Product Description

Few sporting contests have roused such blind passions and filthy suspicions as the Tour de France. From Lance Armstrong's incredible comeback from cancer, to Tom Simpson's death on the slopes of Mont Ventoux, the Tour has been the stage for some of sport's most monumental triumphs and the scene of some of its darkest hours. Since Maurice Garin's inaugural victory in 1903, hundreds of thousands of kilometres have been covered in pursuit of the yellow jersey - cycling's holy grail - and few have been without incident or drama. And on 7 July 2007, the whole pedalling circus is descending on London! But, will the Great British Public be ready for an invasion of neck to thigh slippery lycra, gaudy Geiger-alien headwear, aerodynamic neoprene pixyboots, and Space Age carbon fibre bicycles weighing less than a dinky toy but costing more than a family car? Not without this book, they won't. It's a no-holds-barred look at the rivalries, characters and controversies that have given century-old race its unique colour. Matt Rendell's vivid and entertaining narrative combines the Tour's golden legends with tales from its dark side, capturing the true and often surreal spirit of the world's most arduous race.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #190205 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

Independent
A rattling good ride through the highlights of each race...a brisk solo breakaway through a history littered with bad behaviour...hugely entertaining

From the Inside Flap
The Tour de France is probably cruel and it's undoubtedly
unusual, but it also makes for an exceptionally good story. After 104 years
and 94 laps of the France (time out only for World Wars), the fine
spectacle of life-threatening exertion, bare-faced cheating, road-side
sabotage, ludicrous clothing, extreme intimate discomfort, and grown men at
the absolute end of their tethers has gathered the race an audience of
millions.
With the Tour taking to London's streets, Blazing Saddles takes a
no-holds-barred look at its history - the rivalries and controversies, the
blind passions and filthy suspicions, the wheeling and the dealing
Embellished with over 100 classic images, Matt Rendell's vivid and
entertaining history plunges deep into the peloton, combining the Tour's
golden legends with tales from its dark side to capture the indomitable,
inimitable spirit of the world's greatest race.

From the Back Cover
Blazing Saddles is a rip-roaring sprint through 104 years of
Tour de France history: a riotous tale of tough nuts, bad blood and bitter
pills.
1904 "The Tour de France is over and its second edition, I fear, will also
be its last." Henri Desgrange
1908 "It has been said I owe my greatest victories to drugs. Allow me to
reply: do you seriously think a man, however strong, could survive such
treatment for 28 days?" Lucien Petit-Breton
1924 "I've lost six toenails out of ten. They fall off, one by one, on each
stage." Henri Pelissier
1957 "To prepare for a race there is nothing better than a good pheasant,
some champagne and a woman." Jacques Anquetil
1993 "The bottom line is, I'm a competitor and I like training hard and
going out and kicking ass. I like it, and I got a lot more ass to kick."
Lance Armstrong
2006 "I mean, it was 11 to 1! You'd think he'd be violating every virgin
within 100 miles. How does he even get on his bicycle?" World anti-doping
agency chief Dick Pound on Floyd Landis' testosterone level.

Customer Reviews

Superficial and disappointing.
I ordered this item with the highest expectations, having read Matt Rendell's superb biography of Il Pirata: The Death of Marco Pantani. Which book I'd recommend wholeheartedly to anyone interested in cycling and its many highs and perhaps even more numerous lows; but unfortunately, I can not recommend this one.

Having read the book, I can't tell you how disappointed I am.

No information which is not available in a hundred earlier books; I shan't cite them here but if you are a TdF fan or a cycling fan at all, you probably have all of them already. Also, there are some outright faults with this book, quite gratuitous, inexplicable in a professional publication.

Firstly, the photographs. Oh, there are some wonderful vintage photos in this book; including several I'd never seen before. They're all captioned, sure, but some of the most intriguing are not referenced in the text at all! For instance, I *really* wanted to know what was going on in the picture captioned, 'One transitory headache for Andre Darrigade; one mortal blow for Constant Wouters ... He never regained consciousness and died eleven days later' (p.132). Is this really a photograph of a rider suffering a brain hemorrage or whatever and dying on his bike? Does this have anything to do with the Tour de France? I don't know! And unfortunately, after reading this book, I still don't know, because the picture and its caption are not referenced in the text. Likewise, there are some famous TdF pictures - like the one with the peloton deciding they'd had enough of this and wanted to do some sea-bathing instead, p.110 - which as a cycling fan I knew about; but if you were approaching this stuff for the first time you'd have no more idea after reading this book, since the incident is not mentioned in the text. Nor is poor Abdulkader Zaaf, whose picture appears on the very next page (111); a Muslim who had never touched alcohol in his life, this guy accepted a bidon from a bystander and quaffed it in one, in his desperate thirst, unaware that it contained red wine. He immediately became so drunk that he set off again in the wrong direction and eventually collapsed and had to abandon. He then returned to his home country where he was arrested as a spy, and spent several years in prison. This is a tragic story and deserves far more than the pseudo-comic photographic caption this book chooses to give it.

There are just *loads* of other photos printed with captions but no context - highly frustrating at best, and at worst, very disrespectful to the persons concerned.

And finally - I simply cannot believe, CANNOT believe, that Matt Rendell does not even mention Fabio Casartelli in his account of the 1995 Tour de France. The guy DIED for heaven's sake; please let it be the last fatality on the Tour? But does Rendell mention him. No. Nada. Not one word. NOTHING.

Dunce's cap and in the corner until next period, I think. Very disappointing book. Not a patch on the Pantani biography. Alas, I'll think more than twice before buying another of Matt Rendell's books.

I'm just happy that I got a discount here at Amazon because otherwise, I'd be even more annoyed!

Tedious
I bought this book and although I read the whole thing, I was glad to have finished it. The couple of pages devoted to each Tour gradually become repetitive and tiresome, and this book offers nothing that hasn't been mentionned before. You are effectively reading the same words for each tour, repeated page after page. It will sit on my shelf with the rest of the cycling books, but I doubt it will be re-read again in the foreseeable future.

fantastic
This was a fantastic read, which brought to life the key moments of the tour throughout the years. I am often accused of being a real saddo about the tour de france by my friends, but I learnt lots more about this spectacular event. Vive le tour, Bravo Matt Rendall - yet again!!