A certain idea of ‘Le Sport français’: the monument Frantz Reichel and the contest for the soul of French sport

Abstract

Abstract The French sportsman Frantz Reichel (1871–1932) was the leading sporting intellectual in France in the early twentieth century. His thought had a lasting effect on public policy beyond his sudden death in 1932. An Olympic athlete, he was the strongest advocate of the ideology of amateurism between the wars. Using his position as sports editor of Le Figaro and as the head of the Comité Olympique Français, he defended his ideology against attacks from socialist critics as well as those on the extreme right who advocated professionalism in team sports. The monument erected to him in the west of Paris acted as a symbolic place of ritual for those who supported the ideology of amateurism and a return to what they considered to be the traditional values of France. Despite the monument’s partial destruction in 1941, Reichel’s ideas had a direct influence on the Vichy regime’s sporting révolution nationale.