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Abstract
Founded in 1882, the Racing Club de France (RCF) was one of the very first sports clubs to exist in France. It began operating only in 1884, however, under the leadership of Georges de St Clair (secretary general) and Ernest Demay (president). After two difficult initial years, RCF was reorganized, and its responsibilities redistributed internally with the aim of starting afresh and extending its networks of influence. Until the end of the fifth President Michel Gondinet’s mandate in 1908, the club was caught between issues of recognition by public authorities and social distinction, as well as geographic conquest and sport propaganda. The previous 26 years had, however, enabled the club’s leaders to lay the foundations of RCF’s long-standing presence in France’s sports sphere, heralding its arrival on the international stage. This article contributes to understanding the political, economic, cultural, and social relationships between the Parisian elite and sport. RCF developed a range of sports, first based on athletics, then opening up to other practices. The stances adopted vis-à-vis values and the champion’s role, as well as infrastructure financing and women’s position, attested not only to a certain relationship to sport, built on excellence and performance, but also to the RCF’s contribution to a social undertaking based on an educational project, a political concept, and the intention to participate in change.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 François Bourmaud, ‘Les Britanniques et le développement des sports en France (1815–1914)’ (PhD diss., Lausanne University, 2022).
2 Alex Poyer, Les premiers temps des véloce-clubs. Apparition et diffusion du cyclisme associatif français entre 1867 et 1914 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2003).
3 Patrick Clastres and Paul Dietschy, Paume et tennis en France, XVe-XXe siècle (Paris: Nouveau Monde Éditions, 2009).
4 Bourmaud, ‘Les Britanniques et le développement des sports en France’, 125–139.
5 François Bédarida, La société anglaise du milieu du XIXe siècle à nos jours (Paris: Seuil, 1990).
6 Richard Holt, ‘Le destin des "sports anglais" en France de 1870 à 1914: imitation, opposition, séparation’, Ethnologie française 41 (2011/4).
7 Allen Guttmann, From ritual to record. The nature of modern sports (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978).
8 François Bourmaud, ‘Le Paris Cricket Club et le Bois de Boulogne (1863–1868). Prémices d’une politique sportive sous le Second Empire’, in Les édiles au stade. Aux origines des politiques sportives municipales. Vers 1850–1914, ed. Sylvain Villaret and Philippe Tétart (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2020), 31–43.
9 The Bois de Boulogne is a large, wooded area situated to the west of Paris, in the very bourgeois 16th arrondissement. This old forest, called forêt de Rouvray, was developed by Baron Haussmann during the Second Empire (1852–1870) as a place for walking, thus encouraging the growth of the first leisure sports.
10 François Bourmaud, ‘Les paris sportifs face à l’Ordre Moral: la surveillance du Club des Coureurs par la préfecture de police de Paris (1875–1876)’ (paper presented at the symposium Les préfets et le sport, Lyon, France, November 7–8, 2019).
11 Three schools located on Paris’ right bank, not far from Bois de Boulogne.
12 In the same way as RCF, another club, le Stade Français, was created in 1883.
13 Its facilities at Croix Catelan were chosen to host the athletic events of the 1900 Olympic Games. The club was also at the heart of the organization of the Paris Olympic Games in 1924.
14 Michel Gondinet served two terms as RCF’s president: 1890–1901 and 1904–1908.
15 The club had 102 members in 1884 and 1,425 in 1908.
16 By ‘identity characteristics’ we mean its organization, educative goals, values, social recruitment, etc.
17 Wray Vamplew, ‘Theories and Typologies: A Historical Exploration of the Sports club in Britain’, The International Journal of the History of Sport 30, no.14 (2013), 1569–1585.
18 Malcolm MacLean, ‘A Gap but Not An Absence: Clubs and Sports Historiography’, The International Journal of the History of Sport 30, no.14 (2013), 1687–1698.
19 Article 291 of the 1810 penal code stipulated that ‘no association with more than twenty people can be formed without the government’s prior agreement’.
20 Gérard Unger, Histoire du Second Empire (Paris: Perrin, 2018).
21 Arnaud-Dominique Houte, Le triomphe de la République (1871–1914) (Paris: Seuil, 2014).
22 Lionel Pabion, ‘Turning Gymnasts into Citizen-Soldiers: The Militarization of Physical Activities during the Third Republic in France (1870–1940)’, International Journal of the History of Sport, no.40 (2023), 225–243.
23 Pierre De Coubertin, Une campagne de vingt-et-un an (1887–1908) (Paris: Librairie de l’éducation physique, 1909).
24 Annie Grange, L’apprentissage de l’association (1850–1914). Naissance du secteur volontaire non lucratif dans l’arrondissement de Villefranche-sur-Saône (Paris: Mutualité française, 1993).
25 Georges Bourdon, La Renaissance athlétique et le Racing Club de France (Paris: edited by RCF, 1906), 33.
26 RCF member G. Bourdon was commissioned by the club to publish this work, as a record of its first years of existence. Among those behind the running races, G. Bourdon cites the names of R. d’Arnaud, M. Cucheval-Clarigny, M. L’Herureux, H. Symonds….
27 The club was initially called Racing Club. It adopted the name of Racing Club de France in October 1885 to distinguish itself namely from RC de Bruxelles.
28 Annuaire du RCF (1886–1887).
29 RCF Statues 1885, Art.1.
30 Active members took part in sporting activities while honorary members had stopped doing so.
31 RCF Statutes 1885, Art.4.
32 Such gratuitousness was however limited since the amateur was also the one able to pay high registration fees to the club.
33 Annuaire du RCF (1885–1886), 40.
34 Maurice Agulhon, Le cercle dans la France bourgeoise (1810–1848). Étude d’une mutation de sociabilité (Paris: Armand Colin, 1977).
35 RCF Statutes 1885, Art.10.
36 François Bourmaud, ‘Les parrainages de Georges de Saint-Clair au Racing Club de France: entre réseaux de pouvoir et légitimation sportive (1884–1890)’, in Le sport et ses pouvoirs, ed. Manuel Schotté and Joris Vincent (Limoges: PULIM, 2020), 57–75.
37 La revue des sports, November 21, 1885.
38 Founded in 1882 by Paul Déroulède, la Ligue des Patriotes took a nationalistic stance.
39 RCF Committee Minutes (1884–1892), meeting of January 29, 1887.
40 These three bourgeois arrondissements of the capital are situated in the west, near Bois de Boulogne.
41 The in-group is considered as a highly cohesive and relatively closed social group characterized by the preferential treatment reserved for its members and the strength of loyalty between them.
42 Annuaire du RCF (1885–86 et 1900).
43 Sandra De Cecco, ‘Le Racing club de France des origines à 1945’, 9–13.
44 Sylvain Ville, ‘Donner la boxe en spectacle. Histoire sociale des débuts de la boxe professionnelle à Paris à la Belle Époque’, Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales 209 (2015), 10–27.
45 Alex Poyer, ‘La France s’éveille au sport (début du 19ème siècle – années 1880)’, in Histoire du sport en France du Second Empire au Régime de Vichy, ed. Philippe Tétart (Paris: Vuibert, 2007), 5–23.
46 Rue Lincoln in the 8th arrondissement of Paris, a small street perpendicular to the Champs-Élysées.
47 RCF Committee Minutes (1884–1892), meeting of November 21, 1884.
48 The park, situated in the Bois de Boulogne, was created in 1775 and sold, with its adjacent château, in 1835 to Lord Richard Seymour-Conway, Marquess of Hertford, who renovated and extended the estate. More particularly, he had the Orangerie (orangery) built, another place which would serve as a venue for running races. His son, Richard Wallace, inherited it in 1870. The park was eventually purchased by the City of Paris in 1905 and handed over to the conservateur des jardins de Paris (director of the gardens of Paris) for renovation.
49 The archives did not enable us to identify the reason for this failure.
50 Land also located in Bois de Boulogne.
51 According to Georges de Saint-Clair, Étienne Bladé and Adolphe Alphand were related. Based on Bourdon, La Renaissance athlétique, 88.
52 Archives of Paris. Letter from Adolphe Alphand, dated July 31, 1884.
53 RCF Committee Minutes (1884–1892), meeting of November 21, 1884.
54 Adolphe Alphand refrained from forwarding any concession request to the Paris City Council, whether for RCF or any other club. At the time, he was the barrier between RCF and the decision-making authorities, i.e. the city council.
55 He was the grandson of French zoologist Étienne Geoffroy St Hilaire (1772–1844).
56 Paris Archives. Report of Bois de Boulogne’s chief engineer (January 4, 1886).
57 Idem.
58 Croix Catelan and Pré Catelan were two terms used by RCF members to refer to the same place, their ground in Bois de Boulogne.
59 Annuaire du RCF (1885–1886). Ordinance of March 25, 1886, related to the concession of a lawn in Bois de Boulogne for RCF.
60 Idem.
61 Bourdon, La Renaissance athlétique, 150–151.
62 Paris Archives. Rapport de l’architecte du service des promenades (report of the architect responsible for walking areas) (April 3, 1888).
63 Paris Archives. Rapport du conservateur du Bois de Boulogne (report of the director of Bois de Boulogne) (March 20, 1888).
64 RCF Committee Minutes (1893–1900), meeting of April 8, 1898.
65 Idem.
66 Commune located northwest of Paris.
67 RCF Committee Minutes (1893–1900), meeting of December 28, 1900.
68 RCF Committee Minutes (1884–1892), meeting of March 29, 1885.
69 Idem.
70 RCF Committee Minutes (1884–1892), meeting of April 12, 1885.
71 RCF Committee Minutes (1884–1892), meeting of October 17, 1885.
72 Information about competition results can only be found in the archives as from 1884. It can, however, be reasonably assumed that events were organized as soon as the club was created in 1882.
73 These races were organized as scratch or handicap races. Among the winners, a certain number of important figures then went on to become club managers. This was, for example, the case for Maurice Dezaux, Alexandre de Pallissaux, Frantz Reichel and Pierre Gillou.
74 La revue des sports, November 21, 1885.
75 Most of them were members of RCF or Stade Français.
76 La revue des sports, October 30, 1886.
77 Idem.
78 Idem.
79 La revue des sports, November 20, 1886.
80 The club’s two colours, based on the model of Cambridge University.
81 Paris Archives. Letter from the director of Bois de Boulogne (April 18, 1891). Several local councillors from the City of Paris were also present at the 1895 event.
82 Louis Violette, Kilian Mousset and Philippe Térart, ‘Des sports et des élus. Lecture du Bulletin municipal de Paris (1882–1914)’, in Les édiles au stade. Aux origines des politiques sportives municipales. Vers 1850–1914, ed. Sylvain Villaret and Philippe Tétart (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2020), 45–81.
83 Paris Archives. Letter from RCF President to the Paris Prefect (December 26, 1891).
84 He would return later and be elected president in 1920, a defender of respect and probity.
85 RCF hosted the athletic events of the 1900 Olympic Games at Croix Catelan, an event organized within the framework of the Universal Exhibition. On this occasion, President M. Gondinet was appointed délégué adjoint aux concours d’exercices physiques et de sports (deputy delegate for contests in physical exercise and sport), while G. Raymond, C. Blanche, and Paul Champ (committee members) were in charge of the club’s stand during the event. Together with USFSA, Racing also organized the contest’s school competitions. Regarding sport, the result was excellent for RCF since its athletes won all the French athletics medals (six silver and two bronze).
86 Bourdon, La Renaissance athlétique, 281.
87 RCF Committee Minutes (1893–1900), general assembly of January 20, 1894.
88 The loan taken out by the club in 1896 had been fully repaid by July 1898.
89 Michaël Delépine, ‘Le stade de Colombes et l’enjeu d’un grand stade en France: des origines à 1972’ (PhD diss., Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense University, 2015).
90 Club Athlétique de la Société Générale (société générale’s athletics club), founded in 1903. Société Générale is a bank.
91 Annuaire du RCF (1885–1886).
92 Annuaire du RCF (1909).
93 Race between Les Tuileries and Nanterre, created by Paul Rousseau, head of Le Monde Sportif.
94 Le Petit Journal, November 8, 1903.
95 Without us being able to state this with certainty, the internet website of the newspaper Libération affirmed that the ‘midinettes’ race’ was an idea of gas industrialist Georges Breittmayer, also a member of Racing. https://www.liberation.fr/sports/2020/04/26/les-midinettes-de-la-marche-de-1903-aux-manifestations-de-1917_1786214/.
96 The First World War sounded the beginning of female sporting practice at RCF: 590 female members in 1921 against 324 in 1914, a number that would soar during the interwar period.
97 J. Matthey joined RCF in 1902 and won the national simple and double titles four times between 1909 and 1912. M. Broquedis joined RCF in 1909 and won the French championship in 1913 and 1914. As the only woman selected for the tricolour delegation at the Antwerp Olympic Games in 1920, she won the ladies’ singles gold medal and the mixed doubles bronze medal, which made her the first female French Olympic champion across all sports.
98 Cécile Ottogalli-Mazzacavallo, ‘Femmes et alpinisme au Club Alpin Français à l’aube du XXe siècle: une rencontre atypique?’, STAPS 66 (2004/4), 25–41.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Yohann Fortune
Yohann Fortune is Associate Professor at the University of Rennes 2, France. His research focuses on history of sport and on sport and education, mainly in track and field.
Michaël Attali
Michaël Attali is a Professor at the University of Rennes 2, France. His research focuses on representations of sport and its cultural integration.
Doriane Gomet
Doriane Gomet is Associate Professor at the University of Angers. Her work focuses mainly on the history of physical activity and sport in captivity from the late nineteenth century to date.
Jean-Nicolas Renaud
Jean-Nicolas Renaud is a historian of sport and physical education at the VIPS² laboratory and head of the 2SEP department at ENS-Rennes. He works on a monographic scale around the notion of the emergence of sport.