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Product Description
Product Description
This sumptuous collection of over 250 photographs captures the white-knuckle drama of sports cycling. Legends like Eddy Merckx, Miguel Indurain, Greg Lemond, and Lance Armstrong are caught at the height of their powers. Watson, an accomplished cyclist himself, explains how he achieved special shots and managed to work from inside the races.
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I had traveled to Paris with a group of cycling fans, eager for a sight of Merckx and his rivals at the end of an epic Tour. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
I had traveled to Paris with a group of cycling fans, eager for a sight of Merckx and his rivals at the end of an epic Tour. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Having viewed the quality of Graham Watson's work in various publications over the past 20 years, it was dissapointing to see that none of his more memorable photos appear in this book. Sadly, too, is that there are hardly any shots of race finishes, but instead many pages of dull, uninteresting photo's of the peleton rolling along sweeping landscapes. Professional cycling is a fast, exciting sport, but one would think from these photo's that it's more about lush landscapes and weather. The comments and interesting anecdotes from Watson are well written and insightful, with some fabulous little tidbits about many stars and races. Shame about the choice of photo's: Watson is regarded as one of the best photographers in cycling and has a lot better to publish than what's offered here.
9 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Graham Watson is one of the most respected cycling photographers of the last few decades. He always manages to capture the beauty, and cruelty of the sport. This collection of more than 250 images from the past 20 years spans the days when few wore sunglasses to the de rigueur sports shades of today. The older pictures show that the eyes really are the windows to the soul. The book is split into 6 parts each roughly covering a 4-year period. The format is larger than most. Pictures do not on the whole span the centre binding; a welcome change from other books. All aspects of the sport are included from cyclo-cross to track to the main topic professional road racing.
The full intensity of battle of the classic one-day races is portrayed. Only on these days do or die efforts really surface. Sometimes it only the loser's faces that show just the level effort the winners offer. Grahams pictures show an insider view on this.
The 3-week tours of France Italy and Spain rightly take a large proportion of the book. The flavours of the tours are highlighted. Sprints & crashes, heat & sunflowers, descents & climbs, winners & losers it's all there.
The excitement that comes from watching close track racing is well expressed. The fight with the mud and snow of cyclo-cross the other end of the spectrum. Graham really does work all year around.
Grahams career started with just as Eddy Merckx bowed out, he is (by his own admission) the only notable omission from this volume. All of the greats are shown in their moments of glory.
The subject of drug abuse and Lances cancer could not really be ignored and Grahams observations are handled with a delicate touch. Just looking at the pictures shows how technology has evolved. Graham Obree's radical rework of aerodynamics is there to see. Jasper Skibby's infamous Koppenburg incident with the race directors car is shown in a sequence of snaps.
The selection does have a US / UK bias; but then it is written for the English speaking fan. This is a book to look at time and time again. Put it away and bring it out and the images will still inspire. I took up cycling in 1980 and this book is near perfect representation of my own memory of professional racing as I could wish for. Well-done Graham I hope you have another 20 years of fantastic images to come.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3 reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
selected photos
14 Feb 2001
Format:Hardcover
Certainly Graham Watson is a great cycling photographer and deserves every accolade. But I purchased this book "on approval" and found when I really looked through it, many of the pictures had obscure subjects and less interesting stories. There is an honesty in that this is a review of Graham Watson's career--it does not claim to be a photo history of professional cycling. So it includes many photos less interesting to a cycling fan, but with more meaning for Graham Watson's career. Especially true in the section of black and whites taken as an amateur. Without question, the photographic and print quality are stunning, but I often found myself scratching my head wondering if a given shot could possibly be the best shot he took at that race on that day of that rider. Many of the pictures in this book really look like leftovers from an assignment. I've read European cycling magazines for years, and I feel you could get a much better selection of shots by subscribing to one of them for a year and/or picking up one of their annuals. Ironically, you hear almost exclusively in the US about Graham Watson--this book made me realize how many other great cycling photographers there must be.
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful
The Agony and the Ecstacy and the Beauty of It All
17 Jan 2001
Format:Hardcover
Graham Watson is the pre-eminent photographer of professional cycling, at least in English-language publications. A few minutes of leafing through this gorgeous book is all that is necessary to explain why this is so. For two decades, he has been there, capturing all the great riders in their glorious moments of triumph as well as the bleakness that comes with physical collapse and defeat. Bicycle road racing is like no other sport in the physical demands that it makes on its participants. It requires amazing conditioning and, even more importantly, a resolve beyond anything a normal person can imagine. One need only think of Greg Lemond, coming back to win the Tour de France after almost dying from gunshot wounds; Laurent Jalabert, his face smashed in after a high-speed collision with a policeman, returning to become the number one rider in the peloton; Lance Armstrong, overcoming cancer and winning the Tour de France twice; Andy Hampsten, riding through the freezing mountains to claim the pink jersey of the Giro; the men of Paris-Roubaix, flailing through the mud and banging over the cobbles. Graham Watson was there to record all of this in his superb style, where no detail is unnoticed. And he shows us the grand arenas where these heroes ride: the villages of rural France, the jagged Alps, the green Pyrenees. Sure, everyone will tell you that this is just another professional sport, with big contracts and illegal drugs and oversized egos, but when you look at these magnificent pictures, you will see brave men riding against grand landscapes, against relentless opponents and even against themselves. Graham Watson's books (Kings of the Road, The Great Tours and so forth) seem to sell for a short time and then disappear from the market. This book contains some photos published in the other ones, but is the best collection I have seen covering so many racing highlights that I can recommend it without reservation for lovers of bike racing, good photography and Europe.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
When did the French stop riding bikes.
9 Feb 2002
Format:Hardcover
I don't want to belittle Grahams work, or imply that I don't like seeing the shots of the American riders, but leaving out the other great riders of the last 20 years is a little sad. I understand this was an editing decision and not really Grahams.
I'm amazed at how he can take photos that convey the athletic endeavor in addition to the excitement, determination, and grandeur of these events. If your year starts with the Race of the Flowers and ends with the Race of the Falling Leaves, these are the vignettes of imagination.
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