Tour de France

Tour de France

Author: Christopher S. Thompson

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2008-03-08

Total Pages: 436

ISBN-13: 9780520934863

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In this highly original history of the world's most famous bicycle race, Christopher S. Thompson, mining previously neglected sources and writing with infectious enthusiasm for his subject, tells the compelling story of the Tour de France from its creation in 1903 to the present. Weaving the words of racers, politicians, Tour organizers, and a host of other commentators together with a wide-ranging analysis of the culture surrounding the event including posters, songs, novels, films, and media coverage Thompson links the history of the Tour to key moments and themes in French history. Examining the enduring popularity of Tour racers, Thompson explores how their public images have changed over the past century. A new preface explores the long-standing problem of doping in light of recent scandals.


Le Tour

Le Tour

Author: Geoffrey Wheatcroft

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 420

ISBN-13: 0743449924

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When Henri Desgrange began a new bicycle road race in 1903, he saw it as little more than a temporary publicity stunt to promote his newspaper. The 60 cyclists who left Paris to ride through the night to Lyons that first July had little idea they were pioneers of the most famous of all bike races, which would reach its centenary as one of the greatest sporting events on earth. Geoffrey Wheatcroft's masterly history of the Tour de France's first hundred years is not just a hugely entertaining canter through some great Tour stories; nor is it merely a homage to the riders whose names—Coppi, Simpson, Mercx, Armstrong—are synonymous with the event's folly and glory. Focusing too on the race's role in French cultural life, it provides a unique and fascinating insight into Europe's 20th century.


The First Tour de France

The First Tour de France

Author: Peter Cossins

Publisher: Bold Type Books

Published: 2017-06-06

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 1568589859

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From its inception, the 1903 Tour de France was a colorful affair. Full of adventure, mishaps and audacious attempts at cheating, it was a race to be remembered. Cyclists of the time weren't enthusiastic about participating in this "heroic" race on roads more suited to hooves than wheels, with bikes weighing up to thirty-five pounds, on a single fixed gear, for three full weeks. Assembling enough riders for the race meant paying unemployed amateurs from the suburbs of Paris, including a butcher, a chimney sweep and a circus acrobat. From Maurice "The White Bulldog" Garin, an Italian-born Frenchman whose parents were said to have swapped him for a round of cheese in order to smuggle him into France as a fourteen-year-old, to Hippolyte Aucouturier, who looked like a villain from a Buster Keaton movie with his jersey of horizontal stripes and handlebar moustache, the cyclists were a remarkable bunch. Starting in the Parisian suburb of Montgeron, the route took the intrepid cyclists through Lyon, over the hills to Marseille, then on to Toulouse, Bordeaux, and Nantes, ending with great fanfare at the Parc des Princes in Paris. There was no indication that this ramshackle cycling pack would draw crowds to throng France's rutted roads and cheer the first Tour heroes. But they did; and all thanks to a marketing ruse, cycling would never be the same again.


We Rode All Day

We Rode All Day

Author: Cartman Gareth

Publisher:

Published: 2019-01-20

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 9781916019706

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We Rode All Day is the story of the 1919 Tour de France. As the first Tour since the first World War, it was intentionally brutal - 5,500km of racing across 15 stages. Only ten men made it to the finish line in Paris - and this is their story, told in their voices.


The Secret Race

The Secret Race

Author: Tyler Hamilton

Publisher: Bantam

Published: 2012-09-05

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 0345530438

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“The holy grail for disillusioned cycling fans . . . The book’s power is in the collective details, all strung together in a story that is told with such clear-eyed conviction that you never doubt its veracity. . . . The Secret Race isn’t just a game changer for the Lance Armstrong myth. It’s the game ender.”—Outside NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD The Secret Race is the book that rocked the world of professional cycling—and exposed, at long last, the doping culture surrounding the sport and its most iconic rider, Lance Armstrong. Former Olympic gold medalist Tyler Hamilton was once one of the world’s top-ranked cyclists—and a member of Lance Armstrong’s inner circle. Over the course of two years, New York Times bestselling author Daniel Coyle conducted more than two hundred hours of interviews with Hamilton and spoke with numerous teammates, rivals, and friends. The result is an explosive page-turner of a book that takes us deep inside a shadowy, fascinating, and surreal world of unscrupulous doctors, anything-goes team directors, and athletes so relentlessly driven to win that they would do almost anything to gain an edge. For the first time, Hamilton recounts his own battle with depression and tells the story of his complicated relationship with Lance Armstrong. This edition features a new Afterword, in which the authors reflect on the developments within the sport, and involving Armstrong, over the past year. The Secret Race is a courageous, groundbreaking act of witness from a man who is as determined to reveal the hard truth about his sport as he once was to win the Tour de France. With a new Afterword by the authors. “Loaded with bombshells and revelations.”—VeloNews “[An] often harrowing story . . . the broadest, most accessible look at cycling’s drug problems to date.”—The New York Times “ ‘If I cheated, how did I get away with it?’ That question, posed to SI by Lance Armstrong five years ago, has never been answered more definitively than it is in Tyler Hamilton’s new book.”—Sports Illustrated “Explosive.”—The Daily Telegraph (London)


Pop-up Tour de France

Pop-up Tour de France

Author: Pamela Pease

Publisher:

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780966943375

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Each July, nearly two hundred cyclists embark on a race which loops around the entire country of France. The Tour de France is one of the most exciting and challenging sports events in the world! Follow the ultimate cycling adventure in the pages of this book. Ride with Tour competitors through the French countryside, up dramatic Alpine mountains, then sprint to the finish line on the streets of Paris. Learn how riders train, strategize and collaborate in their quest for the Yellow Jersey.


The Comeback

The Comeback

Author: Daniel de Visé

Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press

Published: 2018-06-05

Total Pages: 473

ISBN-13: 0802165796

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“Greg LeMond was Lance Armstrong before Lance Armstrong . . . the story of a true hero . . . This is a must read if you believe in miracles.”―John Feinstein, New York Times–bestselling author In July 1986, Greg LeMond stunned the sporting world by becoming the first American to win the Tour de France, the world’s pre-eminent bicycle race, defeating French cycling legend Bernard Hinault. Nine months later, LeMond lay in a hospital bed, his life in peril after a hunting accident, his career as a bicycle racer seemingly over. And yet, barely two years after this crisis, LeMond mounted a comeback almost without parallel in professional sports. In summer 1989, he again won the Tour—arguably the world’s most grueling athletic contest—by the almost impossibly narrow margin of 8 seconds over another French legend, Laurent Fignon. It remains the closest Tour de France in history. “[A] blend of chaos, kindness and cruelty typifies the scenes that journalist de Visé brings to life in this sympathetic-verging-on-reverential retelling of LeMond’s trailblazing career (first American to enter the tour, first to win it) . . . As an author in quest of his protagonist’s motivation, [de Visé] subjects it to extreme torque.”—The Washington Post “A great book . . . Well written and thoroughly researched . . . Engrossing and hard to put down. If you’re a Greg LeMond fan, The Comeback is a must read because it’s a detailed accounting of his career and―more importantly―his life and person off the bike. It’s also an important reminder that American cycling did not begin and end with Lance Armstrong.”—PEZ


A Race for Madmen

A Race for Madmen

Author: Chris Sidwells

Publisher: HarperCollins UK

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 21

ISBN-13: 0007321414

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No sporting event has had its past and present, its highs and lows so intricately entwined with those of a country like the Tour has with France.


Le Tour de France

Le Tour de France

Author: Luke Edwardes-Evans

Publisher: Carlton Books

Published: 2018-05

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781787390850

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Filled with features and fabulous images, this official celebration of the famed Tour de France is now updated to include the 2017 race Generally considered the greatest test of endurance in sports, the Tour de France covers more than 2,200 miles in just over three weeks, climbing high into both the Alps and Pyrenees before ending on Paris's iconic Champs- lys es. This updated edition, with brand-new features and stories, gives an authoritative account of each major era up to and including the 2017 Tour--when Britain's Chris Froome joined an elite club of four-time and three-in-a-row winners. In addition to more than 300 photographs, some dating back to the nineteenth century, there are features on the superstars, coverage of memorable moments in every era, thrilling action shots, and pictures of souvenir brochures, period newspapers, posters, stickers, postcards, and letters will engross every fan of the sport.