Showing results for "odyssey" in Sports

In 1887 a 21-year-old newspaperman named George Nellis (1865-1948) rode a bicycle from Herkimer, New York, to San Francisco in 72 days, surpassing the transcontinental bicycle record by several weeks. He averaged 50 miles a day pedaling a 52-inch, high-wheeled Columbia Expert "ordinary" bicycle with a tubular steel frame and hard rubber tires, and he lost 23 pounds in the process.

Making My Pitch tells the story of Ila Jane Borders, who, despite formidable obstacles, became a Little League prodigy, MVP of her otherwise all-male middle school and high school teams, the first woman awarded a baseball scholarship, and the first to pitch and win a complete men’s collegiate game.

In the mid-20th century, the Heldmans were tennis royalty. Julie was a volatile and gutsy tennis star, twice ranked number five in the world. Her mother Gladys was broadly admired for her unique magazine, World Tennis, and for engineering the women’s tennis revolution. No one guessed that Gladys’s hidden emotional abuse was the source of Julie’s powerful drive. Driven is a highly listenable insider’s account of a pivotal time in women’s tennis history; an in-depth look at Gladys’s complex character; and the revealing story of Julie’s interior journey.

Grab your seat next to a super fan who stopped at nothing to enter his generation's premier Chicago sports events.

With wit and candor, Lynn Petronella, former world class runner and 1980 Olympic contender traces the roots of her history and her interest in running and gives us a true picture of the behind the scenes look at what it was really like to be a part of the historical quest for the first woman's Olympic Gold medal in the first ever woman's Olympic Marathon in Los Angeles in 1984.

>Blood, Steel & Canvas: The Asian Odyssey of a Fighter is a story about fighting on two levels: the American lawyer author’s improbable career as Asia’s oldest amateur boxer and his fight to overcome colon cancer and its consequences. Through his friendships with boxers in the Philippines and Thailand, his efforts (not always successful) to learn the languages and his delight in experiencing local cultures, he sets an example for other expatriates who have the great fortune to live and work overseas.