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The history, the legend, the riders by Graeme Fife Published by Mainstream £14.99 Read Extract in Articles
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The history, the legend, the riders by Graeme Fife Published by Mainstream £14.99 Read Extract in Articles
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| The riders in the first Tour de France left Paris in
July 1903 at the start of a gruelling. epic race round the whole
of France — by daily stages, vast distances, riding day and night, often
more than 20 hours in the saddle.. an astonishing ,even freakish, novelty
which caught the public imgination at once . The early heroic era took
the riders across the high mountains of the Alps and Pyrenees on roads
little better than cart tracks. They had to carry out their own repairs.
unaided, find their own food and drink, ride without support. It was, undoubtedly,
the toughest ordeal of sporting endurance yet devised and remains so. Its
founder, Henri Desgrange, said that the ideal Tour would be a race which
only one rider had the strength to complete.
Today s riders are pampered by comparison with their predecessors — the modern Tour organisation caters to their every need: yet the Tour de France is still the ultimate test for professional cyclists: man and machine pitted against all kinds of terrain and weather, for three weeks, in unremitting competition with their rivals. The history of the race is rich in incident — dramatic. heroic, tragic. The legend of great solo rides, of amazing fortitude and gallantry, of misfortune and triumph against the odds, makes un unforgettable story. And the riders who have ridden the Tour, lost and won it to take the yellow jersey. the most coveted prize in cycling, are a breed apart. Graeme Fife’s book affords a compelling insight into the mystique of the Tour de France ,into the unique allure it has always exercised — on devoted bike fans and the occasional enthusiasts alike. ( The audience for the Tour reports on Channel Four gets bigger every year. ) Combining meticulous research with a pacey, fluent narrative style, Fife. a profession~ writer and a keen cyclist who has ridden all the cols celebrated in Tour legend, has not only produced a highly readable account of this amazing race from its inception, hut paints a colourful, human, memorable picture of the men — champions and team riders — whose exploits have made the Tour de France such a durable fascination |