The Critérium du Dauphiné is now the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. The change was announced last year but will need time to feel right.
The new name is like a mouthful to say and a handful to type but the real problem is not the name change, more that it should have happened long ago.
History
Georges Cazeneuve was one of the founders of Le Dauphiné Libéré newspaper which was launched in 1945, its name evoked the Dauphiné area in the Alps and the newly-liberated France. The first edition appeared on 7 September 1945, the front page mentions Hiroshima.
The newspaper had local competition and Cazeneuve hit on the idea of a bike race to promote his paper. In 1947 the Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré was launched. Critérium gets used today to mean an urban bike race lapping a short circuit but the original meaning was a selective race. The stunt worked, the paper and race thrived.
Dauphiné?
The Dauphiné was an old kingdom and principality that has long since vanished. Its capital was the city of Grenoble. It lives on as a vague name and local identity. There’s the newspaper with its HQ in Grenoble and a few old street names, plus it’s also used for some regional branding, for example the local crops of walnuts can be branded Noix du Dauphiné. It roughly overlaps the Isère department.
Over the years the race went beyond the Dauphiné region and further beyond where the Dauphiné Libéré paper was sold. But Grenoble has hosted the race more than anywhere else with 45 stage starts and 60 stage finishes, double that of any other location. Later run by Thierry Cazeneuve, nephew of Georges and also a journalist, he would organise the race in June and by July revert back to covering cycling at the Tour de France from the press room.
Takeover
In 2010 Tour de France organisers ASO took over the race from the newspaper and renamed it the Critérium du Dauphiné. Chopping “libéré” made sense as the newspaper has nothing to do with the race, it was probably a condition of the deal.
Regional change
In 2016 as part of a regional government reorganisation the Rhône-Alpes region merged with the Auvergne region to form a mega region, the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. The enlarged region is vast, comparable in size to Ireland, the UAE or Sri Lanka; more than 1.5 times the size of Switzerland; bigger than two Belgiums.
The enlarged region took to sponsoring the race. It makes sense as the route can help knit together these two areas and with this sponsorship the race has ranged wide. The map below shows the whole region with the yellow outline for the Isère being a proxy for the ancient Dauphiné area.
Indeed lately the race has spent so much time in the Auvergne it’s barely visited the Dauphiné. In recent years there have been editions where it’s probably spent thirty minutes in the Isère department. All those visits to Grenoble over the years? Only twice in the past 10 years. Today the race’s wide remit means a loss of identity, it ranges so wide that there a changes in architecture, geology, vegetation, it feels rootless.
The result is the Dauphiné-race long stopped racing in the Dauphiné-area. This is a pity as it’s a great place for cycling. You could hold a week long stage race in this area and have everything from sprint stages to high mountain passes, tiny backroad climbs and ski resorts like, all in a scenic spot, with a defined identity and enough variety with plenty of mountain passes; plus fewer transfers.
If there was a campaign to relocate the race back to this region, this blog would be posting about it, raving about the roads in the Vercors and Champsaur, and linking to the petition. But that’s not happening. So if the race is not in the Dauphiné that’s a good reason to bin “the Dauphiné” label.
Also the Dauphiné is an old region that few know. Maybe you know it thanks to the cycling race? But it’s not easy to find out what it means; for the anecdote Wikipedia doesn’t have an English-language page about the Dauphiné, it’s only available in French, Ukrainian, Arpetan and Norman with the last two being near-extinct ancient dialects. If the whole point of the race at the start was to promote a newspaper, having a name today that only evokes a Ye Olde Kingdom is defunct.
Conclusion
The race doesn’t take place in the Dauphiné any more but it’ll be hard to stop reflexively calling it the Dauphiné. In an ideal world the race would still be the Dauphiné, and it would race exclusively in the Dauphiné region. Since it doesn’t, better to reflect where it does visit. The surprise is that after a decade of roaming the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes under the region’s patronage is that it’s taken so long to change the name.
The Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes is a mouthful to say and a handful to type, and if that’s just for one week of the year for cycling fans, imagine it for locals? Instead many have solved it by calling their region “Au-RA”. If you wanted a better name than the Dauphiné, how about the Aura Tour?