclists lay in perpetuating the star system. The victory of a star cyclist often led to more prize money for the whole team, including the domestiques, higher salaries from team owners who hoped to

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preserve a winning formula, or even more lucrative contract offers from a competing sponsor eager to hire away a successful champion or his best supporting riders. The Tour de France remained at the heart of the star system after the Second World War. The event was the stage upon which champions built their professional reputations. The race forged new champions or reaffirmed the domination of existing ones. It allowed the public to cheer for their favorite stars in person and as they watched on their television screens. Riders’ Tour victories made them famous, enhanced their popular appeal, and increased their market value. Yet many professional riders and their sponsors believed that the Tour’s pre-1962 national team formula undermined the French star system. The problem was that a dynamic similar to that of professional teams governed the national team’s racing strategy. Ever since the creation of the Tour’s national team format in 1930, the squad manager selected one or two cyclists to challenge for the Tour’s title and instituted a strict hierarchy whereby all the members worked to ensure the victory of the chosen riders. The other national team cyclists, each of whom was a champion and a star in his own right, subordinated their own chances for glory to those of the team leaders.36 In the minds of sponsors and many top riders, this formula diminished the commercial value of cycling’s stars— at least the ones that did not win the race. Team sponsors also incurred substantial opportunity costs when their riders competed in the national team Tours, since they lost the services of their stars for nearly a month at the height of cycling’s racing season. Goddet’s decision to resurrect the corporate team formula in 1961 allowed the Tour’s organizers, the media, and sponsors to exploit athletic celebrity even more effectively. After 1961, each French (and foreign) cycling star had his own team. France’s bicycling heroes competed against one another, as well as stars from other countries— riders from fourteen European countries participated in the Tours of the 1960s— which increased the sheer number of champions vying for the yellow jersey and piqued fan interest in the Tour.37 Each cycling star had the opportunity to imprint his “dramatic signature” on the Tour, since he alone— with the help of his dedicated, contract-bound domestiques— created his own victories and his own glory. The successes of the post-1961 formula underscored the commercial importance of the star system to Tour and the sport of cycling in general. 4. Peasant Stars of the Tour de France in the Postwar Era Even in the television age as overall circulation declined, French fans purchased L’Équipe and other daily newspapers to read in-depth analyses of

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results and expand their knowledge of their favorite sports and champions. Edouard Seidler, L’Équipe’s chief editor in the mid-1970s, pointed out that sales generated 80 percent of L’Équipe’s revenues, as compared to only 20 percent generated by advertising.38 Seidler asserted, “Whether they are from the world of politics, art, or sports, stars sell  .  .  . [and their stories] guarantee high sales for the sporting press.”39 Thus, creating and glorifying stars and profiting from their celebrity were commercial imperatives. As L’Équipe and other sports-related publications fashioned a role for themselves as providers of supplementary, in-depth, behind-the-scenes, biographical coverage of cycling’s stars, other media followed suit. The sport developed a complex public relations system that allowed famous champions to interact with their fans directly in television and the press and in the process increase their commercial value. Television created a more intimate relationship between famous riders and the French public, since the new medium allowed fans to see and hear their favorite riders and to witness their triumphs and defeats firsthand and in real time. Star cyclists— often with the help of personal managers and team coaches— participated more and more in the creation and dissemination of their public personas by choreographing encounters with journalists and by writing autobiographies in which they discussed their private lives and professional careers. Famous riders began to lead completely public lives, and their private worlds increasingly became the public’s domain. Because of their enormous visibility, celebrity bicycle racers emerged as contested symbols of change in France, for good or for ill. The public images of famous Tour stars were composed of distilled virtues, flaws, and contradictions inherent in the French as they endured the upheavals of the twentieth century. The dramas, triumphs, and tragedies that played out on the roads of the Tour, as well as in the personal lives of its stars, were allegories steeped in the dreams, conflicts, and fears that accompanied change and modernity in the French imagination. In the period before the Second World War, the Tour often served as a metaphorical arena for the class conflict endemic in the French Third Republic’s cultural and political fabric. The hyperbolic fame of the Tour’s greatest French stars, many of whom came from working-class backgrounds, challenged the bourgeois-dominated status quo that race founder Henri Desgrange intended the Tour to celebrate. Desgrange considered cycling to be an important tool for the moral instruction of the working class at a time when industrialization and urbanization encouraged moral degeneration and threatened to undermine traditional social authority. Desgrange called the cyclists “pedal workers” (ouvriers de la pédale) and often depicted bicycle

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racing as a form of industrial labor rather than as play or leisure. He characterized Tour participants as mechanical beings and drew analogies between cycling and the workplace. Cyclists also couched the Tour in the language of class conflict and workers’ struggle for rights in the workplace, as evidenced by the Pélissier brothers’ “galley slaves of the road” scandal in 1924. Public dialogues about cycling after the Second World War continued to revolve around the characterization of cycling as labor, especially as more and more doping scandals erupted and fed skepticism of the seemingly superhuman performances of top cyclists.40 After the Second World War, the media and riders, using newspapers, autobiographies, and television, created new character archetypes that became standard points of reference in the construction of cyclists’ public images. “Peasant” or “provincial” character traits became the building blocks of the images crafted by many postwar Tour champions, and almost every French Tour winner alluded frequently to his provincial roots. The media developed a lexicon that endowed famous cyclists with provincial personas. Nostalgia and the popular taste for “authenticity” may account for this shift. As France became a more urbanized society after the war, the French exhibited a nostalgic fascination with the disappearing provincial lifestyle.41 In part, this trend resulted from the rapid growth of mass tourism after the war. Growing numbers of French men and women sought refuge from city life by taking rural vacations and purchasing provincial vacation and retirement homes. The peasant became a powerful cultural icon that connected the French to an idealized vision of their heritage and to a romanticized value system that was threatened by modernization.42 The peasant icon also served commercial purposes: increasingly, businesses capitalized on the popular idealization of peasant life by creating products, marketing campaigns, and vacation packages based on peasant or provincial stereotypes and themes.43 More and more, the French craved authentic experiences and sensations, whether that meant booking Club Méd vacations to exotic yet fabricated locales or cheering for heroes like Raymond Poulidor who, in the public imagination, embodied traditional, rural worldviews and lifestyles.44 Tour de France winners often pioneered new methods of image making in the sports world. Italians Fausto Coppi and Gino Bartali dominated the early postwar Tours. The two rivals competed ferociously with one another in races throughout Europe. The Italian champions introduced to French cycling a new public relations tool, the champion’s autobiography. In 1949, the elder Italian, Bartali, published his memoirs in France, and Coppi followed his example a year later.45 Their autobiographies appeared at the heights of their racing careers: Bartali won his second Tour title in 1948, ten years after his

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first win, while Coppi won the race in 1949 and 1952. Many French racing stars followed the Italians’ example and the champion’s autobiography became a staple tool for famous cyclists to establish or refine their public images. Coppi rose to prominence during the Second World War and was the prototype celebrity for France’s postwar cycling stars. The Italian was one of the first foreign athletes to be embraced as a star in postwar France.46 In 1940, Coppi won the Tour of Italy. Two years later he set the one-hour world speed record, a mark that stood unbeaten for fourteen years. By 1950, the year that he wrote his autobiography, Coppi’s victories and fame had made him, in his own words, the “greatest cycling champion of all time.” In his autobiography, however, the Italian champion hoped to unveil to his fans “another Fausto Coppi, one who has suffered, who used to be cold and hungry, who was without hope.”47 In hyperbole-laden, melodramatic style, Coppi described his childhood in poverty-stricken, rural Italy, his rags-to-riches tale of athletic success, and his idyllic family life. Coppi was born in Castellania, a rural village in Italy’s Piedmont region, in 1919. His father, a “true Piedmont native, as poor as Job, as courageous as Julius Caesar,” was an agricultural laborer.48 As a young boy, Coppi rode his bike every day to the nearby village of NoviLigure to work as an apprentice in a butcher shop. The Italian teenager’s love of bicycling drew him to enter races. Coppi insisted that he had not been seduced by wealth and fame and remained a humble, moral man who was deeply attached to his Piedmont village and who used his wealth to care for his loved ones. He described his courtship and marriage to Bruna Coppi, “a country girl from my province who was more frightened than attracted by my fame,” as “the most beautiful story in the world.”49 The 1951 autobiography of Louison Bobet, who dominated French cycling for much of the 1950s, conformed in many ways to the formula established by Coppi. Bobet was born in 1925 in Saint-Méen, a small village of 2,600 inhabitants near Rennes. Bobet’s father was a baker, but young Louison dreamed of racing bikes. A chance meeting with his idol, Breton cyclist Jean Fontenay, in 1938 after a small race in Saint-Méen, inspired Bobet to pursue a career as a cyclist. By the time he wrote his autobiography, Bobet was arguably the best rider in France: he was a two-time French national champion, had won or placed highly in most of the important national and international competitions, had captured several stages of the Tour de France, and had been named “Sportsman Number One” for 1951 by But et Club magazine.50 Despite his growing fame and wealth and his well-known love of fast cars and airplanes, Bobet insisted that he remained a Breton and a small-town provincial at heart. He described his hometown as “the most beautiful village in the world: it’s the one where I feel like I’m home, where I was born, where I know everybody.”51

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After Bartali, Coppi, and Bobet, almost every French Tour champion of the postwar era wrote an autobiography. Many of the autobiographies were highly formulaic and offered the public detailed but often facile portraits of a racer’s childhood, education, home life, and athletic triumphs. Star cyclists began their autobiographies by detailing their humble upbringings (often in poor peasant families in the provinces) and discussing their formal schooling (many obtained certificats d’aptitude professionnelle, or licenses to practice a manual trade). The major dramatic turning point of each cyclist’s personal narrative occurred at the moment when he decided to eschew his family’s expectations, throw caution to the wind, and pursue a career in professional cycling. Each star analyzed his great triumphs, described his personal background, discussed his attitudes toward professionalism, and paradoxically, offered reflections on the difficulty of maintaining his privacy amid celebrity. The growing importance of personal managers as business and public relations agents for top riders in the 1950s and 1960s may account for the similarities among the autobiographies of the postwar Tour stars. Before the Second World War, few road racers employed personal managers, but more and more of them began to hire agents in the late 1940s.52 For 10 percent of their clients’ winnings,53 personal managers negotiated terms of employment with team sponsors and lucrative appearance fee contracts for one-day competitions, acted as liaisons between race organizers and cyclists, and generally directed the careers of their clients by dispensing informed advice about business deals, contracts, and public relations. In the late 1940s, one personal manager, Frenchman Daniel Dousset, had a near monopoly on the Tour stars of the 1950s and 1960s: He managed Tour winners Fausto Coppi (1949 and 1952), Louison Bobet (1953 – 1955), and Jacques Anquetil (1957, 1961– 1964), as well as André Darrigade, winner of twenty-two Tour stages between 1953 and 1966. Dousset’s only major competitor in France was Roger Piel, who managed the careers of Henri Anglade, a ten-time Tour participant, and Raymond Poulidor, the Tour’s “eternal second.” Journalists also participated directly and indirectly in molding the public personas of top Tour stars. Postwar journalists built on the methods of hagiography pioneered by the prewar press and fashioned cycling’s new stars into a living pantheon of stylized, idealized athletic heroes. In the decade after 1947, the press also seized on the trend toward “provincializing” cycling’s stars. Frenchman Jean Robic, who grew up in Rennes, won the first postwar Tour, and journalists fashioned the champion into the postwar era’s first heroic caricature by drawing on the rider’s Breton roots. Jacques Goddet praised the Tour winner as “stubborn” (têtu) and “aggressive” (hargneux), which were perceived to be stereotypical character traits of France’s rural

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Breton population.54 Robic became the archetype of caustic individualism, Breton rebelliousness, and gritty combativeness. In the forward to Robic’s autobiography, journalist Hervé le Boterf concluded, “There is not a cycling champion of the postwar that better symbolized his province than Jean Robic. . . . [He was] more Breton than the most Breton of all the Bretons.”55 Robic’s 1980 obituary in Vélo Magazine, a subsidiary publication of L’Équipe, even praised the rider’s refusal to abide by the Tour’s regulations and his utter lack of respect for the race’s organizers. The piece recalled with fondness how Robic “was constantly fighting with [race] referees and organizers” and included a lengthy account of his most infamous episode of cheating. During the 1953 Tour, the diminutive Robic stopped at the peak of the col du Tourmalet, the highest of all Tour mountains, and loaded his bicycle with two lead-filled water bottles to increase his weight. Robic claimed with pride that he “gained more than a minute during the descent” thanks to the ruse. Tour judges discovered his cheating when Robic discarded one of his leadfilled bottles at the bottom of the mountain and crushed the toe of a bystander.56 Gradually, the media developed nomenclature that endowed famous cyclists— both French and foreign— with “provincial” personas. In a 1957 essay, Roland Barthes observed that, in the popular imagination, Tour stars’ names had become synonymous with their provincial or ethnic monikers: Jean Robic became “The Celt,” André Derrigade “The Gascon,” and Spanish rider Bernardo Ruiz “The Iberian.”57 Many Tour stars also hired sports journalists as “ghostwriters” when they compiled their autobiographies. French cyclists Jean Robic, Jacques Anquetil, Raymond Poulidor, Cyrille Guimard, and Bernard Hinault employed acknowledged journalist ghostwriters. Other French cyclists who wrote autobiographies probably employed unacknowledged ghostwriters. The important role of journalists in recounting the life stories of famous Tour stars also helps to account for the highly formulaic nature of their autobiographies. Television began to play an important role in image making, as well. Television coverage of Raymond Poulidor, who became a professional racer in 1959, illustrates how television magnified a cyclist’s popularity and how star cyclists used the medium to shape their own public images. Poulidor became one of the most popular French cycling stars of the postwar era, even though he never won the Tour. The Limousin native competed in fourteen Tours between 1962 and 1976. Poulidor remained a contender for the yellow jersey throughout his career and finished in the top three eight times. So famous and popular was Poulidor, whose adoring fans referred to him as “Poupou,” that the term poupoularité— a play on the word “popularity”— entered French slang in the mid-1960s.58 Poulidor’s fame was based on his “peasant” image

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and “everyman” character, which journalists helped to create and to which the media constantly referred.59 In a television piece after he won the 1961 Milan–San Remo race— in only his second year as a professional— French reporters visited Poulidor at his family’s home in rural Limousin. The first images depicted Poulidor in the kitchen with his mother, who appeared uncomfortable in front of the camera. The piece stressed Poulidor’s continued connection to the earth and to farming, and several video clips of the racer working in the fields followed the kitchen shots. The narrator commented, “After visiting with his family, Raymond immediately goes out to the fields to make sure that the strawberries are growing well after spring’s early arrival.”60 In a television interview prior to a stage of the 1962 Tour, the first question posed to Poulidor—“You understand perfectly the techniques and methods of sheep breeding, right?”— concerned farming rather than racing.61 Television allowed cycling fans to see and hear Poulidor’s provincial mannerisms, which served to intensify his “peasant” identity and popular appeal. French television polled roadside spectators informally during the 1972 Tour and asked them to comment on why French fans identified so strongly with Poulidor. An elderly woman replied, “He’s a provincial. . . . He [speaks with] the Midi accent.”62 Poulidor’s first two autobiographies, written in 1968 and 1972 with the assistance of ghostwriters Georges Durand and Pierre Joly, and the biography written about him by his team’s coach, two-time Tour winner Antonin Magne, served to reinforce the famous rider’s provincial image. Poulidor dedicated nearly a quarter of his first autobiography to his childhood. He was born in 1936 in the Creuse département in the Limousin region of central France. In their foreword to the book, his ghostwriters described Poulidor as a “perfect model of the Limousin native.”63 Poulidor was the fourth son born to his parents, who were poor agricultural tenant farmers and had never ventured outside their region: “The first thing to note is our faithfulness to the Limousin region. My family’s entire existence took place . . . within a [geographic] square that was forty kilometers to a side.”64 The details of Poulidor’s childhood conformed perfectly to the romanticized, nostalgic caricature of peasant life. “I was fourteen years old, I had never yet been to the movies. I had never taken the train. I had never visited a single city, not even Limoges.” His only entertainment was the family’s daily veillée, or evening gathering for conversation, storytelling, and game playing. The Poulidor family slaughtered and roasted a pig every Christmas Eve, and each year young Raymond received one Christmas present— a pastry.65 Poulidor left school at fourteen to work full-time on his family’s farm. His military service— three

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years spent in Algeria (1956 to 1959)— whetted his appetite to explore France. Poulidor left his village to see the world as a professional cyclist.66 Antonin Magne, who signed Poulidor to the Mercier-BP team in 1959 for 25,000 francs per month, recalled that the Limousin rider even smelled like a provincial: “[When he entered the room he] brought with him  .  .  . the aroma of the countryside.”67 Poulidor stressed that his ties to his family and farming in rural Limousin continued even as his fame and wealth blossomed: “My parents and my brothers are proud of me. But at my house, nothing has changed. My father is still the boss. [When I come home] I take up my workstation. I help out where and when I must. I work there the entire winter.”68 Poulidor’s cycling style and his history in the Tour de France exemplified the personal and athletic traits the French School valued and instilled in its students. Above all, the French understood the Tour as a showcase for noble human attributes as much as a competition meant to separate winners from losers. Christopher Thompson argues that France’s cycling heroes embodied cherished qualities of French masculinity that seemed threatened in modern times, especially unbreakable human resilience, endurance, willingness to sacrifice oneself for the greater good, and the ability of men to overcome superhuman challenges like the Tour. For the French, then, hero riders provided an antidote to the miseries of modern war and the decline of French greatness in the twentieth century.69 The French public lionized racers who demonstrated such character in competition, whether they won or lost. Poulidor’s bad luck, crashes, and unfortunate mishaps combined with his aggressive, attacking riding style and unbreakable determination to finish races in dramatic fashion made him an ideal French School hero cyclist. The Limousin rider’s breakout moments came early in his career and propelled him rapidly to fame. Poulidor entered his first Tour in 1962 with his arm in a cast because of a broken wrist suffered in a crash earlier in the season. The rookie rider persevered even though he could not grip his handlebars properly and despite dizzying pain caused by the injury. After doctors removed the cast in the middle of the Tour, Poulidor attacked, won the mountainous nineteenth stage at Aix-les-Bains by more than two minutes, and finished third overall. In later Tours, Poulidor crashed, suffered mechanical failures, was hit by a motorcycle, and broke his nose, yet managed to finish the Tour on the podium eight times, although never as the overall winner. Poulidor also played the consummate, self-sacrificing teammate when necessary. In the 1967 Tour, which he entered as a favorite, Poulidor gracefully gave up his chance to win and worked as a domestique for his teammate, Roger Pingeon, when it became clear that Pingeon’s chances

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of victory were far greater than his own. Aficionados of cycling and the general public reveled in Poulidor’s dramatic demonstrations of athletic panache, self-sacrifice, and endurance of suffering. 5. Poulidor versus Anquetil: Rural Traditionalism versus Cosmopolitan Modernity After 1961, when the event’s organizers reintroduced the corporate team formula, a new generation of protagonists supplied the Tour’s drama. The major battles of the Tours of the early 1960s were fought between two French stars, Raymond Poulidor and Jacques Anquetil. Anquetil was the antithesis of Poulidor. Some characterized Anquetil as a “technocrat cyclist” who triumphed thanks to his clever racing tactics, his technical and physical superiority as a rider, and the dominant team of domestiques that his wealthy sponsors bankrolled. By contrast, Poulidor won races thanks to his combativeness, hard work, and fighting spirit.70 Historians have characterized in different ways the meaning of the Anquetil-Poulidor polarity in the popular imagination. Anquetil represented cosmopolitan, modern society while Poulidor personified rural, traditional France, and their duels symbolized France’s struggle to come to terms with modernity. Michel Winock and Hugh Dauncey portray the contrasting imagery of the two riders as symptomatic of the larger inability of the French to reconcile the nostalgic traditionalism of la France profonde with the modernity of the technocratic Fifth Republic, a tension Winock dubbed the “Poulidor Complex.” Philip Dine argues that Poulidor represented an “amalgam” of traditional virtues and modern sporting entrepreneurialism. Poulidor’s wild popularity provided “cultural reassurance in the face of major societal changes” and illustrated receptiveness of French audiences to “images of cultural continuity.”71 Jacques Anquetil was born in 1934 in Mont-Saint-Aignan, near Rouen, but spent much of his childhood in Quincampoix, a small Norman village, living with his uncle, who was a strawberry farmer.72 At age fourteen, Jacques obtained certification to work as a machinist/metalworker (ajusteurtourneur) and found a job at a factory near Quincampoix. Yet from a young age, Anquetil dreamed of “enlarging his horizons,” leaving his village, and exploring France.73 Anquetil became a professional rider at seventeen and followed a meteoric trajectory to the top of cycling. In 1953, at the age of nineteen, Anquetil won the world time trial championship, the Grand Prix des Nations, the first of his six consecutive titles in the event between 1953 and 1958. Four years later, Anquetil won the first of his five Tour de France titles.

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He also won the Tours of Italy (1960 and 1964) and Spain (1963), beat Fausto Coppi’s world one-hour speed record in 1956, and was the world’s dominant cyclist for nearly a decade. After his first Tour victory in 1957, Anquetil emerged as the prototypical professional athlete cum businessman. His first book read more like a professional manifesto than an autobiography, and Anquetil devoted few pages to his upbringing or to developing an amiable public image for his fans: It is true that I am not particularly covetous of sporting glory.  .  .  . I have never had smiles in my shirt pockets, all ready to be handed out to photographers. . . . I am not suited for parades. . . . But I am not ashamed to say that I have a very acute sense of my interests. I am in 1964 the best paid [rider] in France.74

Anquetil declared frankly (and frequently) that he raced for money rather than for glory or respect. “It’s stars [like me] who sell tickets. . . . It’s obvious that if I could get a million franc appearance fee for competing in a race, I wouldn’t object. . . . [It is] morally important, in my view, not to accept less than I’m worth.”75 Anquetil refused to follow a traditional training regimen and had a well-known weakness for whiskey. He enjoyed living the lifestyle of a playboy and mocked those who insisted that professional cyclists devote themselves blindly to their sport and live “like Trappist monks.”76 Anquetil once quipped, “If there were only champions, this is the menu that I would recommend the night before a race: A pheasant with chestnuts, a bottle of champagne, and a woman. Unfortunately, there are not only champions.”77 Television coverage of Anquetil underscored his modern, cosmopolitan lifestyle. Anquetil traveled widely, spent significant portions of his year on vacation, and engaged in new, modern sports in the off season. In an interview recorded by RTF in the late-1950s, Anquetil discussed a hunting trip in eastern France that he planned to take in his time off with Fausto Coppi, who became an informal mentor and advisor to the young French champion. Anquetil and his wife, Janine, showed off some of their gun collection, including a revolver and a semiautomatic pistol, and shot a wooden cutout of a lion— “the king of the animals”— with a birding shotgun. Unlike other cyclists who trained constantly even in the off-season to maintain their form, Anquetil disdained even discussing cycling in his extended “rest periods” such as the hunting expedition.78 In 1960, RTF joined Anquetil at the Saint Gervais ski resort and broadcast nearly a minute of footage of the French champion gliding and shushing down the resort’s ungroomed slopes. Anquetil explained that he spent at least a month per year skiing and up to another month per year at “rest,” during

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which time he traveled, visited with friends, and hunted.79 A 1963 newsreel feature showcased Anquetil at home at his mansion in Saint Adrien, near Rouen along the Seine River. Cameras joined the French champion as he raced his speedboat up the river to his private dock and strode up a hill to his turreted manor. Anquetil explained that his success and wealth afforded him the opportunity to travel the globe, the “dream of his childhood.” Anquetil invited the cameras into his “secret room” containing private keepsakes and souvenirs of his travels, including photos of Janine and Jacques in America clad in Hawaiian shirts and leis. Television cameras captured the champion racer tapping on a bongo drum and wooden chimes he collected in Africa and, later, panned past the hundreds of bottles of wine in his private cellar. The reportage also featured Anquetil managing the gravel-mining operation he owned.80 Anquetil’s lifestyle and outlooks, documented for the nation on its screens, conformed well to the portrait of a modern, worldly, upwardly mobile professional. Perpetuating the caricatures that they helped to create, the media and the race organizers transformed the Tour into a mythic battleground that pitted archetypical protagonists against one another. One of the most legendary battles between antithetical heroes occurred during the 1964 Tour. The media cast Anquetil, the four-time Tour winner in search of his fifth yellow jersey, as the invincible (and cocksure) champion and Raymond Poulidor as the salt-of-the-earth, underdog peasant from Limousin. An overconfident Anquetil, after rebuffing the offensives of Poulidor and other contenders during the first weeks of the Tour, decided to attend a publicity picnic during a rest day in the competition. The following day, Poulidor attacked him furiously on the road to Perpignan. Anquetil, apparently suffering from indigestion after having consumed too much mutton at the picnic, could not respond. He was saved from a catastrophic collapse during the Perpignan stage only by a champagne-filled water bottle given to him by his coach, which settled his stomach and allowed Anquetil to rejoin the main group of racers. Poulidor attacked again in the Pyrenees, won a stage ending in Luchon, and whittled more than a minute from Anquetil’s lead. With Anquetil ahead of Poulidor in the overall standings by only fifty-six seconds with four days of racing remaining, the stage was set for an epic confrontation between the two on the terribly steep roads that climbed the Puyde-Dôme in central France. Anquetil and Poulidor rode shoulder to shoulder for the first kilometers of the 1,400 meter ascent. Surrounded by official cars and motorcycle-riding journalists, the two stars jostled and matched each other’s demonstrations of stamina and power. Anquetil, who was famous for never breaking his perfect pedaling form regardless of the circumstances, be-

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f i g u r e 6 . Jacques Anquetil and Raymond Poulidor race wheel to wheel during the climb up the Puy de Dôme in the 1964 Tour de France. Poulidor beat his rival to the summit but lost the Tour, July 13, 1964. Courtesy of Gamma-Keystone/Getty Images.

gan to tire visibly two kilometers from the top. Poulidor accelerated hard in an attempt to drop the race leader and seize the yellow jersey. Both riders lost all sense of pedaling technique and cycling form as they struggled toward the summit. Poulidor’s valiant effort shaved more than forty seconds from Anquetil’s lead. Nevertheless, Anquetil had determined exactly how much effort to expend on the climb to save his yellow jersey. He preserved a fourteensecond advantage over Poulidor. Anquetil maintained his lead for the rest of the race and won the Tour for the fifth time. The Puy-de-Dôme confrontation became the defining moment of each rider’s career. Poulidor became known as “valiant Pou-Pou,” a star whose frailties, vulnerability, and peasant simplicity, as well as his long record of dramatic failures, crashes, and bad luck in the Tour, seemed both to ennoble him and to endear him to the “common” man. His ghostwriters commented, “Between the city-dweller and him, between the peasant and him, there exists an absolute identification. . . . [Everyone] has to admit in the ‘race of life’ that they more often finish in second or tenth place than in first.”81 Poulidor understood the commercial value of his public persona and quipped, “My

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big luck was to have lots of bad luck,” since his misfortune seemed to make him more popular.82 By contrast, Anquetil was remembered as somewhat of a playboy with a weak work ethic. A racer endowed with tremendous natural athletic talent, as well as a consummate cycling tactician, Anquetil’s victories came to him thanks to his athleticism and to his unparalleled ability to expend exactly enough energy to win important races. As a way of contrasting the natural gifts— and public perceptions— of the two riders, the ghostwriters of Poulidor’s first autobiography, written four years after the dramatic Puy-deDôme confrontation, described Anquetil as “at fifteen or sixteen years old, a sort of child Mozart” and Poulidor as “an accordion’s apprentice.”83 6. Idealism versus Reality: Intimacy and the Problem of Drug Use A new, more intimate relationship emerged between cycling’s heroes and the public. The stories of champions’ personal lives became as important as victories in enhancing their celebrity. Star cyclists participated in staged meetings with the media that offered cycling fans the opportunity, through the press and television, to visit with them in their living rooms, meet their families, and share their private moments. In one such encounter, French star Raphaël Geminiani invited reporters into his bedroom to observe as friends informed him of the death of Italian champion Fausto Coppi in January 1960. Le Miroir des Sports featured five pages of photographs depicting Geminiani in various stages of mourning: collapsed in his bed, sobbing with a handkerchief, staring at a wall in disbelief, and being served broth by his attentive wife.84 Photographs of champions with their wives and children appeared frequently in the media. In some cases, champion cyclists’ spouses became celebrities in their own right because of the attention paid by the media to stars’ private lives. During the 1964 Tour, for example, Jacques Anquetil’s wife, Janine, embarked on a publicity tour of SPAR department stores throughout France and presented the first customers to enter the store with special gift sacks containing Tour de France-related commemorative trinkets.85 Two years later, she appeared as a special “behind the scenes” correspondent for Radio Luxembourg during the Tour.86 Despite their differing, often antithetical heroic personas, all famous cyclists shared a similar characteristic in the public eye. They were a novel type of social icon and members of a new elite group in the mass era: sports celebrities. Because of their high visibility and celebrity after the Second World War, France’s cycling stars helped to define ideals of respectability. The Tour and the sport of cycling in general needed certain types of stars who projected attractive, morally upright public personas. Italian star Gino Bartali

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won the nickname “The Pious” because of his strong Catholic convictions and because he always dined with a statuette of the Virgin Mary on his table. Commenting on Raymond Poulidor, Jacques Goddet opined, “His popularity is extraordinary. . . . Sports in general and the Tour de France in particular need men of his caliber, who ennoble their acts through their irreproachable conduct and their love of their work, the same way a peasant working his plow ennobles himself.”87 The public also expected famous cyclists to live the lifestyle of the elite in accordance with their stardom, and the media exalted champions as exemplars of social promotion and conspicuous consumption. The post-racing biographies of the Tour’s stars fascinated the media and the public. The cycling press frequently ran “where are they now” stories about the postretirement lives of champions. Usually, the pieces stressed that Tour champions remained humble, simple men whose personalities remained unchanged by their wealth and celebrity. On the other hand, many of the features offered poignant, detailed analyses of how far Tour champions had risen on the social ladder and how cycling victories and fame brought wealth. The obituary for Fausto Coppi in Le Miroir des Sports after his death from malaria in 1960 exemplified these trends. The article made references to Coppi’s peasant roots and praised the Italian champion’s humility. Despite his status as an Italian national hero and as the de facto ruler of his nation’s professional cycling community, Coppi “lived simply, not in line with his status as a great star.” The article described how the Italian campionissimo (“champion of champions”) retired to the village of Novi-Ligure to live a simple country life: “‘I am a peasant,’ [Coppi] often said. ‘The big city tires and frightens me. . . . Caring for my vines is enough to make me happy.’” On the other hand, the obituary outlined how Coppi’s wealth and fame transformed him from a naive country bumpkin into a cosmopolitan aristocrat. Coppi became enthralled with fashionable clothes and gradually he “dressed more and more stylishly.”88 He purchased a sprawling, fifteen-room villa in Novi-Ligure where he housed his entourage of trainers, advisors, cycling protégés like Jacques Anquetil, and the many other starry-eyed visitors who made pilgrimages to meet the champion of champions in the 1950s.89 Coppi continued to embrace his role as a celebrity after his retirement and used his wealth to maintain his favorable image with Italian and foreign journalists: “He understood the needs of the press better than any other champion.” To the public and the media, Coppi presented an image of refinement and largesse, and he “received [guests] with the splendor of a veritable lord” on his manor.90 The press generated similar images of French Tour heroes. In 1969, after

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his retirement, Cyclisme Magazine visited with Jacques Anquetil. The former champion had returned to Normandy, bought the land where writer Guy de Maupassant spent his childhood, and established a farm with his childhood friend, Georges Lauzé. In characterizing Anquetil and his surroundings the reporter Robert Silva evoked images of an artist seeking inspiration in provincial nature after a long and fulfilling career. The cover of the issue featured a portrait of Anquetil crouched and sifting his farm’s “sacred” dirt through his fingers. “Here, this is my life,” proclaimed the retired champion born of poor strawberry farmers. The article included pictures of Anquetil driving a tractor and a bulldozer, slopping pigs, and lugging milk cans from a barn. Anquetil’s hair was coiffed and slicked back, however, and the champion wore a perfectly creased shirt and spotless pants and boots. Silva made the point that Anquetil was not a typical country farmer and that the retired star’s athletic successes and large fortune had helped him to climb high on the social ladder. The article explained that cycling helped Anquetil to escape from his job as a factory metalworker and to purchase a hotel in his first year as a professional. After his retirement, Anquetil bought 400 hectares (nearly 1,000 acres) of land for his farm, which made him one of the largest agricultural landowners in France.91 Silva pointed out that although Anquetil “worked hard” on his farm, the retired champion lived in the style of a “gentleman farmer” and resided in a house that resembled a “château.”92 Louison Bobet graduated from cycling to big business after his retirement. To profit from his expertise in modern methods of athletic training and rehabilitation, Bobet established a seaside physical therapy center in southern Brittany.93 An avid pilot who traveled the country in his private airplanes, Bobet also purchased an airline and named himself its president and chief operating officer. Cyclisme Magazine included a feature on Bobet’s post-career business pursuits in the same issue as the Anquetil exposé. The story made it clear that Bobet remained an important figure in celebrity circles despite his retirement from professional cycling: his thalassotherapy clinic welcomed such stars as Yves Montand, Simone Signoret, and Renée Saint-Cyr. Bobet’s business grew rapidly. By the end of its first decade of existence, more than 50,000 patients had visited his therapy center.94 In the early 1980s Bobet sold majority ownership of his center to the Sofitel hotel chain. The celebrity of the Tour’s star cyclists and champions opened doors to new types of careers after the Second World War, especially in expanding media like radio, television, and the Internet. After his retirement, Jacques Anquetil became a cycling commentator for the Europe No. 1 radio and television network and wrote frequent columns for L’Équipe and other publications. Raymond Poulidor appeared as a guest commentator for the Radio-Television

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Luxembourg network during the 1971 Tour (which he did not enter) even before his retirement from professional racing.95 Bernard Thévenet, winner of the 1975 and 1977 Tours, became a regular expert commentator for French television after retiring from professional cycling and established an Internetbased cycling apparel company. Laurent Fignon, winner of the 1983 and 1984 Tours, purchased the right to organize several races, including the prestigious Paris– Nice stage race, and offered television and Internet commentary on cycling. Some Tour stars translated their celebrity into positions in corporate public relations. Raymond Poulidor joined the Tour’s publicity caravan as a representative of La Maison du Café, a French coffee company. The Société du Tour de France hired five-time winner Bernard Hinault as a public relations executive. Other famous Tour participants entered politics after their retirement from competition. Louison Bobet joined the national committee of the Gaullist Rassemblement pour la République (R.P.R.) party, and thirteen-time Tour participant Gilbert Duclos-Lassalle became a spokesman for the Chasse, Pêche, Nature, Traditions (C.P.N.T.) party. The stars of cycling often failed to live up to the standards of morality imposed on them. Growing media coverage complicated the task of maintaining stars’ idealized public images. Scandal undermined the public personas of some cycling heroes. For example, Fausto Coppi’s extramarital affair and separation from his wife, Bruna, in the mid-1950s transformed the Italian racer from an acclaimed living legend into an infamous adulterer. Television coverage of the Tour and other races hid nothing from view and sometimes undermined the rivalries and supposedly bitter antagonisms fabricated by journalists to enliven their stories. French television often showed rivals riding together in the peloton, chatting and joking, which belied their supposed animosities.96 Drug use, long a part of cycling, threatened to undermine cycling’s star system entirely. Public knowledge of the intimate details of heroes’ blood chemistry fostered increasing ambivalence. Christopher Thompson argues that cycling’s popularity in France rested on widely accepted myths about the nature of the sport as noble, heroic labor, especially that the “giants of the road” were paragons of natural, drug-free, superhuman suffering, endurance, and survival. Increased drug testing of professional cyclists, which accompanied the French government’s attempts to criminalize all drug use beginning in the 1960s, resulted in a growing number of doping scandals that challenged the Tour’s underpinning myths about athletic heroism.97 The French School’s viability rested upon these myths, as well, and the problem of le dopage crippled its standing, especially in the wake of particularly unsavory drug scandals.

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As drug testing grew in frequency and effectiveness, more and more star cyclists were compromised. Jacques Anquetil, whose victories were attributed by reporters to his unique natural athletic gifts, repeatedly refused to denounce drug use by athletes and claimed that the physical exertions required of cyclists were impossible without the aid of stimulants. Anquetil also led his fellow competitors in a three-minute “work stoppage” during the 1966 Tour, during which racers dismounted their bicycles and trudged slowly down the road chanting “shit” (merde) to protest mandatory drug testing for professional cyclists. During the 1967 Tour, the most dramatic and infamous doping scandal to date transpired. British champion Tommy Simpson, who in 1962 became the first British racer to wear the Tour’s yellow jersey, collapsed and died during the ascent of Mont Ventoux. Autopsy tests indicated that Simpson died from a heart attack caused by mortal exhaustion due to overexertion that was exacerbated by the day’s high temperatures. The medical report also indicated that amphetamines and methamphetamines tainted Simpson’s blood. The stimulants masked the symptoms of extreme exhaustion as the British champion rode himself to death on the mountainside. After Simpson’s tragic death, professional cycling engaged in a decadeslong campaign to eradicate doping from the sport, with poor results. Legal debates about individual privacy and worker rights lingered, with the result being that the ability of race organizers and cycling’s governing bodies to enact widespread testing remained limited for many years. The persistence of drug testing’s legal and procedural loopholes led to tragicomic dramas like the Pollentier Scandal of 1978. Belgian national champion Michel Pollentier’s victory at the finish of the l’Alpe d’Huez climbing stage made him the race leader. Race officials allowed Pollentier to return home to put on fresh clothes before his drug test, which enabled the Belgian leader to collect another man’s urine. Pollentier put the fraudulent urine in a balloon in his armpit, attached a tube to it, ran the tube into his shorts, and squeezed the balloon to deliver the sample. Testers discovered the ruse, and Tour officials expelled Pollentier, the competition’s yellow jersey, from the race.98 The science of doping also advanced more rapidly than detection measures. The medical community developed new, undetectable drugs that increased strength and endurance, such as advanced steroids. Physicians employed drugs and therapies developed for unrelated conditions to improve athletic performance and recovery.99 For instance, medical researchers designed Erythropoietin (EPO) to stimulate the production of red blood cells in cases of kidney failure or in cancer patients suffering from anemia. Cyclists discovered that EPO also increases their stamina and endurance, because it

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allows the blood to carry more red cells and, hence, more oxygen to the body. In the 1990s, EPO use by Tour de France cyclists led to numerous rider disqualifications and sparked infamous doping scandals. Policing doping carried inherent risks for the Tour, since detection led to drug scandals that challenged the moral foundations of the French School and undermined the image and popularity of cycling and its greatest event. Such risks help to explain why the problem of drug use in the Tour lingers to this day. Nevertheless, the race remained cycling’s most publicized arena for combating drugs and a bellwether for drug testing practices throughout the cycling world, as well as in other sports. As the sport globalized rapidly in the television and Internet era, the war against athletic doping also offered unique opportunities for the Tour de France and the French School to redefine and reposition themselves at a time when French athletic dominance of the “national bicycle race” waned, global public opinion turned definitively against drug use by athletes, and businesses became more hesitant about sponsoring cycling teams and stars. At the close of the twentieth century, the Tour and the French School attempted, with mixed results, to reposition themselves as exemplars of drug-free athletic prowess.

f i g u r e 7 . Antonin Magne (center, seated) and teammates drink champagne before the start of stage 20, an individual time trial, August 1, 1936. Courtesy of the National Archives.

f i g u r e 8 . A boy tends his geese as the peloton passes. Journalists often mixed imagery of the countryside with the race narrative. Undated photograph (ca. 1936). Courtesy of the National Archives.

f i g u r e 9 . French cyclist Georges Speicher rides back to the race route after an unplanned detour through a farm. Undated photograph (ca. 1936). Courtesy of the National Archives.

f i g u r e 1 0 . A fan throws a bucket of water on French rider René Vietto during the second stage of the 1947 Tour. Vietto won the stage, which ended in Brussels, June 26, 1947. Courtesy of the National Archives.

f i g u r e 1 1 . René Vietto competes in a time trial between Vannes and St. Brieuc, July 17, 1947. Courtesy of the National Archives.

f i g u r e 1 2 . A typical mountaintop scene: Italian Fermo Camellini climbs the col du Tourmalet during the Luchon– Pau stage, July 13, 1947. Courtesy of the National Archives.

f i g u r e 1 3 . Spanish cyclist Julián Berrendero crosses the summit of the col du Puymorens during the fourteenth stage of the 1937 Tour, July 18, 1937. Reporters followed the action on motorcycles and often interviewed competitors while they raced. Courtesy of the National Archives.

f i g u r e 1 4 . 1947 Tour victor Jean Robic, clad in the yellow jersey and a leather crash helmet, shakes hands with actor Bourvil moments before the start of the 1948 Tour de France, June 30, 1948. Courtesy of the National Archives.

f i g u r e 1 5 . Intimate heroes: Two boys read about French racer Jacques Marinelli, their neighbor and Tour leader at the time, while sitting in front of Marinelli’s bicycle shop in Le Blanc-Mesnil, July 6, 1949. Courtesy of the National Archives.

f i g u r e 1 6 . Belgian rider Roger Lambrecht competes in a time trial stage near Les Sables-d’Olonne, July 8, 1948. The Tour was popular among men, women, and children. Courtesy of the National Archives.

f i g u r e 1 7 . A crowd mobs Italian star Fausto Coppi, who signs autographs before the start of the Tour, June 30, 1949. Coppi won the 1949 Tour. Courtesy of the National Archives.

f i g u r e 1 8 . The beloved loser: Raymond Poulidor of France is injured after an accident during the descent of the col du Portet d’Aspet during the thirteenth stage of the 1973 Tour, July 15, 1973. The Limousin rider was famous for his bad luck. Courtesy of AFP/Getty Images.

f i g u r e 1 9 . Greg LeMond shadows Bernard Hinault during the climb of the Alpe d’Huez, July 21, 1986. LeMond won the Tour, the first of his three titles. Courtesy of AFP/Getty Images.

f i g u r e 2 0 . Alberto Contador punches a cheeky spectator who runs beside him during the climb up the Alpe d’Huez, July 22, 2011. Authorities found Contador guilty of doping and stripped him of his 2010 Tour title. Courtesy of Lionel Bonaventure/AFP/Getty Images.

5

The Tour in the Provinces: Sport and Small Cities in the Global Age

In 1926, enthusiastic civic boosters established a special task force to bring the Tour back to Caen for the first time since 1910.1 The “Caen Tour de France Committee” succeeded so marvelously that its members penned a history of its work nine years later. The Tour returned to the Norman town every year between 1927 and the Second World War and performed miraculous feats, according the committee’s account. The history concluded that thanks to the return of the Tour, a “grand global contest,” Caen “woke up like [Lord Byron] one morning to find itself famous.” The race’s passages in the early 1930s, the nadir of the Great Depression, “put citizens of all professions to work: businessmen, printers, electricians, restaurateurs, florists,” helped fund publicity drives for the regional dairy industry, and generated seed money and enthusiasm that led to the construction of a new, cement-surface velodrome that “could rival the best Parisian tracks.” The Tour helped solve poverty, crime, slums, youth delinquency, and disease thanks to the committee’s sizable donations to local charities.2 Caen’s overblown characterization of the Tour’s local, national, and global impacts in fact typified the hopes and dreams of many race host towns. The emergence of mass culture reshaped provincial communities’ relations with the French nation and the broader world.3 Mass tourism, radio and television, and mass consumerism spurred cultural integration, undermined some aspects of class distinction, and eroded geographical barriers. These developments created novel forums in which local, national, and global communities interacted in unprecedented ways. In some senses, these trends threatened traditional provincial particularisms and identities. At the same time, many provincial communities seized on the new commercial possibilities offered by France’s emerging mass culture. As they negotiated

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threats and opportunities of globalizing mass culture, provincial communities redefined their identities in the new cultural and commercial context and reforged their relationships with the broader world. The stories of two Tour host towns, Brest and Pau, provide an opportunity to explore the active role of France’s provincial communities in shaping national cultures.4 While most French towns welcomed the race only occasionally, Brest and Pau were, at different times, favorite Tour stops that developed lasting relationships with the event. In the twentieth century, commercialized sport emerged as an important locus of cultural and commercial relations between the provinces and the broader French nation.5 The Tour became a powerful cultural phenomenon around which local and national identities coalesced and through which both were expressed. The changing functions and meanings of the race in its provincial host towns suggest that the creation and adoption of rituals and traditions in the era of mass culture was a fluid, uneven process in which provincial communities often played an active, crucial role.6 The stories of the Tour in its host towns demonstrate that provincial communities selected which elements of France’s shared popular culture to integrate into their local cultural frameworks and determined the terms of that integration. In the process, these provincial communities helped to shape the evolution of a national cultural institution and global spectacle. Brest and Pau’s experiences also illustrate how smaller cities engaged the globalization process. Provincial communities’ interactions with the broader world became more complex and diverse in the era of global mass culture. Although scholars have explored quite thoroughly the urban dimensions of globalization in very large cities like Paris, London, New York, and Tokyo, relatively little attention has been paid to how small- and medium-sized urban communities participated in the process.7 From the mass press era to the Internet age, Brest and Pau enjoyed a measure of recognition that extended far beyond France. In seeking new ways to connect to the wider world, smaller French cities like Brest and Pau sought the same tangible results as large metropolises: they hoped integrate themselves more deeply into the international economy, increase tourism, and transmit appealing images of themselves to large, faraway audiences. It is clear from the stories of Pau and Brest as Tour host towns that local contexts, hopes, and fears determined the nature and outcomes— not always positive ones— of local interactions with the global. 1. Brest and the Tour before the Second World War Because of its vast, protected harbor and its river and canal linkages to the Breton interior, Brest has been a strategically and economically important

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port town for hundreds of years. In the first decades of the twentieth century, Brest was an unusual cultural crossroads. The town lies at the heart of a region, generally contained within the Finistère département on the tip of the Breton peninsula, that was considered to be one of the most culturally unassimilated areas of France, as indicated by the persistent use of Breton, a tongue of Celtic rather than Romance origin. In 1902, 80 percent of Finistère children began primary schooling not knowing a single word of French.8 Even as late as 1977, more than a million of Brittany’s three million residents were fluent in Breton.9 Yet Brest was a city in which French and local cultures met. Because of the large military port, thousands of soldiers and sailors from other parts of France passed through Brest’s walls. The permanent military community became part of the fabric of Brest’s culture. Brest became one of the Tour’s most frequent hosts in the event’s early years. The race visited the town every year between 1906 and 1931 for several reasons. Brittany was one of the cradles of French cycling and produced numerous cycling talents and Tour winners. Brest played a significant role in the development of cycling in Brittany. The Paris– Brest– Paris race, created in 1891 and the first of the classic multiday cycling events, traversed the entire Breton peninsula and made Brest famous throughout the French cycling world. The town’s cycling community founded several of the first Breton cycling clubs and built one of the largest velodromes in the region in 1893. Brest’s location at the far western tip of the Brittany peninsula fit well into Henri Desgrange’s vision of the Tour’s cultural symbolism. In the race’s first decades, Desgrange devised itineraries that followed as closely as possible France’s frontiers. Christophe Campos has argued that the Tour founders engaged in a campaign to use the Tour’s itinerary to “beat the bounds” of France’s borders and to continually retrace and reaffirm the cultural and geographic shape of the nation, especially at a time when France’s political boundaries were in flux.10 Desgrange believed that the race was an event meant to celebrate France’s diverse geography and to reinforce in the popular consciousness a shared knowledge of the varied regional landscape that comprised l’Hexagone. The Tour’s popularity and structure made it an ideal vehicle for transposing local and regional geography onto the wider scale while at the same time celebrating France’s diversity as a source of national unity, which was an important goal in the Third Republic’s ideologies and policies.11 No Tour illustrated this tendency more clearly than the 1919 race, during which competitors sped past the Great War’s battlefields and pedaled through the reconquered provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, symbolically reintegrating them into the motherland.12 Nevertheless, before the Second World War, Bretons contextualized the

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meaning of the Tour very differently. Brittany has a long separatist tradition. Regional historians often point to Brittany’s “resistance to assimilation [and] refusal of acculturation”13 as defining characteristics of Breton experience and identity in the modern era. Breton patriots viewed the advance of the French nation-state, and with it French language and institutions, as the tragic demise of their indigenous culture and ethnic identity.14 Pierre-Jakez Hélias, a poor peasant boy who grew up during the interwar years in southwestern Brittany and later became a famous ethnologist, described the veritable colonization of the region during the Third Republic in the following terms: “We were punished for speaking Breton. . . . We were transplanted, immigrants despite ourselves in a civilization that was not our own.”15 The case of Brest illustrates how sport, especially cycling, emerged as an important arena in which some provincial towns on the nation’s periphery expressed their distinctiveness and disdain for “official French” culture during the Third Republic. Around cycling, the most “national” of French sports well into the interwar years, Bretons built a unique regional identity that distinguished them from the rest of the nation.16 The Brestois (Brest’s residents) established an opposition, manifested on the race courses and in the press, between themselves and “Paris,” a generic term synonymous with nonlocal culture and traditions. The dialogue between provincial Bretons and Parisians that centered on the Tour was symptomatic of a broader cultural gulf between the rest of the nation and Brittany. The regional and national press played a key role in elaborating a specifically Breton sporting identity around which separatist sentiments coalesced, but which in the long run helped weave the colorful fabric of the national myth of the Tour. It is disputable whether this region’s cyclists demonstrated particularly Breton athletic characteristics and personal traits in competition, as many commentators have asserted,17 but it is undeniable that the Brestois and the rest of the nation imagined and perpetuated those stereotypes. The Brestois considered the riders of local origins to be both sports heroes and champions of local culture. As local sports editor Noël Kerdraon pointed out, Brest’s public favored riders who combined athletic prowess with a strong attachment to Breton culture, such as 1930s professional star Ferdinand Le Drogo: [He is] one hundred percent Breton. Even though he spends more time in the capital, the great Ferdinand Le Drogo has not become less attached to Breton traditions, and he discusses the race action in his mother tongue each time that he has the pleasure of running into a local (un pays). At the finish line . . . he obliges the numerous fans who ask him for an autograph . . . in the Celtic language.18

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Cyclists who won the adoration of the Breton public were often rewarded with nicknames linking them to the local heartland, such as François “Fañche” Favé, Lucien Petit-Breton (né Mazan), and Jean-Marie Goasmat, the “Breton flea.” Riders who left Brittany, as almost all professionals had to do to earn a living, and gave up their Breton lifestyle and language were rejected as “Parisians” instead of “pure-blooded Breton” competitors.19 To be adored and supported by the Breton public, a rider had not only to win races but also to demonstrate his Breton loyalties, speak the local tongue, and display in competition the brusque, no-nonsense orgueil (pride) and stubborn stoicism that were understood as the stereotypical personality traits of natives of the region.20 These perceived cultural differences exploded into literal confrontation between Brest and the Tour organizers. Although the Tour visited Brest every year, race organizers and local authorities fought frequently over logistics and money, which sparked larger conflicts. In one episode, Brest’s mayor refused to pave over large potholes in the road leading to the finish line in the Kérabécam velodrome, despite Henri Desgrange’s warning that they would probably cause a major accident in the peloton if the cyclists arrived en masse as predicted (in the end, the riders arrived safely in the velodrome).21 Despite rising fixed costs to stage the Tour in the 1930s, Brest’s cycling club refused to renegotiate an agreement with L’Auto that allowed the club to keep the lion’s share of receipts from ticket sales to the city’s velodrome.22 In part because of this dispute and similar disagreements with other host towns in the region, the Tour completely avoided visiting most of Brittany between 1931 and 1937, and the event did not return to Brest until 1939. Many Brestois believed that the Parisian organizers’ cultural and historical bigotry motivated them to avoid Brittany. Their beliefs may have been justified: Brest’s major daily newspaper quoted one of Desgrange’s lieutenants as joking that the Tour avoided Brittany because it was a “land of chouans,” the term for separatist, royalist counterrevolutionary Bretons during the French Revolution.23 The vitriol that welled up due to these conflicts served to unite residents of the Finistère sporting community in opposition to a common enemy. Although Brest competed with Quimper, on the peninsula’s southern coast, for leadership in the département, Quimper’s cycling community joined with Brest’s in criticizing the Tour in the 1930s and called for regional unity in opposing the cavalier attitudes and actions of the race’s management.24 Following the exclusion of most of Brittany from the Tour in 1931, regional newspapers and cycling enthusiasts organized a rival multistage race, the Circuit de l’Ouest, meant to showcase regional riders. Local editorialists attacked the Tour by calling it a coalition of the Parisian press and bicycle makers against

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regional athletes. The head of Quimper’s cycling club complained of a “systematic campaign of denigration” directed against Breton racers by L’Auto and Edmond Gentil, president of the bicycle manufacturers’ syndicate.25 Local riders complained that L’Auto and the Parisian team sponsors refused to pay Bretons the same salaries as other riders and accused race officials— Parisians— of literally cheating them out of victories when they competed against “national” cycling stars.26 Although the Tour returned once again to Brittany in 1938, the event remained for the Bretons a forum for the expression of cultural differences and tensions well into the post– Second World War era. Despite such tensions, even the staunchest defenders of Breton culture recognized that assimilation into the broader world went hand-in-hand with modernity. Bretons themselves helped to move the process of change forward. In the same passages in which he disdained the linguistic and cultural colonization of the Finistère in the interwar years, Pierre-Jakez Hélias explained how he and other Bretons eagerly pursued the new opportunities for advancement afforded by modernization and the French educational system. Hélias’s peasant family mustered all their meager resources to pay for his schooling. Meanwhile, he and others of his generation became agents of dramatic change as they adopted the behaviors, outlooks, language, and culture they learned in the urban lycées and brought them to rural Finistère: “Everything was changing everywhere all at once. And we were to blame for [sustaining] the convulsion, we who were studying elsewhere.”27 Many of the same Bretons who viewed the Tour as an encapsulation of cultural divisions also believed that the event was a unique and significant boon to regional commerce and tourism.28 The arrival in Brest of the Tour’s massive entourage and thousands of spectators resulted in a one-day gorging of local travel-related businesses. Noël Kerdraon, the Brest sportswriter who wrote so critically of the Tour organizers’ cultural bigotry, reported that the demise of the traditional Brest stage after 1931 was a “loss for local commerce,” a sentiment echoed by local restaurateurs, hotel owners, and politicians.29 Kerdraon also pointed out that the Tour relied heavily on provincial cycling stars and fans and argued that the event’s popularity in France— and its bottom line— suffered when the race organizers selected foreign cyclists over provincial riders to participate in the race.30 This dichotomy— seemingly rabid regional traditionalism coexisting with a relish for profiting from the modernizing tourism economy— came through clearly even to foreign visitors to Brittany. In a July 1923 travelogue published in New York Times Magazine the day after the Tour ended, American Doughboy-turned-columnist Hudson Hawley described returning to Brest

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after the Great War. Hawley recreated conversations with his overbearing Breton hosts, whom he dubbed the “George F. Babbitts of Finistère” for their single-minded, ridiculous attempts to convince the foreign correspondent that Brittany was a tourist paradise and burgeoning commercial dynamo. Boosters persuaded Hawley to visit during the “Finistère Tourism Week,” a festival that showcased, in the words of one Breton businessman, “our little corner of France that is so French yet not French at all.” The American war veteran’s memories of Brest, a major port of entry for American troops during the First World War, were tainted by nightmares of tough military police, duckboarded streets and “Mud. Slush. Fog. Cold, drizzling rain. Muddy coffee. . . . Bedraggled girls, with the look of drowned rats.” Tongue in cheek, Hawley described Tourism Week’s endless folk festivals and processions of Bretons clad in traditional country costumes. In one comic passage, Hawley recounted how his hosts, upon arriving with him in Locronan to discover that the town had not bothered to decorate for Tourism Week, claimed that the residents had consciously avoided festooning their streets with bunting and streamers because tourists “would prefer to view this petit morceau of the medieval just as it is every day, dans sa superbe nudité!” Whether Hawley inquired about developing the Port of Brest, the manufacture of Finistère’s famous lace and pottery, or breeding the region’s sturdy farm horses, booster experts provided ready answers.31 It is clear, then, that the Tour and other facets of modern mass culture like tourism held several, sometimes conflicting meanings for the Brestois in the interwar years. Although the Tour served as a forum in which to express cultural tensions and distinctiveness, the Brestois acknowledged and valued the power of the race to spur the local economy. After the Second World War, the commercial uses of the Tour took center stage, and new generations of Bretons used the race as a vehicle to promote the region’s integration into France and Europe. 2. Brest and the Tour after the Second World War Brest never regained its position as a favorite Tour stage town. The race visited the city only six times after 1947, and not at all between 1974 and 2008. The evolution of the Tour after 1930 did not favor Brest. First, after 1930, Tour management demanded much larger municipal subsidies and far more elaborate, time-consuming, and expensive preparations and receptions by the race’s host towns. Competition for the Tour leadership’s favor increased, too, as many new towns bid for the right to host the race. Second, as Jacques Goddet and his associates took over Tour planning, they began to abandon

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Desgrange’s organizing precept for the race, that it was an event meant to “beat the bounds” of the French frontier. After the Second World War, they often chopped the event’s itinerary into incongruous segments. In light of these developments, it is very likely that Tour management decided that Brest was simply no longer worth the trouble to visit every year. Despite this, the Tour’s visits to Brest in the postwar era illuminate how commercial concerns shaped cultural relations among local, national, and international communities in new ways after the Liberation. In 1952, 1974, and 2008, the Tour chose Brest to host the first stage of the competition. This was a great honor for which French cities competed ferociously, because hosting the opening day of the race generated immense national and international attention. Worldwide media’s arrival in Brest in these years provided the city and its region with unusual opportunities to engage vast audiences while promoting local cultural and commercial amenities. In many ways, 1944 was “year zero” in Brest’s twentieth-century history.32 Because of its protected natural harbor and preexisting naval facilities, Germany stationed a submarine squadron at Brest. The Allies bombarded the submarine base frequently for several years and intensively in the months leading up to the Normandy landing, which caused terrible collateral damage to the city. In the late summer of 1944, with Brest’s liberation imminent, locals claim that the German occupying force set ablaze what remained of the downtown area. By the end of the war, between 90 and 95 percent of Brest’s centre-ville had been leveled and more than 70 percent of the homes in the greater metropolitan area were condemned.33 Two thousand wrecked vessels clogged Brest’s harbor.34 The terrible destruction rained upon the town forced the Brestois to rebuild the city from the ground up. For nearly two decades after the Second World War, the campaign to rebuild Brest’s lodgings, businesses, and infrastructure dominated the daily lives of the Brestois and city planning initiatives. The lack of housing for the local populace was the first and most critical problem. Approximately 50,000 of Brest’s 80,000 prewar residents fled the city when the Allied bombardments began. Forty thousand of them returned after the end of hostilities— even though their homes had been destroyed— and Brest’s population rebounded to approximately 75,000 in 1946.35 During the next decade, reconstruction authorities built two sizable cities next to one another. In Brest’s flattened centre-ville, architects and engineers designed and erected concrete-and-steel apartment complexes, commercial edifices, hotels, and office buildings inspired by the neoclassical style. Architects and planners believed that Brest would serve as a model of modernity and of rational urban planning. They replaced Brest’s infamous labyrinth of cramped, winding, cobblestone-paved

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streets with wide, straight, asphalt boulevards organized around traffic circles and a grid system. The government built twenty-five sprawling “temporary cities” (villes provisoires) to house the population during the reconstruction. Each temporary city was built almost entirely of wood and contained lodging, shops, and services for several thousand residents.36 The French government did not declare central Brest’s reconstruction officially completed until 1965 and did not demolish the last of the “temporary cities” until a decade later. The town’s immense reconstruction effort overshadowed local preparations for the 1952 Tour. Maurice Piquemal, a civil engineer and bureaucrat, had become the driving force behind Brest’s postwar rebirth in the late 1940s. He was also a central figure on the local Tour organizing committee in 1952. City leaders, with Piquemal at the fore, viewed hosting the first stage of the 1952 Tour as a crowning achievement of their town’s postwar reconstruction and used the occasion to issue an open invitation to the rest of France to visit and spend their money in Brest. Mayor Chupin declared that the arrival of the Tour “marks a great victory in the rebirth of Brest [and] confirms the resurrection of her hotel infrastructure and of her public services.” Piquemal added, “The Departure of the Tour de France from Brest is a measuring stick and stepping stone on the path to [Brest’s] rebirth. It furnishes, in effect, an opportunity to show to our visitors, French and foreign, the results of our communal efforts.”37 Brest devoted many of its scarce resources to preparing for the Tour’s arrival. The town offered Tour organizers a three-million-franc subsidy to ensure that Brest was chosen to host the first stage.38 Especially for the Tour, the town renovated the Halles St.-Louis, the downtown’s indoor marketplace, at a cost of 1.5 million francs and furnished it with special electrical hookups and office equipment to serve the race’s large administration and logistical caravan.39 In honor of the race’s visit, Brest spent more than a million francs to organize a ten-day commercial exposition, stage a “pugilistic soirée,” and pay for the services of eleven regional folk groups to spice up the celebration and endow the Tour-related festivities with a Breton flavor.40 At the heart of Brest’s reception lay a commercial imperative. Several weeks before the race, a government report on the livability of French cities named Brest the “most uncomfortable town in the country.”41 Civic leaders denounced the report’s conclusions as misleading, since they were based on information compiled in 1946 when Brest lay in ruins. The report nevertheless injected great urgency into the Tour preparations and raised the local expectations for the impact of the Tour’s publicity. Local businessmen believed that Brest’s brand new hotels and rebuilt, rationalized downtown would attract swarms of tourists. In his public response to the government livability

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report, the president of the local hotel owners’ association predicted, “In a year, Brest will be the premiere hotel town in France.  .  .  . Although [our hotels] will not rival the palaces of the Riviera, they will have the advantage of being accessible to people of all classes.”42 The local organizing committee spent more than 150,000 francs to stage a grand reception for several hundred Tour journalists the night before the race. The president of the regional tourism commission hoped that the reception would have “good repercussions in terms of tourism” and urged the reporters to “relate in [your columns] the impression that you have taken away from your stay in Brest, certainly an impression that can only be excellent.”43 The reception was, at least, a social success. Brest’s major daily newspaper claimed that some of the foreign reporters enjoyed themselves so much that they overslept and missed the start of the Tour the next day.44 Television afforded Brest a new medium to transmit the images of its reconstruction to a growing audience of French viewers. RTF’s newsreel coverage of the Tour’s departure shined the best possible light on Brest’s reconstruction. Producers dedicated an unusually large portion of the newsreel— three and a half of its eleven minutes— to conveying hopeful images of a Brest reborn and ready for tourism. RTF cameras panned over Brest’s undamaged seventeenth-century fortifications and captured footage of locals clad in traditional peasant garb parading through town to the music of Breton talabard (bombard, a high-pitched double-reed instrument) and biniou (bagpipes). Mayor Chupin, surrounded by Tour stars Jean Robic and Fausto Coppi, as well as more locals in traditional Finistère costumes, jubilantly cut a ribbon and threw open his arms to symbolically reopen Brest to the world. The Tour’s caravan paraded ceremonially through the port city on Brest’s new, wide thoroughfares and past several blocks of recently erected apartment buildings.45 On film, Brest still looked like a battlefield despite RTF’s best efforts. Although the rubble had been cleared away, much of the downtown area remained barren dirt. The Tour’s departure ceremonies transpired next to the fortifications on a vast, flat dirt field that had once been Brest’s city center. No matter how RTF producers positioned their cameras, empty and damaged buildings and enormous construction cranes could be seen in the background of most images of the downtown. Old, new, and gutted buildings cohabited in many of the street scenes; the footage of riders pedaling past new apartments segued immediately into images of the peloton climbing out of the downtown area past a burned-out church, its stone steeple the only structure of the building remaining.46 The Tour’s launch from Brest in 1952 was a logistical triumph and drew

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enormous crowds of Breton cycling enthusiasts. The RTF footage showed throngs of spectators cheering and waving flags as the riders passed. Jacques Goddet was so delighted with Brest’s organization that he asked for the blueprints to the Halles St.-Louis so that the Tour could use them as a model for the race’s headquarters in other host towns.47 Elie Wermelinger, Goddet’s lieutenant, concluded that the comfort of Brest’s hotels “surpassed our hopes” and that Brest was a “beautiful town.”48 Thanks to Brest’s successful launch of the Tour, the race visited the city again two years later. Promotion efforts did not magically transform Brest into a tourist mecca. In the late summer of 1954, the president of Brest’s hotel owners’ association complained, “In my whole memory as a hotel owner, I have never known a [tourist] season as catastrophic as this one.” Most visitors merely passed through Brest on their way to beach resorts on the Breton peninsula’s southern coast.49 Despite the overall failure of Tour publicity to attract tourists, however, Brest’s experiences as a host town in the early 1950s demonstrate that new local attitudes toward integration into the national community had taken root in the postwar era. The Brestois no longer viewed the Tour as primarily an arena for conflict between local and national cultures. Rather, they embraced the Tour as a way to increase the town’s visibility on the national stage and to promote its greater integration into the national economy. By 1974, the second year in which Brest hosted the first day of the race, the local context had changed yet again. The early and mid-1970s were a crucial period in western Brittany’s economic history. The town and the region searched for new bases for economic development. The reconstruction campaign, a primary economic engine for the city after the war, had been achieved. The naval base, which employed a third of the city’s population and accounted for up to 40 percent of its economic activity by the early 1960s, continued to decline significantly in importance after the war as France concentrated more of its naval forces in Toulon and other ports.50 Agricultural modernization also created severe economic hardship in western Brittany, one of the most agriculture-dependent regions of France, and preoccupied local leaders. After the war, modern farming methods replaced traditional bocage cultivation, which caused significant structural unemployment that spurred the “rural exodus” from western Brittany. Between 1962 and 1968, the size of Brittany’s agricultural work force shrunk by 23 percent, and in the Finistère département alone more than 30,000 farmers left their lands.51 In light of these factors, the expansion of the European Common Market presented Brest and western Brittany with opportunities for commercial growth during a period when France’s central government granted regional authorities an unprecedented degree of economic self-determination.52

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Brest’s leaders envisioned realizing the long-standing, unachieved dream of transforming their city into the “Marseille of the Atlantic” by establishing a commercial port of the same importance as Brest’s military port.53 At the same time, however, European economic integration threatened the city and western Brittany. The region’s underdeveloped transportation, agricultural, and industrial infrastructures, as well as its location on the periphery of the European Community, threatened to exclude western Brittany from significant participation in the new economy.54 The problem of how to promote regional development in the context of a Europe-wide economy overshadowed local planning and engendered a very different type of welcome for the Tour in 1974. Local organizers employed new styles of promotion during the 1974 Tour and launched an important, multimedia publicity campaign, aimed at an international audience, that was designed to increase the region’s commercial links to the ever-more-integrated European economy. Private businessmen rather than town officials organized the 1974 Tour’s welcome. Specifically, Alexis Gourvennec, a pig farmer, political firebrand, and president of two major regional agricultural cooperatives, concocted the idea in concert with a Parisian advertising firm.55 It was significant that Gourvennec played a central role in the Tour’s local staging because his political and commercial outlooks, as well as those of his constituents, helped to shape the Tour’s reception. Gourvennec was part of a new generation of Breton leaders that embraced radical, sometimes violent, political ideologies but at the same time recognized and took advantage of the enormous commercial potential of the new economy and modern mass media. In the early 1960s, Gourvennec emerged as an important leader of the radical agricultural syndicalist movement in western Brittany. In 1961, while locked in heated negotiations with de Gaulle’s government over farm subsidies, Gourvennec incited his followers to storm the sub-prefecture building in Saint-Pol-deLéon and to roadblock the entire town for twenty-four hours.56 Gourvennec served fifteen days in jail, but because of his radical advocacy of western Brittany’s agricultural interests throughout the 1960s, he secured a strong and faithful following among the region’s farmers. Gourvennec was also a forward-thinking entrepreneur. In January 1973, he established a privately owned ferry service between Roscoff, on the northern Breton coast, and Plymouth, England, with funds from the 4,300-member agricultural cooperative over which he presided. The main purpose of the line was to open up British markets to direct exports of Brittany’s agricultural products, primarily pork and vegetables like artichokes, cauliflower, and onions.57 Shortly after establishing the company, Gourvennec and a Parisian adman came up with the idea of hosting the first stage of the 1974 Tour in

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western Brittany to exploit the “new horizons of commerce” and “symbolize this union between the two sides of the Channel” created by the marine link.58 Once Brest and other towns showed interest in Gourvennec’s idea, the concept blossomed from a simple publicity stunt for the ferry line into a massive media campaign meant to increase the entire region’s ties to the European Economic Community. The design of the Tour’s itinerary in Brittany complemented these goals. Local organizers proposed to stage what they called a “Breton Week of the Tour de France.” The first day of competition would take place in Brest. On the second day, the cyclists would race from Brest to Saint-Pol-de-Léon, Gourvennec’s hometown and the epicenter of the agricultural cooperatives over which he presided. The next day, Gourvennec’s ferries would transfer the Tour’s entourage and competitors to Plymouth. After a stage across the English Channel, which would be the Tour’s first visit to the United Kingdom, the ferries would carry the race’s entire caravan back to France. The Breton organizers convinced Jacques Goddet to agree to the unprecedented, audacious itinerary by guaranteeing an unusually large subsidy of 600,000 francs. Brest contributed 150,000 francs to the total, which was nearly three times the size of subsidies paid to the Tour by other host towns in 1974.59 To justify the expense, Brest’s mayor pointed out that hosting the media-saturated Tour would showcase Brest’s “orientation toward the sea [and] its touristic and agricultural resources” and provide a perfect opportunity to “open [our town and region] outward . . . to put on display the locus of economic development that is Brest.”60 The local hosts recognized the immense commercial power of television. Local organizers tried to fashion the “Breton Week of the Tour” into an international television event that would shower media attention on the commercial and agricultural resources of Brest and western Brittany and showcase the region’s links to England and international markets. Through its adman in Paris, Brest’s organizing committee contacted French television’s Channel 2 about running a documentary on two of its weekly shows outlining how western Brittany was using the Tour for the first time as a promotional tool for an entire region.61 The Brest committee also contacted Eurovision, which transmitted to several Western European countries, the BBC, and ITV, a private British station, to ensure television coverage of the Plymouth stage in Britain and across Europe.62 Finally, the organizers set up a televised reunion of seventeen past Tour participants from Brittany, including three-time race champion Louison Bobet.63 In the end, little of the planned intensive economic promotion came through in the national and international media. Rather, events during the

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1974 Tour confirmed the long-standing preconception of western Brittany as a land of angry, impoverished farmers, a preconception that Tour organizer Gourvennec himself had played a key role in creating. Since the early 1960s, a Breton “Artichoke War” raged against the French government, during which farmers engaged in radical, violent activism in favor of price supports and protectionism for Brittany’s most famous agricultural product. The period from 1960 and 1965 was a particularly violent chapter in the “Artichoke Wars”: farmers periodically vandalized or seized government buildings, rioted, blockaded towns, roads, and railways; burned or dumped on city thoroughfares thousands of tons of produce; and engaged in bloody street battles with police. The press on both sides of the Atlantic wrote many stories and editorials about the “Artichoke War.”64 Even before the Tour’s arrival in 1974, then, Brittany’s image had been symbolically linked to the artichoke, albeit as an icon of violent unrest, the decline of traditional agriculture, and the difficult transition to greater commercial integration. In the days leading up to the start of the race, Gourvennec engaged the French government in a new chapter of the “Artichoke War.” Because of a bumper artichoke crop, prices plunged, and Brittany’s vegetable farmers demanded new, heavy subsidies from the national government to make up for lost incomes. One week before the Tour arrived, Gourvennec incited farmers to dump 100 tons of artichokes on the roads and in trashcans around Saint-Pol-de-Léon and Plouescat as an act of protest.65 Local artichoke farmers dominated the Tour festivities with boisterous protests, large billboards, sandwich boards, and painted cars publicizing their products. Gourvennec coined a slogan, “The Tour de France is in Brittany thanks to the artichoke,” that was repeated frequently in the pages of L’Équipe and in other media.66 Across the English Channel in Plymouth, the artichoke also loomed large. In addition to the entire Tour caravan, Gourvennec loaded his English-bound ferries with tons of artichokes. His agents mounted a giant truck equipped with loudspeakers and distributed thousands of free artichokes to the spectators in Plymouth along with pamphlets, written in English, entitled “How to Taste French Artichokes.”67 The winner of the Plymouth stage, Dutchman Henk Poppe, was presented with a large bouquet of artichokes rather than with the traditional handful of flowers. In L’Équipe, reporters devoted few words to issues of economic development in Brest. Rather, they marveled at the sumptuous, wine-laden feasts sponsored by Gourvennec throughout the week.68 The Tour endured an apathetic reception in Britain. French television broadcast a special report on the Tour in Plymouth. The English town’s boosters had high hopes for the event’s visit. Plymouth’s stage organizer, a

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Mr. Palmer, declared, “The world knows the Tour de France. The world will know Plymouth. . . . We hope [the Tour’s visit] will increase our tourism.” Nevertheless, the piece conveyed clearly the general disinterest of Plymouth residents in the Tour, and the French narrator, Bernard Ronot, concluded, “The Tour didn’t unleash much English enthusiasm.” Notable was the lack of streamers, flags, or other decorations on the thoroughfares where the Tour was to pass later in the day, apart from signs in a dozen storefront windows announcing the event’s arrival. Ronot also pointed out that British television was not planning to cover the race’s visit to Plymouth. In a halfhearted attempt to explain away Plymouth’s apathy, Mr. Palmer compared British ignorance of the Tour to French ignorance of the rules of cricket. The French narrator noted one important similarity between the Tour ceremonies on both sides of the Channel: “Les ‘Miss’ Locales”— local beauty queens, including Plymouth’s “Miss Ready-Mixed Concrete”— adorned the finish line area, just like in France.69 The British press confirmed the impressions of French television. In the Times of London’s synopsis of the Plymouth stage, sportswriter Norman Fox estimated that only a third of the expected 80,000 spectators materialized. Those onlookers who were not “bikies” could not pick out Belgian superstar Eddy Merckx or the other famous competitors. Most spectators were bored quickly by the repetitive, flat, multi-lap circuit race around the English port town. The tons of free artichokes distributed by Gourvennec’s farmers seemed ridiculously excessive in light of the English ignorance of the vegetable, and “children clutched armfuls of free artichokes, not knowing whether to eat them raw, cook them, or plant them,” despite the informational pamphlets. Fox concluded that “like the artichokes, Plymouth’s ambitious gamble was just a little too foreign for mass consumption.”70 Fox’s conclusions matched his predictions from two days earlier, when he questioned “why anyone would want to go to such expense”— an estimated £80,000 paid by Plymouth— to “hold a tiny part of a 2,500-mile race that will have only two British riders, one of whom speaks little English.”71 Although British spectators and French television viewers heard much about the artichoke during the “Breton Week of the Tour de France,” the festivities did not transform Brest into the “Locus of Economic Development” that local organizers had envisioned or spur the British to adopt the artichoke as a dietary staple. In 2008, race organizers once again accorded Brest the honor of hosting the first day of the Tour de France. The Tour experimented with a new formula. Since 1967, each Tour began with a prologue stage. In 2008, the race instead began with a départ en ligne, or a mass start, and an open-road pedal to Plumelec, 197 kilometers of racing away. Stark differences between the 2008

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welcome and those arranged in 1952 and 1974 illustrate emerging trends in urban self-promotion. The 2008 experiences also demonstrate that Brest’s leadership understood clearly the limits of Tour-related publicity. Brest deployed new strategies, some of which had nothing to do with the Tour, to enhance and profit from its interactions with the broader world in the multimedia age. Brest’s Tour hosts held more realistic expectations for the publicity and tourism impact of the 2008 race than they had for the race’s previous visits. First, the Brestois left the job of touristic promotion to the Tour organizers. The Tour had developed a formidable presence on the Internet, and the event’s Paris organization took the lead in disseminating for host towns tourist-brochure images and other promotional materials tailored to the Internet age.72 The Tour’s official YouTube site contained promotional videos for every host town, produced by each city’s chamber of commerce. Brest’s two-minute piece was set to music and featured aerial shots of the city center and waterfront, videos of healthful tourist activities like biking, sailing, and surfing, and short stat-fact graphics trumpeting Brest’s qualities as a business hub, including twelve daily round-trip flights to Paris.73 The Tour’s main website also contained English-, German-, Spanish-, and French-language editions of the Tour de France Tourist Guide (Guide Touristique du Tour de France), which had been compiled in printed book form and distributed in small numbers between 1947 and 1993, when Elie Wermelinger wrote it. Anyone visiting the Tour’s website could download the 2008 tourist guide, which contained several thousand words about the cultural, commercial, political, and sporting history of the city, and lengthy descriptions of major tourist attractions like Océanopolis, one of France’s largest aquariums, and the Vauban fortifications, designed by Louis XIV’s military engineer. The guide also listed traditional Brestois fare like kig ha farz (meat and dumplings), artichokes, and chouchen (honey mead), schedules for annual city festivals like Astropolis, a European electronic music festival, and a short bibliography for further reading about Brest’s history. The guide included eight pages of text about major tourist and cultural destinations to be visited by the Tour on stage one and located them at kilometer markers along the daily itinerary.74 Television and newspaper coverage of the Tour seemed less important in 2008 than in the past. Local newspapers gazed past the Tour’s visit to a more significant tourist event on the horizon, the week-long Brest Maritime Festival 2008 (Les fêtes maritimes de Brest 2008), scheduled to begin the week after the Tour’s departure from Brest. City boosters created the Brest Maritime Festival, a quadrennial, week-long celebration of all things oceanic, in 1992. The 2008 Maritime Festival featured regattas, fireworks, music, gastronomy, parades of specialty boats from twenty-five countries includ-

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ing faraway Vietnam and Madagascar, flotillas of military ships, flyovers by France’s Super-Étendard carrier strike aircraft, and more than two thousand watercrafts open for public inspection and tours.75 Brest invested heavily in the Maritime Festival’s success with the hope that it would become the port town’s signature summer event and “dispel its caricature as a grey and rainy city.”76 The city budget included €900,000 per year for preparations after 2004, in anticipation of welcoming a million visitors during the weeklong celebration. In an article on the upcoming 2008 festivities, the city and its business owners characterized the Tour de France as a warm-up for the Maritime Festival, since the race’s passage would generate only an estimated 30,000 – 50,000 visitors.77 Regional television station France 3 Ouest/Iroise broadcast from the finish line in Plumelec— 200 kilometers away— during the Grand Départ from Brest. Second-team camera crews recorded footage in Brest and along the race route. France 3 Ouest/Iroise’s telecast included no plugs for local touristic amenities. The report featured footage of the peloton crossing the starting line and panning helicopter shots of riders pedaling across the windswept Pont Albert-Louppe, an eighty-year-old bridge connecting Brest to the Breton interior. Local Tour hosts seem to have put little effort into fashioning a unique, Breton-flavored welcome for the event. In a brief interview, Tour Director Christian Prudhomme indicated that the Tour’s logistics transpired just as they had during the event’s last visit in 1974. France 3 Ouest/Iroise’s evening report mentioned that Breton cyclists led the peloton for a brief stint. The report featured esoteric tidbits of historic-sounding yet inconsequential information, such as a thirty-second spotlight on the col du Concolohue, a minor hill on the day’s itinerary, which a knowledgeable spectator described as a favorite ambush site for seventeenth-century highway brigands.78 Global television coverage of the Grand Départ from Brest exhibited the same deficiencies as French television coverage, in terms of its usefulness for promotion. International broadcasters relied on French television’s video feeds and the Tour’s standardized information packets for their images of and information about the host towns. In the United States, the Versus network transmitted the same helicopter shots of the peloton crossing the Pont Albert-Louppe as the French networks. Versus announcers Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwin read excerpts of the same Tour-prepared, English-language text about the history of Brest and Brittany’s famous cyclists as appeared in the tourist guide on the race’s official website.79 After the Second World War, the Brestois forged new economic identities for themselves that were reflected in how and why they hosted the Tour de France. In response to the new economic contexts of the 1950s and of the

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1970s, Brittany’s local hosts put aside their insular attitudes to pursue aggressively new commercial opportunities. In 1952 and 1974, one can conclude that Brest’s organizers failed to achieve their stated goals of developing the tourism industry and transforming Brest into a “locus of economic development” in the European Community. In 2008, Brest’s hosts had largely abandoned the view that the Tour represented a crucial publicity tool. Instead, they pinned their hopes for touristic and business promotion on a proprietary cultural event, the Brest Maritime Festival. Nevertheless, the lesson drawn from these stories is that Brest’s view of its relationship to the broader world evolved significantly. The Brestois zealously pursued the new opportunities that the Tour offered to participate in the cultural and commercial life of the French nation and of Europe. 3. Pau and the Tour before the Second World War Pau was part of the new cohort of Tour host towns courted by race organizers after the 1929 race. The event visited the city more than 60 times after its first arrival in 1930. The arrival of the Tour in the city coincided with a sea change in the community’s history. The evolution of the leisure and tourism industry, especially the decline of aristocratic tourism in France during the interwar years, undermined Pau’s economic structure and threatened its status as an elite resort town. As Pau tried to adapt to the age of mass travel and leisure after the Great War, town leaders welcomed the Tour in the hopes that the event would revive tourism and commerce. Pau is situated in the foothills of the Pyrenees along the banks of the Gave River and is a gateway to the mountains and to the Spanish border. In the modern era, tourism figured highly in Pau’s economy and helped define the town’s identity. By the early twentieth century, Pau enjoyed an international reputation as a preeminent winter resort and gateway to the numerous spa towns in the Pyrenees. The town was world famous for its English colony, a group of several thousand British aristocrats who wintered in Pau every year. Well-to-do Americans and Spaniards also flocked to the city because of its mild climate; the region around Pau enjoys warm temperatures, dry air and gentle breezes even during the coldest winter months. After railways reached the town in 1863, Pau’s economic health depended on the influx of money from foreigners and spa seekers from October to April, when cold, wet weather dominated most of continental Europe.80 The number of spa seekers who passed through Pau in the late nineteenth century is difficult to establish, but spa tourism on the national level became big business during this period. Official statistics indicated that more than one million for-

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eign tourists visited French spas in 1900, including 100,000 British, 200,000 Americans and 534,000 Spaniards.81 The aristocratic tastes and sensibilities of the English residents shaped Pau’s social life, culture, and physical appearance. Foreign tourism literally transformed the architecture of Pau— the number of private, primarily English-owned villas in downtown Pau grew from ninety in 1866 to 325 in 1893.82 Imported British sports dominated the social calendar. The showcase event of each winter season was an enormous fox hunt, which the town subsidized and which was staged in the fields to the south of Pau. The English colony established the first golf course in France in Pau in 1856, the first of many around the city, and helped to create and man the nationally renowned Section Palois rugby club in 1899.83 Foreign tourists even convinced Wilbur Wright to visit Pau and to establish a flying school there in the winter of 1908 – 9, and the city invested more than 70,000 francs to build the school’s fliers a special aviation park.84 The press in Great Britain, North America, and New Zealand chronicled Wright’s aeronautical exploits above the Béarnais capital. So prominent was the English presence in Pau that one of the French winter residents wrote, “Pau is not at all a French town, Pau clearly and definitively belongs to England.”85 The British winter visitors considered Pau to be theirs, as well. They appreciated the stark differences between Paris— “peevish,” “condescending,” “nose in the air”— and Pau, a “visitor’s town, spread out over its hill in the full blaze of the sun . . . gay and glittering,” with its “silvery light . . . delicate, fluid, almost incorporeal” and “surprising tropical gardens” featuring “enormous magnolias with leaves shining as though newly varnished.”86 The Times (London) dubbed Pau “The Restorer, An Englishman’s Haven,” and declared the town “essentially an English resort” made famous by the fox hunts imported by England’s winter residents.87 American visitors frequented Pau in increasing numbers after 1900, and the town became a well-known wintering locale for American high society. The social pages of the New York Times between 1900 and 1940 are filled with hundreds of notices about fashionable New Yorkers spending the winter in Pau. One social notice indicated that it was impossible for well-heeled Americans to remain in Paris for the winter because “Paris is not very gay” come autumn, since “the watering places have all closed their season, and many of the leading members of fashionable society are in the country” to attend, among other events, the first run of Pau hounds.88 The fame of the Pau fox hunt resonated even as far away as California, where the Los Angeles Times carried a story on the event’s centenary in 1938. The story lauded Pau’s “sunny and windless climate [and] unparalleled hunting” as well as the town’s dis-

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tinction of having the oldest golf course on the Continent.89 The New York Times also covered the centenary and noted that although British who settled in France after Waterloo had started the fox hunting club and that the Duke of Wellington was an early member, American Frederic H. Prince of Boston had served as the master of hounds for a quarter century.90 After the First World War, Pau’s tourist industry entered a recession that was later exacerbated by the Depression of the 1930s, and talk began of a municipal “crisis.”91 Between 1927 and 1936, the number of foreign tourists to France dropped from 2,125,000 to less than 700,000 and the amount of money spent by foreigners in France dropped from between twelve and fifteen billion francs to less than one billion.92 The recession in Pau’s tourism industry was attributable to the large number of English aristocrats killed during the Great War, the dramatic plunge in the wealth of the British aristocracy during and after the conflict, and the subsequent decline in British “aristotourism” to France.93 The Times (London) noted the decline and lamented that Pau’s “hotels seemed deserted” because “people cannot afford the prices of the fashionable ‘season’ places anymore.”94 Pau’s weakening hotel tax (taxe de séjour) revenues vis-à-vis those of rival town Biarritz after 1925 highlighted the town’s relative decline as a major travel destination. Biarritz’s hotel tax revenues surpassed Pau’s for the first time in 1930. By 1938, Biarritz took in the sixth-highest amount of hotel tax revenues of any French city, while Pau ranked sixty-first.95 Even Pau’s world-renowned hunting grounds seemed to be slumping. One New York Times article lamented that the French stags had become so tame and lazy after the Great War that “hunting was impossible.” To rejuvenate the sport, the British Colony imported a dozen wild, untamed deer from northern Britain.96 Amid these struggles, Pau searched for a strategy that would resurrect its tourism trade. Local leaders had mixed feelings about trying to attract more tourists from the expanding nonelite clientele, since appealing to middleclass travelers seemed to conflict with the aristocratic, cosmopolitan, Anglophile self-image that Pau had embraced before the Great War. One editorial in the Patriote des Pyrénées, Pau’s largest daily newspaper, lamented the passing of the era when Pau’s visitors were “not mere tourists, but travelers of taste, above all the British, for whom our area was like a second homeland. . . . Unfortunately, those people are part of a disappearing generation.”97 All agreed that some action was necessary since to do nothing, as one councilor pointed out, would be to “declare that the Town of Pau freely abandons her status as a resort and spa town (station climatique) and that she places herself squarely in the ranks of the mere county seats. . . . We must not forget that Pau is considered to be the capital of the Southwest.”98

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Beginning in the mid-1920s, Pau’s municipal council considered several initiatives. The most dramatic measure put into motion was the “Jaussley Plan,” an urban renewal project that involved the radical redesign and city-funded reconstruction of downtown Pau. Between the mid-1920s and 1938, Pau demolished an Ursuline convent, scores of private villas, and a bustling farmers’ market. On this blank urban canvas, the city built a “touristic space” in the center of town that included wide boulevards and promenades, a new, modern 400-room hotel, a casino, retail shops, and updated, reconfigured green spaces.99 Despite the successful completion of the Jaussley Plan, the project did not succeed in bringing back the wealthy clientele of the pre–World War I era. The town also attempted to attract nonaristocratic visitors and promote the town in new ways. Pau modernized the business apparatus of the town by creating a Syndicat d’Initiative (Chamber of Commerce and Tourism) and a foire-exposition, a commercial carnival meant to draw visitors to the town and publicize local businesses, that would be modeled after those staged by France’s larger cities.100 Sport played an important role in Pau’s new promotion strategy. The Tour visited Pau for the first time in 1930 and received a lukewarm reception from the city council because of the high subsidy demanded by the race organizers. To convince the municipal council to devote the rather small sum (by Tour standards of the time) of 5,500 francs to the organization of the event, the head of Pau’s Tour committee reminded the councilors that the spectacle would attract many foreign journalists, not just large crowds of locals.101 The intense, carnival-like atmosphere that engulfed Pau on the day of the Tour’s arrival and the crowd’s incredible excitement astounded reporters from the Patriote des Pyrénées, the local paper. One journalist marveled that “the work of the reporter is easy. The spectacle of a Tour finish is something so vibrant, so bizarre.” The crowd began gathering along the last kilometer of the course at seven in the morning, and very quickly the home stretch to the finish line became a “veritable human river.” Some of the more daring men escaped the crowds and perched themselves on the roofs of the fourstory buildings around the finish line. As the hundreds of cars and trucks that preceded the riders began to arrive in Pau, the place de Verdun, next to the finish line, was “transformed into a gigantic car park.” After the race, the rue de Liège, near the finish line, “was transformed into a vast fairground. A hundred street peddlers advertised and pushed their wares, while crowds surrounded the riders, who struggled toward their hotels. . . . Innumerable Béarnais had come from the most remote villages of the département, dropping their tools in the fields for a few hours, to see the Tour pass.”102 The arrival of the Tour in Pau was a great popular success.

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Editorialists, however, cringed at the Tour’s sheer promotionalism and feared the day when such an unfettered “system of political and commercial propaganda will become completely engrained in our morals.”103 Opinion pieces complained that the Tour took on more and more the character of a giant promotional circus that featured cars and vans packed with publicity fliers broadcasting the loudspeaker-enhanced jingles of pitchmen: “One can see the day when the bicycle Tour de France will be nothing but a mobile foire-exposition in which athletic competition will be nothing more than one attraction among many others, and not even the most interesting one.”104 Such reactions to the Tour exemplified the negative attitudes toward publicity and commercialism that continued to prevail in Pau. Despite such criticisms, Pau’s business community and municipal leaders believed sporting events could be used to boost commerce and rejuvenate the town’s image. In 1933, the city and the local Automobile Club BascoBéarnais created the Grand Prix de Pau, a Formula One automobile race that became part of the international Grand Prix circuit. The first competition took place in February, at the end of the high-society wintering season, on a picturesque course that wove through Pau’s rebuilt downtown tourist spaces. The automobile club and the town together organized and paid for all aspects of the race, which cost 120,000 francs by 1935.105 The organizers approved of the volume and the style of publicity that the Grand Prix furnished Pau. One automobile club official pointed out that more than 1,000 newspapers from France, Spain, Italy, England, and Belgium carried pieces about the 1935 event, which took place on Easter Sunday.106 The race bolstered the image of Pau as a fair-weathered spa resort. While cold temperatures and torrential rainstorms blanketed most of France on the day of the Grand Prix, radio stations transmitted three and a half hours of coverage to France and Italy in which it was reported that the sun was so hot in Pau that “women reached for their umbrellas.”107 The city council agreed that the publicity offered by the event was invaluable, in particular because the aristocratic prestige generated by staging a Grand Prix Formula One event placed Pau once again among the ranks of elite resort towns like Monaco, which also hosted a major Grand Prix race. Despite the cost of the race, most city council members agreed with city councilor Bijon, who affirmed that “the organization of this type of competition helps rebuild the [traditional] fame of the town . . . at the moment when our town is looking to maintain her prestigious image as the great touristic and sporting town of the Southwest.” Several members of the city council commented, “The publicity generated by the last Grand Prix was astonishing. . . . [Staging the Grand Prix] is justified and worth continuing.”108

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Pau’s leaders also came to value the Tour de France as an important image builder, despite the continuing criticisms of the event’s commercialism. Pau’s subvention to the Tour doubled after the race’s first visit, and Henri Desgrange chose the town to host a stage every year during the 1930s. The stage between Pau and Luchon was an exciting and decisive one. It included most of the dramatic climbs in the Pyrenees and became a traditional part of the Tour itinerary. In a letter to the editor in 1935, a Patriote des Pyrénées reader complained that the 10,200-franc subvention offered to the Tour was a “huge waste,” especially since only the town’s restaurateurs and car mechanics would benefit from the Tour’s passage.109 Paul Casassus, the president of the Syndicat d’Initiative, responded the following day in a letter to the paper. Casassus claimed that the selection of Pau, Evian, and Nice as 1935 Tour rest towns accorded Pau “honor” by placing the city once again in the ranks of France’s premier resort destinations. He also hailed the “splendid publicity” for Pau generated by international radio broadcasts during the race: The Tour stops at Pau because of our many comfortable hotels, because the stay here is pleasant, and the population welcoming. Some cities spend millions of francs on publicity to convey that, and the Tour offers it to us for free. Free, because the 10,000 francs are mostly repaid [by what visitors spend here while they watch the Tour].110

Casassus also pointed out that if Pau failed to welcome the Tour lavishly, then the organizers might abandon the city in favor of one of its rival tourist towns like Biarritz.111 Sport, and cycling in particular, began to take on a new meaning in the interwar years. To many provincial towns, sport was no longer merely the bourgeois-gentleman pursuit of the belle epoque, but instead meant publicity, increased commerce, and greater participation in the national economy. The Palois viewed the Tour and the Grand Prix as new tools to be used to revive the city’s declining tourism trade. Nevertheless, Pau’s well-established identity as an aristocratic winter resort did not mesh well with the town’s early forays into promoting commercial spectator sport. The resistance that arose from these experiments underscored the uneasiness of Pau’s transition into the era of mass culture. 4. Pau and the Tour after the Second World War Despite such anxieties, Pau developed an even warmer relationship with the Tour and its organizers after the Second World War. The city became a favorite Tour stop, and the race visited Pau nearly every year. The uses of the event

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for the Palois evolved significantly in the postwar era as the local economic situation changed. By the 1970s, the race served primarily a cultural rather than a commercial function in Pau. The Palois incorporated the Tour into their local sporting identity and embraced the event as a cherished ritual in their summer festival calendar. During the 1950s, publicity benefits of hosting the Grand Prix dissipated while the Tour de France remained a significant part of Pau’s nationwide publicity strategies. Pau refocused its promotional efforts from wealthy travelers to the mass tourism market. Popular tourism expanded tremendously after Liberation. Between 1950 and 1961, the portion of the French populace that took annual vacations rose from 20 to 37 percent.112 Sporting events like the Tour de France generated a style of promotion that resonated more closely with popular tastes than traditionally elite sports like Formula racing. The Tour’s enormous media coverage helped the event maintain a competitive advantage over other sporting events. Before the television age, vast audiences read about the race and its host towns in the press. In 1949, one local reporter estimated that the 400 Tour caravan journalists wrote for an audience of at least twenty million readers.113 Pau’s municipal council coveted that exposure and agreed to fund the Tour’s visits each year, despite the fact that the local welcoming committee consistently ran sizable deficits.114 Television coverage of the Tour de France cast a favorable light on Pau’s historic sites and its connections to natural Pyrenean wonders. RTF’s newsreel highlights films of the Tour’s visits to Pau, usually broadcast during journaux télévises (evening newscasts), followed what had become by the early 1950s a standard format for French television’s coverage of most host towns. The 1953 silent newsreel for the Pau– Cauterets stage on Bastille Day began with shots of the Gave riverfront, with its picturesque bridges and clay-roofed residences on the banks. It continued with several panoramic and close-up detail shots of the famous Château de Pau, the castle of King Henri IV.115 Coverage of the 1960 Pau– Luchon stage featured nearly identical shots of the castle. The narrator, Jean Quittard, employed the same self-referential, historic style of commentary as newspaper reporters. Quittard’s voiceover explained the significance of the Château de Pau footage, pointed out the royal symbols of “Good King Henry” on the castle walls, and referred to the Pau– Luchon stage as the “greatest Pyrenean stage” of the Tour, thereby neatly tying together the sporting and national heritage of the Béarnais host town.116 Thanks to their editing, both newsreels created the impression of an immediate connection between Pau and the wild Pyrenees, even though the heart of the mountains lies some thirty miles to the south. An uninformed viewer might assume that the high Pyrenees are located just outside Pau, since the

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filmed stage coverage transitioned quickly from shots of the Tour caravan rolling through Pau’s streets to cyclists laboring up steep mountain roads. Meanwhile, the Grand Prix de Pau generated less and less media coverage. By the early 1950s, the size of and speeds attained by cutting-edge racing cars made staging Formula One races on Pau’s downtown streets impossible. Between 1952 and 1960, Pau’s Grand Prix race was downgraded to Formula Two and then to Formula 3000, competition circuits whose automobiles were equipped with smaller engines and raced at slower speeds. The city council lowered its expectations for the publicity impact of the automobile race. In 1947, for example, local officials expected the Grand Prix de Pau to “attract an immense crowd from the farthest horizons” and for coverage of the event to appear in newspapers around the world.117 By the mid-1960s, organizers blamed the race’s inability to draw paying spectators for the event’s growing deficit, and a Chamber of Commerce report lamented that the Grand Prix was a “distinctly insufficient” spur to local tourism.118 International newspaper coverage of the Grand Prix conveyed distinctly negative images to readers. As the Pau organizers yearned for reinstatement into Formula One, Canadian driver Ludwig Heimrath, in Pau to compete in the 1962 Formula Two race, commented, “It is hard to imagine a formula one car racing on a circuit with such narrow corners.”119 Worse still, international newspaper coverage lingered on the mortal dangers of the now-infamous Grand Prix. Time magazine and the New York Times, in their articles on the 1955 and 1961 Grand Prix races, devoted more words to the numerous crashes and the tragic death of Italian driver Mario Alborghetti, who flipped his vehicle in a hairpin turn and was killed instantly in the 1955 race, than to race results.120 In 1964, New York Times sports reporter Robert Daley characterized the increasing insignificance of the Grand Prix de Pau as symbolic of France’s decline as a Grand Prix racing powerhouse and of the French nation’s flagging “virility” in auto racing.121 At the same time, the Tour presented Pau with several other distinct advantages over the Grand Prix. First, the annual bicycle race was relatively easy and convenient to stage. By the 1950s, the Tour took over many of the onerous organizational tasks from the hands of local officials in Pau and other host towns. At a time when city administrations assumed more and more (sometimes unwanted) responsibilities, the Tour organizers’ ability to stage their competition with relatively little municipal assistance was very attractive to local authorities. By contrast, the city and the local automobile club were responsible for handling every aspect of the Grand Prix de Pau’s annual organization. In addition, local hotel and restaurant owners liked the personal accountability of the Tour organizers and appreciated that they paid in

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advance for food and lodging, while occasionally the Grand Prix racing teams left town without paying their bills.122 Second, subsidizing the Tour was relatively inexpensive and carried little financial risk for the rewards reaped. The town council granted an annual subsidy but paid for little else. Although the Tour’s Parisian organizers consistently ran deficits in the 1940s and 1950s, host towns were not responsible for covering them. In contrast, city officials promised to pay the Grand Prix’s growing debts. By 1958, Pau was paying nearly 4.5 million francs per year in interest alone on the Automobile Club’s incurred debt. 123 The evolution of the Tour favored Pau. The Tour’s caravan grew to several thousand people, and few towns in the region had adequate hotel and restaurant infrastructures to accommodate it. Pau’s hosts also provided the caravan with unparalleled logistical support and established warm, personal relationships with the Tour’s personnel and management. Georges Briquet, the Tour’s veteran radio announcer, described in 1954 the excellent reception he received at Pau’s Hôtel Continental each year: Monsieur Touyarot [the owner] has rendered us distinguished service. In the twenty-two years I’ve worked the Tour . . . this is the twentieth time I’ve stayed with him. He’s the only hotel owner in France to provide me with my own broadcasting room. It’s a thoughtful luxury that is worth highlighting.124

The following year, Elie Wermelinger, the Tour’s chief of logistics, raved that Pau’s reception for the race was “impeccable” and that Pau was a “model stage town.”125 Some Pau businessmen appear to have developed personal friendships with high-ranking Tour officials. In 1999, Jean Touyarot, the secondgeneration owner and manager of Pau’s Hôtel Continental, even referred to Tour Director Jacques Goddet as “my friend, Jacques.”126 Finally, French geography afforded Pau significant advantages as a Tour host town. Few sizable French towns are situated within bicycle-riding distance of the Pyrenees, so the race had little choice but to pass through Pau. Because of its fortuitous location in the Pyrenean foothills, Pau welcomed one of the Tour’s exciting, decisive mountain stages almost every year. Throughout the 1950s, at a time when the Tour incurred debts consistently, Pau’s administrators insisted on paying lower subsidies than many other host towns and convinced race organizers to accept a special revenue-sharing arrangement that further reduced the city’s financial burden.127 The Tour visited Pau more frequently in the postwar era than almost any other provincial town. In 1962, Jacques Goddet presented Pau with the “Tour de France Medallion” to recognize the city as one of the race’s most frequent and hospitable hosts.128 Yet despite the town’s promotional strategies and

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the publicity power of the Tour’s annual visits, Pau did not succeed in reinvigorating the local tourism industry. By the mid-1960s, an average of only 85,000 travelers per year spent a night in one of the city’s hotels.129 By the late 1960s, Pau had largely abandoned its effort to reestablish itself as a major tourist destination. In 1951, Pétroles d’Aquitaine— later ElfAquitaine— punctured a vast natural gas reserve under the village of Lacq, twenty kilometers west of Pau. The enormity of the Lacq discovery surprised drillers. The first well released a natural gas plume so dense and voluminous that the residents of surrounding towns were forbidden to light matches or turn on stoves for four days.130 By the late 1950s, yearly production of natural gas at Lacq equaled one and a half times the French annual consumption. Gas extraction and refining became two of the most important commercial activities in southwestern France. Between 1954 and 1959, new businesses established themselves in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques département, of which Pau is the capital, at a pace that was two times the national average.131 According to Martine Lignières-Cassou, a National Assembly representative who was later elected mayor of Pau, the Lacq discovery was a “godsend” that transformed the city from a backwater administrative seat and sleepy winter resort into an important commercial and industrial center.132 Elf-Aquitaine’s colonization of the Southwest in the 1950s and 1960s spurred the development of chemical and energy firms that employed 20 percent of Pau’s industrial workforce.133 Hosting the Tour became, in some ways, more of a burden than a benefit for Pau’s hotels and restaurants. By the 1970s, many of the downtown hotels that lodged the Tour caravan each year had joined national hotel chains. Although lodging a cycling team during the race’s stay bestowed a measure of local recognition, many of Pau’s hotels relied on their national chains to refer customers to them and generate publicity outside the region.134 More significantly, local hotels and restaurants came to depend on business travelers rather than on tourists. Hosting the Tour’s caravan became somewhat of an inconvenience. Tour planners reserved entire hotels up to a year in advance but only for a single night, which often disrupted the travel plans of business people visiting the town. In hotels that lodged cycling teams, Tour organizers demanded that owners close their restaurants and other facilities to outside customers to allow riders to recuperate and dine in privacy. Frequently, the Tour’s entourage requested special security arrangements in their hotels, and hotel restaurants had to accommodate the special dietary needs and strange dining schedules of the cyclists, which often required hiring additional hotel staff during the race’s stay.135 Because of these factors, the Tour’s arrival often disrupted the normal operations of Pau’s hotels and restaurants and resulted in lost revenues and business.136

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Town officials instead used the Tour’s passage to publicize important local initiatives to the nation. In 1969 and 1970, Pau cooperated with the nearby town of Mourenx to host the Tour. Beginning in 1956, Elf-Aquitaine had subsidized the construction of Mourenx as a brand-new, planned, ultramodern urban center to house the thousands of workers at the Lacq production facilities.137 Pau and Mourenx arranged the Tour’s visits to celebrate the close ties between the two towns— as well as between the two towns and Elf-Aquitaine— and to acquaint the rest of France with Mourenx. The 1969 Mourenx finish became one of the Tour’s legendary stages: Eddy Merckx’s astounding victory sealed the first of his five Tour victories and earned Merckx the nickname “Cannibal” in recognition of the way he devoured his opponents on the road to Mourenx. Pau employed the Tour’s media coverage on other occasions, as well, such as to announce the grand openings of the Palais des Sports athletic complex in 1991, the Zénith concert hall in 1992, and the Palais des Congrès conference facility in 1999. In the postwar era, as its economy transformed, Pau enjoyed a prolonged “love affair” with the Tour that grew beyond commercialism and touristic promotion. The race’s prominent place in Pau’s summer sporting calendar exemplified how local popular culture evolved. The Palois abandoned the English-inspired sporting culture that had been a central component of the local identity. A comparison of a visitor’s guidebook produced by Pau’s tourism office in 1932 to promotional materials and press releases disseminated in recent years reveals how the local populace embraced a new sporting culture after the Second World War in which modern, popular sports like cycling, soccer, basketball, and rugby figured highly. In its 1932 guidebook, Pau’s tourism office devoted two of the twelve chapters to sport. The guidebook featured lengthy descriptions of Pau’s English-inspired, amateur sporting scene, which was dominated by the wealthy elite that wintered in Pau. A discussion of the town’s famous fox hunts and hunting-dog kennels spanned two pages, and the guide featured several pages of photographs depicting the hunts and the hunting grounds. The guide devoted two pages to winter horse-jumping competitions in Pau and two pages to the town’s Wright Brothers– founded flying school. It also included descriptions of Pau’s annual dog show, the numerous golf courses in the area, local tennis courts, and polo competitions organized by the “foreign colony.”138 By the 1990s, the focus of Pau’s sporting culture had shifted to predominantly popular, professional sports. Locally produced promotional materials trumpeted the victories of Pau’s professional teams such as the Élan Béarnais, a four-time champion of the French basketball league since the 1970s; the Section Paloise, a three-time champion of the French professional rugby league;

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and the Football Club de Pau, which climbed to the French first-division soccer league in 1995. By 2014, the city’s official Internet site included no mention of fox hunting, flying schools, or polo. The site listed the Tour de France in first place, however, just before the Grand Prix automobile race, as part of Pau’s local sporting heritage and declared that the Béarnais capital is “on the podium” of towns that have welcomed the Tour the most frequently.139

* The history of the Tour in its host towns sheds light on how Pau and Brest engaged the broader world and participated in the construction of France’s evolving national culture. Eugen Weber formulated a classic model of how France’s contemporary national culture emerged during the Third Republic. In Weber’s analysis, the centralized state played the key role in transforming France’s traditional, regional cultures and in disseminating modern, “Parisian” culture to the provinces by building schools, railroads, a modern army, and a politically active and republican-minded electorate.140 Although historians correctly stress the crucial function of Paris and the centralized state as disseminators of common cultural practices and traditions, other forces also shaped France’s popular culture. The case studies of Pau and Brest illustrate how provincial communities contextualized a national cultural institution in different ways and used it for their own ends. In Brest, a town ravaged by war, the Tour developed into a novel cultural conduit and mode of commercial communication. Younger generations of provincial Breton leaders used the race’s ever-growing media coverage to promote their integration into the national, European, and global economies in new ways. Pau valued the Tour as a tool to restore its position in the evolving global tourism industry. As Pau developed a more diversified economy, the original commercial purpose of the Tour receded to the background. The Palois paid the Tour to visit each year because the community cherished the event as part of its annual summer festival calendar. The Tour should be understood as a national and global phenomenon that was largely experienced— and constructed— on a local level. The continuous and complex negotiations between the Parisian organizers and the stage towns, which played themselves out in the newspapers, chambers of commerce, and city halls of twenty different French cities each year, heavily influenced the Tour’s development. The construction of the Tour’s commercial and cultural traditions was a continuous but rather uneven process that was strongly influenced by the changing interests of local communities and that was intimately tied to their evolving identities and economies.

6

The Tour’s Globalizing Agenda in the Television Age

Greg LeMond was the first non-European to win the Tour de France. French television captured the moment in 1986 when the young, dirty-blond Nevadan mounted the podium on the Champs-Élysées. Paris mayor Jacques Chirac awkwardly squeezed LeMond’s hand, passed him a yellow jersey, and helped the new champion pull the shirt over his torso. To LeMond’s right, second-place finisher and teammate Bernard Hinault, the French five-time winner of the Tour, grinned sheepishly, shuffled from foot to foot, stood with hands on hips staring at the ground, and chatted distractedly with bystanders as the American national anthem played over the loudspeaker. The French television announcer, Robert Chapatte, recognized that the American’s victory was an “historic moment” that heralded a potential passing of the torch to a new, foreign generation. The announcers invited a former LeMond-Hinault teammate, Frenchman Marc Madiot, to comment during the ceremony. Madiot concluded that although LeMond prevailed, the 1986 Tour should have had “two victors” because Hinault had “done at least as much as Greg to win it.” “We have to respect the American, I think,” conceded Chapatte.1 The reactions to LeMond’s crowning moment captured the ambivalence with which the French faced professional road cycling’s ongoing globalization and the prospect of declining French fortunes in the Tour. Following Hinault’s final yellow jersey in 1985, the French endured decades during which no French rider won the Tour. The American rider’s victory confirmed, however, that France’s national bicycle race remained in the vanguard of the sport’s globalization. Globalization in the postwar era instigated a new kind of interconnectedness, especially in the Western world. The rise of novel regimes of mass consumption and leisure, growing economic interdependence, ever-more-

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complex, voluminous, and intertwined networks of economic and cultural interaction, and the maturation of new technologies such as airline travel, telecommunications, and the Internet sparked this sea change. These trends initiated quantitative and qualitative changes in the way that people interacted across distances.2 International contact and interaction became more deeply embedded in everyday life in the electronic age. Global mass tourism and increasing migration in the postwar era created new human diasporas and enhanced awareness of cultural and social practices among disparate societies. At the same time, electronic mass media and communications facilitated instant conversation among people separated by national and natural boundaries and allowed them to consume media content simultaneously, in real time. Furthermore, the mass consumer and leisure revolutions that characterized France’s “Thirty Glorious Years” occurred around the world, albeit at different times and paces in different regions, with the result that global networks of business, marketing, production, and consumption broadened and deepened. Together, these phenomena led to ever-growing exchanges of ideas, language, taste, practices, and culture that transpired beyond the contexts of locality, nation, or region. Sport held a significant place in the emerging global cultural economy after the Second World War. Communication technologies like television and the Internet transformed well-established international sporting events like the World Cup soccer tournament and the Olympic Games into intimate shared experiences for hundreds of millions of spectators around the planet.3 Phenomena such as South Koreans in Philadelphia watching the 1988 Seoul Olympics via satellite feed epitomize the growing disjuncture between place and experience brought about by globalization, as well as the significant place of sport in fostering the novel networks of identity and community that have become possible in the digital age.4 Moreover, sports, like other industries, took on global proportions in the postwar era. The development of worldwide broadcasting engendered new transnational business structures and relationships of commercial interest among athletics, industry, and the media that linked professional sport throughout the world. Increasingly fluid international exchanges of athletes accompanied such commercial linkages, especially in global sports like soccer, baseball, and cycling.5 The Tour’s evolution as a business and sporting event mirrored these trends, and the event’s organizers pursued an agenda that took advantage of them. As the television economy of professional sports matured, Tour organizers crafted the race into a made-for-television spectacle that showered publicity on its biggest corporate sponsors, continually expanded the event’s

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viewership, and transformed the Tour into a worldwide television event. As these transitions occurred, some of the characteristics that had differentiated the business of French sport from those of other Western nations disappeared. The context of the nation did not disappear, however, as the Tour became a global phenomenon.6 The Tour’s particularly French character, qualities, structures, and cultural symbolism were mimicked, reproduced, and disseminated outside France. The race’s masters exerted a powerful influence on the rules, ethics, competitive structure, commercialization, and scheduling of professional road cycling, which by the 1980s had become a global professional sport with numerous Tour-inspired races around the world to fill the competition calendar. During this time, too, Tour organizers courted participants and sponsors from regions outside the heart of European professional cycling, including the United States, Central and South America, Eastern Europe, and Australia. Paradoxically, this influx of new blood brought an end to the overwhelming French predominance of the Tour and its commerce but at the same time helped to promote the association of Frenchness with professional cycling outside Europe. 1. The Persistent Power of the Press Until the late twentieth century, the printed press remained the medium in which most spectators outside France followed the Tour. The medium continued to play a powerful role in establishing and disseminating the event’s quintessentially French image and character around the world. The fact that extensive television coverage of the race did not exist, except in a handful of European markets, until the late 1980s helps to explain this trend. Tour press coverage outside France expanded significantly and developed greater nuance and complexity after the Second World War. An examination of English-language press in the United States and Britain reveals that mass print media conveyed deep knowledge of the Tour to readers and fans on two continents. In other words, in their daily newspapers and magazines, foreign readers followed race narratives, but also learned about the event’s rituals, stars, history, controversies, commercial structure, and central place in French popular culture. Thus, the press played a central role in developing abroad a fairly refined, profound understanding of the event and its meaning to the French. This deep knowledge of the Tour abroad promoted the association of the race, as well as its values, meanings and rituals, with all of professional cycling. Only in the late 1980s and 1990s did television and the Internet rival newspapers as the global Tour’s primary media outlet. In the postwar era, foreign press coverage of the Tour resembled more

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and more that found in French newspapers. Before the Second World War, newspapers outside professional cycling’s core countries in Western Europe wrote copy using wired or mailed press releases and firsthand accounts offered by shipbound travelers months after the fact. Frequently, wired or mailed press releases were written by Paris-based general correspondents who were not sports reporters, did not witness the race in person, and had little expert knowledge of the Tour. After the war, hundreds of foreign journalists joined the Tour caravan and followed the race in person for extended periods of time.7 Often, they rode in the same vehicles, slept in the same hotels, ate in the same restaurants, and took in the same French radio and television coverage of the event as their French counterparts. Just as the Tour and other French road races were the proving grounds on which the cream of world professional cycling honed its skills and mettle, the media caravan of the Tour became an academy in which foreign journalists gained a profound understanding of the event and its French journalistic conventions, which they then conveyed to their readership at home.8 Journalists offered their English-language readers extensive commentaries on the complex, impenetrable tactics and strategies of cycling, a sport that, to the uninitiated, appears to have little of either. Such commentaries developed in foreign readers a basic understanding of an inherently arcane sport. Perhaps most perplexing to new fans of the Tour and other multistage races is that competitors rarely race their hardest or pedal their fastest. Even top stars vying for the Tour crown spend most of the three-week event tucked safely behind their teammates and exert themselves only for brief stretches of time during a handful of the twenty or more stages. In an article in the Times of London summarizing the first four days of the 1967 Tour, Ronald Faux discussed why none of the Tour favorites had bothered to compete with one another, and why lesser cyclists seemed to break away from the pack without being chased down by the stronger ones. Faux explained that the stars were “watching each other like hawks” in case of unexpected tactics and resting in their teammates’ slipstreams to save strength for later duels with each other. In fact, Faux pointed out, for the sake of energy conservation and aerodynamic efficiency, the whole peloton planned to pedal shoulder to shoulder at a relatively leisurely pace for most of the early stages. Faux also highlighted the crucial role of team managers and coaches, who drive behind the pack, relay food and information to the team, and decide on race strategies and tactics. Only on the orders of a team manager would a star participate in a breakaway in the early stages of the race.9 John Wilcockson explored this theme, as well, in his preview of the 1981 Tour in the Times. Because the first week of the Tour, to be raced in the mountains and hills of southern France,

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would be hot, dry, and exhausting, little racing would occur in the second week of flatland stages. Instead, Wilcockson warned his readers that most riders would spend the eight middle stages of the Tour recuperating and building up their strength reserves for the grueling Alpine stages in the event’s final week, including the decisive Alpe d’Huez climb.10 Novelist Robert Daley covered the Tour de France and other European sports for the New York Times for nearly a decade in the 1950s and 1960s. Daley’s work painted American newspaper readers a detailed, intimate, and compelling portrait of the Tour as an athletic event and cultural phenomenon. In a piece about “Mr. Average Bike Racer” in the 1961 Tour, Daley described the race experience, physiognomy, and career trajectory of a typical, hypothetical Tour participant. During a flat stage Daley covered, which ran between the Pyrenees and the Alps, Mr. Average did not race but “pedaled easily . . . gossiped with his pals in the pack, and ate constantly” to rebuild his strength after strenuous Alpine climbs. He “weighs about 140 pounds,” is covered in cuts, bruises, and scars from crashes, and is “thin and wiry, except for his thighs, which are enormous” and “shaved smooth as a girl’s.” Mr. Average’s “metabolism is so abnormal it borders on the freakish. His heart probably beats only about forty times a minute.” His physical gifts allow him to “pedal swiftly over high mountain passes where the air is so thin that a non-bike rider would have trouble climbing a flight of stairs.” Mr. Average consumes food and liquid constantly while pedaling to provide enough calories for the ride—“sandwiches, fruits, chickens and two pounds of sugar mixed with just enough water to make a thick syrup.” To sate his hunger or thirst, Mr. Average “is not above snatching food and drink out of the hands of spectators” and “flings bottles, chicken bones and the like over his shoulder without regard.” Often, Mr. Average rides all day long without stopping and “brags constantly about how good he is.” He “may earn $100,000 or more a year” and will “buy a heavy insurance policy on himself ” in case of careerending injury, since he crashes five or six times a year. To his team employers, Mr. Average’s celebrity is as important as his physical talents since “his name will draw fans to velodromes [and] is worth plenty to the apéritif, television or refrigerator company to whose team he belongs.” Due to the rigors of the profession, Mr. Average “won’t win much after about 34 but he can keep going on reputation until 40 or more.”11 English-language readers learned much about the broader cultural context of the Tour in France, as well, which was important to developing the uniquely “French” character of the race in their imaginations. American sportswriters described in detail the daily routine of the Tour as a sporting spectacle. John Hess, writing for the New York Times in 1966, described a

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typical Alpine morning for the Tour, which he characterized as a “moving circus about one hundred miles long, all honky-tonk except for the band of sallow heroes in the middle.” After leaving Bourg d’Oisans, near Grenoble, at 11 a.m., following the departure of the publicity caravan, the pack pedaled through Alpine valleys toward the mountain climbs “with white torrents roaring down the mountainsides from the melting snows.” Readers also gained a sense of the excitement of a typical race day in the mountains in Hess’s article. Race drama commenced as the pack began the first climb over the col de la Croix de Fer and several riders, including British contender Tommy Simpson, crashed and lost time, but continued to race. The pack disintegrated as strong climbers pushed the pace and weaker ones faltered and fell behind. Simpson sprinted into the lead over the second climb, the col du Télégraphe, but was later caught by several Spaniards, who Hess noted were renowned for their climbing skills. Spectators crowded the mountain ascents where they had “huddled since dawn for a glimpse of the Tour.” On the final major climb, the col du Galibier, Simpson faltered and fell back into the pack of other race favorites that included French stars Raymond Poulidor and Jacques Anquetil, the five-time Tour champion. Spanish veteran Julio Jiménez pocketed the equivalent of US $2,000 for reaching the Galibier pass first, while Simpson, who collided with a motorcycle and crashed for a second time on the Galibier descent, crossed the finish line in eighteenth place, bleeding profusely, and was awarded the prize for unluckiest rider of the day.12 Simpson’s injuries forced him to abandon the race the next day. American readers also gained a feel for the Tour’s commercial culture. Frequently, writers placed readers in the position of on-site fans to convey the experience of the publicity caravan’s passage. Readers of the Los Angeles Times learned about the experience of the roadside spectator as the publicity caravan passed. “It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen,” explained columnist Mike Littwin. An hour before the race . . . a caravan of trucks, vans and motorcycles and cars equipped with sirens, flashing lights and loud speakers takes to the route the cyclists will soon follow. . . . Samples or written material are tossed to the crowds lining the route. There are even products for sale. At the end of the route . . . the vehicles pass by with a commercial message read over the loudspeaker. It’s a circus.13

Stanley Meisler’s depiction of the 1984 Tour as a “Gallic Carnival” in Blaye, a town outside Bordeaux, confirmed Littwin’s impressions to Los Angeleans. “Frankly commercial, the [Tour’s publicity] vans stormed down the street, their loudspeakers bellowing out the nature of their wares,” wrote Meisler.

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Most represented sports or comics publishing houses, offering special promotion packets of old periodicals and a new Tour de France souvenir cap for 20 francs. Others sold more related goods, like miniature model bikes or water cans that can be hooked to a bicycle. Some of the vans screeched to a stop, ejecting a salesman who ranted to the crowd with his packets, selling as many as he could before scrambling back into the van as it lurched off. Other vans threw out free samples of boxed orange drink or canned tea. Others . . . [pushed] things that have nothing to do with cycling and the tour [sic]— an insecticide, France’s new high-speed trains, a breakfast cereal, Japanese electronics, banks, a skin spray.14

Such evocative passages revealed in detail to American readers the Tour’s overtly commercial character. Foreign papers also conveyed to their readers the debates about overcommercialization of the Tour that transpired in the French press. In a 1958 article on the victory of Luxembourger Charly Gaul, for example, the New York Times aptly described to its readers the Tour’s successful formula, paraphrasing language often employed by the Tour’s organizers: the event was a “unique mixture of sporting event, mammoth publicity campaign, and popular circus.” Yet the article questioned whether such overt commercialism undermined the sporting character of the race. The reporter lamented that witnessing dancer and film star Ludmilla Tchérina, who was on hand to kiss the cheeks of Charly Gaul and was festooned with “the name of a leading insurance company across her comely bosom,” seemed “vulgar,” like imagining “[cricket hero Fred] Trueman bowling in a Lord’s Test match with ‘Persil’ written all over him.”15 Following the 1966 Tour, the New York Times quoted Tour Director Jacques Goddet’s venomous indictment of sponsors’ deleterious effect on competitiveness. Goddet attributed “unspecified ‘misdeeds’” in the 1966 race to “the very nature of the system that accentuates more and more a certain form of corruption, the introduction of habits born of submission to financial interests.” The Times journalist, John Hess, speculated correctly that Goddet would end corporate sponsorship of racers and reinstitute the national team formula the following year.16 Michael Katz, writing for the New York Times, argued that omnipresent, oppressive Tour marketing was endemic of a broader hypercommercialism in French popular culture. Katz joked, “It is said that if the French ever send an astronaut to the moon, chances are that he will have ‘Perrier’ or ‘Bic’ inscribed on his space helmet.”17 Important to the emerging French image of the Tour was the style of writing developed by English-language journalists in their Tour coverage. As with their French counterparts, British and American journalists employed a self-referential, historical style of coverage, which helped to establish a sense

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of continuing tradition around the Tour outside France. For example, in a report on the 1958 Tour, Robert Daley evoked tragic heroes of the Tour’s past to convey to contemporary readers the compelling qualities of failure and its centrality to the Tour’s French traditions. Daley described the collapse during the previous year’s Tour of 1958 favorite Spaniard Federico Bahamontes, who famously flung his cycling shoes into the gutter in an act of self-loathing after he quit the race during the ninth stage. The New York Times journalist summoned great failures of the past to contextualize Bahamontes’s failure. Daley recalled Italian rider Pierre Brambilla, who buried his bicycle in his garden in disgust after he became the first cyclist to lose his lead on the last day of racing during the 1947 Tour, won by Frenchman Jean Robic in a dramatic breakaway on the road to the Paris finish line. Daley also mentioned “Giant of the Road” Eugène Christophe’s amazing feat during the 1913 Tour. After he suffered a broken front fork on his bicycle while traversing the col du Tourmalet, Christophe “trotted nine miles to a blacksmith shop and hammered out a replacement” part for himself, finished the stage, but lost his chance to win the Tour’s overall title.18 In a 1991 article explaining why battles in the exhausting mountain stages decide so many Tours, Samuel Abt recounted the famous tale of French Tour champion Octave Lapize’s condemnation of race founder Henri Desgrange as an “assassin” for incorporating steep Pyrenean mountain climbs in the itinerary for the first time in 1910.19 So famous were certain Tour locales, especially legendary mountain climbs, that the English-language press wove mention of them into articles that had nothing to do with the race, thereby linking the Tour to tourism in France’s geo-historical regions, much as French journalists did. For example, in a piece evaluating “popular legends” about the Auvergne region, Patrick Brogan, writing for the Times of London, described the area’s most stunning geologic feature and site of many dramatic Tour battles, the 10,000-year-old Puy de Dôme lava dome that looms above the Massif Central near ClermontFerrand, as being famous because “the Tour de France labours up it every year.”20 In an article on tourism around Carpentras, the Times noted that Mont Ventoux, a stunning, windswept outcrop that towers over the celebrated vineyards of Provence, is a “stiff climb” even for tourists riding in cars and is often included in the Tour de France as part of time trial stages.21 English-language newspapers alluded frequently to the incredible popularity of the Tour in the provinces and highlighted the event’s character as a primarily rural sporting event. Linked to analyses of the Tour’s provincial popularity were discussions of the race’s unique spectator experience. Paradoxically, in the same passages in which the foreign journalists bemoaned the event’s enthrallment by modern commercialism, they characterized the Tour

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as a throwback to older, premodern days of sports fandom, before pay-towatch stadiums that separated physically and spiritually spectators from the contests they observed. The Times recreated a hypothetical provincial scene in 1966 in the following poetic prose: The Tour de France . . . plunges into the foothills of the Pyrenees. . . . The route in the depth of the country, 37 miles from nowhere, is lined with avid spectators. Granny, in her shiny black vest, gnarled and shawled like something out of the French Revolution, has brought her favourite armchair out of the cottage to sit beside the road. The hayfields are deserted for miles around, pitchforks thrown down . . . a French schoolboy shrieks with laughter at the incredible ignorance of the British journalist who wants to know why everyone is chanting “Pou-Pou” (the nickname of popular French rider Raymond Poulidor).22

The foreign press also highlighted, in much the same way as the French newspapers, the intimacy of the event, with fans lining the roads as the peloton passed, close enough to touch their favorite stars. Foreign journalists paid much attention to the frequent physical interactions between fans and riders on country roads, especially those that influenced the race action. They commented on the common practice of fans pushing tired riders up mountain climbs or dumping cool water on their heads; the overabundance of crowds in tiny villages and atop mountain passes that choked roads, inhibiting the peloton’s passage; accidental collisions between fans and riders, such as the one during the 1999 Tour between a picture-snapping fan and Giuseppe Guerini that nearly ruined the Italian cyclist’s victory on l’Alpe d’Huez; and occasional instances of crowd violence against riders, such as the incident during the 1950 Tour when Basque peasants thrust umbrellas into the spokes of an Italian rider to foil his victory.23 Foreign journalists strove to place the Tour in the broader context of France’s evolving postwar popular culture, as well. They developed a body of stock metaphors, analogies, tropes, and stories to convey to their readers the central importance of the Tour to French sporting culture. One journalist, writing in 1984, even commented on the work of historian Theodore Zeldin, who highlighted France’s unique love affair with the bicycle since the fin-desiècle, and invoked Roland Barthes’s classic 1957 treatise, Mythologies, which characterized the Tour as one of French popular culture’s central, socially constructed mythological reference points.24 Above all, journalists in the United Kingdom and the United States tried to convey the intense popularity of the Tour in France in sporting terms that their English-speaking readers could comprehend. American journalists

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characterized the Tour as a “combination of World Series and World’s Fair,” “the World Series, Kentucky Derby and Rose Bowl game all rolled into one,” and “France’s three-week version of the Super Bowl.”25 British journalists compared the Tour to running marathons, although “marathon runners have it easy” compared to cyclists, and to “the Cup Final, Wimbledon, and Lord’s [site of England’s most important cricket matches] rolled into one and put on wheels.”26 Foreign newspapers often juxtaposed the turbulence of French politics with the regularity of the Tour’s long-established summer traditions. American journalists frequently alluded to the fiction that rabid popular interest in the Tour “[suspended] national interest in politics and everything else.”27 Even during the constitutional crisis of 1958, which resulted in the collapse of France’s Fourth Republic and the return of Charles de Gaulle to power, the French were so enthralled by the Tour that they would be “much too busy” to think of revolution.28 A Chicago Tribune piece on the 1986 Tour quoted a Red Smith quip: “An army from Mars could invade France . . . but if it happened during the Tour de France, nobody would notice.”29 Sports writers occasionally characterized the Tour as an antidote for the ever-evolving ills of modernity. Los Angeles Times columnist Dick Hyland characterized French youth of the 1950s as “surrounded by an atmosphere of futility and defeat,” which he believed helped to explain the popularity of French Tour champions like Louison Bobet. Hyland, repeating a theme often raised in the French and English-language press, compared the popularity and renown of Tour stars to the relative namelessness of French political leadership, especially during the Fourth Republic. He related the results of a survey of youth opinion performed by L’Équipe that pointed out that 97 percent of young men entering the French army knew who had won the Tour de France, while only 30 percent knew the name of their president.30 Although the French adored their Tour champions, they treasured even more profoundly riders who demonstrated the ability to endure and conquer intense pain with spirit and panache. Like their French compatriots, American and British journalists highlighted to their readers the uniquely French way of understanding the event as a metaphor that celebrated enduring intense human suffering as noble triumph, even in defeat.31 English-language journalists scattered the linked themes of pain, suffering, survival, and triumph throughout their analyses of the Tour. In a 1982 Los Angeles Times piece on Jonathan Boyer, the first American to participate in the Tour, the American cyclist rhapsodized on why he was fit to compete in the race: “To be a cyclist, you have to be someone . . . who is tough, someone who enjoys pain, someone who thinks going through pain will help them. I always felt pain was

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good for me.” Boyer explained that he would retire from the Tour soon, but not because he would never taste victory— the American never contended for the title, and his best showing was a twelfth place finish in the 1983 Tour, nearly twenty minutes behind winner Frenchman Laurent Fignon. Rather, he would quit when he no longer had the ability to “suffer.” “I can’t justify the pain any more. . . . I can’t suffer like I used to do.”32 New York Times reporter Robert Daley explained the link between heroism, suffering, and noble defeat in the French imagination. In a 1960 piece on aging champion Louison Bobet, Daley explained that the Rennes native’s lionization arose from his dramatic failures and monumental suffering in the Tours that preceded his three consecutive Tour titles from 1953 to 1955. In the 1948 race, Bobet became “the hero of the Tour [even though] he had not won” after riding his bicycle so hard in the Alps that the frame snapped in half.33 The following year, before abandoning the race, Bobet attempted to pedal through saddle sores so severe that he developed an anthrax infection. In a 1962 article on Norman Jacques Anquetil’s third Tour victory, Daley also dwelled on the reasons why the French crowd adored perennial loser Raymond Poulidor, nicknamed “The Eternal Second,” instead of dominant champion Anquetil. Daley explained, “To finish first [like Anquetil] is splendid . . . but much less important here than in the United States.” Poulidor broke his hand more than a week before the Tour’s end and finished the race even though he could not grip his handlebars: “To finish so well with such a handicap seemed to the [French] crowd as wonderful as victory itself.”34 The Times columnist David Miller concurred, pointing out that the “enviable French concept of sport . . . holds that it is preferable to finish second with style than first with expediency.”35 Into the 1980s, print journalism remained a powerful medium for elaborating for English-language readers the uniquely French conception of the Tour, its meaning, and its broader cultural context in France. Newspapers helped to perpetuate and expand the global community of reader fans of the Tour at a time when radio, television, and the Internet had not yet taken on a sizable role in transmitting race coverage outside continental Western Europe. Even in neighboring Britain in the early 1980s, television coverage remained sparse. There, the BBC broadcast the Tour only during weekend highlight shows of twenty to forty minutes, and programmers mingled Tour highlights with updates of exotic, arcane sports such as the “Strongbow World Superman Contest” and “Athletics from Leningrad.”36 In the United States, the CBS network broadcast occasional weekend Tour highlights shows during the early- and mid-1980s.

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2. Media Deregulation, the Tour, and the Television Economy of Professional Sports François Mitterrand’s Socialist government reversed many of the state’s longstanding media policies and embarked on a program of managed deregulation in 1982, when the Socialist-led National Assembly declared that audiovisual communication must be “free and plural.”37 France’s three state broadcasting companies— TF1, Antenne 2, and FR3, and a network of twelve regional stations (Antenne 2 and FR3 were renamed France 2 and France 3 respectively in 1992)— remained in operation and continued to be funded by a combination of advertising revenues and higher taxes on television sets.38 The state retained control over the physical infrastructure of broadcasting but removed all direct government control over media content.39 Very quickly, private networks, including subscription television service Canal Plus, germinated. The volume of sports-related viewership and programming increased markedly as privatization advanced. Sports coverage on French televisions rose from 793 hours in 1980 to 33,000 in 2000.40 The total sports budget for the three state-founded stations and Canal Plus quadrupled to two billion francs between 1987 and 1995. By 1994, Canal Plus devoted nearly 25 percent of its overall budget to sports.41 In a 1990 poll, 44 percent of the French population responded that they watched the Olympic Games on television, 32 percent watched soccer’s World Cup, 24 percent watched the Tour de France, and 18 percent watched tennis’s French Open.42 The Tour’s television audience and on-air coverage expanded tremendously during this period, as well (see appendix, table 3: The Tour and Television, 1960 – 2009). France 2 and France 3 combined their resources to cover the Tour and to retain the race’s French television rights. The two stations increased the volume of their Tour-related broadcasts from 38 hours in 1986 to 110 hours in 1995. During the 1994 Tour, France 2/France 3 captured, on average, more than 50 percent of the total estimated television audience.43 Television stations from around the globe sought to purchase television footage of the race, as well. By 1986, according to the organizers, the Tour de France emerged as the world’s largest annual televised sporting event and the third-largest television spectacle overall behind the Summer Olympics and soccer’s World Cup. Tour organizers estimated that the race’s worldwide potential viewing audience increased from approximately fifty million in 1980, to more than 150 million in 1983, and to more than a billion people in seventytwo countries by 1986. The size of the Tour’s actual worldwide viewership was likely much smaller than organizers believed. Nevertheless, in 1997, television viewers in 150 countries watched the Tour.44

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The privatization of television led to a radical restructuring of the Tour’s finances. Private broadcasting companies competed fiercely with one another to secure broadcast rights contracts for major sporting events like the Tour. As a result, television rights fees paid to the Société du Tour de France grew from twelve million francs in 1990 to eighty-five million francs in 1998. These payments represented an increasing portion of the race’s overall budget. In 1960, French television’s payments to the race organizers accounted for only 1.5 percent of the Tour’s projected budget. Rights fees, however, accounted for 26 percent of the budget in 1992 and for more than a third of the budget in 1998. In 1998, France 2/France 3 was the largest single contributor to the Tour’s income. Host-town subventions, which accounted for up to half the event’s revenues in the 1940s and 1950s, amounted to only 11 percent of the Tour’s budget in 1999.45 The emergence of television as the Tour’s primary financial motor mirrored trends in other professional sports in France46 and elsewhere. European soccer depended ever more heavily on television-based business models as media deregulation advanced. In France, team revenues relied heavily on ticket sales and municipal subsidies until the 1980s. Between 1984 and 2003, the number of hours of soccer broadcast in France ballooned from 989 to 56,118, nearly all of which was on private, subscription television.47 By 2002, television accounted for 51 percent of the First Division/Ligue 1’s revenues.48 In Britain, soccer match attendance declined by half from the 1950s to the 1970s.49 In 1992, the richest and most competitive clubs split from the 104-year-old Football League and formed the “Premier League” to profit more effectively from the evolving sports marketplace. The new alignment included popular, powerful teams like Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool, and Tottenham Hotspur. The Premier League secured lucrative, worldwide broadcasting contracts. By 2007, 85 percent of Premier League’s £595 million in revenues came from broadcasting fees.50 Overseas fees represented 37 percent of all Premier League broadcasting rights contracts in 2011.51 American sport developed in a different context than in Europe, but with similar results in the long run. America’s media networks evolved as private, for-profit businesses and injected overt commercialism into broadcasting earlier than in Europe. American law permitted professional sports franchises to collude and engage in monopolistic business practices.52 Fear and ambivalence shaped American professional sports’ early relationship with television broadcasting, as the case of baseball illustrates. Attendance at ballparks declined dramatically between 1950 and 1970 as Americans retreated to the suburbs and spent their leisure time and incomes on other pursuits and

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consumer goods.53 Franchise owners enforced “blackout” rules that forbade local stations from televising games to boost attendance, to little effect. Television emerged as baseball’s commercial savior. The gigantic audiences and rights fees generated by the televised World Series changed baseball owners’ minds. The 1951 World Series drew 70 million viewers, more spectators than had witnessed the event over its entire 48-year history.54 Between 1961 and 1990, television rights fees became the most important component of baseball revenues. The revenues from Major League Baseball’s domestic television contracts, divided equally among franchises, rose from $9.4 million per year in 1961 to more than $700 million in 2012.55 By the 1980s, television emerged as the primary commercial engine of the Tour de France and other sports throughout the Western world. At the same time, Félix Lévitan emerged as the Tour’s primary decision maker and initiated a process that would transform the race into a global commercial spectacle. Lévitan experimented with the event’s itinerary and invited competitors from new countries to participate in the Tour to enhance the spectacle’s international appeal. He expanded the Tour’s global television audience and courted more international race sponsorship. At the same time, the sport of competitive cycling expanded and the number of non-European professional riders and races ballooned. Amid these changes, the Tour solidified its position at the heart of world cycling. 3. Road Racing Abroad: The American Experience Road cycling grew into a major professional sport outside Europe beginning in the 1980s. The story of American attempts to create sustainable, Tour-like cycling events illustrates the growth of the sport beyond the European cycling heartland as well as the direct influences the Tour exerted on the evolution of professional racing outside France. In the early 1980s, American fascination with bicycle racing blossomed, as is evidenced by the mini-genre of cycling films that piqued public interest in the era. The 1979 film Breaking Away became a hit, was nominated for five Oscars, and won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. The film recounts the coming-of-age story of Dave Stoller, a Bloomington, Indiana, teenager so obsessed with Italian road racing and culture that he wore Cinzano-brand racing attire everywhere, rode his Italian racing bike incessantly, chided his friends and enemies with melodramatic but meaningless Italian phrases and gestures, and romanced his love interest with Italian arias. Breaking Away sparked the birth of a mini-genre of entertainment focused on the melodrama of road racing, including a shortlived, eponymous television series starring pop singer Shaun Cassidy as Dave

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Stoller. Between 1975 and 1986, the American press periodically mentioned rumors of an anticipated film version, never realized, of the 1973 Ralph Hurne novel, The Yellow Jersey, about an aging, retired cyclist lured back into competition to help his protégé win the Tour de France. Director Michael Cimino (The Deer Hunter) spent several summers in France beginning in 1975 scouting locations and planned to shoot scenes during the Tour de France to lend the film authenticity. Dustin Hoffman followed the Tour for several years in the early 1980s while preparing to play the lead role before the film’s financing finally fell through in 1985.56 Other notable and popular road racing movies in the United States included American Flyers (1985), which starred Kevin Costner and recounted the tale of two brothers training to compete in a Tour-style “Hell of the West” bicycle race in Colorado;57 director Tim Burton’s Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1985), in which the lead character awoke from a dream about winning the Tour de France on his magic, vintage Schwinn to discover that his beloved bicycle had been stolen; and Les Triplettes de Belleville (2003), an Oscar-nominated, French animated movie that features an orphan, Champion, who trained obsessively for years to compete in the Tour de France only to be kidnapped during the race by mobsters. American professional road racing’s rise accompanied the growing interest in competitive cycling and the Tour de France. New, multistage road races in the United States fashioned themselves after the grand French classic. Those involved in organizing and financing the new events, including the Coors Brewing Company, Donald Trump, and chemical giant DuPont, considered America to be a vast, possibly lucrative, and unexploited market for professional cycling. The United States Cycling Federation claimed that its membership tripled in the 1980s and that by the late 1980s, 85 million Americans considered themselves to be bike riders.58 Len Pettyjohn, a race promoter and team director whose amateur and professional cyclists participated in road races “all over the world,” explained, “Cycling in Europe is plateauing, not growing. . . . Europeans see major corporations getting involved in the United States [and] fear the power in the sport will shift [there].”59 Contemporary American road racing dates its birth to the Coors Classic stage race, which developed into a world-famous competition in the early 1980s. The Coors Classic devolved from the “Red Zinger” two-day amateur race, which was founded in 1975 by Celestial Seasonings herbal tea company head Mo Siegel, named after the company’s most popular herbal blend, and featured racing in the Boulder, Colorado, area. Organizers convinced Colorado beer giant Coors to sponsor the competition, renamed the race in 1979, and used the brewery’s seed money to expand the race into one of the world’s most well-known cycling contests. The Coors Classic grew to a week and a

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half of racing and offered prize money totaling $50,000, on par with secondtier stage races in Europe. The legendary 1981 edition pitted rising American professional star Greg LeMond, who became in 1986 the first American to win the Tour de France, against the vaunted Soviet national cycling team. The press narrative of the 1981 Coors Classic fit cleanly into the broader context of Cold War sporting competition. American journalists portrayed the Soviet team, comprised of racers who, technically, were amateurs but who nevertheless trained and competed year-round while on the state payroll, as an invincible, experienced juggernaut that had “never lost a race.”60 The Soviets had never before competed in America and arrived in Colorado still basking in the glory of the road racing gold medal won by team captain Sergei Sukhoruchenkov in the 1980 Moscow Summer Games. LeMond, a twenty-year-old who turned professional in 1979 due to the American boycott of the Moscow Olympics, trained in France and had demonstrated enormous potential on the European racing circuit. LeMond’s spectacular climbing talent ensured his victory in the race’s penultimate stage, the “Morgul-Bismarck” circuit race outside Boulder. Despite Soviet efforts to collude and physically block LeMond’s explosive uphill breakaway by forming a wall of swerving bicycles across the road, LeMond surged out of the main group and overtook Soviet rider and Olympic teampursuit gold medalist Yuri Kashirin for the race lead, which he maintained until the end of the Classic. Sports Illustrated characterized LeMond’s upset win as a victory of “Goldilocks” over the Soviet “Bears” and praised the Coors Classic as “the closest thing the U.S. has to the Tour de France.”61 Despite the event’s popularity and fame, the withdrawal of Coors Brewing Company from sponsorship led to the race’s demise in 1988.62 Nevertheless, American professional road racing continued to grow, especially on the East Coast, in the 1980s. The establishment of the Tour of America, Tour de Trump, and Tour DuPont competitions in the 1980s illustrates the rising popularity of stage racing and the growing corporate interest in sponsorship of the sport. Although none of these races survived past the mid-1990s, their histories highlight the significant influence of the Tour de France on the commercial strategies, tone, style, competitive structure, and spectator culture of American cycling. Tour de France organizers, including directors Félix Lévitan and Jean-Marie Leblanc, had direct roles in organizing the American “Tours.” They believed that growth of professional road racing in the United States would facilitate the ongoing globalization of the French Tour. These direct interactions facilitated ever-expanding exchanges of athletes, organizational expertise, sponsorship money, and fans between Europe and the United States that continue to the present day.

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The Tour of America was the most direct foray of the French into American stage race organization. In 1982, Félix Lévitan and several American business partners developed the idea of staging a Tour de France-like multistage race in the world’s largest, wealthiest media market, the northeastern corridor of the United States. At a November 1982 press conference in the American capital, Lévitan, accompanied by reigning Tour de France and 1980 world champion Bernard Hinault, announced that the three-day, four-stage “Tour of America” would race through Virginia and finish in Washington, D.C. The competition would coincide with the capital’s annual spring Cherry Blossom Festival. Racers would finish on the National Mall next to the Washington Monument. Lévitan would serve as the new event’s codirector. The $100,000 purse made the new event one of the world’s richest. Hinault promised to race in the Tour of America and to serve as an ambassador of professional cycling. “As the number one in this sport, I want to make it number one in this country also,” declared the French champion to the American press.63 The Tour de France inspired the Tour of America’s organization, logistics, and business plan. American press coverage during the months before the race pointed to the growing exchanges of athletes, sponsorship money, and administrative expertise between the new and old worlds. Organizers deemed Hinault’s presence in the Tour of America’s peloton to be crucial to the new event’s popular success. Also crucial was the inclusion of top European cycling teams and sponsors, which would add commercial and sporting clout to the new Tour. After consulting with the American comanager Rob Ingraham in Paris, Lévitan promised to lure eight top European teams to the race.64 Lévitan also signed agreements with French television and the American CBS network to broadcast several hours of live coverage of the event on both sides of the Atlantic. TV coverage would culminate with a real-time, nationwide broadcast of the race’s finish on the National Mall. The Tour de France codirector brought some of the French race’s sponsors to America for the new race. Most visible was Peugeot, which provided the official race cars that preceded the peloton, sirens and bullhorns screaming, into Washington, D.C. The American press paid significant attention to Jonathan Boyer, the only American star scheduled to participate in the race. A United Press International story published widely in the United States during the week before the Tour of America’s launch conveyed to readers a detailed analysis of Boyer’s professional biography. Boyer’s career trajectory became the model followed by most Americans who aspired to ride in the Tour de France and to make a living as a professional cyclist. Although he grew up in Utah and California, Boyer spent ten years living in France serving mainly as a domestique (support rider) for European professional teams while learning the ropes of pro-

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fessional riding. To earn his keep, the American rode in up to 180 races a year, which took a toll in injuries and exhaustion. Nevertheless, Boyer met with good success on the European circuit, placed near the top in several secondtier races, and earned an invitation from Bernard Hinault’s team to compete in the 1981 Tour de France. Now recognized as the top American road racer in the world, Boyer returned to the United States to lead an all-American professional team in the Tour of America. Boyer made it clear that although it was “great to see the United States getting interested in bike racing,” the lure of prize money drew him and other professionals to compete in the Tour of America.65 Local hosts’ expectations for the cultural and commercial impact of the American Tour mirrored those of European host communities. Fredericksburg, Virginia, the launching site for the race’s final stage, would “become, for the moment, a bike-racing mecca.” CBS would tape scenes of the stage’s start, which would transpire on Sunday, April 10, in front of Fredericksburg’s downtown Visitors Center, for rebroadcast during CBS Sports Sunday. The expected rewards for hosting the race were “incalculable” since “scenes of Fredericksburg [would] be broadcast to millions of Americans and Europeans, providing the city with spillover benefits for tourism.” To coincide with the Tour of America’s arrival, the city planned a “carnival of weekend activity,” dubbed “Let’s Get Physical Weekend,” perhaps in a nod to Olivia Newton-John’s 1981 pop hit. “Let’s Get Physical Weekend” would feature clogging, karate, and an Olympics-style competition between town merchants and the city council, as well as bands and food vendors. The race would start at noon, so that spectators could spill out of the pews onto the streets of Fredericksburg to watch.66 Fredericksburg’s newspaper, the Free Lance-Star, published a tonguein-cheek fan guide meant to educate local spectators about stage racing and how to act like a proper French spectator. “You’re part of an ‘elite’ group of some 220 million Americans who have never seen a ‘domestique’ blocking wind and foe alike in the name of fame and glory,” quipped journalist Steve Giegerich. The reporter explained the purposes of domestiques and team captains, how the winner of the Tour of America would be determined, and some of the race route’s highlights. Giegerich urged spectators to cheer with the “proper liquid refreshment in hand”: And that liquid refreshment must never, never . . . be a can of beer. For this is an occasion that demands the presence of a wine with a full bouquet. White wine is preferred and you’ll get high marks if the label ends with the letters eaux.

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The article explained to Fredericksburg readers the proper language and etiquette to be employed while spectating. Fans must never “emit an impassioned plea urging one’s favorite rider to get his you-know-what in gear.” Rather, since most of the riders in the race would be French, bystanders must “urge the cyclists to vitement (go faster),” “bid them bon chance (good luck),” and “wish them a fond adieu” when they have passed. Giegerich stipulated that “it is considered very, very tacky to poke sticks or any foreign objects into the bicycle spokes” of the contestants. Finally, Giegerich encouraged his readers to “enjoy the color and pageantry of the races [and] remember your brief French lesson.”67 In the end, the Tour of America failed to meet the hopes of organizers, fans, or competitors. Doubts about whether Bernard Hinault would participate in the race threatened to deprive the event of necessary “star power” and clouded the run-up to the event’s launch. Although Lévitan and Hinault promised repeatedly that the French Tour champion would compete, the classic, one-day Paris– Roubaix race was scheduled for the same day as the Tour of America’s final stage. Hinault’s sponsors insisted that he return to Europe to participate in the Paris– Roubaix, which robbed the fledgling Tour of America of its most famous participant and predicted winner.68 Instead, unknown Dutch professional Bert Oosterbosch won the race, while Jonathan Boyer (twenty-fourth place) and the American teams finished far back in the standings. The event did not draw enough popular interest. Torrential rains fell as the riders rolled through the final stage. An estimated 200,000 roadside spectators watched the three-day event, which was far fewer than the millions of spectators organizers had hoped to attract. Only 5,000 fans turned out to watch the contest in Fredericksburg, despite the excitement of “Let’s Get Physical Weekend.”69 Later American road races fared better than the Tour of America. U.S. cycling’s next great foray into stage racing was the brainchild of basketball commentator Billy Packer. Packer, scribbling on a napkin at an Indianapolis restaurant one evening in 1987, plotted out the broad strokes of a competition he initially dubbed the “Tour de New Jersey,” a road race from Manhattan to Atlantic City. The basketball commentator’s enthusiasm for the concept was noticed by billionaire real estate tycoon Donald Trump, who granted Packer an audience. Packer’s enthusiasm was infectious, and Trump promised to sponsor the event. Both men agreed that the new competition needed a more compelling name, one that would be recognized immediately around the world. Thus was born the Tour de Trump, a ten-day, 837-mile stage race down America’s Eastern Seaboard.70 Organizers staged the inaugural Tour de Trump in May 1989. Like the

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Tour of America, the Tour de Trump relied on growing exchanges of expertise, athletic talent, and corporate and media sponsorship between Europe and North America. Like its predecessor races, the Tour de Trump strove to mimic the Tour de France’s athletic structure and cultural “feel.” Sports Illustrated magazine declared the competition’s first edition a “smashing success.” The race’s relatively rich sponsorship and prize money—$750,000 from Trump to stage the event, and a total purse of $250,000 — was rich enough to entice two European professional teams to withdraw from the Tour of Spain, one of road racing’s three most important “Grand Tours,” to race in America. The Tour de Trump also drew the top American professionals, including 1986 Tour de France winner Greg LeMond, which added to public interest in the race. The European racers and fans who participated in and followed the Tour de Trump “loved it” and declared that the event “had the feeling of a European road race.” Rural Americans were drawn to the event as it passed through the Appalachians and Pennsylvania Dutch country, especially “wide-eyed schoolchildren” carrying hand-painted welcome signs, “elderly couples . . . toting American flags [waiting for the race] at the end of their driveways,” and “farmers caught in the traffic” caused by the Tour de Trump’s passage. The cycling community spoke optimistically of the Tour de Trump as “a future Tour de France” because of popular excitement, lucrative sponsorship deals, and the large purse.71 Despite such impressions, the first Tour de Trump experienced significant problems. The race’s final stage ended in controversy. An official motorcycle ushering leader Eric Vanderaerden around the time-trial course in Atlantic City led the racer onto the wrong street. The Belgian professional lost so much time returning to course that he was overtaken in the standings by Dag Otto Lauritzen, a former Norwegian paratrooper.72 Despite the seeming popularity of the race in rural America, urban spectators seemed uninterested in the Tour de Trump. The final stage’s race route, which wound past Trump-owned properties in Atlantic City, including the Trump Plaza Casino and the Trump Castle, drew only 10,000 spectators, many of whom were “winos.” Furthermore, despite the race’s rich purse, the Tour de Trump was still categorized as a “Pro-Am” (professional-amateur) race, which limited its appeal to top racing teams, since only fully professional races would be sanctioned by the UCI, international professional cycling’s governing body. Of the nineteen teams entered in the inaugural event, eleven were amateur or semiprofessional, including a squad sponsored by Sauna Diana, Amsterdam’s largest brothel.73 Donald Trump ended his financial support of the race in 1990, but a new corporate backer, DuPont, stepped in with $2 million per year in new spon-

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sorship money. Race organizers changed the name of the race in honor of its most important sponsor. Like the corporate sponsors of the Tour de France, DuPont’s interest in the American stage race stemmed from the conglomerate’s desire to use new, untried publicity tools to expand its name recognition. A DuPont marketing executive, Jack Conmy, called the company’s decision a “dollars-and-cents marketing decision” and characterized its investment in the Tour DuPont as a “bargain.” The company claimed that the American press clippings featuring DuPont’s image associated with the Tour weighed 29 pounds, and that for its sponsorship investment, the international conglomerate amassed global media exposure valued at nearly $70 million, almost all of which ($66 million) was categorized by DuPont as foreign publicity. “In 40 years in [media relations], I have never seen such concentrated, sustained and positive media coverage,” raved DuPont’s adman.74 Despite DuPont’s initial enthusiasm, the Tour DuPont’s chronic weaknesses hamstrung the event’s growth. The race’s “pro-am” status meant that professional cyclists who participated in the Tour DuPont could not gain points that would raise their world rankings. Thus, the race would “not be taken seriously in Europe.” Jean-Marie Leblanc, the Tour de France’s director and advisor to the Tours de Trump and DuPont in the early 1990s, and top stars like Greg LeMond urged the event’s organizers to exclude amateurs from the competition.75 Furthermore, despite significant television coverage of the race— the worldwide audience was estimated at 200 million76— American fan enthusiasm and roadside spectator interest in the event failed to spike significantly. Only in 1996, the race’s final year of existence, did the UCI upgrade the Tour DuPont to full professional status. The race attracted the world’s top professionals that year, but legal woes beset the organizers, which muddied the event’s image in the eyes of sponsor DuPont. The Tour’s owners, sports commentator Billy Packer and Michael Plant, head of the US Cycling Federation, sued each other over rights to the profits from the Tour DuPont as well as over a proposed Tour of China.77 DuPont also engaged the community of Greenville, South Carolina, in a public dispute over the local government’s antihomosexual personnel policies, and DuPont insisted that Tour organizers rescind their promise to bring the competition to the city.78 The chemical conglomerate withdrew its sponsorship of the Tour DuPont. Organizers, unable to secure adequate corporate sponsorship, canceled the 1997 race. The story of American road racing in the 1980s and 1990s demonstrates the process of professional cycling’s globalization in action. During this time, the sport expanded beyond the traditional Western European “core” of nations, and professional road racing established viable roots in North America,

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South America, and Australia. By the new millennium, riders from outside the sport’s “core” competed on a nearly equal footing with the European professionals. All the while, the Tour de France remained the most prestigious, lucrative, and athletically competitive bicycle race in the world. The American story epitomizes how the globalizing sport of bicycling modeled itself after the classic French Tour and aspired to mimic its form, business plans, and culture, albeit not always successfully. It also demonstrates how the Tour’s organizers catalyzed and exploited the sport’s globalization and how France’s “national bicycle race” remained at the heart of transnational exchanges of technical expertise and administrative personnel, sponsorship, and athletes. 4. The Tour on Global Television’s Stage The growth of professional cycling outside Europe and the Tour’s emergence as a major international television spectacle in the 1980s presented the race’s organizers with enticing business opportunities. Félix Lévitan spearheaded several initiatives meant to “globalize” the event’s sponsorship, fan base, and racer composition.79 Between 1980 and 1987, the STF expanded the number of teams and riders invited to compete in the race. The Tour invited thirteen teams totaling 130 riders to compete in the 1980 race, seventeen teams totaling 169 cyclists in 1982, eighteen teams totaling 180 cyclists in 1985, twenty-one teams totaling 210 cyclists in 1986, and twenty-three teams totaling 207 cyclists in 1987.80 As the number of teams ballooned, the peloton’s cross section of sponsors and riders changed. The preponderance of French-sponsored teams and riders declined markedly during this period, while the percentage of foreign sponsors and riders in the competition increased. In 1973, French firms funded six of the twelve teams in the race, and nearly 40  percent of the 132 riders were French. By 1980, the share of French riders and teams had declined slightly: four of the thirteen teams and almost 35 percent of the riders that participated in the Tour were French. By the late 1980s, a still smaller proportion of competitors were French, and in 1990, only three of the twenty-two teams (14 percent) and thirty-four of the 198 riders (17 percent) were French. The Tour organizers maintained roughly the same proportions throughout the 1990s.81 In 1996, for example, four of the twenty-two teams (18 percent) and thirty-eight of the 198 riders (19 percent) were French.82 International team sponsorship increased significantly, and more foreign riders competed in the race. During the 1980s, the STF invited teams from Colombia, Portugal, Britain, Japan, and the United States, peripheral nations where professional cycling was just taking root.83 In 1990, the Soviet Union sent a team to compete in the race. Racers from cycling’s peripheral

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nations competed on an equal footing with professionals from France, Italy, and Belgium, cycling’s traditional powers. American Greg LeMond won the Tour three times (1986, 1989, and 1990) and Irishman Stephen Roche won in 1987. The Tour’s growing global popularity and television coverage attracted new, international corporate partners, which diversified the Tour’s sponsorship base. Although French companies continued to account for the largest percentage of Tour sponsors after 1980, their share declined significantly. In 1980, French companies sponsored nearly 70 percent of the Tour’s largest prizes (dotations). Overall, twenty-five of the thirty-nine firms that funded prizes or that purchased the right to be “exclusive providers” to the 1980 Tour were French.84 By 1995, French firms accounted for slightly more than half of the Tour’s official sponsors (partenaires and fournisseurs). But two of the four major underwriters of the race (the Club du Tour members) were foreign companies.85 To complement the Tour’s “virtual” expansion over the television airwaves, Félix Lévitan created itineraries that sent the race to new, emerging markets. Between 1980 and 1988, the last year in which Lévitan helped to determine the Tour’s itinerary, the race’s prologue took place outside French borders four times. In 1987, Lévitan formulated his most audacious itinerary. He added three stages to the schedule— for a total of twenty-five, the most in the event’s history— to allow Berlin to host the Tour’s prologue. In addition, the Tour’s organizers sought to change the gender cross section of their fan base by enticing more female sports enthusiasts to follow the Tour. To this end, Lévitan and Goddet created the Women’s Tour de France (Tour de France féminin), an all-female bicycle race fashioned along the lines of the Tour de France. The STF staged the first Tour féminin in 1984. A French racer, Jeannie Longo, won the event in three of its first five years.86 Lévitan’s attempts to penetrate the world’s richest sponsorship and consumer market led to his downfall as Tour director in 1987. In the early 1980s, Lévitan proposed that the East Coast cities of the United States host several stages of the Tour de France and that the Concorde supersonic jet transport the riders back to the Continent to continue the race.87 Lévitan helped organize the short-lived— and money-losing— Tour of America bicycle race that was meant to pique American popular and corporate interest in the Tour de France. The Amaury Group’s director, Philippe Amaury, son of the group’s deceased founder, Émilien, claimed that Lévitan had engaged the STF in a risky business venture without consulting him and lost more than 800,000 francs in the process.88 Following a public scandal in which Amaury accused Lévitan of gross financial mismanagement during the Tour of America campaign, the Amaury Group dismissed Lévitan. Later that year, 82-year-old

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Jacques Goddet returned from a brief retirement to oversee the staging of the 1987 Tour and then retired for good. The departure of Lévitan and Goddet opened the door for a wholesale turnover of Tour leadership. Between 1987 and 1993, the Amaury Group assembled a new generation of leaders, many of whom were executives in marketing and advertising industries and held advanced business degrees. The new leadership instituted new corporate structures that separated the Tour’s financial fortunes from those of L’Équipe and Le Parisien libéré and tied the interests and profits of the Tour, the STF, and the rest of the Amaury Group more closely together. The post-1987 Tour developed a leadership structure in which several executives shared decision-making power. Philippe Amaury chose Jean-François Naquet-Radiguet as the Tour’s new director-general in 1987. Naquet-Radiguet was a graduate of the École des Hautes Études Commerciales (HEC), France’s most prestigious business school, and earned an MBA from Harvard Business School. Prior to his appointment, Naquet-Radiguet worked as an international marketing expert for the French cognac industry. Le Monde compared Naquet-Radiguet’s leadership style to that of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and characterized him as a “young wolf ” reformer who was determined to overturn and reformulate the Tour’s long-standing commercial strategies and marketing philosophies.89 Philippe Amaury appointed others with extensive experience in marketing and advertising to important posts at the Tour and at the STF. In 1989, after the departure of Naquet-Radiguet, Amaury selected Jean-Pierre Carenso as the Tour’s director-general.90 Carenso had a business degree from the HEC and made a name for himself in the advertising industry during the 1980s by formulating catchy advertising slogans, such as Du pain, du vin, et du Boursin (“Some bread, some wine, and some Boursin cheese”) for the manufacturer of Boursin cheese. Amaury also recruited Jean-Pierre Courcol as the director of the STF. In 1986, Courcol succeeded Jacques Goddet as L’Équipe’s general manager, although he had little experience in journalism. After serving in the French navy, Courcol received a business degree from the HEC and was the director of Parisian advertising firm Avenir Publicité before he joined L’Équipe.91 Former professional cyclists also joined the Tour organization in important management roles. Naquet-Radiguet appointed recently retired, fivetime Tour champion Bernard Hinault as a special advisor to the STF’s management team. During planning sessions, Hinault offered insights on the Tour’s rules and itinerary that were based on his vast, insider’s knowledge of the race’s technical and strategic intricacies. The charismatic, popular Hinault acted as the Tour’s public face and added star appeal to press conferences

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involving the event’s sponsors.92 In 1988, Jean-Pierre Courcol tapped JeanMarie Leblanc as the Tour’s director of competition. Leblanc competed in two Tours de France (1968 and 1970) before embarking on a career as a sports journalist, including a stint as L’Équipe’s cycling section editor. In 1993, the Amaury Group appointed Leblanc as director-general of the Tour.93 Several key members of the new management team knew little about the Tour as a sporting event. During the first week of the 1987 Tour, NaquetRadiguet admitted, “I have to say that I am just discovering the sport,” and thanked Bernard Hinault for explaining to him the basic principles of the race.94 Jean-Pierre Carenso also had to familiarize himself quickly with the workings of the Tour when he joined the front office at the end of 1988.95 The Amaury Group added executives with vast experience in the international sports business. Philippe Amaury recruited several members of the 1992 Albertville Winter Olympics organizing committee, including JeanClaude Killy, downhill skiing hero of the 1968 Grenoble Olympics. After his retirement from skiing, Killy worked as a high-profile marketing executive for General Motors, United Airlines, Rolex, Evian, and Coca-Cola France.96 Killy cochaired France’s Olympic Committee for the 1992 Winter Games in Albertville, which amassed nearly $300 million in television rights fees.97 The new management team members built a corporate structure that led to a greater specialization of management tasks and allowed the group as a whole to profit more efficiently from the television marketplace. In 1993, they created the Amaury Sports Organization (A.S.O.), an umbrella corporation for the Amaury Group’s professional sports concerns, and named Killy as its president. The A.S.O. and its subsidiaries included marketing and publicity agencies and media production companies. These entities took over many marketing, business, legal, and media production tasks from the STF. Tour management could focus more squarely on organizing the myriad of competitions that the Amaury Group owned. By the mid-1990s, the group’s other cycling races included the Paris– Roubaix, Liège– Bastogne– Liège, Paris–Tours, the Grand Prix des Nations, the Criterium International, and the Flèche Wallonne.98 The Tour’s new executives used their business acumen and marketing expertise to transform the event’s commercial philosophy and promotional style. Naquet-Radiguet employed the jargon of the marketing industry when discussing his plans to reform the Tour: he referred to the Tour as a “product,” and he promised to “sell” the event abroad in the same manner that he had sold the image of France around the world while working for the cognac industry.99 The new director spearheaded initiatives meant to remake the Tour into a worldwide television spectacle: “We have to present the Tour on a

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global scale. . . . We must think of our 12 – 13 – 14 million [roadside spectators] but also keep in mind our billion telespectators.”100 The STF expanded the Tour’s network of television outlets quickly after 1987. Between 1987 and 1994, the number of countries that received some form of televised race coverage more than doubled, from seventy-two in 1986 to more than 150 in 1994.101 The STF refined the television presentation of the race in ways that rejuvenated the Tour’s prestigious image. Naquet-Radiguet used the Tour’s growing revenues to pay for a much-needed upgrade of the event’s physical infrastructure, including new, mobile stages for the televised daily award ceremonies and cyclist interviews. Naquet-Radiguet and others in the Tour’s leadership and several key sponsors agreed that oversaturation of sponsors reduced the overall effectiveness of each firm’s marketing efforts.102 The overabundance of advertising banners and posters on the itinerary degraded the race’s prestigious image. In a news conference during the first week of the 1987 Tour, Naquet-Radiguet declared, “The Tour de France must not be a circus.”103 In the early 1980s, nearly forty companies per year sponsored the Tour in some fashion, approximately one for each of the Tour’s prizes or “official services.”104 Between 1986 and 1989, the STF ended partnerships with some of the Tour’s longest-standing sponsors, including Perrier (spring water, sponsor since 1933) and Peugeot (the official vehicle supplier since 1953). By 1995, the STF had reduced the number of sponsors to sixteen, and the number of official prizes to five.105 The STF redesigned the Tour’s sponsorship structure to allow the event’s biggest corporate partners to extract the maximum advertising benefit from the race. In 1994, the STF created three graduated categories of sponsorship. Each category carried with it special privileges and marketing rights. The “Tour Club,” whose members were permitted by the STF to use the Tour de France brand name in their advertising, included the event’s four largest sponsors, Crédit Lyonnais, Fiat, Coca-Cola, and Champion supermarkets. Tour Club members committed themselves to long-term sponsorship contracts, benefited from unique marketing privileges, and exerted considerable influence in shaping the event’s commercial strategies. A slightly larger number of firms paid less money to join the Tour caravan as “Official Partners,” which could employ the Tour de France brand name in their marketing campaigns. The “Official Providers” paid less than the Official Partners and could not employ the Tour branding in their advertising.106 Race organizers altered the physical appearance of the Tour and its caravan to shower television exposure on the top sponsors. After 1987, when Crédit Lyonnais became the exclusive sponsor of the yellow jersey, the STF changed the color of the jersey to a rich gold hue that matched the bank’s

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gold-and-blue logo. The race director’s automobile, which rode at the head of the peloton and, thus, loomed large during television coverage of the Tour, bore on its roof a large, conspicuous, blue-gold sign bearing the words “Crédit Lyonnais.” The STF transformed the finish-line area into a marketing arena devoted exclusively to the Tour Club partners. Each race day, the Tour’s road crew spray-painted the final fifty meters of street leading to the finish line with large, blue-and-white Fiat logos and placed banners with the Fiat name at twenty-five meter intervals leading up to the stage finish. The crew erected crowd-control barriers along the last kilometer of the course, each of which carried large banners bearing the Champion, Crédit Lyonnais, CocaCola, or Fiat logos. Television cameras captured exciting images of the Tour riders sprinting toward the finish line and transmitted them, along with the logos of the Tour Club members, to billions of potential worldwide viewers. The STF’s new management also fashioned the Tour into a powerful public relations event for its sponsors. At the suggestion of key sponsors, NaquetRadiguet created in 1987 starting-line and finish-line “villages” that served the same function during the Tour as corporate skyboxes in stadiums— to facilitate business networking between firms and their clients. The “villages” were exclusive, invitation-only areas where the Tour’s sponsors welcomed current and potential clients and other VIPs. In the villages, corporate executives, politicians, sponsors, clients, television and radio personalities, and famous cyclists mingled while attractive hostesses served them food and drink. The STF allowed important corporate sponsors to distribute several seats in official Tour vehicles— including one place in the race director’s car— to clients that they wished to impress.107 Finally, the Amaury Group strengthened its grip on the sport of cycling by purchasing many of the world’s most important races. In the new millennium, the Tour of Spain (Vuelta a España), Spain’s “National Tour,” struggled through financial woes and declining television viewership. In 2008, the Amaury Group bought a 49-percent ownership share of the competition from Spanish organizer Unipublic.108 The agreement called for the Amaury Group’s “Tour Club” members— comprised in 2008 of Vittel, Champion supermarkets, Crédit Lyonnais, and Skoda automobiles— to become sponsors of the Vuelta.109 With its investment in the Vuelta, the Amaury Group owned two of cycling’s three prestigious “Grand Tours.” The Tour de France’s ownership also expanded its market share abroad by creating new events in untapped markets. The Amaury Group created the Tour of Qatar in 2002 and the Tour of Oman in 2010. These races, held in February, extended the racing calendar into what was traditionally the European road racing off-season. In 2008, American biotechnology company Amgen reached an agreement with

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the Amaury Group to sponsor, promote, and televise the Tour of California, a multiday stage race created in 2006. Andrew Messick, the event’s organizer, predicted that the partnership would help the Tour of California evolve into a “Grand Tour” in the near future.110 The Tour de France’s global reach also appealed to multinational businesses, many of whom used sport sponsorship to increase their brand-name recognition in new markets. During the 1996 event, for example, massive Asian consumer markets China, India, and Indonesia each received thirteen hours of televised Tour coverage.111 Tour sponsorship also helped American companies Coca-Cola, the Tour’s “official drink,” and Nike, whose “swoosh” logo appeared on the sleeves and lapel of the yellow jersey, to increase their recognition in existing markets like France. Coca-Cola placed first and Nike fifth in a 1995 poll that asked consumers to rank the most recognized brand names in French sports sponsorship.112 The Tour also remained a preferred sponsorship venue for French businesses. Crédit Lyonnais valued its relationship with the Tour since it produced enormous amounts of national and international publicity yet maintained its quintessentially French, provincial character. Crédit Lyonnais viewed itself as a national bank with firmly planted provincial roots, since the large majority of the bank’s 2,000 branch agencies were located outside Paris. Since most of the event took place on France’s country roads, the Tour partnership allowed Crédit Lyonnais to maintain its provincial character while increasing its national and international exposure.113 The Tour demanded larger payments from its biggest corporate partners in return for the special privileges and publicity they received. Crédit Lyonnais paid the STF fifteen million francs in 1987— three times the size of its three-year contract in 1981— to become the exclusive sponsor of the yellow jersey. The STF-Crédit Lyonnais contract rose to twenty million francs in the mid-1990s.114 The STF reaped handsome rewards. Total revenues ballooned from 70 million francs in 1987 to 250 million francs in 1998. Gross sponsorship revenue rose from approximately 42 million francs in 1987 to 155 million francs in 1999. Sponsorship contracts accounted for approximately 60 percent of the STF’s revenues throughout this period.115

* Why is it that the Tour de France retains such power and influence in the world of cycling? And why is it that the event is synonymous with “Frenchness?” Interesting parallels exist between the Tour and other potent symbols of French culture around the world— food and cinema. As Amy Trubeck has argued in her history of haute cuisine, the continuing preeminence of French

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chefs, techniques, knowledge, and sensibilities in the world’s prestigious restaurants and cooking schools derives partly from the fact that the French have dominated the realm of elegant cooking and dining since its inception in France in the eighteenth century. The subsequent globalization of a particularly French haute cuisine, however, depended on the patronage of the upper classes abroad, who spent their leisure time and incomes developing a taste for French food and their money on the delicacies prepared by French chefs. French chefs acted as “apostles of hautness” who established restaurants and culinary institutes abroad and preached the gospel of French culinary tastes to eager, cosmopolitan elites in other lands.116 In her history of transatlantic cinema culture, Vanessa Schwartz traces the emergence of cinematic “cosmopolitanism,” or the development in America and France of an internationalist film culture steeped in Frenchness, in the 1950s and 1960s. “Frenchness,” in Schwartz’s lexicon, indicates a cinematic style, embraced in America and in France, that elevated certain cultural symbols, especially Parisian ones like Belle Epoque imagery and the Can-Can dance. The term also encompassed the emergence of the structures of cosmopolitanism and Frenchness, including the creation of the internationalist Cannes Film Festival in 1946, the growing exchanges of acting talent and production expertise between France and America, and the emergence of a global cinematic celebrity and film culture that accompanied them.117 In the story of the Tour in France and abroad after the Second World War, one witnesses the culmination of a century-long process that resembled the globalization of French food and cinema. The French created the model for the multistage “Grand Tour” that was mimicked throughout Western Europe in the decades after 1903. Road racing’s popularity spiked significantly around the world in the television age. Global cycling looked to the French classic for inspiration, technical assistance, commercial models, and athletic talent. Although the printed press remained a powerful medium for instilling Frenchness into the sport of cycling abroad, the advent of television shifted the Tour de France’s commercial raison d’être, and its relationship with the broader world changed. The rapid transformation of French television in the 1980s spurred the Tour’s evolution into a televised spectacle funded primarily by broadcast media. The event’s successful navigation of the turbulent media upheavals of the television age left it well positioned to exploit the novel opportunities of the global media era and maintain its place at the heart of world cycling.

7

The Global Tour and Its Stars

Athletes play crucial roles in building and perpetuating global sporting communities. The Tour remained at the heart of cycling’s global exchanges of athletes. Thousands of riders from six continents participated in the Tour. The Tour’s stars were among the most famous athletes on the planet, even at the dawn of the television age. Millions of people around the globe recognized their names and faces, even if they were not cycling fans. The Tour’s stars transported knowledge of cycling and its culture across borders and conveyed publicity of the sport’s sponsors to consumers. Its riders, both great and small, French and foreign, played an integral role in globalizing cycling, especially in the period after the Second World War. The Tour de France served as the capstone event of the French School and global cycling’s annual competitive calendar. Famous cyclists like Frenchman Jacques Anquetil and American riders Greg LeMond and Lance Armstrong also served as powerful symbols of the evolving cultural meaning and functions of the event in a globalizing world. Their career trajectories demonstrate the workings of the French School of cycling and the perceived challenges to it posed by globalization in the second half of the twentieth century. Tour victories by Greg LeMond and Lance Armstrong,* who won a combined ten Tours after 1986, epitomized the rise of New World cyclists in the European cycling heartland. Their victories seemed to validate the viability and vigor of the French School and symbolized the globalization of a quintessentially French cultural phenomenon. At the same time, the specter of drug use by French and foreign riders loomed. Armstrong’s dramatic Tour victory * Armstrong was stripped of his seven yellow jerseys in October 2012 when cycling’s authorities determined that he had doped during his reign as Tour champion.

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in 1999, the first of seven consecutive titles, occurred at a time when doping scandals hobbled France’s “national bicycle race.” The Texan’s inspirational triumph occurred less than two years after his recovery from metastasized testicular cancer and vaulted the Tour de France into the mainstream of American sporting culture and commerce. In France, however, Armstrong’s unexpected domination of the event fueled rumors that the American owed his victory more to steroids than to stamina. The embarrassing scandals and angry, public debates about doping were emblematic of French ambivalence about the Tour’s globalization. Internationalization of the field of contenders seemed to precipitate declining French fortunes in the race, and the drug abuse that plagued France’s most famous world sporting event epitomized the doping culture that disgraced the entire sport. Nevertheless, the drug debacles opened the door for a potential rejuvenation and reassertion of traditional Frenchness in cycling. The Tour and its French cyclists emerged at the vanguard of a push for clean, drug-free racing, even as doping continued to scandalize the race. 1. Anquetil Abroad In 1964, Jacques Anquetil became the first rider to win five Tours de France. At the time, Anquetil’s record appeared unassailable, although Belgian star Eddy Merckx would match the feat a decade later. In France, Anquetil was not universally revered and often served as the Tour’s antihero. The French sporting world acknowledged his greatness, but Anquetil nevertheless suffered public enmity for his domineering, calculating athletic style and the disdain he exhibited for fame and the public’s affections. It is important to note that Anquetil’s fame extended beyond France’s borders. Outside of France, press coverage of Anquetil’s exploits— and the sporting world’s ambivalence toward them— served to popularize the race, educate foreign readers about the Tour, and instill an understanding of the particularly French qualities that Tour fans cherished in their favorite champions. As was the case in France, foreign journalists portrayed Anquetil as the antithesis of French School ideals— a calculating and conservative rider who won races by wearing down his opponents instead of relying on dramatic attacks, dangerous tactics, or passionate grit. Thanks to the numerous Anquetil antihero caricatures, Anglophone readers learned much about the nature of French cycling heroism and its tenets. Press coverage of Anquetil in Britain and America demonstrates the power of Tour stars and the media that covered them to build international communities of fans steeped in French cycling traditions and ideals.

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British and American journalists became students of the French debates about Anquetil while living in France and riding in the Tour’s press caravan. In their columns, they conveyed— in some cases verbatim— the French press’s evaluation of Anquetil’s qualities and failings. Early in Anquetil’s career, French cycling aficionados recognized the young Norman’s unequaled physical talents and his technical perfection on the bicycle. New York Times columnist Robert Daley, writing on the eve of the 1959 Tour, confirmed for American readers the French evaluation of Anquetil’s awesome athletic gifts. Anquetil employed “perfect” bicycling form and technique regardless of the situation: “Even in the steepest of mountain passes he stayed crouched over the handlebars, legs pumping rhythmically, never any wobbling from side to side.” In part, Anquetil owed his domination of the cycling world to his unusual physical gifts. Daley reported: His heart-beat was abnormally low, about fifty beats per minute. The capacity of his lungs was extraordinary. He had the ability to digest enormous quantities of food while pedaling, and to fall asleep whenever and wherever he climbed off his bike. This, particularly in a twenty-four day race like the Tour, is vitally important.1

Although Anquetil won the 1957 Tour, the first he had entered, French experts remained unconvinced of the young champion’s greatness. Daley wrote, “Critics complain that Anquetil ‘does not like to suffer,’ the most esteemed quality in racers being willingness to punish themselves to the point of exhaustion.” Daley compared Anquetil’s rapid rise to glory and fame to that of American baseball star Mickey Mantle, who won his first World Series with the New York Yankees as a nineteen-year-old rookie, but questioned whether the young champion Anquetil had “heart” to match his physical talents.2 The characterizations in the French and foreign press of Anquetil as canny rather than daring, dominant rather than exciting, dogged the French champion until the end of his career. In a piece published as Anquetil secured his fifth Tour win in 1964, the London Times described Anquetil as an “antihero” of modern sport who “wins races with cold calculation.” Referring indirectly to the Puy-de-Dôme duel with Raymond Poulidor that year, the Times explained that Anquetil rarely engages in contests of strength and endurance in the high mountains. Instead, Anquetil “tends to play cat-and-mouse” in the mountains, allows rivals to sprint ahead on steep slopes, climbs just fast enough to maintain his time advantage, and then destroys his competitors in the time trials, where he was nearly unbeatable. While grand champion heroes like Fausto Coppi triumphed in the traditional fashion, with aggressive panache and daring solo attacks on storied Alpine and Pyrenean climbs,

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that classic formula was not Anquetil’s “way,” explained the Times. In the 1964 Tour, as in other races, the Norman veteran cemented his victory with a dominant time trial victory in Bayonne at the end of the Tour, even though he had lost time to Poulidor and others in the earlier climbing stages. The Times concluded that Anquetil’s overall Tour strategy, based on his ability to win time trials by wide margins, “was magnificent, but it was not war as the French cycling fans really like to see it fought” and that “French followers of the race felt both admiration and resignation” at the prospect of another rather clinical Anquetil triumph.3 Like the French media, the Anglophone press devoted significant column space to analyzing Anquetil’s business-like approach to victory, especially his famous tendency to surround himself with the strongest team of support riders in the world. In 1961, Robert Daley shed light on the barely veiled but widespread “subtrefuge [sic]” employed by Anquetil and other leaders of the national teams. The day before the Tour began, reported Daley, Anquetil “signed a contract with eleven other riders” that “guaranteed them all his prize money if they helped him win the Tour.” The Anquetil pact included most of the strongest riders and made it nearly impossible for other Tour contenders to attack him. The French star’s rivals, such as 1958 Tour winner Charly Gaul of Luxembourg, could only choose among “pretty poor bike riders” to form their support teams. “My dream is to have a team as strong as Anquetil’s,” exclaimed Gaul to reporters.4 Although it was common practice for stars to make such agreements with supporting domestiques in major races, Daley’s article echoed the complaints expressed by Tour director Jacques Goddet in L’Équipe and suggested that Anquetil’s scheming undermined the competitiveness of the race and removed the elements of surprise and excitement from the 1961 Tour even before it began. The New York Times reporter’s prophesy was realized; Anquetil led the competition from the first day to the last and won by more than twelve minutes, an enormous time gap. Concluded Daley after Anquetil’s triumph, “[The] Tour de France . . . was won by a superman among riders today. . . . There was no drama [from the start].”5 Anquetil won his first two yellow jerseys in Tours raced under the national team formula. Nevertheless, beginning in the late 1950s Anquetil, other star riders, and their wealthy sponsors exerted pressure on the Tour’s organizers to end the national team formula and reinstitute corporate-sponsored teams to reap maximum publicity from participation in the Tour. Although the Tour’s formula changed in 1962 from the national team to the corporate team format, Anquetil’s formula for success remained the same. Anquetil demanded that his extra-sportif team sponsors spend lavishly to build a team

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of all-star domestique cyclists to assist him in major stage races like the Tour. Anquetil’s team riders were star cyclists in their own right and included German sprinting world champion Rudi Altig, French national and world champion Jean Stablinski, and Lucien Aimar, who later won the Tour de France in 1966 when Anquetil faltered. Team Anquetil exerted such unbreakable control over cycling’s peloton that its failures became, in some ways, more noteworthy than its successes. The New York Times reported on the 1962 Tour of Spain (Vuelta a España). German star Rudi Altig ignored the team’s standing order to protect Anquetil and took the race lead by winning the second stage. None of the challengers could believe that any of Anquetil’s domestiques would break team discipline, so his rivals refused to attack, since they assumed that the Frenchman planned to order Altig to relent at the end of the Vuelta. In a show of bluster, Anquetil, still far behind Altig in the standings with only a handful of stages remaining, dispatched his wife to Paris to collect proper French champagne for drinking at the finish line in Madrid. “No true Frenchman would consider toasting a victory with Spanish champagne,” quipped Anquetil.6 Cycling fans anticipated that Anquetil, who held second place in the standings, would recover his four-minute time deficit to Altig in the race’s final stage, a long time trial. Instead, Anquetil feigned illness and abandoned the race and the second-place prize money on the last day rather than face defeat at the hands his domestique. American journalists commented extensively on Anquetil’s self-interested professionalism, temperamental demeanor, and rocky relationship with cycling fans. Robert Daley placed Anquetil at the vanguard of a new kind of star athletes who “are basically businessmen, not egoists [who revel in the crowd’s applause], and the modern athlete’s symphony is the sound of cash registers.” Daley crammed his article with sarcastic barbs on the same theme, explaining that “applause [does] not show on a bank statement” and calling Anquetil “the fastest accountant who ever pedeled [sic] a bike” and a champion with “bike racer’s legs and [an] accountant’s brain.”7 The New York Times columnist also commented on Anquetil’s disdain for meeting his publicity obligations and his frequent refusals to follow his coaches’ orders. The paper described a famous incident in 1959 when sponsors forced Anquetil to enter a race against his wishes, which prompted Anquetil to quit the competition after pedaling “lackadaisically as far as the first hill, where his wife was waiting with his car.”8 The Anglophone press also reported on Anquetil’s refusal to follow coaches’ strategies, heed admonitions that he try harder, and employ his awesome talents to win races in more dramatic fashion.9 Anquetil’s fame abroad climaxed at the moment when Jean-Claude Killy,

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France’s famous skiing champion, exploded onto the international scene. Like Anquetil, Killy dominated his sport like no other skier before him. By the late 1960s, Killy’s global fame eclipsed Anquetil’s. Athletically, however, the Val d’Isère native was Anquetil’s antithesis. Between 1966 and 1968, Killy won the first overall World Cup championship and three Olympic gold medals due to his reckless daring, instinctual skiing style, and attacking mindset. On the eve of the 1968 Grenoble Olympic Games, Killy explained to Sports Illustrated reporter Dan Jenkins, “I have always skied on instinct. . . . if people say I look pretty in a race, then I know I am not winning.”10 In an earlier cover story, Sports Illustrated characterized Killy as “Skiing’s Darling of DerringDo” with a “win-or-nothing attitude.” According to the article, Killy “[skied] like hell,” “[attacked] downhill and slalom courses like Batman” and had an “obsessional love of speed [and a] foolhardy nature.”11 Killy was one of the first global stars of the televised Olympics and helped to perpetuate the daredevil persona in the global media. After winning his third gold medal in Grenoble, Killy explained to the New York Times, “I’ve never slowed down in my entire life, and I never will. I can’t do it. I never knew physical fear [as a child]. . . . Skiing to me is like breathing.”12 Like Anquetil, Killy emerged as a global standard bearer of French athletic heroism, albeit an ideal type rather than an Anquetilian antithesis. The Anglophone press devoted relatively little attention to Anquetil’s rival, Raymond Poulidor. A New York Times piece on the “nonintellectual” Poulidor’s Tour of Spain win in 1964 painted a comic caricature of the Limousin rider’s famous knack for encountering misfortune: His principal rivals would get to the railroad crossings just before the gates went down. Poulidor would get there just after. On the smooth stretches, Poulidor usually would have [thick mountain] tires on his bike, which slowed him. On the ragged mountain roads, he would have [flatland] tires that were paper thin and this gave him lots of practice changing flats.13

During the Anquetil-Poulidor rivalry in the Tour de France, foreign journalists characterized Poulidor as the unsuccessful foil to the Norman champion and as a more popular rider than Anquetil. Little of the Limousin star’s larger symbolic meaning in France came through on the page. The London Times’s sparse commentary on the epic Puy-de-Dôme duel in 1964 indicated that Poulidor, Anquetil’s “great rival” and the “only man given any chance of wresting the Tour de France” title from the defending champion, failed to capitalize on his chances during the closing days of the competition.14 In foreign papers in the Eddy Merckx era of the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the Belgian champion matched Anquetil’s record of five Tour titles, Poulidor

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continued to play the role of unfortunate understudy to greater champions. Following Poulidor’s underdog victory over Merckx in the 1972 Paris– Nice stage race, the New York Times proclaimed, tongue-in-cheek, “French Cyclist Wins, but Runs 2d.” President George Pompidou’s announcement the same day of a national referendum on British inclusion in the Common Market had upstaged the news about the race: “First at last— and it is an event— in the Paris– Nice, here [Poulidor] is, in the news race, relegated to his eternal second place by Georges Pompidou’s final sprint.”15 Careful readers of American and British sports sections learned of Poulidor’s unusual popularity, as well as the enormous expectations that cycling fans foisted on his shoulders. A London Times article on the 1968 Tour identified Poulidor as a “magic name” and the hero of French factory workers and schoolchildren in “grey suburbs,” which were awash in chants of “PouPou.”16 The French public’s fickleness, unforgiving wrath, and unrealistic hopes for Poulidor shone through, as well. In its summary of the finish of the 1965 Tour de France, won by upstart Italian Felice Gimondi, the New York Times reported that the exhausted Poulidor entered the finishing stretch in the Parc des Princes to a chorus of 40,000 angry whistles, which signaled that “Poulidor had ceased to be a hero.” After the race, veteran French rider Henri Anglade, his voice choked with emotion, chided the crowd over a loudspeaker, “One does not have the right to whistle at a lad like this.”17 Anquetil emerged as a lightning rod for debates about drug use on both sides of the Atlantic. Following the drug-induced death of British star Tommy Simpson during the 1967 Tour, the public spotlight focused squarely on cyclists’ use of forbidden medicines and stimulants. In the twilight of his career, Anquetil took on the role of straight-talking opponent of drug testing in the sport he had dominated since the mid-1950s. Anquetil’s unusual candor, unmatched record of achievement, and refusal to abide by cycling’s emerging anti-doping strictures made him infamous. In the summer of 1967, Anquetil penned several editorials in French newspapers deriding the new drug-testing strictures and unveiling for the French public the widespread use of stimulants in cycling. The French champion’s candid, forthright style and refusal to abide by the new doping regulations enraged the cycling world. The French cycling federation banned Anquetil from competing in the French national championships later in the year. The London Times quoted Anquetil’s assertions of innocence and outrage in the French media. Anquetil protested, “I do not see how they can suspend me” since no analysis proved that he had ingested illegal drugs.18 Later in the year, Anquetil made even bigger news. Following his retirement from the Tour de France, Anquetil focused his efforts on shorter races

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and on setting the world one-hour speed record. British and American papers carried coverage of Anquetil’s attempt, as well as world cycling’s rejection of it. On September 27, 1967, Anquetil established a new milestone by racing nearly 47.5 kilometers in an hour at an indoor Milan velodrome. Anquetil engaged in a “comic opera duet” with the Italian doctor charged with collecting a urine sample for drug analysis. The new record holder claimed that he “could not deliver” a urine sample, returned to his hotel while the doctor waited at the velodrome, and finally left for France without having a urinalysis performed.19 The International Cycling Union refused to recognize Anquetil’s hour record and banned him from competing in the world championships. Again, Anquetil took the microphone to defend himself in the French media. The London Times quoted Anquetil’s lawyerly defense of his record on French radio. Anquetil claimed that he was “disappointed” that he was “not given the chance to defend myself.” Anquetil, when asked whether he took drugs, responded, “No. But that depends on what you mean by drugs,” and pointed out that he did not consider ingesting “stimulants” to be a form of doping. In exposés on drug use by athletes around the world, the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and Sports Illustrated cited Anquetil as the primary example of drug use by athletes in France and quoted the retired champion’s assertions that “everyone in cycling dopes himself. Those who deny it are liars,” and that without amphetamines Tour riders would “pedal 15 miles an hour instead of 25.”20 Anquetil remained a vocal critic of doping regulation after his retirement. He defended disgraced Belgian rider Michel Pollentier during the 1978 Tour by claiming that Pollentier cheated like everyone else and that without doping cyclists could not possibly meet the unrealistic expectations of the public for superhuman performances.21 Anquetil’s status as road cycling’s greatest champion made him an international symbol of the sport. Newspapers in America and Britain covered Anquetil’s exploits and the controversies that surrounded him, which captivated and informed new audiences in the 1950s and 1960s, giving them an understanding of the Tour and road cycling. Anquetil was the iconic figure of the French School of cycling around the world. His name was synonymous with the Tour in the American press, so much so that the Christian Science Monitor bestowed on Anquetil the moniker “Mr. Tour de France.”22 In Britain and America, his status as cycling’s antihero put into bold relief the traditional tenets of cycling heroism, which Anquetil rejected, and the traditional doctrines and principles of the French School, to which Anquetil did not subscribe. Press coverage of the conflicts and controversies that embroiled Anquetil— from vocal criticisms of the Norman champion’s clinical, calculating racing strategies to anger over his tacit endorsements of drug use—

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illustrated how the cycling public understood the French School’s ideals and attempted to enforce adherence to them. Paradoxically, Anquetil’s challenges to the French School and his unrivaled dominance of its crowning race for the better part of a decade imprinted even more firmly the French School’s character and philosophies on international cycling. Anquetil was also a transitional figure. He was an icon— albeit a counterpoint— to a certain idea of French athleticism that endured as a broader, Western sports hero culture was taking shape. His career peaked at the moment when television was just beginning to develop into a powerful global medium. Yet Anquetil’s fame abroad was built in printed media. At the same time, Anquetil was a groundbreaking businessman/athlete when this combination was becoming the norm on both sides of the Atlantic. The Norman champion’s fame helped to give shape to this emerging Western archetype. The grudging admiration his exploits won him helped pave the way for the acceptance of the corporatized athlete in France but also reflected the enduring ambivalence of the French about the concept of the corporate athlete. Anquetil’s role as an international lightning rod for doping scandal also heralded a new age in which the “cult of performance” was increasingly undermined by a growing intimacy between star athletes and the public. It became increasingly clear— thanks to science and the new media that were becoming more and more effective at transmitting the unadulterated private lives of celebrities into the public sphere— that drugs rather than grit or talent enabled many of the superhuman performances upon which the mythology of athletic fame and renown was erected. The troubled hero culture that the Anquetil era helped to engender continued to plague cycling and other sports. 2. New World Stars: Greg LeMond and Global Challenges to the French School Beginning in the 1980s, the Tour de France successfully spurred a more rapid globalization of professional road cycling by encouraging and even financing new colonies of the sport in virgin territories like the United States. In addition, the Tour welcomed professional cyclists from across the planet to compete in an effort to diversify and “globalize” the event’s profile. To the consternation of the French racing public, however, French riders’ dominance of the Tour de France waned as more of the world came to France to compete. Breton Bernard Hinault won five Tours between 1978 and 1985, which equaled the title record established by Jacques Anquetil in 1964 and matched by Eddie Merckx in 1974. No French rider has won the Tour since Hinault’s fifth victory in 1985. By the late 1980s, Tour riders from outside the traditional Western European “core”

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competed on an equal footing with French riders. Between 1986 and 2012, cyclists from Ireland, Australia, Britain, Denmark, and Germany captured yellow jerseys, and riders from the United States and Spain won twenty Tours.* The rise of American riders seemed particularly threatening to the French School and its philosophies, given the New World nation’s symbolic meaning in France’s collective imagination. At the same time, the American victories validated the French School amid the decline of French riders’ competitive preeminence on the widening stage of world professional cycling. Although they were born in America, LeMond and Armstrong emerged from the French School of cycling to dominate the Tour. Their Tour triumphs transformed the New World champions into household names in America and elsewhere, which popularized the event even further on the global stage. In 1986, LeMond defeated five-time Tour winner and teammate-rival Hinault to capture the Tour’s crown and became the first non-European to win the world’s most prestigious race. LeMond had trained in the French School and the young American’s three Tour triumphs between 1986 and 1990 confirmed its position as the most important proving ground for the planet’s best cyclists. LeMond’s successes led him to enormous wealth and fame. In America, his star power popularized the Tour and helped spark a renaissance of professional road racing at the moment when the Tour’s leadership sought to colonize the New World in the name of cycling. The American star’s victories and international star power confirmed the ability of the Tour and the French School to forge new champions in the global television age. Greg LeMond rose to the head of a significant cohort of American cyclists who moved to Europe to race professionally beginning in the 1970s. The earliest ambassador of postwar American professional cycling was Jonathan Boyer. Boyer’s early life story and career history illustrate the makeshift, ad hoc process of becoming a competitive cyclist in the United States, as well as the role of the French School in developing promising talent from underdeveloped cycling regions like North America. Boyer was born in Moab, Utah, to Josie and Winston Boyer, who eked a hard living from prospecting for oil and uranium while living in a trailer in the high desert near Arches National Park. After his parents divorced, Boyer and his mother moved to Carmel, California. As a teenager, Boyer befriended Carmel cycling enthusiast George Farrier, who became a father figure and encouraged the fourteen-year-old to develop his racing talent. Farrier introduced Boyer to Remo d’Agliano, a local restaurant owner and retired professional cyclist who had served as a domestique for Jacques Anquetil in the early 1960s. * These totals do not include titles stripped from riders after victory due to doping violations.

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Boyer and his brother, Winston, dominated junior amateur races in northern California in the early 1970s. In 1973, d’Agliano arranged for seventeenyear-old “Jock,” as Boyer was called, to spend five months racing with a cycling club in southern France. The following year, Jock Boyer spent the entire racing season in France. For the next four years he attempted to make a living as a domestique for several second-tier French professional teams. In 1974, the penniless Boyer lived in the closet of his cycling club’s house. On the advice of his club’s sporting advisor, Boyer raced constantly and took an intensive course in French language. Between 1975 and 1979, Boyer turned professional, spent most of each year living and racing in France for second-tier French teams, moonlighted as a bicycle handlebar wrap salesman, married a Texan fencing champion, competed occasionally in American races such as the Red Zinger/Coors Classic, and established in Europe a reputation as a fearless, tireless, powerful support rider with a “capacity to endure, ignore and, if possible, to use a certain kind of pain” while competing.23 Jock Boyer’s training and assimilation into the French School culminated with his selection to race in the Tour de France. Bernard Hinault’s Renault-Elf team hired Boyer as a domestique for the 1981 Tour de France. “Jacques” Boyer, as he was known in the French press, was the first American to participate in the event. Boyer and four other Anglophone riders comprised what the French press dubbed a “Foreign Legion” of American, British, and Australian racers who participated in the 1981 Tour. All five riders followed similar career paths and envisioned using the fame won in France to their advantage at home. Explained Australian Phil Anderson, “In Europe . . . I think I can earn enough money to live well. . . . When I’m done here, I hope to return home and capitalize on my reputation.”24 “I’m Jacques Boyer to these people, but I want to be known to Americans as Jonathan Boyer— BOY-yer,” asserted the American.25 “One of my goals,” explained Boyer later, “is to get cycling out of the underground in the United States, make it respectable.”26 Boyer enjoyed modest success and made a viable living as a journeyman professional racer in Europe. He competed in the Tour five times between 1981 and 1987 and finished in a career-high twelfth place in 1983. In 1998, the US Bicycling Hall of Fame inducted Boyer and recognized his “leadership role in helping the next generation of Americans succeed” on the world bicycling stage.27 The rapid rise of Greg LeMond, who won the world road racing championship in 1983 at age twenty-two, overshadowed Boyer’s pioneering role. Greg LeMond literally and symbolically overtook Boyer as the leading American rider in Europe. As Boyer sprinted away from the peloton toward a possible victory in the last meters of the 1982 world road racing championship, young LeMond led the pack of racers that chased down and overtook the veteran

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American and claimed the silver medal for himself in the process. After his victory in the 1986 Tour de France, the Californian became the first American international cycling superstar since turn-of-the-century track champion Major Taylor. Although his emergence as a successful professional occurred much more rapidly than “Jacques” Boyer’s, LeMond followed the traditional French School training and professional acculturation regimen. LeMond was born in California and grew up near Reno, Nevada, the son of a real estate agent. Sports Illustrated wrote a feature story on LeMond in 1984. The piece described the young racer as a blond-haired, blue-eyed “Huck Finn with steel thighs,” an all-American youngster who craved Dairy Queen and consumed four liters of Coca-Cola for lunch. LeMond’s father, Robert, introduced his teenage son to cycling when, in an effort to eliminate his expanding “beer belly,” he purchased a racing bicycle and began riding in the canyons around Reno with Greg. Although the young LeMond had envisioned a career as a full-time skiing “hot dog,” the 1979 bicycling film Breaking Away made him “insane” and fueled an ambition to become a professional cyclist in Europe.28 LeMond dominated the American amateur ranks and set his sights on competing in the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics. The Nevadan high schooler raced in Europe’s amateur circuit during his summer vacations in 1978 and 1979 and won a gold medal in the 1979 junior world championship road race. His successes turned the heads of professional teams, which in 1980 engaged in a recruiting battle to sign eighteen-year-old LeMond to a professional contract. Renault team manager Cyrille Guimard and his star, reigning Tour de France and professional world champion Bernard Hinault, flew to Reno to court LeMond and signed him to a lucrative deal. The young professional spent the next six years riding for the best French teams as the protégé and heir apparent to five-time Tour winner Hinault. LeMond raced most of the year in France. He lived with his wife, Kathy, in a small Belgian town, Kortrijk, which accepted Greg as their “king” and became the LeMonds’ “adopted hometown.”29 Although he lived in Belgium, LeMond’s development followed the French School model in terms of his competitive demeanor and lifestyle. Between 1980 and 1985, LeMond played the role of faithful apprentice to his “hero” and team leader, Hinault. The Breton declared “LeMond will ride over my body” to succeed him as the best rider in the world.30 During his first Tours in 1984 and 1985, LeMond served as Hinault’s personal pacesetter in the mountains. The young rider placed on the podium in both Tours. LeMond may have been able to win the 1985 Tour but gave up his own chances to help his team leader. On orders from team coach Guimard, LeMond, who had joined a breakaway on the mountainous seventeenth stage when Hinault

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faltered, abandoned his efforts to win to preserve Hinault’s overall lead. In return, the French champion promised to help LeMond win the Tour in 1986. The Nevadan took intensive French lessons early in his career and spoke the language fluently by the time he emerged as a rising star in the early 1980s. By 1990, after eclipsing French rival Laurent Fignon, the young American was ready to become the peloton’s definitive patron (head of state) and had emerged as the French public’s “chosen champion” by combining his Californian “look clean” with the “charms of the French savoir-vivre that he inherited from his [French] education as a cyclist.”31 American television noted LeMond’s rise, albeit more slowly than the American print press. American evening news shows broadcast numerous Tour de France updates in the 1980s during LeMond’s emergence in the top ranks of professional cycling. NBC Nightly News covered the participation of Greg LeMond in the men’s Tour and the American women’s cycling team in the first-ever Women’s Tour de France in 1984. Both races were staged at the same time. A two-minute piece at the beginning of the Tour briefly noted that LeMond was among the contenders for the men’s title, but devoted most of the air time to discussing the chances of the American women’s team and interviewing team captain Betsy King, who declared, “Over here, you need to show ’em that the women aren’t just dishwashers and diaper changers.” Clearly, the women’s Tour held the network’s interest, since reporter Jim Bitterman mispronounced LeMond’s name the two times he used it.* LeMond’s thirdplace finish and the victory of an American woman, Marianne Martin, in the women’s Tour spurred NBC to air a full report on the evening news. NBC’s July 22, 1984, evening news broadcast included nearly three minutes of highlights and interviews with Boulder native Martin and Tour rookie LeMond.32 LeMond’s growing fame and renown in Europe and America came through in an NBC Evening News report on the eve of the American’s first Tour victory two years later. The piece contained three minutes of highlights of the 1986 contest and included a lengthy discussion of LeMond’s prolonged apprenticeship to Bernard Hinault and the burgeoning rivalry between the two. An NBC reporter, interviewing an English-speaking Frenchman on a Paris street, captured the sentiments of French cycling fans, who faced with anxiety the prospect of an American win in France’s national bicycle race. “There’s a big rumor on right now that if this young American wins . . . a hundred thousand Frenchmen will go back to New York and take back La Statue de la Liberté,” joked the man.33 “An American winning here is like * Bitterman pronounced it as one would pronounce the past tense of “lemon” if it were a verb. NBC Nightly News, July 6, 1984, VUTNA.

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a Frenchman winning baseball’s MVP,” explained LeMond after his victory three days later.34 LeMond emerged as an international athletic superstar. After he won the Tour again in 1989 and 1990, as well as the world road racing championship in 1989, LeMond became the highest-paid cyclist in the world. Like Lance Armstrong, LeMond’s compelling personal story added luster to his fame in America after his Tour victory. A 1986 profile in People magazine painted an athletic and personal portrait of LeMond that conveyed his moody disposition and dwelled on the apprenticeship and personal rivalry between the young Tour winner and mentor Bernard Hinault. The article quoted an anonymous Tour “insider,” who lamented, “[LeMond] has the character of a pig.”35 A similar profile in People three years later, following his second Tour victory, struck a different tone and characterized LeMond as “remarkable” and “driven.” Most of the article recounted LeMond’s return to cycling after a near-death experience in 1987. Just eight months after his first Tour victory, LeMond’s brother-in-law shot him accidentally while the two hunted turkey near Sacramento. LeMond missed the entire 1987 cycling season, spent most of 1988 struggling to recover his health and form, and won the 1989 Tour on the last day of racing by a scant eight seconds even though he had thirty shotgun pellets still lodged in his body.36 Sports Illustrated named LeMond its “Sportsman of the Year” for 1989.37 LeMond’s star power on both sides of the Atlantic made him a valuable commercial commodity in France and the United States. After his 1989 Tour victory, French clothing maker “Z” won the international bidding war for LeMond’s services by paying him nearly $2 million per year to lead their team, one of the best in cycling. LeMond’s business arrangement with the Z team included a deal to manufacture and market LeMond-brand bicycles and for the American champion to cosponsor, with Coors, a new professional team that would race in America.38 Across the Pond, the New York Times credited LeMond with popularizing professional cycling in America since before his Tour victories news and results from other top-tier races like the Tour of Italy reached American shores only weeks or months late.39 North America’s nascent professional road racing structure depended on LeMond’s fame and commercial clout for ballast. The press called LeMond the “major attraction” of the Tours de Trump and pointed to LeMond’s failure to enter the 1989 inaugural race or win the event’s second edition as important reasons for the event’s lackluster reception by the American public and its difficulty retaining corporate sponsors.40 LeMond’s lucrative, three-year apparel endorsement pact with DuPont in 1990, which included promises to enter DuPont-sponsored races, justified the chemical giant’s decision to purchase,

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rename, and stage the Tour de Trump in 1991 and generated enormous media attention and publicity. DuPont’s marketing head compared LeMond’s star power to that of world figure skating celebrity and East German Olympic gold medalist Katarina Witt, another DuPont-sponsored athlete.41 LeMond won the Tour DuPont in 1992. Less than eighteen months after LeMond’s 1994 retirement, DuPont ended its sponsorship of its namesake cycling event, and the race ceased to exist. The retirement of Bernard Hinault and the decline of two-time Tour winner Laurent Fignon after 1989 left France with no top-rank cycling stars to vie for the Tour title. On the eve of the 1991 Tour, L’Humanité lamented that French cycling had fallen so low that even the newly crowned French national road race champion, Armand de Las Cuevas, failed to be selected by his team to compete in France’s most famous sporting event. De Las Cuevas’s “exile . . . deprives the French public of its champion . . . during the cycling calendar’s preeminent contest [and] demonstrates the attenuation of the French professional elite.”42 Despite these facts and the anxiety caused by the perceived decline of French cycling in the global era, the French School’s gravitational pull remained inescapable. Greg LeMond’s successes and stardom came thanks to the French School’s wealth, influence, and ability to develop young apprentices into international superstars. 3. Tour de Lance 1999: Heroism Redefined Lance Armstrong’s victory in the 1999 Tour de France electrified the American public and transformed him into a national hero. Cable News Network’s (CNN) report on his victory proclaimed, “All hail to ‘Armstrong the Conqueror,’” and described the Texan as a “triumphant American in Paris” and “no ordinary human being” who “pummeled [the Tour] into surrender.” The report’s editors included few athletic highlights from the 1999 Tour. Instead, most of the four-minute clip dwelled on Armstrong’s inspiring, compelling personal story, especially his battle back from death’s doorstep after vanquishing testicular cancer. The piece included clips of flag-waving, yellow-clad Americans on the Champs-Élysées and in Austin, Texas, Armstrong’s hometown, chanting “USA! USA! USA!” CNN reporter Phil Jones described Armstrong’s triumph as the “sporting achievement of the century . . . covering in glory an event which was dubbed the ‘Tour de Farce’ just last year amid a drug scandal.”43 French television carried similar images of flag-waving Americans on Paris promenades and quoted the minister of sport and youth, who proclaimed that the 1999 event represented a “transitional Tour that contains a note of hope” for the future.44

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The French press’s skepticism counterbalanced transatlantic television’s exuberance. Despite Armstrong’s inspiring performance, the specter of doping loomed. Many in the French press doubted that the 1999 race, dubbed the “Tour of Recovery” by the organizers to signal the era of a new, drug-free Tour, could erase the scars remaining from the scandal-plagued 1998 competition. Le Monde pointed to disturbing coincidences during the race that hinted that “racing at two speeds”— drugged and not drugged— continued in the peloton. Spanish riders seemed to be worthy of special scrutiny, according to Le Monde. Although they were traditionally strong in the mountains, Spanish racers exhibited astounding climbing prowess, and Spanish teams placed unusually high in the team rankings. Meanwhile, veteran riders seemed to find novel, possibly drug-induced talents. Italian rider Alberto Elli placed second in the mountain climbing competition and “exhibited unprecedented climbing talents.” At the top of the list of longtime Tour riders who found new legs in 1999 was winner Lance Armstrong. As Le Monde pointed out, Armstrong was no “newcomer” and had “been in the peloton for many years.” Le Monde indicated that the 1999 Tour was the “fastest in history” and hinted that Armstrong’s record average speed might have been catalyzed by an “EPO placebo effect” from cancer treatments, even if the American had not injected himself with the blood-enhancing drug during competition.45 The 1999 Tour marked an important turning point in the event’s history. French riders dominated the Tour until the mid-1980s. During this period, the French won more than twice as many Tour titles (36) as the runner-up nation, Belgium (18 titles). Armstrong’s victory, the first of seven in a row for the American cyclist, confirmed that cycling had definitively entered the global age. Armstrong’s victory followed triumphs by riders from Ireland (Roche), the United States (LeMond), Spain (Delgado and Indurain), Denmark (Riis), Germany (Ullrich), and Italy (Pantani). On the athletic front, then, the 1999 Tour confirmed that cyclists from nontraditional cycling nations, including several from outside Western Europe, competed at rough parity with their rivals who hailed from France and the rest of the European cycling “core.” Doping dominated the French public discourse during the 1999 Tour. The public dialogues about heroism, athleticism, and drug use— many of which coalesced around emerging champion Armstrong— signaled a sea change in the Tour’s cultural meaning and context in France and abroad. In France, the wounds of the 1998 Tour drug scandals remained fresh and stinging. The French press immersed its reading public in thousands of column-inches of fact, fiction, and conjecture about drug use during the 1999 event. The public dialogues on drug use, in which Le Monde figured highly, were symptomatic

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of a broader process at work. The French press was developing new measures and standards of heroism that linked athletic prowess, courage, and nobility to drug-free cycling. This process had been going on since the Anquetil years, but the drug crises of the late 1990s and Armstrong’s astounding victory forced it to a rapid conclusion. Lance Armstrong’s well-known, inspiring life story served as the backdrop for the drama that unfolded during the 1999 Tour.46 Armstrong grew up in Plano, Texas, in a broken home. Armstrong’s father abandoned the family when Lance was a baby and his mother, Linda, worked as a temporary secretary. He began his athletic career as a top-level professional triathlete. In the early 1990s, Armstrong focused on his greatest talent, cycling, won the US amateur title, and earned a spot on the 1992 US Olympic cycling team. After he turned professional in 1992, Armstrong enjoyed good success, won the Verdun stage of the Tour de France in 1993, and took the mantle of America’s best road cyclist after Greg LeMond’s retirement the following year. Armstrong’s future looked bright in the mid-1990s. The twenty-five-year-old’s testicular cancer diagnosis in fall 1996 nearly ended his life. By the time doctors discovered it, the disease had spread to Armstrong’s lungs and brain. Armstrong underwent surgery and endured months of intensive chemotherapy. Due to his inability to race, Cofidis, the French team that employed the ailing Texan, terminated Armstrong’s contract. Following a year of recovery, in early 1998 Armstrong announced his intention to return to competitive cycling and compete in the Tour de France. He signed a low-salary contract with the United States Postal Service (USPS), which sponsored a second-tier professional racing team. Armstrong did not enter the 1999 Tour as a favorite. The Dallas Morning News published a lengthy article about Armstrong’s comeback just before the race. The piece mentioned that USPS team director Johan Bruyneel placed two other riders on the Tour squad who would take over as team leader if Armstrong struggled. The noncommittal Bruyneel commented that if Armstrong faltered, “it’s OK because he has already overcome cancer.” The Texan’s personal coach, retired professional cyclist Chris Carmichael, commented that although Armstrong “has that ferociousness in him,” his best chance to win the Tour might not come until the following year.47 The American and French press picked Colorado native Bobby Julich, who had finished third in the 1998 Tour, as the top American contender in the 1999 race. Armstrong caused an immediate stir by winning the prologue and donning the yellow jersey in his first day back on the Tour. Although he gave up the race lead in the first week, when sprinters’ teams dominate the Tour, Armstrong recaptured the yellow jersey in stage 8, an individual time trial

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in Metz. In stage 9, a mountainous course to Sestrières, Italy, Armstrong labored over the col du Galibier, broke away from rivals Alex Zülle and Fernando Escartin on the final climb to the Alpine ski resort, and won the stage to take a commanding lead in the overall race standings. He was challenged anew by rivals in the Pyrenean mountain stages, but Armstrong cemented his Tour victory during the penultimate stage by winning the second individual time trial at Poitiers’s Futuroscope theme park. His dramatic victory made Armstrong an American national hero, where the young champion became one of the United States’ most visible athletes and a vocal advocate for cancer research. Long before the momentum built toward Armstrong’s victory during the 1999 Tour, however, the specter of drug use once again dominated the French press coverage of the event. In the week before the start of the Tour, the UCI reinstated French climbing specialist Richard Virenque, arguably France’s most popular rider. Virenque had been disgraced during the 1998 Tour’s Festina drug scandal. Just before the race, border agents stopped Festina team trainer Willy Voet as he attempted to cross the French border in a car filled with EPO, amphetamines, and other performance-enhancing drugs. Tour officials disqualified Festina and French police arrested the entire team. Under interrogation, Festina’s riders and coaches, save Virenque and teammate Pascal Hervé, admitted to systematic doping. In the race’s closing days, riders protested by striking and race officials canceled an Alpine stage. Prosecutions related to the case dragged on into the new millennium as Virenque and others contested the charges and their suspensions from the competition. Journalists labeled the 1998 race, won by Italian Marco Pantani, the “Tour de Farce” in the wake of the scandals. Virenque’s untimely reinstatement by the UCI prompted the French press to resurrect the derisive moniker. Following Armstrong’s unexpected prologue victory, which organizers hoped would refocus the French press’s attention away from doping, the Tour’s surprise leader addressed question after question about drug use on the professional circuit. “It’s been a long year for cycling, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s history . . . we test [for drug misuse] as much as possible and at some point we have to realize enough is enough. . . . We all have to fall back in love with cycling.”48 Armstrong and Virenque became the target of the seemingly contradictory, counterproductive efforts to root out, expose, hide, and ignore doping all at the same time. Virenque’s unexpected reappearance prompted the Tour’s organizers and broadcasters to attempt to erase the Moroccan-born cyclist’s presence on the Tour. Before the prologue, Tour staff washed away dozens of white inscriptions hand-painted on the roads by Virenque’s fans

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and supporters. French television cameras avoided Virenque in the peloton. Such ham-handed attempts to render Virenque invisible served only to pique the public’s interest in the controversy.49 Virenque captured the polka-dot jersey (maillot à pois), worn by the best climber in the Tour, during the decisive Sestrières stage (stage 9, won by Armstrong) by streaking away from the pack on a dramatic breakaway attack over the first mountains on the day’s race route. The popular climber could no longer be ignored by the media. Virenque defended the polka-dot jersey all the way to the finish in Paris. Meanwhile, as Armstrong emerged as the leading contender during the middle week of the Tour, the French press, led by Le Monde, targeted the American cyclist for special scrutiny. The power, dominance, and calculation with which Armstrong dispatched his competitors in 1999 led the French press to describe the rising American star’s cycling using many of the same terms as they had when writing about former champion Jacques Anquetil. In the pages of L’Humanité, Armstrong’s racing was “too mechanical” and “had no electricity.” In the final three kilometers of the climb to Sestrières, Armstrong glanced at his watch as if calculating his exertions, then broke away from his rivals. At the finish line ceremonies following Armstrong’s victory, the crowd saluted Armstrong, but “with little enthusiasm, in the end.”50 Armstrong’s stunning, dominant victory at Sestrières raised eyebrows. Le Monde engaged in thinly veiled speculation about the Texan’s drug use. Armstrong’s “astonishing ability in the mountains [intrigued] and [angered] certain members of the peloton.” Although Armstrong claimed to have “suffered” toward the end of his victorious climb, his “incredible,” “extraterrestrial” performance and the strong rides of his closest competitors were evidence that “cycling at two speeds still exists.” Retired cyclists and media commentators hinted that drugs fueled Armstrong’s exploits. Two-time Tour winner Bernard Thévenet explained that he had “expected to see the American suffer more than that in the mountains.” France 2’s Claude Sérillon, quoted in Le Monde, observed “Armstrong is strong, very strong, too strong. How could this rider who was never considered to be a climber have inflicted such a terrible lesson on the mountain climbing specialists? Only [Armstrong] has the answer.”51 Le Monde speculated that Armstrong’s chemotherapy may have enhanced the cancer survivor’s athletic performance, since his anticancer drug regimen included substances that increase testosterone production and resulted in physiological changes similar to those brought on by taking anabolic steroids.52 The French press’s fixation on drug use produced an unlikely, controversial hero, cyclist Christophe Bassons. Bassons raced as a domestique for La Française des Jeux, a middling team sponsored by the French national lottery.

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He was an average, perhaps mediocre Tour cyclist, but Bassons relished his role that year as the sport’s most frank, outspoken critic of doping. The gadfly cyclist agreed to write a daily journal, published in Le Parisien and quoted extensively throughout the French press, during the first week of the Tour in which he excoriated the cycling establishment and its pervasive doping culture. Before and during the 1999 Tour, Bassons leveled doping accusations at the sport as a whole as well as at its top stars. As a result, the peloton and even his own team ostracized Bassons and nicknamed him “Babasse,” a bastardization of his last name made vulgar in French by adding the “asse” suffix. In his journal, Bassons speculated about how doping shaped each day’s race results and accounted for the great performances of the Tour’s stars, including Armstrong. The rider also reflected on his relatively weak performances, the drug culture of the peloton, and how his frankness led his team and the rest of the riders to ostracize and persecute him. From the moment the Tour began, Bassons hinted that Armstrong doped. Bassons finished 44 seconds behind Armstrong in the time trial prologue, which he characterized as “a lot, too much” for such a short, 6.8-kilometer race, even with the attack of “stage fright” that he suffered on the starting block. After the fourth stage, a sarcastic Bassons characterized eventual second-place finisher Alex Zülle as a “pure class act” who “doped himself ” and “raced on high octane fuel” (rouler au super), a euphemism for drug use. During the Tour’s second week, Bassons accused former Festina teammate and eventual polka-dot jersey winner Richard Virenque of doping. In Bassons’s account, Virenque’s obsession with using drugs and covering his tracks was so pronounced that he refused to speak to or even recognize the existence of his teammate when Bassons made it clear that he refused to dope. Following Armstrong’s victory in the Metz time trial on July 11, Bassons again made veiled allusions to the Texan’s drug use, pointing out that Armstrong’s gear ratio was “monstrous” and hinting that only a drugged rider could generate enough power to pedal such a difficult, heavy gear.53 After Armstrong’s Sestrières triumph, the rider also claimed that others in the peloton were “disgusted” by Armstrong’s obvious doping but shut their mouths for fear of losing their jobs.54 In his journal and in interviews, Bassons painted a saintly self-portrait and elaborated on his sense of martyrdom at the hands of the cycling establishment and its stars. Bassons reflected on his family as he embarked on his inaugural Tour de France and explained that his father was a mason who “worked hard . . . knew nothing about cycling” and spent winters repairing the family home’s exterior “with frozen hands in five below zero” weather. Despite hard training, strict diets, and even hyperbaric oxygen chamber therapy, Bassons found he was unable to match the unusually high blood

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oxygen levels of top cyclists, all of whom he believed to be dopers. During the 1999 Tour, the harder Bassons worked, the more his blood oxygen levels dropped and the weaker his body became. All the while his fellow cyclists seemed to maintain and increase their strength regardless of their training regimens. Bassons continued to slip to the bottom of the standings as the race entered its second week. “It’s the world turned upside down,” lamented Bassons, but “I will not retreat from any sacrifice.”55 In an interview with L’Humanité, Bassons explained the evolution of his competitive worldview during his early career. As it became evident to him that only drugged cyclists won races, Bassons quit training to win and began to train to race as well as he possibly could without drugs. Bassons developed a two-tiered understanding of race results— one set of standings for doped cyclists and another for drugfree ones— and felt that he competed at the top of the rankings of drug-free cyclists. “I’m satisfied with my finishes in the standings” of drug-free riders, he explained, even though journalists “never noticed my ‘podium finishes’ (places d’honneur)” before the 1999 Tour.56 On July 16, before the beginning of mountainous stage 12, Bassons abandoned the race. The dejected rider claimed he “cracked” due to “nervous exhaustion” caused by his persecution at the hands of his coach, teammates, and other cyclists, including race leader Lance Armstrong. To punish him for his crusading, the peloton ostracized Bassons. “I felt rejected by the peloton. Many riders made it absolutely clear to me that they did not appreciate my presence in the Tour.” His coach and teammates urged him to stop talking about doping. “It’s best for everyone that he go home,” explained race leader Armstrong to the press. Armstrong mentioned that he had expressed this sentiment directly to Bassons during an earlier stage. Le Monde anointed Bassons the martyr saint of the Tour and proclaimed, “No flowers or crowns. . . . [Not a single word] of sympathy for the young man who fell on the battlefield of honesty and truth, a concept which is still chivalrous.”57 In the final days of the Tour, the accusations of Bassons and the French press appeared to be confirmed when Le Monde, citing a leaked, secret drug test report by the UCI, announced that Armstrong had tested positive for banned steroids after the first stage of the Tour. The story became an international scandal that was reported in dozens of newspapers in Britain and North America.58 After a bilious news cycle during which Armstrong threatened to sue Le Monde for defamation and made the unusual request that the UCI release its test results to the public, the world learned that an authorized cortisone cream for treating saddle sores had been detected in Armstrong’s drug test and that Le Monde had misinterpreted the result as a positive ste-

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roid detection. Armstrong rode to Paris and took his spot atop the podium on July 25. 4. 2009: Lance in France Encore In 2009, following seven consecutive Tour victories and a three-year retirement, Lance Armstrong returned to professional cycling and announced his intention to compete once again in the world’s greatest cycling race. Armstrong returned as doping scandals continued to swirl around him and around France’s national bicycle race. After Armstrong’s 2005 retirement, Le Monde, former teammates and associates, and others accused the Texan of doping. In the most humiliating incident since the Festina Affair, the winner of the 2006 Tour, American Floyd Landis, was disqualified after the event’s conclusion due to a positive drug test. During the last mountain stage, Landis had embarked on a superhuman, 130-kilometer solo breakaway that erased a seemingly insurmountable eight-minute time deficit. Landis captured the yellow jersey and defended it to Paris. Testing after the stage indicated that drugs had fueled his unbelievable breakaway. In the 2007 Tour, team Astana, sponsored by the government of Kazakhstan, withdrew after team leader Alexandre Vinokourov tested positive for a blood transfusion. Later, the Rabobank team sent home its star rider and the Tour’s overall leader, Michael Rasmussen. The Dutch rider was about to be sanctioned by the UCI for having lied about his whereabouts and hidden from officials to evade blood tests before the start of the race. In 2008, organizers refused to invite team Astana, whose ranks included Alberto Contador and Levi Leipheimer, the first- and third-place finishers from the previous year. The Tour embarked from the London prologue in 2009 with few of the race favorites in the peloton. French commentators feared that Armstrong’s 2009 comeback heralded the return of the turn-of-the-millennium scandals. Former Amaury Sports Organization head Patrice Clerc declared that the race organizers had “missed the turn” and were “lowering their guard” and “reopening a troubled page in the history of cycling” by inviting the tainted former champion to compete. Clerc compared Armstrong’s steadfast professions of innocence to Nixon’s refusal to admit guilt in the Watergate scandal. “That attitude is very American,” concluded Clerc, who asserted that “perjury is far worse than the crime” of doping. Le Monde, which demonized Armstrong during his run of Tour victories, complained that the Texan’s comeback heralded the return of “that generation who climbed with their mouths shut. Never really caught, but always suspect.”59

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Armstrong ignored the doping issue as much as possible, despite the invasive nature of the new testing regimens instituted on the professional circuit since his retirement. To fight drug use, professional cycling implemented a “biological passport” system in which each rider submitted himself to thorough testing to establish a baseline body chemistry profile. Medical personnel performed blood, urine, and hair sample tests on many riders during the Tour and compared the test results to the baseline profile to determine if body chemistry had been altered in unnatural ways. On the morning of stage 11, UCI officials woke Armstrong’s Astana team at 6 a.m. to perform anti-doping tests, provoking Armstrong to “tweet” in protest to his millions of Twitter followers. Despite the unwelcomed distractions, Armstrong performed well in the Tour, especially for a thirty-seven-year-old athlete returning from a threeyear retirement. The Astana group hired Armstrong even though Alberto Contador, acknowledged by most as the best Grand Tour rider in the world at the time, remained under contract with the team. The rivalry between the two Tour winners for leadership of the team and the Tour overshadowed the outcomes of the early stages. Contador’s dominant, mountaintop victory at Verbier, Switzerland, at stage 15 sealed the Spaniard’s overall race lead and ended the leadership controversy. With Contador holding an unassailable lead, Armstrong displayed his mettle during the race’s penultimate stage by climbing away from several rivals and placed fifth on the grueling climb up Mont Ventoux. His performance secured third place overall in the Tour. Armstrong’s return and surprising successes sparked commentaries by national political figures on doping and the state of the Tour. The tone and content of the commentaries reflected the gulf of opinion on the issue that separated the French left and right. Marie-George Buffet, national secretary of the French Communist Party and former minister of sport, declared that Armstrong’s return is “not a good thing for cycling” and that “no one is duped by this character.” Buffet urged cycling officials to renounce the path of “willful ignorance, silence  .  .  . and the rule of money” and enact more stringent anti-doping measures.60 Meanwhile, French President Nicholas Sarkozy, who followed the final kilometers of stage 17 in the Tour director’s car, proclaimed that Armstrong’s participation was an “extraordinary life lesson” in how to fight cancer. Sarkozy declared “the Tour is a victim of doping and is not guilty” of the misdeeds perpetrated by “cheaters.”61 Former Tour champion Greg LeMond joined the chorus of French voices denouncing cycling’s doping culture. During the race, LeMond published a series of commentaries in the French press in which he admonished racers to come clean about their doping habits. He speculated that drugs fueled win-

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ner Alberto Contador’s astounding climbing prowess. LeMond’s critiques recalled similar ones voiced by Christophe Bassons ten years earlier. “For the last two decades, the most talented of riders has had no chance of placing in the top five of the Tour without resorting to doping,” explained LeMond, who asserted that no “magic wand” of extra training or diet could possibly account for the incredible climbing performances of riders like Contador in recent years.62 Despite the specter of doping that lingered, new science appeared to justify the emerging, new-model “French school” of drug-free cycling. Midway through the Tour, a preliminary report on cyclist drug use written by French and Swiss sociologists and funded by the World Anti-Doping Agency was released and concluded that the younger generation of cyclists in France embraced different attitudes toward doping than did older veterans. “Never has a sport changed its culture so rapidly,” concluded report coauthor Christophe Brissonneau.63 The final version of the report, released in December 2009, argued that France’s unique, highly structured cyclist training and promotion system was an “ideal” model for fighting drug use in cycling. The French system had been refocused after the 1998 Festina scandal and encouraged younger riders to embrace drug-free training and recuperation methods. In nations with relatively unstructured cycling programs, such as Switzerland, doping culture remained entrenched, and younger cyclists, left unsupervised, experimented more frequently with illegal performanceenhancing substances.64 French audiences do not appear to have regained their faith in their “national bicycle race.” According to polls conducted by the daily newspaper Sud-Ouest in 2010, only 44 percent of French surveyed “love” the Tour de France, compared to 59 percent in 1964. Meanwhile, the large majority of those surveyed no longer watched the Tour on television, many because they were “disgusted” by drug scandals. Among those who watched the race on television, nearly three times as many people (28 percent) responded that they did so to take in images of the beautiful countryside rather than to see the competition (10 percent). Young people seemed to be abandoning the Tour; the survey found that 66 percent of race fans were men of at least 65 years of age.65 The challenges posed to sporting “Frenchness” by doping in cycling epitomize the difficult transition of France’s national bicycle race into the new millennium. In addition to current doping scandals, revelations about the drug habits of retired and deceased heroes undermine the Tour’s myths and legends. In the early years of the new millennium, the international cycling public witnessed the suicide of 1998 Tour winner Marco Pantani by drug

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overdose and postretirement doping admissions by 1996 champion Bjarne Riis and six-time Tour sprinting champion Erik Zabel. In 2006, Spanish authorities launched “Operation Puerto,” a major doping prosecution that implicated Tour winners Jan Ullrich, Marco Pantani, and Alberto Contador, as well as other top contenders. Doping charges swirled around Lance Armstrong for years after his retirement, and the retired racer admitted in 2013 to doping for most of his career. It is unclear when or if the Tour will succeed in recapturing its luster and revered place in French and global sporting culture. 5. The Struggle for a Drug-Free Tour The dramatic dialogues and narratives generated during the Tour in recent years illustrate how the event engendered new kinds of heroes and villains. The new heroes were those who, regardless of their finishing position, raced drug-free, like Christophe Bassons. The new villains were those who, even as they performed dramatic feats of athletic panache, doped to win. The drug scandals on the eve of the new millennium humiliated the cycling community, disgraced the Tour, and undermined the event’s prestige. As Le Monde concluded after the 1999 race, the public had “lost confidence” in cycling, which closed ranks “like Roman legions threatened with attack” in the face of public scrutiny over drug use, debasing and threatening the sport’s heroic and mythic foundations. This fifteen-year process culminated in 2013 with Armstrong’s admission of guilt and final disgrace. Yet the drug controversies provided the Tour with new opportunities to reinvent itself and reinvigorate its standing in the public eye at home and abroad. Transparency was the key to resurrecting the Tour’s legend and its aura of mythic heroism: “Opinion demands to know the exact conditions in which its heroes affect their exploits. . . . [Without truth, the public’s] vengeance could be fearsome.”66 In the new millennium amid ongoing scandal, the Tour has strived to reposition itself as the world’s preeminent, archetypal drug-free sporting event. Key to the Tour’s renaissance strategy has been the dramatic expansion of drug testing throughout the sport. This approach has been championed by the courts, governments, and cycling community in France and around the world. Despite the public embarrassments that have resulted, all of cycling’s stakeholders hoped that in the long run more drug testing would yield a cleaner sport and rebuild public confidence in the Tour and the exploits of cycling’s heroes and champions. In the years immediately after the 1998 Festina debacle, the Tour attempted to ignore or suppress controversy. Thereafter, the Tour’s strategy has been to penalize dopers and lionize clean racers regardless of the impact of such a strategy on the outcome of the race. In 2008,

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the Tour invited unheralded, second-division team Slipstream to compete in the Tour solely because of its stringent, self-imposed drug testing regime. The team’s roster featured David Millar, a Scottish time trial specialist who gained redemption from a doping ban by returning to the sport as a vocal advocate of drug-free riding. “Slipstream is an American team whose philosophy of anti-doping pleases us,” explained Tour Director Christian Prudhomme.67 These strategies were an important component of the overall process of redefining cycling heroism in the age of doping. The canon of self-sacrifice as a noble sporting quality remained embedded in the Tour’s athletic ethos since the Tour’s early decades. The patron saint of self-sacrifice in the Tour’s lexicon of mythology remains René Vietto. Vietto competed as a junior member of the French national team in his first Tour in 1934 and found himself in contention for the race lead while climbing over the Pyrenees during the Tour’s closing stages. The French team leader, 1931 Tour winner Antonin Magne, broke down behind Vietto twice on consecutive stages. On both days, rather than continue on to possibly claim the yellow jersey, Vietto stopped, doubled back over the mountains he was climbing, and gave up parts of his bike to Magne. Thanks to Vietto’s great sacrifice, Magne won the Tour title in Paris. The iconic photograph of Vietto seated on a wall next to his disassembled bike, weeping after his selfless act, epitomized the ideal of self-sacrifice and remains an integral component of the Tour’s legend.68 In the doping era, however, the definition of sacrifice has broadened to include sacrificing one’s chances of winning in the name of clean racing. Although French Tour athletes were no longer counted among the top contenders for the Tour, they were lauded in the French press as champions of drug-free athleticism and their declining results vis-à-vis riders of other nations were praised as evidence of their courage and honor.69

Afterword

Doping and the Tour on the World Stage

The topic of France’s relative ascent or decline on the global sporting stage has fascinated French commentators. Recently, the French national soccer team has been emblematic of French athletic prowess and interpreted as a barometer of the state of France’s body politic. The team’s astounding victory in the 1998 World Cup final seemed to herald an era of French athletic resurgence and rejuvenated confidence and unity at home. In subsequent World Cup tournaments, the side’s frustrating (2002), breathtaking (2006), and pathetic (2010) defeats, on the other hand, seemed to symbolize the nation’s athletic stagnation as well as growing social and ethnic tensions in France. The Tour is a success story. Its commercial power, popular appeal, and influence on the global scene expanded steadily throughout its history. These qualities may not be apparent in light of recent drug scandals. The reputations of nearly every Tour de France winner since 1996 have been scarred by doping allegations. In 2007, long after his retirement, Danish rider Bjarne Riis admitted to systematic doping during his career, including during his 1996 Tour de France victory. Legal fights over doping charges dogged Marco Pantani after he won the 1998 Tour. Pantani died in early 2004 of a cocaine overdose after battling depression for several years. The UCI stripped American Floyd Landis of his 2006 Tour victory and suspended him for two years after a positive drug test during the race. In the wake of the Landis debacle, important sponsors ended their involvement in cycling, German television stopped broadcasting the Tour, and commentators around the world called for the Tour to be canceled entirely. In February 2012, an international court confirmed a two-year doping ban on Alberto Contador, the Tour winner in 2007, 2009, and 2010. Officials detected banned steroids in Contador’s blood during the 2010 Tour. The court rejected the Spaniard’s claim that the illicit

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195

substance was introduced into his body without his knowledge via tainted beef tenderloin or vitamins. Contador was stripped of his 2010 yellow jersey. The same court levied a two-year ban from competition on German racer Jan Ullrich for doping during the 2006 racing season. Ullrich won the Tour in 1997 and played the part of Lance Armstrong’s primary rival and foil during the American’s early Tour triumphs. The penalty was only symbolic, since German star Ullrich had retired in 2007. Lance Armstrong’s long, rearguard action against doping allegations reached a tipping point in 2012. The United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) released a report in October detailing systemic doping and deception by Armstrong during his Tour victories. The report included damning testimony from Armstrong’s trusted lieutenants, domestiques, and staff. The USADA stripped Armstrong of his Tour victories, a decision confirmed by the UCI. In early 2013, the recalcitrant champion appeared in a televised interview with Oprah Winfrey and finally admitted that the charges were true. How has the Tour been able to maintain its position as the epicenter of world cycling while persistent drug scandals plagued it for more than a half century? Part of the answer is that cycling’s ideals have always diverged from the sport’s unsavory realities. Scandal— athletic and otherwise— has been an integral part of the Tour’s culture since its founding in 1903. The legacies of many Tour stars have been shaped as much by their character flaws and personal failures as by their sporting triumphs. Great champions’ falls from grace were frequently self-induced and often tragic, such as 1906 champion René Pottier’s suicide by hanging at the height of his success and the revelations of Jacques Anquetil’s drug use in the autumn of his career. Controversies have long defined classic Tours in the popular memory, from the 1924 “galley slaves of the road” affair to the 1998 “Tour de Farce” doping debacles. Scandal added unparalleled richness to the Tour’s legend, tarnished and repugnant as it may be. More important, the Tour’s masters and other stakeholders worked consciously, consistently, and successfully to solidify the event’s global preeminence. The Tour’s founding fathers endowed the race with a uniquely internationalist feel and positioned the event as the unofficial world championship of cycling, a status that the rest of the world freely recognized. After the Second World War, the Tour’s directors and the Amaury Group enacted strategies that played upon, profited from, and spurred globalizing trends in business, media, sport, and popular culture. They facilitated global media coverage, welcomed talented cyclists from around the planet to compete, and built an international sport-business empire around the Tour and other sporting events that they controlled. In the process, the Tour dissemi-

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afterword

nated particularly French models of competition, athleticism, and business that the sport of cycling readily adopted and emulated. The race’s diverse stakeholders— European host towns and an increasingly international corps of sponsors, cyclists, broadcasters, and journalists— participated actively in this process as they invested their money, effort, and reputations in the Tour, all of which served to expand the event’s influence even more. In this way, the Tour constantly shored up its position at the heart of a global sport that remained popular, despite the ongoing scandals. The race remains world cycling’s crown jewel.

Appendix

ta b l e 1 . Circulation of L’Auto, 1903 – 1938.*

Year

Total circulation

Average copies per day

Average copies per day during Tour

1903

14,178,474

45,299

65,000

1905

18,004,484

57,522

1910

37,838,282

120,889

300,000

1913

43,641,875

139,431

284,000

1924

87,640,000

280,000

497,000

1925 – 1929

Circulation did not attain 1924 levels.

1930

93,274,000

298,000

605,000

1933

113,932,000

364,000

730,000

1934 – 1936 1938

Circulation decreased steadily from 1933 levels. 64,165,000

205,000

*Sources: Seidler, Le sport et la presse, 55, 62, 69 – 70, 77; Calvet, Le mythe des géants de la route, 36 – 37; Bellanger et al., eds., Histoire générale de la presse française, 3:585; Augendre, L’histoire, les archives, 14.

198

appendix ta b l e 2 . Classification of Tour Sponsors, 1930s.* Business or product

Number

Percent of total

Alcoholic beverages

46

20.8

4

1.8

Food

44

19.9

Furniture and housewares

13

5.9

Cleaning products

7

3.2

Beauty products

5

2.3

Pharmaceuticals

8

3.6

Clothing

11

4.9

Bicycle/auto/moto-related

31

14.0

General promotion and promotion agencies (government agencies, consortiums, etc.)

14

6.3

Electronics/radio

5

2.3

Entertainment

11

4.9

Tobacco, including papers

4

1.8

18

8.6

221

100.3

Chain or department stores

Other or unknown TOTAL

*Derived from a sampling of entities that participated in the publicity caravan, sponsored prizes for the riders, or paid sponsorship money directly to the race organizers. Augendre, L’histoire, les archives, 30; L’Auto, June 26, 1931; and July 27, 1937; Ministry of the Interior, letter to all prefects, July 6, 1936; June 25, 1937; and July 5, 1939; and “Caravane officielle du Tour 1935,” ADBP 4 M 102.

199

appendix ta b l e 3 . The Tour and Television, 1960 – 2009.*

Year

French TV audience (millions)

World TV audience (millions)

Hours of TV coverage in France

1960

9.3

1970

28.4

1980

20.0

153.0

1986

1,000.0

1995

110.0 1,000.0

1998 3.5

2005

3.4

2009

4.0

1.5

32.0

26.0

50.0

20.0

85.0

34.0

38.3

1992

2001

TV rights fees as percentage of Tour budget

50.0

1983

1997

TV rights fees (millions of francs)

152.0

50.0 15.0 44.0

*Télé 7 Jours, June 25, July 2, 9, 16, 1960; June 27, July, 4, 11, and 18, 1970; Jacques Goddet, interview by Jacques Marchand, Cyclisme Magazine 5, April 1960; Intermarco-Conseil, memorandum, January 1981, CL 58 AH 23; Bernard Normand, memorandum, March 9, 1981, CL 58 AH 23; Andreff and Nys, Le sport et la télévision, 144; Vélo Magazine, February 1987; Bourg and Gouguet, Analyse économique du sport, 264; Le Monde, April 10 and June 26, 1995, July 14, 1997, and August 3, 1998; Stratégies 1064, July 10, 1998; Desbordes and Marcille, “Les entreprises et le marketing du Tour de France,” 264 – 65; New York Times, July 25, 2007; Initiative Futures Sport, ViewerTrack Most Watched TV Sporting Events of 2005, 17; Kevin Alavy (head of analytics, Initiative Futures Sport), e-mail communication with author, December 9, 2009; Initiative Futures Sport + Entertainment, ViewerTrack Most Watched TV Sporting Events of 2009, 17.

Notes

Introduction 1. Vigarello, “Le Tour de France,” 885. 2. Scholars often argue that the Tour did not become a global phenomenon until the 1980s, with the advent of regular international television coverage and the beginning of concerted efforts by the Tour’s organizers to “globalize” the event and its participant profile. Lagrue, Le Tour de France, 166 – 76; Marks, Se faire naturaliser cycliste, 217– 24; Cronin and Holt, “Globalisation of Sport,” 26. 3. On contemporary business globalization, see Jones, Multinationals and Global Capitalism. 4. Debord, La société du spectacle; Kuisel, Seducing the French, 37– 69; Belk, “Hyperreality and Globalization”; Portes, “L’Horizon Américain.” On cinema’s place in such discourses, see de Grazia, “Mass Culture and Sovereignty”; Jarvie, “Free Trade as Cultural Threat”; Montebello, “Hollywood Films in a French Working Class Milieu.” In their analysis of world’s fairs, circuses, and film, Robert Rydell and Rob Kroes argue that the “Americanization” of global culture began as early as the mid-nineteenth century. Rydell and Kroes, Buffalo Bill in Bologne. 5. The term “long twentieth century” has even been applied by sociologist Giovanni Arrighi to encapsulate the entire 700-year period of state and capital formation, dating to the late medieval period. Arrighi, The Long Twentieth Century. Scholte, Globalization, 62 – 63. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 2 – 3, 19. Michael B. Miller locates this sea change in the development of modern global shipping in the late nineteenth century. Miller, Europe and the Maritime World. 6. Works that look at transnational business and cultural relationships between France and America address this theme. See in particular Endy, Cold War Holidays; de Grazia, Irresistible Empire; Schwartz, It’s So French!. 7. Richard Holt and Georges Vigarello were instrumental in making the Tour de France a subject of academic inquiry and delved into the early history and cultural significance of the event. Holt, Sport and Society in Modern France; Vigarello, “Le Tour de France.” The centenary of the Tour’s founding sparked renewed interest in the Tour, including two notable collections of essays contributed by scholars in history, media studies, sociology, and geography. Dauncey and Hare, eds., The Tour de France, 1903 – 2003; Porte and Vila, eds., Maillot jaune. Christopher Thompson has written the best and most complete treatment to date of the Tour’s history in the French cultural context, especially in the pre– Second World War period. Thompson, The Tour de France.

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n o t e s t o pa g e s 3 – 8

8. Benedict Anderson’s seminal work on the development of “imagined” national political consciousness in the modern era informs this concept. Anderson, Imagined Communities. Charles S. Maier employs the term “waning of territoriality” to characterize the continuing structural challenges posed by the forces of globalization to the traditional nation-state as a framework for identity since the mid-nineteenth century. Maier argues that nations continued to matter despite the “waning of territoriality,” since states continued to be prime actors in the process of negotiating and renegotiating boundaries— spatial, cultural, economic, and political. Maier, “Consigning the Twentieth Century to History.” Anthony Giddens points to the creation of standardized global time in the mid-nineteenth century as a key moment when local experiences became separated from place on a global scale. Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 17– 18. A continuing debate among globalization theorists involves the timing of the emergence of “globalized” society. Most agree that the post– Second World War period heralded the emergence of globalized culture, but that the trend had antecedents stretching back generations or even centuries. Scholte, Globalization, 16 – 19. 9. See esp. Kuisel, Seducing the French. Victoria de Grazia identifies the interwar years as the key moment when the French began to adopt new, American-style regimes of consumerism, business, and marketing. De Grazia, Irresistible Empire. Jacques Portes argues that French ambivalence toward “American” lifestyles and consumerism can be traced back to the early Third Republic. Portes, Fascination and Misgivings. 10. Trubek, Haute Cuisine; Schwartz, It’s So French! 11. Guyer and Bright, “World History in a Global Age,” 1052 – 53; Appadurai, Modernity at Large, 7– 19; Scholte, Globalization, 135 – 36; Osterhammel and Petersson, Globalization, 80 – 89. 12. On these seemingly paradoxical tendencies, see Meyer and Geschiere, eds., Globalization and Identity; Guyer and Bright, “World History in a Global Age”; Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World. Jessica Gienow-Hecht’s history of Die Neue Zeitung, the influential German-language Munich daily brought into existence by the American occupation government and run by a hybrid German and American staff, argues that the German public winnowed out aspects of American press propaganda that did not fit with its tastes and viewpoints. Gienow-Hecht, Transmission Impossible. Matthew Jordan makes a similar argument in his analysis of how the French assimilated jazz into their cultural identity between 1918 and the Liberation. Jordan, Le Jazz. Borderlands studies scholarship offers compelling interpretive models that demonstrate the agency of the local /peripheral in the ongoing process of negotiating and renegotiating cultural, political, and economic relationships and identities. Sahlins, Boundaries; Ford, Creating the Nation in Provincial France; Rogers, Shaping Modern Times in Rural France; Cole, “France as Periphery?” 13. Thompson, Tour de France; Dauncey, French Cycling, 143 – 50, 166 – 73, 252 – 54. 14. Philip Dine employs this term to encompass the uniquely French metaphorical linkages between sport and identity. Dine, Sport and Identity in France, 5 – 8.

Chapter One 1. Wiley, Dans la foule, 84. 2. Jacques Goddet (Tour director from 1947 to 1987), interview by author, tape recording, Issy-les-Moulineaux, France, July 2, 1999; Luc Derieux (Director of sports sponsorship, Crédit Lyonnais Bank), interview by author, tape recording, Paris, November 12, 1998. 3. Dominique Kalifa claims that while 100,000 spectators watched the 1903 Tour’s final stage in person, L’Auto sold more than 130,000 copies of its special final-stage edition in less than two hours. Kalifa, La culture de masse en France, 52.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 8 – 1 5

203

4. Tour de France official website, http:// www.letour.fr /2005 /presentationus /chiffres.html, accessed December 5, 2009. 5. On the emergence of modern commercialized sports and leisure practices, see Cross, A Social History of Leisure since 1600, esp. chap. 10. On the importance of tourism and travel in disseminating sports within and across national boundaries, see Dine, French Rugby Football. 6. Henry Chadwick is credited with inventing the baseball “box score,” which he modeled on cricket statistical models. On Chadwick, box scores, and the communities of baseball readers in the nineteenth century, see Schiff, The Father of Baseball; Tygiel, Past Time, 15 – 22. 7. The importance of printed material in fostering community and a new “public sphere” of interaction and discourse had antecedents in preindustrial society. Habermas, “The Public Sphere”; Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France, 189 – 226. 8. Anderson, Imagined Communities. On the French experience and the importance of standardized curricula and textbooks, see Thiesse, Ils apprenaient la France. 9. Hobsbawm, “Mass-Producing Traditions: Europe, 1870 – 1914,” 287– 91. 10. Ardis and Collier, eds., Transatlantic Print Culture, 1880 – 1940. 11. Kern, The Culture of Time and Space, 212 – 14, 221, 232. 12. Dine, “Shaping the Colonial Body,” 36. 13. Dine, “The French Colonial Myth of a Pan-European Civilization,” 3 – 9; Dine, “France, Algeria, and Sport: From Colonization to Globalization.” 14. Holt, Sport and the British, 212 – 23; Mangan, “Britain’s Chief Spiritual Export”; Tozer, “A Sacred Trinity.” 15. Murray, The World’s Game, 22 – 23. 16. Dine, French Rugby Football, 25, 47. 17. Echevarria, The Pride of Havana; Regalado, “Viva Baseball!”; Rader, Baseball. 18. On the press’s important role in constituting American football communities, see Oriard, Reading Football. 19. Murray points out that after British travelers implanted soccer abroad, “indigenous” soccer cultures had blossomed and led to the establishment of amateur and professional teams and leagues in North America, South America, and Asia. Murray, The World’s Game, 2 – 5, 15 – 41. 20. Seymour and Seymour Mills, Baseball, 15 – 16. 21. Samuel O. Regalado points out that Cubans were as important as Americans in spreading baseball to Mexico and the Caribbean. Regalado, “Viva Baseball!,” 329. 22. On the technological development of the bicycle in the Western world, see Seray, Deux roues; Chany, La fabuleuse histoire du cyclisme; Herlihy, Bicycle; Ritchie, Quest for Speed. 23. “Tour de France d’une exposition consacrée à la bicyclette,” 5. 24. Smith, A Social History of the Bicycle, 25, 27. 25. Willard, A Wheel within a Wheel, 21– 22, 74 – 75. 26. Ibid., 38. 27. Kenealy, “Woman as Athlete,” 365 – 67. 28. Ibid., 369 – 70. 29. Thompson, “Bicycling, Class, and the Politics of Leisure in Belle Epoque France,” 134 – 35. 30. Willard, A Wheel within a Wheel, 40. 31. Smith, A Social History of the Bicycle, 107– 9. 32. Andrew Ritchie chronicles these competitions and their stars in detail in Quest for Speed. 33. Ibid.; Cronin and Holt, “Globalization of Sport,” 26; Dine, Sport and Identity in France, 48 – 52.

204

n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 5 – 2 0

34. Taylor, The Fastest Bicycle Rider in the World, 1– 4. 35. The enormous £1,500 fee an Australian newspaper syndicate paid Taylor for three months of racing in 1903 – 4 equaled fifteen times the annual earnings of an average Australian. Ritchie, Major Taylor, 195. 36. Holt, Sport and Society in Modern France, 84, 88. 37. Chany, La fabuleuse histoire du cyclisme, 27. 38. Ibid., 37. 39. Holt, Sport and Society in Modern France, 88. 40. Dauncey, French Cycling, 65 – 73. 41. Hare, Football in France, 15 – 21; Wahl, Les archives du football, 126. 42. Dubois, Soccer Empire, 180 – 84. 43. Goldblatt, The Ball Is Round, 135 – 37, 144 – 45. 44. Goldstein, “The Base Ball Fraternity,” 10 – 13; Rader, Baseball, 6 – 10. 45. Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria argues that American sports journalists created and perpetuated this myth but that Castro used baseball as a way to popularize himself with Cubans. Echevarria, The Pride of Havana, 6 – 7. 46. Regalado, “Viva Baseball!,” 331– 35. 47. Roden, “Baseball and the Quest for National Dignity in Meiji Japan,” 291– 302. 48. Ruth Oldenziel and Adri Albert de la Bruhèze portray “the spread of bicycles as an early example of glocalization, the process by which a globally distributed product is tailored locally to fit local laws, customs, and user preferences and cultures” in their introduction to a special edition of the journal Transfers that is devoted to the bicycle. Oldenziel and Albert de la Bruhèze, “Cycling in a Global World,” 24. 49. López, “The Failed Vuelta.” 50. Hounshell, From the American System to Mass Production, 1800 – 1932, 214. 51. Ibid., 190, 214. 52. Smith, A Social History of the Bicycle, 244 – 46. 53. Laux, The European Automobile Industry, 130. 54. Ibid., 130. 55. Herlihy, Bicycle, 328. 56. Larsen and Nilsson, “Consumption and Production of Bicycles in Denmark, 1890 – 1980,” 144. 57. Männistö-Funk, “The Prime, Decline, and Recalling of Rural Cycling,” 52, 53, 64. 58. Boal, “The World of the Bicycle,” 170. 59. Warren, Rickshaw Coolie, 85 – 87, 90. 60. Alexander, Japan’s Motorcycle Wars, 22, 25, 32, 41– 42, 49. 61. Herlihy, Bicycle, 330. 62. Esfehani, “The Bicycle’s Long Way to China.” 63. Rhoads, “Cycles of Cathay,” 106 – 7. 64. Chany, La fabuleuse histoire du cyclisme, 41. 65. Holt, Sport and Society in Modern France, 84. 66. Dauncey, French Cycling, 45 67. Hubscher et al., L’histoire en mouvements, 83. 68. Durry, Le Vélo, 22. 69. Seray, Deux roues, 155; “Tour de France d’une exposition consacrée à la bicyclette,” 5. 70. Weber, France, fin de siècle, 204; Weber, “Gymnastics and Sports in Fin-de-Siècle France,” 82.

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n o t e s t o pa g e s 2 0 – 3 3

71. Hubscher et al., eds., L’histoire en mouvements, 83. 72. Holt, “The Bicycle, the Bourgeoisie and the Discovery of Rural France,” 129. 73. “Tour de France d’une exposition consacrée à la bicyclette,” 5. 74. Hubscher et al., L’histoire en mouvements, 51, 93 – 95. A national sporting association federation announced in 1930 that 28,321 sporting societies existed in France and that sporting societies claimed 4.2 million members. L’Auto, August 9, 1930, cited in Tétart, ed., Histoire du sport en France, 83. 75. Seidler, Le sport et la presse, 31. 76. Hubscher et al., L’histoire en mouvements, 86. 77. Seidler, Le sport et la presse, 26. 78. Chany, La fabuleuse histoire du cyclisme, 49. 79. Ibid., 38. 80. Holt, Sport and Society in Modern France, 93. 81. Chany, La fabuleuse histoire du cyclisme, 77. 82. Augendre, L’histoire, les archives, 7. 83. Allen, In the Public Eye, 212.

Chapter Two 1. Magowan, Tour de France, 8. 2. “M. Desgranges, (Henri Antoine), renseignements,” October 1, 1901, APPP BA /1697. 3. Desgrange, La tête et les jambs. 4. “M. Desgranges (Henri-Antoine), renseignements,” October 1, 1901; “A.S. de M. Henri Desgranges, Légion d’Honneur,” December 18, 1927, APPP BA /1697. 5. Thompson, Tour de France, 17– 19. 6. L’Auto, October 16, 1900. 7. “M. Desgranges (Henri-Antoine), renseignements,” October 1, 1901, APPP BA /1697. 8. Seidler, Le sport et la presse, 45. 9. Chany, La fabuleuse histoire du Tour de France, 19. 10. Géo Lefèvre, interview by Marcel Diamant-Berger, 15 – 17. 11. Chany, La fabuleuse histoire du Tour de France, 22 – 23. 12. “Le Tour à 50 ans,” L’Équipe, special ed., June 21, 1953. 13. Chany, La fabuleuse histoire du Tour de France, 49 – 66. 14. Tétart, “De la balle à la plume,” 306. 15. Holt, Sport and Society in Modern France, 99. 16. On mass-market publishing and tourism culture, see Bertho-Lavenir, La roue et le stylo, 87– 136; Harp, Marketing Michelin. 17. L’Auto, July 11, 1906. 18. Augendre, L’histoire, les archives, 7– 29. 19. By 1910, the combined circulation of L’Auto’s two closest competitors, Sports (50,000 per day) and Jockey (35,000 per day, specialized in horse racing) did not come close to equaling L’Auto’s 120,000 copies per day and 300,000 copies per day during the Tour. Allen, In the Public Eye, appendix, table A.3. 20. L’Auto, June 27, 1920. 21. L’Auto, July 1, 1903. 22. L’Auto, June 27, 1920. 23. L’Auto, July 23, 1919.

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n o t e s t o pa g e s 3 3 – 4 2

24. L’Auto, July 6, 1920. 25. L’Auto, July 11, 1906. 26. L’Auto, July 22, 1919. On commemoration of the Great War during the 1919 Tour, see Thompson, Tour de France, 67– 71. 27. L’Auto, July 12, 1906. 28. L’Auto, July 17, 1920. 29. Le Petit Parisien, June 27, 1924. Londres employs the English term “hard labour.” 30. Miami News, July 7, 1929. 31. Le Petit Parisien, May 2 and 3, 1935. 32. L’Humanité, June 19, 1927. 33. L’Humanité, June 18, 1927. Christopher Thompson discusses the 1924 drama, the characterization of the Tour as work, and clashes between cyclists and Tour organizers throughout the Tour’s history as workplace conflicts, in Tour de France, 141– 214. 34. De la Motte and Przyblyski, eds., Making the News. 35. Alcyon Sales Brochure, 1911, BN 8-WZ-5190. 36. Ibid. 37. Hawera & Normanby Star (New Zealand), June 15, 1914, NLNZ. 38. Reading (PA) Eagle, August 4, 1929, GNA. Similar advertisements appeared between July 24 and August 14, 1929, in twelve newspapers found in the Google News Archive. 39. Straits Times (Singapore), October 24 and November 24, 1930. NLS. 40. L’Auto, July 28, 1930. 41. “Tour de France d’une exposition consacrée à la bicyclette,” 5. 42. Le Petit Parisien, July 7, 1929. 43. Chapman, State Capitalism and Working-Class Radicalism, 50. 44. “Tour de France d’une exposition consacrée à la bicyclette,” 5; Weber, The Hollow Years, 161. 45. Magne and Terbeen, Antonin Magne, 47– 48. 46. Leducq, Une fleur au guidon, 135. 47. Magne and Terbeen, Antonin Magne, 43. 48. Goddet, L’équipée belle, 44. 49. L’Auto, July 2, 1930. 50. L’Auto, June 29, 1930 and July 2, 1930. 51. Leducq, Une fleur au guidon, 143. 52. Joan Tumblety notes that this trend typified other sports, including amateur ones, in her analysis of France’s hosting of the 1938 Soccer World Cup. Tumblety, “The Soccer World Cup of 1938,” 82 – 93, 116. 53. “Caravane officielle du Tour 1935,” ADBP 4 M 102. 54. L’Auto, June 23, 1937. 55. Augendre, L’histore, les archives, 29, 37. 56. L’Auto, supplement, June 26, 1931; L’Auto, April 1, 1931. 57. L’Auto, June 1, 1937. 58. L’Auto, July 4, 1931. 59. On how Desgrange promoted the Tour as a role model for the working classes and ideal labor-management relations, see Thompson, Tour de France, 141– 79. 60. Letter to mayor of Brest, October 17, 1938, AMB 1 I 5(3). 61. Minutes, Chambre de Commerce de Brest meeting, December 15, 1938, AMB 1 I 5(3).

n o t e s t o pa g e s 4 2 – 4 9

207

62. In 1928 and 1929, Strasbourg offered the Tour a subvention of 560 francs, while Caen offered an annual subvention of 1,500 francs beginning in 1927. “Motion Woehl,” July 16, 1935, AMS 30 – 269; Comité Caennais du Tour de France, “Dix ans du comité Caennais du Tour de France cyclist,” 1935, AMC. 63. Service d’ordre for stage town Pau were estimated at 7,427 francs in 1938. Letter to the Ministère de l’Intérieur, June 2, 1938, ADBP 4 M 102. 64. Allen, In the Public Eye, appendix I, table A.3; Bellanger et al., Histoire générale de la presse française, 3:524 – 27. 65. Seidler, Le sport et la presse, 62. 66. New York Times, December 31, 1932; Spokane (WA) Daily Chronicle, August 1 and 10, 1933, GNA; Lewiston (ME) Daily Sun, August 2, 1933, GNA; Berkeley (CA) Daily Gazette, July 27, 1933, GNA. 67. New York Times, July 19, 1926, and March 29, 1931. 68. Wanganui Herald (New Zealand), April 1, 1903, NLNZ. A Wellington, New Zealand, newspaper also posted an announcement about the creation of the Tour in June. Evening Post (Wellington, NZ), June 6, 1903, NLNZ. 69. Otago Witness (Dunedin, New Zealand), September 16, 1903, NLNZ. 70. Otago Witness (Dunedin, New Zealand), September 30, 1908, NLNZ. 71. Otago Witness (Dunedin, New Zealand), March 11, 1908, NLNZ. 72. Star (Christchurch, New Zealand), November 28, 1904, NLNZ. 73. Grey River Argus (Greymouth, New Zealand), July 15, 1912, NLNZ. 74. Marlborough Express (New Zealand), December 19, 1913, NLNZ. 75. Marlborough Express (New Zealand), March 18, 1914, NLNZ. The paper misspelled Passerieu as “Passerin.” 76. Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), August 24, 1914; Adelaide Register (Australia), September 23, 1914, NLA. 77. Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), May 9, 1930; Sydney Mail (Australia), March 14, 1928, NLA. 78. Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), October 14, 1914, NLA. 79. Western Mail (Perth), December 15, 1927, NLA. 80. Argus (Melbourne), June 14, 1928, NLA. 81. Argus (Melbourne), June 16, 1928, NLA. 82. New Zealand Truth (Wellington), October 11, 1928, NLNZ. 83. Canberra Times (Australia), June 27, 1928, NLA. 84. New York Times, April 21, 1996. 85. Argus (Melbourne), December 4, 1928, NLA. 86. Argus (Melbourne), September 29, 1928, NLA. 87. Argus (Melbourne), November 29, 1928, NLA. 88. Mail (Adelaide), August 1, 1953, NLA. It should be noted that a planned multistage race planned to coincide with Australia’s actual jubilee celebration in 1951 was canceled due to illness of the organizer. 89. New York Times, May 11, 1912. The duel was also reported in the Chester (PA) Times and the Fort Wayne News (IN). 90. The paper also reported that most French girls dreamed of becoming tennis champion Susanne Lenglen. Saint Petersburg (FL) Times, July 26, 1926, GNA. 91. Time, July 16, 1934.

208

n o t e s t o pa g e s 4 9 – 5 7

92. Ibid.; New York Times, June 26, 1927. 93. New York Times, July 27, 1930, and June 26, 1927. 94. New York Times, June 19, 1926. 95. New York Times, July 27, 1930. 96. New York Times, March 28, 1928. 97. New York Times, July 2, 1928. 98. New York Times, July 14, 1931. 99. Jacques Goddet, interview by author, tape recording, Issy-les-Moulineaux, France, July 2, 1999. 100. Goddet, L’équipée belle, 129 – 30. 101. L’Auto, October 7, 1942.

Chapter Three 1. Le Monde, June 30, 2003. 2. Noin and Chauviré, La population de la France, 6. 3. Fourastié, Les trente glorieuses, 150 – 52. 4. Kuisel, Seducing the French, 105; Ross, Fast Cars, Clean Bodies, 29. 5. Fourastié, Les trente glorieuses, 76, 83. 6. Defined as time other than work, sleeping, or family- and home-related duties and chores. Dumazedier, Révolution culturelle du temps libre, 28. 7. Kuisel, Seducing the French, 14, 113 – 21. Jackie Clarke argues against understanding this tension in fixed, polar, or deterministic terms that pitted an “American” future against a “French” past. Instead, Clarke argues that the meanings and discourses of modernity and tradition in France evolved over time and that the language of modernity must be historicized. Clarke, “France, America, and the Metanarrative of Modernization.” 8. Brochand, Histoire générale de la radio et de la télévision en France, 1:440 – 41. 9. Ménécier, “Comment est organisé le plus grand radioreportage mobile du monde?,” 259. 10. Declaration of Pierre Caillaux au colloque du Comité national d’études sociales et politiques, séance du 10 juin 1929, 3, Documentation Radio-France no. 66, cited in Brochand, Histoire générale de la radio et de la télévision en France, 1:108; United States Bureau of the Census and US Department of Commerce, Fifteenth Census of the United States, 4. 11. Albert, La presse française, 25, cited in Kuhn, The Media in France, 109 – 10. 12. Kuhn, The Media in France, 109. 13. The number of television sets in France grew from 297 in 1949 to 442,533 in 1956 to 3.4 million in 1962 and to 12.3 million in 1972. Brochand, Histoire générale de la radio et de la télévision en France, 2:501– 2. 14. Neulander, Programming National Identity, 4 – 5. 15. Kuhn, The Media in France, 109. 16. Jackson, The Popular Front in France, 123 – 26; Lebovics, True France, 156 – 57. 17. L’Auto, June 27, 1937. 18. L’Auto, July 1, 1937. These totals do not include the coverage offered by several regional radio stations. 19. Statistics compiled from Chany, La fabuleuse histoire du Tour de France, 862 – 85; Augendre, L’histoire, les archives, 19 – 39. 20. Le Patriote des Pyrénées, July 20, 1935.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 5 7 – 6 2

209

21. Remonté and Depoux, Les années radio, 10. 22. Kuhn, The Media in France, 129. 23. Ibid., 92. 24. Rioux, The Fourth Republic, 442. 25. On how French television packaged philosophers for mass audiences, see Chaplin, Turning on the Mind. 26. Remonté and Depoux, Les années radio, 34, 46. 27. Ibid., 23 – 24, 40 – 42. 28. Merlin, C’était formidable!, 365 – 74. 29. Rioux, The Fourth Republic, 442 – 43. 30. Bourdon, Histoire de la télévision sous de Gaulle, 44 – 45, cited in Kuhn, The Media in France, 132 – 33. 31. Joelle Neulander notes this trend in her analysis of radio in the 1930s. Neulander, Programming National Identity, 23 – 27. 32. Letter from P. Thominet to M. Michel, June 17, 1953, CAC 771612/392. 33. Sabbagh, Encore vous, Sabbagh!, 104. 34. Wille, “The Tour as an Agent of Change in Media Production,” 136. 35. Marcillac, Sport et télévision, 42 36. Goddet, L’équipée belle, 208. 37. Tchernia, Mon petit bonhomme de chemin, 87; Sallebert, Entre l’arbre et l’écorce, 122 – 23; Sabbagh, Encore vous, Sabbagh!, 105. 38. Sallebert, Entre l’arbre et l’écorce, 121; Brochand, Histoire générale de la radio et de la télévision en France, 2:501– 2. 39. L’Équipe, June 26, 1956. 40. Bernard Gensous (RTF chief engineer), interview, Le Miroir des Sports, June 29, 1967. 41. On the experimental cameras and techniques developed for the Tour, see Wille, “The Tour as an Agent of Change in Media Production,” 132 – 39. 42. Télé 7 Jours, June 18 and 25, July 2, 9, and 16, 1966; Télé 7 Jours, June 27, July 4, 11, and 18, 1970. Coverage was split between the two national channels. The total takes into account the listed Tour de France report transmission times and assumes an additional total of five minutes a day of coverage on the morning and evening news programs. 43. Télé 7 Jours, June 25, 1960. 44. Goetschel and Loyer, Histoire culturelle et intellectuelle de la France au XXe siècle, 149. 45. Intermarco-Conseil, memorandum, January 1981, CL 58 AH 23. 46. Bernard Normand, memorandum, March 9, 1981, CL 58 AH 23. Although Normand does not explicitly indicate, the memorandum seems to rely on the estimates generated by Goddet’s 1973 survey. 47. Rioux and Sirinelli, Histoire culturelle de la France, 265 – 66; Hubscher et al., L’histoire en mouvements, 520 – 21. 48. Wylie, Village in the Vaucluse, 347– 48. 49. Philippe Liotard describes how mass televising of sports like the Tour engendered a novel, distinct social ritual that embedded itself into everyday life in France. Liotard, “Médiatisation et ritualités sportives.” 50. Marchand, Le cyclisme, 87; Cahiers de L’Équipe (Cyclisme), no. 5, 1960; Holt, Sport and Society in Modern France, 85; Cyclisme Magazine, no. 84, November 1974. 51. Kuisel, Seducing the French, 104 – 5; Ross, Fast Cars, Clean Bodies, 29.

210

n o t e s t o pa g e s 6 2 – 6 5

52. Cyclisme Magazine, no. 84, November 1974. 53. Marchand, Le cyclisme, 94; Cyclisme Magazine, no. 7, June 4, 1969. 54. J. Bobet, Louison Bobet, 77. 55. Calvet, Le mythe des géants de la route, 38. 56. Presse-actualité, no. 8 (June– July 1963): 22 – 23. 57. Gilles Montérémal argues that the “Tour de France effect,” the surge in L’Équipe’s newspaper circulation associated with the event, remained significant into the 1980s. Montérémal, “L’Équipe,” 111– 12. 58. Vie française, July 1, 1949; Le Miroir des Sports, June 29, 1953. 59. In 1960, the franc was “devalued” at a conversion rate of one “new” franc for every 100 “old” francs. Thus, RTF paid the Tour a million “old” francs per live broadcast, for a total of four million “old” francs. The total budget for the Tour that year was 250 million “old” francs. Télé 7 Jours, no. 14, June 25, 1960, 12 – 13; Jacques Goddet, interview by Jacques Marchand, Cyclisme Magazine, no. 5 (April 1960). 60. J. Henry, “En suivant les caravaniers du Tour de France,” Journal de la Publicité, no. 61, July 30, 1948; L’Équipe, June 21 and 24, 1952, and July 1, 1953; Letter from Robert Letorey to Commission d’hébergement de Brest, April 17, 1952, dossier “Tour de France, 1910 – 1954,” AMB 1 I 5 (3). The 1952 calculation assumes 31 publicity caravan participants paying full entry fees for 31 one-ton vehicles and a half fee for 49 “additional” vehicles. 61. Jacques Goddet, interview by Pierre Vernier, Journal de la Publicité, no. 213, December 31, 1954. 62. Chany, La fabuleuse histoire du Tour de France, 421. 63. Cyclisme Magazine, June 4, 1969, 3. 64. Vie française, July 1, 1949. 65. L’Équipe, June 10, 1947, and July 4, 1950; Jacques Goddet, interview by Jacques Marchand, Cyclisme Magazine 1960, no. 5, April 1960; Félix Lévitan, interview, Le Miroir des Sports, June 18, 1962. 66. Christopher Thompson argues that although the conceptualization of professional cycling as work, and its male practitioners as workers, continued, the characterizations of famous cyclists as athletic superheroes— and the problems of drug use that undermined such characterizations— came to the fore after the Second World War. On the class dynamic surrounding the prewar Tour, see Thompson, Tour de France, 140 – 214. 67. L’Équipe, June 25, 1947. 68. Jacques Goddet, interview by author, tape recording, Issy-les-Moulineaux, France, July 2, 1999. 69. L’Équipe, June 10, 1947. 70. Jacques Goddet, interview by Pierre Vernier, Journal de la Publicité, no. 213, December 31, 1954. 71. Jacques Goddet, interview by Jacques Marchand, Cyclisme Magazine, no. 5, April, 1960. 72. Marchand, Le cyclisme, 115. 73. “Statuts de l’AIOCC,” October 19, 1956, dossier “Association International des Organisateurs de Courses Cyclistes (AIOCC),” APPP 624 – 459. 74. Marchand, Le cyclisme, 115. 75. In all, ten of the twenty-two members of the organization were French. “Liste des membres du bureau et adhérents au 2 décembre 1956 (AIOCC),” dossier “Association Internationale des Organisateurs de Courses Cyclists (AIOCC),” APPP 624 – 459.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 6 6 – 7 3

211

76. Marchand, Le cyclisme, 116 – 17. 77. Goddet, L’équipée belle, 221. 78. Magne, Poulidor et moi, 81. 79. Félix Lévitan, interview by P. Katz et al., Le Miroir des Sports, supplement to no. 801, “Spécial le Tour 60,” June 6, 1960. 80. L’Équipe, June 23 – 24, 1962. 81. Jacques Goddet, interview by author, tape recording, Issy-les-Moulineaux, France, July 2, 1999. 82. Bellanger et al., eds., Histoire générale de la presse française, 374 – 78. 83. Vie française, July 1, 1949; L’Équipe, July 1, 1953. 84. Jacques Goddet, interview, Le Miroir des Sports, supplement, June 8, 1967; Goddet, L’équipée belle, 170. 85. L’Équipe, June 21, 1953. 86. Goddet, L’équipée belle, 174, 199. 87. Vie française, July 1, 1949. 88. Journal de la Publicité, June 5, 1953. 89. Letter from mayor of Pau to Jean Fages, November 24, 1948, AMP 3 R 1/2; Vie française, July 1, 1949. 90. Inquiry no. 1467, October 2, 1944, APPP L-11, 92512; untitled inquiry, Préfecture de police de Paris, July 17, 1941, APPP L-11, 92512. 91. Goddet, L’équipée belle, 174. 92. Marillier (former assistant director of the Tour de France), Le vélo s’y prête, 166 – 67. 93. Programme officiel du Tour de France 1950, 26, BN; Goddet, L’équipée belle, 194. 94. Le Télégramme de Brest et de l’Ouest, July 3, 1958; Ouest-France, November 28, 1957; Goddet, L’équipée belle, 195. 95. Goddet, L’équipée belle, 195. 96. Programme officiel du Tour de France 1950, 25, BN; L’Équipe, February 7, 1947. 97. Goddet, L’équipée belle, 157– 58. 98. Programme officiel du Tour de France 1950, 27, BN. 99. Ibid., 27. 100. L’Équipe, June 21, 1953. 101. Guide à l’usage des comités locaux d’organisation, AMS VIII, 33/158. 102. “Instructions pour l’organisation technique et matérielle de l’arrivée et du départ: Arrivée sur vélodrome et stade,” 11– 14, AMP 3 R 1/2; letter from P. Guri to director of the Tour, April 8, 1953, AMS VIII, 33/158. 103. Guide à l’usage des comités locaux d’organisation, AMS VIII, 33/158. 104. Letter to mayor of Pau, March 25, 1952, AMP 3 R 1/2. 105. Programme officiel du Tour de France 1950, BN, 74; L’Équipe, July 7, 1950. 106. Goddet, L’équipée belle, 202 – 3. 107. L’Équipe, June 28, 1956. 108. Goddet, L’équipée belle, 290 – 92. 109. Letter to mayor of Caen, May 3, 1958, dossier “Cyclisme/ Tour de France/Caravane Publicitaire,” AMC. 110. L’Équipe, June 6, 1947. 111. L’Équipe, June 24, 1952. 112. Société du Tour de France, La route, les étapes (1998), 20.

212

n o t e s t o pa g e s 7 3 – 8 0

113. “Tour de France 1958, étape contre la montre à Châteaulin le 3 juillet,” ADF 63 W 19. 114. Journal de la Publicité, January 14, 1966, and January 1, 1965. 115. Presse-actualité, December 1971. For statistics on the stagnation of radio audiences and the decline of film audiences from the 1950s through the early 1970s, as well as the shrinking share of these media in overall publicity spending, see Marie, La Nouvelle Vague, 48; Jeancolas, Histoire du cinéma français, 77, 89; IREP (deux séries, 1959 – 66 et 1967– 73), cited in Martin, Trois siècles de publicité en France, 318. 116. On average, the organizers chose eleven teams to participate each year from 1958 to 1961, all of which competed under a national or regional flag. From 1962 to 1965, they chose an average of thirteen, all of which were sponsored by businesses. 117. Tour officials created several categories of “official” sponsorships, including grands supporters (major sponsors), principales exclusivités (exclusive providers), fournisseur officiel (official provider), and service officiel (official service provider). 118. Pagneux, Peugeot 203 – 403, 152 – 53. 119. “Sur 2 roues . . . comme sur 4, Peugeot toujours présent dans le Tour de France 1963,” 1963 brochure, Musée Peugeot. 120. “Grande présence de Peugeot sur toute sa gamme,” Peugeot actualités, supplement to Peugeot-Commercial, July– August 1962, Musée Peugeot. 121. Presse-actualité, February 1966. 122. Goddet, L’équipée belle, 314. 123. Untitled police inquiry, February 1968, dossier “Lévitan, Félix,” APPP L-11/92512. 124. The city of Paris reclaimed ownership of the Parc des Princes in 1966. 125. Untitled police inquiry, April 1974, dossier “Lévitan, Félix,” APPP L-11/92512. In 1980, the Amaury Group shortened the name of this S.A.R.L. to “La Société du Tour de France” (STF). 126. Le Monde, April 3, 1987. 127. Michel Lefèbvre, internal memorandum, “Le sponsoring et le Crédit Lyonnais,” June 1980, CL 58 AH 23. 128. Ibid. 129. Bernard Normand, text of speech “Le sponsoring sportif,” May 1981, CL 58 AH 23. 130. Ibid. 131. Luc Derieux, interview by author, tape recording, Paris, November 12, 1998. 132. Marillier, Le vélo s’y prête, 169; Minute, June 5, 1987, CL 91 AH 102. 133. Bernard Normand, memorandum to Claude Pierre-Brosselette (President of Crédit Lyonnais), “Préparation de votre entretien avec Monsieur Félix Lévitan du 10 février 1981,” February 9, 1981, CL 58 AH 23. 134. “Challenges d’Or du Crédit Lyonnais. Le règlement, saison 1981,” CL 58 AH 23. 135. The actual cost of Crédit Lyonnais’s sponsorship of the Gold Challenge amounted to 1.1 million francs in 1981. Bernard Normand, memorandum, November 3, 1981, CL 58 AH 23. 136. Draft contract, attached to Bernard Normand, memorandum, February 9, 1981, CL 58 AH 23. 137. Bernard Normand, memorandum, November 3, 1981, CL 58 AH 23. 138. Félix Lévitan, interview by P. Katz et al., Le Miroir des Sports, supplement to no. 801, “Spécial le Tour 60,” June 6, 1960. 139. Calvet, Le mythe des géants de la route, 197– 98. 140. Marchand and Debray, Pour le Tour de France, contre le Tour de France, 17, 21. 141. Martin, Trois siècles de publicité en France, 327.

213

n o t e s t o pa g e s 8 0 – 9 1

142. Ibid., 283. 143. Victoria de Grazia argues that the business community’s adoption of American-style publicity began in the interwar years. De Grazia, Irresistible Empire, 186 – 270. 144. Intermarco-Conseil, memorandum, January 1981, 20, CL 58 AH 23.

Chapter Four 1. L. Bobet, Mes vélos et moi, 20, 56, 57, 81. 2. J. Bobet, Louison Bobet, 82. 3. On French influences on global food and film culture, see Trubek, Haute Cuisine; Schwartz, It’s So French! 4. Holt, Sport and Society in Modern France, 86, 95 – 96. 5. Pierre Chany, interview by Christophe Penot, in Penot, Pierre Chany, 16. 6. Ibid., 20. 7. Blondin, Sur le Tour de France, 7. 8. Holt, Sport and Society in Modern France, 86. 9. La Dépêche de Brest et de l’Ouest, October 1, 1931. 10. L. Bobet, Mes vélos et moi, 28. 11. Magne and Terbeen, Antonin Magne, 9 12. Holt, Sport and Society in Modern France, 86. 13. Gaboriau, “Sport populaire et pratiques symboliques nouvelles,” 151– 52. 14. For example, the number of soccer players registered with the Fédération Française de Football, the interwar period’s largest soccer federation, jumped from 95,000 in 1925 – 26 to 188,664 in 1938. Wahl, Les archives du football, 126. 15. Bidot, Souvenirs,19. 16. Leducq, Une fleur au guidon, 86. 17. Ollivier, L’histoire du cyclisme breton, 331– 37; Cadiou, Les grands du cyclisme breton. 18. Ollivier, La légende de Louison Bobet, 22. 19. Robic, La vérité Robic, 25. 20. Leducq, Une fleur au guidon, 189, 193. 21. Ibid., 186. 22. Magne and Terbeen, Antonin Magne. 23. Le Petit Parisien, July 1, 1922. Perhaps the name of the rider, Dejonghe, was not mentioned because he was Belgian. 24. Le Petit Parisien, July 12, 1927. 25. Leducq, Une fleur au guidon, 231– 32. 26. Magne and Terbeen, Antonin Magne, 172. 27. L’Auto, June 14, 1937. 28. Le Petit Parisien, July 20, 1935. 29. Le Petit Parisien, July 18, 1936. 30. Le Petit Parisien, July 23, 1933. 31. Anquetil, Je suis comme ça, 25. 32. L. Bobet, Mes vélos et moi, 56 – 57; J. Bobet, Louison Bobet, 74 – 75. 33. Geminiani, Les années Anquetil, 108 – 10. 34. Magne, Poulidor et moi, 244. 35. Magne, Poulidor et moi, 33; J. Bobet, Louison Bobet, 49, 52. In 1956, on average, a senior

214

n o t e s t o pa g e s 9 2 – 1 0 0

manager earned 175,000 francs per month and an unskilled worker 36,000 francs per month. Rioux, The Fourth Republic, 499. 36. Ollivier, La légende de Louison Bobet, 126 – 27. 37. L’Équipe, June 23 – 24, 1962; Le Monde, June 28, 1962; La République des Pyrénées, July 13, 1965. 38. Edouard Seidler, interview by Bernard Chevalier, Presse-actualité, June-July 1978. 39. Seidler, Le sport et la presse, 152, 154. 40. On the evolving meanings of such rider imagery, see Thompson, Tour de France. 41. Moulin, Peasantry and Society in France since 1789, 191. 42. Gildea, France since 1945, 227– 28. 43. Moulin, Peasantry and Society in France since 1789, 191. 44. On the packaging, marketing, and consumption of authenticity in the context of French tourism culture, see Ellen Furlough’s “Packaging Pleasures” and “Marketing Mass Vacations.” 45. Bartali, Mes mémoires; Coppi, Le drame de ma vie. 46. Seidler, Le sport et la presse, 135. 47. Coppi, Le drame de ma vie, 1. 48. Ibid., 2. 49. Ibid., 17, 28. 50. Ollivier, La légende de Louison Bobet, 112. 51. L. Bobet, Mes vélos et moi, 9. 52. Marchand, Le cyclisme, 54. 53. Ibid., 58. 54. L’Équipe, July 21, 1947. 55. Hervé le Boterf, forward to Robic, La verité Robic, 15. 56. Vélo Magazine, November 1980. 57. Barthes, The Eiffel Tower, 79. 58. Poulidor, La gloire sans maillot jaune, 12. 59. Philip Dine, employing the theoretical framework proposed by Georges Vigarello, analyzes Poulidor’s peasant persona as an example the cultural importance of self-referential Tour mythology in the process of reinforcing the imagery of “real France” (la France profonde) in the popular imagination. Dine, “Stardom on Wheels: Raymond Poulidor”; Vigarello, “Le Tour de France.” 60. Television clip compilation videotape “Raymond Poulidor,” INA. 61. Ibid. 62. Ibid. 63. Poulidor, La gloire sans maillot jaune, 17. 64. Ibid., 28. 65. Ibid., 53. 66. Ibid., 74. 67. Magne, Poulidor et moi, 31, 33. 68. Poulidor, La gloire sans maillot jaune, 94. 69. Thompson, Tour de France. 70. Marchand and Debray, Pour le Tour de France, contre le Tour de France, 46 – 47. 71. Winock, Chronique des années soixante, 138 – 42; Dauncey, “French Cycling Heroes of the Tour de France” and French Cycling, 169 – 72; Dine, “Stardom on Wheels: Raymond Poulidor,” 96. 72. Anquetil, En brûlant les étapes, 27.

215

n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 0 0 – 1 1 0

73. Ibid., 36, 176 – 77. 74. Anquetil, Je suis comme ça, 6 – 8. 75. Ibid., 9 – 10. 76. Pierre Joly, forward to Anquetil, Je suis comme ça, 19 – 20. 77. Le Monde, November 19, 1987. 78. RTF, “Anquetil qui êtes-vous?,” Page des sports, May 26, 1962, INA online. INA dates this piece from 1962, but it is likely that it was recorded in the late 1950s. Fausto Coppi, the hunting companion Anquetil mentions in the interview, died in January 1960 following a different hunting expedition to Africa with Anquetil. 79. RTF, journal télévisé, December 27, 1960, INA online. 80. Pathé/RTF, “Jacques Anquetil: Les coulisses de l’exploit,” November 23, 1963, INA online. 81. Georges Durand and Pierre Joly, preface to Poulidor, La gloire sans maillot jaune, 12. 82. Startt, Tour de France/ Tour de Force, 81. 83. Georges Durand and Pierre Joly, preface to Poulidor, La gloire sans maillot jaune, 13. 84. Le Miroir des Sports, January 11, 1960. 85. Advertisement, SPAR department stores, L’Équipe, July 2, 1964. 86. L’Équipe, June 23, 1966. 87. Jacques Goddet, preface to Poulidor, Mon age d’or, 9, 11. 88. Le Miroir des Sports, January 4, 1960. 89. Jacques Anquetil described his first Novi-Ligure meeting with Coppi, whom he dubbed the “don” of the cycling world, in his autobiography. Anquetil, Je suis comme ça, 39. 90. Le Miroir des Sports, January 4, 1960. 91. Cyclisme Magazine, February 3, 1969. In 1970, 85 percent of farm holdings in France were of forty-nine hectares or less and many of France’s small farmers owned their land as disjointed parcels. Less than 2 percent of French farmers owned holdings of more than 100 hectares. Larkin, France since the Popular Front, 386. 92. Cyclisme Magazine, February 5, 1969. 93. Ollivier, La légende de Louison Bobet, 247, 249. 94. Cyclisme Magazine, February 5, 1969. 95. Poulidor, Mon age d’or, 173. 96. Calvet, Le mythe des géants de la route, 199. 97. Thompson, Tour de France, 215 – 55. 98. For an extended discussion of this scandal and the public reaction to it, see Thompson, The Tour de France, 244 – 53. 99. On legal, procedural, and medical developments in doping and doping prevention since 1967, see ibid., 215 – 55; Christiansen, “The Legacy of Festina.”

Chapter Five 1. An earlier version of this chap. appeared in French Historical Studies 30, no. 4 (Fall 2007): 651– 84. 2. Comité Caennais du Tour de France, “Dix ans du comité Caennais du Tour de France cyclist,” 1935, AMC. 3. On tourism, nation building, consumer culture, and national identity, see Harp, Marketing Michelin; Baranowski and Furlough eds., Being Elsewhere; Kaufmann, Consuming Visions.

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In his analysis of Limoges’s festival of Francophone theater, created in 1984, David Troyansky characterizes the Limousin capital as “crossroads for global encounters” and a “transnational space” in the contemporary era. Troyansky, “Displaying World Culture in Provincial France,” 425. 4. Studies that explore the cultural, political, and economic agency of provincial communities in this process include Sahlins, Boundaries; Ford, Creating the Nation in Provincial France; Rogers, Shaping Modern Times in Rural France; Wakeman, Modernizing the Provincial City; Hecht, The Radiance of France; Young, Enacting Brittany. 5. Lagrée, “Brittany,” Raspaud, “Stade Rennais,” and Dine, “Sporting Assimilation and Cultural Confusion in Brittany,” in Jarvie, ed., Sport in the Making of Celtic Cultures. 6. Christopher Thompson explores how the Tour became an arena in which competing “master narratives” and “counter-narratives” of French history, national unity, and disunity were expressed in the Third Republic and immediate post–World War II eras. Thompson, The Tour de France, 3 – 4, 51– 94. Scholars of French gastronomy have explored the packaging of regional cuisine and wine for national and international audiences of consumers and tourists, including the integral role played by regional interests in the process. See esp. Laferté, “The Folklorization of French Farming”; Hache-Bissette and Saillard, eds., Gastronomie et identité culturelle française; Guy, When Champagne Became French. 7. Urban studies scholars in many academic disciplines have drawn evocative parallels between the processes of urbanization and globalization. Knox and Taylor, eds., World Cities in a World System; Sassen, The Global City; Eade, ed. Living the Global City. 8. Ford, Creating the Nation in Provincial France, 65 – 66. 9. Planson and Koshaneg, Histoire de la nation bretonne, 12, 166. 10. Campos, “Beating the Bounds,” 159 – 63. 11. Ibid., 159 – 60. On discourses of regional diversity and national unity in the Third Republic, see Thiesse, Ils apprenaient la France; Peer, France on Display. 12. Christopher Thompson discusses at length the 1919 Tour’s passage through Alsace and Lorraine, as well as the broader symbolic meanings of the race as a celebration of regional diversity and national unity during the Third Republic, in his The Tour de France, 55 – 71. 13. Planson and Koshaneg, Histoire de la nation bretonne, 12. 14. Reese, The Bretons against France, 4. 15. Hélias, Le cheval d’orgueil, 530. 16. Dine, “Sporting Assimilation and Cultural Confusion in Brittany,” 125 – 26. 17. Lagrée, “Brittany,” 53. 18. La Dépêche de Brest et de l’Ouest, August 25, 1936. 19. La Dépêche de Brest et de l’Ouest, July 23, 1936. 20. Christopher Thompson and Catherine Bertho-Lavenir point out that region-specific caricatures of spectators became part of the Tour’s public image and were important, too, in perpetuating narratives of French unity and diversity. Thompson, Tour de France, 59 – 67; BerthoLavenir, “Derrière la barrière.” 21. Correspondence between M. Gouinguenet (local representative of Tour organizers) and mayor of Brest, June 8, 1921, and June 10, 1921, AMB 1 I 5(3). 22. La Dépêche de Brest et de l’Ouest, July 20, 1932. 23. Lucien Avocat, quoted by Noël Kerdraon, La Dépêche de Brest et de l’Ouest, September 14, 1933. 24. La Dépêche de Brest et de l’Ouest, May 23, 1936.

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25. La Dépêche de Brest et de l’Ouest, May 23, 1935. 26. La Dépêche de Brest et de l’Ouest, May 11, 1933. 27. Hélias, Le cheval d’orgueil, 523 – 24, 546. 28. Patrick Young explains how rural Bretons restaged and promoted the religious processions to accommodate and profit from tourists’ interest in authentic, folkloric experiences. Young, Enacting Brittany, 171– 213. 29. La Dépêche de Brest et de l’Ouest, July 20, 1932. 30. La Dépêche de Brest et de l’Ouest, May 11, 1933, and May 23, 1936. 31. Hudson Hawley, “Boosters of Brittany: The Saga of the George F. Babbitts of Finistère,” New York Times Book Review and Magazine, July 22, 1923. Patrick Young notes that travelers from elsewhere helped to fabricate and cordon off touristic spaces where Breton cultural authenticity was enacted as they depicted Brittany’s folkloric culture in print and on canvas to tourist audiences. Young, Enacting Brittany, 171– 213. 32. Le Gallo, Histoire de Brest, 8. 33. Le Goïc, “Qui fait la ville?,” 222; Le Gallo, Histoire de Brest, 338. 34. Clout, “Place Annihilation and Urban Reconstruction,” 168. 35. Prewar population based on 1936 statistics. Le Gallo, Histoire de Brest, 323, 342; Rouxel and Dieudonné, “La ville provisoire,” in Histoire de Brest, ed. Le Gallo, 178. 36. Rouxel and Dieudonné, “La ville provisoire,” 178, 182. 37. Ouest-France, June 25, 1952. 38. Minutes, Brest City Council, March 24, 1952, AMB 1 I 5(3). 39. Letter from Directeur Général des Services Techniques de Brest to the president of the comité local d’organisation du Tour de France, June 11, 1952, AMB 1 I 5(3). 40. “État des dépenses faites à l’occasion du départ du Tour de France cycliste, le 25 juin 1952,” AMB R L.14; “Comité d’Organisation du départ du Tour de France 1952, Commission des Fêtes, Cercles Celtiques et ‘Kevrennou’ participant au Départ le 25 juin à Brest,” AMB 1 I 5(3). 41. Le Télégramme de Brest et de l’Ouest, April 11, 1952. 42. Le Télégramme de Brest et de l’Ouest, April 18, 1952. 43. “État des dépenses faites à l’occasion du départ du Tour de France cycliste, le 25 juin 1952,” AMB R L.14; Le Télégramme de Brest et de l’Ouest, June 25, 1952. 44. Le Télégramme de Brest et de l’Ouest, June 25, 1952. 45. RTF, “Tour de France : 1ère étape Brest-Rennes,” Journal Télévisé de 20h, June 26, 1952, INA online. 46. Ibid. 47. Le Télégramme de Brest et de l’Ouest, June 25, 1952. 48. Le Télégramme de Brest et de l’Ouest, June 20, 1952. 49. Le Télégramme de Brest et de l’Ouest, August 18, 1954. 50. Le Gallo, Histoire de Brest, 297– 98, 356 – 57, 359; Le Couédic, “Brest et la pierre philosophale,” 203. 51. Ville de Brest, Service des affaires économiques, “Les problèmes du développement économique brestois,” April 1974, AMB 1 I 5(4). 52. On efforts to decentralize economic management during the 1960s and 1970s, see Gourevitch, Paris and the Provinces, 75 – 77, 130 – 52, 212 – 13; Gildea, France since 1945, 128 – 35. 53. Le Gallo, “Images d’une ville,” 21; Berthou, “Les changements majeurs du XIXe siècle,” 108 – 12; Le Couédic, “La rémanence du rêve,” 138 – 44; Le Gallo, Histoire de Brest, 237– 69, 328 – 29, 345, 361– 62.

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54. Ville de Brest, Service des affaires économiques, “Les problèmes du développement économique brestois,” April 1974, AMB 1 I 5(4). 55. “Point des actions menées jusqu’à ce jour, Tour de France 1974,” AMB 1 I 5(4). 56. New York Times, June 10, 1961; Éclair-Pyrénées, June 22, 1962; Le Monde, September 6, 1994. 57. By the early 1970s, Brittany produced more than half of France’s artichokes. Sérant, La Bretagne et la France, 184. 58. Press release, “Pour la première fois de son histoire: Le Tour de France cycliste ira en Angleterre en 1974,” June 5, 1973, AMB 1 I 5(4). 59. Contract signed by Gourvennec, Brest, and Tour directors, April 24, 1973, AMB 1 I 5(4). In 1974, Pau paid the Tour 65,000 francs to host a stage. Pau host-town contract, October 23, 1974, AMP 3 R 1/3. 60. “Brest, pôle de développement. Bienvenue à Brest” (media packet), AMB 1 I 5(4). 61. Minutes, Tour de France Entertainment Committee meeting, March 13, 1974, AMB 1 I 5(4). 62. Minutes, Tour de France regional organizing committee, Morlaix, April 30, 1974, AMB 1 I 5(4). 63. “Liste des anciens coureurs Bretons du Tour de France presents à Brest pour le Tour 1974,” AMB 1 I 5(4). 64. Time, the Montreal Gazette, the New York Times, the Times (London), and the Los Angeles Times published numerous stories. A Google News Archive search reveals that newswire stories and editorials appeared in dozens of other dailies across the United States. Art Buchwald was so moved by the conflicts that he called, tongue-in-cheek, for “Artichoke Disarmament.” Meriden (CT) Journal, July 12, 1960, GNA. 65. Ouest-France, June 17, 1974. 66. L’Équipe, June 25, 1974. 67. Le Télégramme de Brest et de l’Ouest, July 1, 1974. 68. It is worth noting that the Breton organizing committee devoted more than 10 percent of the entire projected budget to hosting receptions for journalists. Minutes, “Tour de France” meeting, December 13, 1973, AMB 1 I 5(4). 69. ORTF, “Tour de France: Plymouth à l’heure du Tour,” June 29, 1974, INA online. 70. Times (London), July 1, 1974. 71. Times (London), June 29, 1974. 72. The Tour’s website, www.letour.fr, received up to 491,000 unique visitors and 3.7 million page views per day during the 2009 Tour. http:// www.quantcast.com, accessed Dec 11, 2010. 73. “Les villes étapes 2008: visitez Brest,” official Tour de France YouTube website, http:// youtu.be /GuTfYrUy3QQ, accessed January 7, 2014. 74. Thomazeau and Blanchet, Guide touristique, Tour de France 2008, 2 – 13. 75. Ouest-France, June 30, 2008. 76. L’Express, July 10, 2008. 77. Le Télégramme (formerly Le Télégramme de Brest et de l’Ouest), July 2, 2008. 78. France 3 Ouest/Iroise,“Grand Départ du Tour de France,” 19/20, July 5, 2008, France 2 website, http://ma-tvideo.france2.fr /video /iLyROoafY4BT.html, accessed June 20, 2013. 79. Thomazeau and Blanchet, Guide touristique, Tour de France 2008 (English version); live coverage, 2008 Tour de France, stage 1, Versus Network, July 5, 2008. 80. Tucoo-Chala, ed., Histoire de Pau, 170, 172.

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81. Patriote des Pyrénées, July 9, 1932. Douglas Peter Mackaman puts the number of spa goers in 1900 at 800,000. Mackaman, Leisure Settings, 43, 66. 82. Tucoo-Chala, ed., Histoire de Pau, 172. 83. Dine, French Rugby Football, 47. 84. New York Times, February 14, 1909. The investment was reported to total $15,000. 85. Tucoo-Chala, ed., Histoire de Pau, 171. 86. Times (London), January 27 and February 3, 1920. 87. Times (London), March 23, 1922. 88. New York Times, October 20, 1901. 89. Los Angeles Times, November 13, 1938. 90. New York Times, October 30, 1938. 91. Chadefaud, Aux origines du tourisme dans les pays de l’Adour, 880. 92. Patriote des Pyrénées, August 1, 1935. Patrick Young cites estimates by the president of the French Chambers of Commerce that point to an even more precipitous decline from 19 million foreign tourist visits in 1929 to 900,000 in 1934 – 35. Bahon-Rault, Politique consulaire du tourisme, 3, cited in Young, “A Place Like Any Other?” 139. 93. Tucoo-Chala, Petite histoire du Béarn, 143 – 44. 94. Times (London), March 23, 1922. Another article even complained about the high price of eggs and fowl in Pau. Times (London), February 3, 1920. 95. Patriote des Pyrénées, June 19, 1937 and September 2, 1939. 96. New York Times, November 23, 1926. 97. Patriote des Pyrénées, August 3, 1935. Harvey Levenstein’s history of American tourists in France argues that the traditional distinction between upper-class “travelers” and middle-class “tourists” is false. In his argument, the decline of “cultural tourism” (immersion in high culture for the purpose of education or self-improvement) and the emergence of “recreational tourism” (seeking pleasure and amusement) accounts for such shifts in tourist culture. Levenstein, Seductive Journey, ix– xi, 245 – 48, 280 – 83. 98. M. Verdenal, minutes, City Council, Bulletin Officiel de la Ville de Pau, December 1926, cited in Chadefaud, Aux origines du tourisme dans les pays de l’Adour, 882. 99. Ibid., 884 – 901. Patrick Young describes the national trend toward modernizing French tourist amenities, especially hotels, to conform to international standards. Pau was a relative latecomer to this trend, which Young argues began in the late belle epoque. Young, “A Place Like Any Other?,” 141– 49. 100. Sallenave, Souvenirs d’un maire de Béarn, 64, 68. During the interwar years, many provincial towns began to organize foire-expositions. Martin, Trois siècles de publicité en France, 207. 101. Address of M. Herskowiza, minutes, City Council, June 6, 1930, AMP 1D1/52. 102. Patriote des Pyrénées, July 10, 1930. 103. Patriote des Pyrénées, July 11, 1930. 104. Patriote des Pyrénées, July 25, 1934. 105. Minutes, City Council, December 16, 1935, AMP 3R1/2. 106. Letter to mayor of Pau, March 25, 1935, AMP 3R1/2. 107. Ibid. 108. Minutes, City Council, December 16, 1935, AMP 3R1/2. 109. Patriote des Pyrénées, July 19, 1935. 110. Patriote des Pyrénées, July 20, 1935.

220

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111. Ibid. 112. Boyer, L’invention du tourisme, 122. 113. La IVe République des Pyrénees, July 1, 1949. 114. Minutes, City Council, August 10, 1949; letter from mayor of Pau to mayor of Agen, January 29, 1951; letter to mayor of Pau, May 19, 1957, AMP 3 R 1/2. 115. RTF, Newsreel “Tour de France 1953: 10ème étape Pau– Cauterets,” July 14, 1953, INA online. 116. RTF, Newsreel “Tour de France: Pau-Luchon 11ème étape,” July 6, 1960, INA online. 117. Minutes, City Council, May 6, 1947, AMP 3 R 1/2. 118. Minutes, City Council, August 21, 1959, AMP 3 R 1/2; Chambre de Commerce et d’Industrie de Pau, “Situation économique et perspectives d’avenir,” January 1966, 54. 119. Montreal Gazette, April 20, 1962, GNA. 120. New York Times, April 12, 1955; Time, April 14, 1961. 121. New York Times, April 5, 1964. 122. H. Peyrou (owner of Hôtel Corona, Pau), interview by author, tape recording, Pau, March 15, 1999; B. Kalmoun (manager of Hôtel Gramont, Pau), interview by author, tape recording, Pau, March 11, 1999. 123. Minutes, City Council, February 27, 1959, AMP 3 R 1/2. 124. Éclair-Pyrénées, July 21, 1954. 125. Éclair-Pyrénées, July 28, 1955. 126. J. Touyarot (owner of Hôtel Continental), interview by author, tape recording, Pau, March 19, 1999. 127. Correspondence between Tour and mayor of Pau, November 3, 1953; February 1, 1957; February 14, 1957, AMP 3 R 1/2. 128. Letter to mayor of Pau, December 30, 1961, AMP 3 R 1/3. 129. Statistics for the years 1964 to 1966. Chambre de Commerce et d’Industrie (CCI) de Pau, “Situation économique et perspectives d’avenir,” January 1966, 56; CCI de Pau, “Situation économique et perspectives d’avenir,” January 1967, 55, ADBP. 130. Elf-Aquitaine, Elf-Aquitaine des origines à 1989, 38 – 39. 131. Ibid., 42, 51. 132. Martine Lignières-Cassou, “Elf au coeur du Béarn,” in Josy Poueyto (ed.), Le journal de votre Conseillère Générale— Canton de Pau Centre, no. 2 (Pau, 1999), back cover, AMP. 133. Chambre de Commerce et d’Industrie (CCI) de Pau, Les chiffres du Béarn, 14 – 15. 134. H. Peyrou, interview by author, tape recording, Pau, March 15, 1999; B. Kalmoun, interview by author, tape recording, Pau, March 11, 1999; J. Touyarot, interview by author, tape recording, Pau, March 19, 1999. 135. Ibid. 136. Scholars of the contemporary Tour assert that the event continues to be a significant commercial boon to host towns. Judith Grant Long concludes that the Tour is a “bargain” for host towns that brings “tremendous amenity value to area residents.” Michel Desbordes estimates that the race’s visit to Digne in 2005 resulted in a net injection of €326,000 into the local economy and a significant boost to the city’s image recognition. Long, “Tour de France,” 382; Desbordes, “A Review of Economic Impact Studies,” 535 – 37. 137. Elf-Aquitaine, Elf-Aquitaine des origines à 1989, 51– 53. 138. Syndicat d’Initiative de Pau, Pau, livret-guide, 26 – 36. 139. Conseil-Général du Département des Pyrénées-Atlantiques, “Le Tour de France en

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Pyrénées-Atlantiques,” (press packet), CCI de Pau, 1996; City of Pau official Internet site, http:// www.pau.fr, accessed January 14, 2014. 140. Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen.

Chapter Six 1. Antenne 2, “Sports été,” July 27, 1986, INA online. 2. Scholte, Globalization, 16 – 19, 74 – 87; Osterhammel and Petersson, Globalization, x– xi, 113 – 40. 3. Briggs and Burke, A Social History of the Media, 153 – 54; Murray, The World’s Game, 152 – 60. 4. Arjun Appadurai invoked this phenomenon as illustrative of the deterritorialized “subjectiveness” of the individual experience in the globalized setting. Appadurai, Modernity at Large, 4. 5. Such mutual exchanges of personnel, actors, cinematic style, and commerce between Europe and America have long been a hallmark of the film industry despite Hollywood’s commercial hegemony for much of the twentieth century. See esp. Schwartz, It’s So French!; NowellSmith and Ricci, Hollywood and Europe. 6. Paul Dietschy notes these parallel trends by highlighting French sporting “exceptionalism” and the important role of “French networks [in] facilitating the spread of sports across the globe” since the nineteenth century. Dietschy, “French Sport,” 509 – 10, 22 – 23. 7. Between 1949 and 1961, the number of journalists in the race caravan grew from approximately 400 to 500, according to estimates of Tour officials. La IVe République des Pyrénées, July 1, 1949. Dernières Nouvelles d’Alsace, July 1, 1961. 8. Jessica Gienow-Hecht makes a similar characterization of journalists as agents of transnational cultural exchange in her history of Die Neue Zeitung, the daily German newspaper created by the American occupation government. Gienow-Hecht, Transmission Impossible. 9. Times (London), July 5, 1967. 10. Times (London), June 24, 1981. 11. New York Times, July 9, 1961. 12. New York Times, July 8, 1966. 13. Los Angeles Times, July 26, 1982. 14. Los Angeles Times, July 18, 1984. 15. Times (London), July 21, 1958. 16. New York Times, July 17, 1966. 17. New York Times, July 20, 1969. 18. New York Times, July 6, 1958. 19. New York Times, July 18, 1991. 20. Times (London), October 11, 1971. 21. Times (London), August 7, 1965. 22. Times (London), July 7, 1968. 23. New York Times, July 9, 1966; July 5, 1961; July 7, 1960; Independent, July 15, 1999; Times (London), July 21, 1958; Reading (PA) Eagle, November 28, 1963, GNA. 24. New York Times, July 18, 1984. 25. New York Times, July 11, 1965; Los Angeles Times, June 28, 1959, and July 26, 1982. 26. Times (London), January 21, 1982, and July 5, 1967.

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27. Chicago Tribune, June 12, 1955. 28. New York Times, July 6, 1958. The Fourth Republic collapsed and Charles de Gaulle took emergency powers as premier on June 1, 1958. 29. Chicago Tribune, July 25, 1986. 30. Los Angeles Times, August 11, 1957. 31. On the Tour as a metaphor for suffering, triumph, masculine prowess, and national honor, see Thompson, The Tour de France, 110 – 40. 32. Los Angeles Times, July 26, 1982. 33. New York Times, February 28, 1960. 34. New York Times, July 17, 1962. 35. Times (London), February 28, 1984. 36. Times (London), June 27, July 4, 11 and 18, 1981. 37. Rioux and Sirinelli, Histoire culturelle de la France, 326. 38. Bourg and Gouguet, Analyse économique du sport, 196. 39. Kuhn, The Media in France, 172 – 78; Goetschel and Loyer, Histoire culturelle et intellectuelle, 171. 40. Clastres and Dietschy, Sport, culture et société en France, 207. 41. Bourg and Gouguet, Analyse économique du sport, 218, 245. 42. Enquète SOFRES, May 1990, cited in ibid., 224. 43. Les Echos, July 25, 1994. 44. Le Monde, July 14, 1997. 45. Jean-Marie Leblanc, interview by Christophe Penot, in Penot, Jean-Marie Leblanc, 232. 46. On the powerful commercial and cultural impact of television on French professional sport after 1945, see Moneghetti, Tétart, and Wille, “De la plume à l’écran.” 47. CSA, Lettre de l’économie du sport, March 5, 2004, cited in Nys, “Trois aspects de l’économie du sport,” 246. 48. LNF Infos, 42, March 2002, 6 – 7, cited in Hare, Football in France, 147. 49. Holt and Mason, Sport in Britain, 123. 50. The F.A. Premier League, Premier League Annual Report 2006/2007, 38 – 40. 51. The F.A. Premier League, Premier League Season Review 2010/11, 59. 52. On the links between the cultural and commercial history of baseball and the evolution of American law, see White, Creating the National Pastime. 53. Per-game attendance dipped by approximately 15 percent between 1949 and 1969. Rader, Baseball, 173. 54. Tygiel, “The Shot Heard ‘Round the World,” 178 – 79. 55. Rader, Baseball, 178; New York Times, July 3, 2012. 56. New York Times, July 14, 1984; Los Angeles Times, September 19, 1986. 57. The short-lived Coors Classic stage race was the direct model for the “Hell of the West.” 58. New York Times, May 5, 1989. 59. New York Times, May 16, 1989. 60. Miami News, July 8, 1981, GNA. 61. Sports Illustrated, July 13, 1981. 62. For an enlightening and entertaining sporting history of the Coors Classic and narratives of American cyclists’ triumphs at home and abroad, see Dzierzak, The Evolution of American Bicycle Racing. 63. Free Lance-Star (VA), November 9, 1982, GNA. 64. New York Times, January 17, 1983.

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65. Deseret News (Salt Lake City), March 31, 1983, GNA. 66. Free Lance-Star (VA), April 7 and 8, 1983, GNA. 67. The article is quoted to include its poor French grammar. Free Lance-Star (VA), April 9, 1983, GNA. 68. New York Times January 17, 1983, and March 12, 1983. 69. Free Lance-Star (VA), March 5 and April 11, 1983, GNA. 70. New York Times, May 5, 1989. 71. Sports Illustrated, May 22, 1989; New York Times, May 16, 1989. 72. New York Times, May 15, 1989. 73. Sports Illustrated, May 22, 1989. 74. New York Times, May 13, 1992. 75. New York Times, May 15, 1990. 76. New York Times, May 13, 1992. 77. Free Lance-Star (VA), December 19, 1996, GNA. 78. Washington Post, November 1, 1996. 79. Libération, July 1, 1987, CL 91 AH 102. 80. Chany, La fabuleuse histoire du Tour de France, 933 – 47. 81. The Tour issued invitations to teams according to the world rankings as calculated by the UCI. The STF issued several “wild card” invitations each year, often to French teams to bolster the French presence in the peloton. 82. In these calculations, some cycling teams categorized as French had both French and non-French corporate sponsors. I assume that the largest share of funding for these teams was provided by the French corporate partners, since French men accounted for nearly all the team riders. Chany, La fabuleuse histoire du Tour de France, 922 – 23, 933 – 34, 954 – 55, 970 – 71. 83. Teams are categorized according to the nationality of the majority of the riders or of the team’s primary corporate sponsor. Some categorizations are problematic. For example, 7-Eleven, a chain of American convenience stores, sponsored successful teams that included only a handful of American riders. Panasonic, Hitachi, and Toshiba, three Japanese electronics companies, sponsored teams in the Tour that included no Japanese cyclists. Ibid., 933 – 55. 84. Programme officiel du Tour de France 1980, BN. 85. The major underwriters in 1995 were Crédit Lyonnais Bank, Champion (a chain of French supermarkets), Fiat (the Italian car manufacturer), and Coca-Cola. 86. On the Women’s Tour de France, see Thompson, The Tour de France, 132 – 38. 87. Jacques Goddet, interview by author, tape recording, Issy-les-Moulineaux, France, July 2, 1999. 88. Le Monde, April 3, 1987; “Prévision de Conference de Presse de M. Félix Lévitan,” March 30 and April 2, 1987, APPP L-11/92512; Richard Marillier, Le vélo s’y prête, 177. 89. Le Monde, July 4, 1987. 90. Naquet-Radiguet served in his post at the Tour for only one year. Xavier Louy acted as the interim Tour director in 1988. Goddet, L’équipée belle, 462. 91. Marillier, Le vélo s’y prête, 180; Goddet, L’équipée belle, 465; Jean-Marie Leblanc, interview by Christophe Penot, in Penot, Jean-Marie Leblanc, 207. 92. Jean-Marie Leblanc, interview by Christophe Penot, in Penot, Jean-Marie Leblanc, 77; Marillier, Le vélo s’y prête, 179. 93. Le Monde, July 7, 1989; Penot, Jean-Marie Leblanc, 35 – 58, 109, 161– 63, 171– 76, 207. 94. L’Équipe, July 4 – 5, 1987. 95. Le Monde, October 22, 1988.

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96. Capital, September 1997, CL 162 AH 13. 97. Bourg and Gouguet, Analyse économique du sport, 233. 98. Le Monde, August 3, 1998. 99. Le Monde, July 4, 1987. 100. L’Équipe, July 2, 1987. 101. Vélo Magazine 218, February 1987; Le Monde, April 10, 1995. 102. Luc Derieux, interview by author, tape recording, Paris, November 12, 1998; Jean-Marie Leblanc, interview by Christophe Penot, in Penot, Jean-Marie Leblanc, 229 – 30; Marillier, Le vélo s’y prête, 178 – 79. 103. Le Monde, July 4, 1987. Crédit Lyonnais’s Luc Derieux also employed the term “circus” to describe the pre-1987 Tour. Luc Derieux, interview by author, tape recording, Paris, November 12, 1998. 104. Programme officiel du Tour de France 1980, inside of back cover page, BN; Programme officiel du Tour de France 1983, 95, BN. 105. Société du Tour de France, Programme officiel du Tour de France 1995. 106. In 1998, Tour Club members paid the STF between seventeen and twenty million francs, official partners paid between three and seven million francs, and official providers paid between two and three million francs. Le Monde, August 3, 1998. 107. Vélo Magazine, June 1988, cited in Penot, Jean-Marie Leblanc, 234; Le Point, July 6, 1996, CL 150 AH 19; Luc Derieux, interview by author, tape recording, Paris, November 12, 1998. 108. Le Point, April 14, 2008. 109. El País, June 22, 2008. 110. USA Today, February 29, 2008. 111. Tour de France official website television guide, http:// www.letour.fr /tour /guide_tv1 .html, accessed June 20, 2002. 112. Nike gained six places in the annual poll between 1992 and 1995. In a similar poll in 1997, Coca-Cola placed second and Nike fourth. L’Événementiel, March 1996 and January 1997, CL 162 AH 13. 113. Luc Derieux, interview by author, tape recording, Paris, November 12, 1998; Daniel Isaac (Crédit Lyonnais executive in charge of sports sponsorship after Luc Derieux’s retirement), interview by author, tape recording, Paris, October 17, 1998. 114. Tendences, July 2, 1987; La Tribune de l’Économie, August 26, 1997; Les Echos, August 20, 1997, CL 162 AH 13. 115. Félix Lévitan, “Tour de France 1987, Exposé de Félix Lévitan” [press release], CL 042 AH 025; Le Monde, April 3, 1987; Les Echos, July 25, 1994; Le Monde, August 3, 1998; Le Parisien libéré, July 23, 1999. The STF’s accounting books have never been opened to the public. The revenue figures include all revenues generated by the races that the STF organizes. It is safe to assume that the Tour de France, the STF’s crown jewel, accounted for the majority of the company’s revenues directly and indirectly. 116. Trubeck, Haute Cuisine. 117. Schwartz, It’s So French!

Chapter Seven 1. New York Times, June 28, 1959. 2. Ibid.

n o t e s t o pa g e s 1 7 1 – 1 8 2

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226

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45. Le Monde, July 25, 1999. 46. Armstrong’s first autobiography discusses at length his struggle to overcome cancer and his victory in the 1999 Tour. Armstrong, It’s Not about the Bike. 47. Dallas Morning News, July 2, 1999. 48. Sunday Times (London), July 4, 1999. 49. Le Monde, July 13, 1999. 50. L’Humanité, July 14, 1999. 51. Le Monde, July 15, 1999. 52. Le Monde, July 18, 1999. 53. L’Express, July 15, 1999. 54. L’Humanité, July 15, 1999; Mail on Sunday (London), July 18, 1999. 55. L’Express, July 15, 1999. 56. L’Humanité, July 13, 1999. 57. Le Monde, July 18,1999. 58. Extensive coverage appeared in, among many others, Times (London), July 21 and 22, 1999; Guardian (UK), July 22, 1999; Dallas Morning News, July 22, 1999; New York Times, July 22, 1999. 59. Le Monde, July 4, 2009. 60. Le Monde, July 30, 2009. 61. Le Monde, July 27, 2009. 62. Le Monde, July 17, 2009. 63. Le Monde, July 19, 2009. 64. Brissonneau et al., “Carrière sportive et socialisation secondaire en cyclisme sur route,” 131. 65. Sud-Ouest, July 4, 2010. 66. Le Monde, July 28, 1999. 67. Bicycling, March 20, 2008. 68. In an Internet-only piece before the 2009 Tour, Time ranked Vietto’s “Great Sacrifice” as the fifth most dramatic moment in Tour history. Time official website, July 2, 2009, http:// www.time.com /time /specials /packages /article /0,28804,1908387_1908388_1908368,00.html, accessed January 9, 2014. It should be noted, however, that the myth of Vietto’s “beau geste” differs slightly from the real context in which the drama of the 1934 race transpired. Despite Vietto’s acknowledged climbing prowess, the rookie rider stood approximately half an hour behind his team leader Magne at the beginning of the two Pyrenean stages in which he “sacrificed” himself. For an analysis of Vietto’s sacrifice as a meme of French cycling heroism, see Thompson, “René Vietto et le Tour de France de 1934.” 69. Hugh Dauncey notes this trend in his discussion of France’s enthusiasm for the “hopeless” yet exciting exploits of “modest” French cyclist Thomas Voeckler, who wore the yellow jersey frequently but always acknowledged that he never had a chance of winning the Tour. Dauncey, French Cycling, 252 – 54.

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Index

Abran, Georges, 27 Abt, Samuel, 146 advertising and publicity: Amaury-initiated changes, 163 – 64; Americanization argument, 54, 58 – 59; broadcast media beginnings, 56, 57, 58; clandestine type, 41, 63, 74 – 75; French spending statistics, 74; Goddet’s resistance, 54; Goddet’s staff, 70; in newspapers, 21, 35 – 37, 40, 68, 89 – 90; public opinion, 80 – 81. See also corporate sponsorships entries; publicity caravans agents, rise of, 96 Agliano, Remo d’, 177– 78 agriculture, France: Brest area, 120 – 21, 123; Brittany’s artichoke production, 121, 123, 124, 218n57, 218n64; landowner statistics, 106, 215n91 Aimar, Lucien, 172 A.I.O.C.C. (Association Internationale des Organisateurs de Courses Cyclistes), 65 – 66, 210n75 air time, statistics, 60, 199, 209n42 Albert de la Bruhèze, Adri, 204n48 Alborghetti, Mario, 134 alcohol industry, 41, 80, 90 Alcyon sponsorship, 36, 37, 39, 48, 86, 89 Algeria, 11, 17, 44 Alleluia sponsorship, 37, 87 Alps, addition to Tour, 30. See also mountain climbs Alsace, 33, 112 Altig, Rudi, 172 Amaury, Émilien, 75 Amaury, Philippe, 161 Amaury Group, 75 – 76, 78, 161– 63, 165 – 66 Amaury Sports Organization (A.S.O.), 163 America, Tour of, 154 – 57, 161 American Flyers, 153

Americanization debate, 54, 55, 58 – 59, 208n7 Amgen sponsorship, 165 – 66 Anderson, Benedict, 202n8 Anderson, Phil, 178 Anglade, Henri, 96, 174 Anquetil, Jacques: autobiography, 97; contracts/ earnings, 66, 80, 91; in drug use debate, 108, 174 – 75, 195; international print coverage, 169 – 72, 173, 174 – 76; manager of, 96; public persona, 90, 100 – 104, 106, 149; retirement activity, 106, 174 – 75 Anquetil, Janine, 101, 104, 172 antihero persona. See Anquetil, Jacques Antoine, Jean, 54 – 55 Appadurai, Arjun, 221n4 Argentinian riders, 44 Armstrong, Lance, 168 – 69, 182 – 90, 192, 195 Arrighi, Giovanni, 201n5 artichoke production/conflict, Brittany, 121, 123, 124, 218n57, 218n64 Asia, early bicycling history, 18 – 19. See also Japan Association Internationale des Organisateurs de Courses Cyclistes (A.I.O.C.C.), 65 – 66, 210n75 Astana team, 189, 190 attire debates, in bicycling history, 14, 24 Australia, 44, 45 – 48, 177, 178, 204n35, 207n88 Austrian riders, 44 autobiographies, image-making value, 94 – 96, 97, 101 Automobile Club Basco-Béarnais, 131. See also Grand Prix de Pau automobile industry: and bicycle sales, 17– 18, 62; promotion strategies, 36 – 37; races, 20, 77, 131, 134; support of Tours, 74 – 75, 155, 165 Automoto team, 38

242 Bahamontes, Federico, 146 Ballon d’Alsace, 23, 30 Banque Nationale de Paris (B.N.P.), 77– 78 Bartali, Gino, 94 – 95, 104 – 5 Barthes, Roland, 97, 147 Basco-Béarnais club, 131. See also Grand Prix de Pau baseball: attendance statistics, 151, 222n53; global patterns, 12, 17, 203n21, 204n45; journalism’s language for, 10, 203n6; Mantle-Anquetil comparison, 170; television broadcasting, 151– 52 Bassons, Christophe, 186 – 88, 192 Bayard-Clément factories, France, 20 BBC, Tour coverage, 149 Beaupuis, René, 69 – 70 Belgium, xv, 15, 38, 44, 66, 179, 183 Berlin, Tour hosting, 161 Berrendero, Julián, photo section Bertho-Lavenir, Catherine, 216n20 Besançon, addition to Tour, 29 Bic team, 91 La Bicyclette, 21 bicycling history, overview: international commonalities, 9 – 16; local context impact, 16 – 19, 204n48; print media’s role, 19 – 21; professionalization beginnings, 15 – 16, 21– 22 Bidot, Marcel, 86 Bijon, Councilor, 131 biological passport system, drug testing, 190 Bitterman, Jim, 180 Blaye, publicity van description, 144 – 45 Blondin, Antoine, 84 bloomer craze, 14. See also attire debates, in bicycling history Bobet, Jean, 62, 82 Bobet, Louison: autobiography, 82, 95; background, 82, 85, 87; Brest promotion, 122; earnings, 91; hero status explanation, 149; personal manager, 96; retirement, 66, 106, 107; Stella sponsorship, 90; win record, 82 Bordeaux, in first Tour, 26 Bordeaux– Paris race, 16, 21, 25, 76 Bourvil, photo section box score, baseball’s, 10, 203n6 Boyer, Jonathan, 148 – 49, 155 – 56, 157, 177– 78 Boyer, Winston, 177– 78 Brambilla, Pierre, 53, 146 Breaking Away, 152 – 53, 179 Brest: economic challenges, 120 – 21; reconstruction activities, 117– 19; tourism promotion, 115 – 16, 120, 125 – 26, 217nn28 – 29 Brest, Tour hosting: overview, 5, 111, 116 – 17, 126 – 27, 138; before World War II, 111– 16; after World War II, 118 – 26, 218n68 Briquet, Georges, 135

index Brissonneau, Christophe, 191 Britain: imperialism and sporting culture, 11– 12; Pau presence, 128 – 29; soccer match attendance, 151; television broadcasting, 57, 149; television ownership, 55; Tour hosting, 123 – 24; Tour participation, 177 British Petroleum, 63 – 64, 91 Brittany culture. See Brest entries broadcast media, French evolution, 55 – 58, 60 – 61. See also radio coverage; television entries Brogan, Patrick, 146 Bruyneel, Johan, 184 Buchwald, Art, 218n64 budgets. See financing/budgets, Tour de France Buffet, Marie-George, 190 Burton, Tim, 153 Caen, 29, 110, 207n62 California, Tour of, 166 Calvet, Jacques, 79 – 80 Camellini, Fermo, photo section Campos, Christophe, 112 Canada, transcontinental race, 44 Canal Plus, 150 Canberra Times, 47 Carenso, Jean-Pierre, 162, 163 Carmichael, Chris, 184 cartoon portrayals, Tour de France, 28 – 29f Casassus, Paul, 132 Cassidy, Shaun, 152 – 53 Castro, Fidel, 17, 204n45 CBS television, 149, 155, 156 celebrity aspect, overview, 6 – 7. See also hero persona Chadwick, Henry, 203n6 Champion sponsorship, 164 – 65, 223n85 Chany, Pierre, 84 Chapatte, Robert, 139 cheating episodes, 23, 27– 28, 45, 97. See also drug use Chicago Tribune, 148, 175 China, 19, 159 Chirac, Jacques, 139 Christian Science Monitor, 175 Christophe, Eugène, 32 – 33, 146 Chupin, Mayor (Brest), 118, 119 cigarette advertising, 90 Cimino, Michael, 153 cinema culture, French influence, 4 – 5, 83, 167 Circuit de Champagne, 87 Circuit de l’Ouest, 84 – 85, 87, 114 Circuit of France, 51 civil engineering corps, logistics support, 73 clandestine advertising, 41, 63, 74 – 75 “Clara” tale, 13 – 14

index Clarke, Jackie, 208n7 class dynamics: in Desgrange’s vision, 93 – 94; in early sports history, 14, 17; Pau tourism, 128 – 29, 219n97; Tour’s symbolism, 22, 93. See also peasant character persona Clément, Adolphe, 24, 25 Clerc, Patrice, 189 Cloarec, Pierre, 87 clubs, cycling, 83 – 88 CNN, Armstrong coverage, 182 Coca-Cola sponsorship, 164, 165, 166, 223n85, 224n112 Cofidis team, 184 Cointreau promotion, L’Auto, 40 col de la Croix de Fer, 144 col du Galibier climbs, 144, 185 col du Puymorens, photo section col du Tourmalet, photo section Colette, 8 collusion practices, Desgrange’s rules, 26, 27, 38 commercialization processes, overviews, 35 – 37, 53 – 54, 79 – 81, 88 – 93. See also advertising and publicity; corporate sponsorships entries; publicity caravans commissaire général, logistics management, 69 – 70, 71– 72 common language factor, baseball, 10 community identity, role of print media, 10 – 11, 203n7 Compagnie Parisienne, 15 competitive cycling, emergence, 14 – 15, 19, 43 – 44 Conmy, Jack, 159 consumerism. See advertising and publicity; commercialization processes, overviews Contador, Alberto, 189, 190, 191, 192, 194 – 95, photo section contracts. See salaries/contracts, cyclists Coors Classic, 153 – 54, 178, 222n57 Coors-Z team, 181 Coppi, Bruna, 95, 107 Coppi, Fausto: and Anquetil, 101, 215n78; in Brest promotion, 119; death, 104, 105; mountain climb style, 170 – 71; personal manager, 96; public persona, 94 – 95, 105, 107, photo section; speed record, 101 Cornet, Henri, 28 corporate sponsorships, Tour de France: bicycle industry era, 35 – 38; business classifications listed, 198; cyclist demands, 171– 72; Desgrange’s changes, 38 – 39; drug use impact, 194; Goddet’s rule changes, 74, 212nn116 – 17; international share, 45 – 46, 160 – 61, 223n83, 223n85; Lévitaninitiated changes, 164 – 65, 224n106; opposition to, 54, 63 – 67, 80; team format, xiii– xiv; television’s value, 74 – 76, 165 – 66, 224n112. See

243 also advertising and publicity; commercialization processes, overviews; Crédit Lyonnais; Peugeot; publicity caravans corporate sponsorships, US racing, 153 – 54, 157– 59, 181– 82 Costner, Kevin, 153 costs: bicycles, 13, 20, 37; cycling teams, 62; newspaper operations, 68. See also financing/ budgets, Tour de France; subventions, host towns Courcol, Jean-Pierre, 162, 163 crashes, 32 – 33, 46, 99, 134, 144, photo section Crédit Lyonnais, 76 – 79, 80 – 81, 85, 164 – 65, 166, 212n135, 223 Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré, 65 Critérium International, 163 Critérium National, 65 Croix de Fer climb, 144 Cuba, 12, 17, 203n21, 204n45 cuisine, French influence, 4, 83, 166 – 67 Cyclisme Magazine, 106 Cyclo-Club Rennais, 87 Daley, Robert, 134, 143, 146, 149, 170, 171, 172 Dallas Morning News, 184 Darras, Christian, 91 Darrigade, André, 96 Dauncey, Hugh, 19, 100, 226n70 Debray, Pierre, 80 de Las Cuevas, Armand, 182 Delgado (cyclist), 183 democratization and bicycles, 13 Denmark, 18, 44, 177, 183, 194 Derieux, Luc, 77 Derrigade, André, 97 Desbordes, Michel, 220n136 Desgrange, Henri: automobile races, 36; background, 24; death, 51; New York Times coverage, 48; political orientation, 24 – 25 Desgrange, Henri (and Tour de France): Brest disputes, 114; creation of, 25 – 26; cultural visions, 93 – 94, 112; financing strategies, 39 – 40; management style, 68; problems during first two races, 27, 28; radio coverage, 56; rider conflicts, 33, 34 – 35. See also itinerary and rider rules, Tour de France; L’Auto deterritorialization process, defined, 3, 202n8 Deutschlandtour, 44 De Waele, Maurice, 38 Dewas, Jean, 70 Dietschy, Paul, 221n6 Digne, Tour hosting, 220n136 Dine, Philip, 11, 100, 202n14, 214n59 Dion, Count de, 24 – 25 distances, Tour de France, xii, 26, 29, 38, 56 – 57

244 domestique functions, xvi, 99 – 100, 171– 72. See also drafting practices, team Dop Shampoo, 58 Dousset, Daniel, 96 drafting practices, team, xiv– xvi, 91– 92, 142 – 43, 171 Drais, Baron von, 12 draisienne, 12 Dreyfus, Alfred, 20, 24 – 25 drug use, 107– 9, 168 – 69, 174 – 75, 183 – 84, 185 – 89, 190 – 95 Duclos-Lassalle, Gilbert, 107 duel, Desgrange’s, 48 Dunlop Rubber Company, 45 – 46, 86 DuPont sponsorship, 153, 158 – 59, 181– 82 Durand, Georges, 98 Echevarria, Roberto Gonzalez, 204n45 economic growth, post-WWII France, 53 – 54. See also Brest entries; tourism industry education-oriented narrative, 33, 50, 58 Elf-Aquitaine, 136, 137 Elli, Alberto, 183 Englebert tire promotion, L’Auto, 40 EPO (Erythropoietin), 108 – 9, 183 Escartin, Fernando, 185 European Common Market, 120 – 22 European Cup, 59 Europe No. 1 station, 57– 58, 72 – 73, 106 extra-sportif sponsors. See corporate sponsorships entries Faber, François, 23, 36 Farrier, George, 177 Faux, Ronald, 142 Favé, François, 114 Fédération Française de Cyclisme (F.F.C.), 63, 66 Fédération Française de Football, 213n14 Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), 15 female emancipation and bicycles, 13 – 14 ferry service, Breton coast, 121– 22 Festina team, 185 Feuillet, Ludovic, 86 F.F.C. (Fédération Française de Cyclisme), 63, 66 Fiat sponsorship, 75, 164, 165, 223n85 FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association), 15 Fignon, Laurent, xii, 107, 149, 180, 182 films, bicycle racing, 152 – 53 financing, Grand Prix de Pau, 131 financing/budgets, Tour de France: during the early 1900s, 39 – 41, 42; during the 1940s, 62, 63, 64, 67– 68; during the 1950s, 62, 63, 68, 122, 133, 134 – 35; during the 1960s, 62, 210nn59 – 60; during the 1970s, 76; during the 1980s, 62, 76,

index 161, 166; during the 1990s, 151, 166, 224n106. See also subventions, host towns Finland, early bicycle history, 18 first Tour de France, 25 – 27 flatland stages, overview, xiv Flèche Wallonne, 163 Fontenay, Jean, 85, 87, 95 food industry sponsorship, 40 – 41 Football League, impact of media deregulation, 151 Fox, Norman, 124 fox hunting, Pau area, 128 – 29 La Française des Jeux team, 186 – 87 France: bicycles sales/production statistics, 13, 20, 37, 62; broadcast media evolution, 55 – 58; map, x; radio/television ownership, 55, 60, 208n13; sporting culture developments, 11– 12, 14 – 15, 17, 205n74. See also specific topics, e.g., Desgrange entries; hero persona; Pau entries France 3 Quest/Iroise, 126 La France Socialiste, 51 Franco-Prussian War, 33 Fredericksburg, Virginia, 156 – 57 Free Lance-Star, 156 – 57 Frenchness ideal, 6 – 7, 64, 166 – 67, 202n14, 216n20. See also hero persona French Open, 77, 150 French School, star system development: overview, 82 – 83; commodification processes, 66, 88 – 93; as cultural allegories, 93 – 94, 99 – 100; cycling club importance, 83 – 88; drug use impact, 107– 9, 168 – 69, 191– 92; image-making processes, 94 – 99, 104 – 6; significance of Anquetil-Poulidor rivalry, 100 – 104 Frileuse Wine, Magne’s promotion, 90 Galibier climbs, 144, 185 “galley slaves” controversy, 34, 35 Garin, Maurice, 22, 23, 26, 27, 28 Garnault, Jean, 52f, 70 Gaul, Charly, 145, 171 Gaulle, Charles de, 53, 57, 121 Gave River, in 1920 Tour, 33 La Gazzetta dello Sport, 43 – 44 Geminiani, Raphaël, 66, 91, 104 gender dynamics, sponsor advertising, 41– 42 Gentil, Edmond, 48, 115 geography narrative, 33 – 34, 112. See also itinerary and rider rules, Tour de France Germany: at Brest during WWII, 117; broadcasting industry, 57, 194; early bicycling history, 18; interwar radio subsidies, 55; occupation era media, 202n12; participation in Tour de France, 38 – 39, 44, 172, 177, 183, 195; Tour of, 44 Giddens, Anthony, 202n8 Giegerich, Steve, 156 – 57

index Gienow-Hecht, Jessica, 142, 202n12 Giffard, Pierre, 20 gigantism theme, press reporting, 32 Gimondi, Felice, 174 Giro d’Italia. See Italy, Tour of globalization processes, overview: Americanization theme, 201n4, 202n9; elements summarized, 2 – 5, 139 – 41, 202n8; role of celebrities, 6 – 7; small community engagement, 5, 202n12; timeline debates, 201n2, 201n5, 202n8. See also specific topics, e.g., corporate sponsorships; host towns, Tour de France; soccer; television entries Goasmat, Jean-Marie, 87, 114 Goddet, Jacques: on Anquetil, 171; background, 59; founding of L’Équipe, 53; on Poulidor, 105; on Robic, 97 Goddet, Jacques (and Tour de France): overview, 53, 54; business interests, 67, 75, 76, 78; with colleagues, 52f; commercialization resistance, 54, 62 – 63, 64 – 67, 145; host town relationships, 120, 122, 135; organizational structure changes, 67– 74; post-retirement return, 162; sponsorship rule changes, 74, 212nn116 – 17; during World War II, 51 Gold Challenge race, 78 – 79 golf, Pau area, 128, 129 Gourvennec, Alexis, 121– 23 Grand Prix de Nations, 65, 76, 100, 163 Grand Prix de Paris, 16, 22 Grand Prix de Pau, 131– 32, 134 – 35 Grand Prix de Saint-Méen, 85 Grazia, Victoria de, 202n9 “Great War,” 23, 33, 50, 112, 116, 129 green jersey prize, xiii Greenville, South Carolina, 159 Grenoble, 29, 34 Grey River Argus, 45, 46 – 47 Guerini, Giuseppe, 147 “Guide for Use by Local Organizing Committees,” 71 Guimard, Cyrille, 97, 179 Halles St.-Louis renovation, Brest, 118, 120 Hawley, Hudson, 115 – 16 Hay, Thomas, 25 The Head and the Legs (Desgrange), 24 Heimrath, Ludwig, 134 Hélias, Pierre-Jakez, 113, 115 hero persona: in Breton culture, 113 – 14; commodification of, 66, 88 – 93; and drug use, 107– 9, 192, 210n66, 226n70; in foreign newspapers, 49, 148 – 49, 169 – 70; Killy’s skiing, 172 – 73; in modernization tensions, 93 – 94, 99 – 100; peasant character archetype, 94 – 100, 102 – 6, 214n59; print portrayals, 30, 31– 33, 49, 84, 148 – 49, 169 – 70; respectability ideal, 104 – 5, 107; and

245 retirement careers, 106 – 7; role of time trials, 56. See also LeMond, Greg; Poulidor, Raymond Hervé, Pascal, 185 Hess, John, 143 – 44, 145 Hinault, Bernard: autobiography, 97; LeMond relationship, 139, 177, 179 – 80, photo section; retirement, 182; sponsor promotions, 78; in STF management, 107, 162 – 63; Tour of America, 155, 157; win record, 79, 176 Hirondelle bicycles, 20 “Historical and Touristic Guide to the Tour de France,” 72, 125 history narratives: Desgrange’s vision, 112; in host town promotions, 72; in print coverage, 32 – 34, 50, 145 – 46; in television coverage, 133 Hoffman, Dustin, 153 Holt, Richard, 20, 30, 201n7 host towns, Tour de France: contemporary benefits, 220n136; logistics management, 69 – 70, 134 – 35; and modernization conflicts, 110 – 11, 138; promotions of, 72 – 73; selection requirements, 70 – 71; US reporting about, 49 – 50. See also Brest entries; Pau entries host towns, US bicycle racing, 156 – 57 Hôtel Continental, Pau, 135 hotel tax revenues, 129 Hounshell, David, 17– 18 Hudson automobiles, 37 Hurne, Ralph, 153 Hyland, Dick, 148 imperialism, role of sporting culture, 11– 12, 17 income growth, post-WWII France, 53 – 54 Indurain (cyclist), 183 Ingraham, Rob, 155 International Cycling Union (UCI), xiii– xiv, 14, 66, 158 – 59, 175, 185, 188, 189, 194 – 95 International Olympic Committee, 14 – 15 Internet use, Tour promotion, 125, 218n72 Irish riders, 161, 177, 183 Italy: automobile racing interest, 131, 134; in Breaking Away film, 152; broadcast advertising, 57; road racing interest, 15, 16 Italy, Tour de France participation: before World War II, 31, 38 – 39, 44; after World War II, 53, 75, 94 – 95, 146, 147, 174, 183, 185, 226n46, photo section. See also Bartali, Gino; Coppi, Fausto Italy, Tour of: overview, 43 – 44; creation of, 2, 16; sponsorship approach, 63, 65, 66; winners, 95, 101 itinerary and rider rules, Tour de France: during the early 1900s, 26, 27, 29 – 30; during the 1910s, 29 – 30, 33; during the 1920s, 30, 31, 56 – 57; during the 1930s, 38 – 39, 56 – 57; during the 1970s, 79 – 80, 122; during the 1980s, 161; during the early 2000s, 124 – 25

246 Jacquelin, Edmond, 22 Japan: baseball development, 12, 17; early bicycling history, 16, 18 – 19; Tour participation, 44, 145, 160, 223n83 Jaussley Plan, Pau’s, 130 Jenkins, Dan, 173 Jiminénez, Julio, 144 Jockey, circulation statistics, 205n19 Joly, Charles, 52f, 70 Joly, Pierre, 98 Jones, Phil, 182 Jordan, Matthew, 202n12 Julich, Bobby, 184 Kalifa, Dominique, 202n3 Kashirin, Yuri, 154 Katz, Michael, 145 Kazakhstan riders, 189 Kenealy, Arabella, 13 – 14 Kerdraon, Noël, 113, 115 Kiernan, John, 50 Killy, Jean-Claude, 163, 172 – 73 King, Betsy, 180 Kirkham, Don, 45, 46 Koblet, Hugo, 44 Kroes, Rob, 201n4 Labor bicycles, 89 Lacq discovery, Pau impact, 136 l’Alpe d’Huez climb, 108 Lambrecht, Roger, photo section Landis, Floyd, 189, 194 landowners, farm, 106, 215n91 Lapize, Octave, 23, 36, 146 La Rochelle, 27, 29 Lauritzen, Dag Otto, 158 L’Auto: advertising in, 36 – 37, 40, 89 – 90; Brittany area disputes, 114 – 15; circulation statistics, 28 – 29, 43, 197, 202n3, 205n19; dissolution of, 53; founding, 24 – 25; as L’Auto-Vélo, 25; Tour coverage, 31, 32, 33 – 34. See also Desgrange, Henri (and Tour de France) Lauzé, Georges, 106 Leblanc, Jean-Marie, 154, 159, 163 Le Bonal wine, cyclists’ promotions, 90 le Boterf, Hervé, 97 Le Drogo, Ferdinand, 113 Leducq, André, 39, 86, 87, 89 Lefèbvre, Michel, 77 Lefèvre, Géo, 24, 25, 26 – 27, 28 Le Grèves, René, 90 Le Guével, Lucien, 87 Leipheimer, Levi, 189 leisure time, changes, 9 – 10, 54, 61. See also bicycling history, overview; tourism industry

index LeMond, Greg, xii, 139, 154, 158, 168, 176 – 82, 190 – 91, photo section LeMond, Kathy, 179 LeMond, Robert, 179 L’Équipe: circulation statistics, 62; competition ownership, 65; finances, 68, 93; founding of, 53; management changes, 162; race reporting, 78, 123; sale of, 75; sponsorship award, 77 Letorey, Robert, 52f, 70 Levenstein, Harvey, 219n97 Lévitan, Félix: and Amaury Group, 76; background, 69; globalizing initiatives, 152, 160, 161; Gold Challenge competition, 78 – 79; sponsorship philosophy, 66, 69, 78; US race organizing, 154 – 55, 157 L’Humanité, 35, 182, 188 Liège– Bastogne– Liège race, 15, 16, 21, 163 Liggett, Phil, 126 Lignières-Cassou, Martine, 136 Limoge, theater festival, 215n3 Liotard, Philippe, 209n49 Littwin, Mike, 144 Lombardy, Tour of, 16 Londres, Albert, 34 Long, Judith Grant, 220n136 Longo, Jeannie, 161 Lorraine, 33, 112 Los Angeles Times, 128 – 29, 144 – 45, 148 – 49 L’Ouest-Éclair, 87 Louy, Xavier, 223n90 Luchon– Pau stage, photo section Lucky Strike cigarettes, cyclist promotions, 90 Luxembourg, 27, 44, 56 Lyon, in first Tour, 26 Madiot, Marc, 139 Magne, Antonin: background, 85, 87; with colleagues, photo section; contracts/salaries, 37– 38, 87– 88, 89; and Poulidor, 66, 98, 99; product promotions, 90, 91; US press portrayal, 49; Vietto’s sacrifice, 193, 226n69 Maier, Charles S., 202n8 La Maison du Café, 107 managers, rise of, 96 Mantle, Mickey, 170 Marchand, Jacques, 65 Marinelli, Jacques, photo section Maritime Festival, Brest, 125 – 26 Marseille, in first Tour, 26 Martin, Marianne, 180 Massoon, Marcel, 88 Me and My Bikes (Bobet), 82 Meisler, Stanley, 144 – 45 Mercier, Emile, 89 Mercier, Fernand, 27

247

index Mercier-BP team, 66, 91 Merckx, Eddy, 137, 169, 173 – 74 Merlin, Louis, 56, 57, 72 – 73 Messick, Andrew, 166 Metz stage, 33 – 34, 187 Michelin company, 21– 22 Milan– San Remo race, 16, 98 military support, Tour logistics, 69 – 70, 71– 72, 73 Millar, David (cyclist), 193 Miller, David (columnist), 149 Miller, Michael B., 201n5 Miroir des Sports, 42 – 43, 104, 105 modernization tensions: Americanization debate, 54, 55, 58 – 59, 208n7; bicycle symbolism, 13 – 14; host town navigations, 110 – 11, 216n6; role of peasant archetype, 93 – 94, 99 – 100, 214n59 Le Monde, 162, 183, 186, 188, 189, 192 Montmartre-Sportif club, 86 Mont Ventoux climbs, 146, 191 Morgul– Bismarck circuit, Coors Classic, 154 mountain climbs: overview, xiv, xvi; additions to itinerary, 30; Anquetil-Poulidor rivalry, 102 – 3, 170; Armstrong’s performances, 185, 186, 191; Coors Classic, 154; images of, photo section; Landis’s performance, 189; and leisurely paces, 142 – 43; press coverage, 49, 143 – 44; rider comments about, 46, 146; Simpson’s death, 108; Spanish riders, 183; Virenque’s performance, 186 Mourenx, Tour hosting, 137 movies, bicycle racing, 152 – 53 “Mr. Average Bike Racer” (Daley), 143 Munro, Ivor, 46 Murray, Bill, 203n19 Mythologies (Barthes), 147 Nancy, addition to Tour, 29 Nantes, in first Tour, 26 Naquet-Radiguet, Jean-François, 162, 163 – 64, 165, 223n90 nationalities of riders, changes, 160 – 61, 176 – 77, 183. See also specific countries national team formula, xiii, 38 – 39, 44, 54, 64 – 66, 92, 171 natural gas reserves, Pau impact, 136 NBC Nightly News, 180 Netherlands, 18, 189 New York Times (article topics): Anquetil’s riding, 170, 171, 175; Brittany communities, 115 – 16, 128 – 29; cultural portraits of Tour, 50, 143 – 44; Desrange’s duel, 48; Goddet’s anticommercialism, 145; Grand Prix, 134; heroic qualities of cyclists, 146, 149; LeMond’s impact, 181; Poulidor’s victory, 174 New Zealand, 36 – 37, 44 – 48

New Zealand Truth, 47 Nike sponsorship, 166, 224n112 Nord, cobblestone roads, 32 Normand, Bernard, 77, 79 Office de la Radiodiffusion et Télévision Française (ORTF), 58 “Official Partners” category, sponsorship, 164, 224n106 “Official Providers” category, sponsorship, 164, 224n106 Oldenziel, Ruth, 204n48 Olympic Games, 25, 60, 140, 150, 154, 163, 173 Oman, Tour of, 165 Oosterbosch, Bert, 157 Operation Puerto, Spain, 192 Opperman, Hubert, 46, 47– 48 ORTF (Office de la Radiodiffusion et Télévision Française), 58 Otago Witness, 45 pacers, in first Tour, 26 Packer, Billy, 157, 159 Palais des Sports, 76 Palais Omnisports de Bercy, 78 Palmer, Mr., 124 Pantani, Marco, 183, 185, 191– 92, 194 Parc des Expositions, 76 Parc des Princes, 24, 70, 76 Paris– Brest– Paris race, 20, 21, 22, 48, 76, 112 Paris– Brussells race, 21 Paris– Clermont-Ferrand race, 21– 22 Le Parisien libéré, 53, 62, 67– 69, 78, 187 Paris– Nice stage, 107 Paris– Roubaix race, 16, 21, 65, 76, 89, 157, 163 Paris– Rouen race, 20, 21, 86 Paris-Soir, 42 Paris–Tours race, 21, 65, 76, 163 Passerieu, Georges, 45 – 46 Patriote des Pyrénées, 129, 130, 132 Pau, Tour hosting: overview, 5, 111, 137– 38; before World War II, 57, 130 – 32; after World War II, 132 – 38 Pau, tourism industry: before World War I, 127– 29; decline of, 129, 219n92, 219n97; Grand Prix hosting, 131– 32, 134 – 35; Lacq discovery impact, 136; promotional initiatives, 129 – 30, 219n99 peasant character persona, 93 – 100, 102 – 4, 105 – 6 Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, 153 Pélissier, Charles, 34, 49, 90 Pélissier, Francis, 34, 89 Pélissier, Henri, 34 – 35, 85 People magazine, 181 Perrier sponsorship, 164 Petit, Max, 70

248 Petit-Breton, Lucien, 23, 32, 45, 114 Le Petit Journal, 20 Le Petit Parisien, 34, 37, 42 – 43, 75, 89, 90 Pétroles d’Aquitaine, 136 Pettyjohn, Len, 153 Peugeot: automobile competitions, 36; publicity strategies, 74 – 75, 89; team sponsorship, 32, 63 – 64, 87; as vehicle provider, 74 – 75, 155, 164 Phebus-Dunlop team, 46 Piel, Roger, 96 Pingeon, Roger, 99 – 100 Piquemal, Maurice, 118 Plant, Michael, 159 Plymouth, Tour hosting, 122, 123 – 24 policing duties, government assumption, 73 political activity, cyclist, 57– 58, 107 political identity, role of print media, 10 – 11, 203n7 polka-dot jersey prize, xiii Pollentier, Michel, 108, 175 Pompidou, George, 174 Poppe, Henk, 123 popular culture, common aspects. See specific topics, e.g., advertising and publicity; globalization processes, overview; tourism industry population statistics, France, 53 Portes, Jacques, 202n9 Pottier, René, 23, 195 Poulidor, Raymond: Anquetil rivalry, 100 – 104, 170; autobiographies, 97, 98; commercial value, 66, 91; crashes, photo section; international print coverage, 173 – 74; personal manager, 96; public persona, 97– 104, 105, 149, 214n59; retirement activity, 106 – 7 Premier League, formation, 151 Premier Pas Dunlop, 86, 87 Prince, Frederic H., 129 print coverage: Artichoke War, 123, 218n64; automobile racing, 131, 134; baseball, 10, 204n45; in early bicycling history, 15, 16, 19 – 21; Pau tourism, 128; US bicycle races, 154, 155 print coverage, Tour de France: Brest hosting, 118 – 19, 125 – 26; drug use, 183 – 84, 188 – 89, 190 – 91; hero persona, 30, 31– 33, 49, 84, 148 – 49, 169 – 70; history narratives, 32 – 34, 50, 145 – 46; importance of, 8 – 9, 92 – 93; for international audience, 44 – 50, 141– 49; literary styles, 30, 31– 32, 49, 145 – 46; Pau hosting, 130 – 31, 133; readership poll, 191; US riders, 181, 184 – 85, 186, 189 print media: advertising, 21, 36 – 37, 40, 68, 89 – 90; circulation statistics, 19, 20, 62, 74; finance challenges, 68, 93; identity fostering function, 10 – 11, 12, 203n7; television resistance, 59 – 60. See also specific newspapers, e.g., L’Auto; New York Times (article topics)

index prize money: during the 1880s, 19, 22; during the early 1900s, 26, 45; during the 1910s, 46; during the 1920s, 31, 40, 86; during the 1930s, 40, 42, 87, 89; during the 1950s, 82; during the 1960s, 91, 144; during the 1980s, 154, 155, 158; during the 1990s, 164; during the early 2000s, 189. See also salaries/contracts, cyclists pro-am status, impact, 158, 159 production/sales statistics, bicycles, 13, 20, 36, 37 professionalism, emergence, 15 – 16, 21– 22 provincial communities, modernization tensions, 110 – 11, 216n6. See also host towns, Tour de France Prudhomme, Christian, 126, 193 publicity caravans: during the 1930s, 39 – 42, 89 – 90; during the 1940s, 63, 133; during the 1950s, 119, 135, 210n60; during the 1970s, 107; during the 1980s, 144 – 45. See also corporate sponsorships, Tour de France public opinion, advertising, 80 – 81 Puy-de-Dôme, Anquetil-Poulidor rivalry, 102 – 3, 170, 173 Puymorens climb, photo section Pyrenees: addition to Tour, 30; in Pau television coverage, 133 – 34. See also mountain climbs Qatar, Tour of, 165 Quimper, Tour complaints, 114 – 15 La Quintonine, cyclist’s promotion, 90 Quittard, Jean, 133 Rabobank team, 189 radio coverage, 54 – 55, 57, 72 – 73, 131 Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française (RTF): Anquetil portrayal, 101– 2, 215n78; creation of, 57; host town coverage, 119 – 20, 133 – 34; operational policies, 57– 58; rights fees, 210n59; Tour coverage history, 60 – 61. See also television entries Radio Luxembourg, 56, 57– 58, 104 Radio Monte-Carlo, 57 radios, ownership statistics, 55 Radio-Television Luxembourg, 106 – 7 Rasmussen, Michael, 189 Ravaud, Charles, 86 Regalado, Samuel O., 203n21 registration requirements, in first Tour, 26 reliability trials, automobile, 36 – 37 Renault-Elf team, 178 Renault team, 77 Rennes, addition to Tour, 29 Republican Guard, 73 rickshaws and bicycles, 18 – 19 Riis, Bjarne, 183, 192, 194 road racing, emergence of, 14 – 15, 20 – 22, 43 – 44, 83 – 84

index Robic, Jean, 53, 66, 87, 96 – 97, 119, 146, photo section Roche, Stephen, 161, 183 Romanian riders, 44 Ronot, Bernard, 124 Rostand, Edmond, 33 RTF. See Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française (RTF) rugby, 11– 12, 128 Ruiz, Bernardo, 97 Rydell, Robert, 201n4 Sabbagh, Pierre, 60 Sainte Marie-de-Campan, Christophe’s blacksmithing, 33 Saint Petersburg Times, 48 – 49, 207n50 salaries, French workers, 37, 54, 91, 213n35 salaries/contracts, cyclists: before World War II, 86, 87, 89, 115, 204n35; after World War II, 91– 92, 96, 99, 143, 171, 181– 82 sales/production statistics, bicycles, 13, 20, 36, 37, 62 Salon du Cycle, 20, 37 San Sebastián, Tour hosting, xi– xii Sarkozy, Nicholas, 190 Schwartz, Vanessa, 167 Scottish riders, 193 second Tour de France, 27– 29 Seidler, Edouard, 93 self-sacrifice ideal, 83, 99 – 100, 188, 193, 226n69. See also hero persona Sérillon, Claude, 186 Sestrières stage, Armstrong’s, 187 7-Eleven sponsorship, 223n83 sham amateurism, defined, 86 Sherwin, Paul, 126 Siegel, Mo, 153 Silva, Robert, 106 Simpson, Tommy, 108, 144 skiing championships, 59, 173 Skoda sponsorship, 165 Slipstream team, 193 Small, Bruce, 46 Smith, Robert, 13 soccer: globalization patterns, 11– 12, 16 – 17, 59, 203n19; impact of media deregulation, 151; as national prowess barometer, 194; participant statistics, 213n14 social time, television impact, 61 Société du Tour de France, 78, 107, 161– 66, 223n81, 224n106, 224n115. See also Lévitan, Félix; Wermelinger, Élie Société Nouvelle de Publications Sportives et Industrielles (SOPUSI), 75 – 76 Sonsenka, Ondrˇej, xv Soviet Union teams, 154, 160

249 Spain: early bicycling history, 17; Tour de France participation, 44, 177, 183, 226n46; Tour of, 44, 101, 158, 165, 172. See also Contador, Alberto spectator experience, roadside: in Frenchness narrative, 216n20; images of, xv, photo section; intimacy factor, 8, 147; US races, 156 – 57, 158; before World War II, 27, 30, 130, 202n3; after World War II, xi– xii, 146 – 47 speed averages, peloton, xv Speicher, Georges, photo section spending patterns, bicycles. See sales/production statistics, bicycles sponsorships. See corporate sponsorships entries sport history, convergent patterns. See baseball; bicycling history, overview; soccer sporting societies, French statistics, 205n74 Sports, circulation statistics, 205n19 Sports Illustrated, 154, 158, 173, 175, 179, 181 sports-media-industrial complex, rise of, 19 – 22. See also corporate sponsorships entries; print entries; television entries sprint racing, emergence, 14 – 15 Stablinski, Jean, 172 stage organization, overview, xiv, xvi. See also itinerary and rider rules, Tour de France star system. See French School; hero persona Stella bicycles, 87, 90 Stoller, Dave, 152 – 53 Strasbourg, 33 – 34, 207n62 subsidy payments. See subventions, host towns subventions, host towns: Brest’s negotiations, 118, 122; Desgrange’s demands, 39, 42, 207n62; Goddet’s changes, 68, 71; Pau’s levels, 130, 132; Tour budget portions, 68, 151. See also host towns, Tour de France Sud-Ouest, 191 Sud-Radio, 57 suffering standard, 95, 148 – 49, 170, 186. See also hero persona; Poulidor, Raymond Sukhoruchenkov, Sergei, 154 Switzerland, xiii, 11, 44, 190 – 91 “The Talent Show,” 58 Tassin, Eloi, 87 tax revenues, hotel, 129 Taylor, Marshall “Major,” 25 Tchérina, Ludmilla, 145 television broadcasting: advertising policies, 56, 57; baseball, 151– 52; deregulation impact, 150, 151– 52; French beginnings, 57– 58; soccer, 150, 151; US bicycling racing, 155, 156, 159; viewership statistics, 8, 150 television broadcasting, Tour de France: Amaury-initiated changes, 163 – 65; cyclist image making, 97– 98, 101– 2, 214n59, 215n78; deregulation impact, 150 – 51; drug use impact,

250 television broadcasting, Tour de France (continued) 194; evolution summarized, 40 – 41, 59 – 61; fan-cyclist intimacy factor, 93, 104; global reach, 149, 166; Gold Challenge race, 78 – 79; host town portrayals, 119 – 20, 122, 123 – 24, 126, 133 – 34; impact on rules and itineraries, 79 – 80; Peugeot’s advertising strategy, 74 – 75; print media’s resistance, 59 – 60, 62 – 63; rights for, 62, 151, 152, 199, 210n59; statistics summarized, 199; US riders, 180 – 81, 182; value for sponsors/supporters, 74 – 75, 165 – 66; viewership changes, 191, 199 televisions, ownership statistics, 55, 60, 208n13 tennis, 77, 150 Terront, Charles, 22 La tête et les jambes (Desgrange), 24 Thévenet, Bernard, 107, 186 Thirty Glorious Years, overview, 53 – 54 Thompson, Christopher, 99, 107, 201n7, 210n66, 216n6, 216n20 Thys, Philippe, 32 Time magazine, 49, 134 Times of London (article topics): Frenchness of Tour, 146 – 47; Pau tourism, 128, 129; Plymouth’s hosting, 124; rider characterizations, 170, 173, 174 – 75; rider strategies/tactics, 142 – 43 time trials, xiv, xvi, 31, 38, 56, 73, 170 – 71, 187 Toulon, addition to Tour, 29 Toulouse, in first Tour, 26 “Tour Club” category, sponsorship, 164 – 65, 224n106 Tour de France, overview, xii– xvii, 1– 7, 194 – 96. See also specific topics, e.g., Bobet, Louison; Desgrange entries; host towns, Tour de France; print entries Tour de l’Avenir, 76 Tour de Suisse, 44 Tour de Trump, 154, 157– 59, 181 Tour DuPont, 154, 158 – 59, 181– 82 tourism industry: Brest’s promotion, 115 – 16, 120, 125 – 26, 217nn28 – 29; media’s contribution, 57, 146; Pau’s tradition, 127– 30, 133, 136, 219n92, 219n99; and sporting culture, 11– 12; Wermelinger’s promotional strategies, 72, 125 Tourmalet climb, 32 – 33, photo section Tour of America, 154 – 57, 161 Tour of California, 166 Tour of China, 159 Tour of Germany, 44 Tour of Italy, 43 – 44, 63, 66, 101 Tour of Lombardy, 16 Tour of Oman, 165 Tour of Qatar, 165 Tour of Spain, 44, 101, 158, 165, 172 Tour of Switzerland, 44

index Touyarot, Jean, 135 trade shows, bicycle industry, 20 training and conditioning, Desgrange’s book, 24. See also French School Les Trente Glorieuses, overview, 53 – 54 Les Triplettes de Belleville, 153 Troyansky, David, 215n3 Trubeck, Amy, 166 – 67 Trump, Donald, 153, 154, 157– 58 Tumblety, Joan, 206n52 Tunisian riders, 44 UCI. See International Cycling Union (UCI) Ullrich, Jan, 183, 192, 195 Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI). See International Cycling Union (UCI) Union vélocipédique de France, 28, 85 United Kingdom. See Britain; Scottish riders United States: in Americanization argument, 54, 55, 58 – 59, 208n7; bicycles sales statistics, 13; early bicycling history, 13, 17– 18; impact of media deregulation, 151– 52; Pau presence, 128 – 29; road racing interest, 44, 152 – 59, 161, 165 – 66; television ownership, 55; Tour reporting, 48 – 50, 141– 49. See also Armstrong, Lance; Boyer, Jonathan; LeMond, Greg; New York Times (article topics) United States Anti-Doping Agency, 195 United States Cycling Federation, 153 United States Postal Service (USPS) team, 184 US Bicycling Hall of Fame, 178 USPS (United States Postal Service) team, 184 La Vache qui Rit promotion, L’Auto, 40 Vanderaerden, Eric, 158 Van Looy, Rik, 66 variety shows, host towns, 72 – 73. See also Brest entries; Pau entries Le Vélo, 20, 21, 25, 28 Véloce-Club Bordelais, 21 Véloce-Club de la Belle Epoque, 85 Véloce-Club de Levallois, 86 Véloce-Sport, 21 Le Vélocipède Illustré, 15 Vélodrome de la Seine, 24 Vélodrome d’Hiver, 76 Vélo Magazine, 97 Vietto, René, 193, 226n69, photo section viewership statistics, 8, 60, 61, 150, 152 Vigarello, Georges, 201n7, 214n59 “villages” for corporate sponsors, 165 Vinokourov, Alexadre, 189 violence, spectator, xii, 27– 28, 147 Virenque, Richard, 185 – 86, 187 Vittel sponsorship, 165

251

index Voeckler, Thomas, 226n70 Voet, Willy, 185 Vuelta a España, 44, 101, 158, 165, 172 Wanganui Herald, 45 Watson, Harry, 47, 48 Weber, Eugen, 20, 138 Wermelinger, Élie, 52f, 70, 71– 72, 120, 125, 135 Western Mail, 46 West Germany, broadcast advertising, 57 Wilcockson, John, 142 – 43 Willard, Frances, 13, 14 Winfrey, Oprah, 195 winners, Tour de France: commonalities, xv– xvii; during the early 1900s, 22, 23, 28; during the 1920s, 38, 85; during the 1930s, 43, 88, 94 – 95, 193; during the 1940s, 53, 87, 94 – 95, 146, photo section; during the 1950s, 82, 170; during the 1960s, 100 – 101, 103, 149, 170, 172, 174; during the 1970s, 107, 176; during the 1980s, 79, 107, 139, 149, 161, 176 – 77, 180 – 81, photo section; during the 1990s, 161, 182, 185, 194; during the early 2000s, 194

Winock, Michel, 100 Witt, Katarina, 182 Women’s Tour de France, 161, 180 World Anti-Doping Agency, 191 World Cup, skiing, 59, 173 World Cup, soccer, 150, 194, 206n52 World Series, viewership statistics, 152 World War I, 23, 33, 50, 112, 116, 129 World War II, 51, 69, 117 Wright, Wilbur, 128 Wylie, Laurence, 61 The Yellow Jersey (Hurne), 153 yellow jersey prize, xiii, 164 – 65, 166. See also winners, Tour de France Young, Patrick, 217nn28 – 29, 219n92, 219n99 Yugoslavian riders, 44n Zabel, Erik, 192 Zeldin, Theodore, 147 Zoetemelk, Joop, 78 Z team, 181 Zülle, Alex, 185, 187