Cyclists of the time weren't enthusiastic about participating in this heroic race on roads more suited to hooves than wheels, with bikes weighing up to thirty-five pounds, on a single fixed gear, for three full weeks. Assembling enough riders for the race meant paying unemployed amateurs from the suburbs of Paris, including a butcher, a chimney sweep and a circus acrobat. From Maurice The White Bulldog Garin, an Italian-born Frenchman whose parents were said to have swapped him for a round of cheese in order to smuggle him into France as a fourteen-year-old, to Hippolyte Aucouturier, who looked like a villain from a Buster Keaton movie with his jersey of horizontal stripes and handlebar moustache, the cyclists were a remarkable bunch.

Starting in the Parisian suburb of Montgeron, the route took the intrepid cyclists through Lyon, over the hills to Marseille, then on to Toulouse, Bordeaux, and Nantes, ending with great fanfare at the Parc des Princes in Paris. There was no indication that this ramshackle cycling pack would draw crowds to throng France's rutted roads and cheer the first Tour heroes. But they did; and all thanks to a marketing ruse, cycling would never be the same again.

When, during the Pyrenean stages of the 1998 Tour de France, a journalist asked Marco Pantani why he rode so fast in the mountains, the elfin Italian, unmistakeable in the bandanna and hooped ear-rings that played up to his Pirate nickname, replied: To shorten my agony.

Drawing on the fervor for these men of the mountains, Climbers looks at what sets these athletes apart within the world of bike racing, about why we love and cherish them, how they make cycling beautiful, and how they see themselves and the feats they achieve.

Working chronologically, Peter Cossins explores the evolution of mountain-climbing. He offers a comprehensive view of the sport, combining contemporary reports with fresh one-to-one interviews with high-profile riders from the last 50 years, such as Cyrille Guimard, Hennie Kuiper and Andy Schleck. And, unlike many other cycling books, Climbers also includes the stories of female racers across the world, from Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio and Annemiek van Vleuten to Fabiana Luperini and Amanda Spratt.

Climbers analyses the personalities of these racers, highlighting the individuality of climbing as an exercise and the fundamental fact that it's a solitary challenge undertaken in relentlessly unforgiving terrain that requires unremitting effort.

Captivating and iconic, Climbers is the ultimate cycling book to understand what it takes both physically and mentally to take on the sport's hardest stages.

An awe-inspiring history of the five most legendary classic races in world cycling.

The Tour de France may provide the most obvious fame and glory, but it is cycling's one-day tests that the professional riders really prize. Toughest, longest and dirtiest of all are the so-called 'Monuments', the five legendary races that are the sport's equivalent of golf's majors or the grand slams in tennis. Milan-Sanremo, the Tour of Flanders, Paris--Roubaix, Liège-Bastogne-Liège and the Tour of Lombardy date back more than a century, and each of them is an anomaly in modern-day sport, the cycling equivalent of the Monaco Grand Prix.

Time has changed them to a degree, but they remain as brutally testing as they ever have been. They provide the sport's outstanding one-day performers with a chance to measure themselves against each other and their predecessors in the most challenging tests in world cycling. From the bone-shattering bowler-hat cobbles of the Paris-Roubaix to the insanely steep hellingen in the Tour of Flanders, each race is as unique as the riders who push themselves through extreme exhaustion to win them and enter their epic history.

Over the course of a century, only Rik Van Looy, Eddy Merckx and Roger De Vlaeminck have won all five races. Yet victory in a single edition of a Monument guarantees a rider lasting fame. For some, that one victory has even more cachet than success in a grand tour. Each of the Monuments has a fascinating history, featuring tales of the finest and largest characters in the sport. In this updated edition of The Monuments Peter Cossins tells the tumultuous history of these extraordinary races and the riders they have immortalised.

Discover this 100-year anniversary celebration of the hardest-earned and most sacred prize in sport, the Tour de France's Yellow Jersey.

The perfect Christmas gift for cycling fans.

In 2019, the cycling world will celebrate the 100th anniversary of sport's most iconic and distinguished prize: the Yellow Jersey. Beautifully produced and packed full of interviews with riders such as Chris Froome, Thomas Voeckler and the oldest living wearer of the Yellow Jersey at 94, Antonin Rolland, The Yellow Jersey is a fitting celebration of the 'maillot jaune'.

In 1919 the leading rider was first instructed to wear the Yellow Jersey, following a campaign from fans and journalists who were struggling to identify the winning rider. 100 years on, the jersey has passed into almost sacred status. You'll never see an amateur rider wearing yellow - it is reserved purely for those who have sacrificed themselves in the world's greatest race.

Cossins will take the reader on a journey to the origins of the jersey and its early winners. He'll explore the effect of wearing yellow as a motivator and occasionally as a curse. Beautifully produced with original photography, The Yellow Jersey is an exquisite tribute to the greatest trophy in sport.

'Without doubt the most beautiful book to land on our desk this year... we can't recommend this book enough' Cycling Weekly

When, during the Pyrenean stages of the 1998 Tour de France, a journalist asked Marco Pantani why he rode so fast in the mountains, the elfin Italian, unmistakeable in the bandanna and hooped ear-rings that played up to his Pirate nickname, replied: To shorten my agony.

Drawing on the fervor for these men of the mountains, Climbers looks at what sets these athletes apart within the world of bike racing, about why we love and cherish them, how they make cycling beautiful, and how they see themselves and the feats they achieve.

Working chronologically, Peter Cossins explores the evolution of mountain-climbing. He offers a comprehensive view of the sport, combining contemporary reports with fresh one-to-one interviews with high-profile riders from the last 50 years, such as Cyrille Guimard, Hennie Kuiper and Andy Schleck. And, unlike many other cycling books, Climbers also includes the stories of female racers across the world, from Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio and Annemiek van Vleuten to Fabiana Luperini and Amanda Spratt.

Climbers analyses the personalities of these racers, highlighting the individuality of climbing as an exercise and the fundamental fact that it's a solitary challenge undertaken in relentlessly unforgiving terrain that requires unremitting effort.

Captivating and iconic, Climbers is the ultimate cycling book to understand what it takes both physically and mentally to take on the sport's hardest stages.