Butcher, Blacksmith, Acrobat, Sweep by Peter Cossins

Butcher, Blacksmith, Acrobat, Sweep by Peter Cossins

Full of adventure, mishaps and audacious attempts at cheating, the first Tour de France in 1903 was a colourful affair. Its riders included characters like Maurice Garin, an Italian-born Frenchman, said to have been swapped for a round of cheese by his parents in order to smuggle him into France to clean chimneys as a teenager, Hippolyte Aucouturier with his trademark handlebar moustache, and amateurs like Jean Dargassies, a blacksmith who had never raced before. Dreamed up to revive struggling newspaper L'Auto, cyclists of the time were wary of this 'heroic' race on roads more suited to hooves than wheels, riding hefty fixed-gear bikes for three full weeks. 'With a few francs you could win 3,000', the paper declared in desperation, eventually attracting a field comprising a handful of the era's professional racers and, among other hopefuls, a butcher, painter and decorator, and a circus acrobat. Would this ramshackle pack of cyclists draw crowds to throng France's rutted roads and cheer the first Tour heroes? Surprisingly it did, and, all thanks to a marketing ruse, cycling would never be the same again. Peter Cossins takes us through the inaugural Tour de France, painting a nuanced portrait of France in the early 1900s, to see where the greatest sporting event of all began.

Essential…The First Tour de France takes you back to the race itselfCossins produces a deeply researched and detailed description of the race that toggles between background information on the race’s organization and the individual stages, with long stretches of real-time-style stage reporting one chapter at a time.The effect of this, especially the latter, is soaring * Podium Cafe *
Enthralling… Full of outlandish characters and ripping yarns, it makes for a cracking good read * Bikes Etc *

First drawn into the sport while a student in Spain in the mid-1980s, Peter Cossins has been writing about cycling since 1993, contributing principally to Cycling Weekly, Cycle Sport and Procycling.

The Monuments, his history of cycling's five greatest one-day Classic races, was published in 2014, followed in 2015 by Alpe d’Huez, an appraisal of cycling’s greatest climb.

For Yellow Jersey Press he has written the definitive account of the first ever Tour de France, Butcher, Blacksmith, Acrobat, Sweep the also the enlightening book on cycling tactics, Full Gas.

He lives in the Ariège in the heart of the French Pyrenees.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780224100656
ISBN 10	0224100653
Title	Butcher, Blacksmith, Acrobat, Sweep
Author	Peter Cossins
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Vintage Publishing
Year published	2017-06-08
Number of pages	368
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.