Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7657 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-07
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

The Times
'Paul Kimmage's Rough Ride pierces the essence of the race more
than other [book]'

Synopsis
First published in 1990, "Rough Ride" is one of the greatest books ever written about the life of a professional athlete. Almost twenty years later, Yellow Jersey is publishing an updated edition of this cycling classic, with a new foreword by the author which reflects on his life both inside and outside the sport. Paul Kimmage's boyhood dreams were of cycling glory: wearing the yellow jersey, cycling the Tour de France, becoming a national hero. He knew it wouldn't come easy, but he was prepared to put in the graft: he spent his teenage years cycling an average of 400 miles per week. The dedication began to pay off. As an amateur, he represented his country and finished sixth in the World Championships. In 1986, he turned professional. That's when reality hit. He soon discovered it wasn't about glory and courage, and it wasn't about how much training you put in or how much you wanted to win. It was about gruelling defeats, complete and utter exhaustion, and it was about drugs. Not drugs that would ensure victory, but drugs that would allow you to finish the race and start another day. Paul Kimmage left the sport to write this book.

It is a powerful and frank account that breaks the law of silence surrounding the issue of drugs in sport. An eye-opening expose and a heartbreaking lament, it is a book that anyone interested in any sport should read.

Customer Reviews

A Sad Tale that Had to Be Written
What's it like to be a wonderfully talented amateur bicycle racer who gets thrown into the meat-grinder of professional cycling? Kimmage answers the question in honest yet depressing detail.

An example: This book explains that the fatigued riders who did not place in the final stage of the Tour wouldn't be tested for dope, so they were free to take amphetamines. Reading "Rough Ride" is a lot like driving by a car crash. You really want to avert your eyes but can't. Kimmage's story of life as a cycling domestique is fascinating.

Kimmage makes it very clear that he is only telling his own personal story and not accusing any other rider in particular. But the practices he exposes clearly indict the entire profession. His revelations of the culture of doping within the peloton brought him withering criticism. He wasn't the first to get in trouble for revealing cycling's nasty underside. Bernard Thévenet almost died of liver failure from overuse of corticoids. When he confessed that doping was the cause of his health problems and that doping was a common practice within the peloton, the 2-time Tour winner suffered terrible opprobrium from the press, his sponsor and his fellow racers.

I believe Kimmage's book is the first (at least in English) to detail at length what life as a professional truly entailed. Since then former professional Erwann Menthéour has also written a memoir about doping in cycling which, to the best of my knowledge, has not been translated. Both he and Kimmage explained that the term for revealing cyclists' doping to the public is called "spitting in the soup". Menthéour's (who was caught using EPO) reply was "People are saying I am spitting in the soup, but it is necessary when it is poison." In the last year the wall of silence regarding doping has come tumbling down and several famous racers have confessed their misdeeds.

Yet Kimmage's book is the seminal tome and writing it was an act of courage.

The book is more than about doping. It details Kimmage's own failure to properly train and prepare for some seasons. He also describes the gut-busting exhaustion that the lesser riders suffer as they work at their limits for their more talented team leaders.

"Rough Ride" is a well-written book about racing in the 1980s but its lessons apply to the present. It is important reading for any cycling fan with an interest in what it takes to produce the spectacle we so enjoy watching.

- Bill McGann, author of The Story of the Tour de France

Green Eggs and Ham
"I do not like to cycle in the rain, I do not like to cycle by a train ..." While drugs might have been a part of why Paul Kimmage's dreams of cycling glory didn't come true, the fact that he hated cycling in the rain, in Belgium, on the flats, in the heat ... well, just about anywhere and in any condition might actually be a better indicator of why he never got anywhere and maybe why he's such a bitter man. Of course, by saying this, in Kimmage's book I am an apologist for the dopers in the peloton, because what is also apparent in this book is that anyone who disagrees with him is villified ...

AS for the doping part of the book, it is actually very enlightening on how easy it was (is?) to dope, how easily the mind can be turned to it just to be able to get on a bike every day to compete, how prevalent it is in the sport. But there are a couple things that I find strange about Kimmage's viewpoint. First of all, he basically implies throughout that anyone who has any success is almost certainly a doper because pro cycling is so gruelling. But then he is astounded and hurt that Stephen Roche - Giro, Tour and World Champion in the same year - cuts him out of his life after publication of the book (and Roche was very good to Kimmage during his career). Secondly, near the end of the first edition of the book, Kimmage says that, even though he 'charged up' three times in his career, he isn't a cheat 'I AM A VICTIM' (in all caps) but in his add-ons through the years, he doesn't afford this explanation to Ivan Basso, Jan Ullrich or Floyd Landis. No, these men should be drawn and quartered and their pieces flung to all four corners of the earth.

Another reviewer mentioned this, but I think it's important to reiterate - the guy never seemed to train! He abandoned race after race (at one point, at the beginning of the season, he figured he needed to complete one race because he'd abandoned the first seven he was in and he was worried they wouldn't renew his contract...). He took time off because he couldn't face training and then wondered why his next race was such a horrific experience. I actually came away with the impression that, as much as he might say he loved cycling and it broke his heart, he actually hated cycling - doing it, watching it, talking about it. Every other page he was 'sickened' or 'disgusted' by something. It started to get to sound like a fundamentalist's diatribe after a while. So, read the book definitely because there are very good things in it, but don't expect it all to make sense.

A Rough Read
Not sure what I made of this book. I was interested in the angle on doping, and to some degree Paul's explanation of the blood sweat and tears aspects of the sport almost supported the need for professional cyclists to use drugs to get through.
It certainly describes in almost brutal detail the harsher aspects of the top tier of the sport.
I don't think doping will ever be eradicated from cycling or for that matter any other professional athletic events; money and science will always attempt to out manouvre the testers.
I think we should accept it, declare its use and handicap the users accordingly.
All in all a good read for anyone interested in sport.