Donald McRae in running to be first writer to win William Hill Sports Book of the Year for third time as 2015 longlist is unveiled
Donald McRae, the Guardian writer who is one of only two authors to have won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year award twice, is in contention to take sports writing's richest literary prize for a third time.
A Man's World: The Double Life of Emile Griffith (Simon & Schuster) is named on a longlist of 14 titles for the 2015 edition of the award, the winner of which will be revealed in November.
In A Man's World, McRae tells the story of the American boxer who became world champion in both welterweight and middleweight divisions during a 19-year career but was also gay at a time when homosexuality was a crime in all but one of the American states and still classified by the American Medical Association as a 'psychiatric disorder'.
McRae's ability to draw the reader into the story is particularly strong in his recounting of the rivalry between Griffith and Benny "Kid" Paret, the Cuban fighter against whom he battled for the world welterweight crown three times, winning once and losing once in 1961 but winning again in April of the following year when Paret used the Hispanic term for 'faggot' to insult Griffith at the weigh-in, then took such a hammering in the ring that he died in hospital 10 days later.
The South African-born McRae won the William Hill prize in 1996 with Dark Trade, the journey into the murky world of professional boxing that established him as a writer of note, and again in 2002 with In Black and White, about the friendship between Olympic champion Jesse Owens and another boxing world champion, Joe Louis, two black American icons who rose above poverty and racial divisions.
Also on the list is another boxing writer, Mark Turley, whose intriguing book, Journeymen: The Other Side of the Boxing Business (Pitch Publishing), is deservedly recognised. Turley's subjects are not the headline-making winners but the considerable cast of fighters who make their living from losing, the men whose job is simply to be in the opposite corner to potential future stars, well paid but with no purpose other than to be beaten as latest box-office prospect sharpens his skills on the way to the top of the bill.
The longlist, which will be whittled down further before the shortlist is announced on October 27, has a strong football content, as is to be expected.
These include Living on the Volcano: The Secrets of Surviving as a Football Manager (Century), which is based on a series of interviews conducted by award-winning journalist Michael Calvin, which reveal how even the fierce heat of the media spotlight does not always reveal the full, devastating effect of trying to handle the pressures of being the man in charge.
The Ugly Game: The Qatari Plot to Buy the World Cup (Simon & Schuster), by Heidi Blake and Jonathan Calvert, makes the list, deservedly so after the fine work painstakingly carried out by the authors in exposing corruption at the highest level of football.
There is a place, too, for Fifty-Six: The Story of the Bradford Fire (Bloomsbury), in which survivor Martin Fletcher, who lost several family members in the Valley Parade inferno in 1985, not only recalls the horror of that May afternoon but raises many unanswered questions about what happened and why.
David Goldblatt, whose global history of football, The Ball is Round, won enormous acclaim when it was published in 2006, can expect to be in the running with The Game of Our Lives: The Meaning and Making of English Football (Viking), in which the football writer and sociologist turns his analytical attention to the last two decades at home and how football has developed in time with the social, economic and political changes of the post-Thatcherite era.
A diverse field this year includes titles on cycling, bobsleigh, running, cricket and even chess.
Another Guardian regular, Andy Bull, makes the list with Speed Kings (Bantam Press), his the story of the disparate group of outsiders who formed the United States team that became bobsleigh champions at the 1932 Winter Olympics.
My Fight/Your Fight (Century) is the hard-hitting autobiography of MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) champion Ronda Rousey, while A King in Hiding (Icon) tells the story of Fahim, an eight year old refugee who became a world chess champion after settling in his new home of Paris.
Runner: A Short Story About a Long Run (Aurum Press) is endurance athlete Lizzy Hawker's tale about the Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc, a grueling 8,600 metres of ascent and descent over 158 kilometres of the most challenging terrain, which the London-born runner has won an incredible five times.
Chess has rarely been in the public eye since the great rivalry between the Russian giants Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov in the 1980s and 90s and before that through the political symbolism attached to American Bobby Fischer's defeat of Russia's Boris Spassky to win the world championship in 1972. It has caught the attention now through the story of Mohammad Fahim, a child refugee from Bangladesh who lived as an illegal immigrant in Paris yet despite all the barriers before him became world under-13 student chess champion. A King in Hiding (Icon), translated from the French publication written by author Sophie le Callannec and chess coach Xavier Parmentier, tells Fahim's story.
Simon Lister does a fine job in Fire in Babylon (Yellow Jersey) of describing and understanding the dominance of the West Indies cricket team in the 1970s and 1980s and the effect it had on the people of the region, while Richard Moore delves into another great sporting passion of the Caribbean in The Bolt Supremacy: Inside the Jamaican Sprint Factory (Yellow Jersey).
In King's of the Road: A Journey into the Heart of British Cycling (Aurum Press), cycling journalist Robert Dineen delivers a personal take on the ups and downs in the history of British cycling, interviewing many of the most influential figures in the evolution of the sport in this country and interweaving his own experiences on the club cycling scene.
Finally, John Carlin, who has written some fine books about sport and politics in Spain and South Africa, makes the line-up with Chase Your Shadow: The Trials of Oscar Pistorius, a superb account of the complexities and contradictions not only in the character of the champion paralympic athlete convicted of killing his girlfriend but in the South African nation.
The full William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2015 longlist is as follows:
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A Man's World: The Double Life of Emile Griffith (Simon & Schuster) is named on a longlist of 14 titles for the 2015 edition of the award, the winner of which will be revealed in November.
In A Man's World, McRae tells the story of the American boxer who became world champion in both welterweight and middleweight divisions during a 19-year career but was also gay at a time when homosexuality was a crime in all but one of the American states and still classified by the American Medical Association as a 'psychiatric disorder'.
McRae's ability to draw the reader into the story is particularly strong in his recounting of the rivalry between Griffith and Benny "Kid" Paret, the Cuban fighter against whom he battled for the world welterweight crown three times, winning once and losing once in 1961 but winning again in April of the following year when Paret used the Hispanic term for 'faggot' to insult Griffith at the weigh-in, then took such a hammering in the ring that he died in hospital 10 days later.
The South African-born McRae won the William Hill prize in 1996 with Dark Trade, the journey into the murky world of professional boxing that established him as a writer of note, and again in 2002 with In Black and White, about the friendship between Olympic champion Jesse Owens and another boxing world champion, Joe Louis, two black American icons who rose above poverty and racial divisions.
Also on the list is another boxing writer, Mark Turley, whose intriguing book, Journeymen: The Other Side of the Boxing Business (Pitch Publishing), is deservedly recognised. Turley's subjects are not the headline-making winners but the considerable cast of fighters who make their living from losing, the men whose job is simply to be in the opposite corner to potential future stars, well paid but with no purpose other than to be beaten as latest box-office prospect sharpens his skills on the way to the top of the bill.
The longlist, which will be whittled down further before the shortlist is announced on October 27, has a strong football content, as is to be expected.
These include Living on the Volcano: The Secrets of Surviving as a Football Manager (Century), which is based on a series of interviews conducted by award-winning journalist Michael Calvin, which reveal how even the fierce heat of the media spotlight does not always reveal the full, devastating effect of trying to handle the pressures of being the man in charge.
The Ugly Game: The Qatari Plot to Buy the World Cup (Simon & Schuster), by Heidi Blake and Jonathan Calvert, makes the list, deservedly so after the fine work painstakingly carried out by the authors in exposing corruption at the highest level of football.
There is a place, too, for Fifty-Six: The Story of the Bradford Fire (Bloomsbury), in which survivor Martin Fletcher, who lost several family members in the Valley Parade inferno in 1985, not only recalls the horror of that May afternoon but raises many unanswered questions about what happened and why.
David Goldblatt, whose global history of football, The Ball is Round, won enormous acclaim when it was published in 2006, can expect to be in the running with The Game of Our Lives: The Meaning and Making of English Football (Viking), in which the football writer and sociologist turns his analytical attention to the last two decades at home and how football has developed in time with the social, economic and political changes of the post-Thatcherite era.
A diverse field this year includes titles on cycling, bobsleigh, running, cricket and even chess.
Another Guardian regular, Andy Bull, makes the list with Speed Kings (Bantam Press), his the story of the disparate group of outsiders who formed the United States team that became bobsleigh champions at the 1932 Winter Olympics.
My Fight/Your Fight (Century) is the hard-hitting autobiography of MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) champion Ronda Rousey, while A King in Hiding (Icon) tells the story of Fahim, an eight year old refugee who became a world chess champion after settling in his new home of Paris.
Runner: A Short Story About a Long Run (Aurum Press) is endurance athlete Lizzy Hawker's tale about the Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc, a grueling 8,600 metres of ascent and descent over 158 kilometres of the most challenging terrain, which the London-born runner has won an incredible five times.
Chess has rarely been in the public eye since the great rivalry between the Russian giants Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov in the 1980s and 90s and before that through the political symbolism attached to American Bobby Fischer's defeat of Russia's Boris Spassky to win the world championship in 1972. It has caught the attention now through the story of Mohammad Fahim, a child refugee from Bangladesh who lived as an illegal immigrant in Paris yet despite all the barriers before him became world under-13 student chess champion. A King in Hiding (Icon), translated from the French publication written by author Sophie le Callannec and chess coach Xavier Parmentier, tells Fahim's story.
Simon Lister does a fine job in Fire in Babylon (Yellow Jersey) of describing and understanding the dominance of the West Indies cricket team in the 1970s and 1980s and the effect it had on the people of the region, while Richard Moore delves into another great sporting passion of the Caribbean in The Bolt Supremacy: Inside the Jamaican Sprint Factory (Yellow Jersey).
In King's of the Road: A Journey into the Heart of British Cycling (Aurum Press), cycling journalist Robert Dineen delivers a personal take on the ups and downs in the history of British cycling, interviewing many of the most influential figures in the evolution of the sport in this country and interweaving his own experiences on the club cycling scene.
Finally, John Carlin, who has written some fine books about sport and politics in Spain and South Africa, makes the line-up with Chase Your Shadow: The Trials of Oscar Pistorius, a superb account of the complexities and contradictions not only in the character of the champion paralympic athlete convicted of killing his girlfriend but in the South African nation.
The full William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2015 longlist is as follows:
- The Ugly Game: The Qatari Plot to Buy the World Cup, by Heidi Blake and Jonathan Calvert (Simon & Schuster) Buy from: Amazon
Waterstones WHSmith
- Speed Kings, by Andy Bull (Bantam Press) Buy from: Amazon
Waterstones WHSmith
- Living on the Volcano: The Secrets of Surviving as a Football Manager, by Michael Calvin (Century) Buy from: Amazon
Waterstones WHSmith
- Chase Your Shadow: The Trials of Oscar Pistorius, by John Carlin (Atlantic Books) Buy from: Amazon
Waterstones WHSmith
- Kings of the Road: A Journey into the Heart of British Cycling, by Robert Dineen (Aurum Press) Buy from: Amazon
Waterstones WHSmith
- A King in Hiding: How a Child Refugee Became a World Chess Champion, by Fahim, Sophie Le Callennec, Xavier Parmentier and Barbara Mellor (translator) (Icon) Buy from: Amazon
Waterstones WHSmith
- Fifty-Six: The Story of the Bradford Fire, by Martin Fletcher (Bloomsbury) Buy from: Amazon
Waterstones WHSmith
- The Game of Our Lives: The Meaning and Making of English Football, by David Goldblatt (Viking) Buy from: Amazon
Waterstones WHSmith
- Runner: A Short Story About A Long Run, by Lizzy Hawker (Aurum Press) Buy from: Amazon
Waterstones WHSmith
- Fire in Babylon, by Simon Lister (Yellow Jersey) Buy from: Amazon
Waterstones WHSmith
- A Man’s World: The Double Life of Emile Griffith, by Donald McRae (Simon & Schuster) Buy from: Amazon
Waterstones WHSmith
- The Bolt Supremacy, by Richard Moore (Yellow Jersey) Buy from: Amazon
Waterstones WHSmith
- My Fight/Your Fight: The Official Ronda Rousey Autobiography, by Ronda Rousey and Maria Burns Ortiz (Century) Buy from: Amazon
Waterstones WHSmith
- Journeymen: The Other Side of the Boxing Business, by Mark Turley (Pitch) Buy from: Amazon
Waterstones WHSmith
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