Alejandro Valverde - the 'Green Bullet' - was a symbol of Spanish sport. Supremely talented, hard-working beyond belief, he was ranked no.1 in the world four times before retiring in 2022. He is a champion of undeniable charisma and immense achievement - and yet also a convicted doping cheat. Appearing in a list of encoded names, Valverde was one of many at the heart of a doping ring for elite sportsmen. Discovered by Spanish police in the infamous Operacion Puerto, the revelations contained in the operation threatened to rip cycling apart.

A true cycling nut would be hard pushed to name all 36 races in just a ‘normal’ UCI World Tour. But there are so many more: 375 on the European Tour alone and many more on the America Tour (80), the Asia Tour (65), and the Africa Tour (45). It’s a year-long schedule, most of it unfamiliar. They may be amazing, they may be odd, but all have their place in the Sticky Bottle calendar. Big races and small ones find a place in Sticky Bottle as well as the relatively unknown. Here are personal and historical tales of cycling wonder and woe, plus a healthy smattering of the bizarre.

On Valentine's day 2004, Marco Pantani was found dead in a cheap hotel. It defied belief: Pantani, having won the rare double of the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France in 1998, was regarded as the only cyclist capable of challenging Lance Armstrong's dominance. Only later did it emerge that Pantani had been addicted to cocaine since 1999. Drawing on his personal encounters with Pantani, as well as exclusive access to his psychoanalysts, and interviews with his family and friends, Matt Rendell has produced the definitive account of an iconic sporting figure.

The Tour de France may provide the most obvious fame and glory, but it is cycling’s one-day tests that the professional riders really prize. Toughest, longest and dirtiest of all are the so-called ‘Monuments’, the five legendary races that are the sport’s equivalent of golf’s majors or the grand slams in tennis. Milan–Sanremo, the Tour of Flanders, Paris­–Roubaix, Liège–Bastogne–Liège and the Tour of Lombardy date back more than a century, and each of them is an anomaly in modern-day sport. Peter Cossins tells the history of these extraordinary races and the riders they have immortalised.

Werner Herzog was born in September 1942 in Munich, Germany, at a turning point in the Second World War. Soon Germany would be defeated and a new world would have to be made out the rubble and horrors of the war. Fleeing the Allied bombing raids, Herzog’s mother took him and his older brother to a remote, rustic part of Bavaria where he would spend much of his childhood hungry, without running water, in deep poverty. It was there, as the new postwar order was emerging, that one of the most visionary filmmakers of the next seven decades was formed.

Renowned cycling biomechanics pioneer Phil Cavell explores the growing trend of middle-aged and older cyclists seeking to achieve high-level performance. Using contributions from leading coaches, ex-professionals and pro-team doctors, he produces the ultimate manifesto for mature riders who want to stay healthy, avoid injury - and maximise their achievement levels.

For over a decade Alex Dowsett had been one of Britain’s best cyclists. He has ridden Grand Tours and Classics for elite teams including Sky and Movistar and broke the iconic World Hour Record – the ultimate time trial challenge. With humour, insight and brutal honesty, Alex tells of the challenges he has faced in his struggle to reach the top and his years as a pro-cyclist.

For years Geraint Thomas appeared blessed with extraordinary talent but jinxed at the greatest bike race in the world: twice an Olympic gold medallist on the track, Commonwealth champion, yet at the Tour de France a victim of crashes, bad luck and his willingness to sacrifice himself for his teammates. In the summer of 2018, that curse was blown away in spectacular fashion - from the cobbles of the north and the iconic mountain climbs of the Alps to the brutal slopes of the Pyrenees and, finally, the Champs-Elysees in Paris.

On January 28, 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were thirty emaciated men, barely alive, and they had an extraordinary tale to tell. They were survivors of His Majesty’s Ship the Wager, a British vessel that had left England in 1740 on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain. While the Wager had been chasing a Spanish treasure-filled galleon known as “the prize of all the oceans,” it had wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia.

When, during the Pyrenean stages of the 1998 Tour de France, a journalist asked Marco Pantani why he rode so fast in the mountains, the elfin Italian, unmistakeable in the bandanna and hooped ear-rings that played up to his 'Pirate' nickname, replied: 'To shorten my agony.' Drawing on the fervour for these men of the mountains, Climbers looks at what sets these athletes apart within the world of bike racing, about why we love and cherish them, how they make cycling beautiful and how they see themselves and the feats they achieve.

In 2018, amateur cyclist Jenny Graham left family and friends behind in Scotland to become the fastest woman to cycle around the world. Alone and unsupported, she crossed the finish line at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin four months later, smashing the female record by nearly three weeks. With infectious wit and honesty, Jenny brings listeners into her remarkable Round the World adventure, as she takes on four continents, 16 countries – and countless cups of coffee.

They called him God. For his grace on a bicycle, for his divine talent, for his heavenly looks. Frank Vandenbroucke had it all, and in the late '90s, he raced with dazzling speed and lived even faster. The Belgian won several of cycling's most illustrious races, including Liège-Bastogne-Liège, Paris-Nice and Ghent-Wevelgem. He was a mix of poise and panache who enthralled a generation of cycling fans. Off the bike, he only had one enemy - himself.

It started with a cash drop by an English spy in occupied Paris in 1944. Reserved for Resistance groups during the war, the money reached Émilien Amaury, an advertising executive, who was tasked to help France return to a free press once liberated. He soon launched a newspaper empire that—unbeknown to him—would own the rights to run what would become one of the greatest sporting events in history.

Greg LeMond stunned the sporting world by becoming the first American to win the Tour de France in 1986, defeating French cycling legend Bernard Hinault. Nine months later, LeMond lay in a hospital bed, his career as a bicycle racer seemingly over. And yet, barely two years after this crisis, LeMond mounted a comeback. In 1989, he once again won the Tour - by a narrow margin of eight seconds. It remains the closest Tour de France in history. The Comeback chronicles the life of this great American athlete, from his roots in Nevada and California to the heights of global fame.

Sharp, resourceful and a permanent outsider; for nearly 20 years Steve Cummings determinedly blazed his own winning trail in international cycling. A maverick who defied the dominant teams, to record a sequence of gloriously improbable victories, he has lived and raced with legends of the sport—Cavendish, Wiggins, Froome, Thomas and others—about whom he has strong views and untold stories.