The Golden Girl of British cycling opens up, for the first time, in searingly honest detail about what drives her to compete in a sport she no longer loves. Written with Donald McRae, 2 time winner of the William Hill Award, “Between the Lines” is THE Olympic autobiography.
Victoria Pendleton MBE is not your typical female athlete.
Admired as much by the weekly glossies as she is the newspaper back pages, she transcends her sport.
In 2005 she became first British female to win Gold at the cycling World Championships in 40 years. She followed it up with gold medals at the Commonwealth Games in 2006 and another World Championship in 2007.
Arriving in Beijing for the 2008 Olympic Games, Pendleton was on top of the world. She didn’t disappoint.
In an enthralling example of track cycling, Pendleton took Gold and joined the ranks of British Olympic heroes.
And then it started to go wrong.
Feted by the press and the public alike, behind the scenes the cracks and strains started to show. Despite retaining her World Champion status in 2009, it was a close run thing and her shield of invincibility started to drop. Victoria was falling out of love with her sport.
The sport that had made her was starting to tear her apart.
“Between the Lines” documents the considerable lows as well as the well-known highs and reveals why Victoria almost turned her back on cycling before rediscovering her Championship winning form in 2011, the day after suffering one of her most humiliating days on the track.
Hitting the shelves within a matter of weeks from the end of her Olympic programme and written with Donald McRae, two time winner of the William Hill Sports Book of the Year, “Between the Lines” promises to be the most honest and emotional book from an Olympian to date.
Between the Lines is a groundbreaking account of a decade at the peak of professional sport – as told by the most compelling and fascinating character in British sport.
Between the Lines is a groundbreaking account of a decade at the peak of professional sport – as told by Victoria Pendleton, the most compelling and fascinating character in British Cycling.
It offers a gripping insight into the tangled and often secret world of an Olympic and world champion. Pendleton, with bruising intimacy, lays bare the tortuous twists and turns of her extraordinary career.
As she wins multiple world, European and national championships, and strives to defend her Olympic title at London 2012, Victoria Pendleton reveals the doubts and fears she has faced and overcome – from the most harrowing moments of a deeply personal crisis to the exacting test of nerve at the highest level of Olympic sport.
After a remarkable decade at the top of world cycling, Victoria, the imperious sprint champion, looks back over her tumultuous life and chronicles her journey from a distressing and harmful insecurity to the peak of gold medals, world titles and glossy magazine covers.
Between the Lines affords us a rare, behind-the-scenes account of the relationships and enmities that consume the most private corners of professional athletes. Written with Donald McRae, the award-winning author who has twice won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year, the book shatters the mould of the conventional sporting biography – and tells a deeply human story of pain and glory, love and doubt, failure and triumph. It is a book that will appeal to anyone who has ever been doubted or tested – and forced to find the best within themselves.
