23 Days in July – inside Lance Armstrong's Record-Breaking Victory in the Tour de France

John Wilcockson. John Murray 2005. 312 pages paperback, £7.99. ISBN 0 7195 6717 3.

By the time you read this Lance Armstrong will have retired from bike racing. The seven times Tour winner is arguably the greatest Tour de France rider.

In this compelling book, John Wilcockson chronicles the 2004 event as ‘Big Tex' attempted to win the race for a record-breaking sixth time. Wilcockson stands apart from other cycling writers. A shrewd observer, he writes crisply and authoritatively with the experience of reporting on the Tour for the thirty-sixth time in 2004, and explains pro cycling unpatronisingly to the uninitiated while satisfying the most exacting devotee.

The enigmatic Armstrong is labelled early on: he is fuelled by anger and pulled this way and that in a complicated lifestyle that many might envy but few could handle. But he copes: ‘Compartmentalising' things according to Chris Carmichael, his coach.

Sadly, doping has become synonymous with pro cycling. Wilcockson believes forthrightly that Armstrong is ‘clean'. Post-cancer, he lost ten kilos in body weight and presented a new, sinewy, climber's body shape, and increased his power to weight ratio. There is nothing new here: these arguments have been rehearsed elsewhere, but coming from Wilcockson's pen they hold a fresh resonance. The controversial book LA Confidentiel – Les secrets de Lance Armstrong by Pierre Ballester and David Walsh (see review in TVL Autumn 2004), an attempt to prove the link between Lance and doping is given another airing. It will convince sceptics, leave some tantalisingly unsure, whilst others will see the book as a mere canard.

Jean-Marie Leblanc says that the race can be won without dope, and he knows what he's talking about: he finished it himself twice. And in the modern, shorter Tour there is no need to dope. However, Leblanc avoids mentioning the temptation fuelled by the exorbitant salaries commanded by successful racers. The pressure brought by team sponsors that underwrite the wages bills seems to have escaped him.

On a not entirely divergent tack, Wilkinson rationalises why the speed is so high since the sixties, seventies or even the eighties. Lighter bikes, better roads, more teams, greater incentives, improved training methods and advances in sports medicine are contributory factors (and drugs have already been mentioned, of course). The dichotomy of Richard Virenque, the French housewives' favourite whilst simultaneously being the most blatant drugs cheat, is acknowledged but not explained.

Anecdotes of the Tour abound. The Café de la Place in the tiny village of Junhac set beside a small square with an artistic fountain, featured in 1959. On a boiling hot day Charly Gaul stopped and dipped his head in and out of the water whilst a helper filled his bidons. He hated hot weather. The man who runs the little bar-tabac across the street has a framed display of the Luxembourg champion's discomfort and remembers the incident vividly because he pushed Gaul after he had remounted.

Lance Armstrong alone did not colour the 2004 Tour. Vignettes of his main rivals, Ullrich, Basso and Hamilton are juxtaposed with the race as it unfolds. Former team-mate Tyler Hamilton led the Swiss Phonak squad until his retirement following a crash. Fit, well-prepared, an acknowledged rival to Armstrong, his homely domesticity conceals an understated determination.

Hamilton retired on the hardest day of the Tour, Stage 15, Lannemezon to Plateau De Beille – 16000 feet of total climbing and more than 127 miles of racing. The Blue Train assumed its position at the head of the peloton with six riders pacing Armstrong. Race-followers found their consistent dominance remarkable. However, a week before the Tour the US Postal Team had a training camp where they were drilled for this work and rode part of the day's stage.

From the enervating heat of the Midi to the atmospheric description of the l'Alpe d'Huez time trial Wilcockson's rich text captures the soul of the Tour. It is still a male bastion if, latterly, the presence of women as part of the surroundings has become more evident and acceptable. Desgrange would not have approved, yet Colette wrote about it as long ago as 1912. Its Americanisation is perhaps the most noticeable change in recent years. The influence of Armstrong is clear. He needs the Tour for his high profile and it is a mutually satisfactory arrangement. Everyone has heard of Lance and identifies him with the Tour de France. To read this remarkable account, to digest the testimonials of support for Armstrong, is to realise how exceptional he is as an athlete. With a unique clutch of wins he has entered the Tour's legend but, more than that, he has become a monument, not to cycling alone but to the triumph of will over apparently impossible adversity. There will be much more written about Lance Armstrong in the future. However, little will match this book – it's a gem.

Gordon Daniels