Major Taylor: The Extraordinary Career of a Champion Bicycle Racer by Andrew Ritchie
Synopsis World champion at 19... One of the first black athletes to become world champion in any sport... 1-mile record holder... American sprint champion in 1898, 1899, 1900... triumphant tours of Europe and Australia... Victories against all European champions... Until now a forgotten, shadowy figure, Marshall Walter Major Taylor is here revealed as one of the early sports world's most stylish, entertaining, and gentlemanly personalities. Born in 1878 in Indianapolis, the son of poor rural parents, Taylor worked in a bike shop until prominent bicycle racer Birdie Munger coached him for his first professional racing successes in 1896. Despite continuous bureaucratic--and, at times, physical--opposition, he won his first national championship two years later and became world champion in 1899 in Montreal. This beautifully illustrated, vividly narrated, and scrupulously researched biography recreates the life of a great international athlete at the turn of the century. Based on ten years of research--including extensive interviews with Major Taylor's 91-year old daughter--this is the dramatic story of a young black man who, against prodigious odds, rose to fame and stardom in the tempestuous world of international professional bicycle racing a century ago. --Arthur Ashe "Journal of American History" Trade Paperback
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Renegade Sportsman by Dundas, Zach
Publisher Comments A face-first dive into America's sporting underbelly.
A lifelong sports fan, Zach Dundas asks: What happened to the fun, loud-mouthed, down-and-dirty sporting culture he always loved? Has it been replaced with performance-enhancing drugs, fat paychecks and billion dollar arenas? Of course not.
With a renegade's eye and a fan's resolve, Dundas scours the underground to find the games, fans, and athletes you won't find in the sports pages. He tracks a bicycle race across Iowa designed to confuse and downright torture its participants, chases a gaggle of runners wearing red cocktail dresses in Portland, and screams obscenities in Chicago with the rowdy fans of the DC United soccer team, and through these and other harrowing and hilarious adventures, he begins to reconnect with the thrill of sporting as he discovers a vibrant, beautiful, and thriving element of American culture-simmering right below the surface. Your price $7.95 Used Trade Paperback
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Major Taylor, Champion Cyclist by Lesa Cline-Ransome
Publisher Comments Marshall Taylor could ride his bike forward, backward, even perched on the handlebars. When his stunts landed him a job at the famous Indiana bike shop Hay and Willits, folks were amazed that a thirteen-year-old black boy in 1891 could be such a crackerjack cyclist. andlt;BRandgt; How little Marshall Taylor -- through dedication, undeniable talent, and daring speed -- transformed himself into the extraordinary Major Taylor is chronicled in this inspiring biography. Here is the story of a kid who turned pro at the age of eighteen, went on to win the world championship title just three years later, and battled racism and the odds to become a true American hero. Hardcover
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Paris Roubaix by Philippe Bouvet
Publisher Comments Paris-Roubaix, a one-day bicycle race in northeastern France, is known as "The Hell of the North" for good reason. Although the course is somewhat flatter than the other spring classics, it includes interminable stretches of muddy farm roads paved with rough-hewn cobblestones. The cobbles alone are enough to shake bikes and bones to bits; throw in the notoriously fickle weather, which often includes rain, snow, and driving wind, and the course becomes downright treacherous. Held the third Sunday in April since 1896, Paris-Roubaix is a race of great tradition. The race follows a 270-kilometer course between the suburbs of the French capital and the northern industrial city of Roubaix, and its long history, coupled with its proximity to the cycling-mad triangle of northern France, Belgium, and Holland, means that it has served over the years to confirm the fame of cycling's greatest champions. All of the history and excitement of the world's most famous one-day bicycle race is captured and comprehensively illustrated with hundreds of spectacular color and black-and-white photographs in this lavish, oversized format. With authoritative text from France's top sportswriters, Paris-Roubaix: A Journey Through Hell presents the inside story of the race, its great riders, its traditions, and its secrets. Your price $16.95 Used Hardcover
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Six Day Bicycle Races by Peter Nye
Synopsis A photographic portrait of what was the most popular spectator sport in America during the period from 1900 to 1930: 6-day bicycle racing. It was a big-money sport, because bets were on. The sport was tough and the stakes were high, as the most prominent people in society flocked to Madison Square Garden to watch the races and place their bets. This compilation of historic photographs reproduced in fine duotone detail and accompanying text paints the complete picture of this fascinating but almost forgotten era in American sports.
Your price $19.95 Used Hardcover
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Cyclings Golden Age Heroes of the Postwar Era 1946 1967 by Owen Mulholland
Publisher Comments A pictorial tour of a foremost collection of cycling memorabilia from 1946 to 1967 includes replications of vintage posters, trophies, and other artifacts, in a nostalgic tribute that shares the stories of top athletes and memorable moments. Hardcover
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Dog in a Hat An American Bike Racers Story of Mud Drugs Blood Betrayal & Beauty in Belgium by Joe Parkin
Publisher Comments "The most authentic book ever written on making a living as a pro cyclist in Europe." -- Bob Roll, Versus TV cycling commentator"I saw my first pro kermis race during my first week in Belgium, and it felt like trying to escape a hall of mirrors but not being able to read the exit signs. Everything was larger than life and more grotesque than I had imagined. But kermis racing was not all about the drugs. If the grand tours are like classical music, kermis racing is punk rock, Belgian-style. At some point during the season, our team was invited to a stage race in France, but our team director had made an agreement for us to race a big kermis in Brugge. My buddy Cocquyt decided that we should go as hard as we possibly could from the gun in the kermis, team time trial style, and then peel off at the end of the 11-kilometer lap, laughing at all the guys we had tortured as we took off for the other race. Of course, we all coughed up blood for the entire trip to France, but it was strangely worth it, as if we had smashed our guitars, poured beer on the audience, and walked offstage before the end of the first song." Joe Parkin's life changed when he left America to become a professional bike racer in Belgium. In this brutally frank memoir, Parkin celebrates the glory of racing but doesn't flinch from the cold reality of that life--the drugs, the payoffs, the betrayals by teammates, the battles with team owners for contracts and money, the endless promises, and the sheer physical pain of racing day after day. Set in the hardest place in the world to be a bike racer, A Dog in a Hat is one rider's story of his love affair with professional cycling. Your price $13.95 Used Trade Paperback
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Complete Book of Cyclocross Skill Training & Racing by Scott R Mares
Synopsis The complete book of cyclocross, Skill Training and Racing is a book about cyclocross its origins history and how to train and race. The book covers new skill training drills along with equipment selection. Trade Paperback
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Come & Gone by Joe Parkin
Publisher Comments After five years of busting my ass in the Belgian gutters, I said goodbye to Flanders knowing that I might never go back. I never did. I flew back to the U.S. with empty pockets and no contract. For several years, I was unable to watch a Belgian spring classic without a lump in my throat. I died a little bit watching my teammates in the Tour de France in 1992. Eventually, I landed a spot with the Coors Light team. After the years in Europe, though, racing in the U.S. didn’t really do it for me. I was never able to rise to the level of dedication I had mustered each day in Europe. Until I started racing mountain bikes. Come and Gone is the long-awaited sequel to Joe Parkin’s widely praised bestseller, A Dog in a Hat. Picking up the story, Come and Gone follows Joe through three hardscrabble seasons chasing wins on the U.S. road racing circuit before he changes course and tastes victory as a mountain bike pro. A gritty, authentic, and heartfelt personal memoir, Come and Gone is also a chronicle of the rebirth of professional bike racing in America. “Parkin shows you life on the edge of the peloton. We know the great champions’ stories, but Parkin’s experience is far more illustrative of what a ‘pro cyclist’ really is.” — PodiumCafe.com Trade Paperback
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Dancing on the Pedals: The Found Poetry of Phil Liggett, the Voice of Cycling by Phil Liggett
Publisher Comments He’s dancing on his pedals In a most immodest way. —Tour de France, 1989 In the tradition of Phil Rizzuto’s O Holy Cow!, this is a lighthearted, ironic arrangement into verse form of Phil Liggett’s florid, enthusiastic narrations of cycling’s greatest races. Anyone who has ever watched the Tour de France on TV knows Phil, and his flights of rhetorical brilliance are legion. Bicycling Magazine writes, “His voice defines the sport the way Howard Cosell’s did for boxing and football.” Astonishingly poetic and intelligent, Phil Liggett’s narrations lend themselves perfectly to this found poetry approach. Bill Strickland is executive editor of Bicycling Magazine and the author of The Quotable Cyclist. Trade Paperback
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