Sticky Bottle: The Cycling Year According to Carlton Kirby

Legendary commentator Carlton Kirby's professional cycling race year takes us from the magnificent Grand Tours and iconic Spring Classics to the sport's more bizarre corners with plenty of his inimitable and irreverent diversions en route.

A true cycling nut would be hard pushed to even name all 36 races on the UCI World Tour, but there is much more to professional racing than national tours and monuments. It's a year-long global schedule venturing as far afield as Burkina Faso and Gabon. So why not take some of these roads less travelled in the company of Carlton Kirby, a real commentary nomad, cycling expert and hilarious raconteur.

Carlton's year follows the cycling seasons through the Spring Classics to the Grand Tours and on to the World Championships and Six Day track racing. In between he's visiting the lesser known, bizarre and challenging races such as Tour de Langkawi, Flanders' Scheldeprijs, The Red Hook Crit in New Jersey and UK's National Hill Climb Championships.

Along the way we hear great cycling stories from the past as well as how he appeared in a blockbuster action movie, bought an octopus in an auction, got lost in a storm on a sacred Catalonian mountain and faced near death in a biscuit factory. And that's just some of the anecdotes that don't involve Sean Kelly.