The Bookie* Prize

Tim Koch writes from London:

The prestigious William Hill Sports Book of the Year is an annual British award for excellence in sports writing. This year’s prize is open to any full-length book on a predominantly sporting subject published for the first time in the UK between 28 September 2012 and 27 September 2013. It started in 1989 when the winner was True Blue: The Oxford Boat Race Mutiny by Dan Topolski and Patrick Robinson.

A book on rowing has not won since but this year there is a strong contender that has made it from the ‘longlist’ of seventeen to the shortlist of six: The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown. As our review shows, it is already the HTBS Book of the Year.

A William Hill spokesman said: “As befits the 25th anniversary of the world’s undisputed finest award for sports books and their authors, I do not believe we have previously seen a year produce such an abundance of top quality titles. The judges face their toughest task yet in initially creating a shortlist then deciding on a winner—which will have beaten a classic field to be declared champion”.

The winner of the £25,000 prize will be announced live on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Front Row’ arts programme on Wednesday 27 November at 7.15 p.m. GMT.

The shortlist in full:

The Boys In The Boat: An Epic True-Life Journey to the Heart of Hitler’s Berlin, Daniel James Brown (Macmillan)

The Sports Gene: What Makes The Perfect Athlete, David Epstein (Yellow Jersey Press)

Bookie Gambler Fixer Spy: A Journey to the Heart of Cricket’s Underworld, Ed Hawkins (Bloomsbury)

I Am Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, David Lagercrantz and Ruth Urbom (Penguin)

Doped: The Real Life Story of the 1960s Racehorse Doping Gang, Jamie Reid (Racing Post)

Seven Deadly Sins: My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong, David Walsh (Simon & Schuster)

*Bookie: Slang for one who takes bets such as the sponsors, William Hill PLC.

The winner is…… Jamie Reid’s Doped. Extracts from the six shortlisted books are here.

Desports: The First Sports Magazine to Read with a Bookmark

Desports, a new beautiful sport magazine with literary texts and historical reports.

HTBS’s Hélène Rémond writes from France,

On January 24, editors Adrien Bosc and Victor Robert launched a new publication in France, Desports. It is a "mook" (a mix of magazine and book) dedicated to sports which aims at offering literary texts, historical reports, stories and analysis not tackled in the news. In short, it is a work mingling sports journalism and literature.

The reviews in the French press acknowledge the demanding and intelligent writing Desports puts to the fore. Writers, philosophers and other intellectuals share their reports. In the first issue, the reader discovers Italian film director and poet Pier Paolo Pasolini’s passion for football, the story of the first boxing World Championship in 1916 which saw Arthur Cravan – Oscar Wilde’s nephew – and Jack Johnson in a contest of strength, and much more.

There is a list of the top quotations by Swedish football player Zlatan Ibrahimovic (who is currently playing for the French club Paris Saint-Germain), including the conjugation of the French verb “zlataner”, this neologism meaning “to dominate”. The issue also contains articles about cricket and Samuel Beckett, who was “better in sport than in English”, as well as artistic Olympic Games in Helsinki, Finland, and jumping over camels in Yemen, etc. Hopefully, there will be articles on rowing soon.

The 300-page magazine, which is published by Editions du Sous-sol, is a beautiful object in a hard cover, with thick paper, attractive typography and stunning photographs and drawings in an 18x24cm format – and no advertising. It is sold in good bookshops only, at 20€ in France and available online, too, take a look here or here.

The next issue of Desports is planned to come out on 24 May.

Desports is on Twitter @revuedesports and on Facebook.

The Famous Swede: Zlatan

Yes, yes, I know this is a rowing history blog, but I would like to make an exception only to show you why the football [some of you might call it soccer] player Zlatan Ibrahimovic ended up on my 'Famous Swedes List'. Just have a look at the goal he scored yesterday when Sweden played against England. Hold on to your hats....



On Saturday 17 November, YouTube cut the previous video I had up due to copyright issues. The above one is from the Russian tv, which does not seem to have the same issue.