Le sport cycliste suggère une union sport-industrie — L’Officiel du cycle, 1 May 1954, Achille Joinard on Cycle Sport and the Bicycle Industry

From L’Officiel du cycle, du motocycle et du camping, 1 May 1954, the paper’s special export number, printed in French, English, Spanish and German, page 81: le sport cycliste suggère une union sport-industrie: statement by M. Achille Joinard, president of the Fédération Française de Cyclisme and of the Union Cycliste Internationale (a bicycle for every school, the Brevet du Jeune Cycliste, collective publicity), with a portrait. The title, headings, captions and lists are transcribed as printed; the text is summarized in Ebykr’s words, and the page images carry it in full.

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LE SPORT CYCLISTE SUGGÈRE
UNE UNION SPORT-INDUSTRIE

Voici, sur les rapports du Sport cycliste et de l’Industrie de la bicyclette, une déclaration de M. Achille JOINARD, président de la « Fédération Française de Cyclisme » et de l’« Union Cycliste internationale » :

[Ebykr summary; the article’s text is not reproduced. Achille Joinard says that the Fédération française de Cyclisme, formerly the Union Vélocipédique de France, is now 72 years old yet still young and vigorous, and has always worked for the growth of cycle sport and for the protection of the interests of its industry. The text then moves straight to a paragraph beginning “Le premier est en pleine prospérité” without saying which of two things is meant, so a sentence appears to be missing from the printed text. He goes on to say that the first is the most popular sport by its practice, the well-off classes that around 1900 were almost its only devotees having abandoned it for the car, and also the most popular by its hold on the masses: the crowds along the roads of the Tour de France and lesser races are immense and never tire of cheering the riders, the enthusiasm grows from year to year and the number of races rises with it. If the Chambres syndicales of the cycle industry would understand that close collaboration with the Federation will greatly help bicycle sales, the taste for riding a bicycle would follow from the enthusiasm for the sporting spectacle of the classics such as Paris-Roubaix and Paris-Tours. Collective publicity could be made through slogans, examples and demonstrations. One bicycle per school would sell a hundred or more a year, and there are 40.000 schools, colleges and lycées in France, not counting the colonies and the Union française. The F.C., by creating the Brevet du Jeune Cycliste, has considerably raised the sale of children’s bicycles, as the makers have acknowledged; other ideas of its leaders can be as profitable, provided the two sides come to terms. A union of the cycle industry and the Federation would also be more than useful in defending road racing, threatened by an administration that sees 3 million motorists and neglects 15 million cyclists. As the man responsible for cycle sport in France and throughout the world, he calls with all his heart for this union and collaboration. The statement is printed in French only.]

[A text page of a trade review. A ruled box across the head holds the title in two lines of large heavy roman capitals, “LE SPORT CYCLISTE SUGGÈRE” above “UNE UNION SPORT-INDUSTRIE”, then a short italic introduction naming the speaker and his two offices and the opening of the statement with a tall drop capital L. Below, the statement runs in two narrow roman columns on either side of a halftone portrait photograph of a middle-aged man with combed-back hair, a small mustache and a dark suit with a tie, shown from the chest up with his face turned slightly to the left; it carries no caption and no signature. The two columns continue beneath the portrait inside a second ruled box that closes the text, and the last line ends with a closing guillemet and an ellipsis. No artist signature or agency mark appears.]