Great presents for Christmas
THOUGH we experienced a shortage of decent sports books during late spring, 2020 has still delivered in terms of quality and engaging reads. Here’s some of the year’s sporting belters good enough to warrant a place in any Christmas stocking.
Andrew Smith’s excellent No Way but to Fight is a superbly well-researched account of George Foreman’s eventful life, peopled with characters such as Jerry Perenchio, ‘Tex’ Rickard and ‘Doc’ Cairns.
Perenchio effectively ended the major boxing event duopoly enjoyed by New York and California by staging a bout between Foreman and Jerry Lyle in at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas in 1976. The slugfest proved a massive hit; both men were knocked down in the fourth round before Foreman put Lyle away in the fifth.
While Foreman’s life has been dissected before, Smith’s account, which includes fresh interviews with the man himself, as well as extracts from recently declassified government documents, rates as perhaps the very best.
Nikki Lauda, who died last May aged 70, wrote two earlier autobiographies. The first was published in 1978, while a 1986 version, To Hell and Back appeared immediately after he had retired permanently from Formula One racing.
The second book was never updated, an oversight which Kevin Eason, The Times’ F1 correspondent, seeks to put right in this readable account, focusing “on stories, events and anecdotes” that would have been occupying Lauda’s mind, so creating a “part autobiography, part portrait”, a mix that works well.
Lauda was often portrayed as curt, but as Eason notes, he was great company and unfailingly courteous to women. He was also something of a philosopher as a quote attributed to him confirms: “A lot of people criticise Formula One as an unnecessary risk. But
what would life be like if we only did what was necessary?”
Finally, Howards Means’ fascinating Splash! is the ideal read for anyone frustrated by the stopstart nature of indoor swimming this year.
Means opens in an unusual location: the driest spot on the planet, Wadi Sura in the Gilf Kebire, a plateau in south-western Egypt where, in October 1933, a Hungarian explorer, Laszlo Almasy, became the first Westerner to lay eyes on the Cave of Swimmers.
The walls of the caves depict painted figures engaged in a “relaxed version of doggy-paddle” suggesting the Sahara desert was once home to deep lakes.
This enjoyable history continues through ancient Greece and Rome, supplemented by extracts from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar; it meanders through almost 400 years of swimming history which takes us to the Renaissance and, ultimately, to the Olympic Games.