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

A Century Of Cycling, William Fotheringham (2003)

A coffee-table-sized book containing a good history of the major races in professional road cycling.

Photo-rich tomes of this size frequently deliver little in elucidation. Indeed, this has the appearance of precisely that kind of volume that one is presented with as a gift by a non-cycling family member who has ‘spotted it in a bookshop’.

Happily, however, Fotheringham is a high-quality journalist (he writes for The Guardian) who has covered the world of cycle racing for more than a decade. As a result there is something in this book for all but the most obsessive cycle racing enthusiast. The book is divided into nine chapters with one each on the major tours, and the rest on the classic one-day races, such as Paris-Roubaix and Liege-Bastogne-Liege.

Each chapter covers the history of the race, the most notable contests and is illustrated with a map of a recent course. Throughout the text there are single page profiles of 37 of the greatest cyclists, from Coppi to Lance Armstrong. The book ends with a useful list of all the winners of all the races covered in the book.

My edition is now five years out of date, and may well have come from some kind of discounter. Nonetheless, it is a great companion to the cycling year – one to be got out on the morning of each race to contextualise and deepen your viewing pleasure.

PS Dec 08

Fifty Years of Road Racing – The History of the North Road Cycling Club, S H Moxham (1935)

Diemer and Reynolds 178pp

This solid little tome takes the story of one of England’s most venerable cycling clubs from its inception in 1885 to its Golden Jubilee. And its very physical manifestation gives some indication of how seriously the Club took this anniversary. It has a beautiful mid-blue, grained hardback cover and the text is printed on handsome, grained paper with more than a dozen photographic plates.

Little wonder. The date of publication must surely be close to the high point of voluntary clubs in Britain. Cycling, walking, hostelling, running, model railways and every other pastime you can think of spawned seriously marshalled organisations in every town, village and city. Many, like the Scouts, for example, were Edwardian inventions. But the North Road Club, like a good many other cycling clubs, traces its origins into the glory days of Victoria’s reign.

The book is organised in a year-by-year narrative, which could make for dry picking. But the author – it is credited to Moxham (president of the club from 1933) ‘and others’ – provides a fascinating picture of the early days of amateur racing in this country.

At the outset, the very shape of cycle racing has yet to emerge. Time trials are run on ordinaries (penny farthings), faciles (a hybrid that looks like a penny farthing – albeit without the really dramatic difference in wheel size), tricycles and safety bicycles. Manufacturers promoted events for competitors riding only their own machines. And place-to-place records were in their infancy. In 1882, for example, H R Reynolds recorded the first recorded London to York attempt – managing the journey in 21 hours and 43 minutes.

There are plenty more delicious details. “This season (1890) witnessed the first appearance of the pneumatic tyre in the Club’s races and the commencement of the gradual elimination of the sold tyre…The contrast in appearance between the narrow solid tyres then in common use and the 2in. pneumatic was so extraordinary that the man in the street received the latter with jeers and ridicule”.

The club played a critical role in the development of time trailing – organising, among other things – the first 24 hour event. Indeed, it championed longer time trails. For many years, it would consider no distance of less that 50 miles being worth the effort of organising an event.

As the narrative gets closer to the time of publication, the detail does get thinner. Once or twice the author mentions that there is little point in dwelling too much of detail from only a few years ago. This is a shame, as the age of cycling that is now only just within living memory seems every bit as interesting as the late Victorian golden days.

Happily, the club continues to thrive – albeit now centred on Hertfordshire, rather than north London. It is enormously heartening to learn that a second volume of history was produced in 1985 to mark the club’s centenary. At the time of writing, however, there are half a dozen copies of the 1935 book available on abebooks.co.uk – but not a single copy of the account of the club’s second half century. That in itself probably tells you something of the changing size, status and enthusiasm for official histories that occured in the ensuing period.

PS September 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

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

The Yellow Jersey, Ralph Hurne (1973)

Breakaway Books 1-55821-452-6 285pp $14.95

This novel comes with the recommendation on its cover that it is “The greatest cycling novel ever written”, courtesy of Bicycling magazine. It is, of course, impossible to know how accurately that sentence reflects the magazine’s review of this book, nor of how qualified was the originator of the phrase.

At the time of writing, however, I can think of only a dozen or so ‘cycling novels’ in the English language. Even assuming that I have missed a great many others, can there be more than 50 ‘cycling novels’? If this is the case, being the best in such a small field, is not quite the recommendation that it first appears.

Most cycling novels – and this is no exception – take professional racing as their backdrop. Hurne’s story is of Terry Davenport, a washed up, end-of-career pro, who is down on his luck competitively and unhappy in his personal life.

It is an engaging tale, with plenty of edge-of-the-seat thrills to keep the pages turning. And, as Hurne clearly has a considerable knowledge of, and a love for, professional racing, there is plenty of insider insight to impart.

What it does not do, however, is to transcend its backdrop – in the way, for example, that The Rider does. For a cyclist with a long-haul flight to pass away, it is thoroughly enjoyable diversion. Its is not, however, the volume to persuade anyone else that cycling has produced a rich literature.

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

French Revolutions, Tim Moore (2001)

Yellow Jersey Press 0-224-06095-3 277 pp £12

A humerous account of the authors attempt to cycle the route of the Tour despite his lack of experience on a bicycle

This is a good – if obvious – idea for a travel book. Follow the route of the Tour de France, in this case the tour of 2000, at a touring speed. As a non-cyclist, this gives Moore a framework around which to hang a travelogue, meditation on cycle racing and a chance to marvel at those who complete the route at a rather less leisurely pace than the author achieves.

Moore is undoubtedly an amusing writer. Here he is teeing up his assault on Ventoux.

“The trouble with cycling up mountains is that – panniers or, as today, no panniers – after about four minutes, as soon as that first metallic-tasting, lactic gasp rasps inward at the back of your throat, any thoughts of appreciating your surroundings, contemplating the Continental way of life, or otherwise entertaining an appropriate holiday mentality have been booted out of your brain by an all-encompassing him-or-you struggle to the death with the force of gravity.”

Were someone who knew nothing about cycling looking for a light-hearted introduction to the Tour, this book would serve well.

To anyone who starts the book with a deeper knowledge of cycling and cycle sport than Moore, however, it is impossible to shake a feeling of irritation with him. He is an able writer, for sure, although the efforts of his wise-cracking show. He has read up on the great race, and can rehash many of its curious tales with some élan. But at the end of the day, he has little that is actually new to add. You can’t help feeling that he alighted upon the idea of a Tour-based book as a commercial opportunity, rather than anything fired by passion. As a result, he steadily creates a feeling that, at heart, he is mocking cyclists and cycling for the amusement of others.

PS August 2008

Bad To The Bone, James Waddington (1998)

Dedalus 1 873982 68 2 194pp

During the late 1990s, two stories recurred in the mainstream media coverage of professional cycling in the UK. One described how five-times Tour de France winner Miguel Indurain was in some way a physiological superman. With each year that he started favourite to win the race, there would be more discussion of his unnaturally capacious lungs, or his giant heart’s ability to pump blood faster than those of mere mortals.

The other story – and I am not suggesting that these things were related – was the rise of EPO as the peleton’s drug of choice. Evidence of the effect of this was easy to see – the average speed of la grande boucle rose year after year. And 1996 winner Bjarne Riis was widely known as ‘Mr 60%’ because of his ability to maintain an illegally high haemocrit level. There were also deaths. EPO caused the blood of those who took it to turn to the consistency of jam, causing some to have heart attacks as they slept.

These are the issues that Waddington takes as the themes of this novel. We demand of athletes ever more gladiatorial displays of endeavour, but throw up our hands in horror when they are revealed to be ‘drug cheats’. These are fantastic moral conundrums for a fiction to consider, and Waddington very largely does them justice.

His tale is of a five-times Tour winner, Akil Saenz, his wife Perlita, and a messianic ‘sports physician’ Mikkel Fleishman. It starts with an account of cycle racing which will be recognisable to aficionados, but becomes increasingly disturbed.

Waddington knows his cycle racing and has things to say to even the most trainspottery of enthusiasts. He also has an important point to make about professional sports in general – but to get to that, you should read the book. The end in not as neat as the rest of the book, which undermines its overall quality – but the journey to that point is sufficient to make this an enjoyable and stimulating read.

PS August 2008

Ride And Be Damned, Chas Messenger (1998)

Pedal Publishing £24.95 0 9534096 0 0 151pp

Writing at the age of 84, Messenger tells the tumultuous tale of the British League of Racing Cyclists. These were the hardy band of roadmen who, by grit, guile and grim determination brought mass-start road racing to Britain in the years immediately after the second world war.

The author’s perspective is essentially that of a protagonist – he served for many years as an office holder with the BLRC and was subsequently involved in everything from organising the Milk Race, to working with Britain’s Olympic team.

At this distance, the rift that divided British cycling in the late 1940s and 1950s is difficult to comprehend. The sport’s governing body at that time was the conservative British Cycling Union. As cycling boomed in the 1880s, the Police started to prosecute competitive cyclists for ‘furious cycling’. The governing body wanted to ensure that bicycling remained respectable and, in 1888 that had adopted a resolution stating that: “(We) desire to discourage road racing and calls upon clubs to assist it by refusing to hold races upon the road”.

It was this decision – and the maintenance of that position for more than half a century - that prevented mass start road races from becoming the huge spectator sport in the British isles that it is in most of continental Europe. Racers on these shores had to satisfy themselves with secretively organised time trials, and track cycling.

At the end of the 1930s, however, Percy Stallard, a Wolverhampton cyclist, was one of a growing band who wanted the chance to race as they did on the other side of the Channel. His enthusiasm, and that of those who gathered around him, led to a new organisation – the League of Racing Cyclists, and a furious break with the British Cycling Union. Both sides entrenched, cycling clubs split, and there was much bad blood. As a result, however, big, road races were introduced to the UK, even if they were too late to become the mainstays of the sporting calendar that the European races became.

The joy of this book its two-fold. It is a story that is, otherwise, without a historian, and Messenger does his subject great service by setting down these tales for posterity. It is also fabulously illustrated, with flyers, programmes and photographs. There is scarcely a page without some kind of graphic – and seeing the originals really evoke the age from which they came.

The downside is that Messenger makes a somewhat confused historian. Often he seems uncertain whether he is setting down a dispassionate record, writing a polemic in favour of his own views, or writing a personal memoir. In the end, for anyone interested in the development of British cycling, it is a forgivable fault.

PS August 08

From the pen of J B Wadley, ed Adrian Bell (2002)

Mousehold Press 1 874739 22 6 £12.95 206pp

A collection of articles about competitive cycling by one of Britain's most celebrated cycle journalists



Jock Wadley was a towering presence in British cycle journalism in the middle years of the twentieth century. True, you might say, with few practitioners in this particular corner of reporting during that period, even one of short stature might appear as a giant. But Wadley's qualities as an observer and recorder of bicycle sport would have shone out, whatever the competition.


Born in 1914, Wadley reported on the domestic and continental scene from 1933, pretty nearly until he died in 1981, writing for Cycling and The Bicycle, as well as editing Coureur and International Cycle Sport. That this publication was issued over 20 years after his demise shows the regard in which he was held by his readers.


The pieces here cover topics as diverse as the intense competition to take the 'Bath and Back' record (from London - of course); Frederico Bahamontes assault on the 1959 Tour and a Randonneur in the Alps. His tone is almost conversational - he frequently explains the difficulties of following a race from a press car. "When the journalist is equipped with a helicopter he might be able to cover all four races at once" he laments at one stage - speaking of an age before most commentators watched the race on the box.


Here he is on Shay Elliot's progress in 1958's edition of Ghent-Wevelgem: "What I dared to hope was the Elliot was still strong enough not only to win the Messines prime, but to get away on his own to keep clear of the other chasers all the way to Wevelgem. But although he was still strong, one man was stronger. He was Noel Fore, and Fore Flung himself into a powerful sprint on a modest hill".


He is partisan, but when the English-speaking riders do not triumph, he is quick to applaud the winners.


Often the style is more that of a letter to a friend than what we would today recognise as journalism. But what a correspondent to have! These dispatches from the past are so full of colour, incident and detail that they transcend their style.



PS 24 July

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

The Rider, by Tim Krabbe (1978)

(trans Sam Garrett)
pub: Bloomsbury (2002) 0 7475 5941 4 148 pages cover price £6.99

A exploration of the experience of racing a bicycle written as an account of a fictional race

The Rider is the best book on the experience of cycle racing ever written. Indeed, by any margin, it is a great book; and an exemplar to any who would set out to imortalise the guts of an experience in such a way that a reader might momentarily inhabit the soul of the protagonist.

First published in Dutch, the book is a fictionalised account of the Tour de Mont Aigoual. It draws heavily on Krabbe’s own career as an amateur cycle racer and is at its best describing the effort required to compete at this level. There is plenty of insight into the preparations that he makes for a race and the curious tactical melange that is mass-start racing.

The race narrative – set out kilometre by kilometre – draws readers along like a peleton with the wind on its back. It is interspersed with an account of the rider’s sporting career, and a more general discourse on professional cycle racing. For a reader unfamiliar with cycle racing, this provides useful context. Anyone immersed in the sport might find it distracting.

Nonetheless, it is not surprising that since its English translation, the book, and its author, has become as lauded among British cyclists as it is on the continent. Indeed, some have even gone so far as to produce cycle jerseys in the colours of the fictional teams against whom Krabbe’s rider races. There can’t be many books whose fans feel so passionately about them that they create tribute t-shirts.