More chapters in the Lance Armstrong story and some different takes on the Tour de France

CYCLING BOOKS TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2014

The boom in cycling books has been a feature of recent years in the sports books market, their popularity fuelled by a mix of success stories and shame.

On the one hand, the likes of Bradley Wiggins, Mark Cavendish, Chris Froome and Chris Hoy have taken British cycling to a new level in terms of achievement on the road and track.

On the other, the doping revelations that engulfed seven-times Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong have placed cycling at the heart of a scandal unprecedented in the sporting world.

The Wiggins autobiography My Time was the biggest selling sports book of 2012, while the William Hill Sports Book of the Year for 2012 was Tyler Hamilton's The Secret Race, based on the Grand Jury evidence that exposed Armstrong as the biggest drug cheat of all time.

The Armstrong story spawned another William Hill contender last year in Seven Deadly Sins, in which journalist David Walsh's detailed his dogged pursuit of the truth, and will rumble on in 2014.

New York Times journalist Juliet Macur brings her perspective to the story in Cycle of Lies (William Collins), based on interviews with key players in the Armstrong drama and broadening the story to expose more corruption at all levels of cycling. Cycle of Lies is due out in March.

In May, Michael Barry, who supported Armstrong as part of the US Postal Team, describes his part in the scandal in Shadows on the Road (Faber & Faber).  Barry retired from professional cycling in 2012, shortly before testifying against Armstrong as part of the US Anti-Doping Agency investigation.

Barry accepted a six-month suspension for using performance-enhancing drugs while riding for US Postal, along with the stripping of all his results between May 2003 and July 2006.

In July, Emma O'Reilly, the Irish-born masseuse who became Armstrong's confidante and ultimately his whistle blower, will hit the book stands with Race to Truth (Bantam Press), in which she details not only what she saw as an insider in the Armstrong camp but the years of bullying and lies she endured as attempts were made to destroy her reputation and credibility.

The same month sees a reissued and updated version of A Clean Break (Bloomsbury), written by Christophe Bassons, the French rider driven to quit the sport after his stand against drugs led him to be shunned by fellow riders and confronted by Armstrong, who told him to leave the tour.

Also in July, Nicole Cooke, the Great Britain rider who in 2012 became the first to win Olympic and world road race titles in the same year, goes into print with The Breakaway (Simon & Schuster), which promises to continue where she left off in the damning speech she delivered when she retired in early 2013, when she attacked Armstrong, Hamilton and every other rider who owed their success to drugs for cheating legions of honest, clean competitors out of the glory and prizes that should have been theirs.

Thankfully, 2014 is not all about Lance Armstrong.  There are plenty of titles coming up that celebrate the more glorious aspects of competitive cycling and underline why the sport enjoys such enormous popularity.

Richard Moore, whose six cycling books so far include portraits of David Millar and Team Sky chief Dave Brailsford as well as the acclaimed Slaying The Badger, which focussed on the epic 1986 Tour de France, adds another in June when HarperSport published Étape: The Untold Stories of the Tour de France's Defining Stages, in which each chapter focuses on a single rider in a single stage that became a defining moment in the history of the world's greatest cycling race.

Armstrong's part in the history of the Tour cannot, of course, be airbrushed out, and such a book would be incomplete without the American's emotionally charged win in Limoges in 1995 or his dramatic, drug-fuelled victory eight years later at Luz Ardiden.  Moore revisits too Chris Boardman’s famous debut in 1994, Mark Cavendish’s best and worst stages, as well as iconic stages featuring giants of the sport: Eddy Merckx’s toughest Tour, Bernard Hinault’s journey through hell, Greg LeMond’s return from near-death, and the tragic Marco Pantani’s domination of the most controversial race in Tour history.

The Tour features elsewhere in Marguerite Lazell's updated Complete History of the Tour de France (Carlton Books), due out in April, as well as an updated Tour de France: The History, the Legends, the Riders, by Graeme Fife (Mainstream, September) and a fresh edition of Mapping Le Tour, by Ellis Bacon (Collins, May), a history illustrated with full page maps of the routes of all 100 races so far.

In April, Max Leonard looks at the Tour from a different angle in Lanterne Rouge: The Last Man in the Tour de France (Yellow Jersey), which tells the absurd and inspirational stories of the last placed riders in the Tour de France, from the former wearer of the yellow jersey who tasted life at the other end of the bunch, to the breakaway leader who stopped for a bottle wine and then cycled the wrong way, and the day the fastest finisher of all time, Mark Cavendish, became the slowest.

Yellow Jersey's catalogue also includes Geronimo! Riding the Very Terrible 1914 Tour of Italy, by Tim Moore, in which travel writer Moore, whose account of riding the Tour de France route, French Revolutions, won huge acclaim, retraces the tracks of the eight riders (from 81 starters) who managed to complete the 1914 Giro d'Italia, which has subsequently become recognised as the hardest bike race in history.  For good measure, he does so on a 100-year-old bike.

Alasdair Fotheringham, brother of the prolific William, follows up his biography of Federico Bahamontes (The Eagle of Toledo) with Reckless: The Life and Times of Luis Ocana (Bloomsbury, May). Ocana. who died in mysterious circumstances at the age of only 48, became Spain's second Tour de France winner in 1973, Bahamontes having been the first, in 1959.  Fotheringham doubles as cycling correspondent and Spain correspondent for The Independent.

Also from Bloomsbury, look out in March for Faster: The Obsession, Science and Luck Behind the World's Fastest Cyclists, in which Michael Hutchinson, the professional cyclist turned writer, explains how training, nutrition, psychology and many other factors play a part in the quest for speed, and for The Monuments: The Grit and the Glory of Cycling's Greatest One-Day Races, in which Peter Cossins tells the story of the five legendary races -- the so-called 'Monuments' -- that are the sport’s equivalent of golf’s majors or the grand slams in tennis. Milan–Sanremo, the Tour of Flanders, Paris­–Roubaix, Liège–Bastogne–Liège and the Tour of Lombardy.

Biographies to anticipate include Battle Scars (Hardie Grant), by the popular Australian rider Stuart O'Grady, and Chris Boardman's life story Triumphs and Turbulence (Ebury), due out in June.

Look for more information and details of how to pre-order any of these books at Amazon, Waterstones or WHSmith.

Home

Tweet

After success of The Secret Race, will the Lance Armstrong factor again demand the judges' vote?

When Tyler Hamilton and Daniel Coyne won the 2012 William Hill Sports Book of the Year award for their cycling drugs expose, The Secret Race, the judging panel's view was that the book's central role -- or, at least, the role of the evidence contained in it -- in bringing cheats to justice meant that it was almost impossible for it not to be their winner.

The same argument might be put forward for Seven Deadly Sins, the story of journalist David Walsh's 13-year pursuit of the disgraced multiple Tour de France winner, Lance Armstrong, a piece of dogged investigative reporting unparalleled in sports journalism which could be said to be equally important in exposing the biggest doping conspiracy in sports history.

Seven Deadly Sins: My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong (Simon & Schuster) is among a shortlist of six titles from which the 2013 William Hill Sports Book of the Year will be chosen, with the winner due to be announced on Wednesday November 27.

Author Walsh, the Sunday Times chief sports writer, has already been recognised for his role in uncovering the truth about Armstrong's wrongdoing with the prestigious Barclays Lifetime Achievement Award at the BT Sport Industry Awards earlier this year.

The 58-year-old Irishman has won numerous honours for journalism in the United Kingdom and in his own country since he began his career in the 1970s on the weekly Leitrim Observer in Carrick-on-Shannon.

A cycling fan, he started writing about the sport in 1984 during the period when the two Irish riders, Sean Kelly and Stephen Roche, were at their peak.   Over time he noted that rumours of drug use and blood doping in the sport were gathering pace and he was already working on stories about doping in professional cycling when Armstrong, whose return to competition after developing testicular cancer had given him heroic status in the sport, won his first Tour de France in 1999.

Walsh already had doubts about some of Armstrong's performances, particularly on the mountain stages, when the speed at which he climbed struck the writer as too good to be true.  On the day the American crossed the finish line in Paris, Walsh told his readers in the Sunday Times of his scepticism and suggested the result should be the subject of an inquiry.

The article marked the beginning of Walsh's quest for the truth and his pursuit of Armstrong, who was equally determined to avoid detection and did so successfully until the evidence of Hamilton and others led him to be found guilty as charged by the US Anti-Doping Agency in 2012, stripped of all seven of his Tour titles and banned from competitive cycling for life.

**CLICK ON THE LINKS TO BUY ANY OF THE TITLES MENTIONED**

It was a bitter fight.  Armstrong called Walsh "a little troll" and "the worst journalist in the world", obtained an out-of-court settlement from the Sunday Times after suing them for libel in 2004 and even, in the most heartless of all the insults, suggested that Walsh was conducting a vendetta against the sport driven by the loss of his son, John, who was killed while cycling home from a football match in 1995, aged only 12.

Seven Deadly Sins: My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong is a compelling story, told so well that it is to be turned into a feature film directed by Stephen Frears, the English director known for High Fidelity, Dirty Pretty Things, The Queen and Philomena among others.

The Irish actor Chris O'Dowd has been picked to portray Walsh, with the American Ben Foster in the Armstrong role. Lee Pace, Guillaume Canet and Jesse Piemons are also among the cast.

The following are extracts from a couple of reviews of the book, which has been a bestseller in several countries, beginning with the words of New Zealand Herald writer Dylan Cleaver:

"What shines through in this book, fired out in impressively quick time after the unravelling of Lance last year, is Walsh's doggedness, his ability to cultivate sources and his near-obsession with bringing down Armstrong.

Do not underestimate the machinery Armstrong had in place to prevent this sort of stuff seeing the light of day. You do not successfully live a lie for a decade without having powerful friends in powerful places.

At times it must have been so easy to fold - his paper, Rupert Murdoch's Sunday Times, clearly thought about it - but the Irishman was made of sterner stuff.

He deserves the kudos coming his way, the royalties and, you'd think, a more relaxing year than the previous 13. Perhaps he'll have time to sit back and enjoy the work of others - though I wouldn't bet on it."

Read the full review

Saurabh Kumar Shahi, writing in the Sunday Indian, made reference at the start to the poignant memory of Walsh's tragic little boy.

"Somewhere in the middle of this 430- page exposé of Lance Armstrong, journalist David Walsh recounts the story of his son, John, who died when he was all of twelve. Never afraid of asking questions and never holding anything so sacrosanct as to believe in it unquestionably, John once had a tiff with his teacher at his school. In the Bible class, where the nativity story was being recounted, his teacher insisted how Joseph and Mary lived a modest life. Confused and intrigued in equal parts, Walsh’s son shot back, 'If they were so poor, what did they do with the gold they were given by the three wise men?' Heartbreaking as it might sound in retrospect, it tells us something about the Walsh family.

The Lance Armstrong saga can safely be adjudged as the biggest saga of triumph and eventual downfall in the history of sports in living memory. The story of a cyclist who fought and recovered from testicular cancer and went on to win a record seven Tour de France titles, and then followed it with a bestseller biography and a behemoth of a charitable organisation, appeared too good to be true to many. However, it needed immense courage to delve deeper. And one person who did that, David Walsh, the Irishman who works as the Sunday Times’ chief sports writer, found out that the going was tough. 'He’s not the messiah, he’s a very naughty boy,' he had commented in his measured understatement. In unearthing the truth, he did one heck of a job. And, Seven Deadly Sins: My Pursuit Of Lance Armstrong is the product of that perseverance."

Read the full review

Seven Deadly Sins: My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong(Simon & Schuster) is among six titles shortlisted for the 2013 William Hill Sports Book of the Year prize.  The others are:

I Am Zlatan Ibrahimovic (Penguin), the autobiography of the Swedish footballer Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

Bookie Gambler Fixer Spy: A Journey to the Heart of Cricket's Underworld(Bloomsbury), by Ed Hawkins

Doped: The Real Life Story of the 1960s Racehorse Doping Gang (Racing Post Books), by Jamie Reid .

The Boys in the Boat (Macmillan), by American author Daniel James Brown.

The Sports Gene: What Makes the Perfect Athlete (Yellow Jersey Press), by David Epstein.

The William Hill Sports Book of the Year -- this year to be awarded for the 25th time -- is the world's longest established and most valuable literary sports-writing award, carrying a £25,000 cash prize for the winning author.

The judging panel consists of broadcaster and writer John Inverdale; broadcaster Danny Kelly; award-winning journalist Hugh McIlvanney; and columnist and author, Alyson Rudd. Chairman of the judging panel is John Gaustad, co-creator of the award and founder of the Sportspages bookshop.

The winner will be announced live on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row, at an evening reception at The Hospital Club in central London, on Wednesday 27th November.

William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2013: The Longlist

Zlatan Ibrahimovic's bid to make history

The 1960s racehorse doping gang: a true-life thriller

Match fixing: cricket's heart of darkness

Home

Tweet

Bookie prize contender Tyler Hamilton reveals all you need to know about the Lance Armstrong scandal and cycling's doping secrets

REVIEW: THE SECRET RACE, by Tyler Hamilton and Daniel Coyle

Among all the contenders to be named 2012 William Hill Sports Book of the Year, none is more topical than Tyler Hamilton's disturbing expose of the tainted Lance Armstrong era in professional cycling.


The Secret Race, which Hamilton wrote in conjunction with journalist and best-selling author Daniel Coyle, builds on the confession former US Postal team member Hamilton made in front of a grand jury in 2010 during an investigation into the doping allegations that have now led to Armstrong being stripped of the seven Tour de France titles he won between 1999 and 2005.

Armstrong dismissed Hamilton's book as an example of a "washed-up cyclist talking trash for cash" but Coyle went to considerable lengths to ensure he was not imparting the one-eyed account of an embittered rival, himself effectively banned for life after failing a drugs test for a second time in 2009, and stripped of his gold medal from the 2004 Olympics only this year.

Coyle had harboured his own suspicions about Armstrong since spending almost a year following the American rider to write the essentially sympathetic biography, Lance Armstrong's War, but was not prepared to accept Hamilton's word alone that the stories of drug use, blood doping, complicity and cover-ups were true.

He recorded more the 200 hours of interviews with Hamilton but also talked to numerous independent sources, including other teammates, to verify and corroborate the claims made.

Hamilton spoke of his appearance before the grand jury as a release, an unburdening of his soul as he shared with the wider world the secrets that had tormented him for much of his career.  Coyle said that when Hamilton agreed to put it all into a book it was akin to being given "a ticket behind the wall of silence" that had allowed the doping culture in cycling to survive for so long.

Hamilton extends the confessional aspect of his court appearance by revealing the years of cheating in every complex detail, describing every way in which he felt the testers were so easily outwitted and the lengths to which the co-conspirators went to ensure their astonishing deception went undetected.

As an explanation, for the benefit of the curious but perhaps less well-informed reader, of why the Lance Armstrong story, and all its ramifications, is so huge, Hamilton's book will make a riveting, jaw-dropping read.  For cycling fans, though, it is likely to induce considerable discomfort, perhaps even dismay, at the questions it inevitably raises again about the sport over the last couple of decades, of how much has been clean, how much a lie.

The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-ups, and Winning at All Costs is published by Bantam Books

The Secret Race is among 14 books on the longlist for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year for 2012. A shortlist will be announced on October 26 with the winner due to be revealed on November 26. 

The list in full comprises (click on the links for more information at amazon.co.uk):

1. That Near Death Thing: Inside the Most Dangerous Race in the World, by Rick Broadbent (Orion)
2. Running with the Kenyans: Discovering the Secrets of the Fastest People on Earth, by Adharanand Finn (Faber)
3. Iron War: Dave Scott, Mark Allen, and the Greatest Race Ever Run, by Matt Fitzgerald (Quercus)
4. The Footballer Who Could Fly, by Duncan Hamilton (Century)
5. The Secret Race - Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-ups, and Winning at All Costs, by Tyler Hamilton and Daniel Coyle (Bantam Press)
6. A Weight Off My Mind: My Autobiography, by Richard Hughes, with Lee Mottershead (Racing Post)
7. Be Careful What You Wish For, by Simon Jordan (Yellow Jersey)
8. Fibber in the Heat, by Miles Jupp (Ebury Press)
9. The Dirtiest Race in History: Ben Johnson, Carl Lewis and the 1988 Olympic 100m Final, by Richard Moore (Wisden Sports Writing)
10. Between the Lines: My Autobiography, by Victoria Pendleton with Donald McRae (HarperSport)
11. Swimming Studies, by Leanne Shapton (Particular Books)
12. A Life Without Limits: A World Champion's Journey, by Chrissie Wellington, with Michael Aylwin (Constable & Robinson)
13. Jonny: My Autobiography, by Jonny Wilkinson, with Owen Slot (Headline)
14. Shot and a Ghost: A Year in the Brutal World of Professional Squash, by James Willstrop (Rod Gilmour)

See also: Hamilton and McRae go ahead in battle for 'bookie prize'

Browse among more cycling books at The Sports Bookshelf Shop

Home

Tweet