Matt Rendell

At 9:30 pm on 14 February 2004, former Tour de France winner Marco Pantani was found dead in Rimini. It emerged that he had been addicted to cocaine since Autumn 1999, weeks after being expelled from the Tour of Italy for blood doping. Conspiracy theories abounded - that he was injected in his sleep by a business rival, that the Olympic Committee had framed him, that Italian Industrialists had engineered his downfall, etc etc. If none of these is entirely true and none of them fully explains Pantani's personal tragedy, none of them is foundationless. This book debunks the myths and makes surprising revelations. About Pantani's personal tragedy, but also about the world of cycling. Matt Rendell had access not only to court transcripts but to many of Pantani's friends and the doctors who treated him. But Pantani's life is about much more than drug addiction. Lance Armstrong described him as 'more of an artist than an athlete - an extravagant figure ...' Despite being plagued with injuries he won both the Giro and the Tour in 1998, something very few cyclists even attempt. He was an inspirational icon, and the remarkable wins against all odds make gripping reading.

A Biography

The Death of Marco Pantani

From Lance Armstrong's comeback from cancer, to Torn Simpson's death on the slopes of Mont Ventoux, the Tour De France has been the stage for some of sport's most monumental triumphs and the scene of some of its darkest hours. This book looks at the rivalries, characters and controversies that have given the century-old race its unique colour.

The Cruel and Unusual History of the Tour de France

Blazing Saddles

Every week for much of the year, millions of Brits view and vote on Strictly Come Dancing, with the salsa being one of the most popular dances. Dark, enticing Afro-Caribbean rhythms; moving bodies gently interlaced, responding to the music: at first sight, salsa dancing seems to recover something our regimented British lives suppress. For not much more than a fiver, salsa can reconnect us with our bodies. So we seem to think: with perhaps a million Britons taking a class every week, salsa is statistically our national dance. Matt Rendell learned salsa the British way, as an adult, rote-learning figures and routines. His Colombian wife, Vivi, acquired salsa in early childhood from her parents and grandparents; the dance made her part of her community. A love story about two people from cultures at sometimes comical cross-purposes, Salsa for People Who Probably Shouldn't explores how the world's most popular dance went global, how it reached the UK and whether the saucy, salacious salsa of our national fantasy life is really as exotic as we like to think.

Salsa for People Who Probably Shouldn't

By winning the 2019 Tour de France, Egan Bernal became the race's youngest champion in 110 years, and the first from the South American nation of Colombia. His victory brought decades of national yearning to fruition. Colombia has long been the only developing nation contending at cycling's highest level. Yet its cycling sons are not the products of a rigorous sports system that spots them in childhood and nurtures them through the ranks to the pinnacle of globalised sport. They come from harder backgrounds, that surprise, shock - even, at times, enchant. Colombia Es Pasión! explores the lives and dreams of each of the nation's leading cyclists. Theirs are inspiring stories of overcoming poverty and violence, sickness and corruption, and achieving global sporting glory. 'Takes you into the heart of both a sport and a country. The journey is well worth the effort' Sunday Times 'Wonderful' Observer 'Remarkable, a masterpiece' Never Strays Far podcast

The Generation of Racing Cyclists Who Changed Their Nation and the Tour de France

Colombia Es Pasion!

the legend of José Beyaert : cycling champion, fortune hunter, and outlaw

Olympic gangster

By winning the 2019 Tour de France, Egan Bernal became the race's youngest champion in 110 years, and the first from the South American nation of Colombia. His victory brought decades of national yearning to fruition, and capped the achievements of a golden generation of Colombian cyclists. For, in the years before Egan's victory, Nairo Quintana won the Tours of Italy and Spain, even coming within 72 seconds of winning the Tour. Rigoberto Urán, Esteban Chaves, Miguel Ángel López and Fernando Gaviria took stage wins, donned leader's jerseys and made final podiums at cycling's greatest events. They, and other world-class Colombian talents, made their nation a cycling superpower. Yet its cycling sons are not the products of a rigorous sports system that nurtures them through the ranks to the pinnacle of globalised sport. They come from harder backgrounds, that surprise, shock - even, at times, enchant. The visibility they have secured their homeland has helped open it to international tourism and trade. After decades of violence, corruption and civil unrest, a new, revitalised Colombia has re-entered the community of nation, thanks to its cyclists. This book is about their lives and dreams: it tells inspiring stories of overcoming poverty and violence, sickness and corruption. It explores the unique sporting microcosm that lies behind Colombia's world-beating riders, and how their achievements spurred a nation to prosperity and peace.

For the first time Matthew Rendell tells the little-known story of a Latin American country in which cycling is the national sport, whose sportsmen, denied the enormous benefits of prosperity, cutting-edge technology and unlimited sponsorship, have nevertheless achieved prodigious cycling feats both at home and abroad, and helped to forge for Colombia a heroic national identity. He tells of how, during the fifties, Colombia's own top cycle race, the Vuelta de Colombia, was still being held on dusty, unpaved roads - with consequentially ghastly accidents; of how the first top European cyclists who came to race in Colombia found themselves utterly vanquished by its endless mountain climbs; of how the biography of Colombia's first cycling superstar was written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Then, following the story through to the seventies and eighties, he shows how Colombia's cyclists began to make their mark abroad, even in the ultimate competition, the Tour de France - and, while they may have lacked the team discipline and the pace training to win the race itself, how to them the premier accolade was to become King of the Mountains, by beating everyone else in the Tour's most drainin

How Colombia's Cycling Heroes Changed Their Nation's History

Kings of the Mountains

An inside view into cycling's most prestigious event and the people who have helped Lance Armstrong win an unprecedented six times Lance Armstrong's place in the cycling history books is assured. Winner of the Tour de France a record-breaking six times, he is regarded as one of the greatest individual talents the sport has ever seen. Perhaps his most compelling victory was in 2003 when he won the coveted Centenary race. However, without the team of brilliant athletes assembled to support him - the domestiques - victory in the Tour would have been impossible. Not only do these superbly trained athletes ride alongside the team leader, supplying water and equipment, but they also create a moving stream of energy that is vital for competitive success. In 2003, Lance Armstrong's domestique, Victor Hugo Peña, actually took over the yellow jersey and stepped into history. A Significant Other is the story of that race but also of these unsung heros of the sport.

Riding the Centenary tour de France with Lance Armstrong

A Significant Other

Restlessly vital and possessed of great physical strength, José Beyaert lived many lives. During the Second World War, he boxed and trafficked arms for the Resistance on his bicycle. After it, he became an international cyclist. In 1948, a mile from the end of the Olympic road race around Windsor Park, he broke away alone to take the gold medal and started an adventure that would last the rest of his life. A Tour de France rider in the sport's golden age, José was invited to open a new velodrome in Colombia, South America. He travelled, intending to stay a month. Instead, driven by his thirst for adventure, he stayed for fifty years, becoming by turns athlete, coach, businessman, emerald-trader, logger, smuggler, perhaps even hired killer. Matt Rendell, who knew José Beyaert and met many of his family, friends and associates, tells the fascinating story of an almost-forgotten sporting hero who, incapable of living by other people's rules, lived his many lives on his own terms.

Matt Rendell

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