Merckx odrabiający blisko 10-minutową stratę do lidera. Emocjonalna wygrana Armstronga po śmiertelnym wypadku jego przyjaciela. 180-kilometrowa ucieczka zakończona sukcesem. Szaleńczy plan Cavendisha, podróż Hinaulta przez piekło i LeMond, który ledwo wyrwał się objęciom śmierci.
Tour de France to nie tylko tradycja, prestiż i wielkie pieniądze. To także etapy, które zapisały się w pamięci fanów kolarstwa na lata. Właśnie o nich jest ta książka. Uczestnicy tamtych wydarzeń – słynni kolarze, trenerzy, menedżerowie zespołów – wracają do niezwykłych momentów, które stworzyły legendę najlepszego kolarskiego wyścigu świata.
Dramatyczne wypadki, taktyczne majstersztyki, niespodziewane porażki i zwycięstwa, które nie miały prawa się zdarzyć. Przeczytaj, jak wyglądały z punktu widzenia głównych bohaterów!
Richard Moore is a freelance journalist and author. His first book, In Search of Robert Millar (HarperSport), won Best Biography at the 2008 British Sports Book Awards. His second book, Heroes, Villains & Velodromes (HarperSport), was long-listed for the 2008 William Hill Sports Book of the Year.
He is also the author of Slaying the Badger: LeMond, Hinault and the Greatest Ever Tour de France (Yellow Jersey, May 2011), and Sky’s the Limit: British Cycling’s Quest to Conquer the Tour de France (HarperSport, June 2011).
His latest book, The Dirtiest Race in History: Ben Johnson, Carl Lewis and the 1988 Olympic 100m final, will be published by Wisden Sports Writing in June, 2012.
He is also a former racing cyclist who represented Scotland at the 1998 Commonwealth Games and Great Britain at the 1998 Tour de Langkawi.
Richard Moore's 'Etape: The untold stories of the Tour de France's defining stages' does rather what it suggests - a personal selection of 20 memorable or famous tour stage, from the male edition of the race, retold including via interviews with some of the protagonists.
It's a shame stages from the women's event weren't included - the 1992 Alpe d'Huez track stands between Van Moorsel and Longo is something I've not seen in the men's race.
Many are stages Moore himself remembers - indeed published in 2014, and seemingly researched in 2012-13, there is a recency bias to choosing 3 stages from 2010-12. But in an account of Jose Luis Viejo's 1976 solo win, a record 22m50s over 2nd place, and recalling the Tour's origins as a promotional event for newspapers (most general directors also journalists), he hits on a key credo of the book for even more recent, televised stages:
The reports of road racing were dramatic, poetic, florid; full of epic deeds, tales of suffering and heroism; and frequently speculative. They relied on the testimonies of participants who could, of course, be unreliable witnesses, because there was no way anybody could know everything that had happened. For years, writing about the Tour could be as much the work of the imagination as the reporting of hard and verifiable facts.
Hence novelists, playwrights and poets were sent by their newspapers to cover races such as the Tour, Giro d'Italia and Paris-Roubaix. It's what makes cycle racing such a rich subject for writers. A goal in a football match can be pored over; the build-up can be analysed; its context can be understood by watching the rest of the match with your own eyes. In a road race, despite the probing gaze of television cameras and photographers' lenses, much remains unseen and unknown, even to many of the participants. The mystery is a big part of the appeal. It also means that the reports are not always accurate, and that the full truth sometimes does not emerge until later. Years, or even decades later. Or not at all.
The prompt for this is Viejo's disagreement within even the reported facts of his win, let alone some of the story.
And the most striking issues of the tales, even the most recent, is not so much any revealed secrets, but rather the power of selective memory, the accounts contradicting not only the 'official' story but also each other. My favourite, Jorg Jaschke's revelation that Pantani's destruction of Jan Ullrich on Les Deux Alpes stage in 1998 was due to 'marmalade paninis' (and no that's not intended as a euphemism).
An obvious example here being Hinault's strong memory that having won Paris Roubaix he never entered the race again - although of course had he done so he'd have won again. Moore points out in a footnote he did actually race the next year ... and came 9th.
Perhaps the most interesting account is that of the 1987 Villard-de-Lans stage where Jean-Francois Bernard went from generational French hope and Ventoux conquering Maillot Jaune to a remember-him also-ran, the most convincing interpretation that of his soigneur Shelley Verses who suggests a psychological collapse. And psychology generally plays a key part in many of the stage stories.
Moore's account is limited by those who are able (some have passed) or are willing to speak to him, and there's an unpleasant reminder of his previous book, the invasive and execrable 'In Search of Robert Millar' when he refers to being unable to speak to the recently deceased Peter Post, whose wife also put down the phone when he called her for the Millar 'expose'. And this does mean we get a chapter on Armstrong, who is only to keen to talk about stages in which he was involved to try to prevent their welcome erasure from Tour history.
Each chapter opens with a black and white photograph, and for such a visual sport, I would have preferred more, and colour, shots. But while the decision not to include such images may have been taken for production-cost purposes, it is in keeping with Moore's ethos that professional tour cycling is a sport, primarily, to be written about.
Although I have a bike and use it most days for popping to the shops, I wouldn't really consider myself a cyclist, but I do like most sports and I wanted a break from fiction, so saw this book was being sold off by my local library with its transparent jacket and bar code, and snapped it up.
Really glad that I did. Although it is a niche subject this would be accessible to anyone, due to the fact that The Tour is so epic, unique and global in stature. This book has a high rating compared to most books on GoodReads and I can see why. The chapters are all self-contained and a good length. All of the big cycling personalities I can remember are in there - Indurain, Armstrong, Cavendish, Boardman, although the time frame of the book doesn't include the (amazing) number of recent British winnners (including Cavendish, 1, Wiggins, 1 and Froome, 4). The chapter on Cavendish is, like every chapter, merely a stage win.
It introduced me to some names I wasn't so familiar with too - Pantani, Merckx and Hinault, LeMond.
It has made me wonder if I can see what Richard Moore has been describing on YouTube, so it definitely whetted the appetite. And I would hope one day to be in France and witness a stage, which has never been on my (non-existent) bucket list before!
Which chapter did I enjoy the most? Probably Marco Pantani or Chiappucci - absolutely epic achievements. The book really underlines just how difficult it is to win a stage of the Tour de France.
Why not 5 stars? Something missing in the structure, I think more could have been made of the interviews that he managed to secure years later with the perspective that this allows. Somehow (apart from Lance Armstrong) you feel opportunities were missed because the whole concept is a cracking idea. I wonder if this would work better as a Podcast?
The content is what makes this book worth the read. Moore went out of his way to find some of the most notorious riders of the Tour through the ages, reminiscing on their greatest and not-so-great moments. The book gave a lot of insight on the history of the Tour, and the exclusive interviews with the riders, as well as a look into where they are now, made the whole account interesting.
The writing style is what ruined this book for me. Having written about some of the defining stages of the Tour, Moore had the opportunity to turn each rider's successes and failures into compelling stories with moments of suspense. This would have kept my interest, but the book lacked a lot in this and out of what I read, there were only about 2 paragraphs where I felt this enough to be fully immersed in what I was reading. Rather, the stories were presented as simply an account of the events, making the writing quite black and white and a little bleak for my liking.
Unfortunately, I am not a great enough fan of the Tour to keep reading just for the content. However, if cycling and the Tour is something that is of great interest to you, then this book would definitely be worth the read.
I’m not a huge fan of non-fiction books, with this being my second ever non-fiction book. But I am a huge fan of cycling.
This book was brilliant. Written to be interesting, it gave just the right amount of detail so I could understand what was happening but also focused more on the riders, the emotions and the drama, which at mines got my heart beating as I was on edge as to what would happen.
Great stories about different stages of the world's most famous and most difficult cycling road race. Some are well worth reading even if you're not really a big cycling fan
Really good position about the best cyclist race. Every year I just check result but after this book reading I want to learn more about background story of final standings. Good to know is also that author do not want to avoid the worst problem in cycling - EPO.
This seemed an interesting concept, but its execution exceeded my expectations and I thought this was excellent. This looked at 20 individual stages of the Tour, but the interviews with the cyclists elevated this from a good idea to a genuinely original work.
Naturally, prominent Brits feature heavily, but Moore cast his net wide to include the greats like Hinault and Lemond, to cyclists I had never heard of previously. Sometimes the context seemed more important, as in the case of Millar, and in others such as Chiapucci's it was the stage itself. This stopped it being too formulaic, in a format that leant itself to this trap.
Instead Moore interviewed stage winners and other key figures to tell each story in an engaging manner, while touching on the post-cycling lives of his interviewees. Enough detail is included of the stage itself to ensure that the race was still the main feature, but it never feels like a list of timegaps, and Moore acknowledges the difficulty of piecing together the actual events before TV coverage, armed only with contrasting Chinese whispers.
The interviews add extra colour, but also allow riders' more honest thoughts to be expressed, without the emotion or team duty at the time. Armstrong unsurprisingly comes across terribly, whereas Cavendish comes off well. Millar is more of an enigma, and also part of my only criticism, which is that too much praise is put on him for admitting to doping. I should have expected this given Moore's opinions in his book on Sky, but I didn't realise this was the same author as I thought the writing in this was far superior.
You'd have to be into cycling to understand the context of each ride, and not just see a list of European names each page, but otherwise I don't know what else you could want. The 20 chapters seem ideal for reading a couple at a time, but I read it all on the same day, and after a few dud books in a row, this was a welcome tonic.
Great book that describes some of the most defining stages of the Tour de France. Mr. Moore paints a wonderful backstory, tells what happens during the stage good, and then kind of does a where are they now segment at the end, but that usually is about 1-2 pages at most. Really good book for a cycling enthusiast, as there is a lot of lingo and talks about a lot of smaller races that a true cycling fan would know but for someone like myself who casually checks the standings at the end of July, would not. Book was fine overall though. Great prose, and flowed throughout the entire book. I would pick up if you are into cycling and not someone who is new or doesn't know much about it.
Uwielbiam kolarstwo i wielkie Toury dlatego też z wielkim entuzjazmem podeszłam do tej książki. Mój apetyt podsycał również poprzedni tom jaki czytałam czyli historia Giro d'Italia, który bardzo mi się podobał. Na fali oczywiście obecnych zawodów z cyklu wielkiej pętli w końcu sięgnęłam i po "żółtą" książkę i... trochę się rozczarowałam. Językowo jest bardzo dobrze i lekko napisana, ale wydaje mi się, że wolałabym trochę inaczej ukierunkowaną narrację. Może się czepiam, ale coś mi nie do końca pasowało w tym tytule i chyba było to zbytnie skupienie się na etapach a nie na historii Toure de France. Jednak dla fanów kolarstwa jest to pozycja godna polecenia.
A fantastic book for anyone who wants to know what the greatest bicycle-stage racing that is the Tour de France, is all about.
Goes into accounts of riders from way back before WW II to the modern day greats and has some tales and stories which have never before been heard or read. The book is structured like the race - 21 chapters for the 21 stages and each explaining what was or has been the greatest episode through time on that stage.
A must read- for anyone who wants to know more about cycling and it's heroes.
If you want a quick fix to gaps in your historic Tour de France knowledge, here is a book that will bring you up to date with the key stages, riders and events over the last 50 years. Richard Moore not only identifies these key events but he extracts gems of unknown information by going and interviewing the riders themselves. This therefore gives a riders insider view of what really makes the race and the peloton. Read it quickly before this year’s Tour (2020) so you can be up to date on any zoom Tour de France chats you have with your cycling buddies .
This is a very readable book by Richard Moore which picks particular Stages in the Tour de France’s history that stand out for a variety of reasons. He doesn’t just focus on Stage-winners in looking at stages, but also at things like the grupetto of sprinters trying to make it over a mountainous stage, or the peculiar case of the largest-ever stage-winning margin (in the modern era). I found this never dull or boring and very engaging. The only shame is that the book came out in 2015, so doesn’t include some of the more recent standout stages.
Fascinating account of some of the most interesting stages of the Tour over the last 30 years. I enjoyed reliving the stages I remembered as well as learning about the stages from before my time.
Moore made an interesting decision to interview Lance Armstrong and include wins from him and other confirmed dopers. I think this works - it is better to recognise and confront the sins of the past than to sweep those years under the carpet.
Each chapter pretty much stands on its own, but most are pretty insightful about both racing tactics and about the human experience of bicycle stage racing. Not every chapter is even about a stage winner, and not every stage winner in the book would go on to win the whole race--it's a nice range of experiences. Let's just finish off by saying that the pro peloton is full 'characters'.
The author Richard Moore explores different stages of the Tour de France through dynamic storytelling with action-packed moments to highlight key figures like Lance Armstrong, Jan Ullrich, and Greg LeMond as well as lesser known cyclists. His work gives me a deeper understanding of the history of the Tour the France.
A fascinating read that not only introduces some of the cyclists who have shaped the history of the Tour de France, but also recounts the little-known stories and the protagonists' own words about their experiences. Very entertaining, with an engaging pace and well written. Highly recommended for cycling fans.
A different approach to most cycling books about Le Tour it focuses on memorable stages and the story behind the scenes that made it memorable with personal interviews with the riders as opposed to a pick and mix of previous journalists stories. An enjoyable and enlightening read
This book, surprisingly, actually went into a lot more detail than I anticipated; good if you, like me, are interested in the stories more than the facts and figures, because the stories in this book, especially those you wouldn't expect to see, make it.
I enjoyed the individual stories that brought to life some of the history of the Tour De France from a different angle. The writing style was a little different to normal but it was an enjoyable read.
War Stories! Each chapter captures a particularly meaningful stage of the TdF over the last century ... introducing us to names past and present - their story, their struggles, the rivalry - more exciting and behind-the-scenes you’d ever get as a spectator. A great read!
I've really enjoyed reading Etape. It's a wonderful collection of individual stories from individual stages of the Tour De France. Some you'll remember, some will be new to you. I guess it helps if you're a cycling fan, but if you are, this is well worth reading. A great book.
The history of Le Tour is full of tales of heroism and tragedy. Moore’s book details some of these stories with background and context and is a very worthy read for anyone with even a passing interest in cycling.
Fun, informative and detailed canter across the broad expanse of the TdF through the eyes and mouths of some of its major and a few “minor” protagonists … no topic is too closed or sensitive to receive close scrutiny from one of cyclists most dedicated journalists.
Thoroughly enjoyed the stories that made the Tour! Cycling hero’s, athletes and extraordinary feats! Courage, scandal, skill and drama The thing of legends