Cycling's Strangest Tales : Extraordinary but true stories

Welcome to the weird, wonderful and two-wheeled world of cycling.

Though this isn't the usual side of professional cycling the newspapers report.

This is the real world of cycling, the strange and twisted nooks and crannies of the sport's bizarre history!Cycling is nearly two hundred years old.

The velocipede invented by Baron Karl von Drais in 1817 started the craze for the two-wheeled machine that has had a renaissance few would have predicted.

During those decades, bicycles have thrown up more than their fair share of extraordinary and bizarre stories.

Iain Spragg has trawled the bicycle history books to give you the most fascinating collection of stories, from the first bicycle trip across the globe (an Englishman on a penny farthing in 1886, of course), the 1904 Tour de France winner who was disqualified when it emerged he had caught the train, the 1937 Japanese invasion of China spearheaded by 50,000 bicycle-mounted troops, and the Japanese enthusiast who stayed stationary on a bike for 5 and a half hours in 1965.

With stories from amateur and professional cycling, this is a thoroughly entertaining collection of tales for any two-wheeled enthusiast.