“Wide-Eyed and Legless” isn’t just a book about the Tour de France, it’s a tale of misplaced ambition, glorious failure, and the grim reality of professional cycling’s backroads. Jeff Connor, a journalist by trade but soon to be an unwitting team assistant, takes us inside the ill-fated ANC-Halfords squad of 1987, Britain’s first Tour team in two decades.
What follows is a brutal, hilarious, and sometimes tragic account of a ragtag operation trying to bluff its way through the biggest bike race in the world.
The mastermind (if you can call him that) behind it all was Tony Capper, a man who seemed to operate more on blind faith than actual planning.
A 20-stone chain-smoking businessman with a habit of making grand promises he couldn’t always keep, Capper dreamed of taking a British team to the Tour, despite a budget that would barely cover the coffee bill for the likes of La Vie Claire.
His philosophy was simple: sign a team, get to the start line, and somehow, the rest would take care of itself. Reality, as Connor shows, had other ideas.
The riders – brave, talented, but woefully unprepared for what was to come – were thrown into the fire.
Malcolm Elliott, the team’s best hope for a stage win, had the sprinting legs but lacked the full team backing needed to take on the likes of Jean-Paul van Poppel. Adrian Timmis, a quiet grafter, found himself on survival duty, while Paul Watson, a pure climber, struggled to match the Tour’s relentless pace. Each of them knew they were up against it, but in the grand tradition of British sporting underdogs, they dug in regardless.
Behind the scenes, the situation veered from comedy to disaster with alarming frequency. The soigneurs and mechanics, working on a budget tighter than a time trial skinsuit, did their best to keep the show on the road.
Some days, they struggled to find enough food for the riders; other days, they were lucky if they had a hotel room at all. The team bus, a battered old vehicle that looked like it had been pulled out of a scrapyard, broke down more than once.
Connor, initially just there to report, soon found himself press-ganged into various duties—driving team cars, fetching supplies, and even acting as an impromptu psychologist as morale dipped lower with every passing stage.
The Tour itself was merciless. While Stephen Roche was riding into the history books, ANC-Halfords were simply trying to survive.
The team haemorrhaged riders from the start, three abandoning within the first few stages. The dream of competing quickly turned into the grim reality of making it to Paris.
By the time the race reached the Alps, the surviving riders were running on fumes, both physically and emotionally.
But for all the chaos, there’s something compelling about their story. Cycling fans love a glorious failure, and ANC-Halfords’ 1987 Tour campaign had failure in spades.
Connor tells it with wit, sharp observation, and a clear affection for the characters involved. He doesn’t romanticize the struggle, nor does he sugarcoat the sheer madness of the whole operation. He simply presents it as it was: a team that had no right to be in the Tour, but showed up anyway, clinging on with white knuckles and gritted teeth.
By the time the final stage rolled into Paris, ANC-Halfords was a shell of a team, battered and beaten, but still standing. And in the end, maybe that was victory enough.
“Wide-Eyed and Legless” isn’t just required reading for cycling fans, it’s essential for anyone who loves a good underdog story, especially one that veers wildly between triumph, farce, and outright disaster. Jeff Connor lived it, and thanks to this book, we get to as well.
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Wide-Eyed and Legless: Inside the Tour de France by Jeff Connor
- Publisher : Mainstream (7 Apr. 2011, first published Simon & Schuster, 1988)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 192 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1845961714
- ISBN-13 : 978-1845961718
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