great biography

This book seems to be more about the author's time in France rather than about Lance. Lacking the objectivity of a sports reporter (a sad statement in and of itself). For a much better book about Lance and The Tour de France, try 23 Days in July.

Loved this book! Dugard is a terrific writer who is an admirer (but not a hero-worshipper) of Lance. The most enjoyable parts of the book for me were not about Lance but about the author's description of his experience of France and the French people he encountered during the Tour de France. He is insightful and poetic at the same time, and he includes both personal comments along with observations about cultural and artistic aspects of life in France. He definitely does not glamorize the schlepping from one tour venue to another, but makes it clear that he's tremendously lucky to have the job of covering the tour. He doesn't complain, but some of the difficulties he describes are pretty funny.
The book has a really wonderful tone so that the reader feels like Dugard is a friend who is also a terrific story teller.

I really liked this book. It was part-travelogue, part-biography and part-sports book, following Lance Armstrong on his record breaking seventh tour win.

Good casual book about the 2005 Tour de France and Lance Armstrong's attempt to win 7 times. It was filled with great Tour details, historical references and tidbits about the authors travels while covering the Tour. Very interesting; I learned more about the Tour than I had know when I started the book even though I have followed the Tour over several years. Some of the information was basics, but that is understandable since it's a book for many audiences.

Some cool facts about the Tour de France.

It's hard to not appreciate what journalists must go through when covering the three grand cycling tours of Europe, especially the largest Tour de France. Add to that the announced retirement of the sport's most successful Tour de France rider in history and the coverage of the event is even greater. It's more than three weeks of every day starting in one place, then having to travel 100 or so miles away to beat really fast cyclists through traffic of centuries-old towns and villages if you want to see the finish. More often than not, the journalists skip one (usually the beginning) and watch it on TV from the end. Naturally, the story has Lance Armstrong as its focus and includes some fascinating tales of this and past races, but you could get that from any other sports book on the event. I bumped this up to three stars because of the journalism angle. Covering this event with daily stories has to be one of the most difficult assignments in sports. It's not the intended center of the book's storyline, but it's what allowed me to give it a recommendation.

I learned things about professional cycling, but I also wanted to shake the author sometimes. No one cares what you ate for breakfast!! We don't care about you - we read this book because we wanted to know what Lance ate for breakfast.