In 1988, in a gruelling and dangerous adventure, 50-year-old Helen Thayer became the first woman to ski solo to the magnetic North Pole. She trekked 345 miles, pulling a 160-pound sledge with a husky, Charlie, as her only companion. Attacked by polar bears, caught in violent storms, and close to freezing and starving, she had to learn to control her fear or die. This is her story - one not only of survival, but of love between human and animal. The loyal Charlie, a present from an Eskimo hunter,...
How Mike Weir became a Canadian hero, winning the 2003 Masters Tournament and proving that sometimes nice guys finish first Lorne Rubenstein has been following Mike Weir’s career since the slim kid from Brights Grove, Ontario, near Sarnia, started winning amateur tournaments. Weir was a star on the Brigham Young University golf team before turning professional in 1992. It was clear to Lorne Rubenstein that the gentlemanly left-hander had what it takes to make it to golf’s pinnacle. But there’s...
Shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year In the summer of 1952 Emil Zátopek became the king of the running world with an unprecedented distance treble at the Olympic Games in Helsinki. Together with his wife Dana, who won another gold medal in the javelin, they were the embodiment of sporting romance. Born on the same day, they were champions on the same day too. Yet in 1968 this affable but eccentric Czech solider was betrayed by his Communist paymasters and cast out into wilde...
This is the first full biography of Hall of Famer Urban ""Red"" Faber, who won a record three World Series games in 1917 - the last time the Chicago White Sox won it all. The winningest spitball pitcher in the American League and one of the oldest players ever to wear a major league uniform, he regularly challenged the game's top hitters. Faber experienced the heights of championship baseball until the Black Sox scandal decimated Charles Comiskey's team and relegated Faber to stardom on second-d...
'The incredible story of the man who went from trying to win the Grand National to playing a key role in co-ordinating the French Resistance.' Daily Express An English racehorse trainer and horse dealer's son, John Goldsmith was born and brought up in Paris and spoke fluent French. In 1942 he was recruited in to the legendary Special Operations Executive, or SOE, and dropped three times behind enemy lines. In 1943 he organised the escape of a French air force general across the Pyrenees but a f...
In this collection, the authors have selected some of the great characters from the Five Nations Championships of recent years - from the successful Tony O'Reilly of Ireland to Gareth Chilcott from the West Country. The Welsh heroes of the Seventies are well represented through the likes of Gareth Edwards, JPR and Barry John. Coach Ian McGeechan and captain David Sole celebrate Scotland's victory at Murrayfield to take the 1990 Grand Slam.
A Football Odyssey represents a new slant on football writing. It addresses the game through the eyes of ordinary supporters. If you want to glory in the whims and fancies of 20-year-old millionaires - or the sanitised accounts of the rise and rise of clubs funded by oil-billionaires or leveraged buy outs -then this isn't for you. However, if you want to understand why the Jambos break their fan's hearts - or what it means to downsize your Uniteds - or how this game can shape and mirror lives- t...
In Head to Head, award-winning writer Lenny Shulman offers highlights from the best interviews he has conducted throughout his twenty-year career covering Thoroughbred horse racing. In that time, he has coaxed the innermost thoughts out of the sport's most notable headline-makers. It was to Shulman that Helen "Penny" Chenery, owner of Secretariat, publicly revealed for the first time the mistakes she made with her superstar colt. Arthur Hancock III shared with him his feelings of being banished...
Fred Trueman has met almost everyone in the world of cricket, and on this cassette he tells of anecdotes and dialogues between him and other great players like Don Bradman, Mike Atherton, John Major, and Harold Wilson.