Rough Ride: Behind the Wheel with a Pro Cyclist

Let's forget the doping angle for a moment. Paul tells a lot about how the Tour de France race actually works per breakaways and reeling them in and the work of domestiques. I am being a bit generous with a 5 star rating but the inside view of the peloton is the best I've read. Too, it's good that it's not just some 190 page cycling book and believe me, not to name names but this is a downfall of a number of books out there. There was also a lot of good info on races in his native Ireland, Belgium, Holland, the Milk Tour of Britain which is one I've always liked since my friend had a white Raleigh that was a milk tour bike. As far as doping goes, "From Lance to Landis" by Kimmage's friend David Walsh is by far the best out of a half dozen or so books out there on the subject but he does do a good job describing the UCI's position on doping and an often weak one at that. He really ends up leaving more questions open with few answers. Yes, some of the doping info is dated to his racing days and he does have a "see, I told you so" attitude. With all that said, I was under the big impression this was a doping in cycling book. The last 3rd is what really is about doping and the problem makes appearances here and there prior to that, so I don't consider this a real doping expose.

This book is written by an idealistic Irish national champion who thought to make a career of himself as a professional cyclist. What he found out is that system as it exists uses up its riders like disposable cameras. He had ambitions of glory or at least success, only to find that his talent is common in the pro ranks. What he describes is what it takes to exist as a professional cyclist - the wear and tear on the body and the pounding on the psyche. Hired as a domestique, his job is to support the big guns, the stars. Yet he is compensated on his own personal racing results, which are earned only when he is released from his supporting duties. For lesser riders like him, doping is the logical and even professional way of being able to perform. His transgressions are minor - caffeine suppositories, and trial use of speed, which he discards as just too *visible*. Eventually he drops out of cycling as he transitions into another line of work, sports reporting. His message is that it is the system that is broken - open knowledge of which events are not dope-controlled, the compensation system that expects riders to sacrifice their own results to those of the team, yet get paid on the basis of their criterium results. Most of all it is the code of silence that keeps all the riders mum and reinforces the idea that there is no alternative. He speaks from the point of view of the average rider. While he is tight with the Irish greats of his day (Tour de France winner Stephen Roche and TdF points winner Sean Kelly), he can't and doesn't speak of them beyond his personal experiences from sharing hotel rooms, training rides and personal relationships. If you are looking for a tell-all book about the greats of the Tour de France, you will not find it here. This is his story, no one else's. It's not a comprehensive book about sports doping or even doping in the professional peleton. What made his story notorious in its time was the fact that he dared to speak of it at all. His transgressions were minor but his story ostracized him from his cycling generation for years. He updated the booking in 2005, when he ventured back into that world, albeit as a journalist rather than a rider. Things had changed yet stayed the same. His point of view is tainted now, in that he sees doping everywhere, just in a more sophisticated form than in his day. This book is interesting not so much for the details but for the pressures on the riders to perform and to do anything/everything that the others must do. You and I have long commutes and sedentary lives that are required by our jobs; they have different job constraints that are just as binding, only theirs will kill them sooner. What a life! Thanks, Paul, for letting us see this life from your point of view.

Paul Kimmage is an award-winning sports journalist who writes for the Sunday Times newspaper in the United Kingdom. Born in Dublin, he is a former professional cyclist who competed in the 1980s - alongside compatriots Sean Kelly, Stephen Roche and Martin Earley. In "Rough Ride", Kimmage looks back on his life on the bike - he touches on his amateur years, though he focuses more on his time as a professional. While the move into professional cycling was a dream come true for Kimmage, the reality of professional cycling wasn't quite the dream he had hoped for : never mind the physical and psychological difficulties associated with the sport, cycling had a widespread drugs problem. The 1980s were great times for Irish cycling - Sean Kelly was successful from one end of the decade to the other, while Stephen Roche won the Tour de France, the Giro d'Italia and the World Championships in 1987. Kimmage, however, was a domestique and never won a race. He entered the professional ranks with RMO in 1986, before moving to Fagor-MBK in 1989 - where he rode alongside Stephen Roche until the Tour de France. He abandoned that race and - despite having intended to quit at the end of that season - he never rode professionally again. Kimmage was one of four new pros taken on by RMO in 1986 - however, as one of the few non-French riders, it was initially difficult for him to integrate into the team. Nevertheless, Andre 'Dede' Chappuis quickly became a friend - as, in time, did Jean Claude Colotti and Thierry Claveyrolat. As an amateur, Kimmage had heard rumours about the drug-taking in the professional ranks. However, he was determined to stay clean - even, initially, refusing to take the vitamin shots. (The shots were injected and, in Kimmage's mind, syringes meant doping. Nine stages of the 1986 Tour de France changed his mind : he wouldn't have been capable of starting stage 10 without a shot of Vitamin B12). So far as I know, vitamin shots don't count as doping - I may be wrong - but they certainly would certainly appear innocent enough to the man in the street. Similarly, caffeine tablets also sound reasonably innocent - however, they would return a positive test. Nevertheless, they were quite commonly used - taken early enough in the stage, the caffeine would've been out of the system by the time the cyclist reached doping control. However, things in cycling went far beyond vitamins and caffeine tablets. Kimmage remembers arriving at a race in his early days carrying a briefcase, something that caused a bit of a slagging from the other riders. It was only later that he discovered many other cyclists carried pills and syringes in theirs - while Kimmage himself was only carrying his passport and a few letters. Since not every race tested for drugs, cyclists knew which races they could 'charge up' for safely. While it was never openly encouraged by the management, they were occasionally reminded of their duty as professionals - especially when there were w

What's it like to be a wonderfully talented amateur bicycle racer who gets thrown into the meat-grinder of professional cycling? Kimmage answers the question in honest yet depressing detail. An example: This book explains that the fatigued riders who did not place in the final stage of the Tour wouldn't be tested for dope, so they were free to take amphetamines. Reading "Rough Ride" is a lot like driving by a car crash. You really want to avert your eyes but can't. Kimmage's story of life as a cycling domestique is fascinating. Kimmage makes it very clear that he is only telling his own personal story and not accusing any other rider in particular. But the practices he exposes clearly indict the entire profession. His revelations of the culture of doping within the peloton brought him withering criticism. He wasn't the first to get in trouble for revealing cycling's nasty underside. Bernard Thévenet almost died of liver failure from overuse of corticoids. When he confessed that doping was the cause of his health problems and that doping was a common practice within the peloton, the 2-time Tour winner suffered terrible opprobrium from the press, his sponsor and his fellow racers. I believe Kimmage's book is the first (at least in English) to detail at length what life as a professional truly entailed. Since then former professional Erwann Menthéour has also written a memoir about doping in cycling which, to the best of my knowledge, has not been translated. Both he and Kimmage explained that the term for revealing cyclists' doping to the public is called "spitting in the soup". Menthéour's (who was caught using EPO) reply was "People are saying I am spitting in the soup, but it is necessary when it is poison." In the last year the wall of silence regarding doping has come tumbling down and several famous racers have confessed their misdeeds. Yet Kimmage's book is the seminal tome and writing it was an act of courage. The book is more than about doping. It details Kimmage's own failure to properly train and prepare for some seasons. He also describes the gut-busting exhaustion that the lesser riders suffer as they work at their limits for their more talented team leaders. "Rough Ride" is a well-written book about racing in the 1980s but its lessons apply to the present. It is important reading for any cycling fan with an interest in what it takes to produce the spectacle we so enjoy watching.

Kimmage rode with some of the greats of cycling, but was only in the cold shadow of greatness in terms of ability. He details in the book the means taken by some cyclists to climb out of the shadows into the sunshine by taking drugs. His book was brave at the time, he was accused of 'spitting in the soup' and lost the friendship of many of his cycling peers for his writing about the drug taking. He was called a liar. But time has revealed through the 'festina affair' who were the liars. A good read, but leaves one feeling a little sad to think that sport in general, not just cycling, can be so diseased.