L'Équipe 3.19

L'Équipe is a French nationwide daily newspaper devoted to sport, owned by Éditions Philippe Amaury. The paper is noted for coverage of football (soccer), rugby, motorsport and cycling. Its ancestor was L'Auto, a general sports paper, whose name reflected not any narrow interest but the excitement of the time in car racing.L'Auto originated the Tour de France cycling stage race in 1903 as a circulation booster. The race leader's yellow jersey was instituted in 1919, probably to reflect the distinctive yellow newsprint on which L'Auto was published. The competition that would eventually become the UEFA Champions League was also the brainchild of a l'Équipe journalist, Gabriel Hanot.HistoryL'Auto-VéloL'Auto and therefore L'Équipe owed its life to a 19th-century French scandal involving soldier Alfred Dreyfus - the Dreyfus affair. With overtones of antisemitism and post-war paranoia, Dreyfus was accused of selling secrets to France's old enemy, the Germans.