Sports Books Blog

Just returned from the Frankfurt Bookfair. Shattered as usual, but encouraged by the amount of interest shown in our books. The French boss of Hachette, the world’s biggest publisher (the firm, not him. He was quite short) was looking at our stand at one point and asked for a catalogue. I only know this because I was talking to a French publisher friend and he suddenly started whispering!
Francois couldn’t stay for the World Cup semi-final but I watched it with Dan Hiscocks, of Eye Books with whom we share a stand, and two of Francois’s friends, Stephane and Olivier, at O’Reilly’s, the Irish bar just opposite the main railway station. The two bleus were very gracious about defeat and bought the beers afterwards.
Two England victories in one day; whatever next?
Frankfurt is tiring because of too many late nights and too much sitting around in a hot hall with dry air and a monotonous hum. Thank goodness they banned smoking this year.
There was a good report of the event in the Guardian, which is given away free everyday although it’s not quite as cut throat at my end of the business.

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2190553,00.html.

Well, so Marion Jones took drugs. There’s a surprise. For any US readers, that’s irony – as is the title of this post, not to mention sarcasm.
The only surprise is that finally the woman who won four gold medals at the Sydney Olympic Games has admitted what the athletics world was convinced about all along.
She looked so big and powerful in those Games, so far ahead of her peers that she would have been a welcome addition to the Australian rugby front row as they crumpled against England yesterday.
What needs to be known now is whether she loses those Sydney medals. And if she does who gets the 100 metres gold, for a certain Ekaterini Thanou was second and she was exposed as a drug cheat at the Athens Olympics in 2004.
Still at least Fiona May of Italy and once of Derby would get the long jump gold and she deserves it.
There’s another aspect of Jones’ tarnished career that I would like cleared up although I doubt it will be. When she was 15 she missed a drugs test and it was claimed the Fed-Ex package informing her about the test was mislaid in her coach’s office. Was that the truth?