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Inside the Tour De France
This book will take readers into the intimate world of the Tour.
- GenresCycling
176 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1994
14 people want to read
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September 14, 2020
I think I've said elsewhere but one of the great joys in unearthing old Tour de France biogs in second-hand bookshops is the sheer blindness to/acceptance of the scale of drug-use in the peloton.
Hindsight is a great thing, particularly if you're reading any of Lance Armstrong's books, but it's easy to spot now the light has been cast on the murky world of doping. Which is what I think makes this book doubly interesting. Or triply interesting in fact.
The actual structure of the book is engaging in its own right: It picks 13 people from the cast of participants of the 1993 Tour who tell their stories about what it's like being on the Tour. From the GC riders to lowly equipiers, team managers and wives, journalists and doctors, it's more than an incremental tale of the action on the road, it sets out to explain the psychology and human cost which goes on behind the scenes of the Tour.
It's also written by David Walsh, the journalist who did more than anybody else to break the story of the endemic drug-abuse in the sport. A guy who spent many years shunned by riders, attacked by Armstrong in particular, but who was eventually proved right.
So far so good, an interesting and unusual format written by a very good sports journalist but this is where hindsight chucks us a delicious bone of schadenfreude because the book is rammed with a host of characters who would appear front and centre in cycling's lowest moments, from the Festina affair to the UPS Postal scandals.
Armstrong is profiled as the first-time rider, Claudio Chiappucci is the featured climber and lurking in the background of many of the stories are various Festina riders including Alex Zulle and soigneurWilly Vogt, as well as Johan Bruyneel, Dr Ferrari and the PDM food poisoning affair of 1991 also gets an airing.
It's all the more fascinating now that we know, and you can't help wondering how much this led Walsh to his bigger scoops.
Hindsight is a great thing, particularly if you're reading any of Lance Armstrong's books, but it's easy to spot now the light has been cast on the murky world of doping. Which is what I think makes this book doubly interesting. Or triply interesting in fact.
The actual structure of the book is engaging in its own right: It picks 13 people from the cast of participants of the 1993 Tour who tell their stories about what it's like being on the Tour. From the GC riders to lowly equipiers, team managers and wives, journalists and doctors, it's more than an incremental tale of the action on the road, it sets out to explain the psychology and human cost which goes on behind the scenes of the Tour.
It's also written by David Walsh, the journalist who did more than anybody else to break the story of the endemic drug-abuse in the sport. A guy who spent many years shunned by riders, attacked by Armstrong in particular, but who was eventually proved right.
So far so good, an interesting and unusual format written by a very good sports journalist but this is where hindsight chucks us a delicious bone of schadenfreude because the book is rammed with a host of characters who would appear front and centre in cycling's lowest moments, from the Festina affair to the UPS Postal scandals.
Armstrong is profiled as the first-time rider, Claudio Chiappucci is the featured climber and lurking in the background of many of the stories are various Festina riders including Alex Zulle and soigneurWilly Vogt, as well as Johan Bruyneel, Dr Ferrari and the PDM food poisoning affair of 1991 also gets an airing.
It's all the more fascinating now that we know, and you can't help wondering how much this led Walsh to his bigger scoops.
Displaying 1 of 1 review