Pippa York’s Cycling Road Trip

For three editions of the Tour de France, the Irish sports journalist David Walsh and the Scottish former professional cyclist Pippa York shared a car — an unusually unlikely travel pair to cover the world’s greatest cycling race. Walsh had once played a decisive role in exposing Lance Armstrong’s downfall through his reporting. York, who had previously competed under the name Robert Millar, was known in the press room for her sharp mind as well as her fearlessness.

For twelve weeks the two rode together, talked, reminisced, and sometimes butted heads. From this has emerged a book that defies easy genre boundaries: “The Escape — The Tour, the Cyclist, and Me” is part travelogue, part autobiography — but above all the story of an athlete whose life is inextricably tied to the Tour de France. The English original had already won the prestigious William Hill Sports Book Award, and the book is now available in German as well.

A Life Between Cycling, Transition, and Public Life

The narrative unfolds through the conversations Walsh and York had on the road — in the car, at restaurant tables. Momentary snapshots of their journey alternate with looks at the current racing action, revisiting places that shaped York, and detailed memories of her earlier career.

York spares nothing: her childhood in Glasgow’s working-class milieu, an early sense of gender dysphoria, the beginnings as a cycling racer, the physical and psychological demands of professional sport. It traces the highs and lows of an extraordinary career, injuries, toughness — and the sometimes downright absurd rituals of the cycling world.

Philippa York was born in 1958 in Glasgow and ranked among the world’s elite in the 1980s and early 1990s. Her greatest achievement: wearing the mountains classification jersey and finishing fourth overall in the Tour de France in 1984. She ended her active career in 1995; five years later she began gender transition. For more than twenty years she has lived under her current name. The book also recounts how, after the transition, she was followed by the tabloid press — and how she later returned to the public eye with confidence as a cycling commentator for, among others, Cyclingnews and Rouleur magazine.

David Walsh, the chief sports editor of the Sunday Times, is one of the most recognizable sports journalists of our time. His reporting helped expose doping practices in cycling. His earlier books include L.A. Confidentiel and Seven Deadly Sins: My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong, which was adapted in 2015 into the film The Program.