{"id":246847,"date":"2026-06-05T10:00:40","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T10:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/05\/the-inner-ring-adieu-dauphine-bonjour-aura\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T10:00:40","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T10:00:40","slug":"the-inner-ring-adieu-dauphine-bonjour-aura","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/05\/the-inner-ring-adieu-dauphine-bonjour-aura\/","title":{"rendered":"The Inner Ring | Adieu Dauphin\u00e9, Bonjour Aura"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The Crit\u00e9rium du Dauphin\u00e9 is now the Tour Auvergne-Rh\u00f4ne-Alpes. The change was announced last year but will need time to feel right.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

History<\/strong>
Georges Cazeneuve was one of the founders of Le Dauphin\u00e9 Lib\u00e9r\u00e9 newspaper which was launched in 1945, its name evoked the Dauphin\u00e9 area in the Alps and the newly-liberated France. The first edition appeared on 7 September 1945, the front page mentions Hiroshima.<\/p>\n

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The newspaper had local competition and Cazeneuve hit on the idea of a bike race to promote his paper. In 1947 the Crit\u00e9rium du Dauphin\u00e9 Lib\u00e9r\u00e9 was launched. Crit\u00e9rium 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.<\/p>\n

Dauphin\u00e9?<\/strong>
The Dauphin\u00e9 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\u2019s the newspaper with its HQ in Grenoble and a few old street names, plus it\u2019s also used for some regional branding, for example the local crops of walnuts can be branded Noix du Dauphin\u00e9.\u00a0<\/em>It roughly overlaps the Is\u00e8re department<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Over the years the race went beyond the Dauphin\u00e9 region and further beyond where the Dauphin\u00e9 Lib\u00e9r\u00e9 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.<\/p>\n

Takeover<\/strong>
In 2010 Tour de France organisers ASO took over the race from the newspaper and renamed it the Crit\u00e9rium du Dauphin\u00e9. Chopping \u201clib\u00e9r\u00e9\u201d made sense as the newspaper has nothing to do with the race, it was probably a condition of the deal.<\/p>\n

Regional change<\/strong>
In 2016 as part of a regional government reorganisation the Rh\u00f4ne-Alpes region merged with the Auvergne region to form a mega region, the Auvergne-Rh\u00f4ne-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. <\/p>\n

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 Is\u00e8re being a proxy for the ancient Dauphin\u00e9 area.<\/p>\n

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Indeed lately the race has spent so much time in the Auvergne it\u2019s barely visited the Dauphin\u00e9. In recent years there have been editions where it\u2019s probably spent thirty minutes in the Is\u00e8re department. All those visits to Grenoble over the years? Only twice in the past 10 years. Today the race\u2019s wide remit means a loss of identity, it ranges so wide that there a changes in architecture, geology, vegetation, it feels rootless.<\/p>\n

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The result is the Dauphin\u00e9-race long stopped racing in the Dauphin\u00e9-area. This is a pity as it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s not happening. So if the race is not in the Dauphin\u00e9 that\u2019s a good reason to bin \u201cthe Dauphin\u00e9\u201d label.<\/p>\n

Also the Dauphin\u00e9 is an old region that few know. Maybe you know it thanks to the cycling race? But it\u2019s not easy to find out what it means; for the anecdote Wikipedia doesn\u2019t have an English-language page about the Dauphin\u00e9, it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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Conclusion<\/strong>
The race doesn\u2019t take place in the Dauphin\u00e9 any more but it\u2019ll be hard to stop reflexively calling it the Dauphin\u00e9. In an ideal world the race would still be the Dauphin\u00e9, and it would race exclusively in the Dauphin\u00e9 region. Since it doesn\u2019t, better to reflect where it does visit. The surprise is that after a decade of roaming the Auvergne-Rh\u00f4ne-Alpes under the region\u2019s patronage is that it\u2019s taken so long to change the name.<\/p>\n

The Tour Auvergne-Rh\u00f4ne-Alpes is a mouthful to say and a handful to type, and if that\u2019s just for one week of the year for cycling fans, imagine it for locals? Instead many have solved it by calling their region \u201cAu-RA\u201d. If you wanted a better name than the Dauphin\u00e9, how about the Aura Tour?<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Crit\u00e9rium du Dauphin\u00e9 is now the Tour Auvergne-Rh\u00f4ne-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. HistoryGeorges Cazeneuve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":246848,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6804],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-246847","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246847\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}