The Boy on the Shed, Berlin 1936, Tiger Woods and Red Card among the winners at the 2019 Telegraph Sports Book of the Year awards
The winners at the Telegraph Sports Book of the Year awards 2019 were as follows:
Autobiography of the Year: The Boy on the Shed, by Paul Ferris (Hodder)
The candid and gripping story of a boy raised in Lisburn, near Belfast during The Troubles who became a professional footballer with Newcastle United, saw his career at the top level wrecked by injury, won a Wembley final with Barrow as a non-League player, returned to Newcastle as before quitting the game to study Law and qualify as a barrister - only to return to Newcastle as a member of Alan Shearer’s management team.
The Sporting Club General Outstanding Book of the Year: Berlin 1936: Sixteen Days in August, by Oliver Hilmes
Berlin 1936 was the Nazi Olympics, the moment when the world’s attention turned to the German capital as it hosted the Olympic Games, the one in which Hitler was happy to extend the hand of welcome to visitors from all nations but in which he hoped to see his athletes confirm his belief that the Aryan race was superior to all others. Alongside the drama in the stadium as the black athlete Jesse Owens embarrassed the Fuhrer by winning four gold medals, the author goes behind the scenes to paint a picture, seen through the eyes of Nazi leaders and foreign diplomats, athletes and journalists, nightclub owners and jazz musicians of a vibrant and diverse city about to be plunged into its darkest days.
Biography of the Year: Tiger Woods, by Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian (Simon & Schuster)
In 2009, Tiger Woods was the most famous athlete on the planet, living what appeared to be the perfect life. But he had been living a double life – one that exploded in the aftermath of a late-night crash and sent his personal and professional life off a cliff. Sweeping in scope and packed with groundbreaking details, Sports Illustrated feature writer Jeff Benedict and television journalist Armen Keteyian track the Shakespearean rise and fall of an icon.
Football Book of the Year: Red Card: FIFA and the Fall of the Most Powerful Men in Sport, by Ken Bensinger (Profile Books)
The story of how greed and arrogance brought down the most powerful institution in sporting history. US journalist Ken Bensinger, who as a Buzzfeed staffer was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, takes the reader into a world of power, betrayal and revenge, sports stars and hustlers, corruption, sex and phenomenal quantities of money, and to exotic places from sun-drenched Caribbean beaches to the formal staterooms of the Kremlin and the heat of Doha, Qatar, following the dogged pursuit of the FIFA’s wealthy elite by American FBI and IRS agents, headed by Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who finally brought them to book.
Heineken Rugby Book of the Year: Sevens Heaven: The Beautiful Chaos of Fiji’s Olympic Dream, by Ben Ryan (W&N)
The story of how coach Ben Ryan, a 40-year-old bespectacled Englishman, took the Fiji sevens side to Olympic gold, having agreed to the job of coaching their players after being given just 20 minutes to decide. He was able, by saying yes, to set in motion an extraordinary journey that ended in Rio not only with an Olympic gold medal but with Ryan feeling that the job had brought him "three years of enlightenment" in the South Pacific. An enthralling read.
Heartaches Cricket Book of the Year: Arlott, Swanton and the Soul of English Cricket, by Stephen Fay and David Kynaston (Bloomsbury)
With their strong personalities and distinctive voices, John Arlott and E.W. ‘Jim’ Swanton transformed the broadcasting of cricket into a national institution. The game was entering a new era, and these two men, from different backgrounds, one the son of a humble cemetery registrar in Basingstoke, the other the public-school educated son of a London stockbroker, were thrown together in trying to save the soul of the game they loved as it entered a different era. It has been described as “a chronicle of 20th-century class difference, elegantly observed through the lives of the two men and their attitudes towards their beloved sport.”
Cycling Book of the Year: Full Gas: How to Win a Bike Race – Tactics from Inside the Peloton, by Peter Cossins (Yellow Jersey)
Cycling has come a long way since the only real tactic in Grand Tour events was to ride as fast as you could for as long as you could. Winners sometimes finished hours ahead of the field. Now a minute’s delay thanks to a puncture could ruin a rider’s chances over a three-week race. The intricacies and complexities of cycling are such that an eye for opportunity and a quick mind are just as crucial to success as the strength and form of the man in the saddle. Cycling journalist Peter Cossins listens as pro cyclists and directeurs sportifs explain their tactics: when it went right, when they got it wrong – from sprinting to summits, from breakaways to bluffing.
Sports Health & Fitness Book of the Year: Running Life: Mindset, Fitness & Nutrition for Positive Wellbeing, by Dame Kelly Holmes (Kyle Books)
Double Olympic champion Dame Kelly draws on her own experiences of overcoming depression and a raft of injuries to achieve her Olympic dream. She offers guidance on fitness and wellbeing with easy-to-follow mindfulness exercises aimed at achieving optimum emotional health, on how to keep your body strong with easy exercises you can perform anywhere, plus Kelly’s top running tips, and how to learn which foods best nourish your body, with five ways to improve the way you eat.
Getty Images Illustrated Book of the Year: The Beautiful Badge: The Stories Behind the Football Club Badge, by Martyn Routledge & Elspeth Wills (Pitch Publishing)
The Beautiful Badge is the first book to explore the history of football club badges, looking at what inspired them, who crafted them and how fans reacted. Extensive illustrations show how badges followed fashion, negotiated copyright and expressed the aspirations of owners, managers and fans.
The Telegraph is this year’s headline sponsor for what was formerly called the British Sports Book Awards, the major annual promotion for sports writing and publishing, originally conceived as part of the famous National Sporting Club’s banqueting campaign programme. It soon became evident that there was room for a major celebration of the best sports writing and the Sports Book Awards were born in 2002.
Read more: Shortlists announced for the Telegraph Sports Book Awards 2019
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Autobiography of the Year: The Boy on the Shed, by Paul Ferris (Hodder)
The candid and gripping story of a boy raised in Lisburn, near Belfast during The Troubles who became a professional footballer with Newcastle United, saw his career at the top level wrecked by injury, won a Wembley final with Barrow as a non-League player, returned to Newcastle as before quitting the game to study Law and qualify as a barrister - only to return to Newcastle as a member of Alan Shearer’s management team.
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The Sporting Club General Outstanding Book of the Year: Berlin 1936: Sixteen Days in August, by Oliver Hilmes
Berlin 1936 was the Nazi Olympics, the moment when the world’s attention turned to the German capital as it hosted the Olympic Games, the one in which Hitler was happy to extend the hand of welcome to visitors from all nations but in which he hoped to see his athletes confirm his belief that the Aryan race was superior to all others. Alongside the drama in the stadium as the black athlete Jesse Owens embarrassed the Fuhrer by winning four gold medals, the author goes behind the scenes to paint a picture, seen through the eyes of Nazi leaders and foreign diplomats, athletes and journalists, nightclub owners and jazz musicians of a vibrant and diverse city about to be plunged into its darkest days.
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Biography of the Year: Tiger Woods, by Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian (Simon & Schuster)
In 2009, Tiger Woods was the most famous athlete on the planet, living what appeared to be the perfect life. But he had been living a double life – one that exploded in the aftermath of a late-night crash and sent his personal and professional life off a cliff. Sweeping in scope and packed with groundbreaking details, Sports Illustrated feature writer Jeff Benedict and television journalist Armen Keteyian track the Shakespearean rise and fall of an icon.
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Football Book of the Year: Red Card: FIFA and the Fall of the Most Powerful Men in Sport, by Ken Bensinger (Profile Books)
The story of how greed and arrogance brought down the most powerful institution in sporting history. US journalist Ken Bensinger, who as a Buzzfeed staffer was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, takes the reader into a world of power, betrayal and revenge, sports stars and hustlers, corruption, sex and phenomenal quantities of money, and to exotic places from sun-drenched Caribbean beaches to the formal staterooms of the Kremlin and the heat of Doha, Qatar, following the dogged pursuit of the FIFA’s wealthy elite by American FBI and IRS agents, headed by Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who finally brought them to book.
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Heineken Rugby Book of the Year: Sevens Heaven: The Beautiful Chaos of Fiji’s Olympic Dream, by Ben Ryan (W&N)
The story of how coach Ben Ryan, a 40-year-old bespectacled Englishman, took the Fiji sevens side to Olympic gold, having agreed to the job of coaching their players after being given just 20 minutes to decide. He was able, by saying yes, to set in motion an extraordinary journey that ended in Rio not only with an Olympic gold medal but with Ryan feeling that the job had brought him "three years of enlightenment" in the South Pacific. An enthralling read.
_________________________________________
Heartaches Cricket Book of the Year: Arlott, Swanton and the Soul of English Cricket, by Stephen Fay and David Kynaston (Bloomsbury)
With their strong personalities and distinctive voices, John Arlott and E.W. ‘Jim’ Swanton transformed the broadcasting of cricket into a national institution. The game was entering a new era, and these two men, from different backgrounds, one the son of a humble cemetery registrar in Basingstoke, the other the public-school educated son of a London stockbroker, were thrown together in trying to save the soul of the game they loved as it entered a different era. It has been described as “a chronicle of 20th-century class difference, elegantly observed through the lives of the two men and their attitudes towards their beloved sport.”
___________________________________________________
Cycling Book of the Year: Full Gas: How to Win a Bike Race – Tactics from Inside the Peloton, by Peter Cossins (Yellow Jersey)
Cycling has come a long way since the only real tactic in Grand Tour events was to ride as fast as you could for as long as you could. Winners sometimes finished hours ahead of the field. Now a minute’s delay thanks to a puncture could ruin a rider’s chances over a three-week race. The intricacies and complexities of cycling are such that an eye for opportunity and a quick mind are just as crucial to success as the strength and form of the man in the saddle. Cycling journalist Peter Cossins listens as pro cyclists and directeurs sportifs explain their tactics: when it went right, when they got it wrong – from sprinting to summits, from breakaways to bluffing.
_____________________________________________________
Sports Health & Fitness Book of the Year: Running Life: Mindset, Fitness & Nutrition for Positive Wellbeing, by Dame Kelly Holmes (Kyle Books)
Double Olympic champion Dame Kelly draws on her own experiences of overcoming depression and a raft of injuries to achieve her Olympic dream. She offers guidance on fitness and wellbeing with easy-to-follow mindfulness exercises aimed at achieving optimum emotional health, on how to keep your body strong with easy exercises you can perform anywhere, plus Kelly’s top running tips, and how to learn which foods best nourish your body, with five ways to improve the way you eat.
________________________________________________
Getty Images Illustrated Book of the Year: The Beautiful Badge: The Stories Behind the Football Club Badge, by Martyn Routledge & Elspeth Wills (Pitch Publishing)
The Beautiful Badge is the first book to explore the history of football club badges, looking at what inspired them, who crafted them and how fans reacted. Extensive illustrations show how badges followed fashion, negotiated copyright and expressed the aspirations of owners, managers and fans.
_________________________________________________
The Telegraph is this year’s headline sponsor for what was formerly called the British Sports Book Awards, the major annual promotion for sports writing and publishing, originally conceived as part of the famous National Sporting Club’s banqueting campaign programme. It soon became evident that there was room for a major celebration of the best sports writing and the Sports Book Awards were born in 2002.
Read more: Shortlists announced for the Telegraph Sports Book Awards 2019
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