Put Me Back On My Bike – In Search Of Tom Simpson, William Fotheringham (2002)

Yellow Jersey Press 978 0224 08018 7 Paperback 254pp £8.99

An account of the life of the British star of 1960s cycling that raises the bar for cycling biography
It is curious to reflect now on what an enigma Tom Simpson was during the 35 years after his demise as he raced up Ventoux in the 1967 Tour de France. Fotheringham opens with a screening of Ray Pascoe’s film Something To Aim At. For most of us, this was the only source of biographical information about the man widely described as ‘Britain’s greatest cyclist’.

By the late 1990s, when Fotheringham started work on this book, the precise details of Simpson’s demise had entered space of part knowledge, part rumour. Even his fans would assert that ‘it was drugs that killed him’, but it was rare to meet anyone who could recite the details with any kind of accuracy. The surprise is that it took as long as it did for someone of Fothingham’s talent to apply themselves to this subject. But then in the past decade, British cycling has been unusually blessed with high quality writers applying themselves to a whole range of bicycle-related subject matter. Of them, Fotheringham is among the best.

The book traces Simpson from the Nottinghamshire mining village, where he grew up to the top of the European cycle racing scene, drawing on dozens of interviews with friends, family members and professional colleagues. Along the way, he paints evocative pictures of everything from the amateur cycling scene in northern England in the mid-1950s to the experience of moving to and living in Europe.

There is much in this book from which Simpson’s humour and humanity shines out. He was clearly a gifted athlete and an engaging personality. It is in his account of the sometime world champion’s demise, however, that Fotheringham excels himself. His analysis is forensic and his evidence far too weighty for his conclusion to be in doubt – a massive dose of amphetamines caused Simpson’s body to fatally overheat. Indeed, the shock of the revised edition of 2007 is the revelation that Simpson experience a drug-induced collapse during the Vuelta earlier in 1967, that saw him zig sagging across the road in what was pretty much a rehearsal for the more famous incident.

That this book so successfully nails the drug issue is reason enough to commend it, but it is, nonetheless, a hugely enjoyable read. At the end, however, it is impossible to argue with Fotheringham’s conclusion:

“Simpson should be remembered as an impulsive, intelligent, articulate and supremely charismatic man who had a single blind spot: his need to win at any cost. He was not a bad man, nor a foolish one, nor was he unprofessional in his approach to his sport, but he chose to join others in cheating and got caught in the most dramatic way imaginable.”

PS Mar 09

The Hour, Michael Hutchinson (2006)

Yellow Jersey 9780224075190 paperback 278pp £11.99

An engaging account of Hutchinson’s preparation for, and attempt on, the hour record, taking in much of the history and mythology of the record along the way

Bookshop shelves groan under the weight of accounts of contrived ‘quests’. It is an effective, if well-worn format. Picking this up casually one might assume that it was another such outing. It takes precious few pages to dispel such misapprehensions.

Hutchinson still is a top flight British tester (technically he is from Northern Ireland, but he has been based in England during the entirety of his cycling career). His decision to attack Chris Boardman’s ‘athletes’ hour’ record was far from the goofy pie-in-the sky ambition that he occasionally implies. Nonetheless, his account of how he went about trying to put his name in the record books is a rich, well-researched and revelatory page turner.

Interspersing in his account of his own efforts, Hutch tells a lot of cycling’s less-well-known tales: the NCU/BLRC split, Francesco Moser’s many, many attempts at hour titles (and Mick Jagger’s witnessing of at least one of them), and Roger Riviere’s drug fuelled trip around the track.
The book – and indeed, his attempt on the record – work because of the curious place that ‘the hour’ occupies in the cycling firmament. For long periods of its history, the record has been ignored. Both the Mercyx and the Moser records of 1972 and 1984 endured for close on a decade, or longer. At other times there has been frenetic activity in pursuit of the prize – most notably the Oscar Egg/Marcel Berthet rivalry in the 1910s and the many successful challenges to the record during the mid 1990s.

Since the establishment of the ‘athlete’s hour’ in 2000, however, cycling’s blue ribbon has been all but forgotten. So, its a real record, that has been contested by many of cycling’s biggest names, but it is not quite outside the bounds of possibility that a hapless unknown, as Hutch paints himself, could be seriously in contention.

His narrative is aided significantly by the extraordinary behaviour of the UCI towards those interested in trying to add their names to the record books. Making up rules on the hoof is patently unfair, and did much to hamper our have-a-go hero – but they provide the story with a comedy subtext that it would otherwise lack.

Those who don’t read the British cycling press might not know how this story concludes, so I won’t spoil the ending. If I have one complaint, however, it is that there is not rather more Nick Hornbyesque self-discovery – particularly at the end of the book. Did the endeavour change him? Is his girlfriend still at his side? Is he now applying himself to some more mundane challenge? Having wheeled along beside him from the byways of Antrim to the Manchester velodrome, I would have enjoyed a little more narrative resolution.

PS Mar 09

Roule Britannia, William Fotheringham (2005)

Yellow Jersey Press 0 224 074253 290pp Octo £15.99

A highly readable history of British participation in the Tour de France 1955 – 2004

It is a curious thing being a British cycling fan. Bicycle sport can’t be claimed as an underground interest any longer – Channel Four used to attract audiences of 5 million in the hey day of their tour coverage, and London could scarcely have made a greater spectacle of hosting the Tour’s depart in 2007. But, because there are sports that are so, so much bigger - sports that are woven thick through the national culture - there is still something of the outsider about us bikies.

Only our perception of our marginal place in the country’s grand scheme can have made heroes out of the nation’s rosta of professional bicycle racers. Taken together and subjected to objective scrutiny, they do not amount to a hill of beans. In the entire history of the tour, as a nation, we have not produced a single top three finish, have only one won a jersey of any kind (Robert Millar’s 1984 Mountain’s prize), and have won fewer stages than countries with one tenth of our population.

And yet, I for one, have hung on the performance of every British tour rider, at least since Barry Hoban. I have willed Robert Millar out of the pack; saluted Sean Yates sturdy performance of duty; thrilled to Chris Boardman’s electrifying prologues, and; spent five hours in a baking sun just to watch Max Sciandri pluck defeat from the jaws of victory. It has been a meagre diet of victories. But, perhaps as studies of the health those brought up on WW2 rations have shown, thin pickings can be the most nutritionally beneficial.

William Fotheringham’s account of this history is masterful and frequently touching. Even where riders have been the subject of quality biographies – say like Millar - he finds new angles. He may not touch Jeff Connor’s account of the ANC/Halfords 1987 debacle for laughs – but he provides enough make a good case for seeking out Wide Eyed and Legless. And in the case of David Millar, the rider with whom Fotheringham’s book closes, he has done the best job of explaining his troubled persona that I have yet read.

Roule Britannia is actually at its most affecting when Fotheringham touches on his own cycling back story. It is used to provide only the most occasional linking fibre to the narrative, but I would happily have read a whole lot more.

Of course this is a story that has now moved on. In the 2008 Tour Mark Cavendish served up four stage victories – as much to digest in one race as British fans had to contend with in the preceding decade. And, Team GB’s cycling Golds at the Beijing Olympics provided a further eight course feast of success. So much triumphal fois gras after a century of gruel may prove a challenge to our constitutions. But, hey, who can blame someone who has walked through the desert for gorging themselves now that they have reached the waterhole?

PS February 09

Sex, Lies And Handlebar Tape, Paul Howard (2008)

Mainstream 9781845963019 Quarto 317pp £17.99

A biography of Jacques Anquetil, the dominant racing cyclist of the late 50s and early 60s, including his highly unconventional post-career family life

Forty years after Anquetil hung up his wheels, he continues to be a fascinating character. The first of the five-time Tour de France winners, he is one of the most famous examples of a sportsman who won races but not hearts. Despite his glittering palmares, the French public always preferred his great rival, Raymond Poulidor – the eternal second, as he was know.

More recently, Anquetil has returned to the headlines after the curious twists and turns of his relationships came to light. In 2004, his grand daughter, Sophie, wrote Pour l’Amour De Jacques (Editions Grasset) in which she explained all. Anquetil had an affair with, and subsequently married, his doctor’s wife, Jeanine. Together they brought up her two children – until, Anquetil started an affair with his wife’s then 18 year old daughter, who he also impregnated. They lived as a ménage a trios, with daughter/grand daughter Sophie, for 12 years, until the retired cyclist took up with his stepson’s wife.

The inspiration for this book was clearly this latter aspect of the star’s life. To get to that, however, you must work your way through a long and illustrious competitive career.

Howard has done a creditable job of this, citing numerous team mates, childhood friends and journalists who knew Anquetil while his star was in the ascendant. There is an enduring fascination in such a sporting phenomenon. On some important issues, Howard is wanting, however. Anquetil openly admitted taking performance-enhancing drugs, for example. Several recent books – such as William Fotheringham’s biography of Tom Simpson - have taken an almost forensic approach to this issue. Howard mentions it, but does not nail it satisfactorily.

Nor is there enough, beyond the basics of a rider biography, to make this book seem worth the effort. More of a flavour of France at that time, and the place that cycle racing enjoyed within it, would have better justified publication – but there is precious little of that kind of detail between its covers.

There is the sex – the subject of 20 pages at the end of the book. It is a pretty stomach-churning tale, but Howard can’t really make up his mind whether his subject is a reprobate or a hero whose ‘superior powers’ placed him above conventional morality. Perhaps he simply didn’t want to offend those of his family and fans who continue to be forgiving of this side of the ‘Viking of Quancampoix’. I found myself mentally bracketing Anquetil with the Fred Wests and the Josef Fritzls of this world.

PS February 09

The Death Of Marco Pantani, Matt Rendell (2006)

Phoenix 978 0 7538 2203 6 324pp £7.99


A biography of the meteoric star of 1990s cycling that is readable and thought-provoking; if ultimately depressing.


At the prologue of the 1998 Tour de France I had an unexpected encounter with Marco Pantani. After the last rider started the stage, everyone – myself among them - who had crowded around the start ramp started to walk in the direction of the end of the course. Momentarily separated from my friends, I realised that I was walking beside Pantani, who was wheeling his bike back towards his team bus.

Although he had won the Giro a month earlier, and was famed for his impulsive, thrilling riding in the mountains, he moved through the Dublin crowd without an entourage or commotion. Pushed together more by the surrounding mêlée than anything else, we must have walked side-by-side for 100 meters. I nodded and smiled at him, he appeared to reciprocate.

Sixteen days later Pantani rode audaciously to win the stage that ended 1650 meters above sea level at Les Deux Alpes. Doing so he sealed victory in the Tour and completed one of the most amazing seasons enjoyed by any professional cyclist. It made him one of Europe’s biggest sporting celebrities of the late 1990s.

At the time, the juxtaposition of my accidental brush with Pantani, and his subsequent stellar performance seemed to encapsulate the appeal of cycle racing. Intimate, albeit fleeting, access to the action and its stars is easy and uncomplicated in a way far removed from, say, professional football. And the televised action provides sporting narratives of almost unparalleled drama.

Sadly Matt Rendell’s meticulous researched and brilliantly written book systematically strips away any illusions one might have maintained about top-level cycle racing. He has pieced together the details of the mountain climber’s life, from his childhood on the Italian Riviera to his crazed death after a cocaine binge.

Pantani was involved in a great deal of legal cases because of his doping. As a result, the level of information on which Rendell has been able to draw is spectacular. Half a dozen measures of the state of his blood at nearly every stage of his career paint a picture of an athlete who used doping products throughout, and possibly even before, his professional career. Such data might make for a dull read, but the story fairly trips along to its tragic conclusion – even if the constant focus on blood gave me a few queasy moments.

Rendell concludes that Pantani was ‘cycling’s greatest cheat’. But he casts illumination on more than simply a single, flawed, individual. Pantani was a gift to his sponsors and to Italian broadcasters and the millions who enjoyed his reckless, erratic style of riding. All of us bare some responsibility for what has happened to cycle sport. Nearly five years after Pantani’s demise it seems far from certain that we will find ways to row the sport back from the abyss into which the little man from Romagna disappeared.

PS December 2008

Flying Scotsman, Graeme Obree (2003)

Birlinn 1 84158 283 2 246pp £9.99

Obree’s story is well-known – much of it is told on another article on this site. He was a maverick time trailist from Ayrshire, who built his own bike using some discarded components, and went on to take the world hour record and twice win the world pursuit championship.

There is certainly some interest in the detail of how this happened – his lonely childhood, failed business ventures and inability to settle down to a college course. The genesis and execution of the bicycles that he made, and the development of his unique ski-tuck and superman riding positions too merit a close look.

What really makes this book fascinating, however, is the picture Obree conjures up of his mental health problems – severe depression that have caused him to make several attempts at suicide. Flying Scotsman reads as though he hid under his duvet for days, pounding out, with searing honesty, what it is to live with such a condition and then thrust the manuscript into the hands of its publishers before there was any chance of alteration of embellishment. For anyone trying to understand such problems – whether they find the cycling aspect of his treatise interesting or not – this makes it an extraordinary, and, at times, revelatory, read.

He is desperately poor on the ‘Daily Mail’ aspects of his story. His wife has clearly been a massively nurturing and steadying influence since they got together. Yet quite how they did get together does not make the pages of this autobiography. But then accounts of boy meets girl are ten-a-penny. The distilled experiences of a suicidal depressive are rather rarer.

Heroes, Villains and Veoldromes, Chris Hoy and the Track Cycling Revolution, Richard Moore (2008)

HarperSport 13 978 0 00 726531-2 Quarto 310pp £15.99

A well-written and enjoyable biog of Sir Chris taking in the evolution of the entire track cycling phenomenon that came out of the east of Scotland in the 1990s

Just how do you explain Britain’s emergence is as the pre-eminent force in world track cycling? It is an important question, now that Hoy has brought back three gold medals from the Beijing Olympics?

And who better to answer the question than Richard Moore – and ex team mate of Hoy’s, and now a writer who has already shown his talents as a biographer?

This book came out on the eve of the Beijing games, so takes the story up to the British team’s crushing performance at the world track championships in Manchester 2008. So complete was their demolition of the opposition, that Moore confidently concludes with a promise that there will be much, much more from Hoy. How right he proved to be. You can expect an updated version of this book with a new final chapter any day now, I would guess.

Moore is a diligent journalist who is successful at rooting out the early twists and turns in Hoy’s life: his attitude to BMX racing; the emergence of a dedicated track cycling team in Edinburgh (City of Edinburgh Race Team) in the early 1980s; and, his relationship with his trainers. This is a book that is rich in interviews – with Peter Keen, Chris Boardman, David Brailsford as well as fellow competitors from the UK and beyond.

Moore certainly appears to come close to nailing what makes Hoy special – a fantastic raw talent, married to an obsessive zeal for training. In one of the most interesting passages, a despondent Hoy seeks out Chris Boardman for advice. The Wirral rider’s suggestion is that Hoy needs to devise a training programme that really excites him, rather than one that he simply feels that he has to follow. Given that the Scottish rider apparently always trains on Christmas day – because none of his competitors will be doing so – this was just the kind of advice to help him turn the corner.

Along the way there are plenty of colourful diversions – particularly Hoy’s unsuccessful attempt at the kilometre record, at altitude in Bolivia, and a fascinating chapter on Japanese kerin racing.

Does Moore answer the central question, however? Obliquely, yes – but readers are left to fish for conclusions.

The disappearance of East Germany in 1990 removed from the scene the long dominant presence in track cycling. Like other Warsaw pact countries, the GDR: invested very heavily in facilities (Moore paints a vivid picture of the vast Cottbus complex of training facilities and velodromes); developed talent from a very young age; allowed mature athletes to effectively be professionals by employing them as soldiers; and, utilise a systematic doping programme.

Since then, track cycling has been relatively open. Most success has gone to those countries with the best infrastructure, generally the traditional European cycling nations, or Australia. (The Australian Institute of Sport was founded in 1981 to prevent further national embarrassment after the Montreal Games where the Aussies won no golds.)

The arrival of the Manchester velodrome in 1994 is clearly the springboard from which much of this success took flight. Just as important, however has been the investment in track cycling that the National Lottery has allowed. In 1996, British cycling received just £22,750 in state funding. This had grown to £2.5m in 1999, and now stands at about £4m per annum.

Britain’s home grown back room team is clearly exceptional – Brailsford, Keen and Boardman in particular. But they have also recruited specialist coaches and others from abroad, most notably Australia.

Also largely absent from Moore’s book are any real villains. Yes, the UCI dropped the kilo from the Olympics, but quite why never becomes clear, nor who, exactly are the shadowy forces behind the move. In the context of Hoy’s success in other disciplines, it also appears that they did the Edinburgh rider a huge favour.

Nevertheless, this is a hugely enjoyable book – particularly to those who, like me, have been watching Hoy since his early days at Meadowbank in the mid 1990s. Given his success, it will doubtless sell to a far, far wider audience than would otherwise have been the case. In doing so it will play its part in bringing this most spectacular sport to a much wider audience.

PS August 2008

Rough Ride, Paul Kimmage (1990)

Yellow Jersey Press 0224 051 458 £8 261pp

There are bookshelves and bookshelves of biographies and autobiographies of enormously successful sports people. The testimonies of those who came close to the top of the game, but did not quite make the highest echelons of their sports, however, are few and far between.

When someone with the journalistic skills of Irishman Paul Kimmage does so, therefore, he does those with a serious interest in what it is to compete, a genuine service.

Kimmage was a professional cyclist, riding for a major European team, in the late 1980s. It was a golden age for Irish cycling – Sean Kelly and Stephen Roche were at the pinnacle of their powers, and they were by no means the only compatriots in the peleton. Nonetheless, Kimmage came up the hard way. After a successful amateur career in Ireland, he joined ACCB in Paris as so many had before him. From there he clawed his way to a professional contract – and then rode with enough success to stay in Europe for four seasons.

It is a painful picture that he paints – insufficient money to eat and a lonely life in miserable, shared flats. Even when success comes, life seems to be so hard that he rightly questions why on earth he is carrying on.

Part of his reason for writing the book is to expose the drugs culture in the sport – and to do this, he made himself a persona no grata with many of his former colleagues. In truth, the drug taking that he exposes is small, small beer compared with what has come to light since then. Indeed, given that there is no reason to suppose that Kimmage trimmed his facts, his testimony is arguably evidence that drugs were far less rife that one might have imagined in the 1980s.

During the monstrous Bordeaux-Paris, he is offered ‘something’. On a few other occasions he took some kind of amphetamine ‘charge’ before a small town crit. He was also put under pressure to ‘charge up’ on days in stage races when his team had a lot of work to do to protect their leader.

Lifting the lid on this level of abuse, and the conviction that runs through this book that such drug use is wrong, make Rough Ride valuable. More interesting, though, is the light that Kimmage shines on the lifestyle of the journeyman professional sportsman. His experience is probably similar to the majority of the peleton – not to mention the leagues of young men who labour in the lower reaches of the football divisions, or try to break in to the big time boxing ring.

PS August 2008

Grame Obree profile, Tim Dawson

First published Scotsman 28 February 1998

Graeme Obree circles Manchester’s velodrome with the easy precision of a watch movement. Around and around the huge, empty bowl of pine boards he spins - a vision of mechanical efficiency in his metallic skinsuit - his speed apparently diminished by the vastness of the track. So regular and effortless is the motion that he might easily be a clock’s second hand awaiting installation of its slower partners.

Riding his first trials for a fresh attempt on the world hour record in Manchester this week might have made the going look easy. But all is not as it seems.

‘Cycling at that intensity for an hour is like being on a rack, and winding the screw to tighten it up yourself,’ he says. ‘There are people who can tolerate agony, but very few who can inflict it on themselves over a sustained period.’

Warming to the theme, he says that pulling your own teeth out would be easy by comparison. ‘After about twenty minutes the pain becomes intense and there is no respite. It seems like another three or four hours before you stop. To keep going, I tell myself that the each lap is the last, and visualise my wife and family in tears because I have failed.’

How the forthcoming feature film of the Ayrshire cyclist’s rollercoaster career will deal with the terrible suffering to which he is willing to subject his body remains to be seen. As does its potrayal of the fiery independence that has exasperated so many of the people who have tried to help him along the way.

His single-minded unwillingness to be anything other than his own man is legendary. According to one of cycling’s professional officials, the sport’s ruling bodies would love to help him. ‘All we ask is that he occasionally puts in a competitive performance to demonstrate that he is still riding at international level. But he won’t co-operate and insists on doing everything in private. He would only have to give a little and by doing so, a very substantial pot of money would become available to him, but he makes it impossible for us.’

Graeme Obree first started pedalling around Scotland’s roads as a teenager. He made numerous friends at schoolboy cycle races and on hosteling weekends, but many considered him to be wild. Even, slightly weird. He seemed to be on the edge; willing to sanction in himself physical, mental and mechanical extremes that few others would contemplate. And he has a stubbornness about getting what he wants which, while it is the bedrock of his success, has also lost him plenty of friends along the way.

The signs of his eccentricity are legion. Even now, at 32, he still has plans to conquer the world on ‘Old Faithful’ the original bike he built from scrap parts and fitted with the bearings of an old washing machine. The only professional cycling team to have signed him, sacked him within days. And in the last few months he has turned down lottery funding available to him as an elite athlete, preferring his independence even if it means poverty.

In person, he is engaging, enthusiastic and likeable. He talks ten to the dozen on any subject, and is naturally friendly. But the intensity of his inner belief in his ability to push his body would be considered madness were it not for what he has achieved - and says he can achieve again.

In May or June of this year, Obree will once more try to ride further in one hour than any cyclist has before. He can’t promise to beat the record again - the current holder Chris Boardman has taken it into the ‘twilight zone’ of human capabilities, the Scot concedes. But, says Obree, the conditions for his two successful bids for the record were far from perfect.

‘I am stronger now than I ever have been,’ he says. ‘I can produce more power and I am now taking more account of nutrition, which will give me a few more meters. I won’t be able ride in a position quite so aerodynamic as Chris used because of new rule changes, but I am sure that I can at least get up to his distance.’

Even sympathetic commentators consider his chances slim. But Obree has succeeded against all expectations so many times before that no one will completely discount what he says.

To put his put his accomplishments to date in context, a brief detour into European cycling is necessary. On the continent, cycling is a major professional sport. It is as extensively televised as football and, attracts the cream of athletic talent who if successful can earn millions of pounds each season. Wealthy teams invest lavishly in the minutely monitored training of their stables: some have even built substantial research institutions dedicated to perfecting their riders’ bodies and equipment.

When Graeme Obree achieved international fame, all he knew of this world had been gleaned from television and magazines. Aged 27, he was a highly-rated British amateur. This put him in a group of 20 or 30 people who would thrash it out each weekend for meagre prize money. He and his competitors were as far from international success as Sunday-league footballers are from sudden elevation to the Permiership.

Unemployed after his bike shop had folded, Obree was all for giving up. The training time necessary to compete as a cyclist made it difficult to provide for his young family. But he still had a towering ambition - or perhaps more a crazy dream.

‘Francesco Moser’s hour record in 1984 had always inspired me,’ says Obree. ‘I liked the purity and daringness of one man going out alone with no hiding place against the clock. It seemed like cycling’s glittering prize and Moser’s aerodynamic style and radical bike brought an Italian glamour and panache to his ride. And he broke a record widely considered to be unbeatable.’

It is a record that cyclists have been contesting since 1876 when FD Doods managed to cover 25.508 kilometres in an hour on a track in Cambridge. In subsequent years, many world-class champions have added their names to those who have pushed the record further. Fausto Coppi - arguably the most gifted rider of this century - covered 45.848 kilometres in 1942; five times Tour winner Jacques Anquetil managed 47.493 kilometres in 1967 and the Belgian Eddy Merckx, who notched up more professional cycling wins than any rider before or since, stunned the world in 1972 with a ride of 49.432 kilometres.

Like most others who have tried for the hour record, Merckx completed his successful assault with a vow never to try again - such was the mental and physical stress of the effort.

Obree came to the specialist discipline of track cycling relativly late. Once he did, however, he decided that it was here that he could make his mark.

For all the jokes about his home-made bike, and his training methods, it is impossible to discount the achievement of his first successful hour record bid in 1993. True, the bike did contain some components that came from unorthodox sources. But what he devised in the workshop behind his home in Irvine has been more successful than bikes and positions developed at a cost of hundreds of thousands of pounds in America and Italy.

Both Obree’s successful assaults on the record were made in his own self-devised chest-on-handlebars ‘ski-tuck’ position. By keeping his back flat, he improved his aerodynamics. And by eliminating the bike’s top tube and narrowing the distance between the pedals he was able to imitate the action of a runner, drawing his legs across his body, rather than simply up and down, therby developing greater power.

In the context of world cycling, Obree’s experimentation seems curious. Even among those professional riders with a technical interest in their equipment, none have begun to match his brilliant inventiveness. But then Obree is the product of the peculiar, semi-detached world of British time trialling.

When the modern bicycle emerged, in the 1880s - before cars or planes - it was a sensation whose competitive potential was quickly recognised. The tours of France and Italy started in the early years of this century, as did the other great ‘mass start’ races from city to city that are still the mainstay of professional racing. Similar developments here stalled, however, because, from the 1890s onwards, cyclists caught racing on British roads were prosecuted under a law that prohibits ‘furious cycling’.

Rather than give up, British cyclists turned to clandestinely organised time trials. These were extraordinary events. Secret route guides were mailed to participants along with their start time. At five minute intervals, each competitor would arrive at a deserted lamp post or drain cover. Dressed as inconspicuously as possible, they would belt round the course while a hidden timekeeper recorded their effort. Only when the results sheet arrived in the next day’s post, would competitors know their time and placing.

Not until 1960 was road racing brought within the law and, although much has changed in the sport since then, time trailing continues to be the backbone of British competitive road cycling. The country is criss-crossed with courses that retain coded names and are measured from lamp posts and road signs. And the very nature of these events breeds an obsessive, almost trainspottery, interest in tweaking bikes and employing obscure bits of kit.

That someone from this background could take the hour record shocked the world of cycle racing. Not only was Obree’s bike an oddity, but he eschewed traditional training methods and professed to consume a diet of conflakes and marmalade sandwiches ahead of major events.

As a result, his success rekindled greater interest in the hour record than there had been for years. First Chris Boardman bettered the Scot by 600 meters. Obree extended his record again to 52.713 kilometres in April of 1994, and then the big boys moved in. Miguel Indurain - five times Tour de France winner - put his name in the record books, only to be displaced a few weeks later by the rider ranked world number one, Tony Rominger.

Meanwhile Obree’s extraordinary career continued. He won the world track pursuit title, but was prevented from defending it because his ‘ski tuck’ was banned by cycling’s ruling body. A professional French team offered him a contract, but he was dismissed within the first week when he failed to turn up for training.

Most assumed that his fifteen minutes of fame were over. But, undaunted, he arrived at the 1995 world championships with another new and equally revolutionary cycling style - ‘the superman’. Not only did he storm to victory, but within months, many top professionals had copied the position. Since then, however, a virus wrecked his chance of Olympic glory in Atlanta and shortly afterwards he ‘retired’ because he lacked the money to continue.

Among those who copied ‘the Superman’ was Chris Boardman. After struggling to finish the 1996 Tour de France, the Englishman, who now ranks in the world’s top 20, hit the most blistering form of his career. Before a packed crowd in Manchester he covered 56.375 kilometres - an average speed of more than 35 miles per hour. To beat this mark, Obree must ride more than four kilometres further in the hour than he ever has before.

In pursuit of this he has made some concessions to convention. For the first time since he was a junior, he is working with a professional trainer. He has submitted to a regime similar to those used by other world-class cyclists and is using standard devices like a heart-rate monitor that, until recently, he disdained in place of his own ‘feel factor’.

He even planned to ride a professionally made bike, until another change in the regulations forced him back on Old Faithful. Fortunately, he says, this is still the fastest bike he has ever ridden.

But has Obree has joined the mainstream of cycling? By no means. There will be more novel technical additions and adaptations to his bike. He won’t let anyone see this at the moment - or even enter his workshop - but, among other things, it is possible that he will be using a chain lubricating device adapted from a motorbike.

There will be no public trails until late March. At these, he must demonstrate, for his own purposes, and to impress potential backers of his seriousness, that he can at least mount a credible challenge. Doing this requires him to output between 450 and 470 watts for 20 minutes - as hard as most fit cyclists can manage for two minutes. If he can do this then believes, his training programme will bring him to a peak and by early summer he will be able to sustain the effort for an hour.

But if this happens, it will be nothing to do with gifts from nature, he says. ‘I am insulted when people complement my natural ability. Its not natural - I made myself like this. Most people assume that they have reached their natural limit when really they have reached the level at which they are satisfied. I am never satisfied and play mind games to keep pushing myself to the next level and the next again. The only thing that really makes a difference is what is in your head.’

Nevertheless, Obree says that he will only get close to the record if everything goes exactly as planned. If it does though, he believes he can do it, which at least until now seems to have been enough. And if he is right, his world will once again open up. As holder of the record, he will command decent appearance fees at track meetings around Europe. He has already been pre-selected for Scotland’s Commonwealth Games squad later this year and is even dreaming of the Sydney Olympics in 2000.

What failure would mean is impossible to say. For the moment it is an eventuallity he refuses to contemplate - another mind game. All he can focus on is a mental image. The circling stops and Obree climbs off his bike: a new world record under his belt.

ENDS

One More Kilometer And We Are In The Showers, Tim Hilton (2004)

HarperCollins 0 00 257194 3 £16.99 396 pp

A collection of memories, autobiography and lists by a talented writer who provides a treat for anyone who has been touched by cycling culture

Hilton - an art critic and journalist by trade - has assembled a glorious rattle bag of a book of memoires. He opens with his introduction to cycling as an escape from the communist household in which he grew up in the 1940s. So dedicated to the cause were his parents that they named Hilton, their only child, Timoshenko, after the Soviet war hero.

Little wonder then that 'All Spare Parts' bicycle that he found at the bottom of his grandparents' garage provided a welcome relief from party meetings devoted to the desirability of scientific socialism.

This is a book of vignettes and digressions in bike culture. He ranges widely, from the rivalry between Coppi and Bartali, to the history of the socialist Clarion cycling clubs and way that cyclists choose their occupations. An unusually large number of artists, musicians and writers are cyclists, he claims. Many postal workers are cyclists too - it provides long afternoons for training. Also - he claims - cyclists are won't to seek employment a decent training run distant from their homes.

Hilton is also keen on lists - classic steel frame builders of industrial England, the hills of The Tour of Flanders and successful women racing cyclists of the 1950s, to mention just three.

Even to those who have read dozens of books about cycling, Hilton has something fresh to reveal. He is a writer of such easy, professional competence that he is always a pleasure to read. Indeed, to anyone who has stumbled into cycling and is trying to make sense of why clubs style themselves 'VC' or why British cyclists are obsessed with time trialling, this is a great starting point.

PS July 2008

The Escape Artist, Matt Seaton (2002)

Forth Estate 1 84115 103 3 £14.99 186pp

Autobiography on two wheels including genuine tragedy and highly perceptive observations

Matt Seaton is possibly the most talented writer chronically cycling today. Widely known for being The Guardian (and Fleet Street's) first cycling columnist, he has a long track record as an intelligent interpreter of modern sporting culture. Indeed, he first came to public notice when he won an essay competition in the late 1980s run by the magazine Marxism Today. In that, he dissected the relationship between gym use and the prevailing Thatcherite spirit.


Detractors might dismiss Escape Artist for being Nick Hornby on two wheels. And, it is true that the male-self-discovery-through-obsessive-activity story has been applied to pretty much every imaginable leisure pursuit. In respect of the genre, this point is valid, but it is a format that Seaton raises to a new level. This is part because of his talent and intelligence, part because the period of his life that he chronicles contains a narrative that is truly heart wrenching. By the end of the book, Seaton's 33 year old wife, the mother of his 18 month old IVF-conceived twins, has died from breast cancer.


Even without that, his lyrical description of his transition from boyhood with his second-hand Raleigh Jubilee, to being a creditable amateur racer, and then finding that he had to devote more time to his family, makes this book an enduring pleasure. His observations are illuminating on dozens of tiny matters of cycling interest: the tactile qualities of tubular tyres; the social dynamics of the club run and; cycle apparel before and after Lycra.

Here he is on a question that has tested all of us who have ever put razor to leg: "For cyclists, the real question of shaving, the one which no one dares to ask, is where to stop. In changing rooms at race controls you would see all sorts of ad hoc solutions to this conundrum. Some would shave to just above the point which their lycra shorts would reach. This was fine as far as it went, but in the changing rooms it looked ridiculous because it created the distinct visual impression that they were wearing a pair of hair shorts. On a particularly hirsute cyclist if could look like a pair of opaque tights cut off above the knee.".

Perhaps most important of all, however, Seaton unpicks the way that, for him at least, his bicycle was so much more than a means of physically travelling from A to B. His two wheeled odyssey is as much about his human growth as his muscular development and for that reason is essential reading for all who seek to explore their own transports of delight.

PS July 2008

In Search of Robert Millar, Richard Moore (2007)

HarperSport 978 0 00 723501 360pp £15.99

A readable and stimulating biography of Britain's most sucessful stage race rider

Robert Millar is arguably the greatest stage race cyclist that Britain has every produced – and by virtue of his post-career behaviour, no small enigma. Given the current enthusiasm for cycling-related books, it seems surprising that a biography of Millar took so long to appear. The only thing keeping would be hagiographists back, presumably, was the near certainty that Millar would not co-operate. Moore, however, offers a great deal more that the standard sports-biog. First he was a cyclist himself – good enough to represent Scotland at the Commonwealth Games. Second, he knew Millar slightly; albeit as a bit-part player in a Scottish cycling team that Millar managed. It is the quality of Moore's research and writing, however, that really mark out this book.

He movingly evokes Millar’s ascent up cycling’s greasy pole from a working-class neighbourhood in Glasgow. And, he lifts a bit of the lid on the weirdness of being a professional cyclist in the mid-1980s. Twenty years on, it is easy to forget just what a phenomenon Millar was, or how he achieved his success almost entirely alone. To read this book is to rediscover the joy of seeing Millar shoot out from a group on one of the great French climbs. It is also good to learn that he had friends and admirers in the peleton - even if most of his professional colleagues remained wary of him.

Moore even goes some way to get to the bottom of the persistent stories that Millar has now had a sex change. However jaded you feel with cycling biographies, this one still has something to give.

The Man Who Loved Bicycles, Daniel Behrman (1973)

Harper's Magazine Press 0-060120350-5 130pp $6.95

A series of essays an recolections about life and the culture of cycling as a form of transport by a perceptive US writer, living in France in the early 1970s

"The bicycle is a vehicle for revolution. It can destroy the tyranny of the automobile as effectively as the printing press brought down despots of flesh and blood. The revolution will be spontaneous, the sum total of individual revolts like my own. It may have already begun." So writes Behrman, an American scientific writer "existing in Paris and living in Brittany" in the early 1970s. The book contains far more than pro-cycling invective, however. It is a catalogue of intelligent reflections and ruminations on France in that period. He is a fine writer with moral fibre and an eclectic ear for scientific snippets. The treatise is laced with personal stories and remissness.

Reading the book today, however, (I read it in around 2004) the book does throw up some questions. Where did these pieces of writing come from - they read as though they might have been magazine articles, and who was Behrman?

That the book itself does not answer them however, does not make it any less enjoyable a read.

Major Taylor, Andrew Ritchie (1988)

John Hopkins University Press 1988
0-8018-5303-6 303 pp $15.95

An important readable biography of one of the most historically important stars of late nineteenth century US cycling

Major Taylor was one of the first black athletes to become world champion in any sport. Between 1898 and the early 1900s he was one of the biggest names in track cycling – at that time a massive spectator sport. Few names from that age are recognisable today, but Taylor’s, if any, deserves to be celebrated. He overcame massive obstacles – not least the huge institutional and unofficial bars to non-whites competing at the top level. As a result, he became an international superstar. Ritchie has done a fabulous job in both teasing his story from the fragments of evidence that remain, and bringing to life the golden age of track cycling as a spectator sport. Economic and racial history are intertwined with with sporting triumph and fascinating crumbs from cycling's past. It is peripheral to the tale, but the story of 'Mile-a-minute Murphy' has long stuck in my mind. He constructed a timber track between railway lines, so that he could draught behind a railway train and pedal his bike at the remarkable speed of 60mph.