Vuelta Skelter: Riding the Remarkable 1941 Tour of Spain
Aug 2021 · Random House
4.5star
8 reviewsreport
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About this ebook
Tim Moore completes his epic (and ill-advised) trilogy of cycling's Grand Tours.
Julian Berrendero's victory in the 1941 Vuelta a Espana was an extraordinary exercise in sporting redemption: the Spanish cyclist had just spent 18 months in Franco's concentration camps, punishment for expressing Republican sympathies during the civil war. Seventy nine years later, perennially over-ambitious cyclo-adventurer Tim Moore developed a fascination with Berrendero's story, and having borrowed an old road bike with the great man's name plastered all over it, set off to retrace the 4,409km route of his 1941 triumph - in the midst of a global pandemic.
What follows is a tale of brutal heat and lonely roads, of glory, humiliation, and then a bit more humiliation. Along the way Tim recounts the civil war's still-vivid tragedies, and finds the gregarious but impressively responsible locals torn between welcoming their nation's only foreign visitor, and bundling him and his filthy bike into a vat of antiviral gel.
Julian Berrendero's victory in the 1941 Vuelta a Espana was an extraordinary exercise in sporting redemption: the Spanish cyclist had just spent 18 months in Franco's concentration camps, punishment for expressing Republican sympathies during the civil war. Seventy nine years later, perennially over-ambitious cyclo-adventurer Tim Moore developed a fascination with Berrendero's story, and having borrowed an old road bike with the great man's name plastered all over it, set off to retrace the 4,409km route of his 1941 triumph - in the midst of a global pandemic.
What follows is a tale of brutal heat and lonely roads, of glory, humiliation, and then a bit more humiliation. Along the way Tim recounts the civil war's still-vivid tragedies, and finds the gregarious but impressively responsible locals torn between welcoming their nation's only foreign visitor, and bundling him and his filthy bike into a vat of antiviral gel.
Ratings and reviews
4.5
8 reviews
Bob Williamson
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April 1, 2023
another tim Moore epic.
About the author
Don't be fooled by this suave and nonchalant athlete: endurance cycling has not come easily to Tim Moore. His grand-tour trilogy has been 20 terrible years in the making - a time-scale that allowed him to forget just how awful he felt riding round the 2000 Tour de France (French Revolutions), and just how stupid he looked retracing the 1914 Giro on a wooden-wheeled bike in period kit (Gironimo!). In between he has pulled a donkey across Spain (Spanish Steps), ridden an East German shopping bike down the Iron Curtain (The Cyclist Who Went Out in the Cold), driven a Model T Ford across the US (Another Fine Mess) and mysteriously failed to grasp that this kind of stuff doesn't get easier with age.
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