frtour1-2, Exercise 1: The Dreyfus affair and the Tour

Model answer (check the details):

The chain of events: the Dreyfus affair split France in the late 1890s. Pierre Giffard, editor of Le Vélo, backed Dreyfus. Advertisers who took the other side (including Comte de Dion and the Michelin tyre firm) withdrew their support and helped to launch a rival paper, L'Auto-Vélo, in 1900, edited by Henri Desgrange. Without the quarrel there would have been no second cycling daily to compete with Le Vélo and no need for it to find a new way to win readers.

Why the race made business sense:
- Long races were already known to sell papers, because readers wanted the results and the stories.
- A stage race, spread over weeks, gave the paper material for daily reports for nearly three weeks, so readers had to buy every day.
- The paper owned the event, so it could control the coverage and the prizes.
- Advertisers and the cycle industry could use the race to promote their products.

Result: circulation rose sharply (figures to be checked) and Le Vélo closed in 1904.

Care: the story of the founding has been polished in the retelling; check each step in a standard history.