Event

Pedal Pusher

Marco was incredible. The Italian hero courted by politicians, partied with rockstars and adored by his fans. Marco was the champion the Pope himself asked to meet. He should have been the greatest cyclist of his generation.

But Marco is lying dead in a hotel in Rimini.

And the greatest is an American called Lance.

Pedal Pusher is the true story of the Lance Armstrong, Marco Pantani and Jan Ullrich three professional cyclists battling to become champion of the Tour de France.

Combining docu-drama and high octane physical performance- from Armstrong's battle with cancer to Pantani's tragic crash, as well as the allegations of drug abuse that blighted the Tours, Pedal Pusher charts five years that changed the sporting world forever.

Drawing on interviews, archive footage and news reports, TheatreDelicatessen used devised performance and physical theatre to carry the audience through the mountains, the sprints, the crashes and into the intriguing dangerous world of professional sport

After all, to put yourself through all this for the sake of a bicycle race you'd have to be crazy.

Or on drugs.

First staged in a disused London workshop space in 2009, Pedal Pusher was selected as one of Time Out's Critics' Choices of the year, before transferring to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where it was described as "A muscular production nothing short of ingenious".

Now, five years on, Pedal Pusher has been reworked and re-imagined in response to the explosive and well-publicised admission by Lance Armstrong of his use of performance enhancing drugs throughout his career.

Theatre Delicatessen and the University of Sheffield are staging a weeklong festival that combines theatre, arts and cycling to welcome the Tour De France to Sheffield during the first week of July 2014. Headlining the Changing Gears festival at Furnace Park will be an outdoor performance of Pedal Pusher.