Volumes covering athletics, surfing, football, cricket, horse racing and swimming are in the shortlist for this year’s William Hill Sports Book of the Year award, the world’s richest and longest-running prize for sports writing.
The seven-strong shortlist includes Oliver Kay’s Forever Young, which investigates the short life of the eccentric football prodigy Adrian Doherty, who was offered a five-year contract with Manchester United on his 17th birthday yet died in mysterious circumstances having never realised his true potential. The controversial cricketer, writer and broadcaster Peter Roebuck, another figure who died before his time, has his unpredictable character and sudden death examined in Tim Lane and Elliott Cartledge’s Chasing Shadows.
Barbarian Days by the journalist William Finnegan tells the story of a restless young man who finds that the sport of surfing both anchors him and takes him around the world as he becomes an adult and Find a Way by the swimmer Diana Nyad includes the remarkable story of her attempt to swim the 100 miles between Cuba and the coast of Florida without a shark cage at 28, and how she finally became the first person to complete the treacherous crossing over three decades later, aged 64.
Rick Broadbent receives his third shortlisting for the Prize for Endurance, which looks at the life of the Olympic track legend Emil Zatopek, while Rory Smith’s Mister examines how English football managers helped the game become the global sport it is today and Christopher McGrath’s Mr Darley’s Arabian tells the story of horse racing by following the bloodline of 25 thoroughbreds, from a colt bought from Bedouin tribesmen more than 300 years ago, to the modern champion Frankel.
The seven titles in the running to be crowned the winner of the £28,000 prize are as follows (alphabetically by author surname): Endurance: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Emil Zatopek by Rick Broadbent (Wisden)
Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan (Corsair)
Forever Young: The Story of Adrian Doherty, Football’s Lost Genius by Oliver Kay (Quercus)
Chasing Shadows: The Life & Death of Peter Roebuck by Tim Lane and Elliot Cartledge (Hardie Grant Books)
Mr Darley’s Arabian: High Life, Low Life, Sporting Life – A History of Racing in 25 Horses by Christopher McGrath (John Murray)
Find a Way: One Untamed and Courageous Life by Diana Nyad (Macmillan)
Mister: The Men Who Taught the World How to Beat England at Their Own Game by Rory Smith (Simon & Schuster)
The judging panel for this year’s award consists of: the journalist and broadcaster Mark Lawson; the retired footballer and former chairman of the Professional Footballers’ Association Clarke Carlisle; the broadcaster and writer John Inverdale; the broadcaster Danny Kelly; the award-winning journalist Hugh McIlvanney; and the Times columnist and author, Alyson Rudd. The chair of the judges is Graham Sharpe, co-creator of the award alongside John Gaustad, founder of the Sportspages bookshop, who retired after the 2015 award and died earlier this year.
The winner will be announced at an afternoon reception at Bafta, in central London, on 24 November.
