Matt Rendell survived Hodgkin's Disease and lecturing at British and Latvian universities before entering print and TV journalism. He first visited Colombia in 1998, and his Channel 4 documentary Kings of the Mountains (2000) was described in The Observer as 'a gem, telling us more about the essence of sport in under an hour than a season's worth of Premiership matches.' His first book, Kings of the Mountains: How Colombia's Cycling Heroes Changed their Nation's History (Aurum Press 2002), was described in The Times as 'meticulous, elegant and sensitive,’ while 'The Death of Marco Pantani' was shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award. He has won four National Sporting Club awards, most recently for 'Colombia Es Pasión’, his fifth book about Colombia. Matt has also worked on the British terrestrial coverage of the Tour de France since 1997.