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

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

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

The Sweat of the Gods, Benjo Maso (2005) trans Michiel Horn

Mousehold Press 1 875 739 37 4 165pp £9.95

What is it that makes an athletic hero? The rules of any sport would appear to suggest that winning alone should be sufficient. It takes little historical perspective, however, to see that the consistent, effortless victories are rarely rewarded with much affection by the spectating public, save for nationalistic fervour. Just ask Lance Armstrong or Miguel Indurain

The trick to being a hero, of course, is to win heroically – in the teeth of impossible odds, against a bitter opponent, with an unexpected flash of brilliance.

All sports are, of course, human contrivances, with a particular end in mind – with professional spectator sports, thrilling the viewing public. In this book, Dutch sociologies, Benjo Masso attempts to unpick the forces and fancies that have shaped modern road races, and in particular, the Tour de France.

What rich pickings there are! Masso traces the Tour, though its early genesis, as a spectacle designed to sell newspapers, to the drug scandals of today. And it is the early years that are particularly interesting. Henri Desgrange, editor of a French sports newspaper and founder of the Tour, endlessly tweaked the format of the race to maximise benefit for his paper – and to fend off the influence of other interested commercial parties, such as the bicycle manufactures.

So, at various times: teams were outlawed, then later introduced as national squads, before being replaced by trade teams. Riders were required to ride identical bicycles, carry enough spares to equip them from start to finish and ride on courses deliberately strewn with tacks (to demonstrate how quickly Michelin tyres could be repaired).

The pressures on the race vary over time. In the early years, Desgrange watched his circulation rise and fall depending on how interesting was the race. Sure-fire start-to-finish winners were a disaster. For much of the time, the journalists had little real knowledge of how the race progressed, so for the most part, made up the heroics. Indeed, some of the best loved characters of the race are entirely the result of such ingenuity.

In 1934, for example, team members were, for the first time, allowed to give each other components when the need arose. So it was that rookie rider, and formidable climber, Rene Vietto found himself at the foot of the Pyrenees. His team mate, race leader Antonin Magne, broke his front wheel in a descent. Vietto offered his own wheel, only to find that it did not fit his leader’s bicycle – who instead accepted one from another rider.

However, the tale, retold by Tour director Jacques Goddet in the column he wrote for L’Auto, accompanied by a doctored picture of a wheel-less Vietto, sobbing after having sacrificed his own chances, made a hero of the first-year rider. Indeed, ‘King Rene’ was hailed as the Tour’s moral winner in Paris, and earned a decent living on his resulting reputation for the rest of his career.

At times Sweat of the Gods reads like a kind of Peloton Babylon, so relentlessly does it unearth the sports seamier side. And certainly in translation, there are no references, leaving the reader with little opportunity to double check any of the authors claims.

Nevertheless, this is a tremendous read for anyone with a serious-minded interest in professional cycle sport – so long as you don’t harbour too many illusions about la Grand Boucle’s Athenian ideals.

MOUSEHOLD Press, a small, Norwich based imprint publishes an impressive range of off-beat cycling books.

PS Sep 08

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

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.

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.

Breakaway, Samuel Abt (1985)

Random House 0-394-54679-2 178pp $16.95

Sameul Abt is a long-time follower of the Tour de France and the continential racing scene, mostly in his capacity as deputy editor of the International Herald Tribune. His books are year-long pieces of reportage that tell the tale of the great French race through dozens of individual narratives – of mechanics, riders, managers, sponsors and reporters. This book takes as its subject the 1984 tour – the year that Laurent Fignon got one over on Bernard Hinault. It was also Robert Millar’s best ever tour – he came forth in the general classification and won the King of the Mountains. Abt is a brilliant journalist, with a fine ear for a story and an ability to pluck out telling details. There are really no books to touch his for evoking the glamour, oddity and daily grind of a great cycling tour. Indeed, the value of his books increases as time goes by, as they allow the reader to reimmerse themselves – or immerse themselves, in may cases, in a bygone age.