The Great Bike Race Format: Paperback

"If Alpe d'Huez was a rigorous climb, with its mathematical progression of tight corners and steep inclines, the Izoard is far more awesome, a rocky wilderness at 7,743 feet, which needs only a few bleached skulls at the roadside to complete its sense of desolation."

Geoffrey Nicholson's The Great Bike Race is universally revered by modern cycling critics as the benchmark English-language volume of the sport and has risen to mythical status. It was the first book in English to tell the entire story of a full tour and truly captivates the reader from start to finish. Nicholson's classic, vivid descriptions of the racing, the personalities, tactics and intrigues of the 1976 race are rotated with insightful thematic chapters where he lifts the lid on the broader culture and lengthy traditions of cycling's most famous race and the greatest annual sports event in the world.

The classic, acclaimed book that introduced the world to the Tour de France is now re-issued in a paperback edition.

Geoffrey Nicholson was one of the most original, prolific and best-liked sports writers of the past 50 years. A modest, unassuming man, he was part of a small team at The Observer, who transformed the character of sports journalism in the late 1950s by eschewing tabloid clichés and public relations hype and introducing a quality of writing that matched, and was sometimes superior to, that on the arts and foreign pages.

He was to become sports editor of the Observer and the Sunday Correspondent, sports features editor of the Sunday Times amd rugby correspondent of the Independent. Geoff’s main interest was cycling, and he covered the Tour de France for 20 years. He has the distinction of being the first editor to publish a sports picture by Eamonn McCabe.

Geoffrey Nicholson died in August 1999.