Showing titles in Olympics & Paralympics

With a show-jumping career spanning over 40 years, Nick Skelton is a legend in the equestrian world. No other rider has won so many major competitions on so many different horses, and he is as popular at Olympia and Hickstead as he is at Aachen, Geneva, Paris and Spruce Meadows. In 2000 Skelton was forced into retirement after he broke his neck. But following an amazing recovery, he came out of retirement in 2002. Now he tells the full story of his eventful life and matchless achievements.

In Relentless Spirit, Missy and her parents, D.A. and Dick Franklin, share the story of how Missy became the athlete she is today, a six-time Olympic medalist, five of them gold. Since her Olympic debut in London's 2012 games - when Missy was just 17 - people who have met the Franklins or seen them on TV have wondered what it was like to raise such a champion. What was the training like? How did Missy handle school? How did the family find the right facilities, coaches, and support network?

Jurgen Grobler’s Olympic coaching career is one of legend, yet the man himself has remained resolutely out of the spotlight. Over the last 20 years he has masterminded British Rowing’s incomparable success. And when the difference between gold and silver can mean mere fractions of a second, Jurgen Grobler has consistently delivered Olympic gold through various boat classes and with an ever-changing group of athletes.

In the early 1980s, a golden generation of volleyball players joined the U.S. men's national team. With the Olympics coming to Los Angeles in 1984, the pressure was on to build a winning program around these exceptional athletes. In If Gold Is Our Destiny, Sean P. Murray shares the incredible story of how a group of free-spirited players and their demanding coach captured the heart of a nation and became one of the greatest indoor volleyball teams of all time.

Many people will remember Eric Liddell as the Olympic gold medalist from the Academy Award-winning film Chariots of Fire. Famously, Liddell would not run on Sunday because of his strict observance of the Christian Sabbath, and so he did not compete in his signature event, the 100 meters, at the 1924 Paris Olympics. He was the greatest sprinter in the world at the time, and his choice not to run was ridiculed by the British Olympic committee, his fellow athletes, and most of the world press.

In a world where online scrutiny is more intense than ever, Elise’s story massively transcends sport. Having been bullied while growing up in Scotland, Christie first felt the full weight of online public opinion following three separate disqualifications at the 2014 Winter Olympics. Death threats followed amid a torrent of online hate whereby she was accused of having caused a rival South Korean medal hopeful to crash. Christie, aged just 24, retreated into a period of mental health support to assist her through extremely traumatic times.

In 1937, a schoolteacher on the island of Maui challenged a group of poverty-stricken sugar plantation kids to swim upstream against the current of their circumstance. The goal? To become Olympians. They faced seemingly insurmountable obstacles. The children were Japanese-American, were malnourished and barefoot, and had no pool; they trained in the filthy irrigation ditches that snaked down from the mountains into the sugarcane fields.

It is late summer 2013. Ben Ryan, a red-haired, 40-something, spectacle-wearing Englishman, is given 20 minutes to decide whether he wants to coach Fiji's rugby sevens team, with the aim of taking them to the nation's first-ever Olympic medal. He has never been to Fiji. There has been no discussion of contracts or salary. But he knows that no one plays rugby like the men from these isolated Pacific islands, just as no one plays football like the kids from the Brazilian favelas, or no one runs as fast as the boys and girls from Jamaica's boondocks.

Lolo Jones' path to becoming a world champion and an Olympian began in childhood with a single mother who worked multiple jobs to support a family of six and a father who was serving time in prison. These early years instilled in Lolo an overcomer's mindset that gave her the strength she needed to rise above an unstable and impoverished background, to earn an economics degree at LSU, and then to establish herself as the best women's hurdler in the world.

Journalist Matt Majendie brings listeners the whole story from 2012 to 2020, told by the people who were there. You'll hear from Paula Radcliffe and Sebastian Coe on London 2012, the expert German investigator who cracked the case wide open and the athletes who doped. The programme also gained access to the elite Swiss lab racing to finish testing London 2012 samples and spoke to the man who masterminded doping control at the London games.

An inspirational memoir by a man who became an elite wheelchair athlete after suffering a catastrophic spinal injury and who finally walked again 25 years after his accident. After two years of intense physical therapy following his crippling accident, John Maclean set a new course for himself when his father encouraged him to embrace his new reality and asked: "How far can you go"? Inspired, Maclean became the first paraplegic to complete the Ironman World Championship and swim the English Channel before going on to win a silver medal for rowing at the 2008 Paralympic Games.

Seen around the world, John Carlos and Tommie Smith’s Black Power salute on the 1968 Olympic podium sparked controversy and career fallout. Yet their show of defiance remains one of the most iconic images of Olympic history and the Black Power movement. Here is the remarkable story of one of the men behind the salute, lifelong activist, John Carlos.

Three people living in Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem embark on distinct journeys that converge at "the file"; their efforts to admit Palestine to the Olympics in the early 20th century. Their pivotal roles in history have been purposely omitted from official record, kept secret, or forgotten. Why? Because of the "Nazi Olympics" in 1936 in Berlin. And because of the death in 1972 of eleven Israeli Olympic athletes in the Munich Massacre. This book narrates the previously untold history of a Palestine Olympic Committee recognized before the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.

Three decades later, the "Miracle on Ice" still captures imaginations around the world and causes American hearts to swell with pride. This is the thrilling true story of how a ragtag team of collegiate and amateur athletes united in the shadow of the Cold War to defeat the seemingly invincible Soviet ice hockey team at the 1980 Winter Olympics.

Everything changed for Pistorius in the early morning hours of February 14, 2013, Valentine's Day, when he shot and killed his girlfriend, model Reeva Steenkamp, through a closed bathroom door, allegedly because he mistook her for an intruder intent on doing him harm. He was arrested and charged with premeditated murder, and overnight, the public's view of Pistorius turned on its head. Not since the O. J. Simpson case has a courtroom drama riveted global attention on one man's fate.

De ses débuts en patinage de vitesse à son dernier tour de piste, en passant par l’intimidation dont il a été victime à l’école, son ascension parmi l’élite et les hauts et les bas de sa vie personnelle, Charles Hamelin s’ouvre à Luc Bellemare avec une grande générosité. Charles Hamelin a remporté 6 médailles olympiques, 142 médailles en Coupe du monde et 38 médailles aux championnats du monde. Sa longue et florissante carrière sportive a été marquée par de très grands moments, mais aussi par de cuisantes déceptions.

The Olympics are the world’s most prestigious stage for athletic competition. Fans both casual and hardcore tune in religiously every few years to watch as men and women push themselves to the limits of human performance. But what makes a champion? Is it genetics? Hours of training? A psychological advantage? Of all the athletes who dedicate their lives - and bodies - to achieving that perfect moment of triumph, why will one person or team win out over another? Science has some compelling answers, and in this audiobook, Scientific American explores this topic from various angles.

Set against the backdrop of the turbulent late 1960s and early 1970s, this compelling audiobook provides the first comprehensive history of the 1972 Munich Olympic Games, notorious for the abduction of Israeli Olympians by Palestinian terrorists and the hostages' tragic deaths after a botched rescue mission by the German police. Drawing on a wealth of newly available sources from the time, eminent historian David Clay Large explores the 1972 festival in all its ramifications.

One of the top storylines from the 2021 Tokyo Olympics was the brigade of bandits from Australia throwing down at the freestyle park for the inaugural action-sports events—in particular the young gun from Logan City, Queensland, who took the gold medal off the table before his competitors knew what had happened. But there's been nothing easy about Logan's ascent to the top. A testament to dedication and self-discipline, artistry and courage, Logan Martin has set the bar for what it means to be an international extreme sports athlete.

"Athletes first" is a slogan the International Olympic Committee often touts, but the reality is very different, as preeminent Olympics expert Jules Boykoff shows in this book. While the world’s attention is riveted by the triumphs and tribulations on their screens, there is much that goes on behind the scenes that is deeply troubling: athletes are increasingly voicing concerns over physical, mental and sexual abuse, and they are collectively expressing grievances around equity and human rights.