Professional racing cyclists’ autobiographies tend to bear a certain similarity, whether you are Peter Sagan, Marcel Wüst, or Mark Cavendish. Well, Cav might be the exception as he has three of them. But sometimes there is a tale to be told that is very different and that is certainly the case of the new book by now-retired Canadian pro SveinTuft, written with Richard Abraham, that portrays what must be a unique journey by any athlete to the World Tour.
Svein Tuft’s story starts with his family background. His father was a Norwegian immigrant who came to British Columbia and after marrying a local girl became father to two boys, Svein and his older brother Klint. It is often said that children are raised by their friends rather than their parents and this may have been the case here, particularly following Tuft’s parents’ divorce. Two big influences on young Svein were clearly his pals Evan and Ivan, the former seeming the more serious and focused while the latter a real counterculture type happy to stick it to The Man. As we proceed through the book, both of these character types are reflected by Tuft’s own approach to life.
Not much of a formal student and giving up on school after Grade 10, Tuft’s life seems to have been pretty aimless, with most of his attention directed towards the outdoors. There was skiing, snowboarding, rockclimbing and hiking, with work to earn some cash in the off-season doing things like stacking old railway ties or collecting steel cable from logging. Money was not much of an object compared to adventure-oriented activities. At one point he becomes interested in cycling but nothing like normal cycling. Taking a modest mountain bike and a homemade trailer, he took on some really epic rides, leaving Vancouver for points north that eventually even brought him to the Arctic Circle. He accomplished these journeys on basically no money—at one point after losing his wallet (a plastic bag with $30 in it) he collects enough discarded beer cans en route to cash in the deposits to buy enough food to get home. And on the trailer he hauled his dog, an 80 pound Chow-German Shepherd-Rottweiler (!) mix named Bear. The book recounts many of these adventures and it is clear that Tuft is a man who relishes a challenge.
After putting in massive mileage on his outings, Tuft reads about the average speed of pro bike racers and figures he is doing as well—albeit without having a clue about their tactics or terrain—so he decides to try his hand at the sport. As a rank amateur Tuft advances pretty quickly in the small pond that was the Pacific Northwest racing scene although his primary strategy was basically riding at the front full gas to take advantage of his strength.
He is noticed and lands spots both on a local team and with the Canadian national team, which sent him off to the Tour de l’Avenir, where he learned how brutally hard racing could be in Europe. After short stints with two teams he found himself with the Canadian-based Symmetrics team in 2004, which moved up from amateur status to UCI Continental level the next year. Tuft clearly enjoyed being with this team but it was only to last until 2008 as sponsorship money ran out. One is reminded (as former pro Phil Gaimon has written about as well) that the North American bike racing scene is characterized by haphazard development, dire finances and a truly marginal lifestyle at the lower levels. One of the strengths of the book is its revelations about races you never hear about. Symmetrics was engaged primarily in the UCI America Tour, which included 36 races predominantly in South America. With his wins in Cuba and Richmond, Virginia, along with good placing elsewhere, Tuft was the overall individual winner of the series but from his descriptions racing in South American could be really hair-raising.
In 2008 Tuft was selected to ride at the Summer Olympics in Beijing and at the World Championships later that year in Italy, where his time trialling specialty earned him a silver medal. He signed on to ride for Garmin-Slipstream for 2009-10 but then a chance to ride for an Australian team fell apart as it was basically some kind of fraud, once again not a positive endorsement for the management of pro bike racing.
Tuft, who had a remarkable history in national events, winning the Canadian time trial championships eleven times and the road race twice, was able to join a top tier team, the Australia-based GreenEDGE in 2012 at the age of 34, where he was to prove himself such an able domestique he remained with the team for seven years, with a brief stay at Rally UHC Racing in 2019, the year he retired at 42.
The book is very entertaining, given that Mr. Tuft is not adverse to some salty language. His palmarès are quite impressive as besides the Worlds’ medal and national success in Canada, he wore the Pink Jersey at the Giro—and was the Lanterne Rouge at the Tour de France in 2013. His perspective on racing is unusual as he considers himself an introverted person. Horrified by the crowds at the Tour, he seems to have been happiest when training or going flat out for his teammates. At the 2012 Tirreno-Adriatico he pulled the entire peloton for 200 kms to haul in a breakaway and he took great satisfaction in doing so. His account of both of his Grand Tours make excellent reading: by the time he arrived in Paris in 2013, the GreenEDGE team, which was really only interested in the first week, had been whittled down to a total of two riders!
It is not surprising that his teammates would have considered him something of an outsider with his odd sporting background. He delves a bit into his personal philosophies, including his ideas on nutrition, training, and success, along with some portraits of fellow riders (not always so flattering!) and reflections on life in retirement. Unsurprisingly, he does not miss the hardships of racing but does miss how life as a pro is so focused and goal-oriented.
“We Will Never Be Here Again” was published through crowdfunding and is an unusual, and enjoyable, perspective on one rider’s life, both on the bike and off it.
“We Will Never Be Here Again—Adventures in Cycling from the Wilderness to the Tour de France”
by Svein Tuft, with Richard Abraham
304 pp., illustrated, softcover
Richard Abraham, publisher, 2025
ISBN-978-1-0683092-0-5
Suggested Price: UK 20GBP/USA $25/C$35/EU 25
The book will be available after March 15, 2025 at these Canadian stores, and subsequently via Amazon.com.
7mesh.com.
labicicletta.com.
For those interested in having a fine hardbound Collector’s Edition volume, a handful of these are still available up to March 20 but only via Kickstarter here: www.kickstarter.com.
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