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The Escape

The Tour, the Cyclist and Me

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The Escape

Written by: David Walsh, Pippa York
Narrated by: Annie Wallace, Gerry O’Brien, Stephanie Racine, David Rintoul, Joe Eyre
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Winner of the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award 2025

A Sunday Times Best Book of 2025

A Guardian Best Sports Book 2025

A unique memoir from British cycling’s most fascinating competitor.

In the summer of 2020, sportswriter David Walsh invited Pippa York began a series of journeys following the Tour de France. A nostalgic voyage through the world’s most competitive bike race – for Walsh it was the chance to get to know the Tour’s most enigmatic riders. For York, it was a chance to revisit the race she had ridden eleven times as Robert Millar.

This book is the result – a unique and captivating sporting odyssey. The Escape blends the details of Pippa and David’s journeys with the iconic landmarks of the Tour de France to explore her early years in working-class Glasgow, her entry into competitive cycling, the psychological demands of the sport, and how they shaped her personality. It recounts her career highs and lows, life after racing, and her transition in her 40s.

Touching on doping, gender in sport, and the everyday magic of the Tour, The Escape is an unforgettable travelogue and a candid, one-of-a-kind memoir from one of cycling’s most enigmatic competitors.

©2025 Pippa York, David Walsh (P)2025 HarperCollins Publishers Biographies & Memoirs Cycling Essays & Commentary Sports
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Critic Reviews

'The Escape is a book about one of Britain’s greatest cyclists and their hidden struggle — how they tried to run away from their dysphoria but wouldn’t find peace until it was dealt with. It is about one of cycling’s greatest journalists and his love for the race, despite the Armstrong years. It is also about the greatest sporting spectacle on earth, the Tour de France, and there are few better people to explore it with than with York and Walsh, in what is a tremendously engaging read'. – The Times
‘[The Escape] is a freewheeling, fascinating read that defies genre: part travelogue and part memoir, it dances between present and past, sporting observation and self-reflection, drugs that help you cheat and drugs that help you live. And for all the pain and anguish that gets unlocked here, this is a book without a bitter or hateful bone in its body.’ – Jonathan Liew, Guardian’s Best Sports Books of 2025
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