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In 1988, aged just 11 years and 330 days, Tom Gregory set off from the French coast in a bid to become the youngest person to ever swim the English Channel. Almost 12 hours later he arrived in Dover, cold and exhausted, but pushed on by his brilliant coach John Bullet. In episode 9 of Sportspages, Gregory recalls the remarkable story of how he went from not being able to swim a width without touching the bottom, to navigating the world's busiest shipping lane, and why he waited 25 years to put pen to paper. His memoir, A Boy in the Water was a dual winner of the 2018 William Hill Sports Book of the Year.
Shehan Karunatilaka was an advertising copywriter who gave up his job to watch cricket and hang out with drunks so that he could write his first novel. Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew tells the story of an alcoholic journalist's quest to track down the greatest thing he’s ever seen: a Sri...
Published 07/16/20
The 1986 Tour De France is arguably the greatest of its 106 editions. Not just for the racing itself but for the incredible rivalry between La Vie Clare teammates and rivals Bernard Hinault - the defending champion and 5 time winner - and the young American upstart Greg LeMond. At the '85 Tour in...
Published 07/07/20
Christopher McDougall was a freelance writer when he came across the story of a tribe of super-athletes living in Mexico’s Copper Canyons who’d been living unchanged for 400 years. From that came Born to Run, a chaotic adventure that reads more like a Harlan Coben novel than one of the great...
Published 06/30/20