Le Tour: The Rise and Rise of the Tour de France

by Geoffrey Nicholson

Traces the development of the race from its beginnings, portraying its heroes and villains, its drug problems and its sponsorship battles. This book also tells of the 1990 Tour winner Greg LeMond and what turned out to be his third victory in this race.

Genres: Cycling

264 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1991

Reviews

[Ryan Patrick · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought this would be great—an entire book covering just a single, three-week, race. Unfortunately, this books suggests that there isn’t actually enough material in recounting an entire Tour de France to fill a whole book. I guess I should have realized that when I read Slaying the Badger, although the 1986 race did have enough drama for a book, only really including background material on the two principle protagonists in that race (although it did spend a bit of time recounting the 1985 race as well). Since the 1990 race had a lot more contenders, it inevitably spends a lot more time on background stories, but a lot of them felt a bit superfluous—like when one of my students is trying to pad their paper after not doing enough research. Nicholson just wants to tell some stories of the good old days one feels. I suppose if you like reading about Tour history, and I do, then it is still interesting stuff, but it’s often not quite deep enough to really satisfy a reader who already knows a bit about the history of the Tour.

So, overall, I was disappointed—too much story and not enough analysis—an entire book focused on a single Tour should really get into the strategies of the teams on each stage; instead most stages were covered in the length of a typical newspaper article, leaving more room for background stories, I guess. I would love to find a book focused on a single Tour de France race written by a rider or perhaps a directeur sportif, rather than a journalist.