Product Description

The "Yellow Jersey Companion to the Tour de France" might just tell you everything you've ever wanted to know about the world's greatest sporting event. We won't just give you the name of every stage winner; every mountain and the first to top them; the age of each overall winner; a complete list of all the stage finishes since the race began - we'll tell you all the unknown stories too. We'll tell you about the rider forced to crawl along the finish line in search of his glass eye; the exhausted man who hitched a ride on the back of a donkey; the Tour star denied his yellow jersey hours after he'd won it, and the journeyman competitor who never got to wear his because someone drove away with it. On our alphabetical ride through the Tour's one-hundred-year history we'll share with you the inside stories of the great stars - Jacques Anquetil, Fausto Coppi, Bernard Hinault, Miguel Indurain, Eddy Merckx, Greg LeMond, and Lance Armstrong to name a few; we'll outline the arcane and so often cruel rules that have helped make this race into the sporting world's most gruelling spectacle and we'll even reveal the answer to a question that has troubled many Tour junkies over the years - who really was the first maillot jaune. A work of unparalleled reference and a joy to read, "The Yellow Jersey Companion to the Tour de France" is a literary gift from cycling heaven.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #259706 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 544 pages

The Times
'an admirable historical perspective'

Jeffrey Taylor, Sunday Express
'essential reading for every British educationalist and parent'

From the Publisher
'All the rider detail and race records you need' (The Times), the Yellow Jersey Companion to the Tour de France is 'endlessly fascinating' (Independent).

Customer Reviews

Great to dip into
Les Woodland has written a guide to the Tour that is enjoyable and well written. He covers in this A-Z guide much of interest to both newbie and to bikie.
397 pages of enjoyable facts and stories about the riders, the routes and nearly everything else about the Grand Boucle. He covers bikes, cheats, crashes, doping, mechanics, mountains etc.

It is not comparable to Wheatcofts Le Tour a history. But there are not many belly laughs in Wheatcrofts "comprehensive history of the Tour and an emerging Europe".

Woodland in this mine of information has placed his earlier work into eclipse. He is an entertaining journalist who writes regualarly in the cycling press. As a Francophile he knows and loves the Tour and it shows in the depth of understanding about the idiosyncracies of perhaps the greatest free spectacle in the world. His guide is great to use when following the Tour.

The only criticism I have relates to the short entries he has for the famous cols. Without the mountains the tour would be a desert. Having ridden a good number of the cols I wanted him to realte the suffering of the climb. But for this Krabbes book, The Rider,wins hands up.

As a present it would not go amiss and would be a valuable addition to the cyclists burgening shelves. Dip into before sleep to guarantee pleasant dreams full of bicyles.

Perhaps the balanced entry Woodland gives to Robert Millar, the greatest Scottish cyclist and a KOM of the Tour, indicates how he has tempered his enthusiasm. Millar stated about journalists "If I think they're useless I tell them so." Just what did he say to Woodland? Perhaps it is unprintable?

A book better that,s even better than Bernard Hinault
I have read a lot of cycling books and this is the most informative and amusing by a long way. I particularly like all the stories about cheating, random events and lunatics - as well as stories about ancient riders from early tour days.

Arranged as a A to Z you can use it look up things (and entries range from individual people to subjects like 'mountains' or 'gears'). The entry on Laurent Fignon is hilarious - you have to buy it just for that. It also has useful sections of listings (e.g. who won every stage in every tour) for sad fanatics like me.

It's a huge book - I'm reading it from A to Z and I'm still not finished but I keep skipping forwards and backwards to look up my favourite riders!

Essential Tour reading - get your's to swot up during the flat stages this summer before the Alpe d'Huez time trial.....

It's like a cross between Graeme Fife and Tim Moore - factual and trainspottery but hilarious too. And it's a lot funnier than the Atlas of Cols guide to riding mountains which should be avoided unless you are a Professor of Physics or having difficulty sleeping.

The clue is in the title!
An excellent book for background to the tour and an essential by the arm chair in July!