Cycling's Strangest Tales: Extraordinary But True Stories

For the cycling obsessed, 80 bizarre cycling stories dating back as far as the invention of the wheel

Welcome to the weird, wonderful, and two-wheeled world of cycling. The velocipede invented by Baron Karl von Drais in 1817 started the craze for the two-wheeled machine that has had a renaissance that few would have predicted. During those decades, bicycles have thrown up more than their fair share of extraordinary and bizarre stories. Iain Spragg has trawled the bicycle history books to give you the most fascinating collection of stories, from the first bicycle trip across the globe (an Englishman on a penny farthing in 1886, of course), the 1904 Tour de France winner who was disqualified when it emerged he had caught the train, the 1937 Japanese invasion of China spearheaded by 50,000 bicycle-mounted troops, and the Japanese enthusiast who stayed stationary on a bike for five and a half hours in 1965. With stories from amateur and professional cycling, this is a thoroughly entertaining collection of tales for any two-wheeled enthusiast.