The Sports Bookshelf

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

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

When Duncan Hamilton won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year award for the first time in 2007 the first hand he shook was that of Bobby Charlton, whose autograph he had once queued for in vain as a small boy growing up in Newcastle. It was a moment that Hamilton felt was 'scarcely credible' . Charlton had been a contender for the award himself for My Manchester United Years , the first volume of his autobiography, brilliantly crafted by the veteran sportswriter Jim Lawton, but it had been beaten by Hamilton's book Provided You Don't Kiss Me, an entertaining, perceptive and well-received account of the time he had spent working with Brian Clough as a local newspaper reporter during the glory years of Nottingham Forest. Hamilton recalls the moment in The Footballer Who Could Fly (Century), for which Hamilton has been longlisted for the 2012 William Hill award.  The Footballer Who Could Fly is on one level a journey through football in England from the 1940s

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

Today has been the publishing world's so-called Super Thursday, the October date that signals the start of the Christmas sales push. Among 97 new titles to hit the shelves, the crop of new sports books includes offerings from Stuart Broad and Gary Lineker -- and two books that will hope to benefit from the wave of popularity that has made Bradley Wiggins into a strong contender to be named BBC Sports Personality of the Year. We will not know the thoughts of the Tour de France winner and Olympic champion himself until November 8 -- publication date for Yellow Jersey's new Wiggins autobiography, My Time -- but in the meantime, two titles celebrating the feats of sport's most famous mod revivalist are released today. Bradley Wiggins: The Story of Britain's Greatest Ever Cyclist , by Press Association journalist Matt McGeehan is published by Carlton Books .  The 128-page biography looks at how the Wiggins 2012 success story has been more than a decade in the making,

BIOGRAPHIES OF VICTORIA PENDLETON, JONNY WILKINSON, RICHARD HUGHES, CHRISSIE WELLINGTON, SIMON JORDAN AND JAMES WILLSTROP ON 2012 WILLIAM HILL LONGLIST Sportswriters Duncan Hamilton and Donald McRae are pitted head to head in a bid to make history by becoming the first to win the prestigious William Hill Sports Book of the Year for a third time.  Both have made the longlist - just announced - for the 2012 award and a £24,000 cash prize.   McRae, who won in 1996 with Dark Trade , his exploration of the shadier sides of professional boxing, and again in 2002 for In Black and White , his joint biography of iconic black athletes Joe Louis and Jesse Owens, is in the running as co-author of British Olympic cycling champion Victoria Pendleton's autobiography Between The Lines.   Hamilton, winner of the award in 2007 with Provided You Don't Kiss Me, his account of his day-to-day dealings with Brian Clough as a local newspaper reporter, and again two years later with his biog

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