From Lance to Landis: Inside the American Doping Controversy at the Tour de France |
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From Lance to Landis: Inside the American Doping Controversy at the Tour de France
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by David Walsh
Sales Rank: 43969
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Discount: 34 %
List Price: $24.95
$16.47
At Amazon
on 4-14-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Hard Cover with 352 pages
Published by: Ballantine Books June 26, 2007
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 034549962X
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0345499622
Book Dimensions:
9.2 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
Weighs: 1.2 pounds
Book Description
For eight years, the Tour de France, arguably the world’s most demanding athletic competition, was ruled by two men: Lance Armstrong and Floyd Landis. On the surface, they were feature players in one of the great sporting stories of the age–American riders overcoming awesome odds to dominate a sport that held little previous interest for their countrymen. But is this a true story, or is there a darker version of the truth, one that sadly reflects the realities of Sports in the twenty-first century? Landis’s title is now in jeopardy because drug tests revealing that his testosterone levels were eleven times those of a normal athlete strongly suggest that he used banned substances, and for years similar allegations have swirled around Armstrong.
Now internationally acclaimed award-winning journalist David Walsh gives an explosive account of the shadow side of professional sports. In this electrifying, controversial, and scrupulously documented exposé, Walsh explores the many facets of the cyclist doping scandals in the United States and abroad. He looks at how performance-enhancing drugs can infiltrate a premier Sports event–and why athletes succumb to the pressure to use them. In researching this book, Walsh conducted hundreds of hours of interviews with key figures in international cycling, doctors, and other insiders, including Emma O’Reilly, Armstrong’s longtime massage therapist; former U.S. Postal Service cycling team doctor Prentice Steffen; cycling legend Greg LeMond; and former teammates of both Landis and Armstrong.
Central to the story is Lance Armstrong’s relentless, all-consuming drive to be the best. Also essential to this narrative is Floyd Landis, the unassuming, sympathetic hero who was the first winner of the Tour de France after Lance–and the first ever to face the threat of having his title revoked. More than anything else, this book will ignite anew the debate about whether there is room in the current Sports culture for athletes who compete honestly, whether Sports can be saved from a scandal as widespread as this, and what changes will have to be made.
With a compelling narrative and revelations that will stun, enlighten, and haunt readers, David Walsh addresses numerous questions that arise in that crucial space where Sports meet the greater American culture.
About The Author
David Walsh is chief Sports writer with The Sunday Times (London). A four-time Irish Sportswriter of the Year and a three-time U.K. Sportswriter of the Year, he is married with seven children and lives in Cambridge, England. He is co-author of L.A. Confidential: The Secrets of Lance Armstrong.
Reader Reviews
Even to the most well-read US-based cycling fans and cyclists, the current reporting and debate on the existence or non-existence of drug abuse in cycling is a very cloudy topic. Rumors, hearsay, ambiguous reports, and misleading statements fly around, alternatively giving the appearance of doping in cycling either as a monolithic, opaque cabal, or a motley collection of clueless riders, team managers, doctors, and assistants in a convoluted web of trickery and incompetence. David Walsh has managed to offer a very coherent, readable, enlightening picture of how things were, how things came to be, who the players are, and clarify some of the misunderstood ideals in the subject. I do not know if his offering is necessarily 100% accurate, but his book is a real gem in organizing disparate reports from various athletes, team staff members, and sources from governing bodies in the sport. Walsh does a fair job in underlining evidence and recorded information, and his own propositions. For that, he deserves credit. This book connected various dots gathered from published information and recorded testimonials pointing towards the end-goal of his investigation: which is that Armstrong and Landis conclusively doped. One cannot help but feel that although Walsh managed to show that many pieces of evidence point to that conclusion, he falls just short of that ultimate goal. Hence the earlier parts of the book -- where he was laying down the background story -- reads more cohesively than the latter parts of the book where he tried to point the discussion towards his primary thesis. Whether you have chosen to believe whether Armstrong (or Landis) had doped in their career, I highly recommend this book. It offers a picture of how different practices came to permeate the sport, and who the primary players are, and the pressures within the peloton to follow the practices of other teams. Prior to this book, I read "The death of Marco Pantani" by Matt Rendell. Simiarly to Walsh's book, Rendell examined medical records, various testimonies and recorded interviews and news reports, and tried to put those in a coherent picture. However, Walsh does a better job in writing the narrative to accompany his pieces of evidence, and propositions.
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From Lance to Landis: Inside the American Doping Controversy at the Tour de France
Available from Amazon
Price: $16.47
Updated on 4-14-2008.
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