The Escape

The Tour, the Cyclist and Me

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The Escape

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.

David WalshPippa YorkAnnie WallaceGerry O’BrienStephanie RacineDavid RintoulJoe EyreMudlark

Biographies & Memoirs

Cycling

Sports

Sports Writing

Biographies & Memoirs Cycling Sports Sports Writing

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

Most relevant

A really open and honest inside view into both pro cycling and what it's like to change gender. This book addresses many of the typical questions and misunderstandings of the experience of transgender people and it's laid out in a straight forward way. Equally engaging is how that life merged/clashed with a great sporting career.
Only negative is the Audio narration. The voice used for Pippa didn't feel like it was a good fit to the real person. Also there were few names (particularly of riders) that didn't get brutally mispronounced.