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Dirty Feet is a fresh look at the Tour de France. Henri Desgrange was so bothered by his racer's hygiene that he would publish the names of riders who did not wash after a day of racing on France's dirt roads.

Volume 1 of The Story of the Tour de France concluded with Bernard Thévenet's dramatic victory over Eddy Merckx in the 1975 Tour. Volume two opens with super-climber Lucien van Impe's taking advantage of a course made for the riders with wings. His win was followed by the dominating presence of Bernard Hinault, who became the third rider to win the Tour five times.Unable to fulfill his destiny as a likely five-time winner because of a hunting accident, Greg LeMond won the Tour three times. LeMond's era was followed by that of the remarkable Spaniard Miguel Indurain, the first man to win the Tour five times in a row.The late 1990s were a time of extreme crises for the Tour as the culture of doping within the professional cycling community erupted into the scandal of 1998. The Story of the Tour de France deals with this episode at length.At first, it looked like Lance Armstrong had done what no other rider in the Tour's history had ever accomplished, win the Tour seven times in a row. Both he and his successor, Floyd Landis, were revealed to have used drugs to win.For decades, Great Britain was a marginal player in professional cycling, but no longer. British riders have become a dominating presence in recent Tours.The book concludes with a quest for the greatest-ever Tour de France rider and an epilogue explaining the reason for the extraordinary success of the Tour.

At the dawn of the 20th century, French newspapers used bicycle races as promotions to build readership. Until 1903 these were one-day events. Looking to deliver a coup de grâce in a vicious circulation war, Henri Desgrange-editor of the Parisian sports magazine L'Auto-took the suggestion of one of his writers to organize a race that would last several days longer than anything else, like the six-day races on the track, but on the road.That's exactly what happened. For almost three weeks, the riders in the first Tour de France rode over dirt roads and cobblestones in a grand circumnavigation of France. The race was an electrifying success. Held annually (suspended only during the two World Wars), the Tour grew longer and more complex. Desgrange kept tinkering with an ever-changing set of rules for the Tour, looking for the perfect formula for his race.Each year a new cast of riders assembles to contest what has now become the greatest sporting event in the world.

A Major League All-Star pitcher is at the very pinnacle of his profession. It took him years of training and practice to get there. Did you ever wonder what makes him different from the thousands of other pitchers out there who trained and worked just as hard? How does he train? How does he prepare between starts? How does he start a batter off? Does he pitch to a batter the same way each time he steps up to the plate to hit? The best way to find all this out is to ask someone who did it, and then let him explain it to you in his own words. Tom Brewer did it, and he did it successfully for eight seasons with the Boston Red Sox. He pitched to Mickey Mantle, Al Kaline, Yogi Berra, and Willie Mays. He pitched to Ted Williams in Spring Training. In this book, you'll read how Tom did what he did, and see home plate through his eyes from atop the pitcher's mound.

Since its invention in the 1860s, the bicycle has had a fascinating history. Author James Witherell has spent years collecting the essential, the trivial and sometimes just downright odd facts that make up the story of the bicycle. Instead of composing a narrative history, he's arranged them in chronological order, painting an informative, fun and irresistible picture of what might be mankind's greatest invention. Witherell has given special emphasis to the Tour de France.

When more than 100 men or women go racing down a road, inches away from each other, in all weather, over all kinds of roads, the opportunity for a brilliant win or a terrible accident is always there. For more than a century bicycle racers have sought glory, but have often found only misery. There can be only one winner, and even that triumph can be mixed with terrible loss. Fausto Coppi, coached by a blind man, set the World Hour Record in Milan during the war while the city was being shattered by bombs. Tom Simpson was world champion in 1965, but by 1967, he was nearly a has-been. Desperate to win the Tour de France, he took an overdose of amphetamines and died by the side of the road of heart failure, probably caused by dehydration triggered by the drugs that were to help him win. Great joy and tragedy so close together. Join cycling's most accomplished writer, Les Woodland, as he explores the heroic, sometimes triumphant side of cycling, all the time reminding us that for every winner in cycling there have to be a hundred losers. Sometimes their tale is better or sadder than the winner's. We'll go on a journey round fifty sites of success and sorrow. Some of them, tragically, combined.

The Tour of Flanders is Belgium's most brutal day in the saddle. The bike-crazed Flemish don't just send riders over cobblestone roads. Nor are they content to break the racers' legs with nearly 20 steep hills. No, the worst of all cycling worlds meet in Flanders with narrow, vertical roads paved with slippery, dangerous cobbles. The hills are so steep they are called "muurs", or walls, and they come one after another, for hours, until the riders are shattered with exhaustion. The Tour of Flanders is so fiendishly difficult that the man who wins it earns everlasting fame.Les Woodland tells the inside story of how the Flandrians became the world's most formidable racers, and of the dream of one writer to create a signature race, one that would showcase the Flemish virtues of toughness, endurance and determination. That dream became the Tour of Flanders, one of cycling's monuments. Come join Les for a fascinating ride in the cobbled hills of Flanders.About the Author:Les Woodland has been cycling for 50 years and has been writing about cycling since 1965, when he wrote his first reports for the British publication "Cycling". Since then he has been a prolific contributor to newspapers, magazines, web sites and radio stations in the U.K., the U.S. and Belgium as well as authoring more than 25 books. Mr. Woodland, who lives in France, speaks several of the languages of cycling: English, Dutch and French.

Sticky Buns Across America is the story of one of the four continents and one of the countries Leo Woodland has crossed by bike, this time with patient wife Steph: a tale of riding across small-town America (and occasional bits of Canada, although to Americans that doesn't count). It's not a tale of heroic battling with storms, riots, poison ivy, Americans and other problems. Instead, sit back and enjoy an eccentric account of encounters made and experiences lived. Plus, it has to be admitted, a lot of sticky buns eaten.

Citius, Altius, Fortius (Faster, Higher, Stronger) is the motto of the International Olympic Committee. After reading Les Woodland's "The Olympics' 50 Craziest Stories" the reader might wonder if the motto should be Sillier, Loonier, Crazier. There is the gentle rower who was winning his race when he stopped his scull to avoid scattering a mother duck and her ducklings-we'll let your read the book to find out how he did-and the American socialites who showed up for a golf game in Paris and accidentally ended up in the Olympic golf contest. There was so much confusion that year they never learned one of them had become Olympic champion. Oh, and the men's Olympic golf champion had actually journeyed to Paris to play tennis. Shooting live pigeons was an event in the 1900 Olympics, but there's no mention today of the competition out of embarrassment over the 300 dead and maimed birds that revulsed the spectators. We can't forget the Jamaican bobsled team nor the Russian KGB colonel who rigged the scoring in fencing and managed to create an international incident. They are all in "The Olympics' 50 Craziest Stories," along with dozens more athletes who managed to attain fame they would rather not have earned. In addition to the 50 stories of competitors behaving badly, or at least oddly, Les Woodland has sprinkled collections of interesting and sometimes improbable Olympics facts throughout, making "The Olympics' 50 Craziest Stories" fun from cover to cover. As the author of 26 books, Les Woodland knows how to tell a story and here he's in fine form. Join him in his trip to the crazy side of sports.

The Giro d'Italia is one of the world's most important and popular bicycle races, yet there is almost no information in English about this magical Italian race's rich past. With "The Story of the Giro d'Italia", the fabulous history of Italy's national tour is at last available. Volume One took the story of the Giro from its origin as a desperate promotional gamble by a nearly broke newspaper to Eddy Merckx's convincing 1970 victory. Volume Two describes the growth of the Giro into a modern, vital international race that is followed by cycling fans all over the world. Along the way, the stories and races that have excited the public over the last forty years are told, including the Francesco Moser/Giuseppe Saronni rivalry, the tragic tale of Marco Pantani and the Alberto Contador affair that left the Spaniard stripped of his 2011 Giro championship.

Les Woodland climbed aboard his old Carlton bike to take a nostalgia trip across Belgium and Holland to visit some of cycling's greatest riders. "Cycling Heroes: The Golden Years" tells the story of that journey he took in the early 1990s and the time he spent with some of the finest riders from the 1950s, '60s and '70s. Rik van Steenbergen, Rik van Looy, Jan Janssen, Wim van Est, Hennie Kuiper and Peter Post were some of the most colorful and dominating riders of an era that produced many of the sport's greatest-ever champions. In this book Woodland has collected their and other riders' precious and fascinating recollections, some going back to a time of leather saddles, cloth caps and spare tires wrapped over riders' shoulders; when screaming fans packed smoke-filled velodromes to see their heroes up close; when a stage of the Tour de France could take more than eleven hours. Woodland has filled in his portrait of racing's golden years with the stories of those riders who were either too far away or time got there first, including Fausto Coppi, Louison Bobet, Jacques Anquetil and Raymond Poulidor. Join Les Woodland on a captivating journey back to the golden age of racing.

The Giro d'Italia is one of the world's most important and popular bicycle races, yet there is almost no information in English about this magical Italian race's rich past. With "The Story of the Giro d'Italia", the fabulous history of Italy's national tour is at last available. Volume One takes the story of the Giro from its origin as a desperate promotional gamble by a nearly broke newspaper to Eddy Merckx's convincing 1970 victory.

Professional cycling has been around for more than 100 years, more than enough time for nearly anything imaginable to have happened. Whether it's the Tour de France racer who thought the worst thing that could happen to him was being forced to wear the Yellow Jersey, or the communist team director who insisted, on a whim, that a rider have a toe amputated or the fit of jealousy that started the Giro d'Italia, the sport has an endless supply of examples of human folly. Les Woodland has the perfect knack for telling these improbable, silly, crazy and absurd stories.