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The best sports books give you a peek into lesser known worlds
Summary
'Witness’ and other notable books masterfully capture the the essence of sports like wrestling, cycling, and boxing in a deeply human way
"Menthol pain spray."
If you want to know the smell of wrestling, this is it.
If you’d like to know this sports’ sly cruelties, then it includes a thumb from a rival stuck into her cheek “like a fish hook". If you wish to understand how effort empties athletes, then Sakshi Malik, the Rio bronze medallist, will paint that scene, too. She’s just qualified for the Olympics and is retching violently into a dustbin. Nothing emerges. “My throat felt like it was peeling from the inside out." This is the poetry of pain.
We might wield tennis rackets forever, but wrestling ends when siblings get older and mattresses no longer work as mats. “I don’t know anyone who wrestles for a hobby," Malik points out in her memoir Witness (2024). It’s not your everyday activity and we know so little of its peculiarities, its demands, its stances, its rituals. It’s why Witness, co-written by the excellent reporter Jonathan Selvaraj, must be read. It is probably the best Indian sports book I have read.
Also read: Sakshi Malik's ‘Witness’ is a story of grappling with decisions on and off the mat
I’m drawn to Witness because every sport, often unknown to us, has a particular beat, a rhythm, a personality, an agony. In a book on Jacques Anquetil, a 1960s Tour de France cycling masochist, he talks about a perfect riding position which he won’t shift from. “Simply to raise my neck for an instant to relieve the pain in the nape of my neck would cost me seconds." Greatness is part insanity.
Anquetil is complicated, controversial, obsessed, saying in Paul Fournel’s book Anquetil, Alone (2017), “I live on the road. My houses, my chateaux are stopovers". The book is captivating, a volume as slim as F.X. Toole’s collection of boxing stories titled Rope Burns (2000) where you can read about the artistry of the cutman.
“Blood can blind a fighter," writes Toole, “maybe cost him the fight, or worse, because when he can’t see he starts taking shots he wouldn’t otherwise take, and now he ends up on his ass blinking through the lights and shadows of future memories."
My favourite sports books cast me into worlds I didn’t necessarily grow up with. Rings, rock faces, boats (David Halberstam’s The Amateurs, 1985), which can be wonderful wanders into cultures, codes, attitudes, aerodynamics.
Also read: The Olympics is the greatest classroom
Sports are tied by struggle, but every sect has its specific secrets of nerve and psychology. How do rowers send a message? Steve Redgrave, five Olympic golds, writes of being exhausted after winning a world championship but now has to carry his boat from the water. He can’t. But he will. “I’ll put a mask of nonchalance on my face," he writes in his book Inspired (2009), “and somehow drag the thing out, as though I have endless reserves of energy and absolute faith in my strength. What a lie, but what a valuable lie."
Our reading worlds often take known routes. Into cricket dressing rooms, on to football fields, through the F1 pit. But there’s a thrill to venturing into lesser-known territory and inhaling the wide arc of sport.
A friend once gave me That Near-Death Thing, a 2013 book by Rick Broadbent on the Isle Of Man TT, a legendary motorcycle race that’s killed over 200 people. I just started reading it and on page 5, Guy Martin, a terrific rider, says: “I look back on my crash and yeah, it did hurt. I had to dig my teeth out of my nose. My chest was caving in... Hey, hey. That’s life. Can’t wait to go back."
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I like athletes/authors who put me where I’ve never been, unlocking mysteries I haven’t even considered. This is what Witness does. It educates, it unlocks, it allows you to taste a sport and feel the pulse of a wrestler which arrives only because of the athlete’s honesty and the writer’s curiosity. You sense how wrestling stresses Malik (she can barely swallow food because of a point lost in a sparring match before trials) and how sacred it is. There are boxers whose ritual was no baths leading up to a fight. Malik won’t step on a wrestling mat without one.
Malik’s defiance, her bravery in protesting against the alleged sexual harassment of women wrestlers by former federation president Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, is all starkly and painfully and honestly laid out. I need to know this, yet I also wish to understand wrestling from a great athlete’s viewpoint. How weight is cut. How it must be done “with the help of a partner because you will almost inevitably make stupid decisions for yourself when you are on the verge of dehydration".
Delight lies in the details which help translate a sport. Like costumes. An Asian Games swimmer tells me “it takes about 20 minutes (to put on) a brand new suit. For an old suit, maybe 10 minutes". Malik’s costume simply transforms her. “My costume fitted flush against my muscles. My body felt strong and beautiful. You know how it is in the superhero movies when Superman puts on his suit? That’s exactly how I felt."
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My education as a sportswriter comes from what I watch athletes do, what they tell me, but also from the work of my peers. From books which are revealing and thoughtful, like my wise friend Pradeep Magazine’s sweeping Not Just Cricket (2021) and Viswanathan Anand’s Mind Master (2019), which he wrote with the terrific Susan Ninan.
Now Witness sits beside them, gritty and eloquent, revealing Malik to be an artist. Once she didn’t just dream of podiums but sketched pictures of herself, medal around neck, flag in hand. Now she and Selvaraj have used words to draw something of rare and raw power.
Rohit Brijnath is an assistant sports editor at The Straits Times, Singapore, and a co-author of Abhinav Bindra’s book A Shot At History: My Obsessive Journey To Olympic Gold. He posts @rohitdbrijnath.
Also read: Abhinav Bindra: A champion looks back at who he was
