Muscle on Wheels

Reviews / Votes

"Fixing a feminist gaze on the turn-of-the-century cycling phenomenon, M. Ann Hall's Muscle on Wheels is an impressive account of a gifted and highly successful professional athlete and performer whose sensational career spanned North America." Nancy B. Bouchier, McMaster University "In Muscle on Wheels, [Hall] tells a story set mainly south of the border, where talented women could earn real money thanks to wide-scale betting on the spectacle of sport, and watch it vanish into the pockets of agents, managers, and event organizers. Though Armaindo appears to have held her own amongst these "fast" men, decking and dumping those she realized were ripping her off. One newspaper account had Armaindo and her agent and coach, Tom Eck, wrestling it out when she felt he was not treating her fairly. Given the sensationalistic nature of sports news, it is hard to really know - but let's hope her incredible strength came in handy in every avenue of her life. Muscle on Wheels transports the reader to the racetrack, to the exciting days when Armaindo rode every other North American woman (and many men) into the ground." Literary Review of Canada "In reading M. Ann Hall's fascinating biography of Quebec-born professional cyclist Louise Armaindo, one can't help wondering what other remarkable stories of athleticism have been downplayed, ridiculed, or outright ignored over the past century...Her stori "This engaging book tells the amazing story of a French-Canadian woman and 20 other women who were professional cyclists in the late 19th century. It also recounts the history of wome's high-wheel (tri)cycling in the 1880s and women's so-called "safety" ( "More than a biography of a fascinating bicycle racing pioneer, Muscle on Wheels treats a wide variety of characters, men and women, mostly unknown today. Hall does an excellent job correcting the oversights of authors focusing on cycle history." idrottsf