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

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Martin’s freewheeling strategy to biking, it prolonged to the dinner desk, the place he rejected biking’s fantasy of monk-like existence. He loved a glass of wine when he needed to and didn’t obsess over each grain of rice on his plate. Chased by Pandas is pleasantly uncommon in the way in which it talks about meals. Martin could be a 60-something kilo whippet, however he loves his meals, and he loves speaking about meals. Right here he’s on a personal coaching camp within the French Basque Nation forward of the 2018 Tour, simply him and his spouse, Jess: Ah, the innocence of youth, when you actually believed the things you read in cycling books. Hold onto it as long as you can, folk, you’ll miss it when it’s gone. You see pictures of me when I was a first-year pro in 2008, 22 years old and looking like I’m 15. In modern cycling I might never have made it to where I did – because I wouldn’t have been allowed the time to develop. How many talented riders are we going to lose now?” Many riders have their superstitions, such as putting their right shoe on first and so on. Martin seems to be on a higher level, there are later examples of him having premonitions of victory, sending messages to his family to say “I’m going to win today”. On a recon ride in the Alps ahead of the Giro he explores the Sega di Ala climb and a gets a “very strong premonition”. Sure enough Martin won. 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 which has long since disappeared.

According to Chased by Pandas, Martin never saw doping, he was never offered drugs. He was even reluctant to take medicines for his allergies – which used to ruin his form in Spring – for fear of the side effects. As for dealing with pain, “I would take a paracetamol to help mask the fatigue and dull ache that three weeks of brutal racing inflicts on your body, but I then found out it was more of a placebo. I preferred to be in touch with my body’s messaging, to feel where my limit was, so that I could more accurately balance on the tightrope that is the upper regions of performance.” But, personally, I didn’t really see any difference in the testing process throughout my career. From 2011 to 2021 it didn’t really change. I presume that testing has got more advanced but it’s hard to know if it’s working. He received Liège, he received Lombardia, he received phases in all three Grand Excursions. But it surely’s for being chased by a fan in a panda-suit that Dan Martin is most remembered. It’s a merciless and heartless world we stay in.

Summary

Dan Martin: ‘I retired still loving riding my bike, and loving racing, and that was a very fortunate position.’ Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian 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 was seemingly born’ – The Times The book isn’t a straight chronology of Dan Martin’s cycling career. Instead each chapter explores a particular fear, whether crashing, injury or the burden of leadership and through this the arc of Dan Martin’s cycling career is covered. Now the headings mention phobias but it’s more a theme to explore rather than a catalogue of negatives.

DM: No, a long mountain stage. I didn’t know what Tramadol was before that race but again, it’s the cultural thing, “Try this.” I didn’t feel happy doing it. This is Dan Martin’s long-awaited autobiography, full of ‘the warmth, sharp insights and vivid colour of his 14-year career’ (Guardian) Along the way there are oddities, Martin’s been one of a handful to reject traditional post-race massages – they are a ritual, can be relaxing but there’s little evidence to suggest performance gains. The biggest oddity is The Panda. Who was it that chased him up the climb in Ans, and why the ursine costume? Perhaps the Panda is wondering how Dan Martin got there and what he’s done since, and that’s where this book comes in. It sounds like he has sympathy for young cyclists today. “My sympathy lies with the guys who have to make more sacrifices than I ever did just to be in the peloton. Just to be on the start line in the Tour you have to do altitude training camps, honed nutrition, you need to be super, super, skinny. You have to be doing what Team Sky did. But I got top 10 in the Tour de France, training out of my front door every day. Today that’s not possible.Curiously, while Chased by Pandas paints Martin’s story in pretty pastels, Carrey’s 2017 article was a more nuanced study in light and shadow. It was explicit in the way it talked about doping, that was an important part of the article, it justified why Carrey saw Martin as a hero, he was a guy who chose to reject doping, with Carrey linking that stance to the careers of Romain Bardet and Thibaut Pinot. I was surprised when the owner of the Auberge Basque, the hotel where we were staying, had offered us a place for dinner, but had gratefully accepted; it would save us the trouble of finding another restaurant in town, a town that we soon realised was as tiny as it was pretty. On arrival we discovered that there was another good reason for making a reservation: the hotel’s restaurant was celebrated for its gastronomic qualities, which were underlined by a Michelin star. That Tour of 2003, it’s one of many swipe-left Excursions, received by Lance Armstrong and greatest remembered at this time for Jésus Manzano leaving it in an ambulance, electrodes hooked up to his chest. The fallout from that incident would forged an extended shadow over the early years of Martin’s profession, the VC la Pomme days and the early days of Garmin. But it surely doesn’t forged a shadow over Chased by Pandas. The “sulphurous Excursions de France (1999-2005)” and the “EPO decade” are extra a small stain on the carpet than excrement smeared on the partitions of the game. Operación Puerto itself is talked about as soon as, in passing, Martin noting that the person whose shadow he appeared to turn out to be, Alejandro Valverde, had been “implicated within the Operation Puerto doping affair”. Away from such murky terrain, Martin sounds blissfully happy with his family in Andorra where he is working in a new investment business and about to publish his first book. the most rational hypothesis was that there was an oily residue on the road at that point and the dampness in the air had made it slippery. The irrational hypothesis was that it was down to fate. This explanation was both comforting and unsatisfactory, but I liked it. It was written that I would win in 2013 and lose in 2014…