Product Description

Jeremy Whittle used to love cycling. Now he's not so sure. This is his insider's story of ten years following the Tour de France, and of how a sport has been corrupted by commercialism, scandal and drugs.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17275 in Books
• Published on: 2008-06-26
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

New Statesman, Geoffrey Wheatcroft
`Whittle tells the tale with immediacy and verve'

Synopsis
For Jeremy Whittle, there isn't much in life as spectacular as the Tour de France: sweat-streaked, taut and burnished athletes toiling across vast and ancient European landscapes, hundreds of thousands of fans lining the route. The twisting Mediterranean roads, the jerseys, the peloton in full flight - these have become as familiar to him as the lines around his eyes. And then there are the riders: men of almost superhuman capabilities, men who have become his friends, men whose stories he has written day in day out for the past decade.But even the biggest fan can one day wake up to find that he has lost his faith. We all want to believe in our heroes. That's why Jeremy got into cycling. But what happens when you can't? When you've seen too many positive dope tests, when you've been lied to too many times, when your sport is destroying itself from within? "Bad Blood" is the story of Jeremy Whittle's journey from unquestioning fan to Tour de France insider and confirmed sceptic.

It's about broken friendships and a sport divided; about having to choose sides in the war against doping; about how galloping greed and corporate opportunism have led the Tour de France to the brink of destruction. Part personal memoir, part devastating expose of a sport torn apart by drugs and scandal, "Bad Blood" is a love letter to one man's past, and a warning to cycling's future.

About the Author
Jeremy Whittle has been covering professional cycling since 1993. A former editor of procycling magazine and the Official Guide to the Tour de France, he is cycling correspondent to The Times and the Sunday Herald. He has appeared on BBC Radio 4, Radio 5, NPR and CNN and is the author of Yellow Fever (1998) and Le Tour (2003).

Customer Reviews

Wrongly Titled
Having bought and read many cycling books I mistakingly thought this was going to be an in depth look at the serect life of the Tour de France. Having read the book it is more about one mans campaign to link the name of Lance Armstrong with every doping scandal there has ever been. Whilst the author accepts that Greg Lemond and Bernard Hinault in his opinion raced clean, he seems unable to accept that Lance Armstrong may also have raced clean and there are very few chapters where he does not have a personal attack on Lance Armstrong. Jeremy Whittle writes about cheating, I also feel cheated as the book is wrongly titled and should have been titled "Lance Armstrong, how I can link him with every doping scandal". It is a well written book but contains nothing that hasn't been written before apart from the constant references to doping and Lance Armstrong.

Readable and Compelling
I agree with both of the earlier reviewers. This is a readable, well written and compelling book, as a memoir of Whittle's career as a cycling journalist it is entertaining and as a chronicle of his move from loyal fan to insider to dissapointed cynic it is even quite moving, and to be fair that is how it describes itself.

It is not revelatory though, it is not an 'expose' there is nothing new in the way of evidence, as the first reviewer says, go to Walsh and Kimmage for those but Whilttle never pretends that this is an expose. He gives credit where it due to Walsh to Kimmage to Simeoni, and records his own personal response to these events.

A disappointment
There is nothing revelatory in this book. This, I feel, is a legitimate complaint given its title. No secrets are disclosed: instead we get a history of the doping scandals during Whittle's career in cycling journalism. That's fine, but they have all been documented elsewhere, and in more detail, by the likes of Kimmage, Walsh and Rendell. Also, while Whittle rightly criticises omerta, he admits in this book that he knew of a journalist who transported drugs for a rider. Unless he has informed the UCI of their names, Whittle is equally complicit.

That said, it is well-written and has some interesting accounts of meeting Armstrong, Riis, Lemond and Verbruggen over the years. He has had the habit of being in the right place at the right time - filming a documentary on Armstrong just before he won his first Tour proved quite a coup.

The book documents Whittle's arrival at the same conclusion about doping most of us fans made years ago. Not only is he about twenty years behind Kimmage, he is even behind Matt Rendell - who finally had his epiphany with The Death of Marco Pantani: one of the best sports books you will ever read, and where I suggest you go before this.

Readable, but unnecessary.