2013 British Sports Book Awards: 2011 winner Anthony Clavane makes the shortlists again

London 2012 headline-makers Sir Bradley Wiggins and Lord Sebastian Coe -- and Olympic TV presenter Clare Balding -- are among the nominees for the 2013 British Sports Book Awards.

A strong field for the 11th edition of the National Sporting Club's annual recognition of excellence in sports writing also includes a number of past winners, among them Duncan Hamilton, Anthony Clavane and Jonathan Wilson.

Hamilton, who won best football book in 2008 for Provided You Don't Kiss Me and best biography in 2010 for Harold Larwood, is nominated in the best biography or autobiography category for The Footballer Who Could Fly, which focuses on his own upbringing in the north-east of England.

Clavane, whose personal history of Leeds United, Promised Land, won best football book in 2011 and was voted overall sports book of the year in an online poll, is in the running again for best football book for Does Your Rabbi Know You're Here?, which examines of Jewish involvement in football.

Inverting the Pyramid, a history of football tactics, won best football book for Jonathan Wilson in 2009.  This time he has been nominated in the same category for The Outsider, a broad history of the goalkeeper in football.  Confusingly, The Outsider is also the title chosen by Geordan Murphy, the Irish rugby star, for his autobiography, which is shortlisted for best rugby book.

Other interesting nominations include fell runner Boff Whalley's Run Wild in the best new writer section, That Near Death Thing, Rick Broadbent's brilliant study of the Isle on Man TT races, for best motorsport book, and Stephen Cooper's The Final Whistle: The Great War in 15 Players, which tells the story of 15 members of Rosslyn Park rugby club killed in the First World War, a group of men from differing backgrounds linked in a common fight for Britain and Empire.

Coe's Running my Life and the Wiggins bestseller My Time are shortlisted in the  in the autobiography / biography category, which also includes the story of award-winning Sunday Times journalist David Walsh's pursuit of disgraced cycling champion Lance Armstrong, Seven Deadly Sins. 

Clare Balding's My Animals and Other Family finds a home on the shortlist for best horse racing book, although it would sit comfortably among the autobiographies too.

The most poignant title among the shortlisted titles is the best cricket book nominee, CMJ: A Cricketing Life,   the memoirs of Christopher Martin-Jenkins, former cricket correspondent of The Times and the BBC, who died in January.

In all, nine award categories will be contested by 56 titles. The winners will be announced at Lord’s Cricket Ground on May 21st.  The winners in each category will then go to an online public vote will determine the overall British Sports Book of the Year.

Full shortlists (Click on the links for more information):

Best New Writer:

Barca: The Making of the Greatest Team in the World, by Graham Hunter
Beautiful Brutality: The Family Ties at the Heart of Boxing, by Adam Smith
Run Wild, by Boff Whalley
Running with the Kenyans: Discovering the Secrets of the Fastest People on Earth, by Adharanand Finn
Shot and a Ghost: A Year in the Brutal World of Professional Squash, by James Willstrop
Sit Down and Cheer: A History of Sport on TV , on TV by Martin Kelner

Best Autobiography / Biography:

An Open Book - My Autobiography, by Darren Clarke
Be Careful What You Wish For, by Simon Jordan
Merckx: Half Man, Half Bike, by William Fotheringham
My Time, by Bradley Wiggins
Running My Life - The Autobiography, by Seb Coe
Seven Deadly Sins: My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong, by David Walsh
The Footballer Who Could Fly, by Duncan Hamilton
This is Me: The Autobiography, by Ian Thorpe

Best Cricket Book:

CMJ: A Cricketing Life, by Christopher Martin-Jenkins
Gentlemen & Players: The Death of Amateurism in Cricket, by Charles Williams
On Warne , by Gideon Haigh
The Plan: How Fletcher and Flower Transformed English Cricket, by Steve James
The Valiant Cricketer: The Biography of Trevor Bailey, by Alan Hill
We'll Get 'Em in Sequins: Manliness, Yorkshire Cricket and the Century that Changed Everything, by Max Davidson

Best Football Book:

Barca: The Making of the Greatest Team in the World, by Graham Hunter
Be Careful What You Wish For, by Simon Jordan
Does Your Rabbi Know You're Here?: The Story of English Football's Forgotten Tribe, by Anthony Clavane
Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning - The Biography., by Guillem Balague
Richer Than God: Manchester City, Modern Football and Growing Up, by David Conn
The Outsider: A History of the Goalkeeper, by Jonathan Wilson

Best Rugby Book:

Behind the Lions: Playing Rugby for the British & Irish Lions, by Stephen Jones, Tom English, Nick Cain and David Barnes
Brent Pope: If You Really Knew Me, by Brent Pope & Kevin MacDermot
My Life as a Hooker: When a Middle-Aged Bloke Discovered Rugby, by Steven Gauge
The Final Whistle: The Great War in Fifteen Players, by Stephen Cooper
The Outsider, by Geordan Murphy
Who Beat the All Blacks?, by Alun Gibbard

Best Motorsports Book:

My Chequered Career: Thirty-Five Years of Televising Motorsport, by Steve Rider
Team Lotus: My View from the Pit Wall, by Peter Warr
That Near Death Thing: Inside the Most Dangerous Race in the World, by Rick Broadbent
Formula 1: All the Races - The World Championship Story Race-By-Race: 1950-2012 , by Roger Smith
Lotus 72 Owners' Manual, by Ian Wagstaff
I Just Made the Tea: Tales from 30 Years Inside Formula 1, by Di Spires and Bernard Ferguson

Best Horse Racing Book:

A Weight Off My Mind: My Autobiography, by Richard Hughes with Lee Mottershead
Clive Brittain: The Smiling Pioneer, by Robin Oakley
Her Majesty's Pleasure: How Horseracing Enthrals the Queen, by Julian Muscat
My Animals and Other Family, by Clare Balding
Racing Crazy: The Best of David Ashforth, by David Ashforth
When Horse Racing Was Horse Racing: A Century on the Turf, by Adam Powley

Best Golf Book:

Out of Bounds: Legendary Tales From the 19th Hole, by Sam Torrance
An Open Book - My Autobiography, by Darren Clarke
Miracle at Medinah: Europe's Amazing Ryder Cup Comeback, by Oliver Holt
Bobby's Open: Mr. Jones and the Golf Shot That Defined a Legend, by Steven Reid
Seve: Golf's Flawed Genius, by Robert Green
The Bible of Golf, by Skellett & Weitzman

Best Illustrated Title:

21 Days to Glory: The Official Team Sky Book of the 2012 Tour de France, by Team Sky and Dave Brailsford
A Swing for Life, by Nick Faldo
Bike!: A Tribute to the World's Greatest Cycling Designers, by Richard Moore & Daniel Benson
Coppi: Inside the Legend of the Campionissimo, by Herbie Sykes
Frankel: The Wonder Horse, edited by Andrew Pennington
The Glory Glory Nights, by Martin Cloake and Adam Powley

Best Publicity Campaign:

Be Careful What You Wish For, by Simon Jordan – Bethan Jones
Between the Lines: My Autobiography, by Victoria Pendleton with Donald McRae -- Caroline March
Running My Life - The Autobiography, by Sebastian Coe – Karen Geary
he Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-ups, and Winning at All Costs, by Tyler Hamilton and Daniel Coyle – Alison Barrow
Tom Daley: My Story, by Tom Daley – Jo Wickham
Jessica Ennis: Unbelievable - From My Childhood Dreams to Winning Olympic Gold, by Jessica Ennis – Eleni Lawrence and Lucy Zilberkweit

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