Customer Reviews

The Giants of Cycling

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Like all true sports fans, bike racing buffs compare today's champs to those from yesteryear as if they were all out there hammering together. This is a good thing. The photos and stories in this book show a diversity which doesn't fragment but instead links together these heroes down thru 100 years of bike racing. Any reader will enjoy becoming familiar with every rider here. I don't know of a better overview of the legends and spirit of the sport in print today.

But! Because each rider is given one spread, the bio's are necessarily ultra-compact. You may well be left wanting more, but the format is still nice.

And! The photos are compelling---how could they not be?---but they aren't the best images of these riders. True, there's no point in reprinting photos that enthusiasts have already seen. Still, the shot of Jeannie Longo and a rival after a race with all eyes closed is an example of the photo weakness.

I commend VeloPress for raising the bar in bike book publishing. They have given bike books the quality that sailing and trout fishing used to claim. Check out their portfolio set of large loose photos of vintage bike racing, all suitable for framing. Classy!

If you are looking for a book that will tell you something about cyclings best than this book will do the job. The format is easy reading, comprised of short biographies of the biggest names cycling has ever produced. If like many cycling enthusiasts your memory is limited to recent years, to say maybe the seventies or eighties on, than this book will teach you a litttle history too. It didn't all begin with Armstrong, Indurain , Lemond, Hinualt or Merckx, no, these are the giants of recent memeory; before them there were legends like Jacques Anquetil and Louison Bobet. This book goes way back to the gearless bikes and leather helmet days;it is a visually stunning bit of history. Curiously there are some ommissions that I can't quite understand. Belgian winner Lucien Buysse epic ride in 1926 of 3,570 miles that took weeks to complete is not mentioned; it seems like he should have been in the history section as it was the longest and probably most sadistic Tour de France ever completed. Stuart O'Grady and Robbie McEwen are MIA. Since cycling is in essence a team sport their is no mention of that fact and the contributions of those riders who elevated those to the level of "The Giants." It seems as though there could have been a special section honoring the George Hincapie's of the world. These monor criticisms aside this is a fine historical document with vintage , amazing photographs. Recommended for the cycling fan, especially if they are history buffs.