Diverse titles shortlisted for William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award
31st October 2012 - 2:13pm
Titles celebrating football, cricket, TT racing and the Ironman Triathlon are among the seven books shortlisted for this year's William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award.
Praised by judges as the 'most varied' shortlist in the prize's 24-year history, the books have been whittled down from a longlist of 14 and see squash and the Ironman Triathlon represented for the first time.
Rev star Miles Jupp is in the running for Fibber in the Heat, his tale of how he bluffed his way into the cricket press corps during a 2006 Test series in India, alongside former Crystal Palace chairman Simon Jordan's Be Careful What You Wish For, a blow-by-blow account of his time running the club.
Rick Broadbent, who won the prize in 2009 for Ring of Fire, an insider's account of the pressures of being a MotoGP racer, is nominated again for That Near-Death Thing, in which he follows the leading racers of the infamous Isle of Man TT. If Broadbent wins, it will be the first time a book about motorsport has ever claimed the title.
Also shortlisted is the self-published squash title Shot and a Ghost, the autobiography of world number one squash player James Willstrop, written with the help of sports journalist Rod Gilmour, and Running with the Kenyans by Adharanand Finn, in which the author sets out to discover just what it is that makes Kenyan runners so fast.
The shortlist is completed by A Life Without Limits, the autobiography of four-time Ironman Triathlon world champion Chrissie Wellington, and The Secret Race, by former professional cyclist Tyler Hamilton and journalist Daniel Coyle, described as 'the most damning indictment yet' of
doping in the Tour de France.
William Hill's Graham Sharpe said the shortlist was packed with seven 'readable, remarkable and worthy contenders'.
'The subject matter encompasses the entire emotional gamut from comedy to tragedy,' he added.
This year's winner, to be announced in London next month, will take home a GBP 24,000 cash prize, a GBP 2,000 William Hill bet, a specially commissioned, hand-bound copy of their book and a day at the races.