Bill Ivy had a steely determination to succeed, an almost fearless courage, which meant he never backed away from a challenge, and a love of fashion and fast cars. In this fascinating biography of Ivy, Mick Walker highlights that Ivy was certainly not only a great rider, but also a unique personality. Walker documents a fitting tribute to Ivy's life that will interest any motorcycle enthusiast. When Bill Ivy was fatally injured while practising for the East German Grand Prix in July 1969, motorcycle racing lost one of its greatest-ever competitors. As a tribute to Bill, leading motorcycle historian Mick Walker has written "Bill Ivy: The Will to Win". Bill Ivy was certainly not only a great rider, but also a unique personality. He had a steely determination to succeed, an almost fearless courage, which meant he never backed away from a challenge, and a love of fashion and fast cars. Although only 5ft 2in tall, he more than made up for his lack of stature by his immense upper body strength, which meant he could cope with any size of motorcycle from a 50cc Itom to a 750cc Norton-engined Matchless G15 CSR. It was as a member of the Yamaha factory team that he not only became World Champion, but also set the first 100mph TT lap record on a 125cc machine - only a decade after Bob McIntyre had first achieved this feat on a machine with an engine size four times larger! "Bill Ivy: The Will to Win" is a fitting tribute to one of the world's greatest-ever motorcycle racing stars.

Dottir is two-time consecutive CrossFit Games Champion Katrin Davidsdottir's inspiring and poignant memoir. As one of only two women in history to have won the title of "Fittest Woman on Earth" twice, Davidsdottir knows all about the importance of mental and physical strength. She won the title in 2015, backing it up with a second win in 2016, after starting CrossFit in just 2011. A gymnast as a youth, Davidsdottir wanted to try new challenges and found a love of CrossFit. But it hasn't been a smooth rise to the top. In 2014, just one year before taking home the gold, she didn't qualify for the Games. She used that loss as motivation and fuel for training harder and smarter for the 2015 Games. She pushed herself and refocused her mental game. Her hard work and perseverance paid off with her return to the Games and subsequent victories in 2015 and 2016. In Dottir, Davidsdottir shares her journey with readers. She details her focus on training, goal setting, nutrition, and mental toughness.

From Andre Agassi, one of the most beloved athletes in history and one of the most gifted men ever to step onto a tennis court, a beautiful, haunting autobiography.
Agassi's incredibly rigorous training begins when he is just a child. By the age of thirteen, he is banished to a Florida tennis camp that feels like a prison camp. Lonely, scared, a ninth-grade dropout, he rebels in ways that will soon make him a 1980s icon. He dyes his hair, pierces his ears, dresses like a punk rocker. By the time he turns pro at sixteen, his new look promises to change tennis forever, as does his lightning-fast return.
And yet, despite his raw talent, he struggles early on. We feel his confusion as he loses to the world's best, his greater confusion as he starts to win. After stumbling in three Grand Slam finals, Agassi shocks the world, and himself, by capturing the 1992 Wimbledon. Overnight he becomes a fan favorite and a media target.
Agassi brings a near-photographic memory to every pivotal match and every relationship. Never before has the inner game of tennis and the outer game of fame been so precisely limned. Alongside vivid portraits of rivals from several generations--Jimmy Connors, Pete Sampras, Roger Federer--Agassi gives unstinting accounts of his brief time with Barbra Streisand and his doomed marriage to Brooke Shields. He reveals a shattering loss of confidence. And he recounts his spectacular resurrection, a comeback climaxing with his epic run at the 1999 French Open and his march to become the oldest man ever ranked number one.
In clear, taut prose, Agassi evokes his loyal brother, his wise coach, his gentle trainer, all the people who help him regain his balance and find love at last with Stefanie Graf. Inspired by her quiet strength, he fights through crippling pain from a deteriorating spine to remain a dangerous opponent in the twenty-first and final year of his career. Entering his last tournament in 2006, he's hailed for completing a stunning metamorphosis, from nonconformist to elder statesman, from dropout to education advocate. And still he's not done. At a U.S. Open for the ages, he makes a courageous last stand, then delivers one of the most stirring farewells ever heard in a sporting arena.
With its breakneck tempo and raw candor, "Open "will be read and cherished for years. A treat for ardent fans, it will also captivate readers who know nothing about tennis. Like Agassi's game, it sets a new standard for grace, style, speed, and power.

Christopher Hilton documents the race that caused the worst crash in motor racing history in this new and full study of the fateful day. Through a host of interviews - with drivers, team members, journalists and spectators - and original research at Le Mans, Hilton examines the aftermath of the crash that has affected what we see of motorsport on our television screens today. The worst crash in motor racing history - killing more than 80 people - was produced by a ferocious and haunting combination of circumstances: nationalism, raw speed, the nature of a 24-hour race, and chance. The crash drew in Mike Hawthorn, the blond playboy from Farnham, in a Jaguar, and Juan-Manuel Fangio, one of the greatest drivers of all, in a Mercedes. A crowd of 250,000 watched hypnotised as Hawthorn set out to break Fangio, the two cars going faster and faster...and faster. Another English playboy, Lance Macklin, was caught up in the crash in his Austin-Healey, along with a 50-year-old Frenchman driving under the assumed name of Pierre Levegh. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It cost him his life, even as his car was torn to pieces that scythed into the dense crowd. After 6.2 7pm on 11 June 1955 nothing would ever be the same again and the consequences of the momentous crash are still being felt. In this new and full study of the fateful day, Christopher Hilton sets the race itself in the context of the 1950s. Through a host of interviews - with drivers, team members, journalists and spectators - and original research at Le Mans and in the Mercedes archive in Stuttgart, he recreates every aspect of the race and the crash. Much of the material has never been seen before. He examines the aftermath - the bitter blame game, the conflicting testimonies, the direct threat to motorsport in Europe - and chronicles the beginning of the culture of safety that has affected what we see of motorsport on our television screens today.

Nineteen-twenty was a crucial year not just for the Chicago White Sox but for the game of baseball, in the aftermath of the 1919 World Series scandal. This work is both a collective biography of four individuals whose careers in baseball were forever altered in 1920 and an examination of the 1920 baseball season as a whole. It highlights four legendary personalities--Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the longtime commissioner of Major League Baseball; Babe Ruth, the great pitcher and slugger who changed the game forever; Buck Weaver, the true lone innocent among the Black Sox players who threw the 1919 World Series; and Rube Foster, the fine pitcher, imaginative manager, and great administrator of blackball who founded the Negro National League. Key events that affected the season and the history of baseball are discussed. Nineteen-twenty was the year that Ruth shattered his own home run record and began a hitting spree that brought in record numbers of fans to the ballparks. It was the year that Rube found a way for large numbers of African-Americans to play the game meaningfully, before loyal crowds, despite Jim Crow laws that kept them out of the majors and minors.

"The Red Rose Crew is in fact a classic and it belongs on any number of lists: a list of sports thrillers (it's a great read, almost impossible to put down); a list of the changes wrought by the women's sports movement that began in the sixties; and finally a list of good books on American history-for it is a book that tells how things really happened and describes the formidable forces aligned against the women who led the way.
"from the Foreword by David Halberstam
"The Red Rose Crew is a terrific book. It's not just for rowers-it's as universally appealing as The Horse Whisperer."
"John Casey, author of Spartina
In 1975, a group of amazing women rowed their way to international success and glory, battling sexual prejudice, bureaucracy, and male domination in one of the most grueling and competitive sports around. Among the members of the first international women's crew team-and one of the first women's teams anywhere-were Gail Pearson, the soft-spoken MIT professor who fought equally hard off the water to win the political battles necessary for her team to succeed; lead rower Carie Graves, a statuesque bohemian from rural Wisconsin who dropped out of college and later became the most intense rower of the crew; and Lynn Stillman, a tiny sixteen-year-old coxswain from California.
On hand to guide them was Harry Parker, the legendary Harvard men's crew coach who overcame his doubts about the ability of women to withstand the rigors of hard training. From their first dramatic bid at the 1975 World Championships to their preparations for their first Olympic Games in 1976, this gripping story of bravery, determination, and indomitable spirit captures a compelling momentin the history of sports and of America.

The Secret Cricketer first picked up a cricket bat as a toddler and became a county junior. He secured a professional contract and has been at the coalface of the English county game ever since. This fast-paced, insider's account lifts the lid on modern cricket to reveal what life is really like for an English professional in the 21st century. How do players cope when they can't take a wicket or score a run and their livelihood is on the line? What makes a good coach and how many are there (hint - not many)? Is there still an old-school hierarchy in dressing rooms or a bullying culture? What's the secret to a winning dressing room, and what's it like to be in one when morale hits rock bottom? How much do county players earn? And what's it like to walk out at Lord's to play in a major final? With unique first-hand insight into the fast-evolving modern game, the book answers all these questions and more. It's brimming with untold stories - some that will make you laugh and others that will shock you.

Laurel and Hardy, Ant and Dec, Morecambe and Wise, Herbert and Hill. The history of entertainment is studded with brilliant comic duos.

Johnny Herbert and Damon Hill between them competed in 261 Grands Prix, amassing twenty-five wins, forty-nine podium finishes, one World Championship, 458 championship points, a Le Mans win, two smashed ankles, a broken arm, wrist and leg, sixty broken ribs, and two bruised egos.

Having retired from racing, Johnny and Damon have become the one constant for passionate English F1 fans in a rapidly changing landscape. They have earned cult status as commentators and pundits, with viewers loving their unerring dedication to the sport’s greatness. Drawing on a lifetime of sniffing petrol fumes, Lights Out, Full Throttle stands large over the landscape of Formula One and takes the temperature of the good, the bad and the ugly of the petrolhead’s paradise.

It offers F1 fans a tour of the sport – from Monaco to Silverstone; Johnny’s crowd-surfing and Bernie’s burger bar; the genius of Adrian Newey and Colin Chapman; why Lewis Hamilton will never, ever move to Ferrari (probably); getting the yips; money; safety; what it’s like to have an out-of-body experience while driving a car in the pouring rain at 200mph; and the future of the sport in the wake of Covid-19 and Black Lives Matter.

Whether you’re a fan of Nigel, Niki, Kimi or Britney, pine for the glory days of Brabham, Williams, Jim Clark and Fangio, or believe that Lewis is one year away from retiring as the GOAT, Lights Out, Full Throttle is the oily rag for the petrolhead fan to inhale while waiting for the racers to line up on the grid.

The most definitive and personal answer ever written to the question, "What is Arnold Palmer really like?" A warm, often humorous, look at one of the most popular figures in modern sports.

Shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2021 One of The Times 50 Best Sports Books of 2021 Little Wonder tells the epic, and until now largely unchronicled, story of Lottie Dod, the first great heroine in women's sports. Dod was a champion tennis player, golfer, hockey player, tobogganist, skater, mountaineer, and archer. She was also a first-rate musician, performing numerous choral concerts in London in the 1920s and 1930s, including in a private performance before the King and Queen. In the late 19th century, Dod was almost certainly the second most famous woman in the British Isles, bested only by the fame of Queen Victoria. She was fawned over by the press, and loved by a huge fan base - which composed poems and songs in her honor, followed her from one tournament to the next, voraciously read every profile published on her and every report on her sporting triumphs. Yet, within a decade or two of her retirement from sports, Dod was largely a forgotten figure. She lived, unmarried and childless, until 1960, and for the last half of her life she was shrouded in obscurity. In this new book, Sasha Abramsky brings Lottie's remarkable achievements back into the public eye in a fascinating story of resilience and determination.

This is the first book-length biography of Hall of Fame catcher Ray Schalk, once described as the yardstick against which all other catchers were measured. For years the top defender at his position, Schalk was also a fiery leader on the field, and he guided two teams to the World Series. (One of those teams, however, was the 1919 Black Sox, whose conspiracy to throw the Series left Schalk with a deep and abiding sense of betrayal.)

After he retired as a player, the Illinois native spent decades as a manager or coach on the collegiate, minor league, and major league levels. Schalk entered the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1955.

Tony Hinkle was the man who shaped Butler University's athletic tradition. He served the institution for nearly half a century as a teacher, coach, and athletic administrator. A Hoosier legend, Hinkle worked from 1934 to 1970 as Butler's head coach of basketball, baseball, and football. But it was for basketball that he gained the most fame, creating the Hinkle System a disciplined, high motion offense which countless other coaches have emulated. Hinkle s 560 career wins rank him among the NCAA's all-time winningest basketball coaches and his 41 years of coaching service rank sixth on the NCAA's all-time list behind legendary greats such as Phog Allen of Kansas, Ed Diddle of Western Kentucky, and Ray Meyer of DePaul. Based on numerous interviews with Hinkle and his players and associates, Tony Hinkle: Coach for All Seasons is an absorbing account of the life of a remarkable figure in the world of sport."

Lawrence"Yogi" Berra was never supposed to become a major league ballplayer. That's what his immigrant father told him. That's what Branch Rickey told him, too-right to Berra's face, in fact. Even the lowly St. Louis Browns of his youth said he'd never make it in the big leagues. Yet baseball was his lifeblood. It was the only thing he ever cared about. Heck, it was the only thing he ever thought about. Berra couldn't allow a constant stream of ridicule about his appearance, taunts about his speech, and scorn about his perceived lack of intelligence to keep him from becoming one of the best to ever play the game-at a position requiring the very skills he was told he did not have. Drawing on more than one hundred interviews and four years of reporting, Jon Pessah delivers a transformational portrait of how Berra handled his hard-earned success-on and off the playing field-as well as his failures; how the man who insisted "I really didn't say everything I said!" nonetheless shaped decades of America's culture; and how Berra's humility and grace redefined what it truly means to be a star. Overshadowed on the field by Joe DiMaggio early in his career and later by a youthful Mickey Mantle, Berra emerges as not only the best loved Yankee but one of the most appealingly simple, innately complex, and universally admired men in all of America.

'You can get a couple of years for beating the shit out of another bloke or a couple of grand. I chose to do the latter.' Decca's story is that of a bullied boy with an impossible dream. Of solvent abuse, violence, drug addiction, depression, boxing, bare-knuckle fighting but - ultimately - redemption. It begins on a council estate in Carlisle where, as the victim of cruel bullies, a young Decca anaesthetised himself from the pain and humiliation by sniffing solvents. In his mid-teens the fear fell away to be replaced by fury, as the bullies soon discovered to their cost. Memories of that frightened boy fuelled a rage that forged a fearsome street-fighter and future champion. Working on the doors attracted more trouble but further enhanced his growing reputation. At the age of nineteen, life was good until the love of his life left him. Depression set in and prevailed. For almost ten years, he fell prey to a rampant cocaine habit, which provoked his demons, making him unpredictable and dangerous to be around. Serious jail time seemed inevitable. Out of sheer desperation, his dad arranged Decca's first unlicensed boxing match. He won and became instantly hooked. Having gotten fit, hungry, and off the drugs, he was lured into the bloody arena of bare-knuckle fighting. Many brutal undefeated fights followed, as did two BKB heavyweight titles. A chance meeting with renowned boxing promoter, Ricky English led to Decca's shot at the iconic 'Guv'nor' title. The rest, as they say, is history.

The world-champion freestyle skateboarder and the man who brought the ollie - the trick that revolutionised the sport by taking it from the ground to the air - to street skating shares the history of skateboarding, as he tells the dramatic story of his life.

At the age of 13, Rodney took the freestyle skating world by storm. He won 35 world titles in less than five years. But through it all, his father looked down on his son's love for skating and pressured him to walk away from the sport and leave behind his fans and status as the most famous skateboarder of his era. After years of stress and conflict, Rodney gave in and promised his father he'd quit for good. But by the time he finally broke free from his suffocating and abusive home life, the popularity of freestyle had waned and given way to vert and street styles. So Rodney picked up his board and started from scratch. With the help of mentor Mike Ternansky, Rodney used his freestyle background to usher in a whole new era of street skating.

Today Rodney is more popular than ever. The videos in his series Rodney Versus Daewon are among the most popular skateboard videos ever produced. He won the 2002 Transworld Skateboarding readers' choice award for favourite street skater and is the most popular character on the top-selling Tony Hawk's Pro Skater video games.

*** THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'A heroic outsider - a pleasure to read.' - The Guardian 'A fulsome evocation of football before the Premier League.' - The i 'Such a good storyteller...joyous.' - Financial Times 'Honest, raw, revealing and very funny. How to live a life and career to the full. Insightful book about the most successful outsider inside football ever...' - Henry Winter, Chief Football Writer, The Times 'Pat is a wonderful one-off...and this is the story of why that is.' - John Murray, Chief Sports Correspondent, BBC Radio 5 Live 'Unusually vibrant and elegant with heroic doses of humour, insight and self-effacement, this is an absolute must-read for the football connoisseur.' - Omid Djalili 'The biggest influence of my professional career both on and off the pitch.' - Graeme Le Saux 'I grew up captivated by Pat Nevin the player. As a man he taught me even more about the beauty of the game. One of football's great mavericks, and Chelsea's greatest players. And he can spin a mean tune too.' - Sam Matterface 'I used to walk miles to see Pat Nevin play football and I'd do the same now to read his thoughts. Always challenging, always entertaining.' - Lord Sebastian Coe 'A refreshingly honest and thought-provoking autobiography. As deftly delivered as some of Pat's ball skills in his 1980's heyday.' - ToffeeWeb Pat Nevin never wanted to be a professional footballer. His future was clear, he'd become a teacher like his brothers. There was only one problem with this - Pat was far too good to avoid attention. Raised in Glasgow's East End, Pat loved the game, playing for hours and obsessively following Celtic. But as he grew up, he also loved Joy Division, wearing his Indie 'gloom boom' coat and going on marches - hardly typical footballer behaviour! Placed firmly in the 80s and 90s, before the advent of the Premier League, and often with racism and violence present, Pat Nevin writes with honesty, insight and wry humour. We are transported vividly to Chelsea and Everton, and colourfully diverted by John Peel, Morrissey and nights out at the Hacienda. The Accidental Footballer is a different kind of football memoir. Capturing all the joys of professional football as well as its contradictions and conflicts, it's about being defined by your actions, not your job, and is the perfect reminder of how life can throw you the most extraordinary surprises, when you least expect it.

Up-close, behind-the-scenes biography of the winningest coach in college basketball history.

And Bring the Darkness Home is a haunting exploration of how the mental scars of war destroyed an international cricket career, tore a family apart and left destitute a man who seemed to have it all. Tony Dell was the only Test cricketer to fight in the Vietnam War. His journey to the summit of the game, playing for Australia against England in the Ashes, was as unlikely and meteoric as any in cricket history. His descent was painful and harrowing. It was in his mid-60s, living in his mother's garage, that he learned the truth about what had led him on a path of self-destruction. A diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder allowed him to piece together the ruins of his life and also to search for answers, for himself and the thousands of other sufferers. The restlessness and urgency that once drove him to the top of the game was turned on authorities who refused to learn the lessons from history. PTSD robbed Tony Dell of memories of his playing career and left a palpable sense of loss. It also gave him a life-changing mission.

For 125 years the British & Irish Lions have stood out as a peerless emblem in world sport. This unique account of the best from the four Home Nations examines every tour in the Lions' history, including the victorious 2013 tour to Hong Kong and Australia, told in the players' words. Behind the Lions sees rugby writers from across the Home Nations delve to the heart of what it means to be a Lion, interviewing a vast array of former and current players to uncover the passion, pride and exhilaration experienced when wearing the famous red jersey. It is a tale of heartbreak and ecstasy, humour and poignancy that is at once inspirational, moving and utterly compelling. This is the story of the British & Irish Lions in their own words.

The early 20th century was called the Golden Age of Sport in America with such heroes as Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey grabbing headlines. And alongside them on the front page were horses such as Man o' War, Colin, and Gallant Fox. The men who trained these champion racehorses became icons in their right, shaping the landscape of American horse racing during this time. In "Masters of the Turf", well-known racing historian Edward L. Bowen takes an in-depth look at the lives of this elite group of trainers, including the legendary Sunny Jim Fitzsimmons, who trained two Triple Crown winners in the 1930s among a host of other champions for the powerful Belair Stud and Wheatley Stable; the father-son team of Ben and Jimmy Jones, who helped Calumet Farm dominate racing in the 1940s; and turn-of-the-century masters James Rowe and Sam Hildreth.

The history of baseball is filled with players whose careers were defined by one bad play. Mike Torrez is remembered as the pitcher who gave up the infamous three-run homer to Bucky ""Bleeping"" Dent in the 1978 playoffs tie-breaker between the Red Sox and Yankees. Yet Torrez's life added up to much more than his worst moment on the mound. Coming from a vibrant Mexican American community that settled in Topeka, Kansas, in the early 1900s, he made it to the Majors by his own talent and efforts, with the help of an athletic program for Mexican youth that spread through the Midwest, Texas and Mexico during the 20th century. He was in the middle of many transformative events of the 1970s-such as the rise of free agency-and was an ethnic role model in the years before the ""Fernandomania"" of 1981. This book covers Torrez's life and career as the winningest Mexican American pitcher in Major League history.

Improbable, heart-wrenching, and uplifting, Jeremiah Brown's journey from novice rower to Olympic silver medallist in under four years is a story about chasing a goal with everything you've got. After nearly being incarcerated at age seventeen and becoming a father at nineteen, Jeremiah Brown manages to grow up into a responsible young adult. But while juggling the demands of a long-term relationship, fatherhood, mortgage payments, and a nine-to-five banking career, he feels something is missing. A new goal captures his imagination: What would it take to become an Olympian? Guided by a polarizing coach, Brown and his teammates plumb the depths of physical and mental exertion in pursuit of a singular goal. The 4 Year Olympian is a story of courage, perseverance, and overcoming self-doubt, told from the perspective of an unlikely competitor.