Get Excited for the Tour de France with These Reads
Updated 6/30/2023
Watching the Tour de France on television has been a favorite rite of early summer for my family. If you've never watched a professional road cycling race—I don't blame you. The rules can seem arcane (sock height regulations!); etiquette transgressions can be hard to follow (don't attack during a "nature break"!); and the jargon, much of it from the French, takes time to learn (domestiques, musettes, soigneurs, sticky bottles, super tucks...), but it's a fascinating sport with a storied history.
Whether you caught Tour de France fever after watching Netflix's recent Tour de France: Unchained series or you're a seasoned fan, here are some reading selections about the sport of cycling, the history of the Tour (the scandals!), some of the major players, as well as some fiction reads if that's more your speed.
Nonfiction
The First Tour de France: Sixty Cyclists and Nineteen Days of Daring on the Road to Paris
by Peter Cossins
From its inception, the 1903 Tour de France was a colorful affair. Cyclists of the time weren't enthusiastic about participating in this "heroic" race on roads more suited to hooves than wheels, with bikes weighing up to thirty-five pounds, on a single fixed gear, for three full weeks. Assembling enough riders for the race meant paying unemployed amateurs from the suburbs of Paris, including a butcher, a chimney sweep, and a circus acrobat. Starting in the Parisian suburb of Montgeron, the route took the intrepid cyclists through Lyon, over the hills to Marseille, then on to Toulouse, Bordeaux, and Nantes, ending with great fanfare at the Parc des Princes in Paris. There was no indication that this ramshackle cycling pack would draw crowds to throng France's rutted roads and cheer the first Tour heroes. But they did; and all thanks to a marketing ruse, cycling would never be the same again.The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-Ups, and Winning at All Costs
by Tyler Hamilton and Daniel Coyle
Hamilton pulls back the curtain on the Tour de France and takes us into the secret world of professional cycling like never before: the doping, the lying, and his years as Lance Armstrong's teammate on U.S. Postal.
The End of the Road: The Festina Affair and the Tour That Almost Wrecked Cycling
by Alasdair Fotheringham
The Tour de France is always one of the most spectacular and dramatic events in sports. 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.Higher Calling: Cycling's Obsession With Mountains
by Max Leonard
A Higher Calling explores why mountains have such a magnetic appeal to cyclists the world over. 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.
Slaying the Badger: Greg Lemond, Bernard Hinault, and the Greatest Tour De France
by Richard Moore
Slaying the Badger is an incomparably detailed and highly revealing tale of cycling's most extraordinary rivalry which came to a stunning climax in the 1986 Tour de France as two teammates—five-time winner Bernard Hinault and young American Greg LeMond—vied for the yellow jersey. The stakes were high. Winning for Hinault meant capping his long cycling career by becoming the first man to win the Tour six times. For LeMond, a win means bringing America its first Tour de France victory.
Biography & Memoir
The Comeback: Greg Lemond, the True King of American Cycling, and a Legendary Tour De France
by Daniel de Visé
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.
One-Way Ticket: Nine Lives on Two Wheels
by Jonathan Vaughters
A memoir from the American cyclist discusses his legendary career, his subsequent anti-doping campaign that led him to become a witness against Lance Armstrong, and his founding of the first pro cycling team dedicated to clean riding.
Racing Through the Dark: Crash. Burn. Coming Clean. Coming Back.
by David Millar
Traces the author's journey as a young Scottish expat in Hong Kong to a professional cyclist who has competed in the Olympics, Vuelta a Espana, and the Tour de France, describing his use of banned performance-enhancing drugs before his arrest, cycling ban, and triumphant return as a determined anti-drug activist.
Draft Animals: Living the Pro Cycling Dream (Once in a While)
by Phil Gaimon
Like countless other kids, Phil Gaimon grew up dreaming of being a professional athlete. But unlike countless other kids, he actually pulled it off. After years of amateur races, hard training, living out of a suitcase, and never taking “no” for an answer, he finally achieved his goal and signed a contract to race professionally on one of the best teams in the world. Now, Gaimon pulls back the curtain on the WorldTour, cycling’s highest level. He takes readers along for his seasons in Europe, covering everything from rabid, water-bottle-stealing Belgian fans, to contract renewals, to riding in poisonous smog, to making friends in a sport plagued by doping. Draft Animals reveals a story as much about bike racing as it is about the never-ending ladder of achieving goals, failure, and finding happiness if you land somewhere in-between.
Road to Valor: A True Story of World War II Italy, the Nazis, and the Cyclist Who Inspired a Nation
by Aili McConnon
Documents the against-the-odds story of cyclist Gino Bartal from his impoverished youth in rural Tuscany and his surprise victory at the Tour de France to his secret role in the Italian resistance and his postwar second Tour de France win.
Cycle of Lies: The Fall of Lance Armstrong
by Juliet Macur
The definitive account of Lance Armstrong's spectacular rise and fall. Threading together the vivid and disparate voices of those with intimate knowledge of the private and public Armstrong, Macur weaves a comprehensive and unforgettably rich tapestry of one man's astonishing rise to global fame and fortune and his devastating fall from grace.
My World
by Peter Sagan
With four Tour de France points jersey victories, three road race world championships, the 2018 Paris-Roubaix, and multiple spring classics among Sagan’s palmares, the world of cycling agrees that this intense yet fun-loving rider is among the most dominant and fun-to-watch riders of his generation. Inside My World, Sagan discusses his relationship with fellow riders, his heroes, and how he copes with the expectation of success. He also shares technical details about his preparation, dissects the art of the sprint, and analyzes the tactics that play out during a fiercely competitive stage or race.
Fiction
The Black Jersey
by Jorge Zepeda Patterson
When racers in training for the upcoming Tour de France begin suffering violent accidents, the best friend of a favored contender helps the French police only to discover that the killer appears to be favoring his friend's team.
The Invisible Mile
by David Coventry
The 1928 Ravat-Wonder team from New Zealand and Australia were the first English-speaking team to ride the Tour de France. From June through July they faced one of the toughest in the race's history: 5,476 kilometres of unsealed roads on heavy, fixed-wheel bikes. They rode in darkness through mountains with no light and brakes like glass. They weren't expected to finish. The Invisible Mile is a powerful re-imagining of the tour from inside the peloton, where the test of endurance, for one young New Zealander, becomes a psychological journey into the chaos of the War a decade earlier.
We Begin Our Ascent
by Joe Mungo Reed
Sol and Liz are a couple on the cusp. He's a professional cyclist in the Tour de France, a workhorse but not yet a star. She's a geneticist on the brink of a major discovery, either that or a loss of funding. They've just welcomed their first child into the world, and their bright future lies just before them; if only they can reach out and grab it. But as Liz's research slows, as Sol starts doping, their dreams grow murkier and the risks graver. Over the whirlwind course of the Tour, they enter the orbit of an extraordinary cast of conmen and aspirants, who draw the young family ineluctably into the depths of an illegal drug smuggling operation. As Liz and Sol flounder to discern right from wrong, up from down, they are forced to decide: What is it we're striving for? And what is it worth?
Summaries provided via NYPL’s catalog, which draws from multiple sources. Click through to each book’s title for more.