Koblet + Kubler - Cycling's Forgotten Rivalry

Author: Gareth Cartman
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781916019744
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 332

Book Description
When Hugo Koblet won the 1950 edition of the Giro d'Italia, Ferdy Kübler's world was turned upside down. Hugo was handsome, Ferdy was not. Hugo was elegant, Ferdy was not. Hugo had all the girls. Ferdy did not. A rivalry that had been simmering for years exploded into life. Every time Hugo won a race, Ferdy was inspired to go one further, until the day Hugo stopped winning and his life slowly started to unravel. From Six-Day races around Europe to multiple Tours of France, Italy and Switzerland, the two K's dominated both road and track cycling at the start of the 1950s. Riders complained about chasing white crosses all day, but as decline set in, both men had to learn how to cope with a peloton that was passing them by. Koblet + Kübler is the story of two contrasting riders whose lives will forever be intertwined. How they won Grand Tours, World Championships and Classics, how rivalry turned to friendship, and how it all went tragically wrong. Author Gareth Cartman weaves imagined first-person narrative into this double biography of Switzerland's finest ever cyclists. Taking inspiration from his first book, We Rode All Day, the voices of Hugo Koblet and Ferdy Kubler are brought to life as the book charts their rise to prominence, their domination of the sport and their decline, resulting in tragedy for Hugo.

Tomorrow, We Ride--

Author: Jean Bobet
Publisher: Mousehold Press for Basque Children of '37 Association UK
ISBN: 9781874739517
Category : Cyclists
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
An account of the lives of the Bobet brothers - Louison, triple Tour de France winner and Jean who gave up an academic career to ride in the service of his brother. This story brings alive the romance of the great races and star riders of those post war days whose exploits lifted the public spirit after years of conflict and economic hardship.

We Were Young and Carefree

Author: Laurent Fignon
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1407075217
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 306

Book Description
'Ah, I remember you: you're the guy who lost the Tour de France by eight seconds!' 'No monsieur, I'm the guy who won the Tour twice. The international bestselling autobiography of the legendary French cyclist Laurent Fignon Two-time winner of the Tour de France in the early eighties, Laurent Fignon became the star for a new generation. In the 1989 tour, he lost out to his American arch-rival, Greg LeMond, by an agonising eight seconds. In this revealing account, the former champion spares nobody, not even himself, and pulls back the curtain on what really went on behind the scenes of this epic sport - the friendships, the rivalries, the betrayals, the parties, the girls and, of course, the performance-enhancing drugs. Fignon's story bestrides a golden age in cycling: a time when the headlines spoke of heroes, not doping, and a time when cyclists were afraid of nothing. ‘Sports book of the year: He's ruthlessly honest, about himself and about cycling, and he provides a gripping insight into an unrelenting hard world’ Independent

The Story of the Tour De France

Author: Bill McGann
Publisher: Dog Ear Publishing
ISBN: 1598581805
Category : Bicycle racing
Languages : en
Pages : 316

Book Description

Dennis Horn - Racing for an English Rose

Author: Peter Underwood
Publisher: Mousehold
ISBN: 9781874739661
Category : Bicycle racing
Languages : en
Pages : 84

Book Description
At the age of 20, Dennis Horn won his first English Rose the emblem of a national track champion. Throughout the 1930s he rapidly graduated from the rough and tumble of makeshift grass track racing at country fairs and gala sports days to assail the heights of British track cycling on the great urban cycling bastions of the time the hard-surfaced stadiums of London's Herne Hill and Manchester's Fallowfield and become the star of British track racing. Every year from 1931 to 1938 he was awarded the seasonlong Meredith Trophy to add to those legendary gold and silver cups. This book tells his story.

Continental Cycle Racing

Author: Noel Gordon Henderson
Publisher: Pelham Books
ISBN:
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Book Description

Riding in the Zone Rouge

Author: Tom Isitt
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
ISBN: 1409171167
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 284

Book Description
'An evocatively thoughtful wider history of the race, the war and the peace' GUARDIAN 'Occasionally funny and regularly poignant, brilliantly focused in its research . . . His drive, wit and curiosity inform Zone Rouge . . . gently profound and genuinely moving' HERALD The Circuit des Champs de Bataille (the Tour of the Battlefields) was held in 1919, less than six months after the end of the First World War. It covered 2,000 kilometres and was raced in appalling conditions across the battlefields of the Western Front, otherwise known as the Zone Rouge. The race was so tough that only 21 riders finished, and it was never staged again. With one of the most demanding routes ever to feature in a bicycle race, and plagued by appalling weather conditions, the Circuit des Champs de Bataille was beyond gruelling, but today its extraordinary story is largely forgotten. Many of the riders came to the event straight from the army and had to ride 18-hour stages through sleet and snow across the battlefields on which they had fought, and lost friends and family, only a few months before. But in addition to the hellish conditions there were moments of high comedy, even farce. The rediscovered story of the Circuit des Champs de Bataille is an epic tale of human endurance, suffering and triumph over extreme adversity.

Tour de France Champions

Author: Giles Belbin
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 0750995386
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 295

Book Description
The Tour de France is a race like no other, so perhaps it’s no surprise that it attracts racers like no other.The winner of the second Tour actually came fifth – but the four racers before him were disqualified for cheating.The 1932 champion credits his win with saving him from capture by the Nazis, as the soldiers recognised him from the podium.One of Britain’s best cyclists of the modern era only got into European racing by forging an email.Tour de France Champions is a journey to the summit of cycling, looking at those who have taken on the roads and mountains of France to prevail above all others and win cycling’s greatest prize. Giles Belbin presents the stories of all those who have claimed the original and greatest Grand Tour, the one race that still transcends the sport of cycling: the Tour de France.

Tour de France

Author: Christopher S. Thompson
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520934863
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 436

Book Description
In this highly original history of the world's most famous bicycle race, Christopher S. Thompson, mining previously neglected sources and writing with infectious enthusiasm for his subject, tells the compelling story of the Tour de France from its creation in 1903 to the present. Weaving the words of racers, politicians, Tour organizers, and a host of other commentators together with a wide-ranging analysis of the culture surrounding the event including posters, songs, novels, films, and media coverage Thompson links the history of the Tour to key moments and themes in French history. Examining the enduring popularity of Tour racers, Thompson explores how their public images have changed over the past century. A new preface explores the long-standing problem of doping in light of recent scandals.

Fallen Angel

Author: William Fotheringham
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0224074504
Category : Bicycle racing
Languages : en
Pages : 306

Book Description
Voted the most popular Italian sportsman of the twentieth century, Fausto Angelo Coppi was the campionissimo champion of champions. The greatest cyclist of the immediate post-war years, he was the first man to win cycling s great double, the Tour