Pedagogic opportunities of sports mega-events: teaching geographies of place through the example of the Tour de France cycle race

ABSTRACT

Sports mega-events offer rich and varied opportunities for educating students on key concepts defining geographical ways of thinking. Concept-learning, central to students’ development, can be enhanced by issue-based enquiries that enable them to personalise and apply concepts in meaningful and memorable ways. A diverse range of activities constituting sports mega-events increases likelihood of stimulating interest among students, including those non-active in sport. This paper provides a pedagogic example to demonstrate how geography students can critically engage with their own sport interests to explore the threshold concept of place. It does so through the example of the Tour de France, a professional road cycling race. Three vignettes are presented to interweave theory and empirics, demonstrating how they might be explored using different understandings of place. The first vignette concerns mapping the Tour in relation to space and time, the second to materialities and a sense of place of a finishing line, and the third to a relational politics of place through the inclusion of Plymouth in the 1974 race. Further explorations of place are suggested through themes such as fixity, connectivity, mobility, and temporality, alongside suggestions for class discussion and deeper reflection among students. The pedagogic example provides a template applicable to other sports events.

KEYWORDS:

• sports geography
• sports mega-events
• concept-learning
• threshold concepts
• Tour de France

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Some examples of academic introduction to the Tour de France include Palmer (1998, 2010), Ferbrache (2013) and Reed (2015). The Tour de France website also provides a useful practical introduction accessible in several languages: www.letour.fr

2. A detailed map of this stage route is available at https://www.letour.fr/en/stage-16

3. Brittany Ferries was established in 1973 by a group of French Breton farmers, to transport their produce to the UK markets.

4. The UK joined the European Economic Community in 1973, of which France was already a member.