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Bloomsbury presents The Monuments 2nd edition by Peter Cossins read by Nathaniel Priestley

An aweinspiring history of the five most legendary classic races in world cycling

The Tour de France may provide the most obvious fame and glory but it is cyclings oneday tests that the professional riders really prize Toughest longest and dirtiest of all are the socalled Monuments the five legendary races that are the sports equivalent of golfs majors or the grand slams in tennis MilanSanremo the Tour of Flanders ParisRoubaix LigeBastogneLige and the Tour of Lombardy date back more than a century and each of them is an anomaly in modernday sport the cycling equivalent of the Monaco Grand Prix

Time has changed them to a degree but they remain as brutally testing as they ever have been They provide the sports outstanding oneday performers with a chance to measure themselves against each other and their predecessors in the most challenging tests in world cycling From the boneshattering bowlerhat cobbles of the ParisRoubaix to the insanely steep hellingen in the Tour of Flanders each race is as unique as the riders who push themselves through extreme exhaustion to win them and enter their epic history

Over the course of a century only Rik Van Looy Eddy Merckx and Roger De Vlaeminck have won all five races Yet victory in a single edition of a Monument guarantees a rider lasting fame For some that one victory has even more cachet than success in a grand tour Each of the Monuments has a fascinating history featuring tales of the finest and largest characters in the sport In this updated edition of The Monuments Peter Cossins tells the tumultuous history of these extraordinary races and the riders they have immortalised