You are viewing your 1 free article this month. Login to read more articles.
Weidenfeld & Nicolson triumphed with a hat-trick of awards at last night's Telegraph Sports Book Awards.
Ben Ryan's Sevens Heaven (W&N) won the Telegraph Sports Book of the Year and the Heineken Rugby Book of the Year at the ceremony at Lords Cricket Ground on Tuesday 4th June.
The judges came to a unanimous decision, with the chair of rugby judges, Alan Pearey calling the book, which was ghostwritten by Tom Fordyce, “one of the best rugby books ever written, shedding a fascinating light on the issues affecting Fijian Rugby, and accounting how he turned a hugely-gifted, but poorly prepared group of players into back-to-back World Series Champions and Olympic Gold Medalists”.
W&N also won the Football Book for the Year for Building the Wall by Uli Hesse. The prize was shared with Ken Bensinger’s Red Card (Profile Books). Judging chair, the Football Writers Association's Philippe Auclair, said: “What a wonderful thing for the award to be given to two books that are bound to become part of the canon of great football titles.”
L-R Adam Sills, Ben Ryan, David Willis and David Gower (©Bryn Lennon)
It was a strong night for Penguin Random House imprints with Ebury scooping Sports Bestseller of 2018 with How to be a Footballer by Peter Crouch, also ghost-written by Fordyce, and The Bodley Head winning the General Outstanding Sports Writing Award for Berlin 1936 by Oliver Hilmes.
Dame Kelly Holmes took home the inaugural Sports Health & Fitness Book of the Year award for Running Life (Kyle Books) while Paul Ferris’s Boy on the Shed (Hodder & Stoughton) picked up the Autobiography of the Year.
The Heartaches Cricket Book of the Year, supported by Sir Tim Rice, was awarded to Stephen Fay and David Kynsaton for Swanton and Arlott and The Soul of English Cricket (Bloomsbury). The Beautiful Badge by Martyn Routledge and Elspeth Wills (Pitch Publishing) won the Getty Images Illustrated Book of the Year.
The Cycling Book of the Year was won by Peter Cossins for Full Gas (Yellow Jersey Press) and the Biography of the Year went to Tiger Woods by Jeff Benedict & Armen Keteyian (Simon & Schuster).