Product Description

Ring of Fire is an insider's account of the acclaim, heroism and pressures of being a MotoGP racer. This is a world where manufacturers invest millions, and where a rider will emerge from a coma with shattered legs and bloody lungs to get back on his bike to save his job. This is the first book to cover the whole of the MotoGP era, at the centre of which is Valentino Rossi. Ring of Fire charts his rise, fall and rebirth, detailing the darker side to his rivalries with Max Biaggi and Sete Gibernau and his battles with the tax man and the media. This is a warts-and-all portrait with tales of vandalised cars and the racer who wants to torch 'the whole goddamn valley'. It is a breathless behind-the-scenes look at what makes these riders tick, from double World Superbike champion James Toseland to warring Spanish starlets Jorge Lorenzo and Dani Pedrosa. Rick Broadbent looks back at the sport's tradition of reprobates and debauchery. He introduces us, not just to the stars, but also to the officials, parents, doctors, team owners and fans who make up this white-knuckle sport. By turns funny, sad, shocking and uplifting, Ring of Fire brings us face to face with all those who are bonded by a shared love of risking it all at 200mph.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6334 in Books
• Published on: 2009-07-16
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Review
This is a stunning book. It is history but reads like a 'can`t put it down' novel - hardly surprising considering it grippingly features the two greatest racing motor cyclists of all time, Mike Hailwood and Valentino Rossi. Rick Broadbent tells the enthralling story of a thrilling and dangerous sport like never before and it had me by the throat. --Murray Walker

Customer Reviews

The power and the glory.
Standing alone, this book is brilliant, bringing the adrenalin of a mercurial sport right out onto the page. The scenarios change swiftly, almost from fortnight to fortnight in present day Moto GP, with riders falling like skittles from the top ranks to make way for rookies and returning has-beens alike. Broadbent has somehow managed to press the pause button allowing us a glimpse of the skills, risks, danger, daring, blood, terror, tragedy, and the power and the glory that are a normal part of life at 200 mph. The author also lays bare the brutal psychology of the sport and its effect on relationships and performance.
While I would highly recommend this well written, excellently paced book, I feel it should rather have been subtitled 'The Inside Story of Mike Hailwood and Moto GP'. Also, if you have read Valentino Rossi's book, watched 'Faster', watched a season of Moto GP and read the newspapers, you aren't going to find a lot of new information here.
But, unreservedly, a 5* read.

A brilliant but hard read
A sucker for all things VR, I bought this book and after reading the Prologue, recommended it to a friend as the work of an intelligent writer.

What I now know after finishing the book is that its brilliance comes at a frustrating cost of misunderstood prose and the time squandering need to re-read past paragraphs to truly understand the text. In simple terms Rick Broadbent needs to name more names to make his text understandable. You shouldn't have to decide who's saying what to who on the basis of the context alone. And to make this worse, the story darts from one topic to another; from one race to another and basically, the text just doesn't flow at all well. So not a book for beginners.

It's really two stories in one because Rick Broadbent interweaves the main body of the book with thin chapters covering Mike Hailwood's 1978 TT comeback. Some say he's trying to draw a parallel but with what? The links between Rossi and Hailwood are nothing but tenuous. Hailwood is Rossi's hero but Rossi could never have been Hailwood's. Both mixed fun and hard riding. But as for danger; for every racer that Rossi has seen succumb to racing accidents, Hailwood must have seen five or six. Rossi has said that he would never race at the TT and yet this is where Hailwood excelled. So the Hailwood strand is interesting but arguably superfluous in this book.

Overall though, this is a fine book and you can tell that Rick Broadbent is a pro writer. And whilst some have said that Ring of Fire is devoid of new facts, some of what I read was news to me. But I'm not a MotoGP anorak though I have seen Hailwood racing Hondas.

So if you prefer a 'Noddy in the Dark, Dark Wood' text level, you can forget this book but if you drink 90% Kosher Rum neat, have never worn long-johns and chew your food well before swallowing, this book could be a good choice.

Good read: enthusiastically written but badly edited
This book is a great insight into MotoGP and the sometimes great, someimes dubious characters that inhabit the sport. Broadbent's inside-track contacts and knowledge are used to excellent effect giving the reader a real three dimensional view of Rossi, Biaggi, et al. If all you know about MotoGP is what you see on the telly on a Sunday afternoon then this book will surprise you, and at times make you squirm, at what goes on before and after race weekends! The only downsides are that the Hailwood chapters feel like a clumsy afterthought and despite being well written they ruin the flow of the main narrative. Also, the author's use of many, many adjectives which appear to have been selected from a thesaurus without cross checking their contextual meaning in a dictionary leave the reader thinking that Broadbent is a lesser writer than he really is: a shame really. These two flaws would have been overcome by better (or even any?) editing. In the end though it is Rick Broadbent's enthusiasm for the sport that radiates and makes this a compelling read regardless.