Post War Tour de France –
The event After the Second World War
The founder of the Tour de France died in 1940, and later L’Auto, the Newspaper that Launched the Tour was no more. But after the Second World War the Tour de France was even more thrilling than ever before, read on to find out more.
The founder and director of the Tour de France, Henri Desrange died in 1940. So it came to his successor Jacques Goddet, a sports journalist, editor in chief at L’Auto (a position he held from 1936 when Desrange became too ill to continue), was down to him to keep the Tour alive. During the Second World War, the German forces occupied France and were keen to keep the Tour running, and in spite of the incentives the Germans were offering for holding the event, Goddet refused to do so.
The newspaper the gave birth to the Tour de France however was not so lucky at avoiding the German’s grasp. L’Auto became partially under German control and was used as a propaganda tool for the Nazi occupants. And furthermore, after the liberation of France in 1944 the newspaper’s doors were finally closed because it had “submitted to German Control”. But as the war ended, Goddet re-launched the race, and 1947 saw the return of the Tour de France, recalled as an “Act of Faith” and proved to be a great moral booster for the hosts as the Frenchman Breton Jean Robic went on to win the first post war race.
The victory for France was short-lived as the next year in 1948 saw the Italian Gino Bartali win for the second time since his first Tour de France win over ten years earlier, an intersession record that still stands today. This next win of the second post war Tour de France also cemented one of the great cycling rivalries of all time with the two Italians Gino and Fausto Coppi, on his first Tour de France debut, both fighting to win that 1948 race.
The two men lost much of their cycling careers to the Second World War but as the Tour came back in 1947, their bitter rivalry continued. This made the event even more thrilling than previously before the history of the race and much of this rivalry was also seen in the Giro d'Italia race too.
More Tour de France History
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Tour de France History - The Early Beginnings
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The Start of the Tour de France and the Crucial Decade
With the amount of controversy surrounding the early Tour de France of the 1920's, and with its lack of winning successes for it’s homeland, its appeal was starting to waver. So the 1930's saw significant changes. Read on to find how the Tour continued to survive...
