Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
THE REAL TOUR DE FRANCE REVEALED, 21 Nov 2008
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?
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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A must read , 27 Oct 2008
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.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Readable and Compelling, 17 Jul 2008
I agree with both of the earlier reviewers. This is a readable, well written and compelling book, as a memoir of Whittle's career as a cycling journalist it is entertaining and as a chronicle of his move from loyal fan to insider to dissapointed cynic it is even quite moving, and to be fair that is how it describes itself.
It is not revelatory though, it is not an 'expose' there is nothing new in the way of evidence, as the first reviewer says, go to Walsh and Kimmage for those but Whilttle never pretends that this is an expose. He gives credit where it due to Walsh to Kimmage to Simeoni, and records his own personal response to these events.
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