POSTPONED – Sport & Exercise Research Group Seminar Series: “Lance Armstrong and suiveur reporting in Libération, 1999–2013: A Case Study in Sports Journalism”

Dear Colleagues,

Unfortunately due to unforeseen circumstances this week’s Research in Sport lecture by Ruadhán Cooke –  Lance Armstrong and suiveur reporting in Libération, 1999–2013: A Case Stu​dy in Sports Journalism – has had to be postponed. We hope to reschedule this lecture for a later date, to be confirmed. 

Our next lecture will be on Sep. 28th (12pm in The Bridge) when Dr. Eoin Whelan (J.E. Cairnes School of Business & Economics, NUI Galway) will address the topic of  ‘How are advances in digital technologies impacting sports and exercise?’  – further details to follow later this week.

Lance Armstrong and suiveur reporting in Libération, 1999–2013: A Case Study in Sports Journalism

Ruadhán Cooke, Discipline of French, School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, NUI Galway.

As national institution and site of memory for France for over a century, the Tour de France is a privileged locus for investigating the interactions between sport and cultural meaning. Literary journalism chronicling the race has a long history of representing the multiple meanings and dimensions of physical performance, particularly of heroic champions, in the Tour. During the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries the Tour itself and French culture more widely were destabilised by the ambiguous hero Lance Armstrong, and, in a context of guarded reporting on the facts of doping, literary journalism was able to give a creative account of complex sporting performances. This lecture examines the journalism of Jean-Louis Le Touzet in Libération as an example of suiveur reporting in the tradition of Antoine Blondin, and shows how the freedom of literary journalism allows Le Touzet to accurately reflect academic perspectives on Armstrong, politics, culture and sport.

Ruadhán Cooke teaches French in the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures. Research interests include the overlaps between sport and literature, sports journalism and the cultural impact of sport.