The Sports Bookshelf

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

When Tyler Hamilton and Daniel Coyne won the 2012 William Hill Sports Book of the Year award for their cycling drugs expose, The Secret Race, the judging panel's view was that the book's central role -- or, at least, the role of the evidence contained in it -- in bringing cheats to justice meant that it was almost impossible for it not to be their winner. The same argument might be put forward for Seven Deadly Sins , the story of journalist David Walsh's 13-year pursuit of the disgraced multiple Tour de France winner, Lance Armstrong, a piece of dogged investigative reporting unparalleled in sports journalism which could be said to be equally important in exposing the biggest doping conspiracy in sports history. Seven Deadly Sins: My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong (Simon & Schuster) is among a shortlist of six titles from which the 2013 William Hill Sports Book of the Year will be chosen, with the winner due to be announced on Wednesday November 27. Author Walsh,

REVIEW: THE SECRET RACE, by Tyler Hamilton and Daniel Coyle Among all the contenders to be named 2012 William Hill Sports Book of the Year, none is more topical than Tyler Hamilton's disturbing expose of the tainted Lance Armstrong era in professional cycling. The Secret Race , which Hamilton wrote in conjunction with journalist and best-selling author Daniel Coyle, builds on the confession former US Postal team member Hamilton made in front of a grand jury in 2010 during an investigation into the doping allegations that have now led to Armstrong being stripped of the seven Tour de France titles he won between 1999 and 2005. Armstrong dismissed Hamilton's book as an example of a "washed-up cyclist talking trash for cash" but Coyle went to considerable lengths to ensure he was not imparting the one-eyed account of an embittered rival, himself effectively banned for life after failing a drugs test for a second time in 2009, and stripped of his gold medal f