Lance Armstrong: The World's Greatest Champion Paperback – 24 Jun. 2010

I've read the seven-time Tour de France winner's first autobiography, It's Not About The Bike. It is a plainly-written account, which shows the cyclist to be an occasionally brash character. And I've also read the fairly frank follow-up; Every Second Counts. This shows this cancer survivor to be an intensely competitive individual. Both books were enjoyable, but canny enough to leave some of the mystique of his character intact. I was hoping that this biography would get behind that, and fill in the reader about the true nature of the man. Sadly, I was left slightly disappointed by this 300-plus page account of the man of whom the Italian climber Claudio Chiappucci once erroneously remarked, "One thing is certain: He will never win a major Tour."Why? Firstly, the hugely questionable contention on which the book pivots, which is expressed in its unqualified subtitle: The World's Greatest Champion. At the book's beginning Wilcockson states that he believes Armstrong to be superior to hugely successful sportsman like Michael Jordan, Pele, Muhammad Ali, Babe Ruth and Michael Schumacher. Personally, I don't feel such comparison between sports is intellectually tenable, and should be left only to raucous pub arguments, and polite dinner party conversation. And I feel that the stridency with which Wilcockson makes his claims, suggests strongly that he doesn't have sufficient critical distance from his subject to examine his professional career dispassionately.Secondly, Wilcockson is too close a figure to Armstrong. You can see this right from the beginning: the prologue opens with a chatty email message from Armstrong to the author himself. And as he states on more than one occasion in his account, he has known Armstrong since he was a teenage triathlete, and has interviewed him regularly over the last twenty years. This calls into question whether you are going to get the even-handness and straight-talking one expects in the best of biographies. Here I really don't feel that you get to see "the skull beneath the skin". The weakness in his psychological armoury aren't poked and prodded at sufficiently to extract any startling new insights. For instance, Armstrong's fear of failure is briefly alluded to by a member of his inner circle, but is not developed extensively by Wilcockson.Thirdly, I am not particularly enamoured with Wilcockson's writing style. Many passages are written in the folksy vernacular of a Sunday colour supplement feature. See, for instance, sentences like: "They had a challenging relationship, but no one questioned the love Lance and Sheryl [Crow] felt for each other". Or, "She has prepared a light lunch for us to eat as she talks about her life and her only child".This is a shame. Wilcockson is an experienced journalist who has been writing about cycling for over four decades, and he has done the leg-work for this book: he has interviewed over 60 individuals, mostly face to face, in the course of his research. And the badly-focused black-and-white photographs of Armstrong which are sloppily displayed in the centre (of my paperback edition) further compound the feeling of an opportunity missed.

I hope this book remains on book shop and library shelves as it should be preserved as a reminder of the corrosive influence of Lance Armstrong on cycling. The book is also a salutary warning of the dangers of journalists and reporters allowing a desire to be seen as insiders warp their judgement and in so doing push them from reporting stories to reporting public relations propaganda. Lest it be forgotten, when this book was written there was a mountain of evidence in the public domain which even if you didn't accept as proof that Armstrong doped should certainly have caused the author of this book to pause and to at least consider the possibility that his subject wasn't as white as fallen snow. That a book could be published as such an uncritical hagiography at that stage of the Armstrong saga is either comical or tragic and one of the sad things is I at one time revered John Wilcockson's cycling stories yet now find it hard to stomach anything with his name on. The book is not badly written in literary terms and Wilcockson can write a story but the editorial stance and tendentious use of information mean this book will serve as a warning to journalists to think twice before selling their souls to join the inner sanctum of the celebrities they are supposed to report on.

I am looking forward to the day when someone writes a real biography about Lance Armstrong - this day has not come with John Wilcockson's book. I've read Lance's two autobiographies, Life on the Postal Bus, 23 Days in July, Chasing Lance, etc etc, and there's nothing in this book that I hadn't read already. I'm not looking for a Lance-bashing book - that's as unhelpful as a book written by a Lance fanatic. But I long for the day that a biographer gets the chance to write objectively about Armstrong and actually interview a lot of the key players in his life - former teammates, former rivals (why doesn't anyone ever talk with Jan Ullrich about his rivalry with Armstrong?), people who love him, people who've crossed him and have paid the price, those who work for LiveStrong, etc.Lance Armstrong is a great champion and a great philanthropist - he's also a complex character and someone who is a lightening rod for extreme opinion. He deserves a biography that honestly investigates all of these sides of him - and so do cycling fans.

Whilst this book touches on points already covered in Lance's own books ("Its not about the bike" and "Every second counts") it is a far better read as its written by somebody who knew the author and is prepared to speak to the people who also knew Lance Armstrong to get a more rounded picture of the Tour De France legend. Reading the details of his tour wins and the manner in which they were achieved it truly breathtaking, let alone that they were completed by a man who had overcome incredible odds to beat cancer. This is truly an inspiring read and when you realise how much time was devoted to cycling, supporting his cancer charity and eventually being the CEO of the US Postal Team it is truly amazing. When Lance was doing all of this I personally was not a big cycling fan but wish I had been to savour these moments as they happened.The most annoying thing for me was the way the European elite teams and the French and English press hounded him about doping when there was never a shred of evidence. Yes he may have been a brash, loud Texan, which put some noses out of joint but for seven years the best in the world had every opportunity to beat him and they just couldn't do it. Even when they WERE found guilty of doping.