Rough Ride: Behind the Wheel With a Pro Cyclist (Yellow Jersey Cycling Classics)

What a Great Read .It's about personal experience and life as a pro cyclist, the good, bad, and in between .Very revealing from Amphetamines to Blood Doping, how the "doping controls' were conducted, and the mentality by the powers that be Looking the other way .Although years before LA, it gives new meaning to the words " I've NEVER tested positive "

There are others more informed in cycling who can give a more detailed review than I. I gave up on cycling after a few rides, it was not the sport for me, but I follow pro racing on television and in magazines. It seems so glamorous. But I wanted to know what it's really like. This book gives you so much insight, if you follow pro cycling you may never see it quite the same way again. The glamour is reserved for a very few. For guys like Paul, second rate riders (if you can call a pro rider second rate!), the cycling life has just a quickly passing hint glamour and brief moments of joy but mostly it's a very, very tough slog, not only on the courses themselves but dealing with the other riders.Paul shows how tightly knit the community of riders is and what he had to put up with as someone who spoke up against doping. I think that culture may have changed now, as riders in 2013 have turned viciously against dopers in an effort to clean up the sport and their own reputations - but Paul was a pioneer in that regard. He writes about the bitter rejection he received and the abusive letters that came his way from members of the cycling establishment and then the media establishment, once he became a journalist and wrote about cycling.Even though my knowledge of pro cycling is not what I would call great, I enjoyed this book immensely for its candour and for the revelations about a life lived on two wheels. For sure it's easier today for riders (Paul had to wash his own kit - unthinkable today), but the grim aspects of life as a domestique survive to this day I'm sure. The book is well written and compelling, and I found it hard to put down.

This book is written by an idealistic Irish national champion who thought to make a career of himself as a professional cyclist. What he found out is that system as it exists uses up its riders like disposable cameras. He had ambitions of glory or at least success, only to find that his talent is common in the pro ranks. What he describes is what it takes to exist as a professional cyclist - the wear and tear on the body and the pounding on the psyche. Hired as a domestique, his job is to support the big guns, the stars. Yet he is compensated on his own personal racing results, which are earned only when he is released from his supporting duties. For lesser riders like him, doping is the logical and even professional way of being able to perform. His transgressions are minor - caffeine suppositories, and trial use of speed, which he discards as just too *visible*. Eventually he drops out of cycling as he transitions into another line of work, sports reporting. His message is that it is the system that is broken - open knowledge of which events are not dope-controlled, the compensation system that expects riders to sacrifice their own results to those of the team, yet get paid on the basis of their criterium results. Most of all it is the code of silence that keeps all the riders mum and reinforces the idea that there is no alternative.He speaks from the point of view of the average rider. While he is tight with the Irish greats of his day (Tour de France winner Stephen Roche and TdF points winner Sean Kelly), he can't and doesn't speak of them beyond his personal experiences from sharing hotel rooms, training rides and personal relationships. If you are looking for a tell-all book about the greats of the Tour de France, you will not find it here. This is his story, no one else's. It's not a comprehensive book about sports doping or even doping in the professional peleton. What made his story notorious in its time was the fact that he dared to speak of it at all. His transgressions were minor but his story ostracized him from his cycling generation for years.He updated the booking in 2005, when he ventured back into that world, albeit as a journalist rather than a rider. Things had changed yet stayed the same. His point of view is tainted now, in that he sees doping everywhere, just in a more sophisticated form than in his day.This book is interesting not so much for the details but for the pressures on the riders to perform and to do anything/everything that the others must do. You and I have long commutes and sedentary lives that are required by our jobs; they have different job constraints that are just as binding, only theirs will kill them sooner. What a life! Thanks, Paul, for letting us see this life from your point of view.

Exceptional book detailing life as a struggling cyclist. Starting with a successful local amateur career he moves to France to ride with a top ranked amateur French team before becoming a low level pro. The most FASCINATING part is his description of riding the tour: but more specifically, the process of withdrawing his second year. He's riding well and then hits the wall, starts the internal discussion that he can slow down even when teammates beg him to renter the peloton. Then, the realization of shame and tears as he regrets withdrawing. It's quite fascinating particularly to riders that know the feeling of being dropped in a group ride. Imagine that at the highest level.There is much more in this book but I found the book to lose focus after the original story with chapters of a lost cycling friend and also the death of another. But in closing he revisits the tour where he has been ostracized for writing of the doping while he was on tour. Actually, that's almost comical because all they used was amphetamines. The tour he revisits is won by Floyd Landis, disavowed French Open winner, also primarily responsible for Lance Armstrong's fall from grace. How is that for poetry?I strongly recommend this book even though dated, for all cyclists or those with interest in cycling. Slow in parts but the primary story survives in tact and is very compelling.

Paul Kimmage is someone who, although a naturally talented cyclist by club standards, is probably a far better journalist. One things that comes across very strongly is that unlike Sean Kelly, he wasn't prepared to continously push himself to his limits as a pro. He quickly became disillusioned with the lack of encouragement given to non-continental neo pros like himself, but with the lack of support and motivation from his team management, this isn't surprising. The "charge up" for the next race if you haven't trained hard enough broke his will power and drive, and to be honest, I don't blame him.In the light of the Armstong et al doping admissions and revelations, Paul Kimmage is a dog who is currently having his day, and I wish him well as a cycling jour no in the coming years.

I had heard of Paul Kimmage in media a bit over the number of years and had heard him interviewed a few times which spurred me on the buy this book to find out more about Paul's storey and where he was coming from with point of view.I'm so glad that I did. The book tells his story of his cycling career from a firdt hand perspective and his an eye opening account of the toughness required, mentally and physically, to be a pro cyclist. Pulls no punches, doesn't attempt to glorify himself in any way and feels like an honest account as is possible to give.I couldnt recommend this more to anyone with even a vague interest in cycling or sport in general.

I should have read this book twenty years ago. Paul Kimmage is one of life's good guy's. Put aside the drugs, and you have a book about a young rider trying to make his way in the sport. Living was more of an endurance than cycling.The book isn't about drugs, it's about him and anyone who thinks he is bitter is reading the wrong book. He tried, he failed for whatever reasons. The fact that he was right about the drugs and right about Lance in particular puts us all non-believers to shame.Pat McQuaid should be very embarrassed about trying to sue him for defamation. UCI hid the truth, of that there is no doubt.A great read for anyone remotely interested in cyclying.

A brilliant and insightful book that gives a true account of the life of a 'journeyman' in the pro peloton. I decided to read this book after watching Kimmages' documentary 'Rough Rider' on RTE. This is a 'warts and all' account of Paul Kimmages' time as a 'domestique' and he pulls no punches. As he admits himself, this book is 'spitting in soup' of the pro peloton but it something that had to be done and it's only a pity that the powers that be didn't listen to men like Paul Kimmage or David Walsh a lot sooner.Forget the glamour, the bright colours, the gleaming spokes that you associate with pro cycling. This book gives an account of what really goes on, the doping, the back stabbing, the bullying and the cut throat attitude of most of the people in the sport.I couldn't put this down.

Kimmage does a decent job telling the story of his journey from aspiring amateur to jaded pro and provides plenty of insights into the corrupted world of professional cycling. Prior to reading this I generally took the view that pro cycling was a tough business in which sport often lagged a long way behind the necessities of making a living on the bike and drugs were not just a way of cheating to win but part of the survival toolkit. This book provides plenty of supporting evidence.