Higher Calling: Road Cycling’s Obsession with the Mountains

“The mountains in cycling, in competitive racing, hold a particularly prominent position. In grand tours like the Tour de France, it’s the mountains that separate the overall contenders, the people who are apt to win the race from everyone else…But Higher Calling is not just a book about climbing or climbers, it’s also about the continental European mountains. Leonard does this beautifully. He opens the book with the snow being cleared on this mountain pass and closes the book with it being snowed in again. This road is only available for a very limited number of months during peak summer so there is this finite temporal element to it. Riding on these roads, he is a reflective enough person to raise the basic question, ‘Why is this road even here?’ So, very quickly, you see concrete and battlements from World War II. You unpack the history of the Alps as a border between France and Italy going back to the Napoleonic Wars, when many of these roads that were initially dirt tracks were paved or became passable.” Read more...

The Best Cycling Books

James Hibbard, Sportspersons & Sportswriter