Joined in 2023 
82 
63 About this deal
Chased by Pandas] is not a conventional study of wins, losses and conquering mountains but overcoming the mental challenges of a sport into which he was seemingly born’ The Times
chased by pandas inrng : book review – chased by pandas
Curiously, while Chased by Pandas paints Martin’s story in pretty pastels, Carrey’s 2017 article was a more nuanced study in light and shadow. It was explicit in the way it talked about doping, that was an important part of the article, it justified why Carrey saw Martin as a hero, he was a guy who chose to reject doping, with Carrey linking that stance to the careers of Romain Bardet and Thibaut Pinot.While Martin has spoken in interviews about how he “ almost got used to seeing cyclists being led away in handcuffs”, Chased by Pandas doesn’t go to those dark places. Doping is mentioned, Martin telling us his attitude was to “avoid thinking about it”. He’s continued with that defence mechanism here by doing his best to avoid talking about it. Except to tell us how clean the sport became and how clean he is. That’s something I can understand, and I feel like too many cycling books I’ve read seem to centre on the themes of either suffering or doping. With its descriptions of the profound boredom that oozed from Monaco, or the Tourmalet’s telluric faults and anarchic curves (“like a piece of spaghetti through pesto”), Chased by Pandas is definitely one of the better written chamois memoirs – even if it is another of those chamoirs where the subject’s voice is often lost behind that of the ghost – but at heart it is as light and as trivial as most of the others. Given that both Martin and Carrey have strayed further into the sport’s dark places in interviews and articles, it seems even lighter still. The modern chamois memoir, though, is more an exercise in PR and image management than it is an exploration of a sport forever telling us to ignore what goes on in the shadows and just enjoy the spectacle. Chased by Pandas] is not a conventional study of wins, losses and conquering mountains but overcoming the mental challenges of a sport into which he was seemingly born’– The Times
Chased By Pandas by Dan Martin – Signed Edition - Coles Books
This is Dan Martin's long-awaited autobiography, full of 'the warmth, sharp insights and vivid colour of his 14-year career' Guardian That was 2003 (if you’re one of those people who forever bangs on and on and on about 1989 – the year, not the Taylor Swift album – I’ll bet that makes you feel really old) and Martin was still British, not yet Irish (the following year, 2004, he came the British U18 national road race champion). So instead of going to Lourdes like everyone in Ireland, that Pyrenean holiday saw him and his family going to Luz-Saint-Saveur, 30 kilometres south and a shrine of a different kind, situated as it is at the base of the Tourmalet. DM: Yeah, eventually. But since then, no, apart from when I was lying in a hospital bed in agony with a broken collarbone (his Giro crash in 2014). According to Chased by Pandas, Martin never saw doping, he was never offered drugs. He was even reluctant to take medicines for his allergies – which used to ruin his form in Spring – for fear of the side effects. As for dealing with pain, “I would take a paracetamol to help mask the fatigue and dull ache that three weeks of brutal racing inflicts on your body, but I then found out it was more of a placebo. I preferred to be in touch with my body’s messaging, to feel where my limit was, so that I could more accurately balance on the tightrope that is the upper regions of performance.” That Tour of 2003, it’s one of the swipe-left Tours, won by Lance Armstrong and best remembered today for Jésus Manzano leaving it in an ambulance, electrodes attached to his chest. The fallout from that incident would cast a long shadow over the early years of Martin’s career, the VC la Pomme days and the early days of Garmin. But it doesn’t cast a shadow over Chased by Pandas. The “sulphurous Tours de France (1999-2005)” and the “EPO decade” are more a small stain on the carpet than excrement smeared on the walls of the sport. Operación Puerto itself is mentioned once, in passing, Martin noting that the man whose shadow he seemed to become, Alejandro Valverde, had been “implicated in the Operation Puerto doping affair”.From 1st July 2021, VAT will be applicable to those EU countries where VAT is applied to books - this additional charge will be collected by Fed Ex (or the Royal Mail) at the time of delivery. Shipments to the USA & Canada:
Great Deal 
New Comment