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THE REAL TOUR DE FRANCE REVEALED

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I'm not particularly a cycling fan but perhaps the best thing about this book is that you don't need to be, to really enjoy it. I read `Bad Blood' as a Francophile who has lived in France and as somebody who wanted an accessible, geek-free insight into the recent disasters of the Tour de France. In contrast to earlier reviewers, I didn't find it `prattish' at all, just refreshingly honest. It doesn't offer any pat solutions, just the wisdom of experience and it's all the better for it. The journey aspect of the book - from wide-eyed, star-struck sports fan, meeting Lance Armstrong for the first time, to world-weary cynicism as he watches David Millar weep in the Tour's press room - really worked and took me with it. At times, it's almost cinematic, cutting from Lance Armstrong's front room in Texas to the mountains of France and it gains from being personal and subjective, rather than forensic and black and white. It's also about letting go of your dreams, knowing that you will be alienated as a result - as he says in the book, drug-taking in sport is too easily demonised, because even `good' people cheat. Rather than a dispassionate scientific analysis of laboratory procedures, it's almost a love story and he's not afraid to admit that. The argument, that doping is not a simplistic issue with simple answers, but something with real moral complexity, is expertly made. But the book is at its best when he talks about Lance Armstrong's megalomania, the consequences of Armstrong's control-freakery, and about his relationship with David Millar, a rider he clearly adores, but whose doping confession clouded their relationship. Yes, I felt sorry for him and for other fans who have felt the same sense of betrayal. Yes, he says he is bitter, but then, after working in such a corrupt world for that length of time, who wouldn't be?

Good book, if a little disjointed

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Its an interesting book, but as others have said, nothing new in here. The flow of the story is a little dis-jointed and I found myself trying to work out where in the timeline I was half the time. Not a must have book for fans of the Tour De France. What is written is in many cases likely true but I became extremely bored and irrated very quickly with the constant talk of Lance Armstrong and any drug issue. The man has never been tested positive, can we please just let it go now.

Frustration on every page!

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A most frustrating book. Like other reviewers, I was looking for revelation and hoped that a voice of experience may offer true insight, that might help direct my own views in these troubled times of quandary for cycling. Instead, one ends up feeling very sorry indeed for the writer, who admits himself in closing that he is bitter, but for whom you have had this sense from early in the book. His insinuation that friendships lost are due to disagreements about doping-stance, might be misplaced? Perhaps people have just become fed up with Mr Whittle namedropping (five a side football with David Milliband, "bike-perving" with Paul Smith), bragging at each good hotel he has visited (The Leeds Hilton, the Docklands Crowne Plaza) or they simply think he's a bit of a prat: 'Ciao Ivan, come stai?' I said, exhausting my Italian in a single sentence'. Alternatively, perhaps they are fed up at his betrayal of confidence, not over doping but in crossing the line between friend/confidant and journalist for the advancement of his journalistic career (Lance Armstrong, David Millar, Bradley Wiggins), or just run down by his negativity ('Ken Livingstone's attempts to force Londoners to embrace his two wheeled Utopia were washed away by grey skies, foulmouthed builders and doping, doping - always doping'). Incidentally, not how I remember the prologue of the 2007 Tour de France in London! Just as much a sports fan as Mr Whittle, I care passionately about cleaning up sport, and the essay aspects of his book are to be congratulated, but I did not find it well-written, jumping around too much, leaving one with unanswered questions at key points; often hoping (against hope), that we would be taken back to them later. I found some of the writing trite, perhaps written for a younger generation: "he often went commando, sans underwear". There is also surely a hypocrisy in someone who admits to having taken amphetamine, albeit at a weak moment in a notoriously difficult bike ride, now commercially benefitting out of criticising professional cyclists for doing just the same. Whilst shortlisted, this is sadly not for me a Sportsbook of the Year 2008.

A must read

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Like many I have watched the Tour de France on television and marvelled at the super human achievements of the cyclists who put themselves through this hell. What is even more fascinating, however, are the relationships that exist in this world; not just between the riders, but also the journalists, administrators and financiers. Whittle's book gives a rare insight into how it is to live and work in an environment where people lie and deceive on a daily basis, not because they dislike you, but because their very survival in this world appears to depend on it. Other reviews have said that there is nothing new in this book regarding the material facts of the numerous doping scandals. This misses, what I see, as the point of the book. Whittle gives the reader a glimpse of the relationships that exist within elite sport. His relationships with David Millar and Lance Armstrong typify how difficult it has been for Whittle to stay in love with a sport that once gave him so much as a fan, but as part of the professional cycling circus, he struggles to find truth and honour, not least within himself. I don't believe, as one reviewer states, that Whittle sets out to tie Armstrong to doping. Armstrong has a place within cycling that is without precedent, and so you can sense Whittle's growing sense of anger that Armstrong failed to use the power his position afforded him to banish doping from the peloton. Armstrong like everyone else featured in this book is,neither a hero or villain, but a human being who has fought to survive in such a hostile environment, something a figure like Marco Pantani was unable to do. This is a compelling and often disturbing account of the paradox of loving a sport, whilst at the same time seeing the lure of success in it challenge and, in some cases, destroy, relationships and individuals. A must read.

Wrongly Titled

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Having bought and read many cycling books I mistakingly thought this was going to be an in depth look at the serect life of the Tour de France. Having read the book it is more about one mans campaign to link the name of Lance Armstrong with every doping scandal there has ever been. Whilst the author accepts that Greg Lemond and Bernard Hinault in his opinion raced clean, he seems unable to accept that Lance Armstrong may also have raced clean and there are very few chapters where he does not have a personal attack on Lance Armstrong. Jeremy Whittle writes about cheating, I also feel cheated as the book is wrongly titled and should have been titled "Lance Armstrong, how I can link him with every doping scandal". It is a well written book but contains nothing that hasn't been written before apart from the constant references to doping and Lance Armstrong.