Les Woodland has 4 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 3 narrators. The most-rated is Cycling's World Championships.
Cycling's 50 Craziest Stories
Summary
Professional cycling has been around for more than 100 years, more than enough time for nearly anything imaginable to have happened. Whether it's the Tour de France racer who thought the worst thing that could happen to him was being forced to wear the Yellow Jersey, or the communist team director who insisted, on a whim, that a rider have a toe amputated or the fit of jealousy that started the Giro d'Italia, the sport has an endless supply of examples of human folly. Les Woodland has the perfect knack for telling these improbable, silly, crazy and absurd stories.
©2010 Les Woodland (P)2013 Les Woodland
Tour of Flanders
Summary
The Tour of Flanders is Belgium's most brutal day in the saddle. The bike-crazed Flemish don't just send riders over cobblestone roads. Nor are they content to break the racers' legs with nearly 20 steep hills. No, the worst of all cycling worlds meet in Flanders with narrow, vertical roads paved with slippery, dangerous cobbles. The hills are so steep they are called "muurs", or walls, and they come one after another, for hours, until the riders are shattered with exhaustion. The Tour of Flanders is so fiendishly difficult that the man who wins it earns everlasting fame. Les Woodland tells the inside story of how the Flandrians became the world's most formidable racers, and of the dream of one writer to create a signature race, one that would showcase the Flemish virtues of toughness, endurance and determination. That dream became the Tour of Flanders, one of cycling's monuments. Come join Les for a fascinating ride in the cobbled hills of Flanders.
©2014 Les Woodland (P)2014 Les Woodland
Paris-Roubaix, The Inside Story
Summary
The Paris-Roubaix bicycle race, nicknamed "The Hell of the North," is famous for sending riders over brutal cobblestone roads. Only the strong, brave and lucky survive the hours of bone-shaking racing without suffering some mishap or catastrophe. It is so difficult no one wins it by accident, and winning Paris-Roubaix automatically puts a rider among the immortals of the sport. How did that come to be? At one time roads everywhere were paved with cobbles. Why did Paris-Roubaix emerge to be such a special race? Les Woodland tells the inside story of how one of cycling's classics grew from several 19th century businessmen's plan to bring cycling to the mill town of Roubaix. It wasn't a sure thing, and several times it seemed the race might die. It's a fascinating tale, so fasten your seat belts, Les is going to take you on a bumpy ride.
©2013 Les Woodland (P)2013 Les Woodland
Cycling's World Championships
Summary
Champion of the world! For a year the World Cycling Champion gets to wear a special white jersey with rainbow stripes. And then, for the rest of his career, he can wear a jersey with rainbow cuffs and collar. Unlike the Tour de France's Yellow Jersey, which can only be worn while leading the race, the rainbow is earned for life. For more than a century, organized cycling has been conferring that extraordinary and wonderful title, starting with the first championships held in Chicago in 1893. But it wasn't until 1927 that there was a professional world road championship race, won on the famous Nürburgring car circuit in Germany by the great Alfredo Binda. The story of the world championships is a fascinating one, and besides the well-known road and track competitions, there are many events that even the most dedicated racing fans might not know about, such as Cycle Speedway, Bicycle Polo, and of course the World Unicycle Championships. Join Les Woodland as he tells the whole, fun, and engrossing story of the bravery as well as the treachery and trickery in the World Championships, and the athletes who have been able wear the coveted colors of the rainbow. Author Les Woodland has been cycling for 50 years and has been writing about cycling since 1965, when he wrote his first reports for the British publication Cycling. Since then he has been a prolific contributor to newspapers, magazines and radio stations in the UK and Belgium. Mr. Woodland, who currently lives in France, speaks several of the languages of cycling: English, Dutch, and French.
©2017 Les Woodland (P)2017 Les Woodland