17 Facts About Jacques Goddet

When Jacques Goddet had ended his studies in 1931, he became editor-in-chief of L'Auto.

Jacques Goddet covered the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

In 1924 Jacques Goddet went to work for his father's paper in the rue du faubourg-Montmartre, Paris.

Jacques Goddet became chief reporter at L'Auto and took over organisation of the race when the director, Henri Desgrange, became too ill to continue in 1936.

The academics Jean-Luc Boeuf and Yves Leonard said of Jacques Goddet's writing in that time:.

Jacques Goddet was therefore for the end of the French Republic, although not necessarily its replacement by fascism.

Jacques Goddet said in his biography, written 50 years later after his wartime words, "History should not confuse Petain with Vichy, the true patriotic intentions of the old soldier with the political action of the government in place drawn from the gutter [gouffre]".

L'Auto therefore fell to some extent under German control and the column of general news that Jacques Goddet had included to widen the appeal of L'Auto appeal became a propaganda tool for the occupants.

Jacques Goddet succeeded in launching a new paper, L'Equipe, in 1946, but a condition imposed by the reconstruction government was that Jacques Goddet's name wasn't to be associated with his paper nor his presence seen in its building.

Two other publishers hoped to establish sports papers and they complained that Jacques Goddet's name was associated not only with the tarnished L'Auto but with the Tour de France, which gave L'Equipe an unfair advantage when all newspapers were supposed to have an equal chance of establishing themselves.

Jacques Goddet was educated at a private school near Oxford, England, and maintained a love for both Britain and the enthusiasm for sport encouraged in his school.

Jacques Goddet wrote in the thunderous, literary terms established by Henri Desgrange and referred not to finish lines but "les arrivees magistrales".

Jacques Goddet wrote of the French rider Louison Bobet "accepting gallantly the delay attributed to him by the celestial handicapper".

The finances of L'Equipe were rarely sound and in May 1965 Jacques Goddet accepted a merger with a company run by the publisher Emilien Amaury, with whom he had earlier made his successful bid to relaunch the Tour de France.

Jacques Goddet was an Amaury favourite, but only with the father.

Jacques Goddet died at 95, and his funeral was held in Les Invalides.

In tributes, the President of France, Jacques Goddet Chirac, called him "one of the inventors of French sport".