On November 5th I announced here the result of the decoration contest of the Tour de France 2008. On that day the winner of another contest on the Tour de France 2008 has also been announced: the winner of the Prix Jacques Goddet - Trophée Carrefour for the best article of the French press during the Tour de France.

The sponsor and the jury

De sponsor
Last year this contest was sponsored by LCL, but this year it's up to Carrefour. With the disappearance of the brand Champion, which was made official in June 2008 by the brand's owner Carrefour (the Carrefour and Carrefour Market brands will replace the red lettered Champion brand on the stores within now and 2 years), one of the Club du Tour de France (the 4 most important Tour de France sponsors: LCL, Skoda, Vittel and in 2008 Champion) members will also replace the brand which sponsors the polka dot jersey ... from 2009 this jersey will also show the Carrefour brand!

The prize is named after Jacques Goddet who managed the Tour de France from 1936 till 1987 in addition to his role as director of the L'Auto newspaper which created the Tour de France in 1903. After the second world war he was also the one who managed to bring the newspaper back to life under the new name L'Equipe.

The jury
The jury of the 5th Prix Jacques Goddet was presided by Eric Fottorino, director of the Le Monde newspaper and a member of honour with Prince Albert II of Monaco, because of the Grand Départ from Monaco for the Tour de France 2009.

The result

The prize for the best article of the French press written during the Tour de France 2008 was won by Bernard Chevalier of the L'Equipe sports newspaper for his article De mal en pis (From bad to worse).
The two other places of honour went to Philippe Brunel, for L'Equipe as well, for his article Une histoire sans fin (A never ending story) and for Jean-Emmanuel Ducoin of l'Humanité for his article Déraison d'y croire ? (Should you be mad to believe in it?).

The jury needed no less than 5 ballots to agree on this result. At the third ballot the articles Chavanel, la consécration (Chavanel, the devotion) by José Barroso of L'Equipe and Le peloton a mis la langue dans sa poche (The riders have lost their way with words) by Benoît Hopquin of Le Monde were still in the race.

The last article, published on 10 July (on Le Monde's online version and on the 11th in the paper version of the newspaper), was about the fact that the riders' comments after the Tour stages get less interesting and useful, with the press conference after the Cholet > Châteauroux stage as an example: at this press conference the yellow jersey Stefan Schumacher only said he was happy he could wear the yellow jersey yet another day while the stage winner (after a sprint), Mark Cavendish, indicated he was very satisfied with his first success in the Tour. The journalist's conclusion was that despite the fact that the language spoken by the pack gets more and more international, the information gets less and less interesting!

Unfortunately the L'Equipe articles are not available on the Internet and the sports newspaper unfortunately didn't publish anything special about the article which won this prize ... therefore it's not possible to easily get to read these articles!

Last year the Prix Jacques Goddet was won by Jean-Julien Ezvan of Le Figaro for his article Jean-René Bernaudeau : "Le business sera bon si le sport est prioritaire". Jean-Julien Ezvan received this prize at the Grand Départ of the Tour de France 2008 in Brest on July 4th (photo).

The reward

Bernard Chevalier will get his prize in the Grimaldi Forum in the press room at the start of the Tour de France 2009 in Monaco from Prince Albert II of Monaco (who said about the choice of the best article: it was a fascinating decision: I think we chose a very good winner), from Christian Prudhomme and from Gérard Castrie (marketing and communications director for Carrefour).

He will receive the traditional portfolio (which you can see in the picture on the right) with Jacques Goddet's portrait in a lithography on pearl coloured Japanese paper, which will this year be created by the Dutch artist Mark Brusse.
AEG, the organiser of the Tour of California, will offer him a trip which will allow him to assist to the race's finish in San Diego ... that'll probably for the Rancho Bernardo to Escondido stage because the fourth Tour of California will not go to San Diego.

A.S.O., the Tour de France organiser, at its turn will invite the American winner of a similar contest, chosen after the Tour of California, for the Tour de France 2009.

This probably is one of the first visible actions within the agreement between A.S.O. and AEG which calls for the organizations to develop and initiate comprehensive cross promotional platforms for the world's most prestigious cycling event and America's most successful cycling race as well as provide assistance with media and sponsorship sales for the races in their respective regions.

door Thomas Vergouwen
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