Olympic Gangsterthe Legend Of Jos Beyaert Cycling Champion Fortune Hunter

Download or read book Olympic Gangster written by Matt Rendell and published by Random House. This book was released on 2011-04-01 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Restlessly vital and possessed of great physical strength, José Beyaert lived many lives. During the Second World War, he boxed and trafficked arms for the Resistance on his bicycle. After it, he became an international cyclist. In 1948, a mile from the end of the Olympic road race around Windsor Park, he broke away alone to take the gold medal and started an adventure that would last the rest of his life. A Tour de France rider in the sport's golden age, José was invited to open a new velodrome in Colombia, South America. He travelled, intending to stay a month. Instead, driven by his thirst for adventure, he stayed for fifty years, becoming by turns athlete, coach, businessman, emerald-trader, logger, smuggler, perhaps even hired killer. Matt Rendell, who knew José Beyaert and met many of his family, friends and associates, tells the fascinating story of an almost-forgotten sporting hero who, incapable of living by other people's rules, lived his many lives on his own terms.

Download or read book Sport and the Pursuit of War and Peace from the Nineteenth Century to the Present written by Martin Hurcombe and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-03-14 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume of wide-ranging essays by sport historians and sociologists examines the complex relations of war, peace and sport through a series of case studies from South and North America, Europe, North Africa, Asia and New Zealand. From formal military training in the late nineteenth century to contemporary esports, the relationship between military and sporting cultures has endured across nations in times of conflict and peace. This collection contextualizes debates around the morality and desirability of continuing to play sport against the backdrop of war as others are dying for their nation. It also examines the legacy and memory of particular wars as expressed in a range of sporting practices in the immediate aftermath of conflicts such as the World Wars and wars of independence. At the same time, this book analyses the history of sport and peace by considering how sport can operate as a pacification in some contexts and a tool of reconciliation in others. Together, and through an introductory framing essay, these essays offer scholars of sport, conflict studies and cultural history more broadly a multinational analysis of the war-peace-sport nexus that has operated throughout the world since the late nineteenth century. Chapter 11 of this book is available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.taylorfrancis.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. Funded by Tokyo University.

Download or read book The Death of Marco Pantani written by Matt Rendell and published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. This book was released on 2012-11-15 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The intimate biography of the charismatic Tour de France winner Marco Pantani, now updated to include the 2014 and 2015 investigation into Pantani's death. National Sporting Club Book of the Year Shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award 'An exhaustively detailed and beautiful book . . . a fitting, ambivalent tribute - to the man, and to the dark heart of the sport he loved' Independent On Valentine's day 2004, Marco Pantani was found dead in a cheap hotel. It defied belief: Pantani, having won the rare double of the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France in 1998, was regarded as the only cyclist capable of challenging Lance Armstrong's dominance. Only later did it emerge that Pantani had been addicted to cocaine since 1999. Drawing on his personal encounters with Pantani, as well as exclusive access to his psychoanalysts, and interviews with his family and friends, Matt Rendell has produced the definitive account of an iconic sporting figure.

Download or read book Salsa for People Who Probably Shouldn't written by Matt Rendell and published by Random House. This book was released on 2011-09-29 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every week for much of the year, millions of Brits view and vote on Strictly Come Dancing, with the salsa being one of the most popular dances. Dark, enticing Afro-Caribbean rhythms; moving bodies gently interlaced, responding to the music: at first sight, salsa dancing seems to recover something our regimented British lives suppress. For not much more than a fiver, salsa can reconnect us with our bodies. So we seem to think: with perhaps a million Britons taking a class every week, salsa is statistically our national dance. Matt Rendell learned salsa the British way, as an adult, rote-learning figures and routines. His Colombian wife, Vivi, acquired salsa in early childhood from her parents and grandparents; the dance made her part of her community. A love story about two people from cultures at sometimes comical cross-purposes, Salsa for People Who Probably Shouldn't explores how the world's most popular dance went global, how it reached the UK and whether the saucy, salacious salsa of our national fantasy life is really as exotic as we like to think.

Download or read book Blazing Saddles written by Matt Rendell and published by Quercus Books. This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few sporting contests have roused such blind passions and filthy suspicions as the Tour de France. From Lance Armstrong's incredible comeback from cancer, to Tom Simpson's death on the slopes of Mont Ventoux, the Tour has been the stage for some of sport's most monumental triumphs and the scene of some of its darkest hours. Since Maurice Garin's inaugural victory in 1903, hundreds of thousands of kilometres have been covered in pursuit of the yellow jersey - cycling's holy grail - and few have been without incident or drama. Blazing Saddles is a no-holds-barred look at the wheeling and dealing, the rivalries and controversies that have given the century-old race its unique colour. Matt Rendell's vivid and entertaining narrative chronologically combines the Tour's golden legends with tales from its dark side, capturing the capture the indomitable, inimitable spirit of the world's greatest race.

Download or read book Cycling Champion written by Martin Powell and published by Raintree. This book was released on 2017-07-13 with total page 73 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Austin, eager to prove himself and win a sports trophy like his older brothers, joins a local cycling club and enters a Tour-de-France-style bike race. Not only does he have to find a bike, train and learn the course, but he also has to deal with a bully who wants him out of the club. For Austin, it feels like a race just to get to the starting line!

Download or read book A Significant Other written by Matt Rendell and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2012-11-15 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An inside view into cycling's most prestigious event and the people who have helped Lance Armstrong win an unprecedented six times Lance Armstrong's place in the cycling history books is assured. Winner of the Tour de France a record-breaking six times, he is regarded as one of the greatest individual talents the sport has ever seen. Perhaps his most compelling victory was in 2003 when he won the coveted Centenary race. However, without the team of brilliant athletes assembled to support him - the domestiques - victory in the Tour would have been impossible. Not only do these superbly trained athletes ride alongside the team leader, supplying water and equipment, but they also create a moving stream of energy that is vital for competitive success. In 2003, Lance Armstrong's domestique, Victor Hugo Peña, actually took over the yellow jersey and stepped into history. A Significant Other is the story of that race but also of these unsung heros of the sport.