Colombia Es Pasion!: The Generation of Racing Cyclists Who Changed Their Nation and the Tour de France - Paperback

by Matt Rendell (Author)

By winning the 2019 Tour de France, Egan Bernal became the race's youngest champion in 110 years, and the first from the South American nation of Colombia. His victory brought decades of national yearning to fruition. Colombia has long been the only developing nation contending at cycling's highest level. Yet its cycling sons are not the products of a rigorous sports system that spots them in childhood and nurtures them through the ranks to the pinnacle of globalised sport. They come from harder backgrounds, that surprise, shock - even, at times, enchant.

Colombia Es Pasi n explores the lives and dreams of each of the nation's leading cyclists. Theirs are inspiring stories of overcoming poverty and violence, sickness and corruption, and achieving global sporting glory.

'Takes you into the heart of both a sport and a country. The journey is well worth the effort' Sunday Times
'Wonderful' Observer
'Remarkable, a masterpiece' Never Strays Far podcast

Author Biography

MATT RENDELL survived Hodgkin's Disease and lecturing at British and Latvian universities before entering TV and print journalism. He first visited Colombia in 1998, and his Channel 4 documentary Kings of the Mountains (2000) was described in The Observer as 'a gem, telling us more about the essence of sport in under an hour than a season's worth of Premiership matches'. His first book, Kings of the Mountains: How Colombia's Cycling Heroes Changed their Nation's History (Aurum Press 2002), was described in The Times as 'meticulous, elegant and sensitive'. He has worked on the British terrestrial coverage of the Tour de France since 1997, he has won three National Sporting Club awards, and his book The Death of Marco Pantani was shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award. Colombia Es Pasión is his fifth book about Colombia.