thewashingmachinepost ..........................................................................................................................................................................................................

ascent. the mountains of the tour de france by richard yates. van der plas publications $29.95www.cyclepublishing.com. available in the uk from prendas for £22.50.

it seems that the modern, commercial world of cycling has sent many ascent by richard yatesof us scurrying back to the halcyon days of yore when we all watched in sepia and monochrome. to the days when men were men, bikes were steel and tarmac hadn't been invented. the post has recently reviewed the velopress tome, cycling heroes (see below) and now this hardback appears from van der plas publications of san francisco. what is it about american publishers and european cycle history?

(long term readers may remember a previous volume from vdp, an excellent history of the derailleur called 'the dancing chain'.)

'ascent' has been a very 'difficult' book to review. not because it is hard to read, nor because there is anything fundamentally wrong with the author's text. no, it's difficult because of the title and the descriptive blurb that fills the back cover. i won't spoil the surprise by quoting the entire piece, but this extract: 'the mountains, that's where the greatest battles of the tour de france are fought, where champions are made and where some of the toughest are defeated.'

now, unless i'm very much missing the point here (and feel free to interject) this would give the prospective purchaser the notion that they were about to enlighten themselves with tales of the great mountain battles and the cyclists who fought them.

er, no, not exactly.

the last part of the cover text undermines the bit i just printed. 'this beautifully illustrated book looks at the battlefields and at the men who've fought there throughout the 100-year history of the tour.'

that bit is accurate. the chapters detail the ins and outs of each tour de france since maurice garin won the first edition, right up until the author's self imposed limit of 'the age of big business' pretty much after merckx's retirement. whatever you feel about this guillotining of tour history, it is a point that is hard to argue with.

unfortunately, and purely with reference to the book's stated raison d'etre, the majority of the battlefields are not always where the road goes up. granted many of the tour's mountains are detailed in boxed areas through the book: ballon d'alsace, galibier, tourmalet, puy de dome, iseran, izoard, aubisque, alpe d'huez and ventoux. (why only those and not the others shown on a map at the beginning of the book, i have no idea). but the general text of the book pays no more lip service to the mountains than to the flatter bits.

adhering almost to the letter of the book's title ascent by richard yatesare the wonderful photographs. to be honest the book is worth buying for these alone. sepia images are of the great mountain stages and the greats of the mountains - coppi, bartali, vietto, bahamontes et al. while the more recent images may well have been taken in colour (fignon in 1984), keeping them all in sepia lends a subtle uniformity that the guys at rapha will love. (purely from a washingmachinepost point of view, a book on the mountains of the tour that reaches 1984, and doesn't include an image of robert millar deserves to be sent to bed early without supper.)

so you perhaps see my dilemma. this is a wonderful book, the stories pertaining to each year of the tour may well have been told before, but richard yates makes them read like a report in last week's comic. his enthusiasm for his subject shines through each page. witness this from the introduction: 'the riders give every impression of being totally oblivious of where they are and what they are doing. they ride straight at a solid mass of spectators, who only part at the last possible instant. their sole thought is to ride within themselves without getting dropped; nothing else is of importance.' it is all reminiscent of the inscription on the monument at the madonna di ghisallo 'then god created the bicycle, because man would make it an instrument of effort and exaltation... (i wish i'd written that.)

and something i haven't seen in a book of this type before, each page is divided into three columns, similar to a magazine page. i debated whether this increased the legibility or not, but it does manage, consciously or otherwise, to evoke the newspaper columns of the tour's founding newspaper, henri desgrange's l'auto. a nice touch.

the book's appendix contains 1st, 2nd and 3rd in the king of the mountains competition since its inception in 1933, a bibliography and a fullsome index.

so, by all means get yourself a copy of this book. you certainly won't regret it, even if only for the pictures. just don't expect it to be solely about the mountains.

books from this excellent cycling publisher are distributed in the uk by chris lloyd sales and marketing to whom i am grateful for my review copy.

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as always, if you have any comments on this nonsense, please feel free to e-mail and thanks for reading.

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