Author:Willy Voet
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On 8 July 1998 Festina team soigneur Willy Voet was stopped by the police. In his car were the drugs the team needed if they were to have any chance of playing a competitive part in the 1998 Tour de France.
The car was searched, he was immediately arrested and so the story that has been undermining the sport of cycling since the death of Tommy Simpson in 1967, finally broke.
Imprisoned for sixteen days, sacked from the Festina team and ostracised from the sport to which he had dedicated his life, Willy Voet at last was able to tell the truth. His sensational story will change cycling forever.
Cocaine, amphetamines, EPO, heroin - all these are now considered not optional but necessary, not to win but just to compete in the Tour de France. Details of how these drugs are obtained, mixed together to make cocktails, administered and concealed are all included in this graphic and uninhibited account of how drugs brought cycling to its knees.
A truly horrifying book
—— Time OutThe most vivid insight into the realities of a sport in which illegal drug use is not only tolerated, but a mundane fact of life
—— ObserverPeppered with anecdotes and insight... a fantastic, page turning read which presents a window into the personalities which are normally only seen on the track or in a press conference
—— MotoGPBlogA fantastic new book... well worth getting
—— MotoGP WorldImpressive
—— Leicester MercuryExtraordinary... Rick Broadbent's ability to sweep you along at speeds of 200 mph leaves you quite breathless... a very satisfying and enthralling read
—— BFKbooksFascinating... This is not your average motorcycle book, it almost reads like a novel, but it is history, it is fact written by someone who has been close to and part of it. Because of the style it is one of those books you cannot put down and a must for every racing fan
—— inter-bike.co.ukThrows a whole new light on the disaster
—— Weekly NewsAmong the Thugs is, by some distance, the best book ever written about football violence. Intelligent, succinct, and always in the thick of it, it reads as a blood-fuelled ode to English football, and as a primer for what will be when Russia hosts the World Cup. It grabs the readers attention like a headbutt to the cakehole.
—— Tony ParsonsSizzling writing to rival the best of white-heat gonzo journalism
—— New StatesmanAn extraordinary and powerful cautionary cry.
—— KirkusBrilliant. . . one of the most unnerving books you will ever read
—— NewsweekBuford creates with the majesty of a Tom Wolfe the ultimate price paid by so many for this footballing fever - the Hillsborough disaster, recalled with electrifying eloquence and power
—— Time OutA grotesque, horrifying, repellent and gorgeous book; A Clockwork Orange come to life.
—— John Gregory DunneA very readable, often funny, book.
—— The EconomistHis prose is tough and vivid
—— IDBuford pushes the possibilities of participatory journalism to a disturbing degree . . . Among the Thugs does severe damage to the conventional wisdom that England and Europe are bastions of civilization.
—— New York TimesBuford's book is important in that it offers a far more compelling explanation for the football violence than any offered by the pundits of Left and Right . . . Had Buford's account been written by a tabloid reporter or an academic sociologist it might be more easily dismissed. That is comes from a highly intelligent observer, and a neutral outsider with no axe to grind, makes his book all the more powerful and yet troubling.
—— Michael Crick , IndependentBuford’s accounts of the thugs he moved with are by turns amazing, repugnant, stunning, horrid and exhilarating.
—— HowlerThe defining book on England’s hooliganism
—— Simon Parkin , Guardian
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