Read Any Good Books Lately?

My bookshelf is filling up slowly, but surely! The latest acquisition is the Tour de France for Dummies, which I bought at Amazon.com. This book covers every aspect of the Tour thoroughly and while doing that, provides an insight into the techniques and methods of how teams compete. Some sections detail the Rules, Race Strategies, Where to Watch the Tour and the Bikes. And that's just a fraction of the table of contents.

Compared to the couple other Dummies books I own, there are two notable differences with this one. The dimensions are far better than the larger traditional size, which makes it very handy for carrying around, and the attempts at humour (which I find they are so good at) is much more scaled back. This makes for very comfortable reading! I love humour when I'm reading and though they're witty with it, it had become cumbersome due to the amount that they'd put into the text. These new changes are just great!

From Lance to Landis is another excellent book. David Walsh is an excellent journalist and presents facts learned from interviews. He never mud-slings his subjects and pays compliments where they're due, giving the reader confidence that the book is not a vendetta, but simply a presentation of corroborated incidents.

The Official Tour de France Centennial is very interesting. I'd say it's more of a reference work than anything else. It's a re-print of the newspaper reports that appeared in L'Equipe and covers every single Tour ever staged (no pun intended, heh...) And it's packed with photos which alone are a treasure in themselves.

And Bicycle, The History is a fine, fine read! Fully illustrated, it gives the history of the bicycle and the countries that it grew up in. (I'd raved about this book before.)

So there it is, a whole four books in my collection! That's a good start. I can't wait to add to the bottom shelf of the [photoshopped] bookcase. Got any recommendations?

The Business of Cycling — Sponsors

It's been fascinating learning more about the sport of cycling—and I don't only refer to being in the saddle. I mean the business aspect of it. I always knew lots of money was involved, but I wasn't aware of how many players there really are in the sporting world and they aren't just the ones you see on the court, in the pool or cycling on the road. David Walsh's book From Lance To Landis, gives an interesting insight into this. It has to do with Sponsorship.

A company, say, a sport clothing company, eyes a talent in a particular sport and offers him a sponsorship contract. With all eyes on him as he parades around in their shoes and shirts, their sales will naturally increase, which is desirable for the company. Included in the contract is an agreement that the sponsor will pay him a princely bonus should he win this or that competition in a specified period of time.

The sponsor may not want to have the responsibility of actually paying out such a hefty bonus themselves, so they make a deal with another company which specializes in covering the "risk" that the athlete may very well win the competition.

This company works out the odds of the athlete winning the event and charges the sponsor a premium, which is really a small percentage of the total winnings offered to the athlete.

It reminds me of insurance companies—you pay them a yearly premium so that in the [highly] unlikely event that your house burns down, they will hand you a cheque many many times the amount of the actual premium, so you can get your life back again. Except that if your house does burn down, they must first investigate the circumstances surrounding the loss, before they go forking out any money.

Interestingly, a Texan company underwrote the risk of Lance Armstrong's winning the Tour de France four more years in a row, after he had already won twice in a row. The total prize money offered to the cyclist was US$9,500,000.00 with the sponsor paying a premium of US$420,000.00 for the company to cover the risk. Armstrong actually won five more times.

This book is another fine read. It is written by a respected sports journalist and provides a good insight into what goes on behind the scenes in the cycling world.

Bicycle—The History

Bicycle—The History is a fine book, if I ever read one. It would make a great addition to your bookshelf. The author traces the origin of the bicycle, its development into the two-wheeler we know today, different types of cycles and the various purposes they served, for example, use as a utility-type vehicle and also for recreation and competition. And it's chock full of fascinating pictures, sketches and posters.

The book shows that the early efforts of inventors—and the responses they received—were quite comical at times. When a determined German inventor named Karl von Drais displayed his design in France, a newspaper reported that "it was no more practical than the mechanical wings" which another German inventor exhibited the previous year. The Journal de Paris concluded that it was of no practical value. I wonder what they would say if they could see it now.

When things are in the early stages of development, they tend to be clumsy and awkward. The early bikes were very heavy, weighing over 50 pounds, since the frame was made of wood and the wheels were iron. I can't imagine the kind of ride that would give!

What surprised me most, is that the bicycle is really a recent invention. Quite recent. The very first design that set the stage for the bicycle was made 192 years ago. The real turning point though, came 50 years later, when mechanical parts (pedals and cranks) were applied to make riding more effective. And the rest of its development from there is easy to imagine.

For a vehicle which is so popular in sport and useful in everyday life, I find it surprising that it began really taking shape as recent as, what, 1867.

Another interesting thing I learned from the book is that there was a longtime interest in producing a vehicle that would not necessitate the use of animals, such as horses, to provide the power. The early sketches show what look like the beginning of the automobile, and not a bicycle. It seems as if it simply did not occur to the earlier inventors that a human could remain balanced on a vehicle with two wheels that were not side-by-side. So the designs were always so that the vehicle would stand on its own.

Karl von Drais was the one who presented this new design—that of a machine with one wheel directly in front of the other with no other support on its sides. Interestingly, it mentions that it isn't clear how von Drais came up with his idea.

Although it has struck me that it's a late invention, what surprises me even more is that the ancient Egyptians hadn't been the ones to come up with the original bicycle design. What with their being such masters of engineering with some of their accomplishments still puzzling present-day experts, I would have thought that if there was anyone to design something with two wheels lined up one behind the other, that balances and carries a human being forward with little effort, it would be the guys from Giza.

But that's all in the past now. I'm just mighty glad that when my parents thought me up, the bicycle was already perfected.

Book rating: 6 Treks! (Oh wait, it only goes up to 5!)