Tour de France: The History, the Legend, the Riders - Hardcover

Fife, Graeme

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1840181923 ISBN 13: 9781840181920

Publisher: Mainstream Publishing, 1999

Synopsis

It is one of sport’s toughest ordeals and the ultimate test for professional cyclists. The Tour de France sees riders pitted against all kinds of terrain and weather, in unrelenting competition with their rivals for three weeks. This entertaining and highly-acclaimed book gives a compelling insight into the mystique of the race and the unique fascination it has always exercised on devoted bike fans and occasional enthusiasts alike. Graeme Fife’s Tour de France tells tales of great solo rides, amazing fortitude, terrible misfortune and triumph over the odds from the race’s remarkable history. Combining meticulous research with a pacy narrative style, Fife paints a colourful and memorable picture of the men whose exploits have give the Tour an enduring universal appeal.

About this title

Review

'A complex picture of what one of the world's greatest sporting events feels like from the inside.' -- The Independent

'One of the best books on the Tour yet - not to be missed.' -- Cycle Sport

'Stuffed full of good material...anevocative account, good on the hardship that makes the Tour an examination of the human spirit.' -- The Independent

'This is a difficult book to put down. Fife has a keen eye for detail.' -- Phil Liggett, television commentator, Daily Telegraph

This is a beast of a book which teems with energy.' -- The Glasgow Herald

From the Publisher

We originally turned down Graeme Fife’s offer of this book, not realising just how much interest there already was in the Tour de France. And, at that point we hadn’t seen the manuscript. When, a year later, he urged us to think again, we did reconsider and, having received the text of what became this book we knew we were onto a winner. That original manuscript survives unchanged – a testimony to its author’s remarkable passion, ease of style and familiarity with the subject – but is enlarged each year by an additional chapter covering the latest race. The book’s success is directly linked to the growing popular interest in the Great Bike race. It is no longer an obsession of bike fans only.

What makes the book unique, apart from its intensely personal style, is the fact that Graeme Fife has ridden the mountains which the Tour routinely crosses: he knows what he is talking about. He is, indeed, the first writer or journalist since the great Jock Wadley who has put pen to paper about the Tour de France to do this and to continue to do this. Others follow from car or press room – he gets on his bike. Seeing the race from the roadside adds enormously to the insider feel which distinguishes his writing about a sport he not only loves but has studied and followed for years. In 2003, for example, he rode up the massive col du Tourmalet ahead of the publicity caravan, through the mist, past the thousands of fans gathering to see the race, on up into the sunshine nearing the col where the Basque supporters were out in force. Getting that close to the battleground of the Tour de France is essential to Graeme’s deep involvement. And there is the story about Lance Armstrong’s muffin from the day before the Tourmalet on the col du Portet d’Aspet.

Edition details

• Publisher: Mainstream Publishing
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1840181923
• ISBN 13: 9781840181920
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224