Book description
What makes a man the greatest of all time?
Eddy Merckx is to cycling what Muhammad Ali is to boxing or Pelé to
football: quite simply, the best there has ever been. Merckx was a
machine. It wasn't just the number of victories (445); it was his
remorseless domination that created the legend. He didn't just beat
his opponents, he crushed them.
But his triumphs only tell half a story that includes horrific
injury, a doping controversy and tragedy. He was nicknamed 'The
Cannibal' for his insatiable appetite for victory, but the moniker did
scant justice to a man who was handsome, sensitive and surprisingly
anxious. Britain's leading cycling writer, William Fotheringham, goes
back to speak to those who were there at the time and those who knew
Merckx best to find out what made Eddy Merckx so invincible.
William Fotheringham writes for the Guardian and Observer on cycling
and rugby. A racing cyclist and launch editor of
procycling
and
Cycle Sport
magazines, he has reported on over twenty Tours de France. He is the
critically lauded author of
Fallen Angel
,
Roule Britannia
, and
Put Me Back on My Bike
, which
Vélo
magazine called 'The best cycling biography ever written.
