46 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Go, Timmy, Go!, February 21, 2004
An utterly engrossing book, "The Rider" by Tim Krabbé is a first-person account of a competitor in a French amateur cycling race. Kilometer by kilometer, the author describes, economically, but with plausible feeling, the range of emotions he goes through. It is clear that he rides for the love of cycling, but his writing reveals the mental calculations, often not very flattering, that go through the mind of a rider. A chess player, he is out on the road playing a form of chess with his opponents, considering their weaknesses, weighing their histories, examining his own position on the board, so to speak.
In this short book about a 150 km long race, Tim Krabbé also travels back in his mind, recalling legends of bike racing as well as his own dreams of sporting success in Holland. These include some wonderful absurdist episodes, including a brief "Little ABC of Road Racing" where he fantasizes about riding with Merckx and Anquetil and the other greats in a series of bizarre circumstances. And all through this one is conscious of the race going on, the change of scenery and weather and how the cyclist must constantly monitor his situation-now trying to make up for his downhill lack of skills, now attacking as the others weaken, now preparing for a sprint. One is struck by the fundamental cruelty of the sport, how one must endure pain and inflict it as well.
Anyone who has ridden fairly seriously will love this book, as will those who admire strong, clean writing. The author has brilliantly portrayed a concentrated moment. This is a world of intense focus and narrow but exhilarating boundaries.
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25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Writer, April 27, 2004
Cycling holds a unique niche in the world of sports. It is a delicate balance between rider and machine, between strength and tactics, between the individual and the team, between man and the elements. Anyone who has ever ridden seriously knows that almost any serious ride is an epic journey, an endless series of choices and possibilities, of suffering and pleasure.
To date, I have read nothing that captures the real essence of that experience nearly as well as Tim Krabbé's The Rider, which was originally published in 1978 in Amsterdam and which appeared in English only in 2002. Like a racing bike that has been relieved off all excess weight and trimmed of anything that could increase resistance against the wind, The Rider is prose in its most basic and stripped down form. There is hardly a wasted or misplaced word here: the writing is crisp, powerful, efficient, and compelling.
The little book weighs in at just 148 pages, just a little more than one for each of the 137 kilometers of the Tour de Mont Aigoual, by all rights a nondescript semi-pro bicycle race through the rolling mountains of Cévennes, in south central France. It may not sound like much, but Mr. Krabbé breathes life into it by describing perfectly what goes on inside a racer's head: everything from relevant glimpses at strategy -- in addition to being a strong rider and an even better writer, Mr. Krabbé may be best known as a chess champion, and his eye for tactics and detail shows -- to interesting thoughts about his own athletic career, about philosophy, fantasy, his competitors, and fascinating memories from cycling history.
The book is set in the 1970s, a time that will seem quaint to riders who have become interested in the sport only over the last few years: a period when riders made decisions about strategy rather than have it radioed into their ear pieces, when leather straps and not titanium clips held the shoes to the pedals, and when riders packed half an orange and a few figs in their pockets to fuel the ride rather than the latest scientific miracle mix.
I found it all exhilarating. As I leafed through my copy of the book earlier in order to double check a few facts before writing this review, I found myself happily re-reading some of the more compelling passages. While I was doing so, two (non-cyclist) friends stopped by and I read out loud to them Mr. Krabbé's dramatic account of Charley Gaul's stunning victory in the 1956 Giro d'Italia ... and they were unimpressed.
Which brings me to why I withheld one star from what I think is an excellent book: its appeal is far from universal. Unless you are a rider -- or at the very least, a serious fan of the sport or very close to someone who is a rider -- then I think it will be difficult to appreciate the discussions of the nervousness that accompanies a rapid descent from the mountains or the thought that goes into choosing the right gears.
But if you are a serious (or semi- or formerly-serious) rider, I can't imagine that you wouldn't be as thrilled by this book as I was.
If you do get a copy, my one piece of "strategic" advice would be to keep careful track of the names Mr. Krabbé mentions, famous and otherwise: to an English speaker's ear, many may sound quite similar. In addition to Mr. Krabbé himself we meet riders called Kléber, Koblet, Coppi, Caput, Kübler, and Clemons. And don't even get me started on the mouthful that many Dutch names represent to non-natives. Not that that sort of thing would be much of a stumbling block for anyone accustomed to the rigors of cycling.
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20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant Novella--Even for the Noncyclist, November 17, 2003
I'm not a cyclist by any stretch of the imagination, and am only a moderate fan of the sport in general. But Krabbé's novella, originally published in the Netherlands 25 years ago, has got to best one of the best fictional treatments of any sport. The book follows an competitive amateur rider through a half-day, 150 kilometer race over the very real Mont Aigoual in France. Krabbé is himself an avid amateur cyclist, and his ability to capture both the mental and physical aspects of the sport is uncanny. Although I've never raced a bike, I did run cross-country competitively, and many of the elements carry over-mainly the twin battle each individual faces with their brain and their body (There's one excellent moment when the rider wills his bike to get a flat so he can withdraw with honor.).
The stripped-down prose style (common to all Krabbé's work), works especially well in the context of a race where the long distances can lead to almost a trance-like state. The mind wanders all over the place, and that is captured brilliantly in the rider's musings-for example, one part describes how he tries to invent words to keep himself amused during long, boring training rides. At the same time, the race itself is very tense, and Krabbé does quite well at describing the various tactical gambits employed along the way. The main competitors emerge as distinct figures-allies and foes in both a psychological and physical sense (I especially liked the unknown in the blue Cycles Goff jersey). Interwoven with it all are tidbits of cycling history, which are intermittently interesting to the non-racer.
It's not a reach to call this a masterpiece of sports literature. The story does a remarkable job at conveying the tension and flow of a race to the outsider. At the same time, the insights into the psychology of the athlete are so acute as to be universally recognizable across cultures and sports.
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