What is about sport that so many of us love so much? Is it the allegiances, and the rivalries? The displays of extreme human athleticism, the fallen heroes, the underdogs come good? It's all this and more; between the triumphs and the tragedies, there is metaphor in sport for every aspect of life.
It's for this reason exactly that so many great books have been written about sport, from explosive memoirs to theoretical essays, love-letter novels to philosophical texts. So, without further ado, here is a selection of great books for the sports lover in your life.
When Eniola Aluko , the former England striker, called out what she saw as an endemic culture of racism in football in 2017, it ended her international career and launched a torrent of vitriol from the people she exposed. But she wasn't cowed by the abuse. This is one of the most exhilarating and moving memoirs of any footballer, male or female – not only an account of her extraordinary playing days, but of her struggle to embrace her duel identity as a British-Nigerian sporting icon, and how she stood up to racism when nobody else would.
Would you run seven ultra-marathons in seven days, for a friend? What about over 100 miles in 24 hours? Those are the lengths that former Leeds Rhinos player-turned-England defence coach Kevin Sinfield has gone to fundraising to fight motor neuron disease, the terminal illness that ended the career of his best friend and teammate Rob Burrows. In this extraordinary, bestselling new memoir from Sinfield, readers get closer to a hero both on and off the rugby pitch, one who captured the hearts of the nation – and an OBE in the Queen's Birthday honours – while raising over £7 million for MND. Written with humour and warmth, this is a perfect read to inspire you.
No writer has written about tennis with such passion and insight as David Foster Wallace . He had a supreme ability to impart the most complex and original ideas with such folksy and unpretentious vim, that you almost forget what he's saying has never been said before. And Federer, Both Flesh and Not is his masterpiece, one of the most penetrating and evocative lid-lifts on the game of tennis ever inked, with Roger Federer and his “great, liquid whip” forehand as his muse.
You don’t have to be a Liverpool fan for this to be a great read; Jurgen Klopp is one of the best managers in world football, a mix of Jose Mourinho’s showmanship and Pep Guardiola’s tactical acumen. In this biography of the charismatic German, now translated to English, author Elmar Neveling tells Klopp’s incredible tale, from taking Borussia Dortmund to the top of the Bundesliga table two years in a row, to winning the title with Liverpool for the very first time in the Premier League. This is the definitive, unputdownable story of a one-of-a-kind manager.
You'd struggle to find anyone with a cannier ability to find profundity in the simplicity of boxing as A. J. Liebling , pound-for-pound the greatest narrative boxing writer in history. Described by Sports Illustrated as “the best American sports book of all time”, Leibling takes us on a journey into the bruised heart of the golden age of boxing – from Sugar Ray Robinson's dramatic comeback to Rocky Marciano's rise to heavyweight glory – with this gripping collection of narrative journalism that reveals elegance and beauty in the most violent sport of all.
The poignant story of the youngest person to ever swim the English Channel, told from Tom Gregory ’s own perspective. In 1988, just four years after learning to swim, Gregory swam the 12-hour length of the channel, encouraged by his coach John Bullet. The extraordinary story, told here with child-like ebullience, is as much about fostered kinship as it is about human potential, and won the William Hill 2018 Sports Book of the Year as a result.
This October, boxer Nicola Adams will dance again. But not around a ring, like when she became the first woman to win an Olympic gold medal in 2012, but around a dancefloor in the first same-sex pairing on the BBC's Strictly Come Dancing . If that's all you know about Adams, then you really should read her autobiography – a viscerally inspiring account of all the training, the injuries, the bruising prejudice and, ultimately, the glory that – all in – moulded one of Britain's most trailblazing and beloved athletes.
In 2013, 19-year-old Lara Prior-Palmer became the first woman and youngest person ever to win the Mongol Derby, “the world’s longest, toughest horse race” – a 1,000-miles trek across the Mongolian steppe. Coming into the race wildly underprepared, she braved intense heat, fearsome storms, dehydration, hunger, illness and falls. The William Hill Prize shortlister is both a beguiling coming-of-age story and a story of underdog magic, resilience and naked ambition that The Daily Telegraph described as one of 2019's best memoirs: “a perfect prescription for anybody who thinks millennials are running low on raw grit and deep, drifting thought.”
Mind Game
Many have tried, but no book has climbed deeper into the mind of the modern professional golfer than this. In this groundbreaking, and at times moving, study of golf and its heroes, veteran sports writer Michael Calvin and ex-pro Thomas Bjorn , draw back the curtain on one of the world's most mentally demanding sports, from the principles and philosophies of some of the world's best players to the internal battles they so often face.
Football fiction is a hard thing to get right. The best is probably Nick Hornby 's Fever Pitch
This is the book that the novelist VS Naipaul called “one of the finest and most finished books to come out of the West Indies”. It's also one of the best books to come out of sport, and certainly the best on cricket. C L R James was a cricketer, a novelist, a historian and a world-class thinker. He is, you might say, where philosophy and cricket collide. And this beautiful, warm and witty memoir-cum-celebration of the game he devoted his life to not only embraces cricket as both a sport and an art form, but knocks the barriers of race, class and empire for six.
