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L'Équipe (French for "the team") is a French nationwide newspaper devoted to sports. Its ancestor was L'Auto, originally about automobiles, which originated the Tour de France cycling stage race in 1903 as a circulation booster. The race leader's yellow jersey (maillot jaune) was instituted in 1919 to reflect the distinctive yellow newsprint on which L'Équipe was published.
Average circulation
- 2000: 386,601
- 2001: 359,598
- 2002: 321,153
- 2003: 339,000 est.
History
L'Auto started life in 1900 as L'Auto-Vélo, but the editor and co-founder (with the Baron de Dion) Henri Desgrange was forced to change its name in January 1903 after the threat of legal action by Pierre Giffard, the owner-editor of a rival publication, Le Vélo. Promotion of the Tour de France certainly proved a great success for the newspaper; circulation leapt from 25,000 before the 1903 Tour to 65,000 after it; in 1908 the race boosted circulation past a quarter of a million, and during the 1923 Tour it was selling 500,000 copies a day. The record circulation claimed by Desgrange was 854,000, achieved during the 1933 Tour.
After having disappeared during the German Occupation, editor Jacques Goddet used his connections with the Resistance to get permission to relaunch the newspaper under a new title.
The new-style L'Équipe was published three times a week from 28 February 1946. Since 1948 it has been published daily. The paper benefitted greatly from the demise of its direct competitors, l’Élan, and le Sport.
L'Équipe has been published by the French media group, EPA (Philippe Amaury Publications) since 1968 (since 1992, the Tour de France has been organised by the Amaury Sport Organisation).
External link
- Équipe's website (http://www.lequipe.fr)