North Wind in Your Spokes:
A Novel of the Tour de France

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Item # CB-69393  ISBN: 1891369393




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Greed, Drugs, Glory and Disgrace in the Tour de France

North Wind in Your Spokes is the mesmerizing tale of the rise and fall of a young cycling star. His early victories excite his team, his sponsors, and all the fans. He is hailed as the next Eddy Merckx. But with success come the demons—greed, temptation, and delusions of invincibility.

Bud is favored to win the Tour, but his opponents are prepared to ensure his failure. They try to remove him from the race by any means necessary. His two mentors, a journalist and a doctor, guide him through the snake's nest of the Tour—the rumors, the subterfuges, the secret deals, the dirty riding, the money, the doping, and the sheer exhaustion. And the quiet wisdom of an old farmer on the Tourmalet shows him the high road to success—as long as he is willing to stay on it. But Bud's addiction to easy money in the winter track races, and his seduction by a beautiful woman, draw him nearer and nearer to the brink of collapse.

The novel is a brilliant evocation of the loneliness of the long-distance cyclist. In the Tour, a three-week race with over a hundred riders, one is completely alone. The Tour becomes a mataphor for life itself, and the struggles of one rider are the struggles of all of us.

A timeless, haunting nocel of the cycling world, and the unquenchable obsessions of athletes.

"Here it is—the great sports novel! It couldn't get any more suspenseful."—World on Sunday

"The special appeal of this story lies in its simplicity and naturalness, with which Blickensdorfer connects fiction and authenticity. What I like is the roughness of the language his people use, and in which he narrates. The filth comes through—in the peloton, and in bed. And the sun comes through—between the spokes and in the head. In this book something unbelievable has been rendered believable."—Stuttgart Evening News

North Wind in Your Spokes: A Novel of the Tour de France