Sports Biography Cycling

Known, thanks to his racing style and attitude, for being one of road cycling's last romantics, Dan has always shied away from revealing too much about himself and his story. Now, having retired at the end of the 2021 season aged 35 and no longer bound by the constraints of the racing circuit, Dan feels the time is right to tell his story in the same forthright and honest manner that he rode his bike. This audiobook reflects Dan's generous and outspoken spirit, his resilience to pain, crashes, bad luck and, finally, his acceptance of destiny.

Lightweight, compact, distinctively styled, and now, electric: The Brompton isn't the only folding bicycle—or even the first. But everyone who has been on one will enthusiastically testify to its marvelous design (virtually unchanged over decades) and the particular joy of riding it. Will Butler-Adams, CEO of Brompton Bicycles, has been at the company for twenty years. Initially, he worked as an engineer for Andrew Ritchie, the bike's brilliant inventor and the business's founder, before taking the helm in 2008.

Sharp, resourceful and a permanent outsider; for nearly 20 years Steve Cummings determinedly blazed his own winning trail in international cycling. A maverick who defied the dominant teams, to record a sequence of gloriously improbable victories, he has lived and raced with legends of the sport—Cavendish, Wiggins, Froome, Thomas and others—about whom he has strong views and untold stories.

On 22 July 2012 Bradley Wiggins became the first British man ever to win the Tour de France. In an instant, 'Wiggo' became a national hero. Ten days later, having swapped his yellow jersey for the colours of Team GB, he won Olympic gold in the time trial, adding to his previous six medals to become the nation's most decorated Olympian of all time. Outspoken, honest, intelligent and fearless, Wiggins has been hailed as the people’s champion.

In the late 1880s, Frank Lenz of Pittsburgh, a renowned high-wheel racer and long-distance tourist, dreamed of cycling around the world. He finally got his chance by recasting himself as a champion of the downsized "safety-bicycle" with inflatable tires, the forerunner of the modern road bike that was about to become wildly popular. In the spring of 1892 he quit his accounting job and gamely set out west to cover 20,000 miles over three continents as a correspondent for Outing magazine. Two years later, after having survived countless near disasters and unimaginable hardships, he approached Europe for the final leg. He never made it....

Jill Homer, a newspaper editor in Alaska, has an outlandish ambition: a 2,740-mile mountain bike race along the rugged Continental Divide. But Jill's dream starts to unravel the minute she sets it in motion. An accident during a race on the Iditarod Trail results in serious frostbite. As she struggles with painful recovery and uncertainties about leaving a good job to pursue a seemingly impossible pipe dream, her employer hands down an offer she can't refuse.

Mark Cavendish is the first British cyclist to win the Tour de France's green jersey, the first to wear the iconic rainbow jersey in almost 50 years and our only ever rider to capture the Giro d'Italia points title. He is the most prolific sprinter in the Tour's history, and - according to L'Equipe - the best sprinter of all time. But smashing records and racking up victories means whole new levels of fame: and this has come at a price. Living in the goldfish bowl, he has come under fire for his bombastic riding style and been portrayed as everything from an outlaw to a psychopath.

In the wake of the Tour de France’s fallen heroes, the story of one of history’s most legendary cyclists provides a much-needed antidote. In 1907 the world’s most popular athlete was not Cy Young or Ty Cobb. Rather, he was a black bicycle racer named "Major” Taylor. In his day, Taylor became a spiritual and athletic idol. He was the fastest man in America and a champion who prevailed over unspeakable cruelty. The men who aided him were among the most colorful to emerge from the era.

In 1887 a 21-year-old newspaperman named George Nellis (1865-1948) rode a bicycle from Herkimer, New York, to San Francisco in 72 days, surpassing the transcontinental bicycle record by several weeks. He averaged 50 miles a day pedaling a 52-inch, high-wheeled Columbia Expert "ordinary" bicycle with a tubular steel frame and hard rubber tires, and he lost 23 pounds in the process.

In the tradition of The Boys in the Boat and Seabiscuit, a fascinating portrait of a groundbreaking but forgotten figure - the remarkable Major Taylor, the Black man who broke racial barriers by becoming the world’s fastest and most famous bicyclist at the height of the Jim Crow era.

Bernard Hinault is one of the greatest cyclists of all time. He is a five-time winner of the Tour de France and the only man to have won each of the Grand Tours on more than one occasion. Three decades on from his retirement, he remains the last Frenchman to win the Tour de France. His victory in 1985 marks the turning point when the nation who had dominated the first eight decades of the race they had invented suddenly found they were no longer able to win it.

In 2018, Leigh Timmis became the fastest person to cycle across Europe—in just 16 days, 10 hours and 45 minutes—breaking the previous world record by an astonishing 8 days and 17 hours. But when he set out to break the record, Leigh wasn't just trying to conquer the road. As he prepared his body for this ultra-endurance world record attempt, Leigh realized that he would have to confront deeper problems to make it to the finish line.

For more than a decade, Mahendra Singh Dhoni has captivated the world of cricket and more than a billion Indians with his incredible ingenuity as captain, wicketkeeper, and batsman. Bharat Sundaresan tracks down the cricketer's closest friends in Ranchi and artfully presents the different shades of Dhoni - the Ranchi boy, the fauji, the diplomat, Chennai's beloved Thala, the wicketkeeping Pythagoras - and lays bare the man underneath. He discovers a certain je ne sais quoi about the man who has a magical ability to transform and elevate everything that comes into his orbit.

In November 2015 Sarah Outen completed her five-year, 25,000 mile journey looping the planet by cycling across Europe, Asia and North America and canoeing and kayaking across the North Pacific and most of the North Atlantic.

Jools Walker rediscovered cycling aged 28 after a decade-long absence from the saddle. When she started blogging about her cycle adventures under the alias Lady Vélo, a whole world was opened up to her. But it's hard to find space in an industry not traditionally open to women - especially women of colour. Shortly after getting back on two wheels, Jools was diagnosed with depression and then, in her early 30s, hit by a mini-stroke. Yet, through all of these punctures, one constant remained: Jools' love of cycling.

Most fans and critics are aware of Armstrong's many accolades and controversies, but in order to truly understand Lance Armstrong, you must first understand where he came from. This unauthorized biography explores Armstrong's upbringing, his early years, and details his breakthrough into cycling all the way through the fallout of his big Oprah interview in 2013.

His cheeks are as tender as raw meat on a butcher's block. And those are just the cheeks of his face. As he slumps in the saddle, watching the road disappear into the distance, he aches in parts of his body that he's only just discovering he has. When Mark travels to Ecuador to go hiking and climbing, he discovers a land of dramatic volcanoes rising through the clouds and wide-open horizons rich in history.

In 2001, when the bible of the sport, Cycling Weekly, ran a poll to decide the greatest British cyclist, Chris Boardman's was the name that topped the list. It was 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 - that lit the spark for modern 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.

Born in Ghana, West Africa, with one deformed leg, he was dismissed by most people - but not by his mother, who taught him to reach for his dreams. As a boy, Emmanuel hopped to school more than two miles each way, learned to play soccer, left home at age 13 to provide for his family, and, eventually, became a cyclist. He rode an astonishing 400 miles across Ghana in 2001, spreading his powerful message: Disability is not inability. Today, Emmanuel continues to work on behalf of the disabled.

This authorised biography places Maurice Burton at the forefront of the British sporting narrative as a pioneer in our collective cultural history. It traces his experiences as the child of a Windrush-generation father and an English mother growing up in London, before moving across to the European six-day circuit, and his eventual return to South London in 1984, where he became a successful business owner and community leader.