Author Gordon Neale isn’t a big name in the world of professional cycling. Accordingly, this isn’t an “how I achieved greatness” memoir. Instead, it’s a straightforward, mostly chronological memoir of British-born Neale’s life and experiences in his cycling career, split between his prime years (the early 1960s) and on the “veteran” cycling circuit.

Instead of a deep analysis into the sport, Neale mostly shares general experiences and anecdotes, depicting adventures and conversations with colorful characters he met while cycling—particularly in France, but also in England, several other Western European countries, Russia, South Africa, etc.

Readers will enjoy some fun moments. For example, Neale mentions that British riders have “readily adapted” to a particularly bad habit of French riders: purportedly relieving themselves “everywhere without much thought or consideration.” He later ponders whether a hotel’s parrot, having been taught profanities by a pair of riders, possibly flew away because “it could not stand the bad language.”

There’s also some interesting history about Neale organizing cycling camps in Mallorca, along with his adventures cycling in the Algarve, a gorgeous region along Portugal’s southern coast. Additionally, he discusses the use of performance-enhancing drugs on several occasions. A few chapters explore Neale’s careers outside racing (insurance agent, travel agency owner).

Unfortunately, typos and grammatical errors, unnecessary capitalizations, all-caps use, and misspellings abound throughout (e.g., citing former Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson as “Jeromy” and Nelson Mandela as “Mandella.”) Many sentences confound, while some are only fragments, and dates of seemingly important occurrences are often omitted, including when Neale earned the titular “world champion” moniker (it seemingly refers to an age bracket victory in what the author calls the “Eastern Blocks [sic] version of the Veterans World Road Race
Championships”).

It’s likely that Neale is a colorful and entertaining conversationalist. However, lacking needed editing for tighter focus, grammar and clarity, Cycling 70 Years doesn’t successfully translate that storytelling ability to a compellingly written memoir.

Also available as an ebook.