United States during the pre- 1939 era. Even before the Great War, Tour
founder Henri Desgrange was famous enough in America to warrant a four-
paragraph 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 fi nished 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
g r e a t e s t o f t h e t u r n - o f - t h e - c e n t u r y b i c y c l e r a c e s 49
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 carica-
tures of the main stars of the 1934 French national contingent, referring to
Charles Pélissier as the team’s “dashing, excitable captain” and the “cameo-
profi led 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 inter-
war years and published lengthy articles about the race and its central posi-
tion in French popular culture. Like French journalists, American reporters
employed special language to evoke the arduous diffi culties 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 fi rst 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” un-
like 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 favor-
ites. . . . 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 offi ces 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 fi ght for the
50
c h a p t e r t w o
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 fi re 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 his-
toric 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.” Writ-
ten 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 for-
eign press diversifi ed 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.
g r e a t e s t o f t h e t u r n - o f - t h e - c e n t u r y b i c y c l e r a c e s 51
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 sl
eep 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,” re-
fused to stage the Tour on the grounds that the undertaking was a logisti-
cal impossibility.100 Vichy offi cials 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 fi nish 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 fi rst 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 fi ve 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 dur-
ing the Occupation. Jacques Goddet, the legal heritor of L’Auto’s property, created L’Équipe. The new sports daily printed its fi rst 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 fi fteen minutes from the leader,
Italian Pierre Brambilla, on the fl at run to the fi nish 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 enter-
prise like the Tour de France. As it had done before the war, the Tour con-
tinually transformed itself in ways that allowed its organizers and sponsors to profi t 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 in-
creasing 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 fi fty-
three million.2 Dramatic per capita increases in purchasing power revolu-
54
c h a p t e r t h r e e
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 wash-
ing 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 increas-
ing 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 fi gure directly in the debates on “Americanization,” but its tortuous transition into the television age refl ected the larger public ambivalence to postwar mass culture.
The race’s organizers struggled to reconcile their desire to profi t 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 pelo-
ton. At the same time, the Tour was well positioned to exploit the new oppor-
tunities 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 or-
ganizers 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 fi rst time in 1929. Jean Antoine, a young jour-
nalist with the newspaper L’Intransigeant, offered to provide radio coverage
t h e t o u r a n d t e l e v i s i o n
55
of the Tour for the government’s offi cial radio broadcasting service. Technol-
ogy 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 equip-
ment 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 short-
wave 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, trans-
mitting to local radio stations, which then passed Antoine’s voice to Paris
by telephone. Despite these diffi culties, Antoine managed to make fi fty- fi ve 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 infl uence 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. Be-
fore 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 West-
ern 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 fi ve 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 fi nancial incen-
tives 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 “Americaniza-
tion” and refused to purchase televisions.15