In Pursuit of the Yellow Jersey [Paperback]

In this book, writer Samuel Abt and writer/photographer James Startt follow the world's premier professional bicycle racing event, the Tour de France and the events leading up to it. The book comprises 192 pages of text with black and white photographs and a 16-page full-color photo insert.

"The Tortured Tour," that's how the 1998 edition of the Tour de France, the world's most important bicycle race, has been described.

It began with a bang: Even before the race had started in Dublin, Ireland, a doping scandal involving the number-one-rated team, Festina, upstaged the sporting aspect. And it never calmed down after that, as daily stage results and the fortunes of the race's favorites were pushed off newspaper front pages by reports of police raids, rider expulsions, arrests, and strikes.

Yet by the time the Tour had wound its way through much of France and ended in Paris, we saw some great racing. While Marco Pantani, the Italian star, was clearly the man of the moment, he shared the limelight with Bobby Julich, a rising American racer, and Jan Ullrich, who was the defending champion in the Tour.

In and around the Tour, we also find such new faces as George Hincapie, the American national champion, his teammate Tyler Hamilton, and Australian champion Stuart O'Grady. And we meet old friends, like three-time Tour winner Greg LeMond and Lance Armstrong, first struggling and then succeeding in his comeback from cancer.

This personal account by Samuel Abt and James Startt illuminates the Tour de France and the sport of bicycle racing itself.

Samuel Abt is associate editor for the International Herald Tribune, based in Paris, and has written about bicycle racing for that paper and the New York Times for over two decades. He has written seven previous books about the sport and is the only American awarded the Medal of the Tour de France for distinguished service to the sport.

James Startt is a photographer and writer based in Paris. He has been following European bicycle racing for many years and regularly reports on the sport for U.S. cycling publications. He is the editor of the English-language version of the Tour de France Internet site. His photos have been prominently exhibited at major photo galleries in Paris.