Cycling's 50 Craziest Stories - Softcover

Woodland, Les

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0984311718 ISBN 13: 9780984311712

Publisher: McGann Publishing LLC, 2010

Synopsis

Professional cycling has been around for more than 100 years, more than enough time for nearly anything imaginable to have happened. Whether it's the Tour de France racer who thought the worst thing that could happen to him was being forced to wear the Yellow Jersey, or the communist team director who insisted, on a whim, that a rider have a toe amputated or the fit of jealousy that started the Giro d'Italia, the sport has an endless supply of examples of human folly. Les Woodland has the perfect knack for telling these improbable, silly, crazy and absurd stories.

About this title

Product Description:

Cycling's 50 Craziest Stories Professional cycling has been around for more than 100 years, more than enough time for nearly anything imaginable to have happened. Whether it's the Tour de France racer who thought the worst thing that could happen to him was being forced to wear the Yellow Jersey, or the communist team director who insisted, on a whim, that a rider have a toe amputated or the fit of jealousy that started the Gi... Full description

Review:

A new paperback by Les Woodland, the popular European correspondent for RBR's Premium Site, has just been published. "Cycling's 50 Craziest Stories" is Les's 24th book. Within its 160 pages he entertainingly delves into the absurd side of pro racing. For a hundred years the sport has produced a rich supply of human folly, and Les is simply the best there is at telling the tales. As often as possible he does so after meeting with the characters involved (or their descendants) to learn things no other writer knows. -- RoadBikeRider.com, March 25, 2010

These 50 episodes are often brief in their rendering for this is little need for nuance, for context, for character background. They each, on their face, are so strange as to be worthy of forehead-slapping, belly-holding guffaws of wide-eyed disbelief. These stories can make Brittney Spears seem only a tad quirky.

Told instructionally, as a blueprint for strangeness, a how-to of memorable, these stories beguile comprehension. Charles Terront won a 1000km race on the velodrome. That's not even the strange part. Terront is said to have won the race by an inner tube, but not in the fashion you might guess.

The temptation is to recount bits of this book, but in doing so, I'd be doing nothing so much as spoiling the surprises and I could do nothing crueler in my recommendation of the volume than spoil the fun.

For those who climb into bed tired, this is the ideal bedside reading, not more than four of five pages to an anecdote. I defy you to drift off during the exploits too strange not to have happened. -- Redkiteprayer.com, April 1, 2010

About this edition

• Publisher: McGann Publishing LLC
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0984311718
• ISBN 13: 9780984311712
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160