William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2026: The 12 Books Chasing Sport’s Biggest Writing Prize
Rory McIlroy, Bradley Wiggins, Tadej Pogačar, Formula One, football referees, cricket, running and even Finnish skittles feature on a fascinating 2026 longlist.
The 2026 William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award longlist has been announced, with 12 titles competing for one of the most prestigious prizes in sports writing.
Established in 1989, the William Hill Sports Book of the Year is the world’s longest-established literary sports-writing prize and has developed a reputation for rewarding books that go well beyond results, match reports and conventional sporting autobiography.
This year’s selection covers Formula One, football, cricket, cycling, golf and ultrarunning, alongside books about sporting obsession, motherhood, refereeing, identity and the pressures surrounding elite competition.
An award with serious sporting pedigree
Previous winners include some of the most respected writers in sport, among them Nick Hornby, Duncan Hamilton, Michael Holding, Jeremy Wilson and Lauren Fleshman.
Last year saw Scottish cyclist Pippa York and Irish sports journalist David Walsh win with The Escape: The Tour, the Cyclist and Me.
The 2026 judging panel is made up of Adrian Durham, Elis James, Mark Lawson, Christine Ohuruogu and Michelle Walder. Their first task is to cut the 12-title longlist down to the final shortlist.
F1 Racing: Drive
Sky Sports F1 presenter and reporter Rachel Brookes examines one of the central questions in Formula One: how can 20 of the world’s best racing drivers compete on the same circuits and still produce such dramatically different results?
Rather than simply retelling famous races, Brookes looks at the ingredients behind success — racecraft, engineering, psychology, wet-weather driving and the crucial relationship between a driver and the wider team.
She draws on interviews with figures including Lando Norris, Oscar Piastri, Nico Rosberg, Toto Wolff, Guenther Steiner and Martin Brundle. That access gives the book a strong insider quality and makes it particularly appealing to fans who want to understand what separates a very good Formula One driver from a world champion.
This Is Not About Running
Mary Cain was one of the biggest teenage talents American athletics had produced when she joined Alberto Salazar’s Nike Oregon Project.
The expectation was that she could become one of the great middle-distance runners. Instead, her memoir examines the damaging pressures that can surround a young athlete when success, body weight and performance become more important than long-term wellbeing.
Cain’s story moves beyond her own career and into a wider discussion about coaching, female athletes, power and how elite sporting environments can be improved without removing the ambition required to succeed at the highest level.
Ball of the Century
One cricket delivery provides the foundation for Brendan Cooper’s entire book — Shane Warne’s first ball in Ashes cricket to Mike Gatting at Old Trafford on 4 June 1993.
Warne pitched the ball outside Gatting’s leg stump before producing extraordinary turn to hit off stump. It became instantly known as the “Ball of the Century”.
Cooper uses that extraordinary moment to examine Warne’s influence, the rebirth of leg-spin and a difficult decade for English Test cricket. It is an unusual and clever concept: using a single delivery to tell the story of an entire cricketing era.
HH: Helenio Herrera – Football’s Original Master of the Dark Arts
Long before modern football became fascinated with celebrity managers, Helenio Herrera was building the template.
Nicknamed Il Mago — The Wizard — Herrera won league titles in Spain before transforming Inter Milan into one of the great European teams of the 1960s.
Richard Fitzpatrick explores both the tactical innovator and the much darker, controversial side of Herrera’s career. The book examines his obsessive preparation, psychological techniques, relentless pursuit of victory and the controversies that followed him.
Three-time William Hill winner Duncan Hamilton has described it as a compelling biography, while Guillem Balagué praised the depth of Fitzpatrick’s research.
For A Yellow Jersey
Paul Maunder tells the complicated history of the women’s Tour de France — a story that stretches back to 1955 and includes repeated attempts to establish a lasting women’s version of cycling’s biggest race.
The book covers false starts, financial problems, media indifference and institutional barriers, but its real focus is on the riders themselves.
From Marianne Martin’s victory in 1984 to the rivalry between Jeannie Longo and Maria Canins and the modern development of the Tour de France Femmes, Maunder gives women’s racing a history on its own terms rather than treating it simply as an appendage to the men’s sport.
Tadej Pogačar: Unstoppable
Tadej Pogačar’s career already looks extraordinary enough for a rider considerably older than the Slovenian superstar.
Andy McGrath follows Pogačar’s development from a talented young Slovenian through Tour de France victories, Grand Tour success, Monument wins and World Championship glory.
The biography draws on teammates, coaches and rivals in an attempt to explain not just what Pogačar has won, but why his racing style and attacking instincts have made him such an unusual figure in modern cycling.
McGrath is also the only previous William Hill winner on this year’s longlist, having won the award in 2017 for Tom Simpson: Bird on the Wire.
Till I Die: Why Football Means Everything (Even When It Shouldn’t)
Why can a football match destroy someone’s mood for an entire weekend?
Psychologist and Wolves supporter Damien Pearse applies his professional background to the strange emotional world of football fandom.
The book explores belonging, loyalty, tribalism, identity and obsession, asking why otherwise rational people become anxious, furious or euphoric because of the actions of 11 players representing their club. It is ostensibly a football book, but its real subject is the supporter.
The Power Within
Sophie Power became internationally known after a photograph of her breastfeeding her three-month-old son during the 2018 Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc was seen around the world.
That image sparked a much wider conversation about pregnancy, motherhood and the barriers faced by women in endurance sport.
Power’s book mixes ultrarunning with motherhood, resilience and campaigning. She has since founded SheRACES and pushed for greater equality for women in endurance events. The result is as much a book about changing sporting structures as it is about running extraordinary distances.
The Impossible Job
Football supporters discuss referees every weekend, yet relatively few people have any real understanding of what elite officiating involves.
William Ralston was granted access to football officials and organisations including UEFA, FIFA and PGMOL, following referees through training, assessment and matchdays.
He also trained as a referee himself, experiencing how difficult it can be to make decisions instantly while players, managers and supporters are reacting around you.
With VAR supposed to make decisions clearer but seemingly making refereeing an even bigger part of football’s weekly conversation, the subject could hardly be more timely.
Rory
The most obvious title of interest to Irish readers is Alan Shipnuck’s biography of Rory McIlroy.
Shipnuck examines McIlroy’s journey from a hugely talented youngster in Northern Ireland to one of the most recognisable players in world golf.
The book is not an authorised autobiography. Instead, Shipnuck builds his portrait through reporting and conversations with people from across McIlroy’s career, including figures from golf, coaching and business.
It covers the major victories and painful near-misses, his relationships within the sport and his prominent role during the PGA Tour-LIV Golf upheaval.
McIlroy’s victory at Augusta in 2025, finally completing the career Grand Slam, also provided an extraordinary new chapter to a story that had appeared unfinished for more than a decade.
The Fall and Rise of the Mölkky Bar Kids
This may be the most unlikely sporting story on the entire longlist.
Former sports writer Neil Squires and a group of middle-aged friends wondered whether there might still be a sport in which they could represent Great Britain.
Their search led them to Mölkky, a Finnish throwing game involving numbered wooden pins.
What started as a pub conversation eventually took them thousands of miles to Japan to compete at the Mölkky World Championships in Team GB colours. Underneath the comedy is a warm story about friendship, getting older and refusing to accept that sporting adventures belong only to elite athletes.
The Chain
In 2012, Bradley Wiggins became one of the biggest sporting figures in Britain.
He became the first British cyclist to win the Tour de France and then won Olympic time-trial gold in London just days later.
The Chain is very different from the conventional celebration of those achievements. Wiggins writes about identity, isolation, the pressure created by success and the difficult periods that followed retirement.
The reviews have reflected the seriousness of the subject matter. The Times called it a difficult but brilliant read, while David Walsh described the memoir as searing, insightful and compelling.
It is another example of what much of this year’s longlist does particularly well: looking beyond sporting success at the human being underneath it.
More than books about winning
What stands out most about the 2026 longlist is how few of these books are simply about who won a match, race or championship.
Mary Cain explores what can happen when an elite sporting environment fails a young athlete. Damien Pearse examines why supporters allow football clubs to control their emotions. William Ralston looks at the people expected to control football matches while almost everyone watching believes they could do a better job.
Sophie Power uses ultrarunning to explore motherhood and sporting equality. Neil Squires turns an obscure Finnish game into a story about friendship and ageing. Bradley Wiggins strips away much of the image attached to one of Britain’s most celebrated sporting careers.
Even the biographies of Rory McIlroy and Tadej Pogačar are less interested in simply cataloguing victories than in understanding the personalities, relationships and circumstances behind extraordinary sporting careers.
We were once again struck by the originality of this year’s longlist titles, which provide a range of unique and often challenging perspectives on elite competition.
From 12 books to one winner
Adrian Durham, Elis James, Mark Lawson, Christine Ohuruogu and Michelle Walder will now select the final shortlist.
The shortlist will be announced on Thursday, 29 October.
The winner of the 2026 William Hill Sports Book of the Year will then be announced at the awards ceremony on 24 November.
First awarded in 1989, the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award recognises excellence in sports writing. The 2026 winning author will receive the trophy and £25,000, with the remaining shortlisted authors receiving £2,500 each and a specially bound copy of their book.
