Insights into highs and lows of trying to go the distance

SPORTS BOOKS 2010: MARY HANNIGANreviews works which bring to life the worlds of former boxer Bernard Dunne and long-distance runners

BOXING

My Story – Bernard Dunne(Penguin Ireland, €15).

SHORTLISTED for the William Hill Irish Sports Book of the Year award, My Story, written in conjunction with Irish Timesjournalist Gavin Cummiskey, is Bernard Dunne's account of his journey from a gym in west Dublin, via California, to an arena across the city where he was crowned World Super Bantamweight champion.

The ever-engaging Dunne details the steps he took, from when he started boxing at the age of six in Neilstown to when, 23 years later, he fulfilled his sporting dream by beating Ricardo Cordoba at the O2 Arena to take the world crown.

Having missed out on making it as an amateur to the 2000 Olympic Games, Dunne talks of his decision to turn professional, and the life changes that entailed. His time in California, under the guidance of Sugar Ray Leonard and Freddie Roach, is detailed, as is the homesickness that prompted his return.

Thereafter he reflects on the highs and lows of his professional career: from the despair of his first-round defeat to Kiko Martinez in Dublin, to the ecstasy of the night he beat Cordoba – a memorable day in Irish sporting history, coming hours after the rugby team secured the Grand Slam – to his final bout, when he was knocked out by Poonsawat Kratingdaenggym, to his subsequent decision to retire.

Boxers’ life stories are rarely anything but absorbing, those highs and lows more extreme, physically and emotionally, than in any other sport, and Dunne’s tale is no different.

ATHLETICS

Miles To Run, Promises to Keepby Ian O'Riordan (Boglark Press, €15).

WHEN she started reading Miles To Run, Promises to Keep,Catherina McKiernan wasn't too sure whether she liked the admission/allegation of The Irish Timesathletics correspondent Ian O'Riordan that distance runners are "slightly mad".

By the time she’d finished the book, though, she conceded that her fellow runner may have had a point.

It’s something, of course, that us distance non-runners have known for some time, although O’Riordan’s book succeeds in explaining the attraction of the discipline to those utterly unacquainted with it – and that’s some feat.

Full of anecdotes from his own running experiences, as well as sections on some of the greatest of distance runners – Roger Bannister, Haile Gebrselassie, Sonia O’Sullivan, Paula Radcliffe, Ronnie Delany, to name but a few – the book is as informative as it is entertaining, and at times wonderfully wacky.

“In a way it manages to explain to the outside world who we are and what we are, vindicating our hermit-like existence to achieve, and why running is an addiction,” said McKiernan of the passages that examine the commitment, dedication and motivation of distance runners, and the sacrifices they make along the way.

True, we’re still at a loss to understand how a cryotherapy session, at in or around minus 100 degrees, could be an intoxicating experience, but we’ll just have to take O’Riordan’s word for it.

It might not quite be the book you’ll want to read after consuming half a turkey and most of a plum pudding on Christmas day, but maybe on New Year’s Eve, when you’re carving your resolutions for 2011 in stone, it might just inspire you to get up and running.

Mary Hannigan is a sports feature writer with The Irish Times