Books: Autobiographies to have a say in sporting war of words

Michael Atherton and Ellen MacArthur have bucked the trend by writing personal accounts that have excellent chance of winning award

Autobiographies are the staple fare of sports publishing. Chapter One – Our hero/heroine stands at the peak of their fame. All around them, shining faces. Where did it all begin? Chapter Two – "I was born on October 12th in the small Lancashire town of Mugglesworth."

By Chapter Five, with luck, we're back into more familiar territory with our protagonist firmly established in his or her sporting milieu; a couple of chapters on there'll be the visit to Buckingham Palace. With bad luck, there might also be a chapter on where they see their sport going after they've retired. And there we have it.

These personal accounts – usually ghost-written – have done steady business over the years. But when it comes to winning prizes they have always found themselves trailing down the final furlong as novel, or confessional, or obsessional runners and riders cross the line before them to be garlanded with praise.

Perhaps this year will be different. Of the five entries shortlisted to receive the William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2002 on Monday, three are autobiographies – and, of those, two are written without assistance.

So what are the chances of the most traditional sporting imprint winning the Sports Book of the Year Award for the first time in the 14-year history of the competition? Well, mathematically, three in five. Beyond that John Gaustad, owner of Sportspages bookshop and chairman of the judging panel, is understandably unwilling to say.

The judgement has already been made by the panel – Gaustad, Frances Edmonds, John Inverdale, Danny Kelly, Hugh McIlvanney and Cliff Morgan – in its annual get-together above The Lindsay House in Soho, and we have it on Gaustad's authority that there is still no need to install blood-red carpeting in the small private room they use.

You might have thought that surprising in a year when the publication of Roy Keane's autobiography has created tidal waves of controversy throughout the media and the Football Association. The Manchester United midfielder's book made the long list, but, according to Gaustad, it was never in with a real shout of promotion.

"None of the judges felt it deserved to go through," he said. "Some were quite violently critical of it. Maybe our reading of it was that it got caught up in its own tabloid reaction. And there was the complicating factor that the ghost writer, Eamonn Dunphy, said he had used some licence. It's a bit of an odd book because apart from the stuff about Keane's tackle on Alf Inge Haaland – and you would have to be crazy not to realise that there would be a severe reaction to including that – it tells you very little. One of our judges felt it would be in their top eight, although somewhere between five and eight. But even though the Keane book didn't make it, it has almost turned out to be the year of the biography."

Over the years there have been other life stories shortlisted for the award, many of them of manifest quality, although for any Manchester United fans minded to construct conspiracy theories, Alex Ferguson's book – ghosted by McIlvanney – wasn't one of those selected.

Many felt that if a traditional autobiography was to win, it would have been in 1998 when Tony Adams' account of his life, Addicted, written in conjunction with Ian Ridley, was a highly-regarded contender. The prize, however went to Angry White Pyjamas, Robert Twigger's unusual account of his time training with Japanese riot police.

The habitual accord between the judges and their sponsor was briefly jarred when news of this decision was relayed. "For a while I think Graham Sharpe at William Hill was concerned that we had made a bit of an odd choice," Gaustad said. "But after reading the book through he was quite happy with it."

Although Gaustad insists the judging is generally carried out with decorum – "it's a gentlemanly affair" – he admits that some discussions have included "the odd vernacular". The 1999 and 2000 decisions – awarded respectively to Derek Birley's Social History of English Cricket and Lance Armstrong's account of recovering from cancer to win the Tour de France were the most vernacular-provoking.

As for the easiest year's work for the judges, there is no doubt that that was 1992, when the prize went to Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch. "All of us had it at No 1 apart from one judge," Gaustad recalls. "And they had it at No 2. That year we just got on with the food that had been laid on..."

THE SHORTLIST RUNNERS AND WRITERS FOR THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR

OPENING UP: MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Michael Atherton

Hodder & Stoughton, £18.99

A rare thing, this – a sporting autobiography written without the ministrations of a ghostwriter. And just as the man's character came out in the way he played cricket, so it is here: this is a painstaking, thoughtful book that plays its way in and gradually builds momentum (to paraphrase Atherton about his game). It may not be a laugh a minute, but is shot through none the less with plenty of his laconic Lancashire wit, plus the occasional outright guffaw ("too many Goughs would spoil the broth", indeed). The dust-in-the-pocket incident tends to dominate accounts of his career, and of course he deals with it here but gives it only the same weight as any other significant episode. As a lad he read and re-read Mike Brearley's classic The Art of Captaincy, and it shows. It also shows that in retirement he is a working journalist, and not an "as-told-to" man, and we can hope for more books from him.

TAKING ON THE WORLD

Ellen MacArthur

Michael Joseph/Penguin, £17.99

Another self-written autobiography, the tortured genesis of which tells you everything you need to know about its author. She waited a year after making a splash with her achievements in the Vendée Globe single-handed round the world race, reflecting on everything that had happened before settling down to write. She then lost a huge chunk of it when her laptop was stolen in Bogota airport. The final product makes for a fantastic piece of what could almost be self-help for alpha males and females. The accounts of the races are gripping enough, but most inspirational are the astonishing lengths she goes to to get to sea in the first place (not to mention the Laurie Lee-like tales of childhood). She is, quite simply, an extraordinary individual, and that comes out wonderfully in this fine work. Don't read the prologue outside the house, incidentally, unless you don't mind blubbing in public.

IN BLACK & WHITE: THE UNTOLD STORY OF JOE LOUIS AND JESSE OWENS

Donald McRae

Scribner, £18.99

They were sporting gods for a time, but in the end they were simply two more black American men attempting to make their way in a racist society. After his four Olympic gold medals in Berlin, Owens was banned from athletics on trumped-up charges brought by "Slavery" Avery Brundage (later a predecessor of Juan Antonio Samaranch at the International Olympic Committee). By dint of determined affability and the gift of the gab, he hauled himself up to respectability, even becoming an athletics official himself. Louis, feared and abused as the "Brown Bomber", was eventually loved by Americans of every colour. Except the taxman, who hounded him mercilessly for the rest of his life. With this quite brilliant double biography McRae, a William Hill winner six years ago with Dark Trade, could well become the first author to win the award twice.

A SEASON WITH VERONA

Tim Parks

Secker & Warburg, £16.99

Tim Parks has made some kind of history as the first writer to make the shortlist for both the Booker Prize and this one (he was beaten to the Booker in 1997 by Arundhati Roy), and the idea of a sensitive novelist and essayist running with the Verona hardcore seems somewhat incongruous. No one likes them – and no, they don't care overmuch. But they take the long-standing fan Parks, who chronicles a season following the perennial strugglers home and away, to their hearts, even when they find out they are his raw material. The team's fluctuating fortunes over the season are a springboard for his perceptive explorations of the Italian psyche through football, perhaps its most potent medium of expression. We think we're devoted to the game here but we are mere dilettantes compared to the Italians, and Parks expertly conveys the complex, bitter passions that fire the game there.

NIALL QUINN: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Niall Quinn

Headline, £17.99

A perverse choice for the shortlist, this, though it's a perfectly entertaining account, co-written with Tom Humphries, of a model professional's career (a model pro right down to the drinking and gambling). There is the distinct feeling that it was selected specifically to put "Rabid" Roy Keane in his place (you can't be serialised in a tabloid and win the William Hill, mate), and reading the two back-to-back is like a double bill of ET and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. What Keane saw as the humiliating, bumbling amateurism of the Ireland international set-up, Niall Quinn saw as raw material for building team spirit. The game that Keane knows is full of charlatans and hangers-on; for Quinn, it's part of life's great adventure, and his essentially sunny disposition shines though. Unlikely to have sufficient gravitas to move the William Hill judges, though.