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L'Équipe
L'Équipe (French: [lekip] ⓘ; French for "The Team") is a French nationwide daily newspaper devoted to sport, owned by Éditions Philippe Amaury. The paper is noted for coverage of association football, rugby, motorsport, and cycling. Its predecessor, L'Auto, was founded by wealthy conservative industrialists to undermine Le Vélo, which they found too progressive. It was a general sports paper that also covered the auto racing which was gaining popularity at the turn of the twentieth century.
L'Auto launched the Tour de France road cycling stage race in 1903 as a circulation booster. The race leader's yellow jersey (French: maillot jaune) was instituted in 1919, reflecting the distinctive yellow newsprint on which L'Auto was published.
The European Champion Clubs' Cup, the competition that would later be rebranded as the UEFA Champions League, was also the brainchild of a L'Équipe journalist, Gabriel Hanot. The participating clubs in the first season were selected by L'Équipe on the basis that they were representative and prestigious clubs in Europe.
L'Auto traces its origins to opposition to Le Vélo, a sports newspaper which began publishing in 1892. In addition to covering cycling, the paper also organized cycling races. Le Vélo took a Dreyfusard position on the Dreyfus affair which boosted the paper's sales.
As the scandal developed, French society and media became increasingly polarized. Divisions within Le Vélo on whether Dreyfus was guilty lead to its dissolution. Le Vélo began to adopt a pro-Dreyfus stance and allied with Dreyfusards. Its editor, Pierre Giffard, believed Dreyfus innocent and said so, leading to acrid disagreement with his conservative main advertisers. These included the automobile-maker Comte de Dion and industrialists Adolphe Clément and Édouard Michelin.
Frustrated at Giffard's politics, they planned a rival paper, L'Auto-Vélo which began publishing in 1900. The editor was a prominent racing cyclist, Henri Desgrange, who had published a book of cycling tactics and training and was working as a publicity writer for Clément. Desgrange was a strong character but lacked confidence, so much doubting the Tour de France founded in his name that he stayed away from the pioneering race in 1903 until it looked like being a success.
Three years after the foundation of L'Auto-Vélo in 1900, a court in Paris decided that the title was too close to its main competitor, Giffard's Le Vélo. Thus reference to 'Vélo' was dropped and the new paper became simply L'Auto. It was printed on yellow paper because Giffard used green.
Circulation was sluggish, however, and only a crisis meeting called "to nail Giffard's beak shut", as Desgrange phrased it, came to its rescue. Then, on the first floor of the paper's offices in the rue du Faubourg-Montmartre in Paris, a 26-year-old cycling and rugby writer called Géo Lefèvre suggested a race round France, bigger than any other paper could rival and akin to six-day races on the track.
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L'Équipe
L'Équipe (French: [lekip] ⓘ; French for "The Team") is a French nationwide daily newspaper devoted to sport, owned by Éditions Philippe Amaury. The paper is noted for coverage of association football, rugby, motorsport, and cycling. Its predecessor, L'Auto, was founded by wealthy conservative industrialists to undermine Le Vélo, which they found too progressive. It was a general sports paper that also covered the auto racing which was gaining popularity at the turn of the twentieth century.
L'Auto launched the Tour de France road cycling stage race in 1903 as a circulation booster. The race leader's yellow jersey (French: maillot jaune) was instituted in 1919, reflecting the distinctive yellow newsprint on which L'Auto was published.
The European Champion Clubs' Cup, the competition that would later be rebranded as the UEFA Champions League, was also the brainchild of a L'Équipe journalist, Gabriel Hanot. The participating clubs in the first season were selected by L'Équipe on the basis that they were representative and prestigious clubs in Europe.
L'Auto traces its origins to opposition to Le Vélo, a sports newspaper which began publishing in 1892. In addition to covering cycling, the paper also organized cycling races. Le Vélo took a Dreyfusard position on the Dreyfus affair which boosted the paper's sales.
As the scandal developed, French society and media became increasingly polarized. Divisions within Le Vélo on whether Dreyfus was guilty lead to its dissolution. Le Vélo began to adopt a pro-Dreyfus stance and allied with Dreyfusards. Its editor, Pierre Giffard, believed Dreyfus innocent and said so, leading to acrid disagreement with his conservative main advertisers. These included the automobile-maker Comte de Dion and industrialists Adolphe Clément and Édouard Michelin.
Frustrated at Giffard's politics, they planned a rival paper, L'Auto-Vélo which began publishing in 1900. The editor was a prominent racing cyclist, Henri Desgrange, who had published a book of cycling tactics and training and was working as a publicity writer for Clément. Desgrange was a strong character but lacked confidence, so much doubting the Tour de France founded in his name that he stayed away from the pioneering race in 1903 until it looked like being a success.
Three years after the foundation of L'Auto-Vélo in 1900, a court in Paris decided that the title was too close to its main competitor, Giffard's Le Vélo. Thus reference to 'Vélo' was dropped and the new paper became simply L'Auto. It was printed on yellow paper because Giffard used green.
Circulation was sluggish, however, and only a crisis meeting called "to nail Giffard's beak shut", as Desgrange phrased it, came to its rescue. Then, on the first floor of the paper's offices in the rue du Faubourg-Montmartre in Paris, a 26-year-old cycling and rugby writer called Géo Lefèvre suggested a race round France, bigger than any other paper could rival and akin to six-day races on the track.