In his free time, Dan wrote a monthly column in Europe's greatest cycling magazine, Procyclin g, over an unusually long period, from 2008 to 2021.

Interesting and insightful on the interaction between personalities, strategies, and team functioning and their impact on the riders' careers. 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. His time at Quick-Step seems the best, one small anecdote goes a long way to explaining the “wolfpack” mentality: at the December training camp everyone sits down for dinner together, riders, mechanics, soigneurs all mixing.

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. uk/landing-page/quercus/quercus-company-information/">The data controller is Quercus Editions Ltd. There are of course more constructive ways use one’s time than to read road cyclists’ autobiographies, but I dare say – even before I’ve read the book myself – that STS would be positively surprised if he bought (or loaned) the book and wasted a couple of hours of his time by reading it! Perhaps the Panda is wondering how Dan Martin got there and what he’s done since, and that’s where this book comes in.

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’. I’d read in a book about the pass that his [the Tourmalet’s] name means ‘Bad little detour’ in the local patois, because the valley’s inhabitants were afraid of his ravines, his storms, his blizzards and even his bears. Dan also discusses every aspect of the professional cyclist's life - food, discipline, money, dreams, friendship and betrayal.

With no disrespect to Pierre Carrey, I do wonder if Martin’s literary agent, David Luxton (Brendan Gallagher’s Corsa Rosa, Peter Cossins’ Climbers, Geraint Thomas’ According to G franchise), may have missed a trick and should have brought Hannah Grant in as Martin’s ghost. The most interesting aspect is Martin and his approach the sport and there are often moments in the book where you wish for more, as if you could pause the autobiography and ask for more opinion but hopefully there’s a second career ahead for this. He also won stages in each of the three major tours as well as another of the big one day classics, the Giro di Lombardia.

Martin may well be a 60-something kilo whippet, but he loves his food, and he loves talking about food. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Overlaying that is a glimpse of the frankly mystical events that have foretold a victory or just the direction his career should take.That was 2003 (if you’re one of those people who forever bangs on and on and on about 1989 – the year, not the Taylor Swift album – I’ll bet that makes you feel really old) and Martin was still British, not yet Irish (the following year, 2004, he came the British U18 national road race champion).

Dan also discusses every aspect of the professional cyclist’s life – food, discipline, money, dreams, friendship and betrayal. As a consequence, I’ve often found that crashes don’t occur completely by chance, you’re actually drawn towards them. Even though I think I can safely say that I’ve got a rational mind, I ended up developing an almost mystical rapport with the bike.Given that both Martin and Carrey have strayed further into the sport’s dark places in interviews and articles, it seems even lighter still.