Messi, Bergkamp, Murray, Grainger, Brownlee, Beckham and Holgate. Hang on a minute, Holgate? What the hell is Holgate doing amongst the great and good of the sporting world, surely that must be an error. Err well actually no it isn’t, shocking as it may sound.
Little old me up there with sporting royalty. Not bad eh?
I’m pleased to finally announce that my second book, Can’t Sleep, Can’t Train, Can’t Stop : More misadventures in triathlon ( available from all good bookshops ) has been shortlisted for the prestigious British Sports Book Awards. The honor it is up for is Outstanding General Sports Writing. And I’m absolutely delighted about it. These awards are like the BAFTAS/OSCARS of the sports writing world and this will be my second nomination. And all of those famous superstars are up for awards too for their own books. Brilliant for triathlon to have two books nominated this year, if you haven’t read Swim,Bike,Run by the Brownlee brothers yet you are missing out on a great read.
My first book Can’t, Swim, Can’t Ride, Can’t Run was a finalist in 2012 in the category of Best New Writer, a fantastic achievement in itself for a complete amateur. I lost out to the fantastic ‘The Ghost Runner’ on that occasion, but I was just delighted to be in the mix. So to have only ever written two books and to have both of them now receive nominations from my peers and be recognized as being worthy of making the shortlist of six is fantastic.
British Sports Book Awards 2014
I don’t expect to win, I expect the book Everest will take the prize but you never know, I have a one in six chance, and when you think of the tens of thousands of books that could have been up for this award, to be in the top six is an achievement in itself. You can see who I’m up against here.
There is no public vote this time, the winner will be chosen by a panel of expert judges from the world of sports journalism and writing.Category winners will be announced at a star-studded black tie dinner at Lord’s Cricket Ground on 21st May 2014. It’s a good job I didn’t give my dinner suit to charity after the last awards ceremony, I didn’t expect to ever need it again.
The nominated book.
Oh and if you have a kindle you can buy the nominated book at the now bargaintastic price of £3.75.
So there you go, I’m not of the caliber of Messi, The Brownlees or Becks but for just one night this year I’ve earned my right to be mentioned in the same breath. Now that’s something I never expected.
Source:
http://ift.tt/1kw3kNf