Name: Chris Sidwells book talk.
Start: 2025-01-29T19:30:00+00:00
Location: Brickcroft Lane, PR26 9RF Croston, United Kingdom

We are honoured to announce another North West exclusive:
Cycling journalist Chris Sidwells talks about his latest book:
‘Cycling Legends 03 Jacques Anquetil- the man behind the mask’
Wednesday 29 January, 2025, 7:30pm. Tickets £10 or £20 with the book. Tickets can be purchased at the cafe or over the phone on 01772 603894.
Chris has worked as a cycling journalist for 20 years, writing thousands of articles for newspapers, magazines and websites worldwide, as well as writing 25 other books, many of which have been best sellers and have been translated into over 20 foreign languages.
Cycling Legends Media www.cyclinglegends.co.uk is Chris’s sports media business, which is comprised of book publishing, event promotion, short cycling breaks at iconic European locations, and his podcast, which is a monthly cycling magazine you listen to with features, interviews, tech, fitness, news, opinion and history shows.
About his coming Jacques Anquetil book tour, Chris says:

“Jacques Anquetil was a name I heard so often as a kid. My family was immersed in the world of cycling – Britain’s first professional road race world champion and monument winner Tom Simpson was my uncle.
“Professional cyclists were frequent visitors, especially to Tom’s parents, my grandparents, who lived just around the corner from us.
“I would hear many exotic sounding names, but Jacques Anquetil’s was always said with particular reverence. You knew he was special, someone these cyclists admired, and they had good reason to.
“Anquetil was the best of his generation: the first to repeat the Giro-Tour double of Fausto Coppi; the first to win all three Grand Tours in his career; and the first to win five Tours de France.
“Today he still holds third place in the all-time Grand Tour winners list. Anquetil won eight in total, Eddy Merckx is number one with 11, and Bernard Hinault won 10.
“But victories were not what motivated Jacques Anquetil. He was in cycling to make money and winning was the means by which he did it.
“The woman who knew him better than anyone else, whom he depended upon throughout his racing career, his first wife Janine, said that Anquetil ran ‘Jacques Anquetil the cyclist’ as a director would run a limited company, plotting which victories would give him the greatest return.
“He also created an image for his business – Jacques Anquetil the star, the urbane suave professional, a friend to film stars and politicians. But that wasn’t who he really was.
“In my 20-year career as a cycling journalist and author working in Europe, I met many people who knew Jacques Anquetil. Fellow cyclists, team managers and members of his family. They told me about another Jacques Anquetil, the one the public never saw – the man who Jacques Anquetil really was.
“His suave confidence was a mask; it was the public face which portrayed Jacques Anquetil the cyclist as a business success. In truth he was a timid man, superstitious, sometimes jealous, and an obsessive. On top of that he could be awkward, contrary and oblivious to the affect his actions had on others.
“Those traits made him a restless and conflicted soul, who could be frighteningly driven during his racing career, but who later in life found solace in nature. He loved working on his farm, being outside and appreciating the peace that followed his often controversial cycling career.
“Jacques Anquetil died relatively young, though not long before he succumbed to stomach cancer, he said he had experienced enough in his lifetime to fill several lives.”