Author:Charly Wegelius
**Winner - Sweetspot Cycling Book of the Year**
For 11 years I was a professional cyclist, competing in the hardest and greatest races on Earth. I was in demand from the world’s best teams, a well-paid elite athlete. But I never won a race. I was the hired help.
When my mum dropped me off in a small French town aged 17, I was full of determination to be a professional cyclist, but I was completely green. I went from mowing the team manager’s lawn to winning every amateur race I entered. Then I turned pro and realised I hated the responsibility and pressure of chasing victory. And that’s when I became a domestique.
I learned to take that hurt and give it everything I had to give, all for someone else’s win. When the order came in to ride I pushed out with the hardest rhythm I could, dragging the group faster and faster, until my whole body screamed with pain. There were times I rode myself to a standstill, clutching the barrier metres from the line, as the lead group shot past. But that’s what made me a so good at my job.
As my career took off, I started looking at the fans lining the route, cheering us like heroes. The passion for cycling oozed off them, but they couldn’t know what it was really like. They didn’t see the terrible hotels, the crazy egos or all the shit that goes with great expectations. Well, this is how it is…
If justice is alive and well in the world, this will be the sports book of the year 2013... a book that is well nigh impossible to put back on the shelf at the end of each chapter.
—— The Washing Machine Post.netInteresting and revealing... the most accurate description of what being a highly-regarded domestique in the modern peloton is really like'
—— Cycling WeeklyOne of the hardest working domestiques in the sport
—— Cycling WeeklyCouldn't put it down…the best insight into the peloton since Paul Kimmage’s Rough Ride
—— William FotheringhamA must read. Absolutely outstanding
—— Paul Kimmage[Wegelius] tells it better than anyone before him
—— Independent[Charly Wegelius] tell[s] it better than anyone else before him
—— IndependentLoved this book
—— David MillarLays bare the true struggle of life on the circuit and demystifies much of cycling’s inner machinations
—— CycloLewis is a reporter of rare skill and he writes with wit and verve… It is by turns horrifying, moving and unexpectedly funny. It’s also the sports book of the year by a backcountry mile
—— Alex Bilmes , EsquireAbsorbing
—— Tom Robbins , Financial TimesTim Lewis’ fascinating story of Rwandan cycling isn’t a typical rags to riches, triumph against adversity tale
—— Ben East , ObserverMy selection for the cycling book of the year so far. The incredible story of road cycling in Rwanda, it is a tale that quite brilliantly portrays the power of sport to effect change and roots itself in Africa’s challenge to what we mean by ‘global sport.’. Superb, a must-read
—— Mark Perryman , Socialist UnityThe unlikely true story of two US ex-pros who travelled to Rwanda with visions of creating Africa’s first world-beating professional cycling team
—— Simon Usborne , IndependentThis book is an entertaining account taking in everyone from stage winners and former yellow jerseys who couldn’t hang on, to a breakaway leader who stopped for a bottle of wine and then took a wrong turn, to a doper whose drug cocktail backfired
—— Bike RadarWe know the winners of the Tour de France, but Lanterne Rouge tells the forgotten, often inspirational and occasionally absurd stories of the last-placed rider
—— Miss Dinky
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