Posts Tagged “France”
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“After forty years of study on the subject, I can with some confidence say Bill and Carol McGann’s The Story of the Tour de France is the finest such work ever produced in the English language, and perhaps in any.”
-From the preface by Owen Mulholland, author of Uphill Battle
“Besides towering over all bicycle races, the Tour de France endures for its unique Gaulic character, like Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. The McGann’s passionate and insightful writing evokes the raucous cast of riders, promoters, and journalists thrusting through highs and lows worthy of opera. This volume stands out as a must-read book for anyone seeking to appreciate cycling’s race of races.”
-Peter Joffre Nye, author of The Six-Day Bicycle Races: America’s Jazz Age Sport and Hearts of Lions
“There are LOTS of books on the Tour de France. An increasing number of them are actually written in English. However, of those, none educates Americans about this grand spectacle’s rich past. The Tour de France has a history as fascinating and sordid as Rome’s and it is high time someone undertook to explain this to our American sensibility. Our guide for the trip is a man with a ravenous appetite for both world history and bicycle racing, just the sort of person to paint a Tour champion with the dramatic grandiosity befitting Hannibal himself.”
-Pat Brady, Editor, Asphalt Magazine
At the dawn of the 20th Century, French newspapers used bicycle races as promotions to build readership. Until 1903 these were one-day events. Looking to deliver a coup de grace in a vicious circulation war, Henri Desgrange—editor of the Parisian sports magazine L’Auto—took the suggestion of one of his writers to organize a race that would last several days longer than anything else, like the 6-day races on the track, but on the road.
That’s exactly what happened. For almost 3 weeks the riders in the first Tour de France rode over dirt roads and cobblestones in a grand circumnavigation of France. The race was an electrifying success. Held annually (suspended only during the 2 World Wars), the Tour grew longer and more complex with an ever-changing set of rules, as Desgrange kept tinkering with the Tour, looking for the perfect formula for his race.
Each year a new cast of riders would assemble to contest what has now become the greatest sporting event in the world.
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“After forty years of study on the subject, I can with some confidence say Bill and Carol McGann’s The Story of the Tour de France is the finest such work ever produced in the English language, and perhaps in any.”
-From the preface by Owen Mulholland, author of Uphill Battle
“Besides towering over all bicycle races, the Tour de France endures for its unique Gaulic character, like Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. The McGann’s passionate and insightful writing evokes the raucous cast of riders, promoters, and journalists thrusting through highs and lows worthy of opera. This volume stands out as a must-read book for anyone seeking to appreciate cycling’s race of races.”
-Peter Joffre Nye, author of The Six-Day Bicycle Races: America’s Jazz Age Sport and Hearts of Lions
“There are LOTS of books on the Tour de France. An increasing number of them are actually written in English. However, of those, none educates Americans about this grand spectacle’s rich past. The Tour de France has a history as fascinating and sordid as Rome’s and it is high time someone undertook to explain this to our American sensibility. Our guide for the trip is a man with a ravenous appetite for both world history and bicycle racing, just the sort of person to paint a Tour champion with the dramatic grandiosity befitting Hannibal himself.”
-Pat Brady, Editor, Asphalt Magazine
At the dawn of the 20th Century, French newspapers used bicycle races as promotions to build readership. Until 1903 these were one-day events. Looking to deliver a coup de grace in a vicious circulation war, Henri Desgrange—editor of the Parisian sports magazine L’Auto—took the suggestion of one of his writers to organize a race that would last several days longer than anything else, like the 6-day races on the track, but on the road.
That’s exactly what happened. For almost 3 weeks the riders in the first Tour de France rode over dirt roads and cobblestones in a grand circumnavigation of France. The race was an electrifying success. Held annually (suspended only during the 2 World Wars), the Tour grew longer and more complex with an ever-changing set of rules, as Desgrange kept tinkering with the Tour, looking for the perfect formula for his race.
Each year a new cast of riders would assemble to contest what has now become the greatest sporting event in the world.
The Story of the Tour de France Volume 1: 1903 – 1964
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THE SERIES OF EVENTS surrounding Floyd Landis’s 2006 Tour de France was as improbable as anything in the history of sports: He showed up nine seconds late for the race’s opening prologue, donned the leader’s yellow jersey twelve days later, and lost his lead only to regain it in remarkable fashion just before the Tour’s final stage into Paris. Winning the Tour should have been the culmination of a life’s dream, but a mere three days later, Landis was accused of using banned performance-enhancing drugs. Released by his team and threatened with the removal of his Tour title, Landis went from winning the most prestigious race of his career to being unfairly labeled as a cheater, a liar, and a doper. Positively False is at once a memoir and a powerful indictment of the unchecked governing bodies of cycling that have compromised theintegrity of the sport as a whole. From leaving the Mennonite community of his youth in order to pursue his passion for cycling, to riding alongside Lance Armstrong for three years — with whom he shared the same work ethic and competitive desire — Floyd Landis details the highs and lows of his career with unabashed honesty. It is this same honesty with which he will clear his name once and for all, as he lays bare the inner workings of the cycling world — a place where athletes are subject to the antiquated science, flawed interpretive protocols, and draconian legal processes of the anti-doping agencies — and finally lays to rest the scandal that threatened to destroy everything he’s worked so hard to achieve….
Positively False: The Real Story of How I Won the Tour de France
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New in Paper
An inside look at the 2003 Tour de France through the eyes of Lance Armstrong’s right-hand rider, Victor Hugo Peña–who also helped Armstrong ride to his unprecedented sixth victory in 2004. Peña served as Armstrong’s domestique, a crucial yet unsung position unique to cycling. The domestique handles a variety of tasks, but his most important is to ride ahead of the team leader, creating a wind tunnel that makes it aerodynamically easier for the “star” to continue pedaling. This is the essence of cycling, and the key to Armstrong’s victories. Now, in revealing the true role of the domestique for the first time, Matt Rendell gives a more vivid and insightful portrayal of professional cycling than ever before.
A Significant Other: Riding the Centenary Tour de France with Lance Armstrong
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One of sport’s toughest ordeals, the three-week Tour de France sees riders pitted against all kinds of terrain and weather in unrelenting competition with their rivals. In this updated edition, Graeme Fife sets the 2009 race in the context of the event’s remarkable history, which began in July 1903. Combining meticulous research with a fast-paced narrative style, he penetrates the mystique of the race and paints a colorful picture of the men whose exploits have given the Tour an enduring universal appeal. Tour de France: The History, The Legend, The Riders
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The Tour de France is one of the most revered, thrilling sporting events in the world, not to mention one of the most physically exhausting. Every year top cyclists from around the globe break speed records and push themselves harder and faster in pursuit of the legendary yellow jersey. Here is the ultimate guide to the competition’s heroes, cheats, controversy, extreme terrain, triumphs, and tragedy—on and off the trail. Now fully revised and updated, this is the essential companion to the awe-inspiring event, with a wealth of tales and trivia drawn from the Tour’s century-long history. Vive le Tour!: Amazing Tales of the Tour de France
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- 1/2 Finger
- Velcro Closure
- Non-Slip
- GEL Gloves
- Elastic Wristband
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The Tour De France gloves are half finger gloves for protection without losing grip. They feature Velcro closure, elastic wrist-band and breathable material.
Tour De France Gloves
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Today the Tour de France is the greatest bike race in the world, but it began as a humble promotional gimmick to increase circulation of a floundering Parisian sports newspaper. More than 100 years later the Tour captivates the entire world and is broadcast to over 180 countries. How did a few men desperate to save their struggling business become masters of a giant, successful enterprise? To learn the answer Les Woodland examines the race through the prism of the men who started Tour de France and those who run it now.
Woodland doesn’t leave it that. He also looks at the racers and how racing has changed over the years. Since 1986 Americans have been a dominant force in the Tour, having won 10 editions of the great race. But American cycle racing excellence wasn’t always a given unless one goes back to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when, as Woodland puts it, “…for decades the greatest riders in the world were American and only when they had sorted out among themselves who was the best would they bother going to Europe to see if anybody there was worth beating.” With the great depression American bicycle racing suffered a long period of nearly total eclipse before a wonderful rebirth in the 1970s and ’80s. How all this came to be is just one of the fascinating threads within this wonderful book.
Woodland is more than an historian. He is a jolly and witty storyteller and therein lies the book’s charm. As he explores the creation and evolution of the Tour, he never runs out of those strange and beguiling tales that make his books impossible to put down.
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Today the Tour de France is the greatest bike race in the world, but it began as a humble promotional gimmick to increase circulation of a floundering Parisian sports newspaper. More than 100 years later the Tour captivates the entire world and is broadcast to over 180 countries. How did a few men desperate to save their struggling business become masters of a giant, successful enterprise? To learn the answer Les Woodland examines the race through the prism of the men who started Tour de France and those who run it now.
Woodland doesn’t leave it that. He also looks at the racers and how racing has changed over the years. Since 1986 Americans have been a dominant force in the Tour, having won 10 editions of the great race. But American cycle racing excellence wasn’t always a given unless one goes back to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when, as Woodland puts it, “…for decades the greatest riders in the world were American and only when they had sorted out among themselves who was the best would they bother going to Europe to see if anybody there was worth beating.” With the great depression American bicycle racing suffered a long period of nearly total eclipse before a wonderful rebirth in the 1970s and ’80s. How all this came to be is just one of the fascinating threads within this wonderful book.
Woodland is more than an historian. He is a jolly and witty storyteller and therein lies the book’s charm. As he explores the creation and evolution of the Tour, he never runs out of those strange and beguiling tales that make his books impossible to put down.
Tourmen: The Men Who Made the Tour de France
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A thorough stage-by-stage account of the most contested Tour ever: 1978.
Tour de France: The 75th Anniversary Bicycle Race
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Rupert Guinness has been covering the Tour de France for over 20 years and in that time has watched Australian riders evolve into the collective force they are today. From the pioneering Phil Anderson, who, in the 1980s, set the mark by becoming the first Australian to claim the yellow jersey, to Cadel Evans, Guinness analyses the riders’ fortunes and misfortunes through his knowledge of and relationship with these extraordinary athletes. There are humorous and sadly tragic moments, heroes, and villains, and testing times when everything seems to go wrong. But there are also days of perfect riding, extraordinary scenery, and uplifting successes.
What a Ride: An Aussie Pursuit of the Tour de France
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Taking place over twenty-three days in July and across more than 2,100 miles of smooth blacktop, rough cobblestones, and punishing mountain terrain, the Tour de France is the most grueling sports event in the world. And in 2004, five-time champion Lance Armstrong set out to achieve what no other cyclist in the 100-year history of the race had ever done: win a sixth Tour de France.Armstrong had four serious challengers who wanted nothing more than to deny the man the French call Le Boss from achieving his goal. The major threat among them was the only other former Tour de France champion in last year’s race, Germany’s Jan Ullrich- The Kaiser. But when the race was over, Lance Armstrong once again wore the yellow jersey of victory.
23 Days in July: Inside the Tour de France and Lance Armstrong’s Record-Breaking Victory
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