Professional cycling is deeply rooted in the written word. All three grand tours - Spain's Vuelta, the Giro and the Tour de France itself - were created to boost flagging sales of newspapers. In Italy it was La Gazzetta dello Sport that instigated the Giro d'Italia in 1908. John Foot, in Pedalare, Pedalare! A History of Italian Cycling relies heavily on the contemporaneous writings of Gazzetta journalists and others - dubbed 'the second peleton' - to add context and colour. Tracing the sport's transition from a heroic pursuit practised by riders from largely rural backgrounds at the start of the twentieth century to what he denigrates as the current 'moribund farce' in which riders pump 'their bodies full of... dangerous substances in order to win', Foot argues that Italian cycling's past - when the sport resonated on multiple levels with large sections of the population - is where its true heart and soul still reside. What reader could resi...

Tim Henman may have bowed out of the lawn tennis limelight, passing on the jinxed mantle of Britain’s best player, to Andy Murray. But Tim remains one of the most recognisable sporting personalities in this country. And he never even won Wimbledon. For all his years of tantalising failure, he enjoyed extensive TV coverage and media exposure. There’s nothing our sporting public warms to more, it seems, than a plucky underdog with a tendency always to fall at the last hurdle. As 1966 slips deeper into the collective memory, similar points could be made about the home nations’ football teams in successive World Cup and international competitions. This year’s Euro 2008 tournament in Austria and Switzerland is a stark case in point. It’s a Brit-free zone. You’d be wrong to take your lead from what’s on the TV and conclude that Britons are no good at sport. There’s one discipline in which our national squad stands head and shoulders above the competition - and that’s track cycling. But gener...