Book picks similar to
Me And My Mouth: The Austin Healey Story by Austin Healey
rugby
non-fiction
sport
biography
TC
Tom Carroll - 2013
Inside turned the terrible wheel of drug addiction, part family curse, part legacy of the footloose surf culture he'd done so much to legitimise. Tom's family and friends struggled with him, kept his secrets, and looked on in anger and fear as the wheel began to grind him down.
Shadows on the Road: Life at the Heart of the Peloton, from US Postal to Team Sky
Michael Barry - 2014
Weeks later he testified against his former team mate Lance Armstrong, as part of the USADA investigation.In a stunning piece of writing, Barry explores the dreams and passion of a young, idealistic cycling fan from Toronto - what it was then like to ride as a teammate alongside such giants of the sport as Lance Armstrong, Mark Cavendish, Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome, and how those dreams were tainted early on in his career by a sport in crisis.But it's also the story of his eleven years riding clean, before and after his time in the notorious American Postal Team. What was it like to head for Europe at such a young age, and what was it like to escape the environment of doping, to try and start again, all the time aware that past actions may one day catch up with him?Offering a unique and elegiac insight into the life and mind of a professional sportsman - the pressures, sacrifices, fears, crashes, injuries and neuroses - Cycles of the Heart is a classic, must-read book for cycling and sports fans alike.
El Macca
Steve McManaman - 2004
Soon the ex-Liverpool star was playing alongside Ronaldo, Figo, Zidane and Beckham. It was an astonishing turnaround for a club that had been struggling to live up to its enormous reputation, and Steve was there to witness the most intense and interesting period of its development -- winning the league and two European Cups along the way. Written with the DAILY TELEGRAPH's Sarah Edworthy, who contributes her own insights through original interviews with the key players at Madrid, EL MACCA is not just a highly entertaining memoir of four years at the biggest club in Europe. Thoughtful and candid, it is also a fascinating insight into the process of playing -- and succeeding -- overseas.
Lost and Found: My Story
Lynda Bellingham - 2010
Fear of failure, fear of other people - but mostly fear of myself. It has taken many years to discover who I really am. It's never too late to find yourself, however lost you may be ...'In Lynda Bellingham's blisteringly honest autobiography, the much-loved actress and Loose Women panellist reveals the truth about her life, including her search for her birth mother, only to lose her again to Alzheimer's, and her many years married to an abusive man while playing the 'nation's mum' in the Oxo adverts.But Lynda never lost her sense of humour, and among the darker moments she recalls hilarious anecdotes from her time on stage and screen. Lost and Found is an inspiring story of getting through the tough times with the strong spirit of a survivor, and finally finding true love.
The Test: My Autobiography
Brian O'Driscoll - 2014
Since 1999, when he made his international debut, there has been no greater player in world rugby than Brian O'Driscoll. In 2010 Rugby World magazine named him its world player of the decade - and since then the legend has only grown. Now, at the end of his amazing career - which culminated in fairy-tale fashion with Ireland's victory in the 2014 Six Nations championship - he tells his own story. Honest, gritty and thoughtful, Brian O'Driscoll's Autobiography is not just an essential sports book. It is an essential book about family, friends, hard work, courage and imagination. "An amazing career. There will only ever be one BOD". (Dan Carter). "A thoroughly enjoyable read ...After reading The Test I warmed even more to O'Driscoll as a player and a man. He stood for a new ethos in Irish sport that refused to accept mediocrity or glorious failure". (Fergal Keane, Irish Times). "O'Driscoll's honesty ...takes the reader to a place they simply have not been before". (Vincent Hogan, Irish Independent).
Stan: Tackling My Demons
Stan Collymore - 2004
Exposes the dark and often seedy world shrouded behind the glamorous facade of professional football. 'I was a mess. I couldn't get out of bed. I couldn't structure my day properly. I couldn't face having a shower or getting dressed. Those all seemed like major events I didn't want to confront.' Once the most charismatic and expensive player in the new Premiership flooded with cash, Stan Collymore had, by the age of 28, booked himself into The Priory to treat his depression, close to self-destruction and unable to get his head round playing at all. Along the way, he had been the goalscorer nobody wanted to congratulate, the centre-forward no one knew how to manage, a deeply reluctant star in a tabloid culture that saw him make the front pages as often as the back, and that waited for him to crack up or lash out. When he eventually did, it was, infamously, inevitably, at his then celebrity girlfriend, Ulrika Jonsson.But then retired from football in 2001 and finding himself in the commentary box, he proved he did care about the game, rather too much perhaps, sounding like a fan as much as an ex-player -- and at a stroke he had more in common with the rest of the nation. He knew it was all so much more than a game, and what happened on the field was only a reflection of what was going on inside players' heads. The contradictions remain. A man, who had a steady stream of celebrity women falling at his feet, shamed by his voyeurism in a Cannock car park; a star with everything who was once discovered by his wife tightening a belt around his neck; a loving dad of two whose own father walked out of the marital home and who Collymore continues to blot from his memory to this day; a footballer who abstains from drink and drugs, yet who needs therapy at Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous; the loner slated for his aloofness who found critical acclaim as a football pundit on national prime-time radio. This is Stan Collymore's own life story, the real person on his flawed character and personal demons, telling it like you have never seen before -- raw and uncut.
Jack Charlton: The Autobiography
Jack Charlton - 1996
As a footballer, he touched the pinnacle in England's legendary 1966 World Cup winning team. As a manager, he dragged the Republic of Ireland from the backwaters of international football to compete with the world's best. As a man, he was noted for his forthright personality - one whose views were as honest as they were respected.This is his story, the life of a man who specialised in the improbable, told in his own words.
Left Foot Forward: A Year in the Life of a Journeyman Footballer
Garry Nelson - 1995
This book describes the 1994-5 season at Charlton Athletic but it could be any in which he reveals the ups and downs of what it is like to be an ordinary professional player.There are the injuries, the battles for selection, and the worries that age is catching up on him, which would mean the end of his career. But there are also the occasional triumphs, such as when he was appointed captain and scored the winning goal in a televised match.Written with wit, intelligence and insight, Left Foot Forward reveals far more about what it is really like to be a footballer than any number of ghosted autobiographies by the big stars. It is destined to become a classic of football writing.
Can't Sleep, Can't Train, Can't Stop: More Misadventures in Triathlon
Andy Holgate - 2012
Now take those events and transfer them to a volcanic rock with cruel winds, searing sun, rough seas and nosebleed-inducing hills, and you have Ironman Lanzarote. Why, then, would Andy Holgate – who admittedly has never swum in the sea, who can’t cope with the wind, sun or even stairs – take on such an extreme challenge? Simple: Because he can. Can’t Sleep, Can’t Train, Can’t Stop! continues Andy’s inspirational journey from where Can’t Swim, Can’t Ride, Can’t Run left off, chronicling his attempt to complete two Ironman triathlons six weeks apart. Already in his fortieth year, would Andy make it to his forty-first? Would Lanzarote prove one triathlon too far – or will Andy succeed against the odds and live to swim, ride and run another day?
No Holding Back: The Autobiography
Michael Holding - 2010
Despite having not laced his bowling boots since 1989, it remains a fitting sobriquet. As a commentator and administrator, Holding has delivered his views on cricket in the same manner that he played the game: he speaks softly with a rich Jamaican rhythm and is calculated in either criticism or compliment. This book charts his effortless transition from one of the great players to one of the great pundits. Holding graphically describes his days as a player, looking back at how he tried to deliberately hurt batsmen on the wastelands of Kingston and his first match for Jamaica when he almost collapsed from exhaustionafter only four overs!He alsodivulges what it was like to tour with West Indies, and sharesunmissable insights about sharing a dressing room with other legends of the game like Sir Clive Lloyd, Sir Viv Richards, and Malcolm Marshall.Holding does not shirk the bigissuesheexplores why West Indies have slipped following their halcyon days, openly assesses Brian Lara, and laments the hypocrisy over the state of the game in the region. The controversy surrounding the Allen Stanford $20m spectacle, the ICC's handling of the abandoned England vs. Pakistan match, player power, illegal bowling actions, and the threat of Twenty20 to the Test game are all subjects which Holding tackles with knowledge and class."
Martin Johnson Autobiography
Martin Johnson - 2003
His drive and physical presence mean that he is a natural leader on the pitch - and off it, too. In this, his long-awaited autobiography, he looks at the changing world of rugby. He explains why he led the England team to the brink of a strike in the autumn of 2000, and provides the definitive account of England's 2003 World Cup triumph, as well as Lions tours and all the goings-on that make rugby such a special sport. Hugely popular and respected, Martin Johnson has written vivid autobiography and a remarkable portrait of modern rugby.
The Breakaway
Nicole Cooke - 2014
The contrast could not have been greater - as Lance Armstrong, a fraudster backed by many corporate sponsors and feted by presidents, was about to deliver a stage-managed confession to Oprah, so a young woman from a small village in Wales took aim. She too had been a cyclist, the only rider ever to have become World and Olympic champion in the same year, and the first British cyclist to have been ranked World No.1, but as a woman in a man's sport, her exploits gained little recognition and brought no riches. She too had ridden through this dark period for the sport when drug-taking was everywhere. Nicole Cooke spoke up for those who had taken a very different path to Lance and his team-mates. In her frank and outspoken autobiography, Cooke reveals the real story behind British cycling's rise to global dominance. With a child's dreams of success, she left home at 18 to pursue her goals in Italy. Broken contracts, unpaid wages, a horrendous injury and drugs cheats were just some of the challenges she faced, even before she lined up to take on her opponents. The Breakaway is a book that will not only inspire all those who read it, but which also asks some serious questions about the way society regards women's sport.
Graeme Souness – Football: My Life, My Passion
Graeme Souness - 2017
The game has been his life, and his enduring passion.Souness has written a perceptive and opinionated autobiography. It chronicles one of the most successful and colourful careers in the history of British football. But it also provides an intriguing assessment of the game which has dominated his existence, drawing extensively on his incredibly rich and varied experiences as a player, manager and pundit.The result is a shrewd, incisive and hard-hitting memoir, at times tinged with hindsight and regret, which also grapples with many of the major talking points affecting the game today. It is shot through with Souness' trademark tenacity and wisdom, and with fantastic anecdotes from his glittering career.In many ways, Football: My Life, My Passion is the story of the last half-century of British football writ large.
My Hour
Bradley Wiggins - 2015
The inside story of Bradley Wiggins's record-breaking rideFor 60 minutes this summer, the British public stopped what they were doing, switched on their radios, their TVs, refreshed their Twitter feeds and followed Bradley Wiggins’s attempt to break one of sport’s most gruelling records: The Hour.The premise is simple enough: how far can you cycle in one hour. But it is thought to be one of the toughest events an athlete can endure, both physically and psychologically. Eddy Merckx, cycling’s über-champ, called it the hardest thing he ever did. Wiggins, like many before him, discovered the unique pain of pushing yourself as hard as you can for 60 minutes.In this revealing book, Bradley Wiggins takes you behind the scenes of his record attempt. From planning to preparation, to training to execution, Bradley shares his thoughts on his sacrifices, his heroes, and the people who have supported him along the way as well as what’s to come as he heads towards the twilight of his stellar career.Supported by stunning photography, My Hour is a fitting celebration of one of Britain’s best-loved sportsmen in his finest hour.
Me and the Table - My Autobiography
Stephen Hendry - 2018
Hendry retired in 2012 with a record-breaking seven World Champion titles under his belt, a record that remains to this day. He's now ready to tell his life story for the first time - from a childhood spent climbing the ranks of the sport, through the highs of the '90s and lows of the 2000s, to his life now as a sports pundit and commentator.With an insight into the world of the man behind the cue, and what made him such a top-class player, this is the definitive autobiography of the legend that is Stephen Hendry.