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Books > Language & Literature > Biography & autobiography > Sport
'People think they know him but unless you read this book you will
never know the REAL Alun Wyn Jones' - Warren Gatland 'One of the
greatest, and seemingly indestructible, players in history' - A
Daily Mail Book of the Year Belonging is the story about how the
boy from Mumbles became the most capped rugby union player of all
time. It is the story of what it takes to become a man who is seen
by many as one of the greatest ever Welsh players. What it takes to
go from sitting cross-legged on the hall floor at school watching
the 1997 Lions tour of South Africa, to being named the 2021 Lions
captain. But is it also about perthyn - belonging: playing for
Wales, working his way through the age grades and club rugby and
his regional side. How to earn the right to be there, and what it
feels like to make the sacrifices along the way. Feeling the
connection to players who have come before, and feeling the ties to
the millions in front rooms and pubs across the country, coast to
coast. Knowing that deep down you want to belong, as everyone does.
From playing on the rain-swept pitches of Swansea to making his
test debut against Argentina in Patagonia in 2006; from touring
with the Lions in 2009, 2013, 2017 and 2021 to dealing with loss
and creating a family - Belonging is the autobiography of one of
the most compelling figures in world rugby. Told with
characteristic honesty, this is his unique personal story of what
it takes and what it means to play for your country: what it means
to belong.
The phenomenal international number one bestseller with exclusive interviews with Richie McCaw, Steve Hansen, Beauden Barrett and Dan Carter, The Jersey is the definitive story behind the greatest sports team on the planet.
With a better winning record than any other sports team in history, they stand head and shoulders above their nearest rugby rivals. How did a country of just 4.8 million people conquer the world?
Peter Bills, who has reported on international rugby for more than forty years, was given exclusive access to all the key figures in New Zealand rugby as he set out to understand the secrets behind the All Blacks success. Peter talked at length with ninety people, both in New Zealand and around the world, with intimate knowledge of what makes the All Blacks tick.
The Jersey goes to the heart of the All Blacks success. It is also an epic story of not just a rugby team but a nation, whose identities are inextricably linked.
DescriptionA unique combination of history, biography,
bibliography, and statistics, the widely acclaimed first edition of
"Outstanding Women Athletes" has now been updated to reflect the
many significant changes that have taken place in women's sports in
America in recent years. Now added are the biographies of 26 sports
figures who have recently emerged as role models in traditional
women's sports such as tennis and figure skating as well as in
sports that historically excluded women such as mountain climbing,
bullfighting, and boxing. Also new is a chapter profiling 10
women's championship teams, including each organization's history,
brief biographies of 200 selected team members, and major team
achievements.
'Raw. Vulnerable. Open. Truthful . . . This is a book that will
open up the floor for even more honest conversations about the side
of yoga we don't often see.' - Angie Tiwari @tiwariyoga How did an
ancient spiritual practice become the preserve of the privileged?
Nadia Gilani has been practising yoga for twenty-five years. She
has also worked as a yoga teacher. Yoga has saved her life and seen
her through many highs and lows; it has been a faith, a discipline,
and a friend, and she believes wholeheartedly in its radical
potential. However, over her years in the wellness industry, Nadia
has noticed not only yoga's rising popularity, but also how its
modern incarnation no longer serves people of colour, working class
people, or many other groups who originally pioneered its creation.
Combining her own memories of how the practice has helped her with
an account of its history and transformation in the modern west,
Nadia creates a love letter to yoga and a passionate critique of
the billion-dollar industry whose cost and inaccessibility has shut
out many of those it should be helping. By turns poignant, funny,
and shocking, The Yoga Manifesto excavates where the industry has
gone wrong, and what can be done to save the practice from its own
success.
'One of the greatest mountaineering survival stories never told.' -
The Sunday Times Some mountains are high; some mountains are hard.
Few are both. On the afternoon of 13 July 1977, having become the
first climbers to reach the summit of the Ogre, Doug Scott and
Chris Bonington began their long descent. In the minutes that
followed, any feeling of success from their achievement would be
overwhelmed by the start of a desperate fight for survival. And
things would only get worse. Rising to over 7,000 metres in the
centre of the Karakoram, the Ogre - Baintha Brakk - is notorious in
mountaineering circles as one of the most difficult mountains to
climb. First summited by Scott and Bonington in 1977 - on
expedition with Paul 'Tut' Braithwaite, Nick Estcourt, Clive
Rowland and Mo Anthoine - it waited almost twenty-four years for a
second ascent, and a further eleven years for a third. The Ogre, by
legendary mountaineer Doug Scott, is a two-part biography of this
enigmatic peak: in the first part, Scott has painstakingly
researched the geography and history of the mountain; part two is
the long overdue and very personal account of his and Bonington's
first ascent and their dramatic week-long descent on which Scott
suffered two broken legs and Bonington smashed ribs. Using newly
discovered diaries, letters and audio tapes, it tells of the heroic
and selfless roles played by Clive Rowland and Mo Anthoine. When
the desperate climbers finally made it back to base camp, they were
to find it abandoned - and themselves still a long way from safety.
The Ogre is undoubtedly one of the greatest adventure stories of
all time.
Arthur Wharton was the world's first black professional footballer
and 100 yards world record holder, and was probably the first
African to play professional cricket in the Yorkshire and
Lancashire leagues. His achievements were accomplished against the
backdrop of Africa's forced colonization by European regimes. But
while Arthur was beating the best on the tracks and fields of
Britain, the peoples of the continent of his birth were being
recast as lesser human beings. The tall Ghanaian was an extreme
irritation to many white supremacists because his education and
sporting triumphs refuted their theories. In the late Victorian
era, when Britain's economic and political power reached its zenith
and when the dominant ideas of the age labelled all blacks as
inferior, it was simply not expedient to proclaim the exploits of
an African sportsman. This shaped the way Wharton was forgotten.
Cricket fans everywhere will know of Len Hutton [1916-90] who as an
opening batsman, enjoyed a stellar career with Yorkshire and
England before and after the Second World War. Born into a family
of cricketers in Fulneck, near Bradford, Hutton played the game as
a schoolboy and joined Pudsey St Lawrence CC as a junior member,
aged 12. He soon became established at the club and by the time he
reached his 16th birthday, he was a regular first team player. As
Hutton's reputation grew he was introduced into County cricket with
Yorkshire where he began quietly in the second team. His early
experiences added to coaching from Yorkshire's staff brought
Hutton, aged 20, into Yorkshire's first team as the County's
opening batsman. Never flamboyant but always defensively sound,
Hutton was one of the best batsmen in the world and in 1938 at the
Oval, showed his brilliance in the last Test of an Ashes series.
His score of 364 was a monumental achievement and remained the
highest Test innings for twenty years. When serving in the Army in
the Second World War, Hutton fractured his left arm in an accident
in a gymnasium. The injury never healed properly and despite
several operations, the arm settled at about two inches shorter
than his right arm. Despite the injury Hutton returned to First
Class cricket where his Test and County career culminated in his
appointment as captain of England, the first modern professional
cricketer to achieve that honour. After victory in the Ashes series
of 1953, Hutton took a young party to Australia to defend them and,
with the help of the devastating pace attack of Tyson and Statham,
emerged victorious. Hutton retired in 1956 and was knighted in the
same year. This excellent biography was written with the full
cooperation of the subject and is now reissued with more
illustrations, to commemorate the centenary of Len Hutton's birth.
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Tiger Woods
(Paperback)
Jeff Benedict, Armen Keteyian
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During the 1940s and 50s, the author, a country boy, simply wanted
to go fishing. This is how he succeeded, despite opposition, and
experienced a glorious boyhood.
When barefoot running guru Christopher McDougall takes in a
neglected donkey, his aim is to get Sherman back to reasonable
health. But Sherman is ill-tempered, obstinate and uncooperative -
and it's clear his poor treatment has made him deeply fearful of
humans. Christopher knows that donkeys need a purpose - they are
working, pack animals - and so when he learns of the sport of Burro
Racing or running with donkeys, he sets out to give Sherman
something worth living for. With the aid of Christopher's menagerie
on his farm in rural Pennsylvania, his wife Mika and their friends
and neighbours including the local Amish population, Sherman begins
to build trust in Christopher. To give him a purpose, they start to
run together. But what Sherman gains in confidence and meaning is
something we all need: a connection with nature, the outdoors, with
movement. And as Christopher learns, the side benefits of exercise
and animal contact are surprising, helping with mental and physical
health in unexpected ways.
Joe Tasker lies, struck down by illness, in a damp, bug-infested
room in the Himalaya, wondering if he will be well enough to climb
Dunagiri, his first venture to the 'big' mountains. One of
Britain's foremost mountaineers and a pioneer of lightweight
climbing, he is about to attempt one of the first true
'alpine-style' climbs in the Greater Ranges. The Dunagiri attempt
forms part of Tasker's striking tale of adventure in the savage
arena of the mountains. A superb writer, he vividly describes the
first British winter ascent of the North Face of the Eiger, the
first ascent of the West Wall of Changabang - considered a
'preposterous' plan by the climbing world - and his two
unsuccessful attempts on K2, the second highest mountain on Earth.
Savage Arena is both moving and exciting, an inspirational tale of
the adventuring spirit which follows its own path, endlessly
seeking new challenges, climbs and difficulties to overcome. It is
not reaching the summit which counts, it is the journey to it. It
is also a story of the stresses and strains of living for long
periods in constant anxiety, often with only one other person, and
of the close and vital human relationships which spring from those
circumstances.
What does it take to become one of the most successful coaches in
the world? Eddie Jones is one of the most successful sports coaches
of all time. From coaching three different nations to Rugby World
Cup Finals and with a winning record with England of nearly 80%,
Eddie Jones knows what it takes to lead and manage high performance
teams. What can sport teach us about leadership? For the first
time, Eddie Jones shows just what it takes to be a leader in a high
performance and high pressure environment and how these lessons can
be applied to every walk of life, from coaching the U9 rugby team
to leading a multinational organization to simply doing your job
better. Have a voracious ambition to improve every day As he
explains the High Performance Cycle of Success at the heart of his
philosophy, Eddie Jones reveals the lessons he has learnt from Sir
Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger, Pep Guardiola as well as from the
founder of Uniqlo and Ron Adams from the NBA. He also gives a
detailed analysis of his own performance as a coach as well as how
he gets the best out of the players and coaches around him and what
he saw in Tom Curry that no one else saw, which makes him think
that he could be the next Richie McCaw. Always start with the end
in mind Drawing on stories of nearly thirty years of coaching,
including the 2003, 2007, 2015 and 2019 World Rugby campaigns, the
full story of England's 2021 Six Nations campaign as well as why it
takes humour, humility and relentless curiosity to lead an eclectic
mix of superstars from Maro Itoje to James Haskell, George Smith to
Kyle Sinckler, to create teams that are relentlessly hungry to win,
Leadership is the ultimate rugby book about what it takes to be the
best. Written with Donald McRae, two-time winner of the William
Hill Sports Book of the Year Award, Leadership is the book for
anyone who wants to learn how to build and lead a team to success.
A tribute to Richie Benaud and a celebration of his life.
Remembering Richie is a compilation of the very best writing from
Richie's books, along with the best tributes and obituaries from
those who knew and worked with him. As a player, Richie was one of
the greatest of cricket's all-rounders. As a commentator and
thinker on the game he became the leading figure of his generation.
As a man he was revered by cricket's multitude of followers and as
a friend he was both loved and admired by his close circle of
friends. This celebratory book brings together the best of Richie's
writing on a range of subjects from his love of cricket as a child
to his all time XIs; from his thoughts on T20 to insight into his
family life, along with his most loved sayings and best known
pieces of commentary. All perfectly complemented with tributes from
his friends and colleagues.
Growing up on Chicago's Westside in the 90's, Arshay Cooper knows
the harder side of life. The street corners are full of gangs, the
hallways of his apartment complex are haunted by junkies he calls
"zombies" with strung out arms, clutching at him as he passes by.
His mother is a recovering addict, and his three siblings all sleep
in a one room apartment, a small infantry against the war zone on
the street below. Arshay keeps to himself, preferring to write
poetry about the girl he has a crush on, and spends his school days
in the home-ec kitchen dreming of becoming a chef. And then one day
as he's walking out of school he notices boats lined up on the
floor of the gymnasium, and a poster that reads "Join the Crew
Team". Arshay, having no idea what the sport of crew is, decides to
take a chance. This decision to join is one that will forever
change his life, and those of his fellow teammates. As Arshay and
his teammates begin to come together, learning not only how to row,
many never having been in water before, the sport takes them from
the mean streets of Chicago, to the hallowed halls of the Ivy
League. But Arshay and his teammates face adversity at every turn,
from racism, gang violence, and a sport that has never seen anyone
like them before. A Most Beautiful Thing is the inspiring true
story about the most unlikely band of brothers that form a family,
and forever change a sport and their lives for the better.
In "Atlas", Teddy recounts his incredible life, from juvenile
delinquent, to his induction into the legendary Cus D'Amato's
Boxing Camp and his first major challenge - training 14-year-old
Mike Tyson. An amateur boxer trained by D'Amato, Atlas captured the
Adirondack Golden Gloves title at 139 pounds in 1976. Forced out of
competition because of injury, Teddy turned his talents to training
fighters, including Mike Tyson, Barry McGuigan, Tracy Patterson,
Joey Gamache, Simon Brown and Donny Lalonde. In 1994, in a
memorable performance as trainer and corner man, Teddy inspired
Michael Moorer to beat Evander Holyfield for the world heavyweight
championship. Teddy has also employed his talents outside of the
ring appearing in 2 films and choreographing fight scenes for the
television series "Against the Law". "Atlas" is the remarkable
story of all of these achievements, told in Atlas' completely
inimitable voice. As you'd expect from a boxing memoir, it pulls no
punches.
A cult football figure, Vince Hilaire's career spanned over 600
games and took in spells at Crystal Palace, Portsmouth, Leeds
United and Stoke City, playing in every professional division as
well as for England at Youth and Under 21 levels. Hilaire shared a
dressing room with some of the stars of the era including Kenny
Sansom, Mick Channon, Gordon Strachan and Vinnie Jones, and was
managed by some of the biggest figures in British football -
Malcolm Allison, Terry Venables, Alan Ball and Howard Wilkinson.
This book offers a fascinating insight into the methods of these
managers - Allison and Venables' desperation to produce a side that
rivalled the free-flowing football of the famous `Busby Babes',
contrasting with the dourness and rigidity of Wilkinson's Leeds.
One of the first black players to break into the professional game,
Vince made his professional debut at seventeen and was a member of
the famous `Team of the `80s at Palace that topped the First
Division table. He details exactly why that team fell apart so
quickly and the chaos that subsequently engulfed the club. Vince
also outlines the regular abuse that he faced as a young black
player making his way in football and the dread he felt playing at
certain grounds. This massively entertaining autobiography gives a
fascinating insight into the beautiful game as it used to be
played.
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