The View from the High Board: Writings on Sport - Softcover

As Chief Sports Writer of "The Guardian", Richard Williams has the pick of the best sporting assignments: Olympic Games, world title fights, Grands Prix, Test matches and the World Cup. In this collection of his sports writing he considers the greatness of some of the biggest figures in sport: Michael Schumacher, Tiger Woods, Eric Cantona, Lance Armstrong, and tennis's Williams sisters. But Williams is not interested in celebrity or the cult of personality: rather in sport that has not yet become an industry, that is still genuine competition and aspiration for its own sake. His search for true sport and sporting achievement takes him, therefore, to the maidans of Bombay to see the milieu that produced a cricketing superstar like Sachin Tendulkar; to James Hunt's funeral, to mourn a brilliant and irredeemably maverick racing driver; to the Barcelona Olympics to witness the astounding debut of a 14-year-old diving prodigy from China; and to Bedfordshire to interview a then-little-known but promising athlete called Paula Radcliffe. He also finds extraordinary stories in sport's genuinely forgotten backwaters: he drives for himself the whole route of the legendary Italian motor race that the great Fangio once dominated: the Mille Miglia. He pieces together the mysterious tale of football's Robledo brothers; witnesses the raw East End spectacle of unlicensed boxing shows; and - in a long piece specially written for this book - tells the touching story of how his own father, a country vicar, founded, sponsored and ran his very own village cricket team.