Gareth Thomas's Proud and Bobby Moore biography head the line-up of winners at the 2015 Cross British Sports Book Awards

• Bobby Moore: The Man in Full is Biography of the Year

• Thirty-One Nil is best Football Book

• Cricket Book award goes to Wounded Tiger

• Gareth Thomas's Proud is Autobiography of the Year

Gareth Thomas, Matt Dickinson, James Montague, Richard Parks, Peter Oborne, Alastair Down, Herbie Sykes, Bill Jones and Anna Krien were recognised for their outstanding contributions to sports literature at the 2015 British Sports Book Awards, sponsored by pen makers Cross.

They were the headline winners at a ceremony hosted by broadcaster and former cricketer Jonathan Agnew at Lord's cricket ground in London.

Gareth Thomas, the former Wales and British and Irish Lions captain who played both Rugby Union and Rugby League in a glittering career, won the Autobiography of the Year prize for Proud (Ebury Press), written with the help of journalist and author Michael Calvin, which tells the story of how Thomas found the courage to admit to being gay in the macho world of rugby.

Thomas dedicated the award to Danny Jones, the Keighley Cougars rugby league player who last month died from cardiac arrest triggered by an undetected heart condition.

Available from: Amazon, Waterstones, WHSmith

Co-writer Calvin was himself a winner in 2014 with The Nowhere Men, his study of football's vast army of talent scouts, which was named as Football Book of the Year and won the public vote for overall Sports Book of the Year.

Publishers Yellow Jersey and Bloomsbury both scored two wins each.

The 2015 category winners all now go forward to a public online vote to determine the 2015 Cross Sports Book of the Year.  More details...

Football Book of the Year this time is Thirty-One Nil (Bloomsbury), written by James Montague, a freelance sports writer who set out to discover what the World Cup means in some of the world's most remote football outposts, in the nations whose quest for a place in the finals begins long before the major players have even thought about their route to the showcase event.  The title commemorates the record scoreline in a World Cup qualification match, when Australia beat American Samoa 31-0 in April 2001.

Available from: Amazon, Waterstones, WHSmith

Montague beat a strong field that included Bobby Moore: The Man in Full (Yellow Jersey), which instead won Biography of the Year for Matt Dickinson, chief sports writer at The Times.

Dickinson's portrait of the 1966 World Cup winning captain was notable not only for the depth of research but for its lack of sentimentality, delving behind the golden boy image to discover the true identity of one of football's greatest icons, not with any malevolent intent but simply to find the real person behind the caricature.

Available from: Amazon, Waterstones, WHSmith

Richard Parks, another former Wales rugby player, won Rugby Book of the Year for Beyond the Horizon: Extreme Adventures at the Edge of the World (Sphere), in which Parks tells the story of how he moved on when injury ended his career prematurely to take on extreme challenges such as climbing the highest mountain in every continent and visiting both the North and South Poles, all in the space of seven months.

Available from: Amazon, Waterstones, WHSmith

Peter Oborne's expansive Wounded Tiger: The History of Cricket in Pakistan (Simon & Schuster) won the Cricket Book of the Year award, turning the tables on Dan Waddell's Field of Shadows, the story of an English cricket tour of Nazi Germany, by which it was pipped for the Cricket Society-MCC Book of the Year.

Available from: Amazon, Waterstones, WHSmith


Alastair Down, the horse racing writer and bon viveur, won the Horse Racing Book of the Year for Cheltenham Et Al (Racing Post Books), a collection of his witty and colourful journalism for the Racing Post.


Available from: Amazon, Waterstones, WHSmith

Cycling Book of the Year went to The Race Against the Stasi (Aurum Press), in which journalist and author Herbie Sykes tells the incredible story of Dieter Wiedemann, the East German cyclist and a poster boy for the athletic supremacists of the communist Eastern Bloc and the Peace Race, the cycling stage event dubbed the Tour de France of the East.  Wiedeman, though, abhorred his country's ideology, fell in love with a girl from the other side of the Berlin Wall and, in defiance of the Stasi secret police who sought to control his life, defected to the West.

Available from: Amazon, Waterstones, WHSmith

Bill Jones, the writer and television producer who was Best New Writer in 2012 for The Ghost Runner, won the Outstanding Sports Writing award for Alone: The Triumph and Tragedy of John Curry (Bloomsbury), which explores the troubled life and early death of the former Olympic figure skating champion.

Available from: Amazon, Waterstones, WHSmith

Anna Krien took the Best New Writer award this time for Night Games: Sex, Power and a Journey into the Dark Heart of Sport (Yellow Jersey) which began as the reporting of a rape case involving a young Australian rules football player and developed as an eye-opening expose of a culture of abuse towards women in Australian sports.  Night Games was the winner of the 2014 William Hill Sports Book of the Year award.

Available from: Amazon, Waterstones, WHSmith

Other awards went to Reuel Golden as editor of The Age of Innocence: Football in the 1970s (Taschen), a photographic history that won Illustrated Book of the Year, to Elizabeth Allen (Weidenfeld & Nicolson/Orion) and Jane Beaton (Kew Publicity), who co-ordinated the Publicity Campaign behind Roy Keane's The Second Half, and to Waterstones as Retailer of the Year.

Sir Michael Parkinson, the journalist and broadcaster, received a special award for his Outstanding Contribution to Sports Writing.

Each of the individual category winners will be entered into an online public vote to determine the overall Cross British Sports Book of the Year.

The winners:

Autobiography Proud: My Autobiography (Ebury Press), by Gareth Thomas with Michael Calvin.

Biography Bobby Moore: The Man in Full (Yellow Jersey), by Matt Dickinson.

Football Thirty-One Nil: On the Road with Football's Outsiders (Bloomsbury), by James Montague

Rugby Beyond the Horizon: Extreme Adventures at the Edge of the World (Sphere), by Richard Parks.

Cricket Wounded Tiger: The History of Cricket in Pakistan (Simon & Schuster), by Peter Oborne.

Horse Racing Cheltenham et AL: The Best of Alastair Down (Racing Post Books), by Alastair Down.

Cycling The Race Against the Stasi: The Incredible Story of Dieter Wiedemann, The Iron Curtain and The Greatest Cycling Race on Earth (Aurum Press), by Herbie Sykes.

Outstanding Writing Alone: The Triumph and Tragedy of John Curry (Bloomsbury) by Bill Jones.

New Writer Night Games: Sex, Power and a Journey into the Dark Heart of Sport (Yellow Jersey), by Anna Krien.

Illustrated The Age of Innocence. Football in the 1970s (Taschen), edited by Reuel Golden.

Publicity Campaign Elizabeth Allen (Weidenfeld & Nicolson/Orion) and Jane Beaton (Kew Publicity) for Roy Keane: The Second Half (W & N), by Roy Keane and Roddy Doyle.

Retailer of the Year Waterstones

Outstanding Contribution to Sports Writing Sir Michael Parkinson

More reading: The full shortlists for the Cross British Sports Book Awards

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More chapters in the Lance Armstrong story and some different takes on the Tour de France

CYCLING BOOKS TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2014

The boom in cycling books has been a feature of recent years in the sports books market, their popularity fuelled by a mix of success stories and shame.

On the one hand, the likes of Bradley Wiggins, Mark Cavendish, Chris Froome and Chris Hoy have taken British cycling to a new level in terms of achievement on the road and track.

On the other, the doping revelations that engulfed seven-times Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong have placed cycling at the heart of a scandal unprecedented in the sporting world.

The Wiggins autobiography My Time was the biggest selling sports book of 2012, while the William Hill Sports Book of the Year for 2012 was Tyler Hamilton's The Secret Race, based on the Grand Jury evidence that exposed Armstrong as the biggest drug cheat of all time.

The Armstrong story spawned another William Hill contender last year in Seven Deadly Sins, in which journalist David Walsh's detailed his dogged pursuit of the truth, and will rumble on in 2014.

New York Times journalist Juliet Macur brings her perspective to the story in Cycle of Lies (William Collins), based on interviews with key players in the Armstrong drama and broadening the story to expose more corruption at all levels of cycling. Cycle of Lies is due out in March.

In May, Michael Barry, who supported Armstrong as part of the US Postal Team, describes his part in the scandal in Shadows on the Road (Faber & Faber).  Barry retired from professional cycling in 2012, shortly before testifying against Armstrong as part of the US Anti-Doping Agency investigation.

Barry accepted a six-month suspension for using performance-enhancing drugs while riding for US Postal, along with the stripping of all his results between May 2003 and July 2006.

In July, Emma O'Reilly, the Irish-born masseuse who became Armstrong's confidante and ultimately his whistle blower, will hit the book stands with Race to Truth (Bantam Press), in which she details not only what she saw as an insider in the Armstrong camp but the years of bullying and lies she endured as attempts were made to destroy her reputation and credibility.

The same month sees a reissued and updated version of A Clean Break (Bloomsbury), written by Christophe Bassons, the French rider driven to quit the sport after his stand against drugs led him to be shunned by fellow riders and confronted by Armstrong, who told him to leave the tour.

Also in July, Nicole Cooke, the Great Britain rider who in 2012 became the first to win Olympic and world road race titles in the same year, goes into print with The Breakaway (Simon & Schuster), which promises to continue where she left off in the damning speech she delivered when she retired in early 2013, when she attacked Armstrong, Hamilton and every other rider who owed their success to drugs for cheating legions of honest, clean competitors out of the glory and prizes that should have been theirs.

Thankfully, 2014 is not all about Lance Armstrong.  There are plenty of titles coming up that celebrate the more glorious aspects of competitive cycling and underline why the sport enjoys such enormous popularity.

Richard Moore, whose six cycling books so far include portraits of David Millar and Team Sky chief Dave Brailsford as well as the acclaimed Slaying The Badger, which focussed on the epic 1986 Tour de France, adds another in June when HarperSport published Étape: The Untold Stories of the Tour de France's Defining Stages, in which each chapter focuses on a single rider in a single stage that became a defining moment in the history of the world's greatest cycling race.

Armstrong's part in the history of the Tour cannot, of course, be airbrushed out, and such a book would be incomplete without the American's emotionally charged win in Limoges in 1995 or his dramatic, drug-fuelled victory eight years later at Luz Ardiden.  Moore revisits too Chris Boardman’s famous debut in 1994, Mark Cavendish’s best and worst stages, as well as iconic stages featuring giants of the sport: Eddy Merckx’s toughest Tour, Bernard Hinault’s journey through hell, Greg LeMond’s return from near-death, and the tragic Marco Pantani’s domination of the most controversial race in Tour history.

The Tour features elsewhere in Marguerite Lazell's updated Complete History of the Tour de France (Carlton Books), due out in April, as well as an updated Tour de France: The History, the Legends, the Riders, by Graeme Fife (Mainstream, September) and a fresh edition of Mapping Le Tour, by Ellis Bacon (Collins, May), a history illustrated with full page maps of the routes of all 100 races so far.

In April, Max Leonard looks at the Tour from a different angle in Lanterne Rouge: The Last Man in the Tour de France (Yellow Jersey), which tells the absurd and inspirational stories of the last placed riders in the Tour de France, from the former wearer of the yellow jersey who tasted life at the other end of the bunch, to the breakaway leader who stopped for a bottle wine and then cycled the wrong way, and the day the fastest finisher of all time, Mark Cavendish, became the slowest.

Yellow Jersey's catalogue also includes Geronimo! Riding the Very Terrible 1914 Tour of Italy, by Tim Moore, in which travel writer Moore, whose account of riding the Tour de France route, French Revolutions, won huge acclaim, retraces the tracks of the eight riders (from 81 starters) who managed to complete the 1914 Giro d'Italia, which has subsequently become recognised as the hardest bike race in history.  For good measure, he does so on a 100-year-old bike.

Alasdair Fotheringham, brother of the prolific William, follows up his biography of Federico Bahamontes (The Eagle of Toledo) with Reckless: The Life and Times of Luis Ocana (Bloomsbury, May). Ocana. who died in mysterious circumstances at the age of only 48, became Spain's second Tour de France winner in 1973, Bahamontes having been the first, in 1959.  Fotheringham doubles as cycling correspondent and Spain correspondent for The Independent.

Also from Bloomsbury, look out in March for Faster: The Obsession, Science and Luck Behind the World's Fastest Cyclists, in which Michael Hutchinson, the professional cyclist turned writer, explains how training, nutrition, psychology and many other factors play a part in the quest for speed, and for The Monuments: The Grit and the Glory of Cycling's Greatest One-Day Races, in which Peter Cossins tells the story of the five legendary races -- the so-called 'Monuments' -- that are the sport’s equivalent of golf’s majors or the grand slams in tennis. Milan–Sanremo, the Tour of Flanders, Paris­–Roubaix, Liège–Bastogne–Liège and the Tour of Lombardy.

Biographies to anticipate include Battle Scars (Hardie Grant), by the popular Australian rider Stuart O'Grady, and Chris Boardman's life story Triumphs and Turbulence (Ebury), due out in June.

Look for more information and details of how to pre-order any of these books at Amazon, Waterstones or WHSmith.

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Headline promise hilarity from joker Jimmy Bullard's footballing memoirs

Headline have revealed the cover for Bend It Like Bullard, the in which Jimmy Bullard, the former Wigan, Fulham and Hull City midfielder who was forced into premature retirement because of persistent knee injuries, dispenses his own Twelve Pillars of Football Wisdom.

Bullard, 35, earned a reputation for playing practical jokes during his 13-year career in the professional game and Headline say his sense of humour shines through in Bend It Like Bullard.

"We are extremely excited to be publishing Jimmy's first book," Headline announce in the publicity accompanying the cover picture. "We've read it, and trust us, it's hilarious."

According to the publisher's blurb, Bend It Like Bullard is "a rip-roaring, life-enhancing, hilarious memoir from a football cult hero; very much in the same vein as recent bestsellers from Paul Merson and Jeff Stelling."

Bullard, who grew up in the East End of London, worked as a painter and decorator but, after being spotted playing for Gravesend and Northfleet, was determined enough to recover from rejection by his beloved West Ham to work his way up from the lower levels of league football with Peterborough before making a name for himself in the Premier League and three times being named in England squads.

"Having played under the likes of Barry Fry, Harry Redknapp and Phil Brown, appeared alongside names as diverse as Neil Ruddock and Paolo di Canio, and as long as Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink, Jimmy has racked up an amazing collection of tales and pranks both on and off the football front-line," Headline's blurb continues. "Told with candour, Bend It Like Bullard is the extraordinary story of his journey from cable TV fitter to cult hero. It will make you smile, chuckle and, occasionally, ROFL."

Clearly with plenty to live up to after that kind of promise, Bend It Like Bullard is due to be published in May.

Pre-order from Amazon or Waterstones

More reading: Football books to look out for in 2014 - A Sports Bookshelf Guide

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New biography of England's World Cup-winning captain Bobby Moore among a bumper crop of football books for 2014

FOOTBALL BOOKS TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2014

In a World Cup year, it is no surprise that 2014 will bring a surge of football titles to bookstores and online retailers.

Among the highlights are new autobiographies from Trevor Brooking and Terry Venables, both published by Simon & Schuster, a biography for Yellow Jersey of England legend Bobby Moore by Matt Dickinson, the chief sports correspondent of The Times, and Fergie Rises (Aurum Press), in which Michael Grant, chief football writer of The Herald newspaper in Glasgow, studies the early years of Sir Alex Ferguson's managerial career at Aberdeen.

Bobby Moore collects the Jules Rimet Trophy
from The Queen at Wembley in 1966

Fans of Jose Mourinho will delight in an illustrated celebration of his career due to be published by Headline in time for next Christmas.  Before that, headlines will doubtless follow when a controversial book on the Chelsea manager written by Spanish journalist Diego Torres is published in English by HarperSport.

Prepare to Lose, as was its title in Spain, made the sensational claim that Mourinho broke down in tears when David Moyes was announced as Manchester United's new manager, having convinced himself that Sir Alex Ferguson would nominate him to take charge as his successor at OId Trafford.  The claim was dismissed as "completely false" by Mourinho's agent.

Ronald Reng, whose study of the life and death of the former Germany goalkeeper, Robert Enke, won William Hill Sports Book of the Year in 2012, returns with a revealing history for Simon & Schuster of the Bundesliga, from its difficult infancy in the post-War years to its status today among the world's biggest leagues.

A raft of titles timed to coincide with the World Cup finals in Brazil includes Futebol Nation (Penguin), a history of Brazil through the prism of football written by David Goldblatt, author of the acclaimed global football history, The Ball is Round.

Look out, too, for a revised and updated version of the Alex Bellos classic, Futebol: The Brazilian Way of Life (Bloomsbury), and Golazo! (Quercus), a new book in which Uruguayan author Andreas Campomar examines how football shaped the development of Latin America in political, economic and cultural terms as well as in a purely sporting context.

There is no one figure, of course, more readily identifiable with football in Brazil than Pelé, whose thoughts on the game are passed on with the help of Brazil-based journalist Brian Winter in Why Soccer Matters (Penguin).

In Thirty-One Nil (Bloomsbury), the journalist James Montague describes what the World Cup means in some of the world's most remote football outposts, the nations right at the bottom of the football food chain, whose quest for a precious place in the finals begins long before the major players have even thought about their route to the top table.  The title commemorates the record scoreline in a World Cup qualification match, when Australia beat American Samoa by that score in April 2001.

And given that they are almost bound to play a part at some stage, Ben Lyttleton, who has written about European football for the Guardian and Sunday Telegraph among others, examines the art and psychology of penalty kicks in Twelve Yards (Bantam Press).

Jonathan Wilson

Later in the year, but with the potential to be perfectly timed depending on what happens in Brazil, Orion books will offer the latest from Jonathan Wilson, the acclaimed expert on the evolution of football tactics, who turns his eye to the history of football in Argentina in Angels With Dirty Faces.

Here is The Sports Bookshelf's month-by-month guide to a selection of other football books due to appear in 2014.

February

When Football Was Football: Swansea (by Neil Palmer) and Crystal Palace (by Tom Hopkinson), published by J Haynes & Co.

March

Brazil Futebol, by Keir Radnedge (Carlton); Sol Campbell: The Authorised Biography, by Simon Astaire (Spellbinding Media); Hillsborough Voices, by Kevin Sampson (Ebury Press).

April

So Good I Did It Twice - My Life From Left Field, by Kevin Sheedy (Trinity Mirror Sports Media); Danish Dynamite: The Story of Football's Greatest Cult Team, by Rob Smyth, Lars Eriksen and Mike Gibbons (Bloomsbury); The Hillsborough Disaster, by Mike Nicholson (Amberley); Roy Mac - Clough's Champion: My Autobiography, by Roy McFarland (Trinity Mirror Sports Media).

May

How to Enjoy The World Cup, by Chris England (Old Street Publishing); Scotland '74: A World Cup Story, by Richard Gordon (Black and White); Bend It Like Bullard, by Jimmy Bullard (Headline); The 10 Football Matches That Changed The World, by Jim Murphy (Biteback); The Team of '66: England's World Cup Winners, by Jim Morris (Amberley); Best, Pele and a Half-Time Bovril: A Nostalgic Look at Football in the 1970s, by Andrew Smart (John Blake). When Football Was Football: Leicester City (by Ralph Ellis) and Charlton Athletic (by Mick Walsh), both published by J Haynes & Co.

June/July

Eight World Cups, by George Vecsey (Henry Holt); Brazil's Dance With the Devil, by Dave Zirin (Haymarket); Inverting the Pyramid (Revised & Updated), by Jonathan Wilson (Orion); The Three Degrees, by Paul Rees (Constable); George Raynor, by Ashley Hine (The History Press); Pep Guardiola - the Philosophy That Changed the Game, by Violan Miguel Angel (Meyer & Meyer).

August

In Search of Duncan Ferguson, by Alan Pattullo (Mainstream); Looking for the Toffees: Everton in the Last Season of English Football, by Brian Viner (Simon & Schuster); The World of the Football Annual, by Ian Pearce (Constable); The Final Season, by Nigel McCrery (Random House).

September/October

The Book of Football Quotations, by Phil Shaw (Ebury Press); The Biography of Manchester City, by David Clayton (Vision Sports Publishing); Roy of the Rovers, by Giles Smith (Century); The Bhoys Who Went to War, by Paul Lunney (Black and White).

For more information, go to Amazon or Waterstones.

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True life racing thriller Doped wins the 25th William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award

Doped: The Real Life Story of the 1960s Racehorse Doping Gang has won the 2013 William Hill Sports Book of the Year award for journalist Jamie Reid.

The saga of 1960s turf skullduggery, in which a crooked bookmaker and his glamorous mistress, plus miscellaneous  gangsters, bent stable lads and a drug supplier nicknamed 'the Witch Doctor', conspired to nobble high-profile racehorses, won the vote of the judges to clinch the 25th anniversary award from a field that included two other tales of cheating in sport from the worlds of cycling and cricket.

Seven Deadly Sins, in which journalist David Walsh recounts his pursuit of the disgraced Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong, and Bookie Gambler Fixer Spy, which reveals many truths and destroys some myths about match-fixing in cricket, were both close contenders.

A six-strong shortlist also included the straight-talking and grittily honest football autobiography I Am Zlatan Ibrahomivic, the story of an heroic Olympic rowing eight, The Boys in the Boat, by Daniel James Brown, and David Epstein's fascinating The Sports Gene.

But award judge and broadcaster John Inverdale, who revealed the winner at The Hospital Club in London's Covent Garden live on BBC Radio Four, explained that Doped had the edge.

"Sometimes it takes the panel five minutes and sometimes five hours and this year we were heading towards the upper end of that scale, but for a book that engages, fascinates and grips through to its climax, and is surely destined for either the big or the small screen, the winner is Doped," he said.

Financial Times columnist Reid, who received a cheque for £25,000 among other prizes, admitted that he had been, to a degree, sitting on the story of Britain's biggest and most audacious horse-nobbling racket since he was a small boy.

"I first heard about it, literally, at my grandmother's knee when I was about seven," he said. "She used to share the Sporting Life with me, introduced me to the magnificent, incomparable Peter O'Sullevan and she left me aware that there was a big story there that had never been fully told.

**CLICK ON THE LINKS TO BUY ANY OF THE TITLES MENTIONED**

"I've been a lifelong racing enthusiast and always loved the gambling side of racing and, I have to say, been attracted to this aura of skullduggery and chicanery that is part of that.

"Working as a journalist, writing other racing books and getting to know people in the bookmaking fraternity I gradually became aware that the story was more incredible than I could have imagined, this relationship between Bill (Roper, the bent bookmaker) and his lover, Micheline (Lugeon) and all the incredible cast of toffs and spivs that floated around them.  It was an absolute pleasure and a joy to write."

Reid revealed that there had been several approaches from film-makers gripped by Doped's thriller-like narrative about taking the drama to the screen, the latest of which had been received only on Tuesday of this week.

William Hill spokesman, and co-founder of the Award, Graham Sharpe, said:  “Jamie Reid’s brilliantly constructed book lures the reader into his masterly recreation of late 50s/early 60s England in which social class counted for far more than workplace competence. Nowhere more so than in the historically class-ridden world of horseracing. ‘Toffs’ ruled the roost in outwardly posh, yet archaic, stables and racecourse stewards’ rooms, but were constantly at financial and social war with cunning, street-wise, working-class ‘bookies’, who were tolerated only as outlets for personal wagers, the settling of which was frequently lax when losing.

“This background, generously scattered with sex and drugs and royalty, is the setting for a perfectly researched, paced and plotted unravelling of probably the most shocking, cynical, sustained attempt to dope – sometimes fatally – innocent racehorses and endanger jockeys for personal gain, to come to light in the 500 year history of the sport of Kings, Queens and commoners.”

The judging panel comprised Inverdale alongside broadcaster Danny Kelly, award-winning journalist Hugh McIlvanney and columnist and author, Alyson Rudd, under the supervision of the chairman of the panel, John Gaustad, co-creator of the award and founder of the Sportspages bookshop.

Doped: The Real Life Story of the 1960s Racehorse Doping Gang, by Jamie Reid, is published by Racing Post Books.

Read more about Jamie Reid's book

The full shortlist:

The Boys in the Boat: An Epic True-Life Journey to the Heart of Hitler's Berlin (Macmillan), is among six titles shortlisted for the 2013 William Hill Sports Book of the Year prize.  The others are:

Seven Deadly Sins: My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong(Simon & Schuster), by David Walsh

I Am Zlatan Ibrahimovic (Penguin), the autobiography of the Swedish footballer Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

Bookie Gambler Fixer Spy: A Journey to the Heart of Cricket's Underworld(Bloomsbury), by Ed Hawkins

Doped: The Real Life Story of the 1960s Racehorse Doping Gang (Racing Post Books), by Jamie Reid .

The Sports Gene: What Makes the Perfect Athlete (Yellow Jersey Press), by David Epstein.

More reading:

William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2013: The Longlist

Zlatan Ibrahimovic's bid to make history

Match fixing: cricket's heart of darkness

Lance Armstrong: one journalist's tireless quest for the truth 

The working-class rowers who stunned Hitler

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Wide open field for William Hill Sports Book of the Year as 17-title longlist is named

As the man whose grand jury testimony brought down the most successful and celebrated cheat in the history of sport, cyclist Tyler Hamilton was out on his own among last year's contenders for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year.

The field for this year's prize -- the 25th since the award was launched in 1989 -- looks much more open.

The longlist for the 2013 'Bookie Prize' sees football, tennis, rowing, horseracing, athletics, cycling and ping-pong among the sports represented, and features writers and performers from France, the Netherlands, America, Britain, Spain, Italy and Sweden.

After the success of Tyler Hamilton's The Secret Race, there is another take on the downfall of Lance Armstrong in the shape of Seven Deadly Sins, which recounts the long campaign waged by another of those who helped expose the truth about the seven-times Tour de France champion's systematic drug use, the Sunday Times journalist, David Walsh.

But it will take something special, one suspects, to persuade the judges not to choose their winner from among the six football titles that make up more than a third of the 17-strong longlist.

These include two-times Bookie winner Duncan Hamilton's portrait of George Best, Immortal, as well as biographies or autobiographies of three more recent greats of the beautiful game in Dennis Bergkamp, Thierry Henry and Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

Echoes of the 2012 London Olympics are sounded by Games supremo Sebastian Coe's autobiography, Running My Life, and rower Katherine Grainger's heartwarming Dreams Do Come True.
Cricket, which has provided five past winners, is represented by Bookie Gambler Fixer Spy, in which the cricket betting expert Ed Hawkins exposes the corruption and match-fixing that has blighted the game in recent years.

Brough Scott's brilliant portrayal of Henry Cecil deserves its place on the list, in which this year's left-field choice is without doubt Guido Mina di Sospiro's intriguingly-titled The Metaphysics of Ping-Pong, a discourse on table tennis and much, much more from a American-based Italian journalist.

The full longlist is as follows:

Thierry Henry: Lonely at the Top – A Biography, by Philippe Auclair (Macmillan). Buy

Stillness and Speed: My Story, by Dennis Bergkamp (Simon & Schuster). Buy

The Boys In The Boat: An Epic True-Life Journey to the Heart of Hitler’s Berlin, by Daniel James Brown (Macmillan). Buy

You Don’t Know Me, But… A Footballer’s Life, by Clarke Carlisle (Simon & Schuster). Buy

Running My Life: The Autobiography, by Seb Coe (Hodder & Stoughton). Buy

The Outsider: My Autobiography, by Jimmy Connors (Bantam Press). Buy

The Sports Gene: What Makes The Perfect Athlete, by David Epstein (Yellow Jersey Press). Buy

Dreams Do Come True: The Autobiography, by Katherine Grainger (Andre Deutsch). Buy

Immortal: The Approved Biography of George Best, by Duncan Hamilton (Century). Buy

Bookie Gambler Fixer Spy: A Journey to the Heart of Cricket’s Underworld, by Ed Hawkins (Bloomsbury). Buy

I Am Zlatan Ibrahimovic, by Zlatan Ibrahimovic, David Lagercrantz and Ruth Urbom (Penguin). Buy

Fear And Loathing in La Liga: Barcelona Vs Real Madrid, by Sid Lowe (Yellow Jersey Press). Buy

Doped: The Real Life Story of the 1960s Racehorse Doping Gang, by Jamie Reid (Racing Post). Buy

Henry Cecil: Trainer of Genius, by Brough Scott (Racing Post). Buy

The Metaphysics of Ping-Pong, by Guido Mina di Sospiro (Yellow Jersey Press). Buy

Seven Deadly Sins: My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong, by David Walsh (Simon & Schuster). Buy

Domestique: The True Life Ups and Downs of a Tour Pro, by Charly Wegelius and Tom Southam (Ebury Press). Buy

William Hill spokesman, and co-founder of the award, Graham Sharpe, said: “As befits the 25th anniversary of the world's undisputed finest award for sports books and their authors, I do not believe we have previously seen a year produce such an abundance of top quality titles. The judges face their toughest task yet in initially creating a shortlist then deciding on a winner - which will have beaten a classic field to be declared champion”.

The William Hill Sports Book of the Year award is the world's longest established and most valuable literary sports-writing prize. As well as a £25,000 cash prize, the winning author will receive a £2,500 William Hill bet, a hand-bound copy of their book, and a day at the races.

The judging panel for this year’s award consists of: broadcaster and writer John Inverdale; broadcaster Danny Kelly; award-winning journalist Hugh McIlvanney; and columnist and author, Alyson Rudd. Chairman of the judging panel is John Gaustad, co-creator of the award and founder of the Sportspages bookshop.

The shortlist will be announced on 25th October. The winner will be announced live on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row, at an evening reception at The Hospital Club in central London, on Wednesday 27th November.

The Sports Bookshelf will feature more about the contenders over the coming weeks.

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