End of the Road: The Festina Affair and the Tour that Almost Wrecked Cycling Audiobook (Free)

The Tour de France is always one of the sporting calendar’s most spectacular and dramatic events. However the 1998 Tour offered episode like no other. As the starting stages in Ireland unfolded, the Festina team’s soigneur Willy Voet was caught over the French Belgian boundary using a car-load of medications. Raid after police raid implemented, with arrest after arrest hammering the Tour. In protest, there were riders’ hits and go-slows, with several squads withdrawing en masse and one expelled. By enough time about End of the Road: The Festina Affair and the Tour that Nearly Wrecked Bicycling the Tour reached Paris, simply 96 from the 189 starters remained. And of these 189 beginners, more than a one fourth were later on reported to possess doped. The 1998 ‘Tour de Farce’s’ position among the most scandal-struck sports in history was confirmed.

Voet’s arrest was just the beginning of sport’s biggest mass doping controversy what became known as the Festina affair. Everything but destroyed professional bicycling as the reliability of the complete sport was called into question as well as the bicycling family begun to break up apart. And yet, ironically, the 1998 Tour was also one of the best races in years.

THE FINISH of the street is the 1st English-language book to supply in-depth analysis and a colourful evocation of the tumultuous events during the 1998 Tour. Alasdair Fotheringham uncovers, step by step, how the world’s biggest bike race sank into a nightmarish group of scandals that remaining the sport on its knees. He explores its long-term effects and what, if any, lessons were learned.