Only thirty-six Americans have competed in the Tour de France since the world’s greatest bicycle race began in 1903. That’s not too many more than the twelve Americans who have walked on the moon. It’s far fewer than the hundreds of Americans who have reached the summit of Mount Everest.But rising stars such as Lawson Craddock of Texas, Benjamin King of Virginia, Taylor Phinney of Colorado, Daniel Holloway of California, and Tyler Farrar of Washington state are doing just that as they endure crashes, cold rain, cobblestones, crosswinds, and culture shock on their road to cycling stardom, which starts in Belgium.This is the story of the next generation—of riders not yet tainted by drug scandals, of riders still bursting with hope and potential. This is the story American cycling fans need right now. -------------------“People, get ready for great stories written well. The Belgian Hammer captures cycling culture.” —Benjamin King, 2010 U.S. Pro Road Racing Champion“The Belgian Hammer is the unique story of professional cycling that hasn’t yet been told until now. Daniel Lee has revealed the road map for the next generation of Americans hoping to become successful in Europe, where cycling is king.” —Jim Ochowicz, President/General Manager of the BMC Racing Team.“All of us who left our tire prints on the European circuits remember how racing there shaped us forever. With passion, Daniel Lee gives substance and perspective to the experience of young Americans trying to make it in Europe; and bicycle racing is illuminated by his craft.”—John Howard, three-time Olympic cyclist, who set a bicycle speed record of 152.2 mph in 1985“For those who admire images of cyclists flashing with arms spread wide in triumph over the finish line on blue-sky days, Daniel Lee gives us an insightful, forceful, and gritty account of the rigorous―and frequently perilous―route that cyclists take to force their way up the ranks and develop skills to win. A former racer himself, Dan Lee puts his passion for the sport into his newspaper reporter experience and writing talent. In The Belgian Hammer he follows Taylor Phinney, Benjamin King, Daniel Holloway, and other legends in the making on the USA Cycling national team living in Belgium, where the young bloods from around the world go to test themselves against the best of their generation. They compete in tight packs exceeding 150 riders pumping over narrow wind-blown roads slick from rain while threading through the countryside at unrelenting speed. To spectators cycling matches the grace of ballet. Daniel Lee reveals its uncompromising demands and brutality and heroics.” ―Peter Joffre Nye, author of The Six-Day Bicycle Races: America’s Jazz Age Sport and a Trustee of the U.S. Bicycling Hall of Fame

    

    In the summer of 2018, that curse was blown away in spectacular fashion - from the cobbles of the north and the iconic mountain climbs of the Alps to the brutal slopes of the Pyrenees and, finally, the Champs-Elysees in Paris. As a boy, G had run home from school on summer afternoons to watch the Tour on television. This July, across twenty-one stages and three weeks, and under constant attack from his rivals, he made the race his own.With insight from the key characters around Geraint, this is the inside story of one of the most thrilling and heart-warming tales in sport. Not only can nice guys come first - they can win the biggest prize of all.

    You may know him as the much-loved co-presenter of ITV’s Tour de France coverage or enjoyed his BBC Olympic coverage, but beyond the easy charm Chris Boardman is one of our greatest, most inspiring cyclists.Boardman’s lone achievements in the 80s and 90s – Olympic track gold, the world hour record, repeatedly claiming the yellow jersey in the Tour de France – were the spark that started the modern era for British cycling. His endeavours both on and off the bike have made him the founding father of current golden generation – without him there would simply be no Hoy, Wiggins or Cavendish.It is a story full of intrigue: from Olympic success, to the famous duels with Graeme Obree and the insanity of the Tour de France. Chris became a legend for his combination of physical ability and technical preparation, almost single-handedly taking British cycling from wool shirts and cloth caps into the era of marginal gains. Indeed, after his career on the bike ended, a new chapter began as the backroom genius behind GB cycling. As head of the R&D team known as The Secret Squirrel Club, Chris has been responsible for the technical innovations that made the difference in 2012 and developed Boardman Bikes, which has become the country's bestselling premium bike range.

    Yet when Lance Armstrong, starting his comeback from cancer, signed for US Postal, it was Emma, the only woman on the team, who became his personal soigneur. This is the definitive inside story of that time, and of the enormous repercussions that resonate to this day for Emma, Lance and the whole sport.Emma had the strength to break cycling's omerta by speaking out against the culture of doping. She thought she would be one of many whistleblowers, doing what she believed was right. Isolated and shunned by the sport she loved, however, her reputation was systematically destroyed. And yet she had the courage to bounce back, and remarkably, to forgive those who made her existence a living hell. This is the ultimate memoir of truth and its many consequences.

    Hincapie takes us through his amateur years to the Olympics, and chronicles his exhilarating ride as a professional, including finding his true calling as Lance Armstrong’s most prized “domestique”—leading his then best friend to seven straight Tour de France victories.Hincapie speaks openly about his relationship with Armstrong, how he himself began doping, and why he quit long before the headline-making revelations. His personal evolution is the journey of a man dedicated to coming clean about his past and to restore honor to the sport he loves.

    The result is an explosive book that takes us, for the first time, deep inside a shadowy, fascinating, and surreal world of unscrupulous doctors, anything-goes team directors, and athletes so relentlessly driven to succeed that they would do anything—and take any risk, physical, mental, or moral—to gain the edge they need to win.Tyler Hamilton was once one of the world’s best-liked and top-ranked cyclists—a fierce competitor renowned among his peers for his uncanny endurance and epic tolerance for pain. In the 2003 Tour de France, he finished fourth despite breaking his collarbone in the early stages—and grinding eleven of his teeth down to the nerves along the way. He started his career with the U.S. Postal Service team in the 1990s and quickly rose to become Lance Armstrong’s most trusted lieutenant, and a member of his inner circle. For the first three of Armstrong’s record seven Tour de France victories, Hamilton was by Armstrong’s side, clearing his way. But just weeks after Hamilton reached his own personal pinnacle—winning the gold medal at the 2004 Olympics—his career came to a sudden, ignominious end: He was found guilty of doping and exiled from the sport.From the exhilaration of his early, naïve days in the peloton, Hamilton chronicles his ascent to the uppermost reaches of this unforgiving sport. In the mid-1990s, the advent of a powerful new blood-boosting drug called EPO reshaped the world of cycling, and a relentless, win-at-any-cost ethos took root. Its psychological toll would drive many of the sport’s top performers to substance abuse, depression, even suicide. For the first time ever, Hamilton recounts his own battle with clinical depression, speaks frankly about the agonizing choices that go along with the decision to compete at a world-class level, and tells the story of his complicated relationship with Lance Armstrong.A journey into the heart of a never-before-seen world, The Secret Race is a riveting, courageous act of witness from a man who is as determined to reveal the hard truth about his sport as he once was to win the Tour de France.

    Nine months later, LeMond lay in a hospital bed, his life in peril after a hunting accident, his career as a bicycle racer seemingly over. And yet, barely two years after this crisis, LeMond mounted a comeback almost without parallel in professional sports. In summer 1989, he again won the Tour—arguably the world’s most grueling athletic contest—by the almost impossibly narrow margin of 8 seconds over another French legend, Laurent Fignon. It remains the closest Tour de France in history.The Comeback chronicles the life of one of America’s greatest athletes, from his roots in Nevada and California to the heights of global fame, to a falling out with his own family and a calamitous confrontation with Lance Armstrong over allegations the latter was doping—a campaign LeMond would wage on principle for more than a decade before Armstrong was finally stripped of his own Tour titles. With the kind of narrative drive that propels books like Moneyball, and a fierce attention to detail, Daniel de Visé reveals the dramatic, ultra-competitive inner world of a sport rarely glimpsed up close, and builds a compelling case for LeMond as its great American hero.

    Prepared to be awed and inspired by Chris Froome riding on at the Tour de France with a broken wrist or Geraint Thomas finishing it with a broken pelvis.In The Hardmen the writers behind cycling superblog Velominati.com and The Rules will tell the stories and illuminate the myths of not just the greatest cyclists ever, but the toughest. From Eddy Merckx to Beryl Burton, and from Marianne Vos to Edwig Van Hooydonk, the book will lay bare the secrets of their extraordinary and inspirational endurance in the face of pain, danger and disaster. After all, suffering is one of the joys of being a cyclist. Embrace climbs, relish the descents, and get ready to harden up. . .

    But the 1998 Tour provided drama like no other. As the opening stages in Ireland unfolded, the Festina team's soigneur, Willy Voet, was arrested at the French-Belgian border with a carload of drugs. Raid upon police raid followed, with arrest after arrest hammering the Tour. In protest, there were riders' strikes and go-slows, with several squads withdrawing en masse and one expelled. By the time the Tour reached Paris, just 96 of the 189 starters remained, and of those 189 starters, more than a quarter were later reported to have doped. The 1998 ” “Tour de Farce's” status as one of the most scandal-struck sporting events in history was confirmed.Voet's arrest was just the beginning of cycling's biggest mass doping controversy--what became known as the Festina affair. It all but destroyed professional cycling as the credibility of the entire sport was called into question, and the cycling family began to split apart even as, ironically, the 1998 Tour was also one of the best races in years.The End of the Road is the first book in English to provide in-depth analysis and a colorful evocation of the tumultuous events of the 1998 Tour. Alasdair Fotheringham uncovers how the world's biggest bike race sank into such scandal. He explores its long-term consequences and what, if any, lessons were learned.

    Weeks later he testified against his former team mate Lance Armstrong, as part of the USADA investigation.In a stunning piece of writing, Barry explores the dreams and passion of a young, idealistic cycling fan from Toronto - what it was then like to ride as a teammate alongside such giants of the sport as Lance Armstrong, Mark Cavendish, Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome, and how those dreams were tainted early on in his career by a sport in crisis.But it's also the story of his eleven years riding clean, before and after his time in the notorious American Postal Team. What was it like to head for Europe at such a young age, and what was it like to escape the environment of doping, to try and start again, all the time aware that past actions may one day catch up with him?Offering a unique and elegiac insight into the life and mind of a professional sportsman - the pressures, sacrifices, fears, crashes, injuries and neuroses - Cycles of the Heart is a classic, must-read book for cycling and sports fans alike.

    There was just one difference: rather than supporting the likes of soccer teams Arsenal or Manchester United, Dave’s team of choice was the ever so slightly less glamorous Bromley Football Club—one of the last genuinely amateur soccer teams left, fighting for survival in the lowest non-league division. This tale chronicles Bromley’s worst ever season. Dave turns up to each match with his soccer cleats in his bag, just in case the team is a player short; the team misses so many goals that in one match, the taunting opposition fans actually lose count of the score. The Bromley Boys is the touching true story about supporting a club through thin and even thinner: proof that the more a team may lose on the field, the more there is to gain on the terraces.

    His womanising and frank admissions of doping appalled 1960s French society, even as his five Tour de France wins enthralled it. Paul Fournel was besotted with him from the start ("Too young to understand, I was nevertheless old enough to admire") and followed Anquetil's career with the passion of a fan and the eye of a poet. In this stunningly original biography of a complex and divisive character, Fournel - author of the seminal Vélo (or Need for the Bike) blends the story of Anquetil's life with scenes from his own, to create a classic of cycling literature.

    It's the only cycling record that matters: one man and his bike against the clock in a quest for pure speed. No teammates, no rivals, no tactics, no gears, no brakes. Just one simple question - in sixty minutes, how far can you go?Michael Hutchinson had a plan. He was going to add his name to the list of record-holders, cycling's supermen. But how does a man who became a professional athlete by accident achieve sporting immortality? It didn't sound too hard. All he needed was a couple of hand-tooled bike frames, the most expensive wheels money could buy, a support team of crack professionals, a small pot of glue, and a credit card wired to someone else's bank account. Still, getting the glue wasn't a problem...Michael Hutchinson became a full-time cyclist in 2000 after becoming disillusioned with an academic career. Over the following six years he has won more than twenty national titles, and the gold medal in the Masters' Pursuit World Championships. He is now a writer and journalist (and cyclist) and lives in south London.

    Ben Ryan, a red-haired, 40-something, spectacle-wearing Englishman, is given 20 minutes to decide whether he wants to coach Fiji's rugby sevens team, with the aim of taking them to the nation's first-ever Olympic medal. He has never been to Fiji. There has been no discussion of contracts or salary. But he knows that no one plays rugby like the men from these isolated Pacific islands, just as no one plays football like the kids from the Brazilian favelas, or no one runs as fast as the boys and girls from Jamaica's boondocks. He knows too that no other rugby nation has so little - no money and no resources, only basic equipment and a long, sad history of losing its most gifted players to richer, greedier nations.Ryan says yes. And with that simple word he sets in motion an extraordinary journey that will encompass witchdoctors and rugby-obsessed prime ministers, sun-smeared dawns and devastating cyclones, intense friendships and bitter rows, phone taps and wild nationwide parties. It will end in Rio with a performance that not only wins Olympic gold but reaches fresh heights for rugby union and makes Ben and his 12 players living legends back home.