Samuel Abt, Tour de France Writer for 30 Years, Dies at 91
His son, John, confirmed the death, in a hospital, on the day of the seventh stage of this year's Tour.
Mr. Abt was an editor at The International Herald Tribune (now The International New York Times), based in Paris, when he started covering the Tour in 1977. At the outset, he is believed to have been the only North American writing regularly about it.
'You have to remember that back in the 1970s, the Tour de France was nothing in the United States,' he said in an interview with Bicycling magazine in 2012. 'There were no American riders; there were no Anglophone riders.'
He added: 'I'll never forget when someone at The Times said, 'We don't have many Belgians in our readership, so please never write another story about a rider whose name ends in 'ckx'' — a reference to Eddy Merckx, a five-time winner of the Tour.
Mr. Abt said that he was smitten with the Tour from the first day.
'I just thought, 'God, this is gorgeous,'' he told Bicycling. 'Everything about it pleased me — the uniforms, the crowd excitement, the athletes.'
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