The Tour de France is always among the sporting calendar’s most spectacular and dramatic events. But the 1998 Tour provided play like no various other. As the starting phases in Ireland unfolded, the Festina team’s soigneur Willy Voet was imprisoned over the French Belgian border with a car-load of medications. Raid after law enforcement raid adopted, with arrest after arrest hammering the Tour. In protest, there have been riders’ strikes and go-slows, with several squads withdrawing en masse and one expelled. By the time about End of the street: The Festina Affair and the Tour that Nearly Wrecked Cycling the Tour reached Paris, simply 96 of the 189 beginners remained. And of these 189 starters, greater than a one fourth were later on reported to possess doped. The 1998 ‘Tour de Farce’s’ status as one of the most scandal-struck sports ever sold was confirmed.

Voet’s arrest was just the start of sport’s biggest mass doping controversy what became known as the Festina affair. Everything but destroyed professional cycling as the reliability of the complete sport was known as into question and the bicycling family began to break up apart. Yet, ironically, the 1998 Tour was also one of the best races in years.

The End of the Road is the initial English-language book to provide in-depth analysis and a vibrant evocation of the tumultuous events during the 1998 Tour. Alasdair Fotheringham uncovers, detail by detail, the way the world’s biggest bicycle race sank into a nightmarish series of scandals that left the sport on its legs. He explores its long-term implications and what, if any, lessons were learned.