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Formats: Print, Kindle eBook & audiobook
6" x 9" Paperback, 412 pages with photographs
Suggested retail print version: $19.95, Kindle eBook $4.99
Audiobook: $24.95

About the book
About the authors

Get the book:
Amazon.com Print & Kindle eBook
Amazon audiobook

Here's the link to Volume 1.

About the book:

"After forty years of study on the subject, I can with some confidence say Bill and Carol McGann’s The Story of the Tour de France is the finest such work ever produced in the English language, and perhaps in any."
-From the preface by the late Owen Mulholland, author of Uphill Battle

For any historian of the sport the McGanns' Tour de France history is essential reading. Details of the stages and the riders are not glossed over. For those who are new to the sport, the McGanns bring the glory days of the sport alive with the intrigue that still exists today. Epic stages that might have faded into oblivion are eloquently recounted so that future generation of cyclists will know the rich history of our beautiful sport.
Neil Browne, editor, Road Magazine

Volume 1 of The Story of the Tour de France concluded with Bernard Thévenet’s dramatic victory over Eddy Merckx in the 1975 Tour. Volume two opens with super-climber Lucien van Impe’s taking advantage of a course made for the riders with wings. His win was followed by the dominating presence of Bernard Hinault, who became the third rider to win the Tour five times.

Unable to fulfill his destiny as a likely five-time winner because of a hunting accident, Greg LeMond won the Tour three times. LeMond’s era was followed by that of the remarkable Spaniard Miguel Indurain, the first man to win the Tour five times in a row.

The late 1990s were a time of extreme crises for the Tour as the culture of doping within the professional cycling community erupted into the Scandal of 1998. The Story of the Tour de France deals with this episode at length.

At first, it looked like Lance Armstrong had done what no other rider in the Tour’s history had ever accomplished, win the Tour seven times in a row. Both he and his successor, Floyd Landis, were revealed to have used drugs to win.

For decades, Great Britain was a marginal player in professional cycling, but no longer. British riders have become a dominating presence in recent Tours.

The book concludes with a quest for the greatest-ever Tour de France rider and an epilogue explaining the reason for the extraordinary success of the Tour

About the Authors:

Bill and Carol McGann have had their lives inextricably tied up with bicycles about as long as they can remember. Their first date was a bike ride. Bill, formerly a Category 1 racer, has been a contributor to several cycling magazines and is widely acknowledged as an expert on road bikes and cycling history. Since his father gave him a small 1-speed English lightweight bicycle when he was 5 years old, Bill has been in love with everything about bikes.

Carol, a former college biology instructor is also an accomplished rider, having cycle-toured extensively. Together they started Torelli Imports in 1981, a firm specializing in high-performance cycle equipment.

Currently they own McGann Publishing and run this website, BikeRaceInfo.com