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The Rider
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Description
THE RIDER describes one 150-kilometre race in just 150 pages. In the course of the narrative, we get to know the forceful, bumbling Lebusque, the aesthete Barthélemy, the young Turk Reilhan and the mysterious 'rider from Cycles Goff'. Krabbé battles with and against each of them in turn, failing on the descents, shining on the climbs, suffering on the (false) flats. The outcome of the race is, in fact, merely the last stanza of an exciting and too-brief paean to stamina, suffering and the redeeming power of humour. This is not a history of road racing, a hagiography of the European greats or even a factual account of his own amateur cycling career. Instead, Krabbé allows us to race with him, inside his skull as it were, during a mythical Tour de Mont Aigoual.
Product details
| Published | 16 Jun 2016 |
|---|---|
| Format | Ebook (Epub & Mobi) |
| Edition | 1st |
| Extent | 160 |
| ISBN | 9781408821299 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Paperbacks |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
About the contributors
Reviews
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A beautiful, quiet piece of work: unusual, plausible, moving and poignant
Daily Telegraph, The Best Sports Books of All Time
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A classic. Like all the best sports writing, The Rider manages to convey the excitement, determination and skill of the competitors even to readers who have little or no knowledge of the sport
London Review of Books
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He lays bare the athlete's peculiar mixture of arrogance and terror, viciousness and camaraderie, and the result is one of the more convincing love stories of recent memory
New Yorker
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The Rider is a beautiful brute, as hard and fast as a thin wheel in a concrete road
Observer
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Its 148 pages will flash by in a blur of reckless, high-speed pleasure
Independent

























