Mystery on Col d’Izoard: Interview with What Goes on Tour author Rob McIvor

Rob McIvor’s new novel – a gripping mystery based around the death of a British cyclist on the 1977 Tour de France – makes perfect holiday reading for cycling fans. Rob, a keen cyclist and past director of Audax UK, explains where he found his inspiration – and why he always carries a notebook while out on a ride…

Hear “murder on the Tour de France” and your first thought might be “Oh – Pogacar, killing it again. RIP peloton”. But in Rob McIvor’s new novel, the death in question – whether murder or not – is of an altogether darker nature.

What Goes on Tour charts the rise of young British cycling star Harry Chatham, on the cusp of glory in the 1977 Tour de France when a crash on the twisting descent off Col d’Izoard ends his life. But is there more to this tragic accident than it seems?

Decades later, Harry’s son Jim – who has just discovered his true parentage – pieces together the mystery behind his father’s death and uncovers much more than he bargained for. The result is a gripping story of ambition, loyalty and love set amid the drama and darkness of professional cycling in the 1970s.

What Goes on Tour by Rob McIvor
Publisher: The Book Guild
ISBN 9781835744345
Price: £10.99

Now based in Blackheath, the book’s author Rob McIvor is originally from Lancashire where the early part of Harry’s story is set. Rob is an accomplished long-distance cyclist, naturally, and fellow cyclists will relish the detail of Harry’s breakthrough on the club scene, his rivalry with team mate Mike, and pursuit of Tour de France glory as they face the ultimate test of their ambitions and friendship.

But there’s plenty here for non-cyclists too, as this expertly plotted mystery deftly weaves together bike racing, family drama, love and lust (let’s just say, things can get complicated when your French team mate has two beautiful sisters). There’s even an unexpected parallel drawn between cycling’s doping culture and the present-day pursuit of “marginal gains” in Jim’s work as a secondary school teacher: it’s not only cyclists who have to consider where they draw the ethical line in pursuit of professional success.

“At the heart of the novel is the question of whether some secrets are best kept that way,” explains Rob. “Both Harry, in 1977, and his son, Jim, decades later, face the dilemma of having to decide whether to expose
wrongdoing, knowing that doing so could harm those very close to them.

“The idea came to me when I was riding up the Col de Tourmalet in the French Pyrenees. I was thinking about
Wim Van Est, a Dutch rider who was leading the 1951 Tour de France when he went off the edge of the road
into a 1,000-foot ravine, on a mountain descent. Everyone feared the worst but, amazingly, he managed to grab
a small tree as he fell and clamber 200 feet back up to the road. Road cyclists really are the toughest
sportspeople of all.

“There are very few novels set in the world of bike racing and I hope that, by using it as the setting for this
story, I can also explain a bit about what goes on in a sport that could be described as ‘chess on wheels’.

“And if it encourages a reader to come out and watch the real Tour de France when it passes through
Lancashire next year, even better.”

After finishing reading What Goes on Tour last week – while on holiday in France, fittingly enough – we put some questions to Rob to find out about his inspiration.

‘What Goes On Tour’ is set in 2010, before Sir Bradley Wiggins became the first British winner of the Tour de France. Did his win in 2012 provide any inspiration for the story?  

I was thinking much more of the British riders who made their way over to mainland Europe and fought their way into existing continental teams well before the days of British Cycling and Sky – Tom Simpson and Barry Hoban in the 1960s, for example; Robert Millar in the 80s, becoming the first Brit to win one of the Tour classifications in 1984.

I wanted to give a sense of the three young British riders in the book feeling that they had to work even harder than the continental riders of the same ability to prove their worth. When Harry and his teammate, Mike, first arrive they are treated pretty contemptuously by their French team leader, but he eventually comes to recognise their value to the squad.

The story hinges on a deadly descent of Col d’Izoard. It’s clear from the descriptions that you know the road well; did you pick this particular descent for a reason? 

Oddly, it was the ascent, rather than the descent, that led to that choice.

The first few pages that I wrote were an attempt to describe what it’s like to ride up one of the highest mountain passes on a blisteringly hot day. I chose the Izoard because the first time I climbed it, going north, as the riders do in the book, I was struck by how exposed the lower parts of the climb were, compared with some other climbs, which begin in forest and shade the riders until they are quite close to the summit. It’s almost straight for several kilometres, until you reach the Casse Deserte and the hairpins begin, so you can look up and see how much you’re going to suffer!

Once I’d got my riders to the summit, I had to decide what to do with them, and that was where the idea of making the descent the setting for the crucial incident that sets up the story emerged. The Izoard was perfect for that too; the road drops away very sharply from the summit and you’re into the hairpins almost immediately.

The other reason is that on the northbound climb there is a lovely family-run restaurant, Chez Marius, where I’ve stopped off when travelling in both directions. That provided the model for the ‘Café Barguil’, which is where the novel starts and finishes.

You’re an experienced long-distance cyclist with Paris-Brest-Paris and London-Edinburgh-London on your palmares. Do you find yourself coming up with ideas for characters and storylines while cycling?

I do, and I wish I could remember them all at the end of the rides! I’d have written a dozen bestsellers by now.  As I do most of my cycling alone – particularly the touring – I have an inner dialogue going on in my head most of the time. I did try carrying a voice recorder with me to preserve all my brilliant ideas as I rode along, but that didn’t work very well. So if you see someone at the side of the road, astride the bike but scribbling in a notebook, that may well be me.

What would you say is a bigger feat of endurance: completing Paris-Brest-Paris or finishing a novel?

I’ve never considered that, but there are some similarities.

In theory, if you can ride a bike at a reasonable speed for three or four days, you can finish PBP; if you can tell a story, you can finish a novel. But what separates the average rider from a PBP finisher, or a novelist from someone who abandons their book before completion, is the mental commitment to keep going when it would be easier to give up.

With PBP, I’ve usually had a moment of doubt somewhere along the way and had to push myself hard to carry on. A lot of people get 40-50,000 words into a novel and run out of steam, so they never finish.

The big difference is that when you cross the line at the end of PBP, you’ve finished. When you get to the end of your novel, the hard work is just beginning, as most go through numerous rounds of editing and rewriting before they’re in a fit state to be considered for publication. So, on balance, I’d say writing requires more commitment.

You’ve served as director of Audax UK. Have you a favourite UK audax or sportive; and where are your favourite places to ride?

Audax event organisers take great pride in planning their routes to show off the best of their regions, so I could list dozens of glorious rides from all over the country. A particular local favourite for me is the 200km Man of Kent, which manages to showcase all the different aspects of the county, from hop fields and steam railways to Napoleonic forts and abandoned mining villages.

Another is the Kernow 600km, which starts in Exeter and criss-crosses its way across Devon and Cornwall to Penzance and back. That’s definitely one for the climbers. My favourite places to ride, though, are the north of Scotland, especially the west coast, and rural France, of course.

Do you follow the Tour de France as a fan? 

I do. I first started watching when Channel 4 began covering it in the late 1980s, when British riders were still such a rarity that they announced Max Sciandri’s position at the end of each stage because he was technically British. When it passed through the south of England in 1994, I was one of the millions at the side of the road for both stages and in 1998 I managed to tie in a touring holiday in Ireland with the race beginning in Dublin. I’ve been over to France to watch several times, but I’ve yet to join the mobs at the side of the road on a mountain stage.

Ironically, when the prologue was held in London for the first time in 2007, I had an invitation to watch it from a balcony overlooking the route but I had to turn it down because I was at the hospital seeing my son being born. He narrowly escaped being named Fabio, after the day’s winner.

I’m really looking forward to next year when the Tour passes through Cumbria and Lancashire. The ‘Cote de Jubilee Tower’, near Lancaster, is the climb on which the two central characters in What Goes on Tour first meet and race each other to the top, so I think that’s where I should be when the race passes.

Looking at British cycling, do you think there’s modern-day Harry Chatham coming through the ranks; and could they (or Harry!) stop Pogacar?

I don’t think any country looks capable of producing someone to stop Pogacar on his present form! In the book, Harry’s great skill is his descending and the first time I saw Tom Pidcock in action, I thought ‘that’s Harry’, but I don’t see him as a GC contender. Oscar Onley looks good, too. He excelled in the 2025 Tour when he was only 22, so I could see him maturing into a real contender in a couple of years.

If road cycling gets the TV coverage that will attract youngsters to the sport, though, I don’t see any reason why Britain shouldn’t produce more champions. The biggest obstacle, I think, is ensuring riders’ safety on the roads when they’re training, but that’s a far bigger issue and not one British Cycling can do much about, sadly.

The book finishes with a hint at a possible future cycling champion; can we expect a follow-up to What Goes On Tour?

My next two novels don’t feature cycling significantly at all, although in one there is a character who barrels around London on an electric hire bike. However, I have written the first couple of chapters of a new one which will use Paris-Brest-Paris as a key aspect of the plot. I’ll see how that goes – if I can get past that 40-50,000 word barrier, that may well be a kind of follow-up, but with different characters.

Find out more: www.robmcivor.com