Jacques Augendre Obituary

Jacques Augendre has died at the age of 99. He covered 55 editions of the Tour de France, a record which he of all knew well as the Tour de France’s in-house historian but he took little pride from it. “I like cycling, I like writing” he said, and enjoyed long career from this combination.

Born in 1925, he spent the first part of his childhood in Franconville, a Parisian suburb. Journalism began aged 12 when he launched a school newspaper, until stopped by a teacher concerned this was crowding out schooling. Frustrated, he swore to himself he’d become a cyclist or a journalist, he later told Le Figaro.

Philippe Augendre was a promising racer whose career in cycling was partly undone by war in 1914. He remained a keen follower and son Jacques grew up taking an early shine to Antonin Magne, the 1931 and 1934 Tour de France winner, “the incarnation of loyalty” he said and an early appreciation for the romantic side of sport.

If Augendre would later chronicle French history, he first lived it. In 1940 he was among millions who fled the German invasion of France at the risk of being bombed and machine-gunned by the Luftwaffe. Augendre made it to Bressuire, “with luck, almost miraculously” he told Ouest-France, a small town where his father opened a butcher’s. Bressuire, in the Vendée, is 400km from Paris but this was still occupied France and Augendre said they had to get used to the sound of boots and Nazi hymns.

He joined the Vélo Club Bressuirais. In 1943 he rode the Premier Pas Dunlop, the de facto French junior championship. Collecting his number on the eve of the race he spotted a rival with an unusual bicycle. Augendre recalled seeing “this beanpole” with a “double pulley derailleur” on his bike, then only used by cyclotouristes and thinking to himself “at least I won’t be last“. Only that was Raphaël Geminiani who worked his derailleur over the hilly course to win, ahead of future three-time Tour de France winner Louison Bobet. Finishing 32nd, Augendre would opt for the press room.

After training as a typograhper-printer, he started work at Témoignage Chrétien, a resistance newspaper continuing to print in the post-war era. Then joined L’Equipe upon its launch in 1946 when it was created out of L’Auto. He covered amateur sport and waited until 1949 to be “selected” for that year’s Tour, his word, employing the same vocabulary as a rider.

He started out as a télégraphiste, taking a colleague’s written report to a post office every evening and dictating the article to a waiting stenographer. But he was more than a gopher, travelling in a Renault 4CV each day  he wrote the “Drama at the Back” column about incidents and mishaps behind the race each day, “tales of squashed cats and dogs” he quipped.

Working for L’Equipe meant privileged access at the Tour de France: less the house newspaper of the Tour, more the house race of the newspaper where Jacques Goddet controlled the race and the paper alike. Augendre became a lead reporter and rode in “Car 101”, L’Equipe’s chauffeured vehicle, effectively the lead car for the media during the age of print. He accompanied cycling writer Pierre Chany and playright-columnist Antoine Blondin, seeing up close Blondin’s antics and writing alike (Augendre is in the photo below from Presse Sports on the left, with Chany in the hat and Blondin to the right).

In 1960 Augendre interviewed Henri Anglade who made a dig at his French team mate Roger Rivière after he’d ridden against him:

“Rivière is going to make mistakes. What I worry about is even worse for him. He’s going to try and follow Nencini down the mountain passes and I fear that one day he doesn’t make it“

Augendre noted this but did not go to print with it. Only the words proved prophetic when Nencini attacked down the Col du Perjuret and Rivière followed only crash and sustain spinal injuries that left him paraplegic.

Car 101 gave Augendre a front row seat for the Anquetil vs Poulidor duels in the 1960s, he was tasked with being neutral but later said Poulidor was a firm favourite, although admired Anquetil too. Managed by Antonin Magne of his boyhood heroism, Poulidor’s stoic side appealed to Augendre.

The L’Equipe years came to an end in 1965 when the paper made a wave of redundancies. After spells for various local newspapers and agencies, he joined Le Monde, not at all a sports newspaper but duty-bound to cover the Tour de France during the 1970s. He continued to savour the sport, enjoying the 1970s and 1980s alike.

The enjoyment waned by the 1990s, he said Miguel Indurain did not excite him and he lamented the advent of team buses and the lost contact with riders. By now his experience made him a go-to in the press room for journalists, a clearing exchange of anecdotes, a walking Wikipedia for facts, long before these could be retrieved online. Was this year’s Tour a vintage edition? Monsieur Augendre was the one to ask and he’d cite 1964 and 1989 as the reference editions. He retired from the Tour press room in the 1990s aged 65.

Retirement didn’t mean the end of work. He dabbled as a motoring journalist and stayed in cycling. L’Equipe remains required reading in July but then television was well-established as the dominant medium. If a journalist can file an 800 word article, TV commentators need tens of thousands of words a day and to help them in 1991 Tour director Jean-Marie Leblanc invited Augendre to take on a new role as the historian of the Tour de France, of sorts as he worked for the race organisers Société du Tour (now ASO), racking up more years on the race every July.

He compiled the guide historique of the Tour de France, an annual full of reports, statistics and anecdotes (and downloadable as a PDF here). He also did the guide touristique, another indispensable tool for media on the race (since 2006 produced by François Thomazeau who English speakers may know from The Cycling Podcast).

Liberation, a newspaper, branded Augendre the “Jules Michelet of cycling” in tribute to the author of the 19 volume History of France. Augendre went further, at least in the quantity of books he wrote, and some have been translated in English, Dutch and Japanese. All these roles seemed perfect for him.

After 55 tours, France became a palimpsest of events and souvenirs. The reporter who began at the Tour writing from the back of the peloton found himself looking further behind:

It’s said you can’t cross the plains of the Languedoc without trying to find the plane tree by which Zaaf slumped. You can’t hurtle down the Aubisque without thinking of Van Est in his ravine. It’s true, for me, I think more about the Tours of the past than the one today
– L’Equipe, July 2018