Chased by Pandas: My life in the mysterious world of cycling

Product Information

Very rarely in sports do regular mortals who are undoubtedly athletic get to race against these hyper talented youngsters (and get our hats handed to us! But, when it comes to actually discussing these fears, Martin’s not the guy for the task, his tone is just too reassuring to allow you to experience any sense of danger, his positive outlook – or his ability to deep-six his fears and not think or talk about them – takes all edge off these topics. One thing for sure you can say about him is there’s nothing wrong with his metabolism, he’s got a fully functioning Thyroid. As an autobiography this book can’t explore what others thought but this unwitting pioneer angle alone makes him an interesting rider whose career spanned plenty, starting with the old-fashioned way of making his way to a French amateur climb in the hope of attracting attention via results in Europe. Written with his long-time friend and best-selling author Pierre Carrey, this is the story of a rider who never sought to conform to modern cycling's norms and someone who, in many ways, embodies an age in cycling which has long since disappeared.

The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. This is a fascinating page turning account of the life of an intelligent quirky puncheur, an outsider riding for some of the less glamorous teams in the "mysterious world of cycling" and making a success of doing it his way.The “sulphurous Tours de France (1999-2005)” and the “EPO decade” are more a small stain on the carpet than excrement smeared on the walls of the sport. With its descriptions of the profound boredom that oozed from Monaco, or the Tourmalet’s telluric faults and anarchic curves (“like a piece of spaghetti through pesto”), Chased by Pandas is definitely one of the better written chamois memoirs – even if it is another of those chamoirs where the subject’s voice is often lost behind that of the ghost – but at heart it is as light and as trivial as most of the others. Dan is unashamed when it comes to exposing these dark feelings, his weaknesses and how he tried to deal with them, his attitude exemplifying Mark Twain's quote: "Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear".

Was a huge fan of Dan Martin ever since the Liege win, where he displayed an unbelievable level of cool to just tail-gun the pack and pick his moment. the most rational hypothesis was that there was an oily residue on the road at that point and the dampness in the air had made it slippery. But since then, no, apart from when I was lying in a hospital bed in agony with a broken collarbone (his Giro crash in 2014). Known, thanks to his racing style and attitude, for being one of road cycling’s last romantics, Dan has always shied away from revealing too much about himself and his story.The books featured on this site are aimed primarily at readers aged 13 or above and therefore you must be 13 years or over to sign up to our newsletter. The fallout from that incident would cast a long shadow over the early years of Martin’s career, the VC la Pomme days and the early days of Garmin. I’ve always aspired to race like that since (rarely succeeding thanks to adhd driven impulsiveness) but it was so clinical and enjoyable to watch him constantly positioning himself in the right place the whole way through that day. What Martin is telling us in Chased by Pandas and what Martin told Kimmage five years earlier, they’re substantially the same, in both he’s telling us he hasn’t really used painkillers save for the odd paracetamol every now and again. The thing that I remember most about Martin is him being totally wiped out by Porte and showing no resentment for the fact.

Perhaps the Panda is wondering how Dan Martin got there and what he’s done since, and that’s where this book comes in. To reprise an old theme Dan Martin’s win in the 2013 edition of Liège-Bastogne-Liège was huge for him and his team. And, of course, he was the guy who escaped British Cycling’s clutches and chose to go his own way, rejected the offer of hopping on the elliptical treadmill and bringing home the bangles and the baubles on the track, chose to forge his own path on the road.

As a consequence, I’ve often found that crashes don’t occur completely by chance, you’re actually drawn towards them. Overlaying that is a glimpse of the frankly mystical events that have foretold a victory or just the direction his career should take. Retired from the pro peloton since the end of 2021, Dan is now an active investor in growth and start-up companies as a Partner of Rubix Ventures Inc.