Sagan: My World: Peter Sagan

“If there are a hundred riders at the start of a race, there will be a hundred stories told at the end.  Mine is a story about wearing the UCI Rainbow Jersey three years in a row.  That’s something you can only hear from me.

“From 2015 to 2017, Peter Sagan achieved the seemingly impossible:  He won three UCI World Championships in a row, ensuring his entry into the history books as one of the greatest riders of all time.

“But Peter doesn’t just win.  He entertains.  Every moment in the saddle is an opportunity to express his personality, from no-hands wheelies on the slopes of Mont Ventoux to press-conference mischief with clamoring journalists.  Peter exudes a passion for the sport and a lovable desire to bring smiles to the faces of his fans.

“What motivates the man they call the Tourminator?  How does he approach a sprint?  What’s his take on the other guys in the peloton?  With unwavering honesty and characteristic humor, My World reveals the man who has lit up the world of professional cycling.”

I’ve been woefully behind in my reviewing…  This book was actually a February read!  Life is starting to calm down in some ways, but it’s picking up in others – we’ll see how that bodes for my reading/reviewing schedule.  For now:  The long-delayed review.

I received this book as a holiday gift from my husband’s aunt out in California.  She and I have a similar passion for professional road cycling (and I’ve been trying to make it out to visit her for the Tour of California for several years now…alas…it has never quite worked out).  I fell in love with the sport in 2010 when I moved to Charlotte, NC.  My uncle has loved it for years and is an avid amateur cyclist, himself.  He showed me my first stage of Le Tour de France and took me to my first spin class.  A couple of years ago I finally purchased my first real road bike and boy did I put it to good use.  I’ve yet to ride a race or with a group, but I love the thrill of it.  In order to truly appreciate the sport, you have to fully comprehend just how much cyclists put their bodies through.  My husband (lover of American football and hockey) will disagree with me, but I fully believe that cyclists are some of the world’s most elite athletes.  They constantly push their bodies past breaking points; they test physical, mental, technological, and emotional limits; they hurt themselves on agonizing race days and pick themselves up to do it all over again the next morning; they ride with broken limbs and shoulders and even backs.  This is not just a sport or a passion:  this is their life.  There’s no true lengthy off-season for them unless they decide to remove themselves from the sport entirely because there’s almost always a race somewhere around the world or some sort of different training or conditioning to be done.  This leads me to one of my favorite riders:  Peter Sagan of Slovakia.  He’s a three-time UCI World Champion.  He’s won stage after stage of Le Tour de France, taken home the Green Jersey for sprint points on several occasions, and won a significant number of other races and accolades.  He’s a jokester, one of the most entertaining (and exciting!) riders to watch in this sport, and he’s also one of the most decorated.  Not to mention he’s my age – it blows my mind that he’s accomplished all of this before the age of thirty.  When I heard Sagan was putting out a book detailing his unprecedented sequence of years in the revered Rainbow Jersey, I couldn’t wait to read it.  I was even more excited when I realized that there was no co-author.  When I began reading, I could hear Sagan’s sense of humor and passion – notes of which I’ve witnessed in various interviews and the like over the years.

I knew what I thought was a fair amount about Sagan from my years of watching him ride the Grand Tours.  What I didn’t know was just how he’d struggled in his early years and how much he and his brother (also a professional cyclist worth his own salt) owed to their dedicated father.  They grew up in a country with little to no support for a youth cycling circuit.  When faced against other European countries, theirs looked like a ragtag bunch.  Still, Sagan persevered and knew that he loved the sport and he could be damn good at it.

We get to witness a side of professional racing that isn’t often covered in media:  the behind the scenes with the politics of owning, forming, and running a team, coupled with attempting to decide just who would be the “leader.”  (For those of you who aren’t big cycling fans it may be strange to know that cycling is BOTH an individual and a team sport AT THE SAME TIME.  Teammates will sacrifice themselves to get their leader or sprinter into a good position for points or a stage win, but there are instances where the plans may change if someone else has a clearly better shot.  Sagan details all of this in a much better way than I ever could.  If you’re ever curious, I highly recommend watching a few stages of Le Tour this year – the commentary is usually excellent and very beginner-friendly.)  For the most part, teams are comprised of riders from all over the world.  There are language barriers, culture differences, and clashing egos.  The same goes for the support staff (the sometimes dozens of people who train, manage, transport, support, etc. the riders).  This can lead to some volatile situations and difficult decisions.  I found this insight to be particularly interesting coming from Sagan’s point of view.  He manages to delve deeply into this hidden side of the professional cycling world while still maintaining his happy persona.  Not once does he attack anyone and, in fact, he seems to like (or at least respect) just about every single person he discusses.  I was especially impressed with his views on other riders.  He remained very diplomatic and had something complimentary about every single rider he mentioned – even Cavendish.  Those of you who do watch the sport will know all about Sagan’s controversial expulsion from Le Tour de France a few years ago after a sprint collision between Sagan and another well-known sprinter from the Isle of Man, Cavendish.  I encourage you to look up the footage (it shouldn’t be too hard to find).  I had my own personal opinions on the incident, but I was extremely excited to read Sagan’s point of view.  His take was straightforward and, to my surprise, he wasn’t bitter toward Cavendish at all (I’ll leave my personal opinions about this out).  I found it extremely admirable – especially when the media and frustrated cycling teams/fans definitely made an enormous deal out of the situation (and they’re not wrong).

I feel like this review has strayed a bit from a review of a book and more into an account of my love for cycling and how impressed I am with Sagan.  What this really boils down to are the facts that I enjoyed reading this book, I loved all the insight and personal jokes, and I had a lot of fun seeing a more personal side of a very, very popular cyclist.  This book humanized him and made me even more impressed with the man and athlete that he is.  There really are a hundred stories in a hundred-man road race and Sagan makes it very clear that these are just his own experiences, his own time in the saddle.

Parts of the book do jump around a bit, though they do, for the most part, circle back fairly well.  It reads less like a structured nonfiction book and more like a stream of consciousness in which there’s somehow an underlying tie-in to it all in each chapter, you just may not see it yet.  I feel the included pictures were a great touch for a book written by a man with as much vivacity, humor, and tenacity as Sagan.

If you’re a lover of cycling, then this is a must-read.  You get some very interesting personal stories and glimpses into the ins and outs of the sport.  It’s fairly quick and easy to read because it rings of Sagan’s easygoing attitude.  It definitely doesn’t take itself too seriously (read the book and you’ll get the inside joke there).  If you know nothing about cycling or have some vague notions, then there are probably some terms or races you’ll have to research and the structure of the sport may be a bit beyond you; however, I have faith that Sagan’s personality will help draw you in and, perhaps, even make you a fan of cycling, too.  This book is clearly not written by a professional author, but I think that makes it pretty charming.

Stealing Buddah's Dinner: Bich Minh Nguyen

"Beginning with her family's harrowing migration out of Saigon in 1975, Stealing Buddah's Dinner follows Bich Nguyen as she comes of age in the pre-PC-era Midwest.  Filled with a rapacious hunger for American identity, Nguyen's desire to belong transmutes into a passion for American food--Pringles, Kit Kats, and Toll House cookies.  More exotic-seeming than her Buddhist grandmother's traditional specialities, the campy, preservative-filled 'delacacies' of mainstream American become an ingenious metaphor for her struggle to become a 'real' American.  Stealing Buddah's Dinner is also a portrayal of a diverse family:  Nguyen's hardworking, hard-partying father; pretty sister' wise and nurturing grandmother; and Rosa, her Latina stepmother.  And there is the mystery of Nguyen's birth mother, unveiled movingly over the course of the book.  Nostalgic and candid, Stealing Buddah's Dinner is a unique vision of the immigrant experience and a lyrical ode to how identity is often shaped by the things we long for."

This was another book that was assigned for my Story of Food course.  It's a thin little book that I was not especially enthusiastic about starting; but once I did, I couldn't put it down.  Perhaps it's because I come from a family where our immigrant roots are still very powerful (my mother is only first-generation American) or a personal struggle with food that I can relate to.  Either way, this book was extremely poignant and powerful.

Bich's, along with her older sister, father, grandmother, and uncles flee Vietnam at the end of the war -- managing to escape on one of the last boats available.  Once arriving in the United States, they are relegated to a refugee camp, where they can do nothing but hope, wait, and eat the unattractive food until they gain a sponsor and move to Grand Rapids, Michigan.  Her first taste of "outside" life in the U.S. is spent in an unsafe neighborhood, but it filled with American candy, treats, and snacks brought home by her father.  Their Vietnamese roots were kept alive (throughout the entire story) by her grandmother, Noi.  She would prepare classic Vietnamese dishes, meditate, and leave food for Buddah and their ancestors.  Noi, Bich, and Bich's older sister, Anh, would practice their daily routine of leaving food for Boddah on the altar where the girls would have to wait to enjoy the treat.  Only when Noi determined it was ready would she divide the fruit between her granddaughters and the girls would savor each morsel.  The simplicity of these days is changed when Bich's father meets a Latina woman named Rosa, marries her (when she is well along in her pregnancy with their son, Vinh), and she and her daughter from a previous marriage, Crissy, come to love with Bich's family in their already full little home.  The blend of another culture (Rosa's Latin heritage) seems to only further Bich's confusion, and makes her struggle to fit in with the Americans even more complex.

The little girl sees food as her "in" with the rest of the American children.  Throughout the book, she desperately tries to get her hands on anything and everything she sees her schoolmates eating.  She longs for the same candy and chips; the homemade cookies and lovingly prepared lunches carried to school in fancy tupperware containers; the beef stroganoff and stuffed peppers.  Bich's attempt to be "American" is attacked from the inside-out.  She cannot make her appearance over into the blond hair and blue eyes of her classmates, so her attempts to eat like they do are her way of trying to assimilate.  These attempts, however, are thwarted by Rosa's thriftiness (or cheapness, depending on one's perception) and the strength of her ties to her Vietnamese roots.  Bich is trapped between two worlds and this book provides a powerful account of what it is like to grow up as an immigrant in our country.

This story is beautifully written and, oftentimes, hauntingly sad.  It is the tale of a little girl who feels like an outsider -- an outcast -- because of where she comes from.  Bich Nguyen is an eloquent author with quite the childhood and I completely recommend this book to everyone either interested in the way food shapes culture, an autobiographical account of the childhood of Vietnamese immigrant, or learning acceptance for those who come from a different place than we do.

(Side note:  I'm a huge fan of Vietnamese food (and I'm really sad that I cannot get it anywhere near where I currently live...) and this book presents a beautiful account of what makes this cuisine so unique and wonderful.)