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Books > Sport & Leisure > Sports & outdoor recreation > Cycling, skateboarding, rollerblading > Cycling
As a young girl, trapped in bed with a life-threatening disease,
Paula Eber dreamed of adventuring across the globe, visiting exotic
places far beyond the suffocating walls of her bedroom. Thirty
years later, now an anthropology professor, cyclist and mother of
two young girls, Paula runs into a quirky ad that sets in motion a
very unconventional idea. Why not bicycle around the world with her
family? Traveling slowly on a bicycle and camping along the way,
the family could meet the local people, intimately experiencing the
culture, history and geography of the world. Plus, the journey
could support an important cause. Each kilometer they pedaled would
raise money for asthma, the disease that had almost killed Paula as
a child. And by cycling, they would choose a sustainable form of
travel, making the world a better place to breathe. Two years
later, supported by six major outdoor sponsors and World Bike for
Breath, www.worldbikeforbreath.org, Paula, her husband, Lorenz, and
their two daughters-eleven year old Yvonne and thirteen year old
Anya-set off with two tandems, two tents, six panniers and one
stuffed elephant. Their audacious plan: to pedal 15,000 kilometers
across Europe, through Asia, Australia and the South Pacific and
across North America in an unbroken, continuous circle around the
globe. As they cycle, the Ebers do indeed plunge deeply into the
local culture. They become guests of honor of an Italian cycling
team; cook dinner with a Mongolian family over a dung fire in their
yurt; participate in an ancient tea ceremony at a Buddhist
monastery in Taiwan and are treated as honored guests at the Dayton
rodeo in the U.S. However, as the family struggles with increasing
hardships and danger, both parents and children are forced to grow
and change both individually and together. Facing a 100 degree heat
wave in Italy, a snowstorm at the Great Wall in China, an
earthquake in Taiwan, and a tornado in North Dakota, the family is
forced to work together-each dependent on the skills of the other,
no matter how young. Dealing with drug smugglers and corrupt border
guards in Russia, a bite by a poisonous molokau in Tonga and a
broken foot in New Zealand, Paula and Lorenz learn hard leadership
and decision-making lessons as parents. Yvonne and Anya come face
to face with poverty and global inequities as they camp on the lawn
of a Lithuanian man whose home has no heat or insulation. And
weaving throughout the story is Paula's own personal challenge:
overcoming her asthma as she struggles to breathe while cycling
over high altitude mountains in the Alps and Rockies and battling
pollution filled air in Asia. On August 28, 2004, the Ebers
finished their 14,931 kilometer journey in Washington D.C. They
raised $65,000 to combat a disease that kills more than 250,000
children and adults around the world every year. The family spoke
about clean air and asthma to over 150 newspapers, magazines and TV
stations across the globe, including features in Time for Kids and
NPR, and PBS's Road Trip Nation. They are the only family on record
to complete a full circumnavigation of the world by bicycle.
A profound insight into the stories behind the image of the Tour de
France, showcasing the sacrifice, despair, strategy and chaos of
those four weeks in July to reveal a fascinating new perspective on
the greatest race on earth. Every year the Tour de France puts on
one of the great viewing spectacles in sport, showcasing
extraordinary human endurance and one of the most beautiful
countries on the planet. But underneath the facade, it's a
different story - a story of suffering, sacrifice and pain. This is
that story. Pain and Privilege gets under the skin of cycling's
cruel super race and describes what the race that unites people
from all over the globe is really like, from the laughs to the
tears, from the politics to the personal, from inspirational
triumph to desperate failure. Team staff, sports scientists,
psychologists, media and dignitaries all contribute to draw a more
complex and confronting portrait of the world's grandest sporting
spectacle. With exclusive contributions from Richie Porte, Cadel
Evans, Chris Froome, Michael Matthews, Caleb Ewan, Sam Bennett,
Robbie McEwen, Michael Morkov, Jens Debusschere, Matt White, Allan
Peiper, Cherie Pridham, Enrico Poitschke, Mathew Hayman, Simon
Clarke, Marcel Kittel and Luke Durbridge. Plus, insights from
Geraint Thomas, Mark Cavendish, Patrick Lefevere, David Brailsford,
Tadej Pogacar and more.
"The holy grail for disillusioned cycling fans . . . The book's
power is in the collective details, all strung together in a story
that is told with such clear-eyed conviction that you never doubt
its veracity. . . . "The Secret Race" isn't just a game changer for
the Lance Armstrong myth. It's the game ender."--"Outside"
"NEW YORK TIMES "BESTSELLER - WINNER OF THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS
BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD
"The Secret Race" is the book that rocked the world of professional
cycling--and exposed, at long last, the doping culture surrounding
the sport and its most iconic rider, Lance Armstrong. Former
Olympic gold medalist Tyler Hamilton was once one of the world's
top-ranked cyclists--and a member of Lance Armstrong's inner
circle. Over the course of two years, "New York Times" bestselling
author Daniel Coyle conducted more than two hundred hours of
interviews with Hamilton and spoke with numerous teammates, rivals,
and friends. The result is an explosive page-turner of a book that
takes us deep inside a shadowy, fascinating, and surreal world of
unscrupulous doctors, anything-goes team directors, and athletes so
relentlessly driven to win that they would do almost anything to
gain an edge. For the first time, Hamilton recounts his own battle
with depression and tells the story of his complicated relationship
with Lance Armstrong. This edition features a new Afterword, in
which the authors reflect on the developments within the sport, and
involving Armstrong, over the past year. "The Secret Race" is a
courageous, groundbreaking 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.
With a new Afterword by the authors
"Loaded with bombshells and revelations."--VeloNews
" An] often harrowing story . . . the broadest, most accessible
look at cycling's drug problems to date."--"The New York Times"
" 'If I cheated, how did I get away with it?' That question, posed
to "SI" by Lance Armstrong five years ago, has never been answered
more definitively than it is in Tyler Hamilton's new
book."--"Sports Illustrated"
"Explosive.""--The Daily Telegraph "(London)
What is it really like to be a racer? What is it like to be swept
along at 60kmh in the middle of the pack? What happens to the body
during a high-speed chute? What tactics must teams employ to win
the day, the jersey, the grand tour? What sacrifices must a cyclist
make to reach the highest levels? What is it like on the bus? In
the hotels? What camaraderie is built in the confines of a team?
What rivalries? How does it feel to be constantly on the road, away
from loved ones, tasting one more calorie-counted hotel breakfast?
David Millar offers us a unique insight into the mind of a
professional cyclist during his last year before retirement. 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
**Winner - Sweetspot Cycling Book of the Year** For 11 years I was
a professional cyclist, competing in the hardest and greatest races
on Earth. I was in demand from the world's best teams, a well-paid
elite athlete. But I never won a race. I was the hired help. When
my mum dropped me off in a small French town aged 17, I was full of
determination to be a professional cyclist, but I was completely
green. I went from mowing the team manager's lawn to winning every
amateur race I entered. Then I turned pro and realised I hated the
responsibility and pressure of chasing victory. And that's when I
became a domestique. I learned to take that hurt and give it
everything I had to give, all for someone else's win. When the
order came in to ride I pushed out with the hardest rhythm I could,
dragging the group faster and faster, until my whole body screamed
with pain. There were times I rode myself to a standstill,
clutching the barrier metres from the line, as the lead group shot
past. But that's what made me a so good at my job. As my career
took off, I started looking at the fans lining the route, cheering
us like heroes. The passion for cycling oozed off them, but they
couldn't know what it was really like. They didn't see the terrible
hotels, the crazy egos or all the shit that goes with great
expectations. Well, this is how it is...
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