Showing titles in Sports History

The Rip Curl Story is the remarkable tale of two young surfers who pursued an audacious dream to make a living in pursuit of the ultimate ride. The brand they built, Rip Curl, not only satisfied their own surf- and wanderlust but also inspired countless others, both fuelling and riding the wave of the global youth revolution of the late '60s. Rip Curl's mantra became 'the Search' - the chasing of new waves on distant shores - as they embraced new thrills such as skiing, snowboarding and windsurfing and aimed always to make better equipment to elevate the experience.

What will it take to run a marathon in less than two hours? The world's fastest times for the marathon have been dropping since the distance of 26.2 miles was made official nearly one hundred years ago. But after a noticeable decline that occurred for a half century, the times, while still edging lower, have stalled several minutes north of two hours for the past decade. For the first time, 1:59 examines what it will take for an elite distance runner to go subtwo hours.

This is the story of Barbara and Larry Savage's sometimes dangerous, often zany, but ultimately rewarding 23,000-mile global bicycle odyssey, which took them through 25 countries in two years. Miles from Nowhere is an adventure not to be missed! Along the way, these near-neophyte cyclists encountered warmhearted strangers eager to share food and shelter, bicycle-hating drivers who shoved them off the road, various wild animals, rock-throwing Egyptians, overprotective Thai policeman, motherly New Zealanders, meteorological disasters, bodily indignities, and great personal joys.

By creating WrestleMania, jumping into the pay-per-view field, and expanding across North America, Vince McMahon changed professional wrestling forever.

Journeying from Abu Dhabi to Newcastle, and onto London, Paris, Moscow and New York in search of the answers, Miguel Delaney follows the threads that surround the allegations of sportswashing and misconduct in the beautiful game. The result is an exploration of how European football clubs have been bought by some of the world's wealthiest businessmen and state-backed corporations. Drawing on exclusive interviews and unprecedented access to key stakeholders, Miguel has produced an all-encompassing exposé of modern footballs highest echelons.

From 338BC to the sinners of today, Titus O'Reily leads us into the temptations of sportspeople across the globe. We have stories from cricket and ice hockey, soccer and baseball, tennis and boxing, NFL and competitive eating, and more. We meet the players, mascots and administrators whose sins are absurd, unwise, inspired or reckless and sometimes lead to losing (sport's greatest sin).

ECW was one extreme contradiction piled on top of another. It was an incredibly influential company in the world of professional wrestling during the 1990s, yet it was never profitable. It portrayed itself as the ultimate in anti-authority rebellion, but its leadership was, at various points, working covertly with the two wrestling giants, the World Wrestling Federation and World Championship Wrestling. Most of all, it blurred the line between real life and the fantasy world of professional wrestling like no other company before it.

Alfredo Di Stéfano, Diego Maradona, Gabriel Batistuta, Juan Román Riquelme, Lionel Messi...Argentina has produced some of the greatest footballers of all time. But the rich, volatile history of Argentinian football is made up of both the sublime and the ruthlessly pragmatic. Jonathan Wilson, having lived there on and off during the last decade, is ideally placed to chart the sport's development in a country that, perhaps more than any other, lives and breathes football, its theories and its myths.

Over the past two years, professional golf has been at war, and Alan Shipnuck is our most trusted correspondent. Following closely on the heels of his New York Times bestselling sensation, Phil, Shipnuck turns to LIV Golf’s controversial – and belligerent – storming of the professional golf world. In LIV and Let Die, Shipnuck delivers the inside story in real time, with fly-on-the-wall reporting from the yachts where LIV was hatched and within the corridors of power as the PGA Tour flailed to fend off the threat.

Emma Gatewood told her family she was going on a walk and left her small Ohio hometown with a change of clothes and less than $200. The next anybody heard from her, this genteel, farm-reared, 67-year-old great-grandmother had walked 800 miles along the 2,050-mile Appalachian Trail. And in September 1955, atop Maine's Mount Katahdin, she sang the first verse of "America, the Beautiful" and proclaimed, "I said I'll do it, and I've done it."

From reflecting on his early years at his local pitch and putt to his stellar career playing against the best of the best on the greatest courses on the planet, Golf is Hard takes you inside the world of professional golf like no book before it, sharing side-splitting and painfully honest stories of life behind the scenes as a tour pro.

The 1988 Seoul Olympics played host to what has been described by some as the dirtiest race of all time, by others as the greatest. The final of the men's 100 metres at those Olympics is certainly the most infamous in the history of athletics, and more indelibly etched into the consciousness of the sport, the Olympics, and a global audience of millions, than any other athletics event before or since.

For fans of books from Chris Jericho, Steve Austin, Daniel Bryan, Mick Foley and Jim Ross. Comedian and PROGRESS Wrestling founder Jim Smallman takes us on a wild ride through the history of pro wrestling, from its beginnings at the turn of the 20th century to the pop culture, pay-per-view juggernaut that it is today. Join Jim as he looks at the most defining and iconic moments in wrestling's history and attempts to nail down just why this ludicrous, over the top, compelling quasi sport means so much to so many people.

After sixty years of keeping notes on the things he's seen and learned and on the golfing greats he's taught, Penick lets the secrets in his Little Red Book be heard by the golf world in this classic work. His simple, direct, practical wisdom pares away all the hypertechnical jargon that's grown up around the game, and lets all golfers play their best - whatever their level.

Gracie wrote Comfort in Darkness after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease, a terminal sentence which he views as the greatest fight of his life, one he knows he will eventually lose. This is Gracie’s defining life statement about his spiritual and technical practice. For the first time, he reveals his time-tested theories and techniques of invisible Jiu Jitsu, a combat system anyone can use to awaken their power and apply it to their everyday lives. An indispensable tool for any fighter or seeker, Comfort in Darkness teaches how to balance and align the mind, body, and spirit.

The National Football League's current dominance has obscured how professional football got its start. In The League, John Eisenberg reveals that Art Rooney, George Halas, Tim Mara, George Preston Marshall, and Bert Bell took an immense risk by investing in the professional game. At that time, the sport barely registered on the national scene. The five owners succeeded only because at critical junctures in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, each sacrificed the short-term success of his team for the longer-term good of the League.

Matt Warshaw knows more about surfing than any other person on the planet. After five years of research and writing, Warshaw, a former professional surfer and editor of Surfing magazine, has crafted an unprecedented, definitive history of the sport and the culture it has spawned. The History of Surfing reveals and defines this sport with a voice that is authoritative, funny, and wholly original.

In Sport, the term 'good bloke' doesn't mean what it says. Like 'fun run', it in fact often means the exact opposite. Titus O'Reily, the sports historian Australia neither needs nor deserves, examines why our nation's sportspeople can do terrible things yet be so readily forgiven. In this Great Southern Land, a sportsman can be excused almost any sin if he is elevated to the mythical status of being a 'good bloke'. So, what does it take to earn the title of 'good bloke'? And can female athletes be good blokes, too?

So, who’s the best of 'em all? Tiger Woods? Jack Nicklaus? Bobby Jones? Ben Hogan? Golf fans will disagree until the end of time, but one thing is certain: For well over 100 years, the sport has provided its share of spectacular careers and indelible moments. And what about fan favorites such as Phil Mickelson, Nancy Lopez, and Lee Trevino? Where do they rank on the list? Or modern players like Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, Xander Schauffele, Jordan Spieth, Nelly Korda, and Justin Thomas. Did they make the final cut—and if so, where?

Coming into 2016, the Americans had lost an astounding six out of the last seven Ryder Cup matches, and tensions were running high for the showdown that took place in October 2016 in Hazeltine, Minnesota, just days after American legend Arnold Palmer had died. What resulted was one of the most raucous and heated three days in the cup's long history. Award-winning author John Feinstein takes listeners behind the scenes, providing an inside view of the dramatic stories as they unfolded.