FREE RACING HARD: 20 TUMULTUOUS YEARS IN CYCLING PDF William Fotheringham | 368 pages | 06 Jun 2013 | FABER & FABER | 9780571303625 | English | London, United Kingdom News: SweetSpot Cycling Book of the Year Award | SweetSpot, organisers of The Tour of Britain and creators of The Pearl Izumi Tour Series, have launched a new annual poll, with over people having already voted for their choice. Everyone who votes in the SweetSpot Cycling Book of the Year Award goes into a draw to win copies of all 12 shortlisted titles, with the voting closing on Friday 20th December. The winning book will be announced in the New Year, with the author receiving the first ever SweetSpot Cycling Book of the Year trophy, and prizes from Tour partners, including a Festina watch and a magnum of Heidsieck Monopole champagne. For more details, and to vote, please visit www. Ned Boulting. Yellow Jersey. William Fotheringham. Faber and Faber. Lionel Birnie and Ellis Bacon. Peloton Publishing. Rob Hayles. 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Newspaper journalism is, the old saying goes, the first draft of history and this collection of columns from the pen of William Fotheringham and the pages of the Guardian and Observer newspapers in the UK affords the reader an opportunity to remember how some recent cycling history was first reported. Racing Hard is at least the third volume of newspaper columns to be collected in book form in the UK in recent years, with both the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian having put out Tour books in addition, there have been a number of instant-publishing e-books cashing in on the fame of individual riders or incidents. All have a value, it's nice to be reminded of how the story was originally reported, but all rob from the book-form the primary advantages it has over the newspaper column: time and space. Here's Fotheringham in his introduction explaining the drawbacks of the newspaper column:. It's the best within certain limitations, the best you can provide to your paper on a given day, by a given time, in a given amount of worlds, with a given amount of information to hand. You never have unlimited time and you never have the number of words you want to say what you want. At the back of your mind is the core journalistic principle: the paper needs to get out on time. Generally speaking, the best pieces in Racing Hard are the stories originally commissioned for the Observer 's Sport Monthly supplement, where Fotheringham had both time and space to actually develop ideas and not just report news. They're the pieces that aren't just bite-sized easily digested fact-based reporting. They're the pieces you'll remember when you put the book down. As well as time and space there are other problems with the newspaper reporting, which Fotheringham also explains in his introduction:. If it's a piece that has the words Lance and Armstrong in it, it's been picked over by a lawyer who knows that if he or she gets it Racing Hard: 20 Tumultuous Years in Cycling, the cost could run into millions. Given that the key story in the sport over the last fifteen years - since the Festina affaire exploded in - has been doping, the restrictions placed on journalists by lawsuit-averse editors are not an unimportant consideration. The other point that Racing Hard: 20 Tumultuous Years in Cycling to be considered is what's of interest to the Guardian 's readers. Typically here you are talking about three factors: British success, the Tour de France, Racing Hard: 20 Tumultuous Years in Cycling the Olympics. Those three topics, more or less, account for most of the pieces collected in Racing Hard. The Tour and the Olympics take up the lion's share of the book, with just one piece about any of the Classics the edition of Paris-Roubaix. Of the two main sections, the Racing Hard: 20 Tumultuous Years in Cycling is - for me - the least interesting. Perhaps here I am a little jaded about the big buckle at this stage: the bookshop shelves are creaking under the weight of new books published about the race, and that is especially true of this year's crop of cycling books. The pieces themselves are snapshots of moments in time and do have value as such. But really it's just the highlights reel. And, really, to appreciate many of theses stories the reader could do with the context of some of the lowlights to show how they were really reported. Take, as a good example, the Cofidis affaire. Fotheringham here selects his post-arrest interview with David Millar. What's missing, though, is anything from the previous six months, during which time the Guardian was to the fore in dismissing the whole story as being a just a minor problem with one or two riders which was being talked up by a manipulative nutter, Philippe Gaumont. Similar could be said of the manner in which other episodes are covered in the pieces collected in Racing Hard. Millar's interview does offer an interesting contrast in perspective when compared with the manner in which Lance Armstrong's Oprah Winfrey intervie w was reported. Of the Tour pieces, it is the ones in which Fotheringham is able to break free of the editorial constraint of what's assumed to be of interest to Guardian readers which, for me, stand out the most, such as a piece about Jean-Rene Bernaudeau and his grassroots approach to building the Europcar squad:. Among the centre's intake are cyclists from outside the sport's mainstream: France's Pacific and Atlantic islands. Three-quarters of the Europcar team have come though the structure, notably the team leader Voeckler [ On the Olympics side of the book, Fotheringham has a broad range of material to choose from, the Guardian and Observer having been, like most of the British media, part of Team GB's cheer-leading squad. But rather than bury the reader under pieces about Bradley Wiggins and Chris Hoy - or even Chris Boardman's over exposed secret bloody squirrels club - Fotheringham here goes for the less well reported side of the story. There are several pieces about Jason Queally, who Fotheringham believes never received the acclaim he deserved. Outside of Britain's bangle and bauble baggers in the five-ring circus that is the Olympics it's Anna Meares who gets to represent the rest of the world. This part of the story gives a good overview of how Britain's track stars went from zeroes to heroes over the course of a decade, from Atlanta to Athens. Here I'll again mention Yvonne McGregor. Racing Hard: 20 Tumultuous Years in Cycling, in coverage of the renaissance in British cycling's fortunes, she gets overlooked, even though Peter Keen - who started life with Tony Doyle before achieving success with Chris Boardman and then shepherding the British cycling federation into the post-Lottery promised land - was very much a part of her story too. A wry sense of humour helped her cope with four major accidents in three years. Like Boardman, she has held the world distance record for one hour, the toughest feat, in terms of distilled agony, that cycling has to offer outside the Tour. One of the curiosities in reading newspaper pieces from the past is that it is often difficult not to see in them something of the present. One of the reasons for taking an interest in cycling's history - recent or distant - is for the perspective it offers on the present. So, with a lot of cycling's current crop of aging stars nearing their sell-by dates, Fotheringham's report on Greg LeMond's retirement is worth a re-read:. Now he is threatening a lawsuit to regain money he says he is owed. I had to take a pay cut or they would go to court. Then they stopped paying me as of September 1. Rounding out Racing Hard is a series of obituary columns which do allow for the normal restrictions of newspaper journalism to be overcome and stories Racing Hard: 20 Tumultuous Years in Cycling deserve to be told finally get the space they deserve. Fotheringham himself has this to say when introducing the selected pieces:. All told Racing Hard is a book for dipping in and out of to be reminded of moments from the past and, despite all the drawbacks, is a worthwhile addition to any cycling bookshelf. 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