From Lance To Landis

Author : David Walsh
Publisher : Ballantine Books
Page : 362 pages
File Size : 49,9 Mb
Release : 2007-06-26
Category : Sports & Recreation
ISBN : 9780345503589

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From Lance to Landis by David Walsh Pdf

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 tremendous 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 examines 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 larger American culture.

Author : Floyd Landis,Loren Mooney
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 319 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2007-06-26
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781416950233

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Positively False by Floyd Landis,Loren Mooney Pdf

Landis, the American cyclist whose hard-earned 2006 Tour de France victory was stripped due to doping allegations, provides irrefutable evidence to clear his name and details the fascinating ups and downs of his life and career.

Author : David Walsh
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 432 pages
File Size : 41,5 Mb
Release : 2015-10-27
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781501133190

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Seven Deadly Sins by David Walsh Pdf

The basis for the upcoming major motion picture The Program directed by Stephen Frears (High Fidelity, The Queen, Philomena), starring Chris O'Dowd as journalist David Walsh and Ben Foster as Lance Armstrong. When Lance Armstrong won his first Tour de France in 1999, the sports world had found a charismatic new idol. Journalist David Walsh was among a small group covering the tour who suspected Armstrong’s win wasn’t the feel-good story it seemed to be. From that first moment of doubt, the next thirteen years of Walsh’s life would be focused on seeking the answers to a series of hard questions about Armstrong’s astonishing success. As Walsh delved ever deeper into the shadow world of performance-enhancing drugs in professional athletics, he accumulated a mounting pile of evidence that led a furious Armstrong to take legal action against him. But he could not make Walsh—or the story—go away, and in the autumn of 2012, Walsh was vindicated when the cyclist was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles. With this remarkable book, Walsh has produced both the definitive account of the Armstrong scandal, and a testament to the importance of journalists who are willing to report a difficult truth over a popular fantasy.

Author : Tyler Hamilton,Daniel Coyle
Publisher : Bantam
Page : 304 pages
File Size : 44,8 Mb
Release : 2012-09-05
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780345530431

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The Secret Race by Tyler Hamilton,Daniel Coyle Pdf

“The holy grail for disillusioned cycling fans . . . The book’s power is in the collective details, all strung together in a story that is told with such clear-eyed conviction that you never doubt its veracity. . . . The Secret Race isn’t just a game changer for the Lance Armstrong myth. It’s the game ender.”—Outside NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD The Secret Race is the book that rocked the world of professional cycling—and exposed, at long last, the doping culture surrounding the sport and its most iconic rider, Lance Armstrong. Former Olympic gold medalist Tyler Hamilton was once one of the world’s top-ranked cyclists—and a member of Lance Armstrong’s inner circle. Over the course of two years, New York Times bestselling author Daniel Coyle conducted more than two hundred hours of interviews with Hamilton and spoke with numerous teammates, rivals, and friends. The result is an explosive page-turner of a book that takes us deep inside a shadowy, fascinating, and surreal world of unscrupulous doctors, anything-goes team directors, and athletes so relentlessly driven to win that they would do almost anything to gain an edge. For the first time, Hamilton recounts his own battle with depression and tells the story of his complicated relationship with Lance Armstrong. This edition features a new Afterword, in which the authors reflect on the developments within the sport, and involving Armstrong, over the past year. The Secret Race is a courageous, groundbreaking act of witness from a man who is as determined to reveal the hard truth about his sport as he once was to win the Tour de France. With a new Afterword by the authors. “Loaded with bombshells and revelations.”—VeloNews “[An] often harrowing story . . . the broadest, most accessible look at cycling’s drug problems to date.”—The New York Times “ ‘If I cheated, how did I get away with it?’ That question, posed to SI by Lance Armstrong five years ago, has never been answered more definitively than it is in Tyler Hamilton’s new book.”—Sports Illustrated “Explosive.”—The Daily Telegraph (London)

Author : Christopher S. Thompson
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 436 pages
File Size : 54,5 Mb
Release : 2008-03-08
Category : Sports & Recreation
ISBN : 0520934865

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Tour de France by Christopher S. Thompson Pdf

In this highly original history of the world's most famous bicycle race, Christopher S. Thompson, mining previously neglected sources and writing with infectious enthusiasm for his subject, tells the compelling story of the Tour de France from its creation in 1903 to the present. Weaving the words of racers, politicians, Tour organizers, and a host of other commentators together with a wide-ranging analysis of the culture surrounding the event including posters, songs, novels, films, and media coverage Thompson links the history of the Tour to key moments and themes in French history. Examining the enduring popularity of Tour racers, Thompson explores how their public images have changed over the past century. A new preface explores the long-standing problem of doping in light of recent scandals.

Author : Juliet Macur
Publisher : Harper Collins
Page : 321 pages
File Size : 42,9 Mb
Release : 2014-03-04
Category : Sports & Recreation
ISBN : 9780062277244

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Cycle of Lies by Juliet Macur Pdf

The definitive account of Lance Armstrong's spectacular rise and fall. In June 2013, when Lance Armstrong fled his palatial home in Texas, downsizing in the face of multimillion-dollar lawsuits, Juliet Macur was there—talking to his girlfriend and children and listening to Armstrong's version of the truth. She was one of the few media members aside from Oprah Winfrey to be granted extended one-on-one access to the most famous pariah in sports. At the center of Cycle of Lies is Armstrong himself, revealed through face-to-face interviews. But this unfolding narrative is given depth and breadth by the firsthand accounts of more than one hundred witnesses, including family members whom Armstrong had long since turned his back on—the adoptive father who gave him the Armstrong name, a grandmother, an aunt. Perhaps most damning of all is the taped testimony of the late J.T. Neal, the most influential of Armstrong's many father figures, recorded in the final years of Neal's life as he lost his battle with cancer just as Armstrong gained fame for surviving the disease. In the end, it was Armstrong's former friends, those who had once occupied the precious space of his inner circle, who betrayed him. They were the ones who dealt Armstrong his fatal blow by breaking the code of silence that shielded the public from the grim truth about the sport of cycling—and the grim truth about its golden boy, Armstrong. Threading together the vivid and disparate voices of those with intimate knowledge of the private and public Armstrong, Macur weaves a comprehensive and unforgettably rich tapestry of one man's astonishing rise to global fame and fortune and his devastating fall from grace.

Author : Lance Armstrong
Publisher : Broadway
Page : 258 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2004
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780767914482

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Every Second Counts by Lance Armstrong Pdf

Continuing where "It's Not About the Bike" left off, recounts Armstrong's life after cancer, his relationship with the French, disproved accusations of doping, and his work restoring a chapel in Spain.

Author : Daniel de Visé
Publisher : Atlantic Monthly Press
Page : 473 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2018-06-05
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780802165794

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The Comeback by Daniel de Visé Pdf

“Greg LeMond was Lance Armstrong before Lance Armstrong . . . the story of a true hero . . . This is a must read if you believe in miracles.”―John Feinstein, New York Times–bestselling author In July 1986, Greg LeMond stunned the sporting world by becoming the first American to win the Tour de France, the world’s pre-eminent bicycle race, defeating French cycling legend Bernard Hinault. Nine months later, LeMond lay in a hospital bed, his life in peril after a hunting accident, his career as a bicycle racer seemingly over. And yet, barely two years after this crisis, LeMond mounted a comeback almost without parallel in professional sports. In summer 1989, he again won the Tour—arguably the world’s most grueling athletic contest—by the almost impossibly narrow margin of 8 seconds over another French legend, Laurent Fignon. It remains the closest Tour de France in history. “[A] blend of chaos, kindness and cruelty typifies the scenes that journalist de Visé brings to life in this sympathetic-verging-on-reverential retelling of LeMond’s trailblazing career (first American to enter the tour, first to win it) . . . As an author in quest of his protagonist’s motivation, [de Visé] subjects it to extreme torque.”—The Washington Post “A great book . . . Well written and thoroughly researched . . . Engrossing and hard to put down. If you’re a Greg LeMond fan, The Comeback is a must read because it’s a detailed accounting of his career and―more importantly―his life and person off the bike. It’s also an important reminder that American cycling did not begin and end with Lance Armstrong.”—PEZ

Author : Daniel Coyle
Publisher : Harper Collins
Page : 526 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2009-03-17
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780061746482

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Lance Armstrong's War by Daniel Coyle Pdf

Lance Armstrong's War is the extraordinary story of greatness pushed to its limits; a vivid, behind-the-scenes portrait of perhaps the most accomplished athlete of our time as he vies for a historic sixth straight victory in the toughest sporting event on the planet. It is the true story of a superlative sports figure fighting on all fronts—made newly vulnerable by age, fate, fame, doping allegations, a painful divorce, and an unprecedented army of challengers—while mastering the exceedingly difficult trick of being Lance Armstrong, a combination of world-class athlete, celebrity, regular guy, and, for many Americans, secular saint. With a new afterword by the author, featuring in-depth reporting on: Armstrong's unprecedented seventh consecutive Tour de France victory New blood doping allegations Armstrong's continuing personal and legal battles, and his retirement A fascinating journey through the little-known landscape of professional bike racing, Lance Armstrong's War provides a hugely insightful look into the often inspiring, always surprising core of a remarkable athlete and the world that shapes him.

Author : David Walsh
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 54,7 Mb
Release : 2013-11-21
Category : Sports & Recreation
ISBN : 9781471133343

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Inside Team Sky by David Walsh Pdf

The inside story of Team Sky's 2013 Tour de France challenge. After the victory of Bradley Wiggins and Team Sky in the 2012 Tour de France, the pressure was on the team to repeat their success in 2013. When Wiggins had to pull out of the defence of his yellow jersey, attention moved to Chris Froome, who had finished as runner-up the year before. Could he bring about back-to-back victories for the UK and for Team Sky? With team principal Sir Dave Brailsford at the helm, the levels of expectation were high. Nothing less than a win would do. Embedded within the team was top sportswriter David Walsh, who had been covering the sport for four decades. As the man who had done more than any other journalist to reveal the lies of Lance Armstrong, he has the reputation for exposing the dark secrets that cycling would want to keep hidden. His inside story, from how Team Sky prepared for the Tour de France through to Froome's emphatic victory, is supported by insights from all the key members of the team, and provides a definitive account of a dramatic race that gripped cycling fans around the world.

Author : Juliet Macur
Publisher : HarperCollins UK
Page : 480 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 2014-03-04
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780007520657

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Cycle of Lies: The Fall of Lance Armstrong by Juliet Macur Pdf

A fly-on-the-wall account of the Lance Armstrong doping scandal – the greatest drama in modern sporting history by the New York Times cycling correspondent.

Author : David Millar
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 453 pages
File Size : 47,5 Mb
Release : 2012-06-26
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781451682700

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Racing Through the Dark by David Millar Pdf

WORLD-CLASS CYCLIST, Tour de France stage winner, and time trial specialist David Millar offers a vivid portrait of his life in professional cycling—including his soul-searing detour into performance-enhancing drugs, his dramatic arrest and two-year ban, and his ultimate decision to return to the sport he loves to race clean—in this arrestingly candid memoir, which he wrote himself. As a young Scottish expat living in Hong Kong with his father after his parents’ divorce, Millar showed early promise with mountain biking and BMX. Two wise local cyclists took him under their wings, encouraging him to concentrate on road racing. Millar proved a ready convert. Racing Through the Dark offers the winning account of his climb through the ranks—first as an amateur and then as a pro, riding for the French team Cofidis. Among his early triumphs were several stage wins in the Tour de France. From the moment Millar turned pro, he began to see hints of the unethical measures that many— maybe most—of the other pros were taking in order to race at the very tops of their games . . . and beyond. At first, he felt that he was immune to temptation, that he could win clean. But the ugly pervasiveness of performance-enhancing drugs and the seemingly universal attitude that condoned it began to corrode his willpower. Racing Through the Dark details his eventual capitulation, his subsequent arrest and two-year ban from cycling, and his remarkable comeback as a clean cyclist who is now doing his utmost to keep performance-enhancing drugs out of the sport he so loves. Filled with thrilling descriptions of the world’s most spectacular courses, Racing Through the Dark captures the pure joy of cycling and includes some of the most vivid accounts of racing ever written by a true insider.

Author : David Walsh
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 388 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2012-12-13
Category : Sports & Recreation
ISBN : 9781471127564

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Seven Deadly Sins by David Walsh Pdf

Author : Reed Albergotti,Vanessa O'Connell
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 416 pages
File Size : 47,5 Mb
Release : 2013-10-15
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781101635889

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Wheelmen by Reed Albergotti,Vanessa O'Connell Pdf

The first in-depth look at Lance Armstrong's doping scandal, the phenomenal business success built on the back of fraud, and the greatest conspiracy in the history of sports Lance Armstrong won a record-smashing seven Tours de France after staring down cancer, and in the process became an international symbol of resilience and courage. In a sport constantly dogged by blood-doping scandals, he seemed above the fray. Then, in January 2013, the legend imploded. He admitted doping during the Tours and, in an interview with Oprah, described his "mythic, perfect story" as "one big lie." But his admission raised more questions than it answered—because he didn’t say who had helped him dope or how he skillfully avoided getting caught. The Wall Street Journal reporters Reed Albergotti and Vanessa O'Connell broke the news at every turn. In Wheelmen they reveal the broader story of how Armstrong and his supporters used money, power, and cutting-edge science to conquer the world’s most difficult race. Wheelmen introduces U.S. Postal Service Team owner Thom Weisel, who in a brazen power play ousted USA Cycling's top leadership and gained control of the sport in the United States, ensuring Armstrong’s dominance. Meanwhile, sponsors fought over contracts with Armstrong as the entire sport of cycling began to benefit from the "Lance effect." What had been a quirky, working-class hobby became the pastime of the Masters of the Universe set. Wheelmen offers a riveting look at what happens when enigmatic genius breaks loose from the strictures of morality. It reveals the competitiveness and ingenuity that sparked blood-doping as an accepted practice, and shows how the Americans methodically constructed an international operation of spies and revolutionary technology to reach the top. It went on to become a New York Times Bestseller, a Wall Street Journal Business Bestseller, and win numerous awards, including a Gold Medal for the Axiom Business Book Awards. At last exposing the truth about Armstrong and American cycling, Wheelmen paints a living portrait of what is, without question, the greatest conspiracy in the history of sports.

Author : David Walsh
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 464 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2015-10-01
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 1471152588

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The Program by David Walsh Pdf

The tie-in edition of the stunning new film, directed by Stephen Frears and starring Chris O'Dowd (Moone Boy, The IT Crowd) as David Walsh and Ben Foster (3.10 to Yuma) as Lance Armstrong. This book, previously published as Seven Deadly Sins, tells the thrilling story of Walsh's thirteen-year quest to prove that the world's most famous cancer survivor and cycling superstar Lance Armstrong had built his reputation on a lie. From Armstrong's first Tour win in 1999, Walsh was one of very few to question what we were seeing and, in his search for the truth, he was dubbed a 'troll' by the Texan cyclist and found himself ostracised by those who didn't want to upset the narrative that Armstrong seemed to present to a sport in urgent need of renewal. Eventually, thanks in large part to Walsh's persistence, Armstrong was stripped of his titles, banned for life from the sport and forced into admitting to Oprah that he had, after all, been doping and that his seven Tour de France victories were little more than his seven deadly sins. It was one of the biggest sporting stories of the century, and the tale of how it came about is now the basis of a wonderful film.