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17 March 1987 after losses by the Tour of America, in which he was involved. The claim was that it had been cross-financed by the Tour de France. Lévitan insisted he was innocent but the lock to his office was changed and his job was over. Goddet retired the following year. They were replaced in 1988 by Jean-Pierre Courcol, the director if L'Équipe, then in 1989 by Jean-Pierre Carenso and then by Jean-Marie Leblanc, who in 1989 had been race director. The former television presenter Christian Prudhomme – he commentated on the Tour among other events – replaced Leblanc in 2005, having been assistant director for two years. Prudhomme works for the Société du Tour de France, a subsidiary of Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO), which since 1993 has been part of the media group Amaury Group that owns L'Équipe. It employs around 70 people full time, in an office facing but not connected to L'Équipe in the Issy-les-Moulineaux area of outer western Paris. That number expands to about 220 during the race itself, not including 500 contractors employed to move barriers, erect stages, signpost the route and other work. The first three Tours stayed within France. The 1906 race went into Alsace-Lorraine, territory occupied by Germany since the end of the Franco-Prussian war in 1870. Passage was secured through a meeting at Metz between Desgrange's collaborator, Alphonse Steinès, and the German governor. The race passed to
Politics
the waving of local people, the race director Victor Breyer wrote, but not without trouble at the border. L'Auto reported the difference between the German and French border controls: The Germans let not only the competitors pass without problem but all the officials and their cars and the amateur enthusiasts who rode with them. "It is distressing," L'Auto said, "to find that it's only the French who can't grasp the simple idea ... of allowing the best representatives of French energy [to cross the border]." The paper offered to start a public appeal to provide better clothes for its frontier officials. No teams from Italy, Germany or Spain rode in 1939 because of tensions preceding the second world war, and the race was not held again until 1947 (see Tour de France during the Second World