Author: Martin Smith Publisher: Aurum ISBN: 178131036X Category : Sports & Recreation Languages : en Pages : 280
Book Description
For the record-breaking third time London will be hosting the Olympic Games in 2012. From the inception of Baron Pierre de Courbetin’s crusade to revive the Games of the ancient Greeks, in the 1890s, through the triumphs and disasters of twenty-nine Olympiads, The Daily Telegraph has been there to provide eye-witness accounts of the greatest sporting moments in history with characteristic authority. This comprehensive and colourful review of the summer Olympics takes you back to 1908, the first time London held the Games, with Dorando Pietri’s infamous disqualification in the marathon. Then to Fanny Blankers-Koen and Emil Zatopek lifeting the War-scarred capital in the Austerity Games of 1948. With more recent record-breaking moments from the Olympics of Sydney, Athens and Beijing, this is the perfect scene-setter for the Games’ return to London. From Sebastian Coe and Steve Ovett to Jesse Owens and Carl Lewis, Kelly Holmes, Steve Redgrave, Ian Thorpe and Daley Thompson, the tears and the glory of all the heroes and villains from 116 years of Olympic history are collected here in this wonderful anthology of the greatest show on earth.
Author: The Telegraph Publisher: Aurum ISBN: 1781313865 Category : Sports & Recreation Languages : en Pages : 423
Book Description
How do you achieve sporting immortality? How do you develop a winning mentality? What seprates the best from the rest? While sporting greatness is for the few, there is much that the rest of us can learn from them. From the era-defining brilliance of Muhammad Ali to the tactical genius of Sir Alex Ferguson, gathered together here for the first time are the rare insights into what made some of the best sports men and women from the past century. Drawn from the Telegraph archives, this collection of interviews, contemporary accounts and first-person articles covering everyone from Michael Phelps to Dame Ellen MacArthur, Roger Federer to Michael Schumacher, Sir Steve Redgrave to Nicole Cooke, give a rare glimpse of how these individuals conquered the world. Through the snow, mud, ice and sun of the sporting calendar, TheTelegraph Book of Champions features one hundred champions from thirty-one sports. Side by side, in this unique collection, they line up as a reminder of what it takes to be the best, why success at the very top is only for the few, and what the rest of us mere mortals can learn from them.
Author: Ben Ryan Publisher: Hachette UK ISBN: 1474608280 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 313
Book Description
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2018 The uplifting, feel-good autobiography of Ben Ryan, the coach of the Olympic gold-medal winning Fijian rugby team It is late summer 2013. Ben Ryan, a red-haired, 40-something, spectacle-wearing Englishman, is given 20 minutes to decide whether he wants to coach Fiji's rugby sevens team, with the aim of taking them to the nation's first-ever Olympic medal. He has never been to Fiji. There has been no discussion of contracts or salary. But he knows that no one plays rugby like the men from these isolated Pacific islands, just as no one plays football like the kids from the Brazilian favelas, or no one runs as fast as the boys and girls from Jamaica's boondocks. He knows too that no other rugby nation has so little - no money and no resources, only basic equipment and a long, sad history of losing its most gifted players to richer, greedier nations. Ryan says yes. And with that simple word he sets in motion an extraordinary journey that will encompass witchdoctors and rugby-obsessed prime ministers, sun-smeared dawns and devastating cyclones, intense friendships and bitter rows, phone taps and wild nationwide parties. It will end in Rio with a performance that not only wins Olympic gold but reaches fresh heights for rugby union and makes Ben and his 12 players living legends back home.
Author: Michael Bond Publisher: HarperCollins UK ISBN: 0008560153 Category : Juvenile Fiction Languages : en Pages : 131
Book Description
Paddington Bear has been delighting adults and children alike with his earnest good intentions and humorous misadventures for over sixty years and is now a major movie star!
Author: Michael Gillard Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN: 1448217423 Category : True Crime Languages : en Pages : 384
Book Description
'Reveals criminal corruption on a scale that the Kray twins would never have dreamt of' John Pearson, Profession of Violence, The Rise and Fall of the Kray Twins 'Gillard's detailed investigation makes for a stunning and shocking read' Barry Keeffe, The Long Good Friday 'Legacy illustrates the sordid links between business, politics and organised crime' Ioan Grillo, El Narco and Gangster Warlords When billions poured into the neglected east London borough hosting the 2012 Olympics, a turf war broke out between crime families for control of a now valuable strip of land. Using violence, guile and corruption, one gangster, the Long Fella, emerged as a true untouchable. A team of local detectives made it their business to take him on until Scotland Yard threw them under the bus and the business of putting on 'the greatest show on earth' won the day. Protecting the Olympic legacy by covering up a scandal of suspicious deaths and corruption seemed more important than protecting Londoners from the predatory Long Fella and his friends in suits. For others at Scotland Yard, the crime lord was simply too big and too dangerous to take on. Award-winning journalist Michael Gillard took up where they left off to expose the tangled web of chief executives, big banks, politicians and dirty money where innocent lives are destroyed and the guilty flourish. Gillard's efforts culminated in a landmark court case, which finally put a spotlight on the Long Fella and his friends and exposed London's real Olympic legacy.
Author: Iain Sinclair Publisher: Hamish Hamilton ISBN: 9780241965504 Category : London (England) Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
'The notion was to cut a crude V into the sprawl of the city, to vandalize dormant energies by an act of ambulant signmaking.' Walking the streets of London, Iain Sinclair traces nine routes across the territory of the capital. Connecting people and places, redrawing boundaries both ancient and modern, reading obscure signs and finding hidden patterns, Sinclair creates a fluid snapshot of the city. In Lights Out for the Territory he gives us a daring, provocative, enlightening, disturbing and utterly unique picture of modern urban life. And in the process he reveals the dark underbelly of a London many of us did not know existed. 'Quite simply one of the finest books about London ever written.' SpectatorCover art by- Stephen Powers'whether the book addresses graffiti explicitly, evoke a city from the past, or are considered cult classics, the novels all share the quality - like street art - of speaking to their time.' Guardian Gallery
Author: Oliver Hilmes Publisher: Other Press, LLC ISBN: 1590519299 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 321
Book Description
Named a Best Book of the Year by The Guardian, The Telegraph, Daily Mail, and Financial Times A lively account of the 1936 Olympics told through the voices and stories of those who witnessed it, from an award-winning historian and biographer Berlin 1936 takes the reader through the sixteen days of the Olympiad, describing the events in the German capital through the eyes of a select cast of characters--Nazi leaders and foreign diplomats, sportsmen and journalists, writers and socialites, nightclub owners and jazz musicians. While the events in the Olympic stadium, such as when an American tourist breaks through the security and manages to kiss Hitler, provide the focus and much of the drama, it also considers the lives of ordinary Berliners--the woman with a dark secret who steps in front of a train, the transsexual waiting for the Gestapo's knock on the door, and the Jewish boy fearing for his future and hoping that Germany loses on the playing field. During the games the Nazi dictatorship was in many ways put on hold, and Berlin 1936 offers a last glimpse of the vibrant and diverse life in the German capital in the 1920s and 30s that the Nazis wanted to destroy.
Author: Stephen Gaylord Miller Publisher: Yale University Press ISBN: 9780300115291 Category : Sports & Recreation Languages : en Pages : 310
Book Description
Presenting a survey of sports in ancient Greece, this work describes ancient sporting events and games. It considers the role of women and amateurs in ancient athletics, and explores the impact of these games on art, literature and politics.
Author: Chris Cleave Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1451672748 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 372
Book Description
Building on the tradition of Little Bee, Chris Cleave again writes with elegance, humor, and passion about friendship, marriage, parenthood, tragedy, and redemption. What would you sacrifice for the people you love? KATE AND ZOE met at nineteen when they both made the cut for the national training program in track cycling—a sport that demands intense focus, blinding exertion, and unwavering commitment. They are built to exploit the barest physical and psychological edge over equally skilled rivals, all of whom are fighting for the last one tenth of a second that separates triumph from despair. Now at thirty-two, the women are facing their last and biggest race: the 2012 Olympics. Each wants desperately to win gold, and each has more than a medal to lose. Kate is the more naturally gifted, but the demands of her life have a tendency to slow her down. Her eight-year-old daughter Sophie dreams of the Death Star and of battling alongside the Rebels as evil white blood cells ravage her personal galaxy—she is fighting a recurrence of the leukemia that nearly killed her three years ago. Sophie doesn’t want to stand in the way of her mum’s Olympic dreams, but each day the dark forces of the universe seem to be massing against her. Devoted and self-sacrificing Kate knows her daughter is fragile, but at the height of her last frenzied months of training, might she be blind to the most terrible prognosis? Intense, aloof Zoe has always hovered on the periphery of real human companionship, and her compulsive need to win at any cost has more than once threatened her friendship with Kate—and her own sanity. Will she allow her obsession, and the advantage she has over a harried, anguished mother, to sever the bond they have shared for more than a decade? Echoing the adrenaline-fueled rush of a race around the Velodrome track, Gold is a triumph of superbly paced, heart-in-throat storytelling. With great humanity and glorious prose, Chris Cleave examines the values that lie at the heart of our most intimate relationships, and the choices we make when lives are at stake and everything is on the line.
Author: Janie Hampton Publisher: Quarto Publishing Group USA ISBN: 1781310017 Category : Sports & Recreation Languages : en Pages : 447
Book Description
‘An enthralling account.’ —Independent ‘A fascinating book … researched with an awesome thoroughness.’ —Daily Telegraph ‘Hampton’s excellent book should be compulsory reading for everyone involved in the 2012 London Olympics.’ —Daily Mail Critic’s Choice The budget for the 2012 Olympic village alone is already a billion pounds short. The likelihood of corporate sponsorship recedes with every day of the credit crunch. How on earth are we going to match the opening and closing ceremonies of Beijing, let along top them? Fortunately, London has been through just such hard times before in the run-up to an Olympics, and in 1948 it showed just how to run a fantastic Games on a tiny budget – indeed, make them all the better for it. Janie Hampton’s book about the last time the Olympics came to London is a tale of female competitors sewing their own kit, teams ferried to the Games on red London buses and billeted in Spartan hostels or even army camps, and the main stadium being hastily cleared of greyhound racing to allow the athletics to take place. The total budget was £760,000, great athletes like Emil Zatopek and Fanny Blankers-Koen thrilled the crowds, and at the end a profit was turned! This is a book that becomes more relevant and ironically entertaining every day nearer to 2012.
Author: Martin Smith
Author: The Telegraph
Author: Ben Ryan
Author: Michael Bond
Author: Michael Gillard
Author: Iain Sinclair
Author: Oliver Hilmes
Author: Stephen Gaylord Miller
Author: Chris Cleave
Author: Janie Hampton