Description
The 1986 Tour De France is arguably the greatest of its 106 editions. Not just for the racing itself but for the incredible rivalry between La Vie Clare teammates and rivals Bernard Hinault - the defending champion and 5 time winner - and the young American upstart Greg LeMond. At the '85 Tour in which Hinault won, the Frenchman claimed he would help his young teammate to win the following year. But 'the Badger' as he was known, failed to stick to his word and attacked relentlessly, piling the pressure onto LeMond. In episode 11 of Sportspages, Richard Moore tells Simon Clancy about how Slaying the Badger came about, what it was like meeting the pair 25 years later, and their roles in a race that played out like a three-week long psychological drama with extraordinary levels of subterfuge.
Shehan Karunatilaka was an advertising copywriter who gave up his job to watch cricket and hang out with drunks so that he could write his first novel. Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew tells the story of an alcoholic journalist's quest to track down the greatest thing he’s ever seen: a Sri...
Published 07/16/20
Christopher McDougall was a freelance writer when he came across the story of a tribe of super-athletes living in Mexico’s Copper Canyons who’d been living unchanged for 400 years. From that came Born to Run, a chaotic adventure that reads more like a Harlan Coben novel than one of the great...
Published 06/30/20
In 1988, aged just 11 years and 330 days, Tom Gregory set off from the French coast in a bid to become the youngest person to ever swim the English Channel. Almost 12 hours later he arrived in Dover, cold and exhausted, but pushed on by his brilliant coach John Bullet. In episode 9 of...
Published 06/23/20