Overview

Dutch sportswriter, Nando Boers, and Pedro Horrillo, a Spanish cyclist riding for the Dutch Rabobank team, conceived the idea at the end of 2008 to correspond regularly via email throughout the coming season. They would exchange thoughts about the racing, the results and events in the cycling world. The correspondence, starting early in 2009 begins in that fashion - two friends swapping stories and experiences. Then in May everything changes, utterly: Horrillo crashes, horrifically, in the Giro d'Italia, tumbling 80 metres down a cliff face. Miraculously, after days in a coma, he survives but he will never race again. The correspondence is eventually resumed, and continues in fits and start over the next three years. Boers, infinitely patient and encouraging, is able to cope with long periods of silence from his friend. He understands the psychological healing will take longer than the physical. Then in 2012, Horrillo is able to confront his demons, returning to the scene of his crash where 'my first life ended and my second life began' and describing it in one beautiful, final letter. 'Amigo, here is the story of my pilgrimage to Italy.When you've read this, hopefully you'll understand that I feel free and relieved. ' The book includes 12 pages of black and white photographs by Timm Kolln.

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9781874739715

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Amigo closes with two quite lengthy letters from Horrillo, written in late 2012, in which he confronts the demons of his crash and these, along with some of the early correspondence, are the real gems of the book. The other letters are the digging away of the topsoil in order to get at what lay beneath: they are ultimately rewarding, but not as beautiful as the book's mother lode.The first of those final letters concerns events in the hospital in Bergamo in the days after Horrillo's crash, and are intense and surreal and startlingly funny. Horrillo relates as fully as he can the dreams, the hallucinations he suffered in the days after the crash, dreams fuelled in part by that novel he had been reading, Bolano's2666, as well as by the medication he was on and the trauma of his accident. The second letter sees Horrillo return to the Culmine di San Pietro, undertaking a pilgrimage to the place where he was born again, where a professional cyclist passed and a new life began. These final two letters are the reason you will want to read Amigo. While either would fit perfectly into a magazine like Rouleur - they are of that quality of writing - the correspondence leading up to them, which can be equally frustrating (reflecting the reality of the time) and illuminating, gives them extra meaning .-[Feargal MaKay, podiumcafe]; Amigo is, having said all that, a truly excellent book, one that will bear re-reading over many years, and at times an almost unwitting view into the psyche of a particularly aware professional cyclist, untainted by the perceived constraints of media training. Both men are of an intellectual nature as is notably evident from reading but the first few pages. There is an intriguing complexity to their correspondence that hints at the whole being considerably greater than the sum of its parts... Set aside as much time and understanding as you can before sitting down and reading. The more effort you put into reading and appreciating Amigo, the greater will be the rewards. A possible contender for Sports book of the Year I'd warrant, but one that would happily inhabit a wider field of appreciation and influence than simply that of the velocipede. - Brian Palmer, [the washingmachinepost]

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