ABSTRACT
The special nature of Jean-Marie Leblanc's working life - as a Tour rider, as a Tour journalist and now as Tour organizer - gives a particularly well-informed perspective on the Tour de France. Indeed, the current managing director of the Société du Tour (born 1944) was initially a rider for the amateur teams of the Northern region of France around his birthplace, and then a professional rider for four years, finishing 65th and 85th in the Tours of 1968 and 1970. During his time with the professional teams, he was also a trainee reporter at the Voix du Nord, a major French regional daily newspaper, which he joined as a fulltime journalist in 1971 to cover both boxing (he had obtained a training diploma in boxing at the end of the 1960s) and cycling. He followed the Tour for the Voix du Nord in 1974 and 1976, and then from 1978 for the French daily sports newspaper L'Equipe, as head of cycling coverage. Finally, he started his career in the organization of the Tour by taking the post of directeur des compétitions (director of racing) in 1988, and then by becoming directeur général (managing director) in 1994. This highly-informed view of the Tour 1 provides us with a better understanding of how the Tour de France - like other 'events' - is co-produced by its organizers with, increasingly, the reporters who follow it; in other words, how this spectacle is nowadays aimed as much at the media audiences (readers, listeners and viewers) as at those who attend the race itself. 2
