Selling the Yellow Jersey

by Eric Reed

  Britain and France, the most motorized societies in the world behind the

  United States, had per- capita ratios of thirty and twenty- eight vehicles, re-

  spectively.54 Denmark remained bicycle mad. A 1930s Copenhagen traffi c

  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 bicy-

  cling 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 im-

  migrant 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.

  s p o r t , b i c y c l i n g , a n d g l o b a l i z a t i o n i n t h e p r i n t e r a 19

  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 signifi cant mode of personal

  transportation until the interwar years. Before the Great War, foreign com-

  munities 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 bicycle-

  oriented society.

  Only in Western Europe did a rich professional cycling culture endure

  long into the twentieth century. Complex networks of competition, spectator-

  ship, 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 ap-

  proximately 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-

  20

  c h a p t e r o n e

  cycles. The number of bicycle manufacturers grew, and many builders be-

  gan to employ mass production techniques. The size of the bicycle factories

  grew signifi cantly, indicating the beginnings of mass production: the Bayard-

  Clément factories near Bordeaux employed 2,000 workers by the mid- 1890s.67

  By 1894, more than 300 bicycle manufacturers displayed their wares at the

  fi rst 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 Rich-

  ard 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 affl uent 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 associa-

  tions around the turn of the century.74

  The popularity of riding bicycles and watching races infl ated the circula-

  tion numbers of the main cycling newspapers and enticed new publications

  to enter the market. The most important newspaper created during this pe-

  riod 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 infl uential 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 fi rst 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 e
xpand 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

  s p o r t , b i c y c l i n g , a n d g l o b a l i z a t i o n i n t h e p r i n t e r a 21

  as tire, component, and clothing businesses, directly controlled several cy-

  cling 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 Man-

  ufacturers also bought signifi cant advertising space from some mainstream

  national newspapers. The sporting press and, to a certain extent, the general

  interest press entered into a mutually profi table relationship with bicycle

  businesses during the fi n 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 con-

  cocted 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 fi rst intercity contest and ran a dis-

  tance 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 Bor-

  deaux’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. Individ-

  ual manufacturers attempted to monopolize the sport and its spectacle to

  corner publicity for themselves. Industry leaders considered success in com-

  petition to be the best possible advertising, and they went to extremes to en-

  sure 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

  22

  c h a p t e r o n e

  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 philoso-

  phy 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 fl ourished in competi-

  tive cycling from the moment the fi rst cash prizes were offered. Even before

  the “bicycle craze” the most successful French riders earned considerable

  amounts of prize money, and working- class riders fi lled 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 fi rst race

  in 1876 and quit his job as a bicycle messenger at the Agence Havas to com-

  pete 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 fi fty- fi ve of the sixty- fi ve 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 fi rst 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 champi-

  ons, 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 News-

  papers molded the stories of rags- to- riches champions like Terront and Jac-

  quelin to resonate with and captivate their increasingly lower- and working-

  class readership. The Tour de France was born of this publicity-

  fi lled,

  profi t- driven milieu of professional cycling.

  2

  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

  disqualifi ed the top four riders including Maurice Garin, the fi rst- place fi nisher and champion of the inaugural 1903 race. The same year, organizers

  disqualifi ed a dozen competitors for infractions that included traveling in

  trains, fi ghting, drafting behind cars, and accepting food and aid from spec-

  tators. René Pottier, the Tour’s fi rst dominant climber, won the 1906 Tour

  by racing over the Ballon d’Alsace, the fi rst mountain ever included on the

  itinerary, only to commit suicide several months later after discovering his

  wife’s infi delities. 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 fi ve- 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 Eu-

  ropean 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.

  24

  c h a p t e r t w o

  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 offi ce 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 respect-

  ability 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, fi rst

  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 ma-

  jor manufacturer of bicycles and automobiles. Desgrange became modern

  cycling’s fi rst 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 fi ctional 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 authoritar-