A Dog in a Hat: An American Bike Racer's Story of Mud, Drugs, Blood, Betrayal, and Beauty in Belgium
Product Details | Similar Products | Customer Reviews | Author: Joe Parkin List Price: £14.99 Availability:  |
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 | Product Details: Paperback 240 pages Release Date: 15 September 2008 Publisher: VeloPress ISBN: 1934030260 Rating:  Sales Rank: 4973 | | Look for similar books by subject:
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| | Customer Reviews: Cycling on the wrong side (04 January 2009)It was a good honest read, very interesting with refectling accounts of life as a professional cyclist, the compromising living standards, the uncomfortable transport to events, the abuse of drugs, the cheating and fixing of racing, who wants it ?, this sport of cycling needs a new moral level and Joe has shown a lot of moral courage exposing it, I am glad I went to college instead.  A Dog in a Hat (29 November 2008)This memoir would not have been published a decade ago. Then, cycling books were idealized, all sunflowers, suntans and white teeth. If the Festina Affair was some kind of milestone, more recent events have stripped the veneer from pro cycling to expose a drug-fuelled sham. Its aspiring saviours face a huge challenge. Joe Parkin wanted to be the best. Arriving from the USA as an innocent, he witnessed in Belgium the darker side of cycling at his first pro event with riders openly injecting themselves as part of pre-race preparation. Parkin was a nearly man. Fate, or ability that fell short, kept him from the big win that would make his name. But he kept trying, absorbing Flemish culture and speaking the language. He was accepted. Kermis - or kermesse - racing is the staple diet of Belgian cycling. Jim Ochowicz told Parkin that kermis riders were 'a dime a dozen' and that he should have ambition for the big races. Parkin himself found his dressing room peers generally dim. However, he was a man trying to do a superman's job. It wasn't long before dope claimed him, too. The drudgery, race-fixing and duplicity of riders, managers and sponsors -and not merely in the second stream - comes through Parkin's words. There's not much glamour for the journeyman professional. He stayed just a few years in Belgium and then did not return. Who could blame him? a cat on a hot tin roof (09 November 2008)I bought this book after reading a review in procycling magazine.I wasn't dissapointed.Its a great read,well written and an honest and open account into pro cycling.I couldn't put it down.Its worth putting on your wish list or getting it for a xmas present. Funny and sobering... (24 September 2008)Being a Flemish cycling enthousiast(after all, our love for cycling is a genetic feature of most Flemings...) I was really curious to read the story of this "Yankee at the World Centre of Cycling". I must say I was positively surprised by his no-nonsens approach, with easy to read, well written chapters and a nice set of glossy colour pictures. The odd Flemish expressions and curses thrown in, add a nice local flavour to the stories and enhance their credibility. Joe is very straightforward, outspoken and - I want to believe - honest in his analysis of the tough small inner circle of life on the racebike in Europe, especially Flanders, where he came to look for a career in professional cycling. The backroom politics, backbiting amongst riders donning the same jersey, the relation with the directeurs sportifs, the way races are "pre-arranged", all confirm the fact that the only message for naive newcomers is to accept the unwritten rules of the peleton or get destroyed... Joe doesn't dodge the tricky issue of organized doping either, which shows how doping had become generally accepted in cycling and inherited by one generation of riders to the next one. The book is a real page turner and reads like a 53 X 11 gear during a descent. Most recommended to anyone interested in sports in general and cycling in particular. | |
