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...

Cycling is a collection of habits and muscle memories learnt in childhood - usually with the help of stabilisers - which are never wholly forgotten. Hence we encourage people to revisit a long-neglected activity with the expression, “It’s just like riding a bike.” For me, the particular habit of freewheeling, has been second nature for as long as I‘ve been riding. I have also always favoured a conventional multi-geared bicycle. It makes sense on down-hills to click onto the smallest rear cog and blast along like Germany’s troubled big-gear grinder, Jan Ullrich. Choosing a low gear going up and even stooping to the last ditch ‘granny’ option like cadence king, Lance Armstrong , is the other ‘no-brainer‘. Integral to this is the ability to glide along without pedalling. Why would anyone give up their gears and revert to the kind of primitive, ‘one-speed-fits-all’ machine, used more than a century ago when the Tour de France wasn’t even a gleam in the eye of its first director, Henri Des...