The Tour de France and Its Heroes PDF Download

Author: Graham Watson
Publisher: Random House (UK)
ISBN:
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Author: Feargal McKay
Publisher: Aurum Press
ISBN: 9781781312650
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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The Tour de France is the gretest public sporting spectacle on earth. For 100 editions - every year since 1903, except during the Great Wars - competitors have battled over thousands of miles of French countryside in pursuit of the coveted yellow jersey. The Complete Book of the Tour de France brings together every statistical record, every key moment, every stage and edition winner, every jersey ever won. This encyclopeadic companion provides a complete record since the founding race, and with it everything that anyone could ever need to know about the Tour de France. But this is much more than a dry compendium of names and numbers. It also contains a summary account of each edition of the Tour de France enriched with an extraordinary wealth of Tour de France lore and anecdote, bringing back to life the stories of riders whose names have not been uttered for over a century. This is the essential companion to the greatest cycling race on earth, and reading it you might feel that you had taken part in the race yourself. ÿ ÿ ÿ

Author: Peter Cossins
Publisher: Bold Type Books
ISBN: 1568589859
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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From its inception, the 1903 Tour de France was a colorful affair. Full of adventure, mishaps and audacious attempts at cheating, it was a race to be remembered. Cyclists of the time weren't enthusiastic about participating in this "heroic" race on roads more suited to hooves than wheels, with bikes weighing up to thirty-five pounds, on a single fixed gear, for three full weeks. Assembling enough riders for the race meant paying unemployed amateurs from the suburbs of Paris, including a butcher, a chimney sweep and a circus acrobat. From Maurice "The White Bulldog" Garin, an Italian-born Frenchman whose parents were said to have swapped him for a round of cheese in order to smuggle him into France as a fourteen-year-old, to Hippolyte Aucouturier, who looked like a villain from a Buster Keaton movie with his jersey of horizontal stripes and handlebar moustache, the cyclists were a remarkable bunch. Starting in the Parisian suburb of Montgeron, the route took the intrepid cyclists through Lyon, over the hills to Marseille, then on to Toulouse, Bordeaux, and Nantes, ending with great fanfare at the Parc des Princes in Paris. There was no indication that this ramshackle cycling pack would draw crowds to throng France's rutted roads and cheer the first Tour heroes. But they did; and all thanks to a marketing ruse, cycling would never be the same again.

Author: Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743449924
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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When Henri Desgrange began a new bicycle road race in 1903, he saw it as little more than a temporary publicity stunt to promote his newspaper. The 60 cyclists who left Paris to ride through the night to Lyons that first July had little idea they were pioneers of the most famous of all bike races, which would reach its centenary as one of the greatest sporting events on earth. Geoffrey Wheatcroft's masterly history of the Tour de France's first hundred years is not just a hugely entertaining canter through some great Tour stories; nor is it merely a homage to the riders whose names—Coppi, Simpson, Mercx, Armstrong—are synonymous with the event's folly and glory. Focusing too on the race's role in French cultural life, it provides a unique and fascinating insight into Europe's 20th century.

Author: Richard Moore
Publisher: VeloPress
ISBN: 9781937715069
Category : Tour de France (Bicycle race)
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Presents a pictoral history of the Tour de France, highlighting the athletes, memorable races, and the scandals.

Author: Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1471128954
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 556

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Geoffrey Wheatcroft's hugely entertaining and well researched history of the Tour de France is already established as the definitive account of cycling's greatest event. Since the book was last published in 2007, much has changed. Bradley Wiggins' historic victory in 2012 - the first Briton ever to secure the yellow jersey - brought him a knighthood and garnered more interest in the race than ever before. Yet the months after were dominated by an even bigger story, as Tour legend and seven-time winner Lance Armstrong was stripped of his titles and confessed on Oprah to doping in each of his victories. Suddenly, everything that we thought we knew had happened was no longer true. In this new and comprehensively revised edition of the book, Wheatcroft not only brings his story of the Tour fully up to date to mark the race's 100th running in 2013, he also reflects on the changes brought about by the scandals that have rocked the sport to its core. Yet for all the controversies of modern times, he vividly captures the essential glory and romance of the heroes who battle to conquer one of sport's greatest challenges.

Author: Tyler Hamilton
Publisher: Bantam
ISBN: 0345530438
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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“The holy grail for disillusioned cycling fans . . . The book’s power is in the collective details, all strung together in a story that is told with such clear-eyed conviction that you never doubt its veracity. . . . The Secret Race isn’t just a game changer for the Lance Armstrong myth. It’s the game ender.”—Outside NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD The Secret Race is the book that rocked the world of professional cycling—and exposed, at long last, the doping culture surrounding the sport and its most iconic rider, Lance Armstrong. Former Olympic gold medalist Tyler Hamilton was once one of the world’s top-ranked cyclists—and a member of Lance Armstrong’s inner circle. Over the course of two years, New York Times bestselling author Daniel Coyle conducted more than two hundred hours of interviews with Hamilton and spoke with numerous teammates, rivals, and friends. The result is an explosive page-turner of a book that takes us deep inside a shadowy, fascinating, and surreal world of unscrupulous doctors, anything-goes team directors, and athletes so relentlessly driven to win that they would do almost anything to gain an edge. For the first time, Hamilton recounts his own battle with depression and tells the story of his complicated relationship with Lance Armstrong. This edition features a new Afterword, in which the authors reflect on the developments within the sport, and involving Armstrong, over the past year. The Secret Race is a courageous, groundbreaking act of witness from a man who is as determined to reveal the hard truth about his sport as he once was to win the Tour de France. With a new Afterword by the authors. “Loaded with bombshells and revelations.”—VeloNews “[An] often harrowing story . . . the broadest, most accessible look at cycling’s drug problems to date.”—The New York Times “ ‘If I cheated, how did I get away with it?’ That question, posed to SI by Lance Armstrong five years ago, has never been answered more definitively than it is in Tyler Hamilton’s new book.”—Sports Illustrated “Explosive.”—The Daily Telegraph (London)

Author: Austin American-Statesman
Publisher: Sports Publishing LLC
ISBN: 1582619743
Category : Bicycle racing
Languages : en
Pages : 130

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The retrospective Lance Armstrong: Historic Six-Time Tour De France Champion also details Armstrong's Inspiring fight against cancer, his foundation, and the intense training methods and strong will that have helped turn him into one of America's biggest sports heroes. Full-color photography throughout complements the 128 pages of action-packed stories, making this book a cherished keepsake for all Lance fans!

Author: Luke Edwardes-Evans
Publisher: Carlton Books
ISBN: 9781780970875
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Comprising an authoritative narrative account of each major era in the history of the epic race, up to and including the 2007 Tour, this work also contains 40 facsimile items of sporting memorabilia integrated into its pages. The greatest endurance test in sports, the Tour de France covers more than 2,200 miles in just over three weeks, climbing high into the Alps and Pyrenees on a circular journey around France and into neighboring countries before ending on the Champs-Élysées. This official publication of the Tour's organizers presents an authoritative history of the sport, including 40 items of rare memorabilia such as personal letters from champions, logbook entries, regulations from 1910, and more!

Author: Philippe Brunel
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780964983502
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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