Field of Fire: The Tour de France of '87 and the Rise and Fall of ANC-Halfords Book

In 1987, a British-based team competed in the Tour de France for the first time in almost two decades. The team, the cream of the UK's road racers, under the banner of ANC-Halfords, left Britain with high hopes and reasonable expectations, but the romance of the world's greatest bike race turned into a nightmare. The ANC squad were decimated by the punishing pace, the manager walked out during one of the Alpine stages, five of the nine riders and some of the staff never made it to Paris and most of the personnel went unpaid. ANC were the definitive innocents abroad and it became one of the great sporting misadventures of all time. If that wasn't bad enough for ANC, on the Tour's first day in Berlin the riders and staff discovered that a tabloid journalist would be travelling with them for the full three weeks. Jeff Connor's account of the Tour, Wide-Eyed and Legless, became a classic and was later voted number one in Cycle Sport's list of the best cycling books of all time. Now, 25 years on, Connor revisits the scene of the crime, tracks down the 1987 participants and discovers exactly how their fortunes were changed, some irrevocably, on the 'field of fire'. Drawing on interviews with those involved in the ANC team and flashbacks to 1987, Field of Fire tells a moving tale of sporting disillusionment, heartbreak, anger - and humour.Read More