How the Race was Won

written by Peter Cossins published by Velopress reviewed by Matthew Pioro

Veteran cycling journalist Peter Cossins’s How the race was won is a book on road-cycling tactics for fans who are deep into the sport or ready to go deeper. (For more of a primer, I recommend Jamie Smith’s Reading the race.) It can arm you for your espresso-fuelled discussions with friends about of who did what during a race and why.

Cossins takes you through some history of racing tactics, all way to Tour de France founder Henri Desgrange’s thoughts on training, some of which seem silly now. (Practise holding your pee, for example.) Cossins also writes about the evolution of the bunch sprint, getting into a breakaways, managing climbs and taking on Classics races.

One of the highlights for me was David Millar’s description of Ryder Hesjedal’s style of attacking: a self-counter-attacking technique. “This involves him attacking,” says Millar of Hesjedal, “waiting for for everybody to get to him, then attacking again. Once they reach him again, he rides as hard as he can until they start getting dropped, before attacking them again. He’s like a four-man team.”

Joe Dombrowski has a great line: “A lot of great bike riders are kinda stupid. You know, having nothing going on up there, just primal instinct.” More than the edginess of this comment, what strikes me is that I’ve heard other journalists describe Dombrowski as too smart for his own good, possibly one to over think. If I were to be more charitable, to both Dombrowski and the dumb riders, I would say there’s a race intelligence, which you could call instinct, that some riders have to a higher degree than others.

Cossins looks to Tejay van Garderen to take on the topic of power meters. Are they ruining tactics and traditional race intelligence? Van Garderen has a nicely nuanced answer. In fact, nuance is also this book’s strength as it delves into the complex and fascinating world of chess – and a bit of poker – on two wheels.