Reporting the Death of Cycling’s Elite in First World War France

Unquestioningly nationalistic, L’Auto contributed to a pervasive culture de guerre [war culture] through which all aspects of national life were mobilized in the defence of plucky France against the eternal enemy: Germany. L’Auto cheerily rallied French sport and sportsmen to the nation’s cause, projecting the war as the ultimate sporting event. This chapter examines how the death of elite athletes (here, professional cyclists) challenged key aspects of L’Auto’s heroic narrative. It focuses on three types of deaths covered at different moments in the war: the presumed death of the cyclist-turned-infantryman reported missing in action; the death of the cyclist-turned-aviator; and the death in ancillary military service behind the front line. It considers how coverage of these deaths reflects various anxieties and, increasingly, a war-weariness that modify earlier nationalistic rhetoric and which reflect a process of mourning articulated around nostalgia for the fallen athlete’s former physical prowess. It concludes by examining how the relaunch of competitive sport can be read as a form of forgetting and a return to life following the completion of the mourning process.