Contemporary Authors

• Cycle Racing: How to Train, Race, and Win Firefly Books (Buffalo, NY), 2004
• Cyclopedia: It's All about the Bike Chicago Review Press (Chicago, IL), 2011
• Merckx: Half Man, Half Bike Yellow Jersey Press (London, England), 2012
• The Badger: The Life of Bernard Hinault and the Legacy of French Cycling Chicago Review Press (Chicago, IL), 2015

1. Cyclopedia : it's all about the bike https://lccn.loc.gov/2016303327 Fotheringham, William, author. Cyclopedia : it's all about the bike / written by William Fotheringham. Revised American edition. Chicago, Illinois : Chicago Review Press, 2015. vi, 433 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm TL410 .F68 2015 ISBN: 9781613734124 (pbk.) 2. The Badger : the life of Bernard Hinault and the legacy of French cycling https://lccn.loc.gov/2016301446 Fotheringham, William. Bernard Hinault and the fall and rise of French cycling The Badger : the life of Bernard Hinault and the legacy of French cycling / William Fotheringham. Chicago, Illinois : Chicago Review Press, 2015. x, 370 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 22 cm GV1051.H56 F68 2015 ISBN: 16137341829781613734186 3. Merckx : half man, half bike https://lccn.loc.gov/2012427892 Fotheringham, William. Merckx : half man, half bike / William Fotheringham. London : Yellow Jersey Press, 2012. xii, 308 p., [16] p. of plates : ill. ; 23 cm. GV1051.M45 F67 2012 ISBN: 97802240744839780224091954 (pbk.) 4. Cyclopedia : it's all about the bike https://lccn.loc.gov/2011499908 Fotheringham, William. Cyclopedia : it's all about the bike / written by William Fotheringham. American ed. Chicago, IL : Chicago Review Press, 2011. vi, 432 p. : ill. ; 22 cm. TL410 .F68 2011 ISBN: 9781569768174 (hc.)156976817X (hc.) 5. Cycle racing : how to train, race and win https://lccn.loc.gov/2005280573 Fotheringham, William. Cycle racing : how to train, race and win / William Fotheringham. Willowdale, Ont. ; Buffalo, N.Y. : Firefly Books, 2004. 160 p. : ill. (some col.) ; 26 cm. GV1049 .F68 2004 ISBN: 1554070139 (pbk.)

• Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Fotheringham

  William Fotheringham
  From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  William Fotheringham (born 1965) is a sports writer specialising in cycling and rugby. As a newspaper journalist he writes for The Guardian.[1] Fotheringham was a features editor for Cycling Weekly, and the first editor of Cycle Sport and Procycling magazine.[1] He is a current writer for Rouleur Magazine.[2]

  A graduate of Cambridge University with a degree in French, Russian and Italian, Fotheringham won the IPC Media Specialist Writer of the Year award in 1993 and 1998.[1]

  He was also a racing cyclist for nearly 30 years.[2] He is described by Rapha as being "one of the finest writers in the ‘Pro Tour’ pressroom".[3]

  He is the brother of fellow cycling journalist Alasdair Fotheringham.[4]

• William Fotheringham - http://www.williamfotheringham.com/about/

  About

  There can have been few British schoolchildren who grew up with the Tour de France in the 1970s, but I was one who did. I would come out of school in July to find my father in the car listening to French radio’s Tour coverage, and I smuggled copies ofMiroir du Cyclisme into lessons to read inside my books. I saw the Tour for the first time in 1984, and “lived” that year’s race through television in the Normandy village where I lived (and raced, not very successfully).

  I began writing about bike racing in 1988 and was covering the Tour de France within two years, one of maybe half a dozen British journalists on the race. I spent much of the 1990s writing for Cycling Weekly and Cycle Sport, combining that with work for the Guardian, who talked me into covering the Tour for them in 1994.

  In 1999 Jeremy Whittle and I launched procycling as a joint web and print venture; it’s been curiously satisfying to watch it go from strength to strength in the last few years.

  Next up came a spell working at the sports desk in the Guardian in which I began covering rugby as well as cycling, reporting on the World Cup in 2003, by which time my first full-length book, Put Me Back on My Bike, had sold getting on for 25,000 copies. Since then I’ve juggled authorship and newspaper work; since the Athens Olympics the Great Britain team and its spin-offs have become the focus as the likes of Chris Hoy, Victoria Pendleton, Bradley Wiggins and Mark Cavendish have become national celebrities.

• Podium Cafe - http://www.podiumcafe.com/2010/7/16/1565249/interview-william-fotheringham

  QUOTED: "Basically everyone had a story to tell about him, most of them had lots of stories because he was a larger-than-life Mark Cavendish-type of guy, and most of them hadn't told anyone so it was all waiting to come out. All I had to do was go along with a tape recorder."
  "The Coppi story followed naturally from Tom as the bones are the same - national icon with feet of clay (or not depending how you see it) and an untimely death. Like Tom there is just far more depth to the story than a lot of them. Plus I felt that a lot of the old gregari might not be around much longer. So I got into it early on and kept plugging away. The problem was that because of work and family I couldn't go to Italy more than a couple of times a year for a week at a time, so it just took ages. I could have kept going as well, there were still people I wanted to interview, stuff to be dug at."

  CAFE BOOKSHELF
  Interview: William Fotheringham
  11
  by Feargal McKay@fmk_RoI Jul 16, 2010, 4:51pm EDT
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  William Fotheringham's cycling books include biographies of Fausto Coppi and Tom Simpson and translations of Willy Voet's Massacre Á La Chaîne and Laurent Fignon's Nous Étions Jeunes Et Insouciants, along with a history of the British riders in the Tour de France.

  With the Fausto Coppi biography (Fallen Angel) now available in paperback and the Laurent Fignon autobiography (We Were Young And Carefree) just published we caught up with the Guardian's cycling correspondent and put a few questions to him.

  Podium Cafe: Your own background in cycling - could you tell us a little bit about how you got involved in the sport and your own time in the racing ranks?

  William Fotheringham: I had a hysterical moment a few weeks ago when one of the juniors in my club asked me how long I'd been racing and I said this was my thirtieth season. The poor kid nearly fell over. It sounds like a lot but I'm only 45.

  Basically my dad nudged me into it, I was a huge fan of the Foreign Legion - Paul Sherwen, Graham Jones, Robert Millar, Yates and co - and I became one of those racers who can't keep away but never gets very far up the ladder. I did a season in France in 1984 and wasn't bad at a low level. It was a very different world - 200-up fields in the rockbottom amateur races, fast, fast races, lots of crashes, crits every night even for the low categories, a fair bit of cash to be made.

  I've never really stopped just had years when I don't do much, I got to first cat in England one year in the 1990s, got to ride the Rás which was the best thing ever. Now I do local races but I've got into the whole track thing, because it's more manageable with a family and work. I was riding the national masters track at the weekend at Newport and fell off, but I'll be back. Sums the 30 years up really.

  And that led me into the work because I can write, I'm fluent in French and I was obsessed with bike racing.

  Btc_medium PdC: You've translated two books now. There are special difficulties that come with rendering someone else's words into English, it's obviously not as simple as just chucking the text into Babelfish and tidying up the mess that spews out. With the Willy Voet book, Breaking The Chain, I seem to recall that you were faced with issues of what to leave out. With the Fignon book, was the biggest difficulty capturing the tone of the original French, the almost casual, idiomatic French Fignon used?

  WF: Fignon didn't use casual idiomatic French, or maybe he had a ghostwriter. It was a very hard book to translate because it's a mishmash of styles. There are bits that are written in the casual, idiomatic style you describe, which was roughly what I aimed to reproduce in English for the book, but particularly at the start of the chapters there is the odd paragraph or two of highfaluting artistically written bits of French which veer off into imagery that would mean nothing to an English fan even if you can get a handle on what he's trying to say. I had to rejig those bits, figure out what he meant and whether it would mean anything to an English-speaking cycling fan and if not leave it out. The best bits of the book are where it sounds like Fignon talking, which is the bulk of it.

  It's a very difficult job translating French books to English because the French tend to be stronger on images than on facts so you have to paraphrase and rejig sentence order to make it into English sportese. An English sportswriter will tell you how it feels, looks and is, as he sees it, but won't try to be DH Lawrence. A French one will get delusions of grandeur which probably goes back to Henri Desgrange trying to be Emile Zola.

  Wryac_medium

  PdC: In We Were Young And Carefree Fignon is very open about his cycling life, both in and out of the peloton - but he still seems very guarded of his private life. You've met him a few times now, is that your own experience of the man, that there's always another Laurent Fignon hiding behind those glasses?

  WF: Together with Robert Millar, Fignon is about my favourite character in the whole of pro cycling. They are very similar guys, guys with a bit of an edge and a lot of intelligence, with a wider view of the world than just cycling. When I met them for the first time both of them seemed to be testing me, responding in certain ways to see how I reacted. I think I passed the test whatever it was. I went to interview him in the 1990s for Cycling Weekly and Cycle Sport and it wasn't really like work.

  I think you're right though, he's a hard man to get really close to. That came through in the book to a surprising extent. I think in Britain we can't imagine the scrutiny that the big stars get over there, and in those days there were no team press officers, no buses, and no internet. That meant the guys weren't protected, and with the media being less diffuse, if some guy slagged a big star off it happened in print, it happened in l'Equipe, he read it the next day in black and white, and so did absolutely everyone else.

  Pmbomb_medium

  PdC: Fallen Angel is your second biography, after Put Me Back On My Bike. So much has been written about Fausto Coppi and Tom Simpson - claim and counter-claim made about nearly every aspect of their lives - that it must be quite a challenge to strip away the myths created about them to get at the truth underneath.

  WF: With Tom it wasn't so difficult. Basically everyone had a story to tell about him, most of them had lots of stories because he was a larger-than-life Mark Cavendish-type of guy, and most of them hadn't told anyone so it was all waiting to come out. All I had to do was go along with a tape recorder. And most of the writing about him was in English so there were stories and facts there that I could bounce off the people I spoke to ‘do you remember this' and so on, and they would respond. I spent a whole afternoon doing that with Helen and I think I surprised her with how much I knew about her late husband.

  With Coppi it was far tougher, because all the core guys were older and had been asked the same questions time after time so they had a set of stock responses. For some there were things they didn't want to talk about, mostly the White Lady. A lot of them must have hated her but didn't want to offend Faustino by saying so or by telling any bad stories. Another problem was that the story has been told zillions of times in Italian, with a lot of people dressing the basic facts up in the same way but never looking any further. The best material came from a couple of old gregari who had been largely forgotten, and Raphael Geminiani was a good source. But I had to keep at it.

  Fa_medium

  PdC: Coppi seems to be someone you've wanted to write about for quite some time - the interviews you conducted for the book span at least three or four years. Of all the greats, of all the giants of the road, what is it that attracted you so strongly to the Coppi story?

  WF: The Coppi story followed naturally from Tom as the bones are the same - national icon with feet of clay (or not depending how you see it) and an untimely death. Like Tom there is just far more depth to the story than a lot of them. Plus I felt that a lot of the old gregari might not be around much longer. So I got into it early on and kept plugging away. The problem was that because of work and family I couldn't go to Italy more than a couple of times a year for a week at a time, so it just took ages. I could have kept going as well, there were still people I wanted to interview, stuff to be dug at.

  PdC: Cycling's law of omertà hasn't gone away yet - the UCI's chief, Pat McQuaid, has been pretty consistent in his criticism of books like Paul Kimmage's A Rough Ride and Fignon's We Were Young And Carefree - but we do seem to be going through a period of glasnost, a period of openness, at least in some teams and among some riders. Is this making it easier for you to do your job as a journalist, to ask the hard questions that need to be asked?

  WF: Not really to be honest because the guys who I feel I can ask the questions to tend to be the clean ones so you don't need to ask them.

  Rb_medium

  It's very British, but personally I am shy about asking those hard questions. I wrote in Roule Britannia that in 2004 I had doubts about David Millar - because as a journalist with a few years behind you you know the things that drug-takers say and do so you get a feel for who is suspicious - but I couldn't ask him straight out, even though I knew him as well as any journalist knows a bike rider.

  As a journalist, I feel I have the same relationship with most of the athletes and coaches I work with that I would have with someone I meet on a very occasional basis through work. There has to be a distance and I don't believe being a journalist gives me any right to lose that distance for a good while. For me, to ask a rider I have seen at a few press conferences if he takes drugs is like asking a female athlete if she pays too much attention to her looks. It's too personal. It would be like saying to an accountant ‘I think you are a liar and a cheat, am I right?'

  PdC: British cycling - cycling in general in Britain - is definitely on an upswing. Lottery money has bought national pride at the Olympics and cycling will be coming home in 2012. You've got a newly elected PM who rides a bike. London has a cycling mad mayor and is about to get its own vélib' scheme. And you've got Team Sky following in the tyre tracks of Hercules, ANC-Halfords and the Linda McCartney Racing Team. And yet on the sports' pages of the British press there still seems to be something of a reluctance to cover the whole of the racing calendar - there's still something of a sing-when-you're-winning approach to the sport, only reporting races when British riders are on top. Is that frustrating for you as a journalist?

  WF: I sincerely hope that Sky aren't following those other three, as they all went bust!

  There's a two-pronged problem in British journalism at the moment: football and money. At the Guardian, where I have been the cycling correspondent since 1996, there is now a culture on the sports desk that cycling is one of the biggest sports, up there with rugby, cricket and formula one. The problem is that there is less money across all the papers now, fewer pages to play with, so all the sports apart from soccer have a problem getting in the paper. Soccer has created its own massive celebrity culture and the sports pages all feel they have to buy into that.

  Having said that, coverage of the Tour has expanded massively since I covered my first Tour for the Guardian in 1994, and it's not just about winning Brits. I wrote screeds about the Tour in 2004 and 2005 when there was not a Brit in it. It's going to change with Sky though. By the end of this Tour Geraint Thomas could be on the same level as Wiggo or Cav, and there are Peter Kennaugh and Ben Swift to come.

  The more British stars there are, the more races they will do well in, and the more the papers will be forced to look outside the Tour if guys like Gee start getting up there in races like Paris-Nice. When Kelly and Roche were winning, that was a can't miss race. But you can't go there and hope to get decent space writing about Contador or Pierrick Fedrigo.

  PdC: There's a lot of polemica in the Coppi story, especially his rivalry with Bartali. British cycling has its own polemica-driven rivalry, between Cavendish and Wiggins. Did you ever dream you'd live to see the day when British cycling fans would be spoiled for choice, and could even be divided over which rider they preferred?

  WF: No. Never, not when I was a fan in the early 80s, not when I was a journalist struggling to make the Tour interesting in the Indurain years.

  Again, I'll hark back to Roule Britannia. I wrote that book first time round in 2004, and that year and 2005 there wasn't a single Brit in the Tour. There were little stirrings but no stars. David Millar's career was over and Jeremy Hunt was going nowhere. I thought then that there would be new guys like Charly Wegelius coming through, but nothing on the Cav scale. Even in 2007, I reckoned Cav might win the odd stage later on - say by 2009, 2010 if he kept progressing - and that was why the Guardian started running his column.

  As for Wiggins, that was a big surprise. Very few riders have ever transferred their talents from one area of cycling to another at such a late stage. Even Cadel Evans came over from mountain biking relatively early. That's why Roule Britannia needed a massive update this year.

  * * * * *

  You'll find reviews of Fallen Angel and We Were Young And Carefree on the Cafe Bookshelf.

  An updated version of Roule Britania has just been released, bringing the history of British riders in the Tour de France up to the advent of Team Sky. It and the biographies of Fausto Coppi (Fallen Angel) and Tom Simpson (Put Me Back On My Bike), and the translations of Willy Voet's Festina confessional (Breaking The Chain) and Laurent Fignon's autobiography (We Were Young And Carefree), are all available from Yellow Jersey Press.

  Thanks to William Fotheringham for his time and to the people at Yellow Jersey Press for facilitating this interview.

• Faber and Faber - https://www.faber.co.uk/author/william-fotheringham/

  William Fotheringham
  William Fotheringham began writing about bike racing in 1988 and was covering the Tour de France within two years, one of maybe half a dozen British journalists on the race. He spent much of the 1990s writing for Cycling Weekly and Cycle Sport, combining that with work for the Guardian, who talked him into covering the Tour for them in 1994.

  On the sports desk in the Guardian he covered rugby as well as cycling, and reported on the World Cup in 2003. His first full-length book, Put Me Back on My Bike, was published in 2002. His most recent book is Merckx: Half Man, Half Bike.

• Penguin - https://www.penguin.co.uk/authors/william-fotheringham/1013549/

  Explore
  The Badger: what's in a name?
  On writing
  The Badger: what's in a name?
  Books

  Colouring the Tour de France
  William Fotheringham (and others)
  The Tour de France is one of the world’s most fabulous and notorious sporting events and this is the book to help you celebrate it in glorious technicolour

  A perfect souvenir for the connoisseur and ideal apprenticeship for the newcomer – this look, learn and colour book allows you to bring to life the wonderful moments of the Tour’s history. So allons-y mes amies, get off your bike, get out your crayons and colour the Tour de France!

  Paperback

  The Badger
  William Fotheringham
  Bernard Hinault is one of the greatest cyclists of all time. He is a five-time winner of the Tour de France and the only man to have won each of the Grand Tours on more than one occasion.

  Hinault is the last ‘old-school’ champion: a larger-than-life character from a working-class background, capable of winning on all terrains, in major Tours and one-day Classics. Nicknamed the ‘Badger’ for his combative style, he led a cyclists’ strike in his first Tour and instigated a legendary punch-up with demonstrators in 1982 while in the middle of a race. His battles with teammates Laurent Fignon and Greg LeMond in the 1986 Tour resulted in one of the greatest races of all time.

  Three decades on from his retirement, Hinault remains the last French winner of the Tour de France. Here, William Fotheringham shows that while France may one day find a new champion, there will never be another Bernard Hinault.

  Paperback

  Bernard Hinault and the Fall and Rise of French Cycling
  William Fotheringham
  Bernard Hinault is one of the greatest cyclists of all time. He is a five-time winner of the Tour de France and the only man to have won each of the Grand Tours on more than one occasion. Three decades on from his retirement, he remains the last Frenchman to win the Tour de France. His victory in 1985 marks the turning point when the nation who had dominated the first eight decades of the race they had invented suddenly found they were no longer able to win it.

  Hinault is the last ‘old-school’ champion: a larger-than-life character from a working-class background, capable of winning on all terrains, in major Tours and one-day Classics. Nicknamed the ‘Badger’ for his combative style, he led a cyclists’ strike in his first Tour and instigated a legendary punch-up with demonstrators in 1982 while in the middle of a race. Hinault’s battles with team-mates Laurent Fignon and Greg LeMond provide some of the greatest moments in Tour history.

  In Bernard Hinault and the Fall and Rise of French Cycling, William Fotheringham finally gets to the bottom of this fascinating character and explores the reasons why the nation that considers itself cycling’s home has found it so hard to produce another champion.

  Hardback eBook Audio Download

  Put Me Back On My Bike
  William Fotheringham
  The cyclist Tom Simpson was an Olympic medallist, world champion and the first Briton to wear the fabled yellow jersey of the Tour de France. He died a tragic early death on the barren moonscape of the Mont Ventoux during the 1967 Tour. Almost 35 years on, hundreds of fans still make the pilgrimage to the windswept memorial which marks the spot where he died. A man of contradictions, Simpson was one of the first cyclists to admit to using banned drugs, and was accused of fixing races, yet the dapper "Major Tom" inspired awe and affection for the obsessive will to win which was ultimately to cost him his life. An authoritative evaluation of Simpson's death, and of the life that led to it, has been long overdue, the more so since cycling has been rocked by a succession of drug scandals. Put me Back on my Bike will revisit the places and people associated with Simpson to produce the definitive story of Britain's greatest ever cyclist.
  Paperback

  Merckx: Half Man, Half Bike
  William Fotheringham
  What makes a man the greatest of all time?

  Eddy Merckx is to cycling what Muhammad Ali is to boxing or Pelé to football: quite simply, the best there has ever been. Merckx was a machine. It wasn't just the number of victories (445); it was his remorseless domination that created the legend. He didn't just beat his opponents, he crushed them.

  But his triumphs only tell half a story that includes horrific injury, a doping controversy and tragedy. He was nicknamed 'The Cannibal' for his insatiable appetite for victory, but the moniker did scant justice to a man who was handsome, sensitive and surprisingly anxious. Britain's leading cycling writer, William Fotheringham, goes back to speak to those who were there at the time and those who knew Merckx best to find out what made Eddy Merckx so invincible.

  Paperback eBook

  Roule Britannia
  William Fotheringham
  In 2012 Bradley Wiggins made history by becoming the first Briton ever to win the Tour de France. His compatirot Chris Froome came second while fellow Brits, the 'fastest man on earth' Mark Cavendish and reformed doper David Millar, made sure that between them Britain accounted for 7 of a possible 21 stage wins. Great Britain had conquered the Tour de France.

  In Roule Britannia, number one bestselling author William Fotheringham, charts British cycling's rise to the top. From the early days of Brian Robinson to Bradley Wiggins's dominant ride via Tom Simpson, Robert Millar, Chris Boardman and many others, Roule Britannia celebrates a nation's love affair with the greatest race of all.

  Paperback eBook

  Fallen Angel
  William Fotheringham
  Voted the most popular Italian sportsman of the twentieth century, Fausto Angelo Coppi was the campionissimo - champion of champions. The greatest cyclist of the immediate post-war years, he was the first man to win cycling's great double, the Tour de France and Tour of Italy in the same year - and he did it twice. He achieved mythical status for his crushing solo victories, world titles and world records. But his significance extends far beyond his sport.

  Coppi's scandalous divorce and controversial early death convulsed a conservative, staunchly Roman Catholic Italy in the 1950s. At a time when adultery was still illegal, Coppi and his lover were dragged from their bed in the middle of the night, excommunicated and forced to face a clamorous legal battle. The ramifications of this case are still being felt today.

  In Fallen Angel, acclaimed cycling biographer, William Fotheringham, tells the tragic story of Coppi's life and death - of how a man who became the symbol of a nation's rebirth after the disasters of war died reviled and heartbroken. Told with insight and intelligence, this is a unique portrait of Italy and Italian sport at a time of tumultuous change.

  Paperback eBook

  Put Me Back On My Bike
  William Fotheringham
  Tom Simpson was an Olympic medallist, world champion and the first Briton to wear the fabled yellow jersey of the Tour de France. He died a tragic early death on the barren moonscape of the Mont Ventoux during the 1967 Tour. A man of contradictions, Simpson was one of the first cyclists to admit to using banned drugs, and was accused of fixing races, yet the dapper 'Major Tom' inspired awe and affection for the obsessive will to win which was ultimately to cost him his life.

  Put Me Back on My Bike revisits the places and people associated with Simpson to produce the definitive story of Britain's greatest ever cyclist. The revised edition of William Fotheringham's classic biography, commemorating the fortieth anniversary of Simpson's death, features a new foreword and postscript further exploring the truth behind the legend.

  Paperback eBook
  Biography
  William Fotheringham (Author)
  William Fotheringham is the bestselling author of Merckx: Half Man, Half Bike, Fallen Angel: The Passion of Fausto Coppi, Roule Britannia, The Badger: Bernard Hinault and the Fall and Rise of French Cycling, and Put Me Back on My Bike, which Vélo magazine called `the best cycling biography ever written’. He writes for the Guardian and Observer on cycling and has reported on over twenty Tours de France.

QUOTED: "Fotheringham draws Hinault to fierce perfection: a workingman born to the bicycle seat, massively successful because he had the grit and no need for better living through
chemistry."

Fotheringham, William: THE BADGER
Kirkus Reviews.
(July 1, 2015):
COPYRIGHT 2015 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text: 
Fotheringham, William THE BADGER Chicago Review (Adult Nonfiction) $18.95 9, 1 ISBN: 978-1-61373-418-6
Guardian cycling correspondent Fotheringham (Half Man, Half Bike: The Life of Eddy Merckx, Cycling's Greatest Champion, 2013, etc.) recalls
the days when bicyclists were bold and doping was second nature. "Leave me in peace; everybody takes dope," said French hero Jacques
Anquetil--except the subject of this book, Bernard Hinault (b. 1954), who won five Tour de France titles. Hinault's brilliant career--he was
arguably the best competitive cyclist ever--fell between two tumultuous moments in cycling history. Nevertheless, he was a one-man extremeweather
event unto himself. He began competing in the early 1970s, following the retirement of Anquetil and the semiretirement of Eddy Merckx,
and he continued until the rise of Greg LeMond and a whole new technological age. As Fotheringham writes in this fleet, personality-drenched
book, Hinault was a throwback to Breton cycling at its most elemental and ferocious. The author is also fascinating on the rise of cycling as a
sport in the period after World War II. It was insular and a bit clandestine--much like the French Resistance--complete with heroes and weekly
events that tested the mettle of all participants. Hinault was built of such stuff. He was notoriously prickly--he once said "he wished he had a
jacket with tacks on it, to ward off back slappers who would hassle him after stages"--and he was brash, busting up the time-honored events
simply by winning them, and screw the veterans' scripts. He was brutish, he possessed extreme endurance, and he loved a challenge. In short, he
was the Badger: strong, tenacious, and always spoiling for a fight. "I'm not a nice animal," he reflected in retirement. Fotheringham draws Hinault
to fierce perfection: a workingman born to the bicycle seat, massively successful because he had the grit and no need for better living through
chemistry.
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Fotheringham, William: THE BADGER." Kirkus Reviews, 1 July 2015. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA419698476&it=r&asid=22e1b18e96338bc91cdbbc096bae130a. Accessed 5 Feb.
2017.
2/5/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1486337899838 2/10
Gale Document Number: GALE|A419698476

---
QUOTED: "Fotheringham has placed him in his proper context and reminds us all that world-class athletes are driven by forces that most people can only imagine"

2/5/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1486337899838 3/10
Fotheringham, William: HALF MAN, HALF BIKE
Kirkus Reviews.
(Mar. 1, 2013):
COPYRIGHT 2013 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text: 
Fotheringham, William HALF MAN, HALF BIKE Chicago Review (Adult Nonfiction) $18.95 4, 1 ISBN: 978-1-61374-726-1
The life and times of the greatest cyclist ever. Bicycle racing has fallen on hard times. The recent revelations about Lance Armstrong's longstanding
use of performance-enhancing drugs simply provides the seeming coup de gr�ce for a sport tainted from top to bottom with
juicing athletes. Here, veteran cycling journalist Fotheringham (Put Me Back On My Bike: In Search of Tom Simpson, 2007, etc.) provides a
welcome reminder that at its best, cycling creates phenomenal athletes with otherworldly endurance, discipline and will. Born in 1945, Eddy
Merckx was raised in the suburbs of Brussels. He embraced bicycle racing at a relatively young age. By the time he was in his teens, he revealed
clear promise for future stardom; with his parents' reluctant blessing, he turned professional. Within just a few years, he had climbed to the
pinnacle of the sport and had earned the nickname "The Cannibal." Merckx dominated the sport for a decade, making victory so routine that some
fans and journalists came to resent and even hate him, as they believed his overwhelming rate of victory was ruining the sport. Fotheringham is
passionate and knowledgeable about his subject, and for fans of the sport, this book will likely stand as the definitive Merckx biography.
Newcomers to cycling's history will learn a great deal but may at times be overwhelmed by the detail and presumed knowledge that the author
brings to the narrative. Eddy Merckx was the greatest of all time in his sport. Fotheringham has placed him in his proper context and reminds us
all that world-class athletes are driven by forces that most people can only imagine.
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Fotheringham, William: HALF MAN, HALF BIKE." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Mar. 2013. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA320397484&it=r&asid=5d08d2b1ee90152d927bbfada2cf69b0. Accessed 5 Feb.
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A320397484

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QUOTED: "humorous yet substantial"

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Fotheringham, William. Cyclopedia: It's All About the Bike
Library Journal.
136.20 (Dec. 1, 2011): p151.
COPYRIGHT 2011 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text: 
Fotheringham, William. Cyclopedia: It's All About the Bike. Chicago Review, dist. by IPG. 2011.432p. illus, maps. bibliog. ISBN
9781569768174. $25. REF
Fotheringham (Cycle Racing) offers a reference to bicycles and cycling culture. Organized alphabetically, entries include brief biographies, terms,
competitions, bicycle models and makers, team song lyrics, and even time lines. Informative and frank biographical entries open with birth and
death dates, major wins, nicknames, and (when applicable) books written. Framed sidebars present subject trivia, while maps detail a
competition's geographical course. A humorous yet substantial addition to sports or cycling history collections.
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Fotheringham, William. Cyclopedia: It's All About the Bike." Library Journal, 1 Dec. 2011, p. 151. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA274874451&it=r&asid=fb98547736e0190646303fc344d4daa4. Accessed 5 Feb.
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A274874451

---
QUOTED: "The research is meticulous, the recapitulation of Merckx's races sweet reminiscences for those who witnessed them and things of wonder for those who did not."
"It is marvellous to read of such Herculean feats. But Fotheringham's principal interest is in the wherewithal: how could a man accomplish them? And here the book is weak."

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The pedals of Hercules
Henry Sheen
New Statesman.
141.5104 (May 7, 2012): p42.
COPYRIGHT 2012 New Statesman, Ltd.
http://www.newstatesman.com/
Full Text: 
Merckx: Half Man, Half Bike
William Fotheringham
Yellow Jersey, 320pp, [pounds sterling]16.99
A resume: Eddy Merckx, Belgian racing cyclist hors pair of the late 1960s and early 1970s, collected victories in bike races as easily as stamps:
the Tour de France and the Giro d'Italia five times each, countless one-day classics (such as the Paris-Roubaix and the Milan-San Remo), world
championships, the world one-hour track record. The palmares goes on and on: 445 victories for the man known as "Cannibal" for the way he
devoured one race after another.
William Fotheringham's biography seeks to account for Merckx's invincibility. The research is meticulous, the recapitulation of Merckx's races
sweet reminiscences for those who witnessed them and things of wonder for those who did not.
Every now and again the sporting world throws up a Hercules: Merckx was one such, a cyclist who could pull the peloton apart and then drop any
riders who stayed with him one by one. To read about his feats is like reading of the labours of the Greek demigod: the mountain-top finish in the
Giro d'Italia at Lavaredo in the Dolomites, where Merckx decimated the peloton on the last climb and emerged alone, in short sleeves and cockcap,
powering through a snowstorm to the summit; the stage to Mourenx in the 1969 Tour de France, where he was leading by eight minutes and
then attacked single-handedly for four hours in the Pyrenees to establish another eight-minute advantage; the near fatal crash in the Derny race in
September 1969, where he displaced his pelvis - a handicap sustained in the first year of his domination which prevented him from fulfilling his
potential.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
It is estimated that Mercld had between 70 and 80 crashes in his career, half a dozen of which resulted in serious injuries: in the 1975 Tour, he
rode the last six days with a double fracture of his cheekbone, unable to take more than fluids. He still attempted to bridge the gap between him
and the wearer of the yellow jersey, Bernard Thevenet, who would later admit that the doubt sown by Merckx's repeated attacks was such that he
wasn't convinced he could win the Tour until two laps from the finish on the Champs-Elysees.
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It is marvellous to read of such Herculean feats. But Fotheringham's principal interest is in the wherewithal: how could a man accomplish them?
And here the book is weak. Why did Merckx tolerate such relentless suffering? Is there nobility in it? Is there beauty in its futility?
Fotheringham focuses on what he considers to be the salient characteristic: Merckx's fear of failure. Merckx never considered his victories in the
grands tours until the finishing line was crossed. That is why he attacked and attacked, even when nobody else doubted that he would win. But
this hardly accounts for his invincibility: the point is that he had the capacity to inflict more suffering on his rivals, dans latete, than he would
suffer himself by doing so.
Any successful sportsman must endure a fear of failure. Suffering, and the moral dimension it offers, is perhaps the most fascinating aspect of
racing cycling. This is the moral futility that the French find so ennobling. When Merckx speaks of his "passion" for cycling, Fotheringham
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underestimates the significance of the term. "Passion" has deep Christian resonances, and is almost synonymous with suffering. Did Merckx
consider it ennobling to suffer as he did? Was it through such suffering that he became more than human until, at the age of 3o, his body could
endure no more?
It would be interesting to consider, given scientific progress in the intervening years, the genetic make-up that enabled Merckx to flourish and
become the Hercules of the cycling world. What genetic fluke or stroke of moral luck enabled him to take all the jerseys - yellow, green, polkadot
- in the same Tour de France?
As with any sporting giant, such lavish success was resented. That resentment was manifested when a French spectator punched him in the liver
as he neared the top of a summit in the 1975 Tour. The next day, the resulting bruising saw him fade with exhaustion as he tried to win time back
on the yellow jersey. Hercules was undone by the resentment of Juno; Merckx's enemies were all too human.
newstatesman.com/writers/henry_sheen
Sheen, Henry
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
Sheen, Henry. "The pedals of Hercules." New Statesman, 7 May 2012, p. 42. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA291124910&it=r&asid=f25acafbbc19477b30ad0f6bdb25d2cd. Accessed 5 Feb.
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A291124910

--
QUOTED: "An enjoyable read with tantalizing detail."

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Fortheringham, William. The Badger: The Life of Bernard
Hinault and the Legacy of French Cycling
John N. Jax
Library Journal.
140.13 (Aug. 1, 2015): p104.
COPYRIGHT 2015 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text: 
Fortheringham, William. The Badger: The Life of Bernard Hinault and the Legacy of French Cycling. Chicago Review. Sept. 2015. 384p. illus.
index. ISBN 9781613734186. pap. $18.95. SPORTS
Fotheringham (Half Man, Half Bike) has penned many insightful books related to the sport of cycling. Thus, he is well qualified to write a
biography of world famous cyclist Bernard "The Badger" Hinault (b. 1954) and his impact on both French and international cycling. While other
works in French and English have appeared on Hinault, even one by the cyclist himself, all are long out of print or hard to obtain. Fotheringham
documents Hinault's awe-inspiring racing life from start to postretirement. Hinault was France's last dominant road racer and five-time Tour de
France winner, a feat that has stood uncontested since 1985. Often compared with other multitour-winning greats (i.e., Jacques Anquetil, Eddy
Merckx, and Miguel Indurian), Hinault is renowned for his aggressive style that would leave opponents and sometimes teammates demoralized.
Based on this account, it would seem that Hinault relished showcasing that he was capable of doing something competitively distinct, especially
during a race. The author concludes with a chapter on France's hope of finding a worthy successor to "Le Blaireau." Illustrations and index were
not seen. VERDICT An enjoyable read with tantalizing detail. For all libraries wanting to update their cycling and sports collections.--John N.
Jax, Univ. of Wisconsin Lib., La Crosse
Jax, John N.
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
Jax, John N. "Fortheringham, William. The Badger: The Life of Bernard Hinault and the Legacy of French Cycling." Library Journal, 1 Aug.
2015, p. 104. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA423818164&it=r&asid=f1af27d44fc27ae7e6d50979513f3195. Accessed 5 Feb. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A423818164

---
QUOTED: "This approach gives a rich
depth to the book while still paying tribute to a remarkable athelete."

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Half Man, Half Bike: The Life of Eddy Merckx, Cycling's
Greatest Champion
Eve Gaus
Booklist.
109.16 (Apr. 15, 2013): p13.
COPYRIGHT 2013 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text: 
Half Man, Half Bike: The Life of Eddy Merckx, Cycling's Greatest Champion.
By William Fotheringham.
Apr. 2013. 320p. illus. Chicago Review, paper, $18.95 (9781613747261). 796.6.
Within the world of professional cycling, no name conjures such complete dedication and domination of the sport than that of Eddy "the
Cannibal" Merckx, dubbed for his voracious appetite for winning. Fotheringham expertly traces Merckx's career from his early races in Belgium
to his successes at the Tour de France, painting a nuanced portrait of a man best described by his wife as "driven on by a power that was unique to
him." The power behind this account is Fotheringham's skill in bringing Merckx's races alive on the page. Woven throughout is a thoughtful
discussion of the impact of Belgium's ethnic divide, between Flemish and French and its effect on Merckx's career as well as insightful analysis
of how Merckx's quiet and introverted personality helped to build his mystique. While Fotheringham clearly holds Merckx in high regard, he
avoids the sycophantic tone of many sports biographies by placing Merckx within the wider cycling world at the time. This approach gives a rich
depth to the book while still paying tribute to a remarkable athelete.--Eve Gaus
Gaus, Eve
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
Gaus, Eve. "Half Man, Half Bike: The Life of Eddy Merckx, Cycling's Greatest Champion." Booklist, 15 Apr. 2013, p. 13. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA327988354&it=r&asid=7db2ae6bea21d087cdba9b445573fb8c. Accessed 5 Feb.
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A327988354

"Fotheringham, William: THE BADGER." Kirkus Reviews, 1 July 2015. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA419698476&it=r. Accessed 5 Feb. 2017. "Fotheringham, William: HALF MAN, HALF BIKE." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Mar. 2013. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA320397484&it=r. Accessed 5 Feb. 2017. "Fotheringham, William. Cyclopedia: It's All About the Bike." Library Journal, 1 Dec. 2011, p. 151. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA274874451&it=r. Accessed 5 Feb. 2017. Sheen, Henry. "The pedals of Hercules." New Statesman, 7 May 2012, p. 42. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA291124910&it=r. Accessed 5 Feb. 2017. Jax, John N. "Fortheringham, William. The Badger: The Life of Bernard Hinault and the Legacy of French Cycling." Library Journal, 1 Aug. 2015, p. 104. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA423818164&it=r. Accessed 5 Feb. 2017. Gaus, Eve. "Half Man, Half Bike: The Life of Eddy Merckx, Cycling's Greatest Champion." Booklist, 15 Apr. 2013, p. 13. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA327988354&it=r. Accessed 5 Feb. 2017.

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