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Celebrating the 100th race of the Tour de France
Hot off the press: Tour de France 100: A Photographic History of Cycling’s Most Iconic Race publishes … today
All I can say is this is one sexy book! I could go on about the superb imagery, exquisite photography, and insightful commentary from sports journalist Richard Moore, but the book speaks for itself.
If you’d like a quick peruse of the inside of this gorgeous book, just click here.
If you’re a cycling enthusiast and don’t have a copy, well…
Who will fill Sir Alex Ferguson’s shoes?
I was 11 years old when I first started supporting Manchester United; an arbitrary decision to annoy my Liverpool-supporting older brother, but also linked to the football sticker swapping craze which had spread through the school playground. It was the peer-pressure of youth, centred around the Merlin’s Official Premier League 94 football collection, which led me to give my allegiance to the Red Devils. While most girls’ pin-ups were Take That and East 17, mine were to be Ryan Giggs, Eric Cantona and Andrei Kanchelskis, followed later by Beckham, Scholes, Nicky Butt and the Neville brothers … and many more besides. Heroes in my eyes.
But where would the club be with out the the gaffer, the manager, the boss? Throughout my years as a Manchester United supporter, though players have come and gone, there has always been the constant of Sir Alex Ferguson. Indeed, anyone in their early thirties and younger will never have known any different, but with Sir Alex’s retirement announced this morning after 26 years in charge, a new era is nevertheless dawning. But who will take over? A daunting challenge for even the most experienced.
In our new book, Standing on the Shoulders of Giants (publishing next month) – a history of Manchester United from its origins as Newton Heath in 1878 to the present day – the author Søren Frank dedicates the last chapter to Alex Ferguson and the legacy he has created, but also discusses the possible replacements for the (un)enviable position as manager of one of the world’s greatest football clubs.
So who will fill Sir Alex’s shoes? For a quick insight, click on the cover for a sneak preview of some of the top candidates…
Triumph and Tragedy at the Giro d’Italia
Triumph and tragedy? Surely I’m not prophesising the results of the Giro d’Italia already? Nah, if I was, I wouldn’t be so worried about my Fantasy Cycling team*.
As much as I’d love to tell the future and know if Wiggo will beat Nabali to win the pink jersey or whether the Manx Missile, Mark Cavendish, will come home in the red, I think I’m just going to have to sit back and watch the drama unravel on TV like the rest of you other cyclist enthusiasts.
However, I just thought I’d give you tifosi out there the heads-up about the smashing new edition of Maglia Rosa, by Herbie Sykes and published in partnership with Rouleur. A stunning photographic book offering a definitive history of the Italy’s Grand Tour, it takes you all the way from its beginnings in 1909 right up to the present day. And if you fancy checking out some of the gorgeous images, just click on the cover below…
Essential reading for all ‘tifosi’
*L’Equipe Kirsty
Read All About It!
Check out our new online Health and Fitness catalogue for 2013… #betterthanslicedbread
Out Now: The Back Bible
For Anyone with Back Problems, and Everyone Who Wants to Avoid Them
It’s estimated that 4 out of 5 adults will experience back pain at some stage in their lives, with the NHS spending more than £1 billion per year on back pain related costs and British businesses losing an estimated 4.9 million days to employee absenteeism through work related back pain. With these statistics, it’s clear that we need to look after our backs. Dr Jenny Sutcliffe has written this excellent family reference guide packed with proven, practical approaches to caring for your back throughout your life.
With a full anatomy of the spine and back, a breakdown of different types of pain, when to see the doctor and at-a-glance diagnostic advice, The Back Bible offers a physiological run down of the problems that can affect you back, neck, and shoulders. Click on the cover to get a sneak preview of inside.
This book is an absolute must-have for anyone with back problems and for those who wish to avoid them!
Top 10 Weird Sports (continued…)
Okay, we won’t keep you in suspense anymore. Here’s the second half of the top 10 wackiest and weirdest sports…
(And don’t forget to click on the pics for action videos.)
5. Bog snorkelling
Started in Wales in (surprise surprise) the Seventies, supposedly as a result of a conversation in a pub (as most new sports probably are), bog snorkelling involves racing through a flooded trench dug into a peat bog about 60 yards long, and then racing back again. That’s pretty much all there is to it. Competitors must wear a snorkel and flippers and aren’t allowed to try to swim. Wetsuits are not mandatory, but are probably advisable.
4. Cheese rolling
A round of Double Gloucester cheese is given a one second head start down Cooper’s Hill in the Cotswolds. Hundreds of people charge down after it. The winner is the first one to the bottom of the hill, or the person who catches up with the cheese. But seeing as it reaches speeds of up to 70mph, that never happens. The prize is the cheese, and international fame. You might not want the cheese, given where it’s been. In 1993, 15 people were injured, 4 of them seriously. Organisers received death threats in 2011 after trying to charge a high entry fee, supposedly to try and reduce the number of competitors to comply with the health and safety laws that saw the 2010 event cancelled.
3. Running of the bulls
Because as every real man knows, it ain’t a real sport unless something bleeds. Made famous by Ernest Hemingway, with the encierro at Pamplona in Spain now the best known, bull-running involves penning a bunch of bulls in the streets and then letting them run wild whilst a bunch of idiot humans run in front of them and try to avoid getting gored. The path leads to the bull-ring, where the bulls are tortured until they collapse the following day whilst the same idiot humans whoop and cheer. Over a dozen of these idiot humans have been killed by the bulls at Pamplona in the last century. The heart bleeds. Theirs, mainly. Ours, only sarcastically.
2. Tossing the caber
Perhaps the most emblematic event of the Highland Games, tossing the caber secretly impresses us weedy Sassenachs, but it still amounts to chucking a bit of a tree around. The caber is typically an almost-20ft-long pole made of larch that weighs about 80kg. The aim of tossing it is not just to achieve distance, but to have it land perfectly. The top of the caber should land nearest to the thrower, so the caber can’t just be pushed up into the air and allowed to fall. Ideally it should come to lie at exactly twelve o’clock to the thrower. He loses points the further it lands from this sweetspot, and if the caber doesn’t turn over in the air. The person throwing the caber is called a tosser. No comment.
1. Chess boxing
But surely the weirdest sport currently played is chess boxing. It’s exactly what it sounds like. Competitors play six rounds of chess in the ring, interspersed with five rounds of boxing – if both competitors last that long. Having the strongest fist won’t necessarily secure victory here. Competitors need to be equally skilled with their knights and bishops, because chess boxing matches can be won either way. The sport is currently enjoying an explosion in popularity, though the first proper matches weren’t held until 2003. Interestingly, chess boxing first appeared in 1992 – in the pages of a comic book. 
Guest post by Jonathan Eyers. Follow his blog at http://jonathaneyers.com/blog/
Top 10 Weird and Wacky Sports
We freely admit in Team Sport at Bloomsbury that we’ve published a fair few books on a plethora of sports from around the world, and there’s plenty more in the offing. But we got a-thinking about what weird and wacky sports there were out there. We may not be planning to publish books about them, but here’s our resident satirical sports-writer, Jonathan Eyers with a list of his top 10 weird ‘sports’.
(And click on the images if you want to see some of these crazy sports in action.)
10. Cup stacking
Almost exclusively a pastime of preteen Americans, this ‘sport’ involves laying out rows of plastic cups, stacking more rows on top of them, and then dismantling the stacks again – all as quickly and as accurately as possible. Penalties for knocking over your stack include death (not really). Clearly America will make a competition out of anything, including preparing their kids for careers in the service industry. Incidentally, competitive eating (surely also the sole preserve of Americans) would be at number 11 on this list.
9. Birdman rallies
They might call these eccentric/embarrassing (delete as appropriate) spectacles Flugtags now to try and convince the world they are a German invention, but the first birdman rally was held in Britain in 1971. Actually, it’s not hard to imagine the grey-faced, red-flared, Seventies breed of Brit showing up to watch someone throw themselves off the pier, given the mass unemployment, three-day week, power outages and regular strikes. As with everything else, some people take it all far too seriously, and the most hardcore of enthusiasts can reach over 100ft in their human-powered craft. Points are won both for distance and entertainment value. A bit like boxing.
8. Kabaddi
Kabaddi is the Tamil word for ‘holding hands’, but the key thing about this 4,000-year-old sport from the Indian subcontinent is actually holding your breath. Described by some as a bizarre mix of wrestling and rugby (without a ball), it sounds more like one of those games we played as kids that involved charging at each other. Two teams of seven take turns to be on the offensive and defensive. Each controls half the court. The team on the offensive sends a raider onto the other side of the court to knock out (not literally) as many opponents as he can. The catch is that the raider must hold his breath until he is back on his own side, and the defenders will be doing everything they can to stop him getting there before he runs out of air.
7. Wife-carrying
This bizarre sport originated in Finland, which holds the international championships every year. Male competitors must carry their wives over a 253.5m obstacle course, and the winning couple is the one that finishes it in the fastest time. Fortunately for those husbands whose wives are not enthusiastic about being heaved through the mandatory pool of water, it doesn’t have to be your own wife. However, she must weigh at least 49kg, or she has to wear a rucksack for added weight. Wives can be carried piggyback, over the shoulder or ‘Estonian style’ – the wife hangs upside down with her legs over her husband’s shoulders whilst she holds onto his waist. All other sports could learn one thing from wife-carrying – the official rules require all competitors to enjoy themselves.
6. Ferret legging
Another product of the Seventies (remember, they didn’t have the internet and there were only three TV channels back then), this endurance sport came from Yorkshire, where it was popular with coal miners. Its popularity has waned in recent years, perhaps because it’s considered slightly cruel to trap two live ferrets down an old bumpkin’s trousers for five and a half hours (the world record). Winning at ferret-legging simply entails not letting the things out before any of your fellow competitors. The former world champion used to wear white trousers to better show off all the blood that the biting, scratching beasts extracted from his legs and… other places. They sure don’t breed ’em like that down here in’t south.
To be continued …
Tennis: A Call to Ranks
Guest Post by Anna MacDiarmid, Editorial Intern for Team Sport
Olympic Stars – Andy Murray & Laura Robson
The first major event on the tennis calendar, the Australian Open, is well underway. And the question on every tennis fan’s lips is: who will raise the trophy this year? British number one Andy Murray has already won one trophy this year, defending his title at the Brisbane International. 2012 was a fantastic year for British tennis, along with most British sport, with Murray winning an Olympic Gold Medal and the US Open, ending the UK’s long wait for a Grand Slam Champion. Can he top 2012 with a Wimbledon win? We shall see. While Murray is the only British male tennis player in the world’s top 100, things are looking up for female tennis, with young players Laura Robson and Heather Watson entering the top 50 this year. My question is: why must we tennis fans rest all our hopes on so few contenders?
Britain is the home of tennis, so why is it we produce so few Murray-like players? Most people love to sit down to a good Wimbledon match with a Pimms in one hand and some strawberries and cream in the other, so why do we not play tennis with such devotion? This is set to change; with such a good year for British tennis last year, as well as the lasting Olympic Legacy British sport is keen to promote, things are starting to look up. Tennis does have a reputation for being an expensive sport, and I can understand this as a tennis player myself. It is rare to find a court you can play on without paying £5 a game and often you have to pay an extortionate fee to join a club. However, things are set to change, with more free courts popping up around the country as well as taster sessions allowing people to try out the sport.
Grab a racquet this Spring!
One excellent organisation promoting just this is Tennis For Free (www.tennisforfree.com). TFF works with schools, tennis clubs and local authorities throughout the UK to create more opportunities for tennis communities to utilise public park court facilities for free. One of their main projects is to provide free equipment and a 2 year coaching programme delivered by qualified coaches to all ages and standards for 50 weeks of the year, for free. Their website is also an excellent resource for finding courts you can play on around the country (…for free). Just enter your postcode and browse the results for your most convenient court.
January is the month to take up a new sport and get fit, so I say take up tennis, let’s start producing our own Federers, Djokovics and Nadals. This game really is fantastic for all areas of fitness, not only does it improve your aerobic fitness, but also builds muscle and improves balance as well as being great fun! The average player will cover between 3 and 5 miles during a competitive match and burn up to 600 calories per hour. Also tennis players repeat the same movements over and over which helps to tone the body. Don’t wait for the summer, pick up your racquet and get on court.
Editorial Intern for Team Sport at Bloomsbury, Anna is a keen tennis player and has been playing on and off for about eight years; she secretly hopes to hit the big time. While admitting racquet sports are probably the only kind of exercise she really enjoys, she does also like swimming, and desperately wants to try scuba diving in a tropical underwater world one day.
Spring Highlights
Just a quick sneak preview of some of our Spring highlights…
… Inspired? You should be! We’ll keep you posted on all our upcoming titles throughout the year. Happy 2013!
from Team Sport at Bloomsbury
The Inside Track: Sports Journalism
Journalism, like many industries, has a language all of its own. Fortunately, it isn’t too complicated and is quite easy to pick up.
In his new book Sports Journalism (out 20th December 2012), James Toney, managing editor at national press agency Sportsbeat, gives aspiring sports journalists the inside track on the exciting and first-paced environment of sports journalism and how to get into it. He also provides a handy glossary so that when someone on the backbench tells you, ‘We’re off stone early tonight so need to have your copy filed by 8 and will add quotes later,’ you will soon understand what it means.
Here’s a few taster terms to get you started:
Backbench – The senior management of a publication or media outlet, which normally includes the editor, deputy editor, news editor and chief subeditor.
Filing – The act of sending your story to your editor.
Gaggle – An informal press conference, usually a gathering of reporters around a player or coach after an event.
Kill – To prevent a story from running. A kill fee may also be paid to a freelancer for a story that has been commissioned but not published by a media outlet.
Off stone – An old term, dating back to printing techniques, for the final time a newspaper must be sent to the printers.
Round table – When a number of journalists interview together, usually when time would not permit an athlete to give a number of one-on-ones.
Stringer – A freelance journalist hired on an ad-hoc basis to cover events.
Nick in Nets
Kirsty
Naomi
Sarah
