The Sports Bookshelf

As we welcome 2013 and a whole new raft of sports literature, time to reflect on the best of 2012, or at least those that appealed most to The Sports Bookshelf. Not surprisingly, the short and longlists from the William Hill Sports Book of the Year awards are well represented, most prominently by the winner of that prize, the extraordinary exposé of chemical cheating that helped bring down one of sport's biggest names in the cyclist Lance Armstrong. In the words of the judges, The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France won the William Hill prize for self-confessed doper Tyler Hamilton because it 'fundamentally changed the sport it described' but it stands as a great read, too, irrespective of the impact of its content. Skilfully crafted by the journalist Daniel Coyle, Hamilton's account of his time alongside Armstrong in the US Postal Team has the style and suspense of an espionage novel as Hamilton, who was right at the heart of the most so

WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2012 The Secret Race , the jaw-dropping expose about the drug-taking, blood-doping, cheating and cover-ups that revealed so much of professional cycling's recent history to be a sham, had to win the William Hill Sports Book of the Year award for 2012, in the words of the judging panel, because it "fundamentally changed the sport being written about". It was to a large extent the evidence of former Olympic champion and leading Tour de France rider Tyler Hamilton to a grand jury after US federal prosecutors pursued a two-year investigation into allegations of doping against Lance Armstrong that led this year to the announcement by the United States Anti-Doping Agency that Armstrong should be stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and banned for life. That evidence is outlined in all its disturbing detail in The Secret Race , which Hamilton, who was Armstrong's teammate in the US Postal Team, had begun writing in collabo

Who wins the William Hill Sports Book of the Year for 2012 is entirely down to the panel of judges but if their assessment of the seven titles shortlisted is a reflection of sales figures then Tyler Hamilton's Tour de France exposé The Secret Race will take the prize. According to data compiled by Nielsen Bookscan , more than 10,500 copies of The Secret Race were sold in only six weeks following its UK publication in mid-September by Bantam Press. Most of these sales came before the United States Anti-Doping Agency effectively endorsed the accusations Hamilton makes in the book by branding seven-times Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong a "serial cheat" on the basis of testimony offered under oath by Hamilton and others. The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France, written with the help of former Armstrong biographer Daniel Coyle, came about after Hamilton, himself a self-confessed drugs cheat, decided he would come clean about cycling's

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