The Sports Bookshelf

Award split for first time after judges cannot separate Tom Gregory's swimming epic A Boy in the Water and Paul D Gibson's boxing tale The Lost Soul of Eamonn Magee For the first time in its 30-year history, the William Hill Sports Book of the Year award has joint winners. Broadcaster John Inverdale told guests at a reception at BAFTA in London to announce the 2018 winner that the judges had been unable to decide between Tom Gregory’s extraordinary debut book A Boy in the Water (Particular Books) and Paul D Gibson’s boxing tale The Lost Soul of Eamonn Magee (Mercier Press). As a result, they took the unprecedented step of declaring the two books joint winners, which means the £30,000 cash prize is split equally between the two titles, with both authors receiving a £15,000 cheque. A Boy in the Water tells the story of how Tom Gregory , now a director with the accountancy firm Deloitte, swam the English Channel on September 6, 1988 to become at the age of 11 years 3

WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2016 The winner is announced Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life. By William Finnegan (Corsair) £9.99 William Finnegan  (centre) shows off the 2016 William Hill  Sports Book of the Year Award, flanked by (left-to-right)  judges Graham Sharpe, Alyson Rudd, Hugh McIlvanney, Mark Lawson, John Inverdale and Clarke Carlisle. Surfing memoir Barbarian Days, described as “compelling, elegiac and profound” by the chair of the judging panel, has won the 2016 William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award for American author William Finnegan. The book, which has already won a Pulitzer Prize for the veteran New Yorker magazine writer, tells the story of Finnegan life through the prism of his 50-year obsession with surfing, from his childhood days in California and Hawaii to the present day. Barbarian Days beat a particularly strong field to land the £28,000 cash prize that goes with the award, which also comes with a leather-bound commemorative cop

WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2016 On the Shortlist Find a Way: One Untamed and Courageous Life By Diana Nyad (Knopf Publishing Group), £16.99 Review by Jon Culley Diana Nyad, pictured earlier this year at a sports psychology conference in Phoenix This is the book that Hillary Clinton apparently said would remain by her side throughout her campaign to be President, as a source of inspiration. Diana Nyad excelled at open water swimming. In 1975 she swam the entire 28 mile (45km) circumference of the island of Manhattan in a world record time and in 1978, on her 30th birthday, swam the 102 miles (164km) from the Bahamas to Florida. This despite suffering abuse at the hands of both her stepfather and a swimming coach as an adolescent, and spending three months in hospital with a heart infection. When she retired from competitive swimming, she pursued a successful career that combined journalism, broadcasting and motivational speaking among other things. B

The shortlist for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award – the world’s richest and longest-running prize for sports writing – has been revealed following the deliberations of the judging panel, who have whittled down a longlist of 17 to a shortlist of seven. Six sports are represented on the list, the majority sharing a common theme in that they dig deep into the psyche of their subjects, showing how their strengths and weaknesses helped and hindered them in the pursuit of their dreams. This is demonstrated in two memoirs set against the backdrop of the sea - Barbarian Days, by journalist William Finnegan, and Find a Way, by swimmer Diana Nyad. Barbarian Days, surfing’s first appearance in the 'Bookie Prize' field and already a Pulitzer Prize-winner, tells the story of a restless young man whose sport both anchors him and takes him around the world as he becomes an adult. Diana Nyad’s memoir is a testimony to the indomitability of the human spirit: a wor

The sports book market has a Super Thursday of its own this week, with the memoirs of three Olympic superstars launching simultaneously on November 8, when autobiographies of Jessica Ennis, Bradley Wiggins and Lord Coe will be competing for the biggest display stands at bookstores up and down the land. Their appearance will sound the starting gun on the pre-Christmas sales rush if it is not already under way.  Shelves are groaning a little more every day now with the release of new titles. None more so, literally, than those stacked with the latest version of David Miller's mammoth Official History of the Olympic Games and the IOC, Athens to London, 1894-2012, published by Mainstream. This is the third - arguably the fourth - edition of the veteran journalist Miller's unrivaled tome, which first appeared in 2003 to mark the return of the Games to Athens in 2004, was updated ahead of the Beijing Olympics in 2007 and has been further revised to include London 2012. Publ

TODAY'S TOP TEN BEST-SELLING SPORTS BOOKS To buy any title, click on the picture or link 1 - Running with the Kenyans Author: Adharanand Finn Published by: Faber and Faber Ever since the Mexico Olympics of 1968, when the athletes of Kenya claimed an unprecedented nine medals, the sporting world has been eager to learn the secrets that seemed to set the runners of one African nation apart from the rest, and turned the likes of Kipchoge Keino and Naftali Temu into legends of the track. Adharanand Finn, a freelance writer and running enthusiast, moved his family to Iten, a small high-altitude town in the Rift Valley that has become a mecca for long-distance runners. Finn ran side by side with Olympic champions and barefoot schoolchildren. This beautifully written book reveals what he learned about Kenya’s runners and their country. 2 - Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice Author: Matthew Syed Published by: Fourth Estate Matthew Syed, T