Push Yourself Just a Little Bit More: Backstage at the Tour De France

Johnny Green sets out, in the spirit of Elie Wermelinger - a historian, gourmet, traveller and observer who helped shape the modern tour - to capture the buzz, to understand the deep link between the race and the countryside it races through, to get at the essence of the French love affair with Le Tour. For Green, the Tour is more than a race: it is a way of looking at France, at the world. It remains a glorious anachronism in the modern age of the untouchable superstar.
And then there are the drugs.
Green is also drawn to the flamboyant, fancy-dan riders: Mario Cipollini in his skin-tight, one-piece suit fitted with electrical circuits; the tragic Marco Pantani; as well as the new generation of potential stars such as Vladimir Karpets and Tommy Voeckler. He also celebrates the great names from yesteryear: Eddie Merckx flying at full tilt; Hugo Koblet tending to his quiff as he crosses the line.
More than anything, Push Yourself Just a Little Bit More seeks to capture the adrenaline rush as the peloton tears through some isolated village or hamlet, and looks behind the scenes at what makes the greatest race on the planet tick. Accompanied by his son Earl (the filmmaker) and mysterious co-pilot the Brief, Johnny Green has followed Le Tour for two consecutive years (2003/04) and has written an irreverant account of his own road trip.

Johnny Green has a degree in Arabic and Islamic Studies from Lancaster University. After spending five years on the road with The Clash he left the music business and eventually became Kent county education adviser on sex and drugs. He lives in Whitstable, Kent.