The Tour de France 1903-2003. A Century of Sporting Structures, Meanings and Values

Ed. Hugh Dauncey and Geoff Hare. Frank Cass Publishers 2003. 289 pages paperback, £18.50. ISBN 0-7146-8297-7.

A collection of essays by academics from Britain, France and the United States, all with interests in French popular culture, sport and broadcasting in France and the cultural history of the Tour. They trace the Tour from its inception to modern times, setting it in a political, cultural and social context, identifying important historical milestones, major French heroes, and discussing organisation and management.

From the outset Tour journalists wrote in a florid style: the superlative is the norm. The newspaper was the foremost means of popular mass communication and through the columns of L'Auto , they created a mythology, turning exploits into epics and riders into heroes. Much of the considerable Tour literature is hagiographic.

Dauncey and Hare offer a warts-and-all approach. The Pélissier brothers' abandon in the 1924 Tour is depicted as a clash of Left and Right. Albert Londres' ‘convicts of the road' (a reference to his earlier exposé of the horrors of the penal colony on Devil's Island) politicised the Tour: the ‘slave labourer' riders was a mirror of critics' comparison of capitalism's abuse of factory workers. Led by Desgrange, the Right tried to discredit Pélissier as a wealthy racer gone soft.

Until 1930 the Tour's function was to sell newspapers and the bicycles whose manufacturers contracted the best riders and controlled the race. The national team formula introduced by Desgrange in 1930 was designed to frustrate their dominance. L'Auto provided everything: bicycles, food, accommodation and mechanics, and funded it all from the publicity caravan and increased subsidies from the host towns. In the ten years from 1929 prize money went up from 150,000 to 800,000 francs.

L'Auto became L'Equipe after the war – a story in its own right – and was joined by Le Parisien libéré in reinventing the Tour in 1947. The sales of bicycles plunged and professional cycling survived on the introduction of extra-sportif sponsors and the return to commercial teams.

With media deregulation, the Tour's television and on-air coverage expanded: TV rights fees increased from 12 million francs in 1990 to 85 million francs by 1998. French TV, the Tour's main financial partner, uses its enormous influence to slant the broadcasting towards tourism – landscapes, heritage sites. Corporate influence increased: Coca-Cola and Nike were able to disseminate their brand images not merely in France but worldwide.

The Tour hero is a mix of his own ability and the fans' perception of him. Public views on drug-taking have changed: the race's physical demands are so enormous that survival, never mind success, is supposed to depend on some bending of the rules. Whistle-blowers like Christophe Bassons receive a mixed reception from press and public, while those at the sharp end of the syringe have ways of rationalising their behaviour. Buttressed by doctors and trainers, they pick it up by a kind of osmosis and become adept at self-deception in defending themselves against challenges from outside the cycling cocoon.

Bobet's post-war success paralleled French society as it came to terms with occupation and collaboration, and then post-war social and economic modernisation.

Intense media coverage has increasingly made the Tour the subject of demonstrations, both social and political, a last resort for expressing deep social unrest. But the organisers are skilled negotiators: they have learned to anticipate potential risks to the smooth running of the race, and have developed means of incorporating protests into the needs of the Tour. The media platform afforded to social movements to enable the publicising of grievances reinforces the image of a popular race.

Anyone who has waded through lightweight contemporary books on the Tour de France will find these essays challenging and rewarding.

Gordon Daniels