Tim Krabbé – författare

At the start of the 137-kilometre Tour de Mont Aigoual, Tim Krabbé glances up from his bike to assess the crowd of spectators. ‘Non-racers,’ he writes. ‘The emptiness of those lives shocks me.’ Immediate and gripping from the first page, we race with the author as he struggles up the hills and clings on during descents in the unforgiving French mountains.Originally published in 1978, The Rider is a modern-day classic that is recognised as one of the best books ever written about the sport. Brilliantly conceived and best read at a break-neck pace, it is a loving, imaginative and passionate tribute to the art of cycle racing.

Respectable geologist Egon Wagter has always found the amoral Axel van de Graaf's charisma difficult to resist. But from their first meeting as adolescents on a field trip to Belgium, when three lives became inextricably linked in the caves of La Roche, he has never yet allowed himself to be drawn into his friend's criminal life. Instead he has kept his independence, preferring to learn about Axel's exploits as a drug baron from the papers. Now his life as a family man is in tatters and the escape route offered by an expedition to South America lacks only $40,000 to become a reality. So here he is, far from home in a South East Asian country where the penalty for running drugs is death, running drugs for Axel, but maybe also on the brink of finally understanding the secret of the cave and the love that might have been.

THE RIDER describes one 150-kilometre race in just 150 pages. In the course of the narrative, we get to know the forceful, bumbling Lebusque, the aesthete Barthélemy, the young Turk Reilhan and the mysterious ''rider from Cycles Goff''. Krabbé battles with and against each of them in turn, failing on the descents, shining on the climbs, suffering on the (false) flats. The outcome of the race is, in fact, merely the last stanza of an exciting and too-brief paean to stamina, suffering and the redeeming power of humour. This is not a history of road racing, a hagiography of the European greats or even a factual account of his own amateur cycling career. Instead, Krabbé allows us to race with him, inside his skull as it were, during a mythical Tour de Mont Aigoual.

The instant cult classic about biking, road racing, and the bicyclists who love their sport. Originally published in Holland in 1978, The Rider went on to sell more than 100,000 copies. Brilliantly conceived and written at a break-neck pace, it is a loving, imaginative, and, above all, passionate tribute to the art of bicycle road racing. Tim Krabbé begins this story at the very start of the Tour de Mont Aigoual, ready to race his rivals through the mountains of Central France. Over the course of the 150 pages that follows, Krabbé takes his bike 150 kilometers, and pulls his readers into the life of the sport he loves. The Rider is beloved as a bicycle odyssey, a literary masterpiece, and the ultimate book for bike lovers as well as the arm-chair sports enthusiast.

Este libro es una antología de las columnas y textos breves que Tim Krabbé ha escrito de ciclismo durante los últimos treinta y cinco años, muchas de ellas en el periódico NRC Handelsblad, pero también en otros medios especializados como Wieler Revue, De Muur y Soigneur.Parte de estos textos, los más antiguos, se habían publicado en los Países Bajos bajo el título 43 Wielerverhalen [43 Historias de ciclismo] en 1984, libro inédito en España.Esta primera selección de cuarenta y tres textos se complementa con textos más tardíos, y otros que el autor pasó por alto en la primera antología; en conjunto, setenta y una historias de ciclismo. En ellas, Tim Krabbé escribe sobre sus vivencias como ciclista aficionado (llegó a disputar más de 1.000 carreras), nos trae la historia del ciclismo repasando grandes momentos de la competición profesional y describiendo a grandes campeones, a la vez que aporta numerosas reflexiones personales. En conjunto, es un retrato apasionado y personal de su visión del ciclismo y la vida, con un estilo que recuerda en ocasiones a su gran novela El Ciclista.