Review by The Mole
Richard Moore documents the birth of Britain's first national cycling road race team since the ANC-Halfords team of the late 1960s. David Brailsford conceived the idea of the team as a progression to his experience and success in building the British Olympic track team of 2008 - the track team that was so steeped in success. Although the story is of building the road race team that competed for the first time in 2010 - a team whose founding philosophy is to be "clean" and drug free and to break some of the unwritten rules of road racing - it's foundations start even before the 2008 Olympics and the story tries to progress chronologically, but keeps dropping back to earlier foundations and while this could make it difficult to follow, Richard Moore has told the story in such a way as to make the reading a pleasure. I received this book just before the start of the 2011 Tour de France - the biggest annual road race in the cycling calendar. The Sky team have had some bad luck and some success on the 2011 tour so far and so we have seen many of the people from the book, on the screen and heard their opinions. The conclusion I came to was that Richard has captured the characters very well and this adds credibility to what could have been a jingoistic piece but is more an impartial fly on the wall account.
I don't have loyalties to riders etc because they are British, in fact on this years tour I have no real loyalties but I find myself wishing success for the Sky team and looking out for them. But I still hope Andy Schleck will win it this year!
Well written and not burdened with reams of meaningless facts or pictures, this book is a very enjoyable read.
Publisher - Harper Collins
Genre - Sport Non-Fiction
Buy Sky's the Limit: British Cycling's Quest to Conquer the Tour de France
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