Selling the Yellow Jersey

Eric Reed

University of Chicago Press

2015

251 páginas

8h 22m

ISBN-13: 9780226206530

Inglês

The Tour de France is the most-watched annual sporting event on television, surpassed only in viewership by the quadrennial Olympics and soccer World Cup. But while those events are explicitly international, the Tour is a distinctively French event. Eric Reed tackles the dual questions of what it has meant for France to host this media extravaganza every year, and what it has meant for the world of cycling that its premier event is uniquely French. The story of the men who have raced the Tour de France has been told many times, but the growth of the Tour itself is taken for granted. From its beginnings as a stunt to sell newspapers in 1903 up to today's media spectacle (produced by a staff of 300, with dozens of cars, trucks, buses, and helicopters, and watched by more people than any other annual sporting event), the Tour is a unique window onto France in a changing world. Eric Reed takes us behind the scenes, not just onto the team buses (though the riders' stories are not forgotten) but also into the offices of the organizers (from Henri Desgrange through Christian Prudhomme) as they navigate international politics, the business of selling newspapers, and the quasi-governmental institutions of French TV and radio. Too, we see the role of the Tour in the life of two cities which have hosted stages regularlyBrest and Pauand see not only the ways in which they transform themselves in order to host this traveling behemoth, but also the ways in which the Tour has changed their role in France and the world. Reflecting the nationalist politics of its founder Desgrange, the Tour has always represented a distinctively French contribution to international sport, culture, and media."