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Jo Pavey

The inspirational story of athlete Jo Pavey, the runner and mum who ran at a record-breaking fifth Olympic Games at Rio 2016. 
 
'Come-back races? I've had more than a few, the night of 10 May 2014 was the ultimate long shot. I was a forty-year-old mother of two who had given birth eight months before. I trained on a treadmill in a cupboard by the back door and I was wearing a running vest older than most of the girls I was competing against. Was I crazy?' 
 
Jo Pavey was forty years old when she won the 10,000m at the European Championships. It was the first gold medal of her career and, astonishingly, it came within months of having her second child. 
 
The media dubbed her ‘Supermum’, but Jo’s story is in many ways the same as every mother juggling the demands of working life with a family – the sleepless nights, the endless nappy changing, the fun, the laughter and the school-run chaos. The only difference is that Jo is a full-time athlete pushing a buggy on her training runs, clocking up miles on the treadmill in a cupboard while her daughter has her lunchtime nap, and hitting the track while her children picnic on the grass. 
 
Heartwarming and uplifting, This Mum Runs follows Jo’s roundabout journey to the top and all the lessons she's learnt along the way. It is the inspiring yet everyday story of a mum that runs and a runner that mums.

This Mum Runs

Laurent Fignon

'Ah, I remember you: you're the guy who lost the Tour de France by eight seconds!' 
'No monsieur, I'm the guy who won the Tour twice. 
 
The international bestselling autobiography of the legendary French cyclist Laurent Fignon 
 
 Two-time winner of the Tour de France in the early eighties, Laurent Fignon became the star for a new generation. In the 1989 tour, he lost out to his American arch-rival, Greg LeMond, by an agonising eight seconds. 
 
 In this revealing account, the former champion spares nobody, not even himself, and pulls back the curtain on what really went on behind the scenes of this epic sport - the friendships, the rivalries, the betrayals, the parties, the girls and, of course, the performance-enhancing drugs. Fignon's story bestrides a golden age in cycling: a time when the headlines spoke of heroes, not doping, and a time when cyclists were afraid of nothing. 
 
‘Sports book of the year: He's ruthlessly honest, about himself and about cycling, and he provides a gripping insight into an unrelenting hard world’ Independent

We Were Young and Carefree

The Autobiography of Laurent Fignon

Aidan Smith

July 30, 1966. Bobby Moore is lifting the Jules Rimet trophy, Denis Law is playing golf, and a young boy in Edinburgh is being taught the most important lesson of his life: no matter who England are playing, you support the other lot. If the opposition have a dodgy human rights record, or are cruel to wasps, or can't even be located on a large-format map - too bad. You support the other lot. 
 
Forty years on, and Aidan Smith has done a pretty good job of supporting the other lot. But these days he should be old enough, and ugly enough, to be above petty, playground-formed sporting squabbles. Besides, the World Cup is coming, Scotland haven't made it, and he's about to marry an Englishwoman. Maybe it's a sign. But can a Scotsman ever cheer for 'Ingerland'? 
 
In Union Jock, Aidan Smith investigates the age-old England-Scotland emnity, both on and off the football field. The Scots may have suffered at the hands of the Auld Enemy for centuries - Braveheart, Culloden, Jimmy Hill calling David Narey's goal a "toe-poke" (against Brazil in the 1982 World Cup, top right-hand corner) - but now they're a nation on the rise, with a spanking new parliament to prove it. But what do the fans, players, politicians, and Sassenach invaders really think about their English neighbours? Would supporting England be a denial of their Scottishness? 
 
Join Aidan Smith on his quest to put an end to centuries of not-so-friendly rivalry. That's if the Scots don't get him first. Or the English.

Union Jock

Sleeping with the Auld Enemy

Donegan Lawrence

It is sport's greatest event. The Ryder Cup - Europe versus the USA, three days of golfing brilliance at the Belfry featuring the best players in the world and the loudest, most partisan fans this side of an Old Firm derby. Lawrence Donegan - author, musician, European PGA Tour caddy (retired) - is determined play his patriotic part. 
 
Too mean to buy a ticket, and cruelly denied a place on the European team by a selection process emphasising the ability to play golf, Donegan tries - and fails - to become Lee Westwood's bagman at the Belfry. Then he lands the perfect job - Ryder Cup marshal. Free clothes, free food, his very own 'Quiet Please' paddle ... and look at that uninterrupted view! 
 
This is a Ryder Cup story with a twist, a golf fanatic's story from the back of the tee by Lawrence Donegan, author of the bestselling Four-iron in the Soul.

Quiet Please

Tim Moore

A 3,162 km race. A 48-year-old man. A 100-year-old bike. Made mostly of wood. That he built himself. 
 
Tim Moore sets off to recreate the most appalling bike race of all time. The notorious 1914 Giro d'Italia was an ordeal of 400-kilometre stages, cataclysmic night storms and relentless sabotage - all on a diet of raw eggs and red wine. Of the 81 who rolled out of Milan, only eight made it back. 
 
Committed to total authenticity, Tim acquires the ruined husk of a gearless, wooden-wheeled 1914 road bike with wine corks for brakes, some maps and an alarming period outfit topped off with a pair of blue-lensed welding goggles. 
 
From the Alps to the Adriatic the pair relive the bike race in all its misery and glory, on an adventure that is by turns bold, beautiful and recklessly incompetent.

Gironimo!

Riding the Very Terrible 1914 Tour of Italy

Stefan Fatsis

For many, Scrabble is merely a board game. For others it is an intellectual pilgrimage. In this book, Stefan Fatsis, journalist and self-confessed word freak, goes in search of the people for whom Scrabble is life and affords us a glimpse into the extraordinary world of the brilliant geeks and misfit savants who populate the highest ranks of the game. 
 
Playing competitively in tournaments across the world, Fatsis chronicles the story of how Scrabble has grown from a diversion invented by an unemployed architect during The Great Depression into the hugely successful, challenging and beloved game of today.

Word Freak

A Journey Into the Eccentric World of the Most Obsessive Board Game Ever Invented

Jeremy Whittle

Even the biggest cycling fan can one day wake up to find that he has lost his faith 
 
 Bad Blood is the story of Jeremy Whittle's journey from unquestioning fan to Tour de France insider and confirmed sceptic. It's about broken friendships and a sport divided; about having to choose sides in the war against doping; about how galloping greed and corporate opportunism have led the Tour de France to the brink of destruction. 
 
Part personal memoir, part devastating exposé of a sport torn apart by drugs and scandal, Bad Blood is a love letter to one man's past, and a warning to cycling's future. 
 
‘Whatever you think about doping, you must read this book ... Well-balanced, considered, compelling’ Rouleur 
 
Shortlisted for the 2008 William Hill Sports Book of the Year

Bad Blood

The Secret Life of the Tour de France

Raphael Honigstein

‘Football is a simple game; 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans always win’ Gary Lineker 
 
 Packed with exclusive interviews with key protagonists, Raphael Honigstein’s book lifts the lid on the secrets of German football’s success. 
 
13th July 2014, World Cup Final, the last ten minutes of extra time. Germany forward Mario Götze, receiving a floated pass from his international teammate André Schürrle, jumps slightly to meet the ball and cushion it with his chest. Landing on his left foot, he takes a step with his right, swivels, and in one fluid motion, without the ball touching the ground, volleys it past the onrushing Argentine goalkeeper into the far corner of the net. The goal wins Germany the World Cup for the first time in almost twenty-five years. 
 
 In Das Reboot, journalist and television pundit Raphael Honigstein charts the return of German football - how did German football transform itself from its efficient, but unappealing and defensively minded traditions to the free-flowing, attacking football that was on display during the last World Cup? The answer takes him from California to Stuttgart, from Munich to the Maracaná, via Dortmund and Durban. 
 
‘German football boasts not only the World Cup, but superb writers…A fine account of how Germany reclaimed hegemony’ Guardian

Das Reboot

How German Football Reinvented Itself and Conquered the World

Lawrence Booth

Cricket, Lovely Cricket is a journey around the perennially curious world of cricket, leaving no metaphorical leg-break unturned and peering at the game from every conceivable angle. Here, Lawrence Booth, who had little option but to turn a youthful obsession with the game into a means of paying the mortgage, seeks to consider the questions that crop up on a daily basis but rarely receive a satisfactory answer. What are the players really like? What is the secret of sledging? Why get so worked up about the Ashes? Why all the clichés? And how did India take over the world? 
 
Taking the reader to the heart of a game that seems more capable than any other of bewitching its followers, this is a captivating look at the way cricket has become what it is today - and what, given a fair wind, it might be like in the future.

Cricket, Lovely Cricket?

An Addict's Guide to the World's Most Exasperating Game

Marc 'Elvis' Priestley

In the high-octane atmosphere of the Formula One pit lane, the spotlight is most often on the superstar drivers. And yet, without the technical knowledge, competitive determination and outright obsession from his garage of mechanics, no driver could possibly hope to claim a spot on the podium. These are the guys who make every World Champion, and any mistakes can have critical consequences. 
 
That's not to say the F1 crew is just a group of highly skilled technical engineers, tweaking machinery in wind tunnels and crunching data through high-spec computers. These boys can seriously let their hair down. Whether it be parties on luxury yachts in Monaco or elaborate photo opportunities in gravity-defying aeroplanes, this is a world which thrills on and off the track. 
 
Join McLaren's former number-one mechanic, Marc 'Elvis' Priestley as he tours the world, revealing some of Formula One's most outrageous secrets and the fiercest rivalries, all fuelled by the determination to win. 
 
This is Formula One as you've never seen it before.

The Mechanic

The Secret World of the F1 Pitlane

George Plimpton

From the author of Paper Lion 
 
It began as a fun filled stunt and came to a deeply hellish, nearly humiliating end. George Plimpton had the chance to answer every baseball fan’s question: could I strike out a major league star? Out of My League chronicles what happened next as his inspired idea – to get on the mound and pitch a few innings to the All-Stars of the American and National Leagues – got seriously out of hand. 
 
The original foray into participatory journalism that started it all, Out of my League announced George Plimpton as a giant of sports journalism, able to penetrate deep into the very spirit of sport, with his characteristic wit, charm and grace.

Out of my League

An Amateur's Ordeal in Professional Baseball

'Bill Bryson on two wheels' Independent 
 
Scaling a new peak of rash over-ambition, Tim Moore tackles the 9,000km route of the old Iron Curtain on a tiny-wheeled, two-geared East German shopping bike. 
 
Asking for trouble and getting it, he sets off at the Arctic winter's brutal height, bullying his plucky MIFA 900 through the endless and massively sub-zero desolation of snowbound Finland. 
 
Haunted throughout the journey by the border detritus of watchtowers and rusted razor wire, Moore reflects on the curdling of the Communist dream, and the memories of a Cold War generation reared on the fear of apocalypse - at a time of ratcheting East-West tension. 
 
After three months, 20 countries and a 58-degree jaunt up the centigrade scale, man and bike finally wobble up to a Black Sea beach in Bulgaria, older and wiser, but mainly older.

The Cyclist Who Went Out in the Cold

Adventures Along the Iron Curtain Trail

Henrik Brandão Jönsson

In Brazil nothing is more important than football. 
 
If England is the birthplace of football then Brazil – the five-time World Cup winners and home of Pelé, Romário, Ronaldo, Neymar and the rest – is the heart and soul of the game. 
 
Jogo Bonito – meaning ‘the beautiful game’ – takes you on a journey through the Wild West of Brazilian football. On the way we meet an eclectic cast of characters, such as Mario Zagallo, the four-time World Cup winner; the long, lost son of Garrincha; Brazil’s best-loved bad boy player turned politician, Romário; and many more. We take a trip to an away game with the country’s most violent hooligans, visit the home of the world’s largest amateur football tournament and enjoy a boozy dinner with South America’s most famous commentator – he of ‘goooooooool’ fame. 
 
Jogo Bonito is a history, a travelogue and a gonzo-style report into a country which has the sixth biggest economy in the world and yet questionable records on education, healthcare and corruption. The result is a book that not only tells the story of Brazilian football, but also of today’s Brazil.

Jogo Bonito

Pele, Neymar and Brazil’s Beautiful Game

Kevin Mitchell

25th February 1995 
The Dark Destroyer vs the G-Man 
Nigel Benn and Gerald McClennan 
 
Two men with a reputation to defend - a reputation for brutal, unforgiving combat both in the ring and outside it. Ostensibly, they were fighting for a world title and a lot of money, the stuff of professional boxing. But this fight was different. It was a rare collision of wills, and few present had seen anything like it. 
 
After ten of the most gruelling and vicious rounds that the sport of boxing has ever witnessed McClellan finally was defeated. He knelt in his corner on one knee in submission. And he never got up. 
 
This is the story of what brought these two men together on the night of 25th February 1995 and how that night changed them forever. It's a story too about those associated with the promotion of public fist-fighting, who bend morality to suit their needs. It's a story that attempts to unravel the glamour of violence. 
 
William Hill Sports Book of the Year Finalist.

War, Baby

The Glamour of Violence

Bradley Wiggins

On 22 July 2012 Bradley Wiggins made history as the first British cyclist to win the Tour de France. Ten days later at the London Olympic Games he won gold in the time trial to become his country’s most decorated Olympian. In an instant ‘Wiggo’, the kid from Kilburn, was a national hero. 
 
Outspoken, honest, intelligent and fearless, Wiggins has been hailed as the people’s champion. From his lowest ebb following a catastrophic attempt to conquer the 2012 Tour and the loss of his granddad who had raised him as a boy, My Time tells the story of his remarkable journey to win the world's toughest race. 
 
INCLUDES A BRAND NEW CHAPTER 
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BRITISH SPORTS BOOK AWARD FOR BEST AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Bradley Wiggins - My Time

An Autobiography

Simon Jordan

The ultimate gift for every football fan. Ever dreamed of owning your boyhood football club? Be careful what you wish for... 
 
Simon Jordan grew up a stone's throw from Crystal Palace Football Club. As a boy he used to break into the Palace ground for a kick-about on the hallowed turf. On leaving school he entered the mobile phone business. By the age of thirty-two, he'd built a company from nothing, sold it for £75 million and bought his childhood club. By the age of forty-two Palace was in administration and Jordan had lost nigh on everything. 
 
Be Careful What You Wish For lifts the lid on the owner's story and reveals for the first time how the national game really works. Jordan spares no one, least of all himself, as he takes us inside a world where hopes and aspirations sit alongside greed, self-interest, overpriced players, dodgy transfers and top-level incompetence. He doesn't hold back. 
 
Breathtakingly honest, highly controversial, humorous and full of jaw-dropping anecdotes, this is far more than a football book. It is a social commentary on the culture of great wealth and ambition; a Shakespearean tragedy that exposes the dark side of chasing a dream. 
 
‘If you are a football fan and have not read this book, you are missing out’ John Inverdale 
 
‘One hell of a read’ Sport Magazine 
 
'One of the best football books you will ever read' Birmingham Post

Be Careful What You Wish For

Anna Krien

*Winner of the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award 2014* 
 
What does a sportsman do to cut loose? At night, some play what they think of as pranks, or games. Night games with women. In the closely-knit world of top-level sport, what happens when the bonds that join teammates on the pitch twist into something darker after the final whistle? 
 
Night Games follows the rape trial of a young footballer. It is both a real-life courtroom drama and an exemplary piece of investigative journalism. Fearlessly and without prejudice, Anna Krien shines a light into the darkest recesses of sports culture.

Night Games

A Journey to the Dark Side of Sport

A.L. Kennedy

Bullfighting - the ultimate spectator sport. 
 
Acclaimed novelist A. L. Kennedy unpeels the layers and explains the mechanics before dissecting them with surgical precision. Beyond the theatre, the costume and the well-worn plot she focuses on the fact that a man faces his death while a crowd looks on. The result is a startling confrontation with her own, and mankind's, mortality.

On Bullfighting

William Skidelsky

A story of tennis, obsession and Roger Federer for tennis fans and the general reader alike. 
 
For much of the past decade, William Skidelsky has not been able to stop thinking about Roger Federer, the greatest and most graceful tennis player of all time. A devotion has been all-consuming. 
 
 
In Federer and Me, Skidelsky asks what it is about the Swiss star that transfixes him, and countless others. He dissects the wonders of his forehand, reflects on his rivalry with Nadal, revels in his victories and relives his most crushing defeats. 
 
 
But this is more than just a book about Federer. In charting his obsession, Skidelsky explores the evolution of modern tennis, the role of beauty in sport and the psychology of fandom, weaving his own past into the story. 
 
 
Thought-provoking and beautifully written, Federer and Me is a frank, funny and touching account of one fan's life. 
 
‘A splendid deconstruction of Federer’s technique’ Sunday Times

Federer and Me

A Story of Obsession

Professional cycling is a rich, dynamic and often controversial sport that lends itself to great writing. Some of the most famous and illustrious races were founded by newspapermen and The Cycling Anthology continues this tradition by bringing together the best in the business. 
 
Volume Five is an eclectic mix of stories old and new: 
 
As World War One is commemorated acros the globe, Brendan Gallagher looks at cycling's war heroes and the role the bicycle played in WWI. 
 
Jeremy Whittle goes in search of panache - why you don't always have to be a winner to be a winner in the public's eyes. 
 
Francois Thomazeau examines how the Tour de France became the international event it is today. 
 
The 2014 Tour de France is relived in the form of poetry, by Ellis Bacon. 
 
Lionel Birnie tells the story behind the Linda McCartney cycling team, the great British team that could have been. 
 
Joey McLoughlin was a shining star of the British cycling scene in the 1980s and '90s - Andy McGrath finds out what happened to him. 
 
Edward Pickering returns to one of cycling's great Pyrenean climbs - Superbagneres. 
 
As Matt Beaudin finds out, the Tour de France is a treat for the senses - albeit a loud one. 
 
Matt McGeehan sends a postcard from the 2014 World Track Championships in Colombia. 
 
And Daniel Friebe introduces us to Jean Francois Naquet-Radiguet: Tour de France pioneer.

The Cycling Anthology

Volume Five (5/5)

Paul Kimmage

An eye-opening expose of and a heart-breaking lament for professional cycling 
 
Paul Kimmage's boyhood dreams were of cycling glory: wearing the yellow jersey, cycling the Tour de France, becoming a national hero. He knew it wouldn't come easy, but he was prepared to put in the graft. The dedication paid off – he finished sixth in the World Championships as an amateur and in 1986, he turned professional. 
 
He soon discovered it wasn't about courage, training hours or how much you wanted to win. It was about gruelling defeats, total exhaustion, and drugs - drugs that would allow you to finish the race and start another day. 
 
 Kimmage ultimately left the sport to write this book – profoundly honest and ground-breaking, Rough Ride broke the silence surrounding the issue of drugs in sport, and documents one man’s love for, and struggle with, the complex world of professional cycling. 
 
 ‘A must read for any cyclist’ Cyclist 
WINNER OF WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR

Rough Ride

Behind the Wheel with a Pro Cyclist

From the author of Paper Lion 
 
Stepping into the ring against light-heavyweight champion Archie Moore, George Plimpton pauses to wonder what ever induced him to become a participatory journalist. Bloodied but unbowed, he holds his own in the bout – and brings back this timeless book on boxing and its devotees, among them Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, Ernest Hemingway, and Norman Mailer. 
 
 
Shadow Box is one of Plimpton’s most engaging portraits of professional sport seen through the eyes of an inquisitive and astute hopeful. From the gym, the locker room, the ringside, and even in the harsh glare of the ring itself, Plimpton documents what it truly means to be a boxer in some of the finest writing of his career.

Shadow Box

An Amateur in the Ring

Richard Williams

For tens of millions of people around the world, a single name evokes the world of speed - Enzo Ferrari. Today's Formula One would be unthinkable without the presence of the Ferrari cars on the grid. Win or lose, Ferrari attract more fans than all the other teams combined. And the cars unique appeal - their mystique, their myth - has its origins in the story of one man with a dictator's will and the cunning of a Machiavelli. 
 
Going back to the origins of "The Old Man", tracing his remarkable rise to prominence, and using sources which have hitherto remained silent, Richard Williams tells the story of a man who was one of the key figures of sport in the twentieth century, and whose influence over his sport is undiminished today, more than a decade after his death.

Enzo Ferrari

A Life

Tim Adams

Read a fan's eye view of one of tennis's most notorious stars, and an exploration into the idea of sporting obsession. 
 
The perfect nostalgic treat for any Wimbledon fan. 
 
The greatest sports stars characterise their times. They also help to tell us who we are. John McEnroe, at his best and worst, encapsulated the story of the eighties. His improvised quest for tennis perfection, and his inability to find a way to grow up, dramatised the volatile self-absorption of a generation. His matches were open therapy sessions, and they allowed us all to be armchair shrinks. 
 
 Tim Adams sets out to explore what it might have meant to be John McEnroe during those times, and in his subsequent lives, and to define exactly what it is we want from our sporting heroes: how we require them to play out our own dramas; how the best of them provide an intensity that we can measure our own lives by. Talking to McEnroe, his friends and rivals, and drawing on a range of reference, he presents a book that is both a fan's-eye portrait of the most vivid player ever to pick up a racket, and an original study of the idea of sporting obsession.

On Being John McEnroe

Updated with a new chapter on Klopp's emotional final season at Liverpool 
 
Jürgen Klopp was confirmed as manager of Liverpool FC in October 2015 to a rapturous reception. His super-sized personality and all-or-nothing style of football and management made him the perfect choice to pump up the volume at Anfield and lift Liverpool out of a slump. 
 
Fans and club officials were delighted to get the coach they'd long admired from afar and eager to see the impact he would have on the club and the Premier League. 
 
Klopp is the manager to turn players into winners. He's authentic, approachable and funny, charming media and fans alike. He's also merciless and exceptionally driven, his quick temper bubbling away barely under the surface. Klopp's pitch-side passion has enthralled fans, leading to 2019's triumphant Champions League win and culminating in 2020 Premier League victory 
 
With exclusive access to Klopp's friends, family, colleagues and players, Raphael Honigstein goes behind-the-scenes at Liverpool to tell the definitive story of Klopp's career and how he brought Liverpool to victory.

Klopp: Bring the Noise

Bobby Charlton

Wembley, 1966. England wins the World Cup to roars of a euphoric home crowd. 
 
Sir Bobby Charlton, England&rsquo;s greatest ever player, was there on the pitch. In 1966, he looks back on the most glorious moment of his life and England's greatest sporting achievement. 
 
He takes us through the build-up to the tournament and to the final itself - what he saw, what he heard, what he felt. He tells us what it was like to be part of Sir Alf Ramsey&rsquo;s team, his memories of his teammates, the matches, the atmosphere; the emotion of being carried on the wave of a nation&rsquo;s euphoria and how it felt to go toe-to-toe with some of the foremost footballers to ever play the game. 
 
His life was forever defined by a single moment: one day when a man stood side-by-side with his best friends, united in a single aim in front of a watching nation. This is his story. 
 
&lsquo;It&rsquo;s gripping stuff&hellip; This is a mellow book, the product of many years&rsquo; contemplation, and emotional in a way that may surprise you&hellip;He has a wonderful story to tell&rsquo; Daily Mail

1966

My World Cup Story

Wembley, 1966. 1-5, Munich, 2001. Mexico '72 and Italy '90. 
 
Bobby Moore and Franz Beckenbauer, Paul Gascoigne and Jürgen Klinsmann. 
Forty years of hurt, tabloid rabble-rousing and 'Don't mention the war'. 
 
But what do the Germans really think of us? Do they even care? 
 
In Englischer Fussball, respected journalist Raphael Honigstein gives us a German's-eye view of our national game. 
 
Starting with the origin of the modern game in the late nineteenth century, Honigstein traces the development of English football from its public-school origins to the glory years of Ramsey and beyond. Is English football really about manliness, hard work, fair play and a never-say-die attitude? Why is there so little room in our game for individual brilliance? And just why are we so hung up on beating the Germans? 
 
Provocative, incisive and ever topical, Englischer Fussball is a book that explores the difference between how we see ourselves and how the rest of the world sees us. From hooligans to sex scandals, Wayne Rooney to Stanley Matthews, it asks what football can teach us about the English national character. 
 
'Honigstein offers a perspective on England's football and its culture that is stimulating and rather fascinating' Observer

Englischer Fussball

A German's View of Our Beautiful Game

Lance Armstrong

It’s Not About the Bike was first published in 2000. Detailing Lance Armstrong’s battle with life-threatening testicular cancer and his return to professional cycling, it became a huge bestseller, appealing to fans of cycling as well as cancer survivors inspired by his full and dramatic recovery. 
 
 Dogged by suspicion and allegations of doping throughout his career, in January 2013 in an interview with Oprah Winfrey, Lance Armstrong admitted to having taken performance enhancing drugs during all seven of the Tours de France in which he competed. The UCI, the world governing body for cycling, stripped him of his titles.

It's Not About The Bike

My Journey Back to Life

Thomas 'amarillo Slim' Preston

Thomas Austin Preston. Six foot four, skinny as a rake. He played poker with two US presidents - and drug lord Pablo Escobar; made a million dollars by the age of nineteen; and drove a golf ball a mile. Thomas Austin Preston - who was he? The world knows him better as the greatest gambler of all time: Amarillo Slim. 
 
Raised in Amarillo, Texas, Amarillo Slim lived the most daring, exciting and profitable life of any man of his time. He ran the biggest black-market operation in Europe, won the World Series of poker in 1972, was celebrated in songs and movies, and his picture hangs in City Hall, Las Vegas. He was a member of four Halls of Fame - and a legend in his lifetime. 
 
Because, most of all, Slim was a man who loved to gamble. He'd bet on anything - if the price was right. He rode a camel through the fanciest casino in Marrakesh and beat Evel Knievel at golf (with a hammer), but that was just the small stuff. In his finest hour, he took on the Chinese table tennis champion at his own game. Slim, of course, got to choose the bat. The choice? Coke bottles. The result? 21 - 0. Slim was a very happy man. 
 
A sensationally entertaining autobiography, this is the story of his extraordinary life - and the secrets of his even more extraordinary success. From Vegas to Colombia, Texas to London, welcome to the wonderful world of Amarillo Slim.

Amarillo Slim In A World Full Of Fat People

The Memoirs of the Greatest Gambler Who Ever Lived

Severiano Ballesteros

Now the subject of a major film. 
 
Once or twice a generation, an athlete transcends his sport - at last, here's Seve Ballesteros in his own words 
 
There are golfers, and there are golfers. And then there's Seve. 
 
Severiano Ballesteros was perhaps the most naturally gifted golfer ever to have walked a fairway. From the moment his brother Manuel gave him his first club he was unstoppable. A few weeks before his seventeenth birthday he turned pro. Five years later he won the Open. A genius had arrived. 
 
For the best part of two decades Seve dominated the golfing landscape. He played shots others could only dream of. With 94 wins as a professional (including 5 majors) he was a phenomenon, an athlete who transcended his sport. 
 
But Seve stood for more than simple excellence. Almost single-handedly, Seve gave European golf credibility; almost single-handedly, he made the Ryder Cup one of the greatest contests in world sport. And when, as captain, he finally lifted the trophy on home soil in 1997, a whole continent rejoiced. His pride and passion have inspired millions, and we have taken him to our hearts. 
 
Here, for the first time, Seve tells his own story. From his humble beginnings right up to the present day, here at last is the man behind the magic in his own words. Seve is utterly entertaining, blazingly charismatic and unique. 
 
Severiano "Seve" Ballesteros Sota was a Spanish professional golfer and a leading sports figure. He won more than 90 international tournaments in an illustrious career. He first caught the attention of the sporting world in 1976, when at the age of 19 he finished second at The Open. He played a leading role in the re-emergence of European golf, helping the European Ryder Cup team to five wins both as a player and captain. He won the World Match Play Championship a record-tying five times. He is generally regarded as the greatest Continental European golfer of all time and won a record 50 times on the European Tour. 
Ballesteros died of brain cancer on 7 May 2011, aged 54.

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