Chased by Pandas: My life in the mysterious world of cycling

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He enjoyed a glass of wine when he wanted to and didn’t obsess over every grain of rice on his plate. 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. It’s hard to tell if this was just a communication blunder that got out of hand, each side not listening to the other… or worse, management frustrated with him.

Though Dan also had successful rides in grand tour races and my feeling is he might have had even more success with greater support within his team(s)! Known, thanks to his racing style and attitude, for being one of road cycling's last romantics, Dan has always shied away from revealing too much about himself and his story.

When reading such books about the life of a bike racer covering the key points and the stories of race successes, though for me the greater interest is within storyline of the detailed day to day of what went on within a team, the camaraderie with other riders, the management and organisation, the positive aspects of how well the team prepares in it’s approach to an an important race. Now, having retired at the end of the 2021 season aged 35 and no longer bound by the constraints of the racing circuit, Dan feels the time is right to tell his story in the same forthright and honest manner that he rode his bike. Chased by Pandas - My Life in the Mysterious World of Cycling, by Dan Martin (with Pierre Carrey) is published in the UK by Quercus. At the Auberge Basque the menu was magnificent, from the reduction of asparagus from the garden served as a starter (accompanied by a mousseline of asparagus, dried skipjack tuna and marjoram) to the savoury version of a Basque cake, with ewe’s milk cheese replacing the cream.

Dan also discusses every aspect of the professional cyclist's life - food, discipline, money, dreams, friendship and betrayal.Very rarely in sports do regular mortals who are undoubtedly athletic get to race against these hyper talented youngsters (and get our hats handed to us! Martin may well be a 60-something kilo whippet, but he loves his food, and he loves talking about food.

The opening chapter is about the fear of crashing and reprises Martin’s wipe-out on the final bend of Liège-Bastogne-Liège, he’d given his rivals the slip and was just about to overhaul Giampaulo Caruso only to slide out in sight of the finish line.By that I mean a rider who rides his own race, for fun, as well as for winning, for the pleasure of racing ! He was the guy launching reckless attacks that didn’t amount to a whole hill of beans but looked good. 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”.