French Media Write Tour de Farce Obits

The farce that has become this year’s Tour de France cycle race now has some French newspapers writing the obituary for the 104-year-old event that is watched in more than 180 countries and has a turnover this year around €200 million. And how many sponsors are going to want to be associated with all these doping scandals that keep rocking the race year after year?

France Soir plastered its black-bordered obituary on its front page announcing the Tour's death at "the age of 104, after a long illness". Libération did similar, devoting its front page to “The Death of the Tour” and said the race had been “emptied of all sporting interest”, and that it would no longer publish results.

"This procession of cyclists has been transformed into a caravan of ridicule,” Libération said and called for the race to be stopped until such time its cyclists could be weaned from drugs.  

And talk about walking the fine line of a Chinese Wall – L’Equipe is France’s biggest and most popular sports newspaper and it is published by the Amaury Group – the very people who run the Tour de France. But with race leader Michael Rasmussen of Denmark thrown out because he allegedly had lied twice earlier this year to doping officials where he was so they could not perform random blood tests, even for L’Equipe enough was enough. It chose, however, not to blame the race organizers but rather the International Cycling Union for failing to stop doping within the sport. It printed on its front page against a black background a picture of Rasmussen and banner type, “Banned”.

Elsewhere other newspapers are taking a stand similar to Libération. In Switzerland, for instance, Tages Anzeiger, one of the country’s largest newspapers, said it will no longer report on the Tour stages and will limit its coverage to results and doping stories. The German-language daily newspaper has a circulation of about 231,000, reaching an estimated 550,000 readers.

And as much as the Tour seems a disaster for cycling, just spare a moment for the sponsors. They have poured millions into sponsoring teams so they can get great positive brand recognition. How do you think the Dutch Rabobank feels right now throwing out its rider, Rasmussen, because of a doping cloud? Here’s a clue: A bank spokesman said this was “a dark page” in their history.

Are sponsors going to continue to sponsor an event that has fallen into ridicule and farce? Does that earn a good return on the spend? With a German already having a positive doping test, and the German ARD and ZDF public broadcasters cutting off their coverage, German teams sponsors like Audi and T-Mobile are already hinting they may be gone, too, next year.

And remember this is same Tour de France that stripped American Floyd Landis of his champion’s title on winning last year’s race when a doping test came back positive. That case is still in the appeals process, but the Tour officials had a whole year to convince riders to clean up their act, that their doping tests were very sophisticated, and they were not about to beat the system. Seems there are always a few souls who think they can beat the system.

And now the French prime minister has even gotten in on the act. He told a radio program, “Obviously, this gives a disastrous image of the Tour de France, but at the same time, if we encourage the organizers, we can clean up French sports and in particular, cycling.” Want to bet?

Jean-Francois Lamour, vice president of the World Anti-Doping Agency, believes the situation has gotten so bad that cycling should be withdrawn from the Beijing 2008 Olympics.

But in France this still seems to be good television. France 2 says its ratings are up about 6% this year with an average of 3.5 million viewers daily. – July 27, 2007

Keywords: sports media coverage, media in France

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