Every moment in the saddle is an opportunity to express his personality, and nobody else has succeeded in making elite cycling look so much fun. From no-hands wheelies on the slopes of Mont Ventoux to press conference mischief with clamouring journalists, Peter exudes a passion for the sport and a lovable desire to bring smiles to the faces of his fans.So, for the very first time, you will have the opportunity to glimpse behind the scenes of Peter’s world. You will discover the gruelling training programmes necessary for success, and how Peter copes with the pressure of high expectation. You will feel that sense of elation when crossing the line ahead of the pack, and moments of desperation, like in 2017 when Peter realised he wouldn’t be allowed to challenge for his sixth Tour de France green jersey. But what better tonic than to ensure a third year in rainbow – an achievement which may never be repeated again.

    And then there are the riders: men of almost superhuman capabilities, men who have become his friends, men whose stories he has written day in day out for the past decade. But even the biggest fan can one day wake up to find that he has lost his faith. Bad Blood is the story of Jeremy Whittle's journey from unquestioning fan to Tour de France insider and confirmed sceptic. It's about broken friendships and a sport divided; about having to choose sides in the war against doping; about how galloping greed and corporate opportunism have led the Tour de France to the brink of destruction. Part personal memoir, part devastating exposé of a sport torn apart by drugs and scandal, Bad Blood is a love letter to one man's past, and a warning to cycling's future.

    Over the course of a season on the World Tour, Millar puts us in touch with the sights, smells and sounds of the sport. This is a book about youth and age, fresh-faced excitement and hard-earned experience. It is a love letter to cycling.'Cycling has always been about a great deal more than its winners, and The Racer is quite a ride' Spectator

    Twice-winner of the Tour de France in the early eighties, Fignon became the star for a new generation. In 1989 he took part in one of the most fiercely-contested Tours of all time. Over the course of 3,285 kilometres he lost out to his American arch-rival, Greg LeMond, by an agonising eight seconds on the final Parisian time trial.In this forthright and unflinching account the former champion spares neither friends nor opponents, nor even himself. In doing so he gives cycling fans a tantalising glimpse of what really went on behind the scenes of this epic sport - the friendships, the rivalries, the betrayals, the scheming, the parties, the girls, and, of course, the performance-enhancing drugs.Laurent Fignon lived cycling at its peak. He enjoyed a truly exceptional career, winning over eighty titles from 1982 to 1993. The highs were matched by lows of serious injury, periods of self-doubt, and accusations of cheating.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.Laurent Fignon was born in Paris in 1960. He won the Tour de France in 1983 and 1984 and the Giro d'Italia in 1989. In June 2009, Fignon revealed that he was being treated for advanced intestinal cancer and he died in August 2010.

    Although he won three stages of the Tour De France—and wore the yellow jersey twice—Voigt never claimed an overall victory. He became a star because he embodies qualities that go beyond winning and losing: sacrifice, selflessness, reliability, and devotion. European and American crowds were drawn to his aggressive riding style, outgoing nature, and refreshing realness.Voigt adopted a tireless work ethic that he carried throughout his career. In Shut Up, Legs! (a legendary Jensism), Voigt reflects upon his childhood in East Germany, juggling life as a professional cyclist and a father of six, and how he remained competitive without doping. Shut Up, Legs! offers a rare glimpse inside his heart and mind.

    In this new edition of 'Wide-Eyed and Legless', Connor describes in detail what it takes to compete, survive and win during those 26 days of gruelling effort in the name of sport.

    He knew it wouldn't come easy, but he was prepared to put in the graft. The dedication paid off – he finished sixth in the World Championships as an amateur and in 1986, he turned professional.He soon discovered it wasn't about courage, training hours or how much you wanted to win. It was about gruelling defeats, total exhaustion, and drugs - drugs that would allow you to finish the race and start another day. Kimmage ultimately left the sport to write this book – profoundly honest and ground-breaking, Rough Ride broke the silence surrounding the issue of drugs in sport, and documents one man’s love for, and struggle with, the complex world of professional cycling. ‘A must read for any cyclist’ CyclistWINNER OF WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR

    But Max Leonard, himself an accomplished amateur cyclist, does not forget the pain, the glory, the sweat, and the tears that go into these grueling climbs.  After all, cycling up a mountain is hard.  So hard that, to many, it can seem absurd. But for others, climbing a mountain gracefully (and beating your competitors up the slope) represents the pinnacle of cycling achievement. It is where legends are forged.Many books tell you where the mountains are, or how long and how high. None of them ask why. Why are mountain ranges professional cycling’s Coliseum? Why do amateurs also make pilgrimages to these high, remote roads? Why are the roads even there in the first place to lure us on to these obsession inducing climbs?   Just why are mountains so enthralling? “This is real cycling, where the glory is and where dreams come true,” according to Bradley Wiggins. Mountains are where cycling's greatest heroes have made their names. Every amateur rider wishes they could climb better, too.  Are all these people addicted to the pain? To the achievement? Or to the allure of the peaks? Some spend their weekends and holidays cycling up mountains from start to finish. But how does a rider push themselves beyond their limits to get up a 10% gradient on pedal power alone? What is happening when they do?A Higher Calling explores the central place of mountains in the folklore of road cycling. Blending adventure and travel writing with the rich narrative of racing, Max Leonard takes the reader from the battles that created the Alpine roads to the shepherds tending their flocks on the peaks, and to a Grand Tour climax on the “highest road in Europe.” And he tells stories of courage and sacrifice, war and love, obsession and even elephants, along the way.

    One of the game's great characters. A man who faced doen the demons. A top television pundit and columnist. This is the story of James Peter 'Jimmy' Greaves, one of the all-time greats of English football.Jimmy Greaves was born in east London in February 1940, and from humble beginnings began his rise to the top of the game. He scored on his Chelsea debut, aged seventeen, and became the first player to score 100 goals before the age of twenty-one. When Jimmy left Stanford Bridge for AC Milan in 1963, it outraged the Chelsea faithful, but after only four months Jimmy returned to London, to Tottenham Hotspur for £99,999. Scoring a hat-trick on his debut, Jimmy went on to help Spurs win the fA Cup and the European Cup-Winners' Cup. Throughout the 1960s Greavsie was the hero of White Hart Lane.But for all his success at both club and international level (44 goals in 57 games), there were dark struggles to overcome too. An injury picked up in the final group game of the 1966 World Cup meant that Jimmy cast a forlorn figure on the sidelines during England football's finest hour. And after a move to West Ham at the start of the 1970s, Jimmy career would be plagued by alcoholism. But however powerful his addiction, Jimmy was too strong a character to be pulled under. He came through and reinvented himself as a celebrated pundit on the beautiful game.'Greavsie' is a gripping and truthful autobiography, the story of a remarkable life laced with Jimmy's trademark wit. It is a fascinating account of the golden era of football, the characters who populated it, and the goalscoring machine at the centre of it all.

    After battling cancer and becoming an inspiration to millions, Armstrong won the Tour de France a record-breaking seven consecutive years before retiring from competition in 2005. Four years later, at thirty-seven, Armstrong decided to come out of retirement and go for the win yet again. He was racing for no salary, in a season when his greatest rival--Tour de France, Tour of Italy, and Tour of Spain champion Alberto Contador--was on his own team. The twenty-five-year-old Spaniard had been handpicked by Armstrong's own mentor, Johan Bruyneel, to be his successor. Now he would be his fiercest competition. Armstrong was about to suffer like never before--and, for the first time in recent memory, appear to be human on a bicycle. After seven Tour victories--and beating cancer--did Lance Armstrong really need to prove anything? Beyond the thrill of another possible victory, what drove him to race again? What was he seeking--and would he find it? Cycling insider Bill Strickland had unprecedented access to Armstrong, Johan Bruyneel, and the team. He takes readers behind the scenes during the 2009 racing season and along for the ride on the Tour de France with a dramatic mile-by-mile account. Offering a penetrating and candid glimpse into the man behind the myth, Tour de Lance goes beyond a single season or a single race to reveal the heart of the sport and the soul of the cyclist.

    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.

    Yet surprisingly, for many, a desire to go faster is much more important than a desire to win. Someone who wants to go faster will work at the details and take small steps rather than focusing on winning. Winning just happens when you do everything right-it's the doing everything right that's hard. And that's what fascinates and obsesses Michael Hutchinson.With his usual deadpan delivery and an awareness that it's all mildly preposterous, Hutchinson looks at the things that make you faster-training, nutrition, the right psychology-and explains how they work, and how what we know about them changes all the time. He looks at the things that make you slower, and why, and how attempts to avoid them can result in serious athletes gradually painting themselves into the most peculiar life-style corners.Faster is a book about why cyclists do what they do, about what the riders, their coaches and the boffins get up to behind the scenes, and about why the whole idea of going faster is such an appealing, universal instinct for all of us.

    So when her best friend Mick suggests a gruelling cycle ride from Land’s End to John o’Groats, she takes up the challenge. They opt for the scenic route which takes them along cycle paths, towpaths and the back roads and byways of Britain, unable to resist sampling local beers in the pubs they pass along the way.But as the pints start to stack up faster than the miles they’re putting under their tyres, Ellie wonders if they’ll ever make it to the finishing line....

    If ever there was an athletic exploit specifically not for the faint of heart and feeble of limb, this is it. So you might ask, what is Tim Moore doing cycling it?An extremely good question. Ignoring the pleading dictates of reason and common sense, Moore determined to tackle the Tour de France, all 2,256 miles of it, in the weeks before the professionals entered the stage. This decision was one he would regret for nearly its entire length. But readers--those who now know Moore's name deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Bill Bryson and Calvin Trillin--will feel otherwise. They are in for a side-splitting treat.French Revolutions gives us a hilariously unforgettable account of Moore's attempt to conquer the Tour de France. "Conquer" may not be quite the right word. He cheats when he can, pops the occasional hayfever pill for an ephedrine rush (a fine old Tour tradition), sips cheap wine from his water bottle, and occasionally weeps on the phone to his wife. But along the way he gives readers an account of the race's colorful history and greatest heroes: Eddy Merckx, Greg Lemond, Lance Armstrong, and even Firmin Lambot, aka the "Lucky Belgian," who won the race at the age of 36. Fans of the Tour de France will learn why the yellow jersey is yellow, and how cyclists learned to save precious seconds (a race that lasts for three weeks is all about split seconds) by relieving themselves en route. And if that isn't enough, his account of a rural France tarting itself up for its moment in the spotlight leaves popular quaint descriptions of small towns in Provence in the proverbial dust. If you either love or hate the French, or both, you'll want to travel along with Time Moore.French Revolutions is Tim Moore's funniest book to date. It is also one of the funniest sports books ever written.

    Now cyclist and journalist Chris Sidwells brings the Tour to life by pulling back the curtain on the behind-the-scenes battles, tactics, and technology that have played such a large role in the race from its inception.