Tag: Bookshelf

In the third volume of his Cycling Legends series, author Chris Sidwells focused on the first man to win all three Grand Tours in his career and the first to win the Tour de France five times. Monsieur Chrono was the nickname given to Jacques Anquetil, who built his reputation through his brilliance as a time trial racer. With his sporting heyday from the late 1950s to the mid 1960s and with his early death at 53 in 1987, many of today’s cycling fans are not that familiar with his impressive accomplishments. The first English-language biography of him only appeared in 2008. This new book is subtitled The Man Behind the Mask and the author’s aim was to reveal who…

Our world of cycling literature tends towards realism, with not much in the way of fiction. Years after its publication in 1978 Tim Krabb’s The Rider still remains at the top of the list of novels about cycling, with honourable mention for The Yellow Jersey by Ralph Hurne, which appeared in 1973. The latter has even attracted attention from Hollywood screenwriters but has never developed further. In a sport that never lacks for grand spectacle and human drama, maybe reality somehow trumps the imagination but one can still write fiction that transcends the sports novel and addresses greater questions.A fine example of this is Dear Hugo, by British author/Italian resident Herbie Sykes. Sykes is a fine writer of non-fiction cycling…

As a professional cyclist you dont get a nice jersey for winning Milan-San Remo. Or Paris-Roubaix. Or the Tour of Flanders. Victory in the Clsica de San Sebastin entitles you to wear a big black beret that looks like a giant floppy pancake for a humiliating moment. But there is a very special jersey that, once you win it at a one day event, it is yours for a year wherever you racethe Spring Classics, the Tour, or the Meiji-Jingu Outer Garden University Criterium. This jersey, is of course, the glorious rainbow-striped confection first donned by Alfredo Binda in 1927 and which has most recently adorned Flashy Entertainer Julian Alaphilipe for the Elite Men and Italy’s Elisa Balsamo for the…

Don’t be misled by the title of this excellent book. Pantana Was A God is not a panegyric, a worshipful recounting of the life of the last pro cyclist to win the Giro d’Italia and the Tour de France in the same year. It is two books in one – a masterful look at the great stages where Pantani triumphed, and brief remembrances by those who knew him personally. Sadly, the inherent possibility of his successes, unlikely as his background made them, seems to have been greater than that of his end.Fifteen years ago, on Valentine’s Day, the body of Marco Pantani was found in a room in an inexpensive resort hotel in Rimini. Cause of death was cardiac arrest…