Come and Gone - Joe Parkin

Joe Parkin's "Come and Gone" chronicles the rebirth of pro bike racing in America, it's his sequel to the highly praised memoir, "A Dog in a Hat".

Boulder, CO, USA, May 12, 2010... After a grueling five-year education in European bike racing, Joe describes his return from Belgium, his struggles with the nascent American bike racing scene, and the birth of mountain bike racing.

After those years of racing in Belgium, Joe Parkin said goodbye to Flanders knowing he might never go back, and he never did.

Joe flew back to the U.S. with empty pockets and no contract. For several years, he was unable to watch a Belgian spring classic without tears in his eyes, and seeing his former teammates race the 1992 Tour de France was torture.

Eventually Joe landed a spot with the elite Coors Light cycling team. After the years in Europe though, racing in the U.S. was a difficult transition, with poorly organised events, little sponsorship money, and inexperienced racers. Joe was unable to muster the motivation that had driven him every day in Europe.

Until he started racing mountain bikes.

Come and Gone follows Joe through three hardscrabble seasons chasing wins on the U.S. road racing circuit before he changes course and tastes victory as a mountain bike pro.

A gritty, authentic, and heartfelt personal memoir, the book is also a chronicle of the rebirth of professional bike racing in America.

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Some man.

As the first Briton to win 3 Olympic golds at the same Games since 1908, Scotland's Chris Hoy has become a beacon for British sporting achievement.

This autobiography charts his life from 7-year-old BMX fanatic, supported by a devoted dad and local cycling club, through paralysing self-doubt and a major career overhaul, to the sport's holy grail.

Chris is a genuine sporting superhero - and he's British. This 33-year-old cycling fanatic from Murrayfield in the west of Edinburgh defied the doubters who thought he would struggle when his specialist discipline, the 1km time trial, was dropped from the Olympics, and went on to reinvent himself as a track cycling sprinter and triple Olympic gold medallist in Beijing.

His return to these shores sparked unprecedented celebrations and real admiration that here was a role model who was the epitome of all things that are good in sport.

What makes a champion in sport? In this book, Chris returns to his roots as a child fully engaged with the BMX craze of the Eighties; when, even as a seven year old his will to succeed allied to an unyielding mental strength set him apart from other youngsters of his age.

A promising rower and rugby player in school, it was when he joined his first local cycling club, the Dunedin CC,  and spent most weekends of the year competing in national events from Blackpool to Bristol that the seeds of his future career were sown, flourishing when he joined the City of Edinburgh Racing Club.

With the devoted support of his family, Hoy drove himself to the pinnacle of his sport at the same time as British track cycling established itself as a pioneering force on the world stage.

In the lead up to London 2012, there is no sporting icon better placed to demonstrate what it takes to reach the top than Chris Hoy.

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Mark comes across as not afraid to speak his mind.

Boy Racer steps behind the scenes of the Tour de France. It unmasks the exotic, contradictory, hysterical and brutal world of professional cycling from the compellingly candid viewpoint of someone right in the thick of it.

Written off as ‘fat’ and ‘useless’ in his youth, Mark Cavendish is now cycling's brightest star.

His extraordinary six stage-wins at this year’s Tour proved him Britain’s best ever cyclist.

Some have called him cocky, but to anyone who doesn’t like his style, Mark will simply shrug his shoulders and reply, ‘I know I’m good. There’s no point lying about it.’

Peers say that they have never seen anyone with Cavendish’s hunger for success and while this fearlessness – both in the saddle and on the record – has at times led to controversy, it has also earned him the respect of ever-more fans.

"In Boy Racer we follow him through through the mayhem of the Tour de France in a page-turning journey of pure exhilaration" - well, that's the publisher's view.

It's an enjoyable read, most interesting when Mark is discussing his teammates and rivals, sometimes they're the same thing, and he's not been afraid to potentially piss some people off, not that he'll be particularly bothered about that.

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A great read about about what it's really like not being on a "Plan".

A Dog in a Hat is the remarkable story of Joe Parkin. In 1987, Parkin left the comforts of home to become a bike racer in Belgium, the hardest place in the world to be a bike racer.

As one of the first American pros in Europe, Parkin was what the Belgians call “a dog with a hat on” — something familiar, yet decidedly out of place.

Parkin's memoir reads like a novel. In plainspoken and fast-paced prose, Parkin describes the true life of the professional bike racer, putting the reader into the whirlwind of this hardest of athletic educations.

A Dog in a Hat begins with Parkin's terrifying first visit to his team doctor, where he is strapped to a table and monitored by humming electrodes as men in white lab coats coldly divine his future as a pro.

Parkin's story is very honest. A Dog in a Hat celebrates the glory of bike racing, but Parkin thrillingly tells the hard reality of the life—the drugs, the payoffs, the betrayals by teammates, the battles with team owners for contracts and money, the endless promises that keep you going, and the rider's sheer physical agony of racing day after day.

Despite the pain, despite the suffering, A Dog in a Hat is a great book. It is one American’s story of his love affair with professional cycling, set in the hardest place in the world to be a bike racer. It is a story not really explored before, and one that you'll revisit again and again.

You can download the first chapter for free (350kb PDF)

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"The Escape Artist" is a poignant tale.

Matt Seaton’s critically acclaimed memoir about his obsession for cycling and how that obsession was tamed.

For a time there were four bikes in Matt Seaton’s life.

His evenings were spent 'doing the miles' on the roads out of south London and into the hills of the North Downs and Kent Weald.

Weekends were taken up with track meets, time trials and road races – rides that took him from cold village halls at dawn and onto the empty bypasses of southern England.

With its rituals, its code of honour and its comradeship, cycling became a passion that bordered on possession.

It was at once a world apart, private to its initiates and, through the races he rode in Belgium, Mallorca and Ireland, a passport to an international fraternity. Anyone who's been a member of a cycling club will read this and smile to themselves - we've all experienced this passion, and we'll recognise it in Matt's writings too.

But then marriage, children and his wife's illness forced a reckoning with real life and, ultimately, a reappraisal of why cycling had become so compelling in the first place.

Today, those bikes are scattered, sold, or gathering dust in an attic.

Wry, frank and elegiac, ‘The Escape Artist’ is a celebration of an amateur sport and the simple beauty of cycling. It is also a story about the passage from youth to adulthood, about what it means to give up something fiercely loved in return for a kind of wisdom.

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Have you seen this man?

I was the Great Britain team mechanic for those championships, but Mr. Obree didn’t remember to mention this fact in his book. You could call this the bitter out-pouring of a man scorned, but rather it’s just my memory of what happened.

The book is very interesting; it gives the reader an insight into the thoughts of a top class athlete, a bit of a wacky one, but defiantly an individual, a one-off.

Like all geniuses, Graeme doubts himself, thinks he’s a failure to the point of trying to commit suicide on three occasions.

His story is a compelling read in the same way Lance Armstrong’s “It’s not about the bike”.

The difference is that Armstrong battles against his illness (cancer) to win out in the end, Graeme has his illness (bipolar affective disorder) with him all the time and possibly it will win.

The stories of his early years of cycling in Scotland brought back a lot of memories for me, I am older and did my cycling from Glasgow, 30 miles north of Ayrshire where Obree started, but the experiences would be the same for a lot of people. I don’t know if cyclists in other countries have a thing called a “drum-up” (a fire lit to heat up cups of tea) or not, but I’m sure suffering cold, exhaustion and hunger is a universal thing with all cyclists.

Proof that Graeme has shaved his legs at least once in his career.

Obree’s descriptions of how he built his own frame and components are as fantastic as they are innovative. A sad story of a bright flame that burnt very quickly. One of his escapes from reality on a touring holiday to Spain, he visited a bullfight, from his description of the fight and of how the bull was killed, he didn’t understand it, but at least he visited one which is more than most tourist would do. This is a very good book and a must to read, except for one omission - me!

In the book his recounting of the Worlds Championships of 1994 on the Italian island of Sicily, Graeme said the manager was also the mechanic - this is not correct as I was the mechanic for the track, time trial and the road events which at that time were all held in the same place, unlike now, as the track and road are in different venues.

All the team flew down except me and the masseur, Gordon Johnston; we had a 3 day drive from England through France, Belgium, Germany and Switzerland and to drive the full length of Italy to the island of Sicily’s capital Palermo, a bit tiring but a great 3 days that we managed to do in a day and a half on the return journey.

Sicily is a beautiful place scarred with flower wreaths on all the roads, not from accidents but from mafia killings, which was a bit worrying. A judge had his house at the back of the team hotel, he had armed soldier guards on sentry duty and when he came home for lunch it was like a military operation with three cars and 20 armed guards in tow. When some fireworks went off one night during dinner, tourists stood up to look out the window while locals hid under the tables.

Like all good riders, Graeme doesn't stand when he can sit, or sit when he can lie down. Or stay awake when he can sleep, for that matter.

The team was in Sicily a week before the championships to get used to the track and everything, but no-one could get used to the heat, even the Italians from Milan and Rome referred to Sicily as 'Africa'. Most days were in the 40’s ºC with humidity over 80%, all training and racing was to be done either in the morning or evening, but the main problems were the UCI and the way they just did not want Graeme Obree to ride.

We had three commissaries examining Graeme’s “Old Faithful” every day to see if it conformed to the rules. First the saddle was "too far forward", and then it wasn’t "commercially available", as we had bent it a little, I suggested turning the saddle round, pointing the other direction, that didn’t go down well!

Then after I had asked one of the workers from the track to bring his child’s saddle from home they just made up a new rule on the spot to stop him.

During this time I also had to build up Chris Boardman’s gold medal wining Lotus bike. I had to saw the carbon frame’s built-in seat pin to the correct length and drill 2 holes for the clamp; it has to be right first time as there is no adjustment. I was sweating a lot, and it had nothing to do with the temperature.

Graeme had unveiled his new bars, which became his superman position a year later. At the time he didn’t like them, and they ended up in a Sicilian dustbin!

Boardman went on to take the gold medal and Graeme was disqualified after a farce of a qualifying ride where he was 4th. Fastest through an obstacle course of judges and commissaries.

Graeme in his soon-to-be-banned-AGAIN position, this time: Superman.

The other rider I was looking after was Paul Curran, who was riding the last ever Motor-paced world champs. His pacer was the famous Joop Zijlaard - a real character, and in the qualifying ride all was going well, Paul was sitting in fourth position and ready to pass the Austrian pairing to go through to the final.

Every time they tried to pass, the Austrian moved up the track to close the door on them. This happened three times; on the fourth occasion Joop reached across and shook the handlebars of the Austrian pacer, all at over 50 mph: frightening!

After the race some journalists came to talk to Paul about his ride, and one of them asked him how much his bike was worth. Under the circumstances (that that was the last ever motor-paced world champs), I said “f**k all now!”. I don't think that’s what got printed.

Not much else of any excitement happened at the track except on the last night the local kids stole most of the car wheels from the car park, then it was off to Catania for the time trial.

We were going to be faced with the same problems for Graeme as he was going to use “Old Faithful” again.

Chris Boardman had lent him his Look tri-bar and stem set up so all should be legal, so we set off on a trial ride on the course. Half way along a dual carriageway Graeme stopped for some adjustments on his bike, gave me the bike and got into the car: he had stopped right next to a decomposing dog that he and the others had spotted earlier. Phew! That dog stunk!

Work had to be done to Graeme’s training bike as the saddle kept slipping down, so a handy drink (I think it was Aquarius) can was soon cut for a shim to fit down the seat tube and then Graeme could go training up the smoking Mount Etna.

The time trial started with us in the team car and all the press cars and TV motorbikes behind us. You couldn’t see for vehicles and the noise was unbelievable.

As the ride went on Graeme went slower and one by one the cars and bikes disappeared until it was only us and a commissar.

Chris Boardman won his second gold medal and we had to move on Agrigento for the pro road champs and another cycling Scotsman, Robert Millar - but that’s another story...

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You'll laugh on nearly every page with this book.

Not only is it the world's largest and most watched sporting event, but also the most fearsome physical challenge ever conceived by man, demanding every last ounce of will and strength, every last drop of blood, sweat, and tears.

If ever there was an athletic exploit specifically not for the faint of heart and feeble of limb, this is it. So what, you might ask, 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 is 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, this is the book for you.

French Revolutions is Tim Moore's funniest book to date, and it is also one of the funniest sports books ever written.

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Push Yourself is a good fun read, which will make you want to go and see the races for yourself.

"Push Yourself Just A Little Bit More" by Johnny Green is an interesting read, mostly because it's a book about the Tour de France, written by someone who isn't a typical cycling journo.

For sure that's not to say it's a kinda "Le Tour for Dummies", explaining for example what 'le peloton' is and what 'attacking' means, but it is interesting to read about the race from a priviledged spectator's point of view - Johnny is simply a fan of the race, who has managed to blag himself and his pals press passes with no intention of doing any serious writing or coverage of the event itself.

As someone who has spent time at the roadside, in cafe's, and as a member of the press corps covering the race, I could relate so much to his experiences.

It's made doubly entertaining because it is interlaced with comments about various rock bands on tour: the previous book I'd read by Johnny was "A Riot Of Our Own", about his time touring with The Clash (one of my favourite bands).

Johnny also draws parallels between a rock star's requirements to keep going on tour, even when totally exhausted, and a pro cyclist's - he has a very laid back and sympathetic attitude to the use of "substances".

Overall, the book is simply a good laugh, and it manages to portray just how much fun there is to be had in following a bike race with your pals.

Anyone for the Ronde van Vlaanderen next spring?  Ed? ...Stevie?

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The title works on two levels: after being slung out of the Giro D'Italia race on the penultimate day on a charge of suspected EPO use, whilst leading by a long way, Marco was hounded by demons - insecurity, shame, confusion, betrayal, distrust - all the way through a terrible cocaine addiction to his demise of an overdose.

This is a desperately sad tale, which everyone should read with an open mind.

In addition, Manuela [or Man(u)], his personal manager, tried everything in her power to help him restore firstly his self-esteem and motivation, and laterly his will to live.

Chasing Marco around Europe, baby-sitting him to prevent self-harm, and collecting him from wherever he ended up, meant that Manuella devoted a large part of her life to him, which he definitely appreciated, but all too often challenged, in the way that an errant child will challenge his parents.

It's a desperately sad tale: Marco was let down by fair-weather friends, by long-time sponsors and by money-driven hangers-on.

Most of all however, Marco was let down by cycling. Let's be honest, there is still a massive problem with doping in cycling - and indeed in pretty much all professional sport - in the week where Roberto Heras is positive following his 4th Vuelta D'Espana win, it is still difficult to believe that top riders are achieving their palmares on muesli and spring water.

It's akin to speeding on the motorway - most people do it, and you're only guilty if your caught. Still, the way that the Italian press and judiciary hounded Marco was astonishing, and certainly led to his frightful depression, which in turn forced him to seek an escape in cocaine, rather than training and dignity.

Marco saw his depression as the problem and his addiction as a symptom, but over the years these roles reversed, and Marco became heavily dependent upon the drugs and incapable of functioning normally for any length of time.

The book is very well written, and seems to spare no details. However, whilst much is made of that terrible day when Marco failed his blood tests, and his determination that there was a conspiracy behind it, it's noticable that there isn't a resolute denial either.

In many ways, in this story, it's not important. What is clear from reading it, is that once you start to dabble in drugs, you may think you're in control, but sooner or later, it'll control you. A harrowing, sad, heart-rending read.

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Alan Peiper.

This book, Allan Peiper's story, is a little different from the usual sports biography: it's clear that Allan is a sensitive, thoughtful, somewhat spiritual bloke, who spends a lot of time trying to get through life in the best way possible, whilst looking after others (he's currently working as a Team Director for the Lotto - Davitamon Pro cycling team), and usually putting himself further down his priority list than most other folk would.

The book does detail his early days though, and I found these sections particularly interesting, partly because he talks about riders who I idolised in my youth, guys like Allan himself, Robert Millar, Eddy Plankaert and Bernard Hinault, and partly because they do help to explain why such a mild mannered and gentle man was able to draw on his inner anger and have a very successful and worthy career as a pro bike rider.

Allan admits to dabbling a little in primitive amphetamines a couple of times, but explains that the ethos at that time was of children eating sweeties in class behind the teacher's back, whereas nowadays, with the money involved in professional sport, any cheating is viewed more in the context of sporting fraud.

The reader can forgive Allan because he was simply doing what most of the others were doing, albeit he appears to be "kitting up" to a far lesser extent than most.

The double dealings and buying and selling of races are discussed (this is all part and parcel of pro cycling), as is his relationships with his managers and directors, and other riders.

The book is organised into chapters with each one concentrating on various characters (some very famous) that Allan knew and worked alongside - it's an unusual format, but it really does work.

The format means that the story leaps around chronologically quite a lot, but that just makes the book more enjoyable and less of a straightforward progression through his life - he adds his views and perceptions on every page, and his descriptions never lean towards sensationalism, yet his experiences with the various characters in the sport are enthralling.

A thoroughly enjoyable read by a very likeable, honest bloke.

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