Cycling book read
I am winding down on my reading for the year and have finished last week, A Significant Other: Riding the Centanary Tour de France with Lance Armstrong by Matt Rendell. This book is part of some of the books I have read about cycling. I am slowly winding down on being interested on the topic. Pretty soon I must stop reading and start riding.
The topic of this book was following Victor Hugo Pena as he was a domestique on the US Postal squad standing guard for Lance Armstrong in the 2003 Tour de France. That Tour was Armstrong’s toughest tour. He lost a time trial to Jan Ullrich, spectacularly went off roading as Joseba Beloki crashed out in the melting asphalt, toppled to the ground by a spectator, and won it with the least time between him and his competitors in any of the seven he’s won. The book focused on the 15th stage where he fell off his bike then sped on to victory.
What should’ve been a gripping story was ruined by disjointed story telling. Rendell switched from telling Pena’s tale to the history of the tour to Armstrong which made the book not so compelling. I was bored with it hoping to catch some insight to that tour. I wanted to relive the moments of that great tour, but it wasn’t to be. Rendell was telling the wrong story.
C
