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

Dan Martin's autobiography, [Chased by Pandas], is a revealing and honest account of his 14-year career in road cycling. The book reflects Martin's generous and outspoken spirit, resilience to pain, crashes, bad luck, and acceptance of destiny. It discusses every aspect of the professional cyclist's life, including food, discipline, money, dreams, friendship, and betrayal. Written with his long-time friend and best-selling author Pierre Carrey, the book celebrates a true cyclist's career and appeals to anyone who has embraced the weekend ride while dreaming of the mountains.

Format: Hardback
Length: 336 pages
Publication date: 13 October 2022
Publisher: Quercus Publishing

This is Dan Martin's long-awaited autobiography, full of the warmth, sharp insights, and vivid color of his 14-year career. Guardian. 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. 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.

This book reflects Dan's generous and outspoken spirit, his resilience to pain, crashes, bad luck, and, finally, his acceptance of destiny. Each chapter's title has a sub-title based on a typical cyclist's fear: the fear of losing a race, the fear of retiring from the sport, the fear of mountains or downhills, the fear of doping, and, ultimately, the fear of death. Dan also discusses every aspect of the professional cyclist's life: food, discipline, money, dreams, friendship, and betrayal. Dan is unashamed when it comes to exposing these dark feelings, his weaknesses, and how he tried to deal with them, his attitude exemplifying Mark Twain's quote: Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.

Written with his long-time friend and best-selling author Pierre Carrey, this is the story of a rider who never sought to conform to modern cycling's norms and someone who, in many ways, embodies an age in cycling that has long since disappeared.

This is the celebration of a true cyclist's career, which will appeal to anyone who has embraced the weekend ride while dreaming of the mountains.

[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 threw himself with all his heart.

Weight: 574g
Dimension: 240 x 160 x 28 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781529427585