Anquetil, Alone: The legend of the controversial Tour de France champion

Shortlisted for Biography of the Year and Cycling Book of the Year at the Sports Book Awards 2018, this is a strikingly original portrait of one of cycling’s most enigmatic champions: Jacques Anquetil.

“There are things he does alone, and things that he alone does.” Anquetil was a rider like no other — aristocratic in bearing, coolly detached, and utterly unapologetic about the choices that scandalised 1960s France. His womanising, his open admissions of doping, his refusal to play the moral hero… all of it outraged the public even as his five Tour de France victories kept them enthralled.

For writer and poet Paul Fournel, Anquetil was an early obsession. “Too young to understand, I was nevertheless old enough to admire,” he recalls — and that mixture of awe, confusion and fascination shapes this book. Fournel follows Anquetil’s career with the passion of a lifelong fan and the precision of a literary craftsman, weaving the rider’s story together with moments from his own life.

The result is not a conventional biography but a lyrical, intimate and deeply human exploration of a complex, divisive figure. Blending memory, myth and meticulous detail, Fournel — author of the cult classic Vélo (Need for the Bike) — creates a work that stands among the great books of cycling literature.