1 hr 10 min

EPISODE 351: Andy McGrath — God is Dead The Spokesmen Cycling Roundtable Podcast

    • Wilderness

15th April 2024

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 351: Andy McGrath — God is Dead

SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUEST: Andy McGrath


LINKS:

https://www.the-spokesmen.com/

https://www.ternbicycles.com

https://twitter.com/CarltonReid

https://twitter.com/Andymcgra

https://andydoesart.substack.com

https://www.amazon.co.uk/God-Dead-Vandenbroucke-Cyclings-Wasted/dp/0552176044/

TRANSCRIPT

Carlton Reid 0:12
Welcome to Episode 351 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Monday, April 15 2024.

David Bernstein 0:28
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e-bikes for every type of rider. Whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com. That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.

Carlton Reid 1:04
I’m Carlton Reid. And today’s show is the first of two episodes with bike book authors. Later this week, I’ll share the chat I had with potholes and pavement author Laura Laker a book so fresh, it’s not even out yet. But today, I talk with William Hill award winning author Andy McGrath about his 2022 book, God is dead biography of Frank Vandenbrouke the wunderkind who died a mysterious death in a grungy African hotel room.

Liège–Bastogne–Liège has been staged since 1892, the oldest of cycling’s five monument races, and this year’s race will be staged at the end of the month, Sunday the 21st to be exact. Now, Andy, it’s 25 years since a certain famous victory of that particular race. So tell us about that.

Andy McGrath 2:10
This was the edition of Liège–Bastogne–Liège where the great Belgian cycling hope Frank Vandenbrouke seemed to be fulfilling his immense potential. And he did it in his own unique way. He told anyone that would listen in the days for the race, you know, teammates, DS’s, rivals and other races and media, where he was going to attack to win the race to make it stick, a bit like Muhammad Ali used to do before his heavyweight fight. And he’d went out for a 20 minute puto, a few days before the age best on the age. And it’s covered his teammate saw him come back to the hotel, you know, barely a blink of an eye later. And he told him, that’s all all I need, I feel good. I’m going to win lift some of the age. And he was in a state of grace that day, he attacked on by ODU, which sounds different course back then. It finished in an industrial suburb over the age. And the Cordilla. Redo was about oh, at 90k from the finish. And he, he he wrote up in the big room, he tacked up in the big green, which is I could barely walk up it when I was researching the book, which is a astonishing and slightly sinister thing when you really get into that era of cycling. And he was already clearly the best, you know, he he accelerated pass the defending champion makayley Bartley like it was nothing and then he just let the rest catch him up, basically. And he did attack, you know, if we’re going to split hairs slightly later than he said he would you know, or maybe earlier actually, I think it was early. And he said he would you know, a few 100 metres earlier. Because

Carlton Reid 3:55
Because that’s in your book, isn’t it? Yeah. It’s a very detailed book and you you’re knocking on doors, and you give the exact door that he actually did attack on and not the one that you said he’s going to attack on?

Andy McGrath 4:06
Yeah, the thing is, I actually knocked on the door of the house number he said he would attack which was 256. You know, hoping for some kind of journalistic intrigue and it was a little bit disappointing that I think people that answered the door were very nice, but it was someone loo

15th April 2024

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 351: Andy McGrath — God is Dead

SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUEST: Andy McGrath


LINKS:

https://www.the-spokesmen.com/

https://www.ternbicycles.com

https://twitter.com/CarltonReid

https://twitter.com/Andymcgra

https://andydoesart.substack.com

https://www.amazon.co.uk/God-Dead-Vandenbroucke-Cyclings-Wasted/dp/0552176044/

TRANSCRIPT

Carlton Reid 0:12
Welcome to Episode 351 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Monday, April 15 2024.

David Bernstein 0:28
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e-bikes for every type of rider. Whether you’re commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com. That’s t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.

Carlton Reid 1:04
I’m Carlton Reid. And today’s show is the first of two episodes with bike book authors. Later this week, I’ll share the chat I had with potholes and pavement author Laura Laker a book so fresh, it’s not even out yet. But today, I talk with William Hill award winning author Andy McGrath about his 2022 book, God is dead biography of Frank Vandenbrouke the wunderkind who died a mysterious death in a grungy African hotel room.

Liège–Bastogne–Liège has been staged since 1892, the oldest of cycling’s five monument races, and this year’s race will be staged at the end of the month, Sunday the 21st to be exact. Now, Andy, it’s 25 years since a certain famous victory of that particular race. So tell us about that.

Andy McGrath 2:10
This was the edition of Liège–Bastogne–Liège where the great Belgian cycling hope Frank Vandenbrouke seemed to be fulfilling his immense potential. And he did it in his own unique way. He told anyone that would listen in the days for the race, you know, teammates, DS’s, rivals and other races and media, where he was going to attack to win the race to make it stick, a bit like Muhammad Ali used to do before his heavyweight fight. And he’d went out for a 20 minute puto, a few days before the age best on the age. And it’s covered his teammate saw him come back to the hotel, you know, barely a blink of an eye later. And he told him, that’s all all I need, I feel good. I’m going to win lift some of the age. And he was in a state of grace that day, he attacked on by ODU, which sounds different course back then. It finished in an industrial suburb over the age. And the Cordilla. Redo was about oh, at 90k from the finish. And he, he he wrote up in the big room, he tacked up in the big green, which is I could barely walk up it when I was researching the book, which is a astonishing and slightly sinister thing when you really get into that era of cycling. And he was already clearly the best, you know, he he accelerated pass the defending champion makayley Bartley like it was nothing and then he just let the rest catch him up, basically. And he did attack, you know, if we’re going to split hairs slightly later than he said he would you know, or maybe earlier actually, I think it was early. And he said he would you know, a few 100 metres earlier. Because

Carlton Reid 3:55
Because that’s in your book, isn’t it? Yeah. It’s a very detailed book and you you’re knocking on doors, and you give the exact door that he actually did attack on and not the one that you said he’s going to attack on?

Andy McGrath 4:06
Yeah, the thing is, I actually knocked on the door of the house number he said he would attack which was 256. You know, hoping for some kind of journalistic intrigue and it was a little bit disappointing that I think people that answered the door were very nice, but it was someone loo

1 hr 10 min