Pedal Pusher

Zoo Roxy
6-30 August

The story of the Tour de France over the past 15 years is one of the great sporting scandals. Here, it’s brilliantly explored by a company of four actors who use a variety of techniques to try and explain why a champion cyclist ended up dead, and another is still fighting to clear his name.

The action begins with the death of Marco Pantani from a cocaine overdose in 2004. A brilliant climber and Tour de France winner, his career was blighted by drug allegations, which played a major part in the discrediting of the sport.

He, along with Lance Armstrong and Jan Ullrich, are the major players in the action, which takes the form of stylistic reconstructions of the pivotal races (with chairs used as bicycles) and key press conferences. Armstrong’s announcement of his cancer diagnoses in 1996 is particularly moving.

This impressive offering from Theatre Delicatessen proves a fitting tribute to one of the world’s most gruelling and controversial sports. And, while it doesn’t shy away from the allegations that continue to taint Armstrong, it offers the possibility that, just maybe, he was the greatest champion of them all.