Eddy Merckx : The Cannibal
Just finished reading this. I bought it and "Half Man Half Bike" at the same time and decided to read which ever one appeared top of the list on my Kindle first. And Dan Friebe won.
When Friebe used to write a lot for ProCycling I would sometimes tend to think his articles started to veer towards the sycophantic bumwash end of the spectrum and that bloody dreadful Cavendish book didn't help matters. However, Mountain High was great (the words) and I'll read anything about cycling, so I was always going to buy this one.
It's well written - And done without direct access to Merckx, so a lot of it is from interviews with riders and journalists who were around at the time. There's a lot of information and you really start to feel like you're getting a small flavour of what it was like at the time. It's not a book for people expecting a "he won this race this way, then won the next another way" - Sometimes it appears to gloss over the victories but as Eddy won so much the general victories aren't that important, it's more how he reacted to not winning or how his overwhelming desire to win affected others.
It's definitely a good one to read for people who have a nostalgia for a period they never experienced. There were trains keeping the race under control and there were mountain helpers keeping the pace high to crush any attacking.
So one that's worth picking up I'd say. I read it pretty quickly and I think I'll probably re-read it over the summer.
When Friebe used to write a lot for ProCycling I would sometimes tend to think his articles started to veer towards the sycophantic bumwash end of the spectrum and that bloody dreadful Cavendish book didn't help matters. However, Mountain High was great (the words) and I'll read anything about cycling, so I was always going to buy this one.
It's well written - And done without direct access to Merckx, so a lot of it is from interviews with riders and journalists who were around at the time. There's a lot of information and you really start to feel like you're getting a small flavour of what it was like at the time. It's not a book for people expecting a "he won this race this way, then won the next another way" - Sometimes it appears to gloss over the victories but as Eddy won so much the general victories aren't that important, it's more how he reacted to not winning or how his overwhelming desire to win affected others.
It's definitely a good one to read for people who have a nostalgia for a period they never experienced. There were trains keeping the race under control and there were mountain helpers keeping the pace high to crush any attacking.
So one that's worth picking up I'd say. I read it pretty quickly and I think I'll probably re-read it over the summer.
Fckin' Quintana … that creep can roll, man.
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