Tom Humphries/LockerRoom When word came through that Dermot Dignam had arranged for a copy of a book about the Rás to be left into the office for me I got sharp stabbing pains in my chest. Slight dizziness followed. Some nausea

. The Rás? Jaysus! Than came a series of vivid memories of my only experience covering cycling. A Nissan Classic long ago. Little groups of us each got given a Nissan Primera in which to follow the race. I was unable to drive but one evening in a practical joke gone wrong I managed to park or buck-jump the new Nissan Primera into quite a position in a split-level car-park in Galway. I managed indeed to park it in such a way that the front half of the new Nissan Primera hung out in the air above the lower level of the car-park and the back half didn't touch the ground either.

My brief, poverty-stricken freelance life flashed before my eyes. Werburgh Street Labour Exchange crooked its finger again. In desperation I went forth and, faking gross intoxication, woke up what turned out to be an uncommonly understanding team of French cyclists, who helped me push and slide the Nissan Primera back to safety.

That's all I remember apart from Roy Willoughby of RTÉ having with him a mobile phone which was the size of a small wardrobe. Every time one cyclist would pass another in the race Roy would shout for us to bring him to the top of a hill so he could file the news.

I remember that and a wet day in some mountains with a ponytailed American we had in the car for the day. The Ponytail leapt out and, gazing down through the mists and rain, roared: "Sam Abt, Sam Abt, Sam Abt, why are you not here, Sam Abt?" We were scared of him for the rest of the week.

There was all that and then there was the half decade's worth of drug scandals which slowly killed pro cycling as an exercise with any sort of moral core attached. News of the arrival of a book about the Rás didn't augur well. I'm not an office-going creature at the best of times. This put a little lead in my step.

Now I feel like I've missed out on something. The Rás, The Story Of Ireland's Unique Bike Race, by Tom Daly, is a classic or a criterium or whatever the correct cycling term is. The Rás turns out to be the most colourful show in Irish sport for the last half century, an event ridden with eccentricity and ridden by eccentrics. Tom Daly plays it all with a straight face but he has a way of slipping in the anecdotes which just makes the book whip along.

And the photographs are extraordinary. One simply captioned "Cresting Musheramore" sums up an entire sport beautifully, while another picture of Mick Grimes crossing the finish line followed by a Honda 50 and a Morris Minor captures the Rás. Others are just great documents of another time, like the shot of some Irish dancers being charmed by a group of horny-looking Polish cyclists.

The stories and the characters are what make this books such an unexpected treat.

Joe Christle (without whom no column is complete) looms large in the early days. There's a great old shot of Colm Christle (Joe's brother) and his friend Phil Clarke chasing down an unidentified race leader on a rainy day in Enniscorthy. And on the same pages we learn that Clarke was elected an MP while serving jail time for IRA activities but that during his incarceration he is unlikely to have forgotten that on that very first Rás Joe Christle came to the room he was sharing with Colm Christle and announced that as race organiser he was facing financial difficulties and it was imperative either Colm or Phil win the race. So it came to pass. The first Rás, back in 1953, was won by Colm Christle.

The following year the Rás expanded its ambition and the Christle name became forever associated with the event when another brother, Andy, was killed in a collision with a car outside Tralee.

From the outset the Rás had a wonderful aspiration to be culturally meaningful and politically alive. Colm Christle was wreathed in laurels picked at Aonach Tailteann, the site of the old Tailteann Games. Later on the Rás would be dedicated to James Connolly and Vladimir Lenin, unique surely for an event to which the GAA gave money and All-Ireland medals for the winners.

And there's a great story about the first visit of a godless Russian team and how they ended up being billeted in a seminary.

And Gene Mangan, an 18-year-old rider, became Kerry Sportsperson of the Year in 1955, the year Kerry won a classic All-Ireland, and a couple of years later became haplessly involved in the internecine politics of Irish cycling and ended up in an Italian jail.

There's the basis for a great movie in those early days. What Rás people call "The Cookstown Incident" seems almost incredible now. Racing around Lough Neagh, the lead car of the Rás was stopped by the RUC, who demanded that the Tricolour be removed from the vehicle. The car, which contained (inevitably) Joe Christle, refused and drove away before the cyclists arrived on the scene.

Outside Lurgan they were intercepted and the RUC again demanded the removal of the flag. The flag was then seized. A fracas ensued. It was seized back and held within a ring of cyclists.

The stage was abandoned and, escorted by police tenders, the cyclists rode the rest of the way together in protest, singing A Nation Once Again as they wheeled through places like Randlestown and Magherafelt. Just before they got to Cookstown one Paddy O'Callaghan attempted to remove a Union Jack from a flagpole.

In Cookstown the Rás was baton charged with the help of locals and serious fighting broke out and lasted 20 minutes. Cyclists remember local women screaming like banshees and throwing hot water at them as they made their exit. Next day they got up and cycled 153 miles.

Somebody needs to give Tom Daly or Paul Kimmage a million quid to turn those early days into a movie.

Everything about the Rás has been unusual and distinct. In the early days Joe Christle, suspected widely of being an IRA activist, ran the event with Kerry Sloane, an officer in the Army. At one stage Christle sits a law exam in the morning and participates in a raid on Gough Barracks in Armagh in the afternoon.

And the characters, the "savage road men" who spent day after day leaned low, "chewing the handlebars". The aforementioned Gene Mangan went off in the late fifties to become a pro cyclist. Easier said than done. A written representation from Seán Lemass couldn't sway things as Mangan was on the wrong side of "the split" in Irish cycling.

Calling himself Laurence Mangan, he finally got an independent licence through local connections in the south of France. As soon as he began to race, the other side of the split hunted him down and out of the pro game. Shay O'Hanlon, who battered the Rás into submission in 1962, had similar problems a few years later and returned to win three more Rásaí.

So it goes. The addition of foreign riders gave the Rás a new flavour and latterly the sullying of the professional game by cheats and chemists lends the Rás, in retrospect, a feeling of heroic innocence, a last great challenge done for love. It brings the Rás back full circle to within the ethos of the GAA.

Most of us have missed out on the Rás over the years. We live in an era after all when the media look the other way most of the time. We ruminate endlessly on the professionals and their venalities. There are some heroes left though and some great stories too.

The Rás, by Tom Daly, is available from The Collins Press.