In 1977 an American journalist for the International Herald Tribune in Paris switched from the news desk to become sports editor. In June that year he found himself covering the Tour de France for the first time. Samuel Abt had no particular interest in bike racing even if his wife was a fan. To him, bike racing was “just a bunch of guys pedaling in their underwear.” By the time the Tour reached Paris he had become a convert and for the next three decades would cover the sport for the IHT (a sadly missed newspaper), the New York Times and other publications. He wrote: “This is a sport, for a lucky few, you only have to see once to love.”
Abt was not really a sports writer per se. As a journalist, in 1971 he had been one of the editors at the New York Times of the Pentagon Papers, the top secret document leaked by Daniel Ellsberg. The subsequent court case was a milestone in freedom of the press jurisprudence and the start of the unravelling of the Nixon Administration. But given this very different background, Samuel Abt went on to produce articles about bike racing that are succinct, beautifully written and often very touching. They are the notes of a sympathetic fan who wants to share his special access with the world.
That world was the English-speaking one and focused on the United States. In 1977 professional cycling in Europe was an obscure niche sport to Americans. Eurocentric in the extreme, its internationalization only became a thing around the time that Abt began to write about it. He wrote for a general audience, people who knew nothing about the Tour, and one looks in vain for any technical references. Rather, he explained: “I have tried to write about the people in this sport of sacrifice and suffering hoping “to see a world in a grain of sand,” as William Blake put it in a somewhat different context.
Samuel Abt’s name appears on no fewer than ten books about bike racing, all of them compilations from his newspaper and magazine stories. The stories are short, usually just three or four pages, and efficiently expressed. To my mind, the best way to approach Samuel Abt is with his 2002 book “Off to the Races.” This compilation is a selection of articles covering 25 years of his writing. He noted: “The selection was based mainly on which pieces gave me the greatest pleasure to read.”
“Off to the Races” is divided into three parts. This is the “Stars and Watercarriers” approach (reference there to a classic cycling video!) as Part One (“Atop the Podium”) is about the Big Names with whom Abt rubbed shoulders. Part Two (“In the Pack”) has stories about riders you have never heard of, or ones that nobody for an English-language publication would interview. And Part Three (“Races and Places”) covers the races beyond the Tour that make up the professional men’s calendar. There are some Classics but also kermesses in Belgium that riders described as “Where was it?” Races too like the Tour of Langkawi in Malaysia and America’s Tour DuPont.
1977 marked Eddy Merckx’s last time at the Tour and Abt saw him there, a shadow of the great rider he had been. But Abt was to see and interview many of the greats of the era: the defiant Bernard Hinault, the not-so-loved Laurent Fignon, the silent Miguel Indurain, the surprisingly unambitious Joop Zoetemelk.
The stories might be brief but reflect an ability to read character in some depth. While some of the stars reach great heights before crashing to earth (the maddening Fignon being a notable example), many of the protagonists here do not have glorious victories but are trying to earn a living in a sport they love. Their personal stories can be hard and injuries are never too far away but there is a strong sense of acceptance and even optimism. For instance, there is a whole series of articles about Jan Ullrich, winner of the Tour at 23 and then seeming for the next few years to be unable to find his form due to illness or rather astonishing weight gain. “I like to eat. That is what winter is for.”
It is difficult to summarize this book. The three sections include around 125 different stories spread over nearly 350 pages. This is the world of bike racing, predominantly in Europe, from the late 1970s through to the start of the new Millenium. It is primarily about the racers, stories sensitively and amusingly told, but also about the entire circus around them. The host towns and their local worthies, the amateurs, the fan clubs. Heartbreaks are more common than glory in what is a brutally hard sport. These stories you will find nowhere else because Samuel Abt was a fan trying to convey what he loved about the sport in very fine writing.
He wrote about what he saw from that first day in June 1977 to the end in these words: “The color, the speed, the glorious scenery, the companionship, the pageantry, the sheer athletic skill of the riders, their availability and willingness to talk–all thrilled me then and still, after more than 20 years of watching and writing about the sport.”
Samuel Abt passed away in France in July 2025 at the age of 91.
“Off to the Races–25 Years of Cycling Journalism” by Samuel Abt
354 pages, hardcover, with photographs by Graham Watson
VeloPress, Boulder, Colorado, 2002
ISBN-13: 978-1931382069
Originally published at US$29.95, you can easily find copies of this excellent book at the usual used book sources such as Amazon.com or Abebooks.com. Prices vary!
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