Philippe Gilbert: Mijn droomjaar

by Philippe Gilbert

You see kid, you've done it, and there was no reason to fear the gradient of the Wall of Huy. Benefit, when you're in such form, you have to jump on everything that moves.' Tour de France winner Bernard Hinault in conversation with Philippe Gilbert.

Philippe Gilbert is the most famous Belgian road cyclist, and indeed, one of the most celebrated cyclists in the world. He was the first Beligan, and second person worldwide, to win all three of the Ardennes Classics races in a single year. He has also won a stage at the Tour de France among other races.

Philippe My Dream Year documents his experiences in 2011, the most successful year of his career thus far in which he claimed 18 victories, along with the prestigious Grand Prix Cyclist de Quebec award. It is a passionate account of his emotions, memories and anecdotes along the way, and his hopes to improve on that success in 2012. A must for all cycling fans.

This book has been created in collaboration with Stéphane Thirion, journalist for Le Soir, Belgium's top francopohone newspaper.

Preface; A Dream Season's Origins; Alan, My Greatest Victory; Training, My Work of Every Day; My First Victory in the Algarve; 'The God of the Final Kilometre'; Between Two Seas, A Third Victory; The Indomitable Primavera; 'On the Bosberg, my major mistake of the season'; The Brabant Arrow as an Aperitif; The Amstel Gold Race - Absolute Perfection; The Wall of Huy, a Football Stadium; A Holy Week; My date with 'Doyenne'; The Merry Month of May!; My Revenge in the Tour of Belguim; The Ster Electro Tour As Well!; The World's Most Beautiful Jersey; Finally, the Yellow Jersey!; My Birthday, An Unhappy Memory; Second at Cap Frehel and Super Besse; Van den Broeck's Fall; 'Jelle s Plateau'; The Big Buckle is Buckled; A Basque Beret For Me!; Champion of Belgium Once Again!; In Quebec, I Become Number One Again!; From Montreal to Copenhagen; My last duties; My record in a Few Figures; Epilogue.

Genres: Cycling

218 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[Chris Leon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought this book because I’m a Philippe Gilbert fan. I wasn’t really expecting it to be very good. It seemed like a rather blatant attempt to make some extra money after a particularly good year at bike racing. I decided to give Philippe a chance anyway. The introduction left me very depressed. The writing was rather poorly done and I wasn’t looking forward to sitting through an entire book of it. The most annoying part was the author’s attempt at making up for the lack of writing ability by using fancy sounding words. It left me with the impression of reading really bad poetry by someone that thinks stringing together pseudo-intellectual phrases is a recipe for success. I’m pretty sure this was actually due to English not being the author’s first language and the translation not coming across quite right. I can at least use that excuse to also explain the grammatical errors throughout the book. Now that I’m done complaining, I have to say the rest of the book isn’t really that bad. The parts actually written by Philippe are actually surprisingly well done and the author of the introduction mainly interjects to tie together these sections. It’s just the story of a year of bike racing, so don’t expect anything deep or meaningful. In fact, if you’re not already a fan of Gilbert or a fan of cycling in general it would be pretty boring. I have to say that even though it’s not a great book I still enjoyed it.