The Great Bike Race is a seminal cycling text , long-placed highly in the pantheon of great cycling books and now newly reprinted . This superb book has won so many accolades that it seems hardly necessary to add a further review . Recently established to ' create , develop and curate the highest quality books ' for the cycling community , Velodrome Publishing have chosen this title as the launch volume in their ' Vintage Velodrome ' series . The book is certainly a worthy flag ship for this specialist publisher .

The new subtitle The Classic , Acclaimed Book that Introduced the World to the Tour de France , betrays the parochial nature of our times ; during the 1970s , when the book was first published , the ‘ world ’ of continental Europe hardly needed an introduction to the Tour de France ( TDF ) and would have found it difficult to use one which illustrated the complexity of the race by comparisons with test cricket . This is actually a book which was aimed at the English speaking , Anglo-centric world . The original publication bore the subtitle A vivid account of the world ’ s greatest annual sporting event , which is perhaps a better strap line .

The Great Bike Race is generally agreed to be the first work in the English language to tell the story of the Tour de France . It was published at a time when the British public knew little of the race and road cycling in general . It is not a technical book , there are few details of group sets or performance sport science , rather it is beautiful exposition of combined history and legend which gives any reader a grounding in what might be thought of TDF lore . Taking the 1976 tour as a framework , the chapters alternate between the unfolding story of the 1976 edition of the race and the background , history and context of the TDF . A studious reader will gain an understanding of the complex sport of cycling stage racing , as well as familiarity with the famous anecdotes from the race since its inception in 1903 . It is essential reading for any cycling fan .

The author of The Great Bike Race , Geoffrey Nicholson , was a correspondent for the Guardian and Independent who sadly passed away in 1999 . His obituary in the Independent ( 3 Aug 99 ) reported that he was first seduced by the world of road cycling when asked to cover a cross Pennine stage of the Tour of Britain in 1959 : ‘ that was a rounded , selfcontained story with complex relationships , sudden shifts of action , identifiable heroes , a beginning , a middle and an end ’. This is the spirit in which the Great Bike Race is written .

TDF enthusiasts are not your normal sports fans , the appeal of the Tour endures through controversy and is presented in this book as a three-week drama with all the power and appeal of Shakespeare . Those of us who followed the antics of Frome and Sagan last summer enjoyed something more than mere race and Nicholson tells us why , presenting the TDF as no mere ‘ arena sport ’ but a drama , a ‘ series of tales … of disaster and deprivation , treachery and honest courage , extremes of heat and cold , and the triumph over man and nature ’. Chapter 2 , titled A Drama in Three Acts describes the stage and set , with characters and roles carefully introduced elsewhere . The fundamentals of the romance , tragedy and comedy that play out each summer in the TDF are conveyed in loving detail .

If you don ’ t know about the Tour and are wondering what all the fuss is about , read this book . If you are already bitten by the bug , this book will only enrich your experience of the race .

Cycling World Magazine January 2017 | Page 45