The idea is simple: allow cycling journalists to wander the byways of the sport rather than being restricted to the main highways of race reports, big names and doping. It pays off because there are so many rarely told stories both from cycling’s history and amongst today’s peloton (there might be a limited number of winners, who are the focus of our attention, but there are so many other stories). Also I believe that, in the English speaking countries at least, in a golden age of cycling writing. As the sport has moved from an obsession for slightly cranky enthusiasts to something more widely recognised, there has been a chance to explain to a new audience the current workings of the sport and the glories of past heroes. It’s as if members of an underground clique have emerged, blinking, into the daylight to find that people are ready to listen to what they have to say. Now any self respecting bookshop has a shelf of good book. Cycling is cool, cycling is increasingly middle class, to be cool you have tone informed, and so there is a demand for literature
This book, or should I say these books as we are at number five in the series, are probably aimed at the enthusiast. In the beginning they were sold through cycling shops and were a bit outside the mainstream but they have obviously crossed over, as they are now published by Random House. So what do you get? In the current edition there are ten articles, half of which are related to the Tour de France and of the rest most are historical: cycling in World War One, the search for a past rider, the history of an old team. Eight of the authors are British, one is French and one American. As with any collection, there are hits and misses. I don’t want to dwell on pieces I didn’t like so well. (Oh OK then - I wasn’t that impressed by a piece on panache that where the writer was not really sure what it meant but whatever it was it could never apply to Thomas Voeckler - that just seemed a bit mean). Instead I will mention a couple of the stories that really caught my eye. The first was about the Linda McCartney cycling team from the 1990s who talked a good match, promised to challenge at the highest level and wore the badges of big money sponsors, but collapse when the talk was shown for what it was - just talk. There was no big money, the team was run by a fraudster and sponsor’s names had been used without agreement. There were good riders and but no infrastructure to support them. Promises and dreams, promises and dreams and many of us sporting romantics are prone to fall for them. The interesting thing though, is that only a few years later many of the same promises were made by British Cycling when they formed Team Sky but this time it was organised, managed and funded, and it succeeded. Reading the story Linda McCartney just hammers home the message that to succeed you need the right structure and proper management. You can’t wing it and hope things work out in the end, or rather you probably can for a short time but eventually things will fall apart. Going back to the previously mentioned article, it could be said that Linda McCartney had a certain amount of panache because they had victories in spite of their flakiness but Sky don’t have panache because they are more calculating. Doing things properly sometimes means you lose the love.
The other article I particularly liked is about Jean-François Naquet-Radiguet who was in charge of the Tour de France for just one year. What a weird story it is. From 1903 to 1986 only three people had run the race: the first was Henri Desgrange, the founder, after the war it was taken over by his deputy Jacques Goddet, who was joined in 1962 by Félix Lévitan, who looked after the financial side. When they left, after some scandal about the cross subsidising of a failed Tour of America, it was thought a fresher, more businesslike approach was needed and, for whatever reason, they appointed Naquet-Radiguet, who had no previous connection with the sport. The outsider, coming into a set-up that had been running in its own way for decades, with his own ideas, is a classic recipe for jealousies, politicking and turmoil (think only of the succession of long term football managers like Alex Fergusson or Matt Busby). And so it was, Naquet-Radiguet lasted only one year. But, and to my mind this is a very big but, he should be given the credit for setting up the most exciting finish in the race’s history. He didn’t like the tradition of the last day being a procession and thought it should be raced until the end. he shook things up with a final time trial on the Champs Elysées. As it so happened, in 1989 the two leaders were close enough for this to matter and for there to be an outside chance it might change the result. Laurence Fignon led Greg LeMond by 50 seconds, which should have been enough but you never know, especially as Fignon did not seem to be as focussed on the disciplines of time trailing as LeMond. His pony tail flapped out behind him, causing an increase in drag (LeMond wore an aero helmet), he was on the drops (LeMond had aero bars). Small things matter and LeMond won by 8 seconds - the smallest margin there has ever been, and probably ever will be. Brilliant. If that was Naquet-Radiguet legacy than that would have been enough but he saw that the race needed to adapt to the modern media and sharpen its image. Something his successors have been successful in doing ever since.
The Cycling Anthology doesn't have a theme and one article doesn't lead into another; they all stand alone. But these two essays are linked in that they both deal with times of transition. Linda McCartney happened at a time when British cycling was emerging from its old isolationist, amateurish ways and embracing the sport with a new attitude. A transformation which would eventually lead to the development of champions. Naque-Radiguet was about a change from the old guard and some of its old ways. Times of transition are hard on the people involved but usually throw up good stories. The cusp is an interesting place to be.
P.S. By coincidence the pieces I have highlighted were written by two of the three hosts of The Cycling Podcast, Lionel Birnie and Daniel Friebe (the other host is Richard Moore). If anyone has the slightest interest in professional cycling I would thoroughly recommend it.
Date of publication
2014
Book consequences
At first sight there might seem little connection between this week and last: cycling and a polemic about the virtues of working with your hands but there is a clear link. The bike is wonderful because it is one of the few remaining machines where all the working parts are in clear view and you know how it is meant to work. It is something you can take apart and put back together again, something you can understand. It is the exactly what Matt Crawford was talking about
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