This book is presented as a "how we won the World Championship Road Race" but that's only half the tale, if that. It tells you of Rod Ellingworth's involvement in the British Cycling Academy as well as his involvement with Team Sky. It is fascinating while not a great read which may sound a bit odd. It seems like Rod has written this himself and, while I'm sure he had guidance, he's not going to go on to a successful writing career. However he is honest, surprisingly at times as he tells the reader what he's good at and what he's not. He is also complimentary to people who potentially could be stealing his limelight. He also doesn't pull his punches on what he doesn't agree with although he is at least tactful in doing it.
To hear how he/they set up the academy and his dedication to the project really shows why it was successful and maybe points to why not as many good riders are coming through now he is no longer involved. The discipline he instilled and the insistence of increasing the amount of hours the riders spent on the bike clearly worked. I did feel sorry for his wife though.
The world championship itself didn't sound as tough a job, he needed to get all the riders pulling in the same direction and riding for one man, Cav. Now I realise that is easier said than done but compared to what he achieved by bringing through top professional cyclists ready for the road I don't think it compares.
This book is an insight that I haven't got from anywhere else, including Cav's autobiography and I think is a must for any keen fan of British Cycling - just don't expect it to be a page turner...
Cycling books tend to fall in to two categories, bike racing and all that's associated with that and then there's travel writing. The travel writing books are often a different breed altogether, the whole cycling element can become secondary to the scenery and cultures the rider is passing through. This book however promised to be a mix of the two. Mark Beaument attempted to cycle around the world and get himself a Guinness World Record at the same time by being the fasted person to do it. It's not giving away the ending to say he did it, in fact just reading the back of the book or the introduction would tell you this. Why give that way? Well he smashed it and the story is not whether he did it or not but how he did it.
At times this book is a great read and at other times it can be a bit of a drag but I don't think that's down to the writing, it's the subject. Sometimes he was riding through interesting places and interesting things were happening to him. Other times he was riding day after day through wide open spaces with nothing happening.
The book gave a real insight in to his ride and his notes were clearly comprehensive keeping a track of all he did. While it was a bit of 'eat,ride,eat, ride, eat, sleep' it was done in an entertaining way, keeping it brief when it was mundane, expanding when more went on. He certainly helped you understand what it felt to ride all those miles, I certainly felt for him with the saddle sores, I've suffered for a couple of days, imagine it day after day, week after week. He did discover pawpaw cream which is allegedly very good for these just in case you have suffered too. I guess insights like that kept me more entertained in the book. As most of my riding is along the travel rather than competitive riding I found tips like that useful. He also mentioned the need to build your knee muscles up and mentioned other nutritional and physical advice as the book went on that he got from a team of advisers.
By the end of the book I was willing him to finish, I think it came across in the book he'd had enough and I'd had enough. All the interesting places were in the first half of the book and there was little more to tell by the end. It's a good book but I think there are better travel writing books that take in the whole world (Alastair Humphrey's is one), however if you've read a few in this genre already it is probably still worth the read. Well done Mark, what an achievement.
I have read a lot of Richard Moore's books, sadly the only one I've reviewed on here is Sky's The Limit, his inside view of Sky's first season in road racing. While a good book it wasn't his best. Sadly Sky didn't hit the heights in their first year that they'd hoped and have since achieved, leaving less fodder for Moore. Heroes, Villains and Veledromes was all about "Britain's Track Cycling Revolution" but, not in a bad way, read very much like a biography of Chris Hoy. His book Slaying The Badger was excellent, a book on the 1986 tour, his favourite tour. It told of the battle between Greg LeMond (eventual winner of the tour three times) and Bernard 'The Badger' Hinault (five times winner of the tour). While a slow starter it really built up and the finish had me on the edge of my seat, if it's possible with a book.
This book offers a number of new inside stories from the tour, ones that I haven't heard before despite having read close to forty books on cycling. I wouldn't say it's all 'untold stories' as the cover suggests but it does cover them from different or new angles. Not only that but it was a great accompaniment to this years tour. The book of course opens with a prologue stage, accident or not it then covered the cobbles just as this year's tour hit the bone shaking route that would in part decide this year's winner of the yellow jersey. As it's is a book made up of 'stages' you can pick up and put the book down after each chapter knowing next time will be a new story and something fresh. A great read, well done Richard Moore.
I have just finished Discovery Road and thoroughly enjoyed it. It is very much in the same vein as Why Don't You Fly and the excellent Thunder & Sunshine / Moods of future joys. The difference being that this is written by two guys (three of them started the trip) and the real joy is that they seemed to enjoy it and really took the adventurous nature of it in.
The challenge was to cycle across three continents unaided and therefore cycle around the world. They may not have ridden unaided but they didn't camp out in the open quite as often as Alistair in Thunder and Sunshine but that's just sensible isn't it. I guess I could relate to these guys a lot more (if you can relate to someone who gives up work and cycles around the world). Even when there was a lot of conflict during the the first stretch as they cycled across Australia with one of their ex-girlfriends (when did they ever think that was a good idea) they still portrayed a sense of adventure and enjoyment to the reader. There was humour throughout the book and they found joy in so many different situations. It's a big book (it took them each 6 months to write it) yet I still didn't want it to end. It was like a Team Pannier coast to coast to trip amplified by one million times.
I recommend you read this if you like travel and cycling, it's a corking read to dream to...
Wow, there a books that can really shake your understanding and beliefs in life. Some are very profound, the excellent Bounce book by Matthew Syed for example has changed how I raise my children and has made me assess my (lack of) limitations in life. The Secret Race has been so quite life changing but it has brought a whole new understanding to the soap opera that is cycling.
Tyler Hamilton was Lance's right hand man, for a period of time he roomed with him, he shared his aspirations and worries with him and he even doped with him. In this book Hamilton gives a first hand account of what it was like within the US Postal team and their organised doping. He also gives a full account of Armstrong and his personality, I never thought I would like him be I can't quite believe what a bullying nutcase he comes across as in the book.
My very wise wife has said to me in the past that they should 'just let them all take drugs and leave them to it'. Well it seems that they pretty much did. Hamilton says in his book that Armstrong was even caught for EPO in the Tour of Switzerland and the UCI swept it under the carpet - all for a $125,000 'donation' from Lance. Wow! It seems the authorities were so far behind the cyclists that they might have not bothered. Simple techniques like chugging down loads of water and simply pretending to not be in worked getting around drugs tests. Also they knew what time the testers were allowed to turn up so they would just try to take the drugs outside of those hours. One tester even phoned before he came to make sure they'd be in!
However, many keen cycling fans will have heard about the Festina affair in 1998 where a member of the team was caught carrying a load of drugs across the border during the tour. This meant a massive clamp down and all the cyclists and teams were running scared of the testers and being caught. Armstrong thought everyone else would still be getting their EPO one way or another and so organised his to be delivered. However they were wrong and in recent times (since Lance's retirement) the samples taken from riders at the time were tested with the new tests able to catch the cheats. Only 8% tested positive. 8%! That means only 8% of the field had a chance against Armstrong in his first tour win.
This really changed my perspective on the whole thing. I've always felt it was a fairly even playing field but it obviously wasn't that year. As time went on everyone else was doping, in fact most of them were using the same doctor! In fact I can remember one year when everyone was attacking Armstrong and it was a real close race - that must have been the year everyone was wired up to the eyeballs!
Having read David Millar's Racing Through The Dark and now this book, there is a stark contrast. Millar felt he was pushed in to drug taking, that he had no choice, that he felt bad. I feel Hamilton's view point is probably a lot more common. He portrays it as a cool club that he wanted to be in, that it gave him belief he could win or more that he didn't think he could win without it. He saw a marked change in competitors and felt he wanted and needed to follow them.The irony being that one tell-tale sign to him was one person's improvement over another athlete. It turns out that at that point that cyclist wasn't doping, he was just on good form but I guess this is why drug taking gave them the belief.
I think at the moment there is still a lot of drug taking about. The course for the Vuelta was so punishing but some cyclists seemed to compete day after day at the same level, cycling up the steepest of mountains like they were racing on the flat. There was a phrase used by Lance that someone was doping, he said a result or a performance was 'not normal'. The Vuelta this year was 'not normal', let's hope the tour this year is.
Oh and do buy the book, you will find it fascinating.
Reading the back of this book you would believe this book is about the terminal illness of the writer's wife and how that impacted his life. Well that's the impression I got. Yet it's so much more than that and in fact that is merely a side story to the main theme. Cycling. Amateur cycling and Seaton's obsession with it.
I've played football at amateur level since I was 18 and found Matt's account of the cycling equivalent fascinating. He addresses everything from the training schedules to the changing room etiquette - I'm assuming the 'not looking' policy is the same in all male changing rooms throughout the UK despite my wife's insistance to the contrary - not that he mentions this side of it. Seeing the dedication required to achieve at such a low level is quite an eye opener but what this book covers and excels at is that it covers questions you've always wanted to ask about cycling and raises, and answers a whole load more.
What you begin to realise is that his main enjoyment, hobby and reason for living is about to come to an end. While his mouth and brain have come to terms with that his heart hasn't. Forget his wife's illness or their IVF treatment, this is where the book really got me. Having given up football 15 years after starting I could totally relate to what Seaton was now facing. Family life called and it was only right he gave up cycling. While he slowly withdrew from cycling it dawned on him even more slowly how this would affect him.
So if you're suddenly finding age and life catching up on you and you're no longer doing what you want for just you 100% of the time then this book is for you. He doesn't tell you how to deal with it, he doesn't know himself but it does show you that many more men across the country are going through the same thing, whether they're in to tennis, cycling, football or rock climbing. If you want a full, rounded life then it will come to you too.
Daniel Coyle's similarly titled Lance Armstrong: Tour de Force was a fantastic read, one of my favourite (at the time) cycling books. This is by a different author, John Deering and so is not to be confused with the former. However it is a real pleasurable read. It cleverly mixes a day-by-day run down of Wiggo's Tour Success in 2012 with a look at the rider's history and build up to the tour in a similar way to Coyle.
As an avid Tour follower and equally keen reader of cycling books a lot of it was visiting familiar ground already covered elsewhere. If you watched all the 2012 tour and have read Sky's The Limit and Bradley Wiggins autobiography (released a couple of years ago) then you will learn little from this book. But that isn't the only reason to read is it? Deering beautifully pulls all this information together and presents it in an enjoyable way that is like reading the best bits of three books and adding them to your own personal memories. He adds first hand tales from the tour as well as information gleaned from difference sources such as tweets and web site reports. Most importantly for me, he explained where the nickname of Frome Dog for Chris Frome came from. I first heard it on ITV4 when David Millar was interviewed. I thought it was his 'street' name for Frome. Turns out it was quoting a tweet from Frome's girlfriend as she felt his interests were playing second fiddle to Wiggin's ambitions "if you want loyalty get yourself a Frome dog". So now you know too, I may have taken away your "aha" moment but there is still plenty in this book to keep you entertained and is well worth a read.
I decided to read this book during the Tour this year (sorry for the late review) as I thought it would be great to have an insight in to the team and compare it to what I was seeing on TV. In a world of wanting everything now it's no surprise that I was frustrated at the lack of insight in to the team in its present state but that soon subsided as I read about everything that had got them to this point.
The book is set in the time of setting up Team Sky with their talisman, Bradley Wiggins signed and hoping to beat his previous year's outstanding achievement of finishing fourth in the tour. I think while David Brailsford and the team weren't naive enough to think they'd have instant success I think they probably dared hope they'd have something to shout about, something to show to say "here, this is what we've brought to the world of road racing".
In some respects they did bring new elements to the world of cycling, some of it visible to the fans (slick buses, outfits and cars), some of it visible to the competition (buying riders out of contracts in a football style - new to cycling) and some of it only visible to Team Sky and Richard Moore, the author of the book. Richard does mention that it isn't an authorised / official book and in that sense he doesn't suck up to Team Sky but does get pretty close access to them. His insight behind the scenes is certainly what makes this book a worthwhile purchase and the whole feel of the book goes along with the debut season Sky had. Upbeat and positive at the start followed by realisation that it's not all going to go as planned (something David Brailsford doesn't put up with for long) and the book and season ends with lessons learned and a new positive outlook to the future.
As a book it's a good read but it doesn't have the depth of some of Moore's other books, this is surely because it's like writing an autobiography before you've achieved anything - there's not much to tell. I wonder how it would read if it was written now...
"Isn't that supposed to be jersey?" my Dad asked. "Exactly" I said and that's the beauty of this book. My Dad doesn't follow cycling and 99% of what he knows about it he's learnt through osmosis from when I lived at home. This book is the perfect introduction to the modern day Tour for those who are less than knowledgeable about the whole cycling world. While other books have covered the whole history of the tour such as the excellent Blazing Saddles this concentrates on the tour since it began in Ned Boulting's world. Ned was thrown in at the deep in 2003, sent to cover the Tour de France having never seen a bike race before. It covers the characters in the race since then with a (much appreciated) British bias.
While it may sound like Tour de France for the beginner it actually gives the avid follower a real insight in to the tour from the media's point of view, often with a humorous outcome. Anyone who's watched ITV4 's coverage of the tour (or channel 4's before that) will be interested as he gives insights in to the whole cast, as he calls it, including legendary commentators Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen.
I would heartedly recommend this as a light hearted read for anyone in to the tour but more importantly to anyone thinking they'd like to know more about the tour - this is the place to start. It was excellent.
As my challenge to read 12 books in 12 months continues I find myself finding a bit of a hill in front of me. Our second baby is due in October and so really I need to read 12 books in 9 months. Luckily Cyclebabble is already number 6 BUT does it really count as a book? It's a collection of blog posts, with comments from the Guardian web site. It's hard bound and has words typed in it so I'm counting it as a book. The book was a present - I'm really easy to buy for, but all people think that don't they?.
The book covers all aspects of cycling, there are interviews with Olympic cyclists and policticians (I can't actually remember which politician) and there are articles on riding events and there are even bits about cycle maintenance. Overall it's quite a good toilet read (you can pick it up and put it down quite easily) but it is of course dictated by what they cover in the blog and that tends to be covering items that are in the news, that's understandable with it being a blog on a newspaper web site. The only thing I would say is that it gets a bit bogged down in safety issues and rules of the road. I now know a lot more about cycle lane widths, why cyclists don't have to pay road tax (it's not called road tax any more apparently and it's based on Co2 omissions) and how many accidents cyclists cause compared to drivers. Oh and pregnant women. In fact there is a whole chapter on women. I have a pregnant wife but I didn't find that section very interesting and if it wasn't for the challenge I would have probably skipped it.
However I would say there are uplifting sections to the book where it makes you want to get out on the road* and feel the wind through your hair*. There is a post / chapter on the naked rides - there's one in Bristol apparently - and there is a post on the city in some South American place where they close the roads on a Sunday.
The book as a whole makes you proud to cycle but there is a heavy bias towards London and the whole you shouldn't cycle through red lights just gets boring after the fifth time. It's worth a read and a £5.99 I'm pleased that my sister got a bargain...
*I haven't been cycling once while reading this book. *I haven't got any hair.
For those readers of my other blog you may be aware of my New Year's Resolution (NYR) last year. The plan was to buy an album a month and amazingly, probably for the first time, I managed to stick to my NYR. I think the key is always to make it something positive, do more of something you enjoy. Well this year I am aiming to read one book a month. For some I'm sure this would be an easy task, for others I'm sure it would seem an impossible task. I certainly would have thought that ten years ago and certainly when we had a baby girl it would have been a no go. Anyway, as I had 13 new, unread books on our bookshelf I thought I'd give it a go. As I looked through my list of books to read I realised 7 of them were cycling related so I thought I might as well review each cycling one on here.
Why Don't You Fly? is a cycling travel book as Chris Smith attempts to cycle from his home in the UK to Vladivostok in Russia. As you can probably guess from the cover he only makes it to Beijing and I guess this is a bit indicative of the book as whole. It's a book of a nearly man, he nearly makes it all the way without getting a lift, he nearly has a romance and he nearly made it to Russia.
The book as a whole is an enjoyable read and through Chris you learn quite a bit of history about the places he rides through. He teaches about where the people have come from and what is in the make-up. He uses big words without it detracting from the book and I feel I'm being educated without effort. I admire him for the journey he has been on but he just doesn't get to know the people very well. I guess I was always comparing his book to a similar book(s) by Alastair Humphreys. Alastair always seemed to end up sleeping on someone's floor and getting to know the locals. Chris just wanted to be left alone and needed space. He's older and more cynical and while at times his grumpy nature can be amusing at other times you wish he'd just open himself up more.
In fact the best parts of the book are when he has company and how he interacts with them. A boring Serb, a funny German (an oxymoron if ever I heard one) and a sweet Dutch lady all bring life to the journey. I'm quite a people person myself so perhaps that's why I enjoy these interactions.
To sum it up, to ride the distance he did is impressive but not superhuman. To the extent that maybe (I said maybe) I might be able to do it. What Alistair did was something special (he cycled the world), I would recommend both authors but if I was just to read one of them...
I recently read the biography of Jacques Anquetil, five times winner of the Tour de France amongst other great titles and I thought I’d pop a quick review up here.
I found it weird reading this book how such a successful man could come across so unpopular even when written so many years on from his glory days. He seemed to win his races with such machine like performances that the French never warmed to him and in fact they warmed more to the guy who constantly finished second to Anquetil, Poulidor.
The book covers Anquetil’s life from start to finish (he died in 1987) and, as the title suggests, he had just as interesting life off the bike as he did on it. In fact you are given a sneak preview of his personal life in the introduction and it makes for interesting reading.He married his Doctors wife and then had a daughter with his wife’s daughter from her previous marriage. He then carried on relations with both for many years. Eventually the mother of his child moved out and he then married his wife’s daughter in law. If you’re still with me, well done.
It may all sound incestuous but in the eyes of the law I don’t think anything was illegal as it wasn’t in his direct blood line. The author, Paul Howard, does well to put this all across without sounding judgemental at any time. He also manages to keep his personal life separate from his cycling story and he should be applauded for this as such a story could distract from what was a very successful and unique cycling career.
Having read the book I am glad to know the story of Jacques but it never seems to come to life and you never feel like you’re in Anquetil’s head. At times the book can drag on and the author explains why there are certain gaps in his information. It must be hard writing a biography after the subject has died but you never feel caught up in his successes, perhaps this is how the French felt when following him and in that sense Howard has done well transporting me from Bristol to the crowds of France but I felt like I was the one stood at the back who couldn't see everything.
I think if you’re a fan of the Tour de France or cycling in general then I think this may interest you. However if you’re new to the sport or haven’t read many other cycling books then there are better on the shelf. I would give this book three out of five.
I've not managed to read many books since my daughter was born and I've been making an effort recently to try and get back to reading now she's sleeping better. For Christmas I was bought two books written by Alistair Humpreys. They are the account of his cycling adventure, the mad man spent four years cycling around the world. I have to say I'm gripped and I'm reaching for my book ahead of the TV remote on a daily basis. If you like travelling, cycling or just reading about either I definitely recommend you pick up a copy of both parts of his book. His web site is:
I finished them both a long time ago but they still stand out for me. Other books of a similar nature have not touched the same highs. The other people exploring the world just didn't embrace other cultures as much as him and his acheivement hasn't been matched by any of those I have read. Well worth a read.
