The greatest cycling books of all time: the top five

published 22 August 2010

Concluding our countdown of the best cycling books ever written.

The greatest 50 cycling books of all time: 50-41

In 1984, David Walsh travelled to Paris to cover a full season of professional cycling, pinning his hopes on Kelly winning. This is a conventional biography, charting the success of a rider who was on the way to the very summit of the sport but it is charmingly written. Walsh’s direct, incisive style takes you to the heart of the milleu and, without realising it, you are learning about how professional cycling is layered. You also get an insight into Kelly, at the time almost monosyllabic in his expression, and are left with an impression of a tough man doing a tough job very well. Most people associate David Walsh with the Lance Armstrong stories, but that is to forget that he’s one of the best writers ever to have covered cycling.

Bicycle racing differs from every other sport I know in being the only one to have been created by writers. Imagine a sport that sprawls for days, weeks, maybe almost a month, over a sizable stretch of countryside, where the main action takes place far from where most people live, a race in which the only real witness is the landscape and you begin to understand how a deliberately created epic sport came into being – one that from the first invited comparison with The Iliad, The Voyage of the Argonauts or the Song of Roland.

He’s also got a deep understanding of the rhythms of the cycling seasons – he doesn't just cover the Tour, but describes the Classics and other Tours, at a time when to the public at large, there was only one bike race in existence. The mini-chapters on the stars of the sport – Hinault, LeMond, Millar, Roche and Anderson, to name a few - are only a few thousand words long, but absolutely nail their personalities.

Paul Kimmage wrote about his life as a professional cycling, an experience akin to pulling back the curtain and glimpsing the puppeteer at work. The crumbling of Kimmage’s dream, the lowering of his expectations to mere survival are the real story in this book but it is the story of widespread doping that made this controversial. It was almost cycling’s equivalent of The Satanic Verses and Kimmage was its Rushdie. He was criticised for spitting in the soup but eight years later the Festina Affair showed the consequences of allowing such rampant pursuit of self-interest to go unchecked.

On seeing me arrive at the hotel, my team-mates started laughing at my briefcase. “Ah Paul, the briefcase, you’re a real warrior alright.” I hadn’t got a clue what they were talking about. On visiting the riders’ rooms that night I noticed that many had briefcases. But whereas mine contained my passport and letters and writing materials, theirs contained pills, syringes and little bottles of liquid of every colour and shape.

In a lot of ways, Rough Ride helped make the decision for me that I didn’t really want to be a pro cyclist – even if I had been good enough. But it’s a book I wouldn’t have been without as I devoured all the cycling magazines and books, and watched all the television, that I could. I suppose I thought that the bad guys Kimmage described were few and far between. That’s still the way people like to think, I suppose, too.

I still find it strange, though, that this book didn’t put me, or others, off the sport completely. It might have something to do with the passion for cycling that Kimmage retains throughout the book, despite how dark some of his days become, culminating in his retirement to take up a new life as a journalist. No – I didn’t need to be a pro to enjoy the sport. Neither, it turns out, did Kimmage. He still writes like that today, in his pieces for The Sunday Times, where his experience, that same passion and a desire for a clean sport shine through.

It truly is essential reading, this – a book that holds up today, as the banter, bullying and hardships of life as a pro are as applicable as ever. The 1990 William Hill Sports Book of the Year has been updated a couple of times along the way, even losing the ‘A’ from its title somewhere along the line. Today’s cover of a grimacing Kimmage in his final year as a pro with Fagor was preceded by a shocking – in both respects – minimalist yellow cover, but my favourite will always be the original – the one I own – of a pained, almost crying, Kimmage giving it everything at the Tour de France on what looks like Alpe d’Huez – a mountain to climb. It kind of summed – still sums – it all up, really.

By now ANC’s Tour de France was beginning to resemble a huge family outing. Fisher – Fish Face as Snowling [the mechanic] has uncharitably christened him – had arrived back from Paris with his wife, a tiny, aggressive and faded blonde… and their poodle. There was also by now Mrs Capper, a large lady perspiring in her summer frock and two teenage Capper sons, who immediately donned official team jerseys and expensive riders’ sunshades. Fisher’s poodle was in a bad way, having been left in the family Rover in the heat in Avignon and it didn’t survive the day, Nick Rawling burying it in the hotel garden. Two lively children scuttling round the hotel and sitting with the riders at meals didn’t go down too well either.

I was a sub-editor on the Daily Star, not even a reporter. Believe it or not, the Daily Star was a good paper in those days. We were selling about two million a day and we had Murdoch worried. We followed every sport going. I don’t think any of the tabloids bothered with cycling but we sponsored the Milk Race and supplied the podium girls, who were models who did promotional work for the paper, not Page 3 girls, by the way.

I came into the office one day and the sports editor and his deputy were looking at me a bit oddly. They said: “Do you want to go to the Tour de France for a month?” They wanted me to ride one of the stages. It sounds ludicrous now but we had no idea. I’d been into climbing and I’d started running big-time. I was the only one who was reasonably fit while the rest on the desk were smokers and drinkers. These were the days when you smoked at your desk and had five pints at lunch. They picked on someone who would survive.

They fixed up for me to join the British team, ANC-Halfords and travel round with them. When I turned up at the airport, Tony Capper didn’t know anything about it. I think he did but he didn’t want to admit to the riders he’d been involved. I had access that you wouldn’t dream of today. None of the riders were very happy about it, although they didn’t actually complain. I think most of the riders thought they were going to get murdered in France and they didn’t want a journalist there to see it.

After a while, I became one of the boys but they were going through extremely difficult times. They wanted to come home after a stage and have something to eat and talk about anything but cycling. Guys like Shane Sutton, Steve Swart and Malcolm Elliott were happy to talk, to an extent, but Graham Jones wasn’t. I didn’t realise it at the time but he was ill and trying to survive. The last thing he’d have wanted was me hanging around asking daft questions.

I wasn’t setting out to get people into the world of cycling. I was on the ground and had access but it could have been any sports team, it’s just that the Tour de France is such an incredible event. I had such joy writing it. I’ve done about nine or ten books since and none of them has been as good or as much fun. It was a gift. There weren’t PR people running around spoiling everything but I do think ANC made a bit of a mistake allowing me to go there. There were some people from the company who turned up and started telling the riders and staff what to do and they were made to look idiots in the book.

The beauty of Wide Eyed and Legless is its simplicity. Connor brings the distilled tabloid journalist’s writing style to an event made for meandering, flowery descriptions. And it is all the better for that. This is journalism, pure and simple. For Connor, the story is the key, and this is a great story, the sort of material a documentary maker would kill for. Connor says what he sees. If something is ridiculous he describes it as ridiculous. When he puts his foot in it, he does not gloss over it. And he’s prepared to admit he was on an even steeper learning curve than the riders.

There are overtones of the First World War in it, although not explicitly brought out. The riders are the brave foot soldiers, just trying to survive. The management are in the trenches with them but painfully aware they are not going over the top with them. And then the team’s sponsors turn up midway through, like generals used to spending the war miles behind the lines in a luxurious chateau. And when they start shouting the odds they are viewed with contempt. Connor views them with contempt too, because by now he is one of the boys, mucking in.

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