A Peiper's Tale

This book is no ordinary sporting biography, for Allan Pieper has written A Peiper’s Tale straight from the heart. His description of his difficult early years, his cycling career and his life when his career finished is remarkably and refreshingly candid.

Peiper was just 16 years old when he took the extraordinary step of leaving his shattered family in Australia and moving to Belgium to become a professional cyclist. In Europe he fought prejudice and deceit, made friends and won races on the way to riding the Tour de France and becoming one of the most respected cyclists of the 1980s. Part of the cycling culture Peiper found revolved around drug-taking, and these issues are discussed with honesty and even an optimism for the future.

Each chapter revolves around one of the many varied and colourful characters he met – men like Jan ''the Papers'', who gave him his first accommodation in a run-down Ghent boarding house; Peter Post who ruled the Panasonic team with a rod of iron; Eddy Planckaert, the youngest of the Flandrian cycling dynasty; Robert Millar, Britain’s most successful ever stage racer; Sean Yates; Robbie McEwen; Cadel Evans; and the legendary fellow-Aussie, Phil Anderson; and many others.
It’s all here – cycling from the saddle and now from the team-car, and all the trials and tribulations in between. Peiper talks freely about every aspect of his life, and every aspect of professional cycling, making this one of the better sporting biographies out there.