Michael Hutchinson – författare

The hilarious true story of an amateur boating adventure.Yacht racing. A world of privilege and money. Beautiful women, bronzed men, and Simon le Bon explaining that he used to be in a band. It's not like that for everyone. Somewhere much, much further down the ladder it all looks very different. As a teenager, Michael Hutchinson raced tiny plywood dinghies on Belfast Lough, amid shoals of sewage-eating jellyfish. For him, sailing became the kind of obsession that often as not ends with a psychiatric intervention. Turning pro was his only dream.Then, at the age of eighteen, driven to despair by his own unremitting mediocrity, he gave up. But he never stopped dreaming about it - what was he missing out on? How good or bad had he really been? Had it really been a wasted youth? At last, fifteen years later, he went back. Missing the Boat is the story of his comeback season, on the South Coast of England, in Ireland, and in the glamorous resorts of the Mediterranean. It's about the yachts, the people, the regattas, and just what it was like to dive back into a world that had become entirely alien.Michael Hutchinson won the Best First Book at the British Sports Book Awards.

A fascinating and funny investigation into cyclists' incessant pursuit of speed by one of the sport's top professionals.For professional cyclists, going faster and winning are, of course, closely related. Yet surprisingly, for many, a desire to go faster is much more important than a desire to win. Someone who wants to go faster will work at the details and take small steps rather than focusing on winning. Winning just happens when you do everything right – it’s the doing everything right that’s hard. And that’s what fascinates and obsesses Michael Hutchinson.With his usual deadpan delivery and an awareness that it’s all mildly preposterous, Hutchinson looks at the things that make you faster – training, nutrition, the right psychology – and explains how they work, and how what we know about them changes all the time. He looks at the things that make you slower, and why, and how attempts to avoid them can result in serious athletes gradually painting themselves into the most peculiar life-style corners.Faster is a book about why cyclists do what they do, about what the riders, their coaches and the boffins get up to behind the scenes, and about why the whole idea of going faster is such an appealing, universal instinct for all of us.

‘As if Bill Bryson had taken to two wheels’ - FTSomewhere in a German forest 200 years ago, during the darkest, wettest summer for centuries, the story of cycling began. The calls to ban it were more or less immediate.Re:Cyclists is the tale of the following two centuries. It tells how cycling became a kinky vaudeville act for Parisians, how it was the basis of an American business empire to rival Henry Ford's, and how it found a unique home in the British Isles. The Victorian love of cycling started with penny-farthing riders, who explored lonely roads that had been left abandoned by the coming of the railways. Then high-society took to it - in the 1980s the glittering parties of the London Season featured bicycles dancing in the ballroom, and every member of the House of Lords rode a bike. Twentieth-century cycling was very different, and even more popular. It became the sport and the pastime of millions of ordinary people who wanted to escape the city smog, or to experience the excitement of a weekend's racing. Cycling offered adventure and independence in the good times, and consolation during the war years and the Great Depression. Re:Cyclists tells the story of cycling's glories and also of its despairs, of how it only just avoided extinction in the motoring boom of the 1960s. And finally, at the dawn of the 21st century, it celebrates how cycling rose again - a little different, a lot more fashionable, but still about the same simple pleasures that it always has been: the wind in your face and the thrill of two-wheeled freedom.

'A unique and funny writer with a true understanding of what it takes to make it as an elite cyclist' Chris Boardman'As if Bill Bryson had taken to two wheels' Financial Times'Hutchinson proves as good a writer as he is rider - congenial, funny and insightful' Guardian'Michael Hutchinson takes an inhuman sport and makes it deliciously, wonderfully, wickedly human' Ned BoultingFurther sees former professional cyclist Michael Hutchinson immerse himself in the world of ultra-distance bike racing. Speaking to some of the best athletes in the world, as well as sports scientists, psychologists and nutritionists, he discovers what some of the toughest events in sport demand - both physically and mentally.He experiences hallucinations, emotional meltdowns and a depth of physical exhaustion he never thought possible. But he also bears witness to the profound pleasures of the long ride - the joy of crossing a continent under your own power, and the wonders of discovering what you're truly capable of. And as he takes on one of the hardest events in the cycling calendar, he might just find out for himself the miseries and the glories of going all the way to the edge, and maybe just a little bit further...

'A unique and funny writer with a true understanding of what it takes to make it as an elite cyclist' Chris Boardman'As if Bill Bryson had taken to two wheels' Financial Times'Hutchinson proves as good a writer as he is rider - congenial, funny and insightful' Guardian'Michael Hutchinson takes an inhuman sport and makes it deliciously, wonderfully, wickedly human' Ned BoultingFurther sees former professional cyclist Michael Hutchinson immerse himself in the world of ultra-distance bike racing. Speaking to some of the best athletes in the world, as well as sports scientists, psychologists and nutritionists, he discovers what some of the toughest events in sport demand - both physically and mentally.He experiences hallucinations, emotional meltdowns and a depth of physical exhaustion he never thought possible. But he also bears witness to the profound pleasures of the long ride - the joy of crossing a continent under your own power, and the wonders of discovering what you're truly capable of. And as he takes on one of the hardest events in the cycling calendar, he might just find out for himself the miseries and the glories of going all the way to the edge, and maybe just a little bit further...

'A unique and funny writer with a true understanding of what it takes to make it as an elite cyclist' Chris Boardman'As if Bill Bryson had taken to two wheels' Financial Times'Hutchinson proves as good a writer as he is rider - congenial, funny and insightful' Guardian'Michael Hutchinson takes an inhuman sport and makes it deliciously, wonderfully, wickedly human' Ned BoultingFurther sees former professional cyclist Michael Hutchinson immerse himself in the world of ultra-distance bike racing. Speaking to some of the best athletes in the world, as well as sports scientists, psychologists and nutritionists, he discovers what some of the toughest events in sport demand - both physically and mentally.He experiences hallucinations, emotional meltdowns and a depth of physical exhaustion he never thought possible. But he also bears witness to the profound pleasures of the long ride - the joy of crossing a continent under your own power, and the wonders of discovering what you're truly capable of. And as he takes on one of the hardest events in the cycling calendar, he might just find out for himself the miseries and the glories of going all the way to the edge, and maybe just a little bit further...