Editing Tour de France (section)

===1947–1969===
[[File:Jacques Goddet Memorial.jpg|thumb|left|upright|[[Jacques Goddet]] memorial at the top of the [[Col du Tourmalet]]]]

In 1944, ''L'Auto'' was closed—its doors nailed shut—and its belongings, including the Tour, sequestrated by the state for publishing articles too close to the Germans.<ref name="Liberation1">Libération, France, 4 July 2003.</ref> Rights to the Tour were therefore owned by the government. Jacques Goddet was allowed to publish another daily sports paper, ''L'Équipe'', but there was a rival candidate to run the Tour: a consortium of ''Sports'' and ''Miroir Sprint''. Each organised a candidate race. ''L'Équipe'' and ''Le Parisien Libéré'' had La Course du Tour de France,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.cyclingrevealed.com/timeline/Race%20Snippets/TdF/TdF1940_46.htm |title=Cycling Revealed&nbsp;– Tour de France Timeline |publisher=Cyclingrevealed.com |access-date=18 July 2009}}</ref> while ''Sports'' and ''Miroir Sprint'' had La Ronde de France. Both were five stages, the longest the government would allow because of shortages.{{sfn|Dauncey|Hare|2013|p=}} ''L'Équipe''<nowiki>'</nowiki>s race was better organised and appealed more to the public because it featured national teams that had been successful before the war, when French cycling was at a high. ''L'Équipe'' was given the right to organise the [[1947 Tour de France]].{{sfn|Goddet|1991|p=}} However, ''L'Équipe''{{'}}s finances were never sound, and Goddet accepted an advance by Émilion Amaury, who had supported his bid to run the postwar Tour.{{sfn|Goddet|1991|p=}} Amaury was a newspaper magnate whose sole condition was that his sports editor, [[Félix Lévitan]], should join Goddet for the Tour.{{sfn|Goddet|1991|p=}} The two worked together—with Goddet running the sporting side, and Lévitan the financial.

On the Tour's return, the format of the race settled on between 20 and 25 stages. Most stages would last one day, but the scheduling of 'split' stages continued well into the 1980s. [[1953 Tour de France|1953]] saw the introduction of the [[Points classification in the Tour de France|Green Jersey]] 'Points' competition. National teams contested the Tour until [[1961 Tour de France|1961]].{{sfn|Augendre|1996|p=55}} The teams were of different sizes. Some nations had more than one team, and some were mixed in with others to make up the number. National teams caught the public imagination but had a snag: that riders might normally have been in rival trade teams the rest of the season. The loyalty of riders was sometimes questionable, within and between teams. Sponsors were always unhappy about releasing their riders into anonymity for the biggest race of the year, as riders in national teams wore the colours of their country and a small cloth panel on their chest that named the team for which they normally rode. The situation became critical at the start of the 1960s. Sales of bicycles had fallen, and bicycle factories were closing.{{sfn|Masso|2003|p=122}} There was a risk, the trade said, that the industry would die if factories were not allowed the publicity of the Tour de France. The Tour returned to trade teams in 1962.{{sfn|Augendre|1996|p=55}} In the same year, Émilion Amaury, owner of ''le Parisien Libéré'', became financially involved in the Tour. He made [[Félix Lévitan]] co-organizer of the Tour, and it was decided that Levitan would focus on the financial issues, while [[Jacques Goddet]] was put in charge of sporting issues.{{sfn|McGann|McGann|2006|pp=253–259}} The Tour de France was meant for professional cyclists, but in 1961 the organisation started the [[Tour de l'Avenir]], the amateur version.{{sfn|Dauncey|Hare|2013|p=115}}

Twice, in [[1949 Tour de France|1949]] and [[1952 Tour de France|1952]], Italian rider [[Fausto Coppi]] won the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France in the same year, the first rider to do so.

[[Louison Bobet]] was the first great French rider of the post-war period and the first rider to win the Tour in three successive years, [[1953 Tour de France|1953]], [[1954 Tour de France|1954]] and [[1955 Tour de France|1955]].

[[File:Raymond Poulidor, Jacques Anquetil and Federico Bahamontes podium, Tour de France 1964 (cropped).jpg|thumb|right|[[Jacques Anquetil]] (centre), [[Raymond Poulidor]] (left) and [[Federico Bahamontes]] (right), podium of the [[1964 Tour de France]]]]
[[Jacques Anquetil]] became the first cyclist to win the Tour de France five times, in [[1957 Tour de France|1957]] and from [[1961 Tour de France|1961]] to [[1964 Tour de France|1964]].<ref name="sports-reference">{{cite web|url=https://www.sports-reference.com/olympics/athletes/an/jacques-anquetil-1.html |title=Jacques Anquetil Olympic Results |access-date=28 December 2012 |work=sports-reference.com |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121214112523/http://www.sports-reference.com/olympics/athletes/an/jacques-anquetil-1.html |archive-date=14 December 2012 }}</ref> He stated before the 1961 Tour that he would gain the yellow jersey on day one and wear it all through the tour, a tall order with two previous winners in the field—[[Charly Gaul]] and [[Federico Bahamontes]]—but he did it.{{efn|Anquetil took the yellow jersey after the second half-stage (time trial) of the first day, Darrigade having won the first half-stage.}} His victories in stage races such as the Tour were built on an exceptional ability to ride alone against the clock in [[individual time trial]] stages, which lent him the name ''"Monsieur Chrono"''. Anquetil enjoyed a rivalry with [[Raymond Poulidor]], who was known as "''The Eternal Second''", because he never won the Tour, despite finishing in second place three times, and in third place five times (including his final Tour at the age of 40).

Doping had become a serious problem, culminating in the [[death of Tom Simpson]] in [[1967 Tour de France|1967]], after which riders went on strike,{{Sfn|Augendre|1996|p=59}}{{sfn|Nicholson|1991|p=50}} although the organisers suspected sponsors provoked them. The [[Union Cycliste Internationale]] introduced limits to daily and overall distances, imposed rest days, and tests were introduced for riders. It was then impossible to follow the frontiers, and the Tour increasingly zig-zagged across the country, sometimes with unconnected days' races linked by train, while still maintaining some sort of loop. The Tour returned to national teams for 1967 and [[1968 Tour de France|1968]]{{sfn|Augendre|1996|p=60}} as "an experiment".{{sfn|Masso|2003|p=126}} The Tour returned to trade teams in [[1969 Tour de France|1969]]{{sfn|Augendre|1996|p=62}} with a suggestion that national teams could come back every few years, but this has not happened since.