A Clean Break: My Story Free

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Christophe Bassons is a former professional cyclist. His career was a successful one albeit never in the full glare of the media. That all changed when, inthe Festina doping scandal broke and Bassons shot to fame as one of the handful of clean riders in the peloton - and as the only professional who dared to speak openly about the topic. Having been seen as a possible champion, his instinctive and stubborn refusal to dope saw him outstripped in physique, stamina and speed by men he'd once equalled or exceeded. His willingness to denounce the doping culture set him against the entire ethos of professional cycling: owners, management and his peers - the likes of Lance Armstrong, Richard Virenque, Christophe Moreau. A year later, Bassons' career was over. Having clashed publicly with other riders - notably with Armstrong during the Tour de France - and written in French newspapers of his disbelief and disgust, Bassons found himself exhausted and exiled - chewed up and spat out by the sport he loved. First published in French in and now updated following recent revelations from Armstrong, Tyler Hamilton and other high-profile figures, and A Clean Break: My Story by Peter Cossins, A Clean Break is unmissable reading for all cycling fans. It offers a unique and heartbreaking take on the subject. Christophe Bassons was a professional cyclist between andracing with the likes of Lance Armstrong, Tyler Hamilton and Richard Virenque. He now works for the French Ministry of Sport and Culture to prevent doping. Peter Cossins has been writing and reporting on cycling for over 20 years. He is a former editor of Procycling and the author of The Monuments. Benoit Hopquin is a French journalist and author. He is a senior reporter for Le Monde and is based in Paris. This is an excellent book and definitely recommended for cycling fans, though it does make for rather depressing reading when revealing the lengths that cyclists will go to A Clean Break: My Story by cheating. The other emotion it engenders is cynicism, when you see riders pedalling with ease up mountains for kilometre after kilometre you do wonder. His story is at least an uplifting contrast with that of Marco Pantani, whose life was destroyed by cycling and drugs. All delivery times quoted are the average, and cannot be guaranteed. These should be added to the availability message time, to determine when the goods will arrive. During checkout we will give you a cumulative estimated date for delivery. Click and Collect is available for A Clean Break: My Story our shops; collection times will vary depending on availability of items. Individual despatch times for each item will be given at checkout. Delivery is free for the UK. All delivery costs are charged in advance at time of purchase. Except for damaged items or delivery issues the cost of return postage is borne by the buyer. Your statutory rights are not affected. A Clean Break: My Story Bookshop. Sign In. Refine Your Search. Browse by Category. View Basket. All Children's Books. Cressida Cowell. Roald Dahl. Julia Donaldson. Jon Klassen. Philip Pullman. David Walliams. Jacqueline Wilson. Harry Potter. Wimpy Kid. All Shops. Browse Menu:. Your Shopping Basket. Foyalty Add to Basket. Reviews 1. Author Info. Synopsis Christophe Bassons is a former professional cyclist. Customer Reviews This is an excellent book and definitely recommended for cycling fans, though it does make for rather depressing reading when revealing the lengths that cyclists will go to win by cheating. Report A Clean Break: My Story Review. Leave Review. Delivery Delivery Options All delivery times quoted are the average, and cannot be guaranteed. You might also like. The Loyal Lieutenant: Leading out President of Pandemonium: The Mad Version: 1. Foyles A Clean Break: My Story cookies to help ensure your experience on our site A Clean Break: My Story the best possible. Title of the book contains:. Author's name contains:. Series of the book contains:. All words. Any words. A Clean Break Quotes by Christophe Bassons

I remained silent for a long time. I pedalled without saying a word. I shut myself away in the peloton and kept my counsel. For almost three years, all that came from me were sighs when the climbs got steep, my legs got tight, my rivals were pitiless and my breathing got laboured. I stoically endured all the excesses of the cycling world that I so wanted to be part of. I held my words back. I needed every little bit of breath I could muster to stay with the multi-coloured convoy as it sped along the roads. I did notice it getting faster and faster, even when those policing the sport claimed that it had been slowed down. I even felt happy to be experiencing this A Clean Break: My Story adventure. The whirr of bearings lulled my thinking. I heard chains clicking up and down the gears and thought I could detect the magical hymn of the so-called convicts of the road, of whom I was a proud member. The wind that whistled in my ears gave me the feeling of freedom. I cried a lot during those long months. I reasoned that suffering vii. My tears were providing sustenance for its legends, preventing them from withering away. Come on, kid! Forget the arrows that pierce your legs every time you stand on the pedals. Take a look around you! Everyone else must be going through the same torture and yet they are not A Clean Break: My Story it show. They are braver than you. Look at these impassive faces. Admire their ability to control their suffering A Clean Break: My Story in adversity. How do they do it? They must A Clean Break: My Story working harder than you, you slacker! I flogged myself. I increased my training load. They were still dry at the finish, bone dry in fact, while my jersey was drenched. You also needed to give blood. I had known about A Clean Break: My Story since I first started to race. It seemed abstract, overrated, nothing less than cheating. After turning professional, I discovered how effective these potions were. Above all, I learned how the corrupt use of medical products had become inextricably linked not just to achieving great success, but even to everyday riding. I thought that this principle signified a rider devoting himself entirely to his career, by training with complete commitment, following a strict diet, and maintaining a disciplined lifestyle. This was certainly how I applied myself, being what I thought was a complete professional. I thought I was doing the job correctly, but I was told I viii. I was mistaken about the meaning of this precept. As it stands, the phrase is a huge understatement and also quite hypocritical. I accepted the need to rein in my appetite, to berate myself for any indolence, and to lead a nomadic existence, torturing my body for half of the year on the road. But I refused to surrender my honesty, to sacrifice my health on the altar of victory. During those years of anonymity, that was where I fell short as a cyclist, but it was what made A Clean Break: My Story proud as a man. My rejection of absolutely everything the job entailed went well beyond simple concern about putting a needle in my arm and the poison that it would pump into my veins. My education and upbringing — and also my bad temper, my hopeless tendency towards contradiction and my fanatical individualism — created a barrier that made me impervious to any temptations. To use a medical analogy, these characteristics created antibodies that have protected me. This in-built antidote allowed A Clean Break: My Story to stick to my categorical refusal, while others, who are no worse than me as characters, simply could not hold out any longer. I was sure I was going to succeed without needing to resort to subterfuge. I believed I had enough ability to A Clean Break: My Story me to the very top. I was A Clean Break: My Story into my twenties, an age when you feel heroic. I thought I was in one of those trashy novels where the main character overcomes heavily armed adversaries with his fists alone. Virtue always triumphs. Children rejoice, women swoon, men laud their saviour, while the hint of a smile can be seen on the face of the Herculean hero ix. I hope to do as well next time. Having initially failed to finish races, I then managed to do so, but was utterly defeated. The hardest thing to take was those races where I performed well. I came away from them full of regret. The incentive to succumb to temptation was strong and neverending, like a huge press slowly crushing the toughest metals until they are in the required shape. Being part of such an insidious set-up made me question convictions that I thought were deeply rooted and inseparable from my being. Doping myself would have meant disowning myself. And yet I did almost betray myself. I wavered. I had injections, three or four times. I injected myself with water and glucose. On another occasion, I was tempted to take a shot of caffeine. The needle missed my vein. But what did it matter? I tried to do it, even though the jab missed its target. A Clean Break: My Story saw this willingness to take supplements as a betrayal and, above all, as a potential first step on a very slippery slope, even though the products concerned were harmless. I was on the verge of complete collapse, but love arrived just in time. I met Pascale. She became part of my struggle, and everything became easier with two of us on board. She released me from the morbid isolation into which I was sinking. She found the right words when they needed to be said. When I was demoralised, her support was a wonderful A Clean Break: My Story. She shored up my resolve, even when it was shaken to its foundations. So I was able to hold out. I remained uncompromising but, I admit, mute. The same arrogance that enabled me to cling on to the ideal of riding clean prevented me from condemning loud and clear the little tricks and big scams within the sport. I was engaged in a personal battle. Thanks to some heightened feeling of distress, I believed that I was the only one interested in this issue. For the public, at that time, doping was a dim shadow cast across cycling, but one which in no way tarnished the vivid A Clean Break: My Story of the riders they cheered on from the roadsides. This prejudice enabled fans to A Clean Break: My Story their champions off lightly and celebrate their victories without restraint. The idea that there might be guys among the also-rans who were trying to compete despite a considerable handicap would have spoiled their fun. Forget about A Clean Break: My Story outsider who refused to go with the flow: A Clean Break: My Story was his problem. Nobody wanted to see anything or know anything. At least that is what I thought then, walled in by my own resentment. I was wrong, and what happened later would prove that to me. The concern that many of those onlookers showed towards me, even as I was thinking they were as about as interested in my fate as a cow is in a passing train, leaves me feeling confused now. I am ashamed of feeling so desperate about the state of humanity simply because I no longer expected anything of those in the cycling milieu. My solitude made me bitter. I thought I was nothing more than a rider who had been written off, one of the completely misunderstood athletes who end up forgotten. I knew that some successes had not been fairly come by, but was careful not to criticise. I had other things to do besides pour my heart out. I was trying to survive in the peloton, or at least to stay with it. At our hotels each evening, my poor performances earned me reproaches, gibes, xi. I accepted what came my way, or at least I gave the impression I accepted it. In my heart of hearts, I could clearly see I was fighting a losing battle. My professional days were numbered. I would soon be ejected, having reached the end of the road and the end of my A Clean Break: My Story. My departure was imminent. My ejection from cycling would be discreet. A Clean Break: My Story: Christophe Bassons: Bloomsbury Sport

Uh-oh, it looks like your Internet Explorer is out of date. For a better shopping experience, please upgrade now. Javascript is not enabled in your browser. Enabling JavaScript in your browser will allow you to experience all the features of our site. Learn how to enable JavaScript on your browser. Home 1 Books 2. Read an excerpt of this book! Add to Wishlist. Sign in to Purchase Instantly. Explore Now. Buy As Gift. Overview Christophe Bassons is a former professional cyclist. His career was a successful one albeit never in the full glare of the media. That all changed when, inthe Festina doping scandal broke and Bassons shot to fame as one of the handful of clean riders in the peloton - and as the only professional who dared to speak openly about the A Clean Break: My Story. Having been seen as a possible champion, his instinctive and stubborn refusal to dope saw him outstripped in physique, stamina and speed by men he'd once equalled or exceeded. His willingness to denounce the doping culture set him against the entire ethos of professional cycling: owners, management and his peers - the likes of Lance Armstrong, Richard Virenque, Christophe Moreau. A year later, Bassons' career was A Clean Break: My Story. Having clashed publicly with other riders - notably with Armstrong during the Tour de France - and written in French newspapers of his disbelief and disgust, Bassons found himself exhausted and exiled - chewed up and spat out by the sport he loved. First published in French in and now updated following recent revelations from Armstrong, Tyler Hamilton and other high-profile figures, A Clean Break is unmissable reading for all cycling fans. It offers a unique and heartbreaking take on the subject. He now works for the French Ministry A Clean Break: My Story Sport and Culture to prevent doping. Peter Cossins has been writing and reporting on cycling for over 20 years. He is a former editor of Procycling and the author of The Monuments. Benoit Hopquin is a French journalist and author. He is a senior reporter for Le Monde and is based in Paris. Christophe Bassons was a professional cyclist between andracing with the likes of Lance Armstrong, Tyler Hamilton and Richard Virenque. First drawn into the A Clean Break: My Story while a student in bike-obsessed Spain A Clean Break: My Story the mids, Peter Cossins has been writing about cycling since He has covered sixteen editions of the Tour de France and spent three years as editor of Procycling magazine and the last four as contributing A Clean Break: My Story to that title. Show More. Related Searches. Peter Carey captures our imagination with a brilliant and unexpected portrait of Sydney. In the In the midst of the Olympic games, Australia native Peter Carey returns to Sydney after a seventeen-year absence. Examining the urban landscape as both a tourist View Product. Breaking Beautiful. Allie lost everything the night her boyfriend, Trip, died in A Clean Break: My Story horrible car accident-including her Allie lost everything the night her boyfriend, Trip, died in a horrible car accident- including her memory of the event. She doesn't remember driving on the cliff road. She doesn't recall jumping from the truck just before Trip lost control. Disenchantment: Managing Motivation and Demotivation at Work. Inside the behaviors that lead to workplace disenchantment and how managers and organizations can boost Inside the behaviors that lead to workplace disenchantment and how managers and organizations can boost motivation in sustainable ways. Dreaming Dangerous. Tucked deep in the woods and surrounded by a Empire of Imagination: Gary Gygax and A Clean Break: My Story Birth. The life story of Gary Gygax, godfather of all fantasy adventure games, has been A Clean Break: My Story The life story of Gary Gygax, godfather of all fantasy adventure games, has been told only in bits and pieces. Michael Witwer has written a dynamic, dramatized biography of Gygax from his childhood in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin to his untimely Halo Warfleet. Halo: Warfleet is the official, authoritative guide to spacecraft in the Halo universe, featuring ten Discover encyclopedic A major biography of the queen who transformed Spain into a principal global power, and A major biography of the queen who transformed Spain into a principal global power, and sponsored the voyage that would open the New World. Inwhen Castile was the largest, strongest, and most populous kingdom in Hispania present day Spain Bloomsbury Publishing.