The Sports Bookshelf

Here's a question -- in which sport does Britain boast the top two male players in the world and two of the top four women yet did not win a single medal at London 2012? The answer is squash.  And the reason for its conspicuous lack of success in Britain's golden year is that, as yet, squash is not an Olympic sport, despite years of lobbying for inclusion. It has featured in the Commonwealth Games and the Asian Games since 1998 but never in an Olympics. That might change this time next year.  Having missed out in London and again in Rio in 2016, squash has turned to Mike Lee, the bid strategist behind London 2012 and Qatar's controversial securing of the 2018 World Cup, to steer their campaign for a place at the 2020 Olympics.  Squash will learn its fate when the International Olympic Committee meets in Buenos Aires next October to elect the host city and decide which new sports get the nod. It will be too late for James Willstrop and Nick Matthew, who will go int

COMING SOON: Unbelievable - From Childhood Dreams to Winning Olympic Gold The autobiography of Olympic heptathlon champion Jessica Ennis It is a measure of the essential modesty of Olympic golden girl Jessica Ennis that she was reluctant to commit to telling her life story before London 2012 because she was not sure that she had done enough to warrant it. The idea was discussed earlier this year, when she asked Rick Broadbent, the athletics writer who had ghosted her column in The Times since 2009, if he would be willing to work with her, only to decide that she did not want to blur her focus on her ultimate goal. "We talked about it but she was always in two minds," Broadbent told The Sports Bookshelf. "She didn't want to do it because, in her mind, she had not really achieved anything, so the project was put on hold." Ennis had been European and World heptathlon champion but only Olympic gold would satisfy her definition of achievement and i