by Eric Reed
ditional 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 rib-
bon 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 fi lm, Brest still looked like a battlefi eld despite RTF’s best efforts. Although the rubble had been cleared away, much of the downtown area re-
mained barren dirt. The Tour’s departure ceremonies transpired next to the
fortifi cations on a vast, fl at dirt fi eld that had once been Brest’s city center.
No matter how RTF producers positioned their cameras, empty and dam-
aged buildings and enormous construction cranes could be seen in the back-
ground 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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c h a p t e r f i v e
enormous crowds of Breton cycling enthusiasts. The RTF footage showed
throngs of spectators cheering and waving fl ags as the riders passed. Jacques
Goddet was so delighted with Brest’s organization that he asked for the blue-
prints 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, God-
det’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 south-
ern 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 pri-
marily an arena for confl ict 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 fi rst 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 re-
gion 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 signifi cantly in importance after the war as France con-
centrated 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 signifi cant 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 Mar-
ket 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
t h e t o u r i n t h e p r o v i n c e s
121
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 signifi -
cant participation in the new economy.54 The problem of how to promote re-
gional 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 commer-
cial links to the ever- more- integrated European economy.
Private businessmen rather than town offi cials organized the 1974 Tour’s
welcome. Specifi cally, Alexis Gourvennec, a pig farmer, political fi rebrand,
and president of two major regional agricultural cooperatives, concocted
the idea in concert with a Parisian advertising fi rm.55 It was signifi cant 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 com-
mercial 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- de-
Léon and to roadblock the entire town for twenty- four hours.56 Gourvennec
served fi fteen 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 north-
ern 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 d
irect exports of Brittany’s agricultural products, primarily pork and vegetables like artichokes, caulifl ower, and on-ions.57 Shortly after establishing the company, Gourvennec and a Parisian
adman came up with the idea of hosting the fi rst stage of the 1974 Tour in
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c h a p t e r f i v e
western Brittany to exploit the “new horizons of commerce” and “symbol-
ize 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 fi rst 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 fi rst 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, auda-
cious 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 develop-
ment 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 inter-
national television event that would shower media attention on the commer-
cial 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 Chan-
nel 2 about running a documentary on two of its weekly shows outlining how
western Brittany was using the Tour for the fi rst 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 pri-
vate 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
t h e t o u r i n t h e p r o v i n c e s
123
1974 Tour confi rmed 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 pe-
riod from 1960 and 1965 was a particularly violent chapter in the “Artichoke
Wars”: farmers periodically vandalized or seized government buildings, ri-
oted, blockaded towns, roads, and railways; burned or dumped on city thor-
oughfares 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 diffi cult 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 de-
manded new, heavy subsidies from the national government to make up for
lost incomes. One week before the Tour arrived, Gourvennec incited farm-
ers 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 specta-
tors 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 fl owers. 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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c h a p t e r f i v e
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, fl ags, 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 televi-
sion 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, in-
cluding Plymouth’s “Miss Ready- Mixed Concrete”— adorned the fi nish line
area, just like in France.69
The British press confi rmed 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 super-
star Eddy Merckx or the other famous competitors. Most spectators were
bored quickly by the repetitive, fl at, 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 vegeta-
ble, and “children clutched armfuls of free artichokes, not knowing whether
to eat them raw, cook them, or plant them,” despite the informational pam-
phlets. Fox concluded that “like the artichokes, Plymouth’s ambitious gam-
ble 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 specta-
tors 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 fi rst day of the Tour de France. The Tour experimented with a new for-
mula. Since 1967, each Tour began with a prologue stage. In 2008, the race in-
stead 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
t h e t o u r i n t h e p r o v i n c e s
125
welcome and those arranged in 1952 and 1974 illustrate emerging trends in ur-
ban self- promotion. The 2008 experiences also demonstrate that Brest’s lead-
ership understood clearly the limits of Tour- related publicity. Brest deployed new strategies, some of which had nothing to do with the Tour, to enhance
