Lance Armstrong: Tour de Force - Softcover

Coyle, Daniel

3.73

161 ratings by Goodreads

9780007195282: Lance Armstrong: Tour de Force

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007195281 ISBN 13: 9780007195282

Publisher: HarperSport, 2009

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Lance Armstrong rewrote the record books in 2005 when he won the Tour de France for an unprecedented seventh time. Daniel Coyle followed his progress, throughout that season, examining what made him push himself to the limit of his endurance, for his bestselling book Tour de Force now fully updated with his celebrated return to the Tour in 2009.

The world’s most challenging athletic endeavour is also one of the biggest and most popular annual sports events in the world. The 2005 race witnessed Texan Lance Armstrong clinch his seventh Tour de France victory – something that no other rider has achieved in the event’s 100-year history.

This book looks into the unprecedented build up to the Tour, focusing on Armstrong’s season and on the physical and mental limits of endurance through which he forced himself. Starting off in February when he made his annual move to Girona in Spain where preparation for the Tour becomes all-consuming, all the details of his hypermasochistic training regime will be unveiled, from sleeping in an altitude tent to the miles of gruelling riding through the pain barrier.

This ‘inside story’ also involves access to Armstrong’s US Postal Service Team and key rivals in the battle for the Yellow Jersey – among them German Jan Ulrich, American Tyler Hamilton, and Spaniard Joseba Beloki.

Above all, Armstrong’s motivational strengths and burning desire to achieve are the focus of a book that celebrates a unique sporting phenomenon – a fascinating look at history in the making and the colourful world of professional road cycling.

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Review:

Lance Armstrong's achievement (as vividly detailed in Daniel Coyle's Lance Armstrong: Tour de Force) has been one of the most astonishing in recent sporting history, not least for the reasons detailed in the book's strapline: tough guys, flawed heroes and one man's battle for ultimate supremacy. This is the remarkable story of a man who triumphed over all the odds -- a behind-the-scenes record of the 2004 professional cycling season and the manner in which Armstrong landed his sixth Tour de France victory. What makes the book particularly inspiring is the fact that Armstrong is no superman -- he talks about the many strikes against him (his age, the dissolving of his team and -- most of all -- his triumph over potentially lethal illness (his struggle against cancer is, of course, well-known).

Coyle takes us from the cyclist’s turbulent youth in Texas through his many achievements in the cycling field (notably his near loss in the 2003 tour), and his massive struggles against a series of disasters that would have floored most of us: his difficult divorce and subsequent separation from his children and, finally, the terrifying revelation of his cancer. The section on the various solutions that Armstrong tried (including new age healers and radical Italian sports doctors) makes for particularly fascinating reading: as Armstrong realised that his solutions lay elsewhere, there is a genuinely inspirational note here.

Equally fascinating are the descriptions of his obsessive fans, the mind games he was forced to play (both with his opponents and corporate heavyweights), and, of course, his much-publicised relationship with rock star Sheryl Crow. The climax, his victory in the 2004 Tour de France, rounds out one of the best sport biographies in years. --Barry Forshaw

Review:

'An incisive portrait of an intense and driven man. Coyle holds nothing back but provides the wherewithal for the readers to make up their own mind about the Armstrong phenomenon. This is a remarkable book.' Judging panel, 2006 British Book Awards

‘The best Armstrong book ever written’ Cycling Weekly

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