Nestled in a quiet part of County Tipperary, Coolmore Stud casts as long a shadow as any sporting entity over the history of Irish sport. Founded by the legendary horse trainer Vincent O'Brien, and now managed by John Magnier, Coolmore Stud has grown from a small breeding farm into a global behemoth, renowned the world over for the quality of the horses it produces. Alan Conway tells the story of how Coolmore Stud and its training operation at Ballydoyle have come to dominate the world of horse breeding and racing. Using the stories of the people involved, including the legendary Syndicate of Magnier, O'Brien and Robert Sangster, and of the famous horses it has produced, such as the legendary Sadler's Wells, his sons Galileo and Montjeu, and the mighty Danehill, this book charts the rise of one of Ireland's greatest sporting success stories.

Shocking secrets of the sands When she gave herself to Sheikh Salman in Paris five years ago, Jamilah Moreau fantasized about wedding dresses and happy endings. But Salman was driven by desire, not diamond solitaires.... Now, sheikh of a desert kingdom, Salman can have anything he wants--and, as Jamilah discovers when he spirits her off to a desert oasis, it's still her However, time has wrought changes, and their lovemaking is no longer enough. Something happened back in Paris that had everlasting consequences for both of them....

You might feel sure that a horse is not a Flamingo, a Polar Bear, a Tomato, a Teapot, a pair of Bootlaces, a Taxidermist, a Rat Catcher, or a Flea, but you'd be wrong. Racehorse owners often give their horses bizarre names that would seem to make success impossible. Luckily, thoroughbreds are able to defy such handicaps. A Spaniel has won the Derby (1831), a Crow the St Leger (1976), a Butterfly the Oaks (1860) and, difficult to imagine, Oscar Wilde the Welsh National (1958). It's bonkers. Bonkers won at Southwell in 2002. Over the centuries there have been hundreds of thousands of different names bestowed or inflicted on racehorses, and in Fifty Shades Of Hay, David Ashforth has picked out a selection to baffle, surprise, and amuse in equal measure.

Jim Haynes, Australia's favourite tale teller, loves the sport of kings as much as he loves Aussie yarns and bush verse. From country picnic tracks to the thoroughbred racecourses of Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne, from Archer to Black Caviar, from the mysterious punter Louis the Possum to the great trainer Bart Cummings, he brings these two great loves together in the biggest book of Australian racing stories ever. In these stories, full of the humour and romance of the track, Jim reminds us of the great champions, the tragedies, and the unique characters (equine and human) of racing. Here are stories of famous races and jockeys, touts and urgers, nose-to-nose battles and a rort or two, as well as country race meeting where anything can happen. This rich collection captures the heart and soul of the turf and reminds us exactly why a day at the races and having a punt are such an important part of the Australian spirit. Jim Haynes lives ten minutes' walk from Randwick Racecourse and his favourite television channel is Thoroughbred Central.

During the boom years of the 1980s, the massed oil wealth of the princes of Dubai and Saudi Arabia were pitted against British millionaire Robert Sangster in a battle for control of one of the world’s rarest, most precious and most unpredictable commodities: top-pedigree thoroughbread racehorses.

From acclaimed New York Times Magazine author Michael Sokolove, the full inside story of the NCAA's epic corruption scandal that exposed the rot and hypocrisy at the heart of big-time college sports. In 2017, the FBI revealed that it had reached the endgame of a sprawling investigation of large-scale corruption involving Adidas, Louisville and a host of other colleges, in which large payments were laundered from Adidas through a network of coaches and fixers to athletes and their families to induce them to go to Adidas-branded college programs. In short order, Hall of Fame basketball coach Rick Pitino (salary: $8 million) and athletic director Tom Jurich were fired, and fear, trembling, and some high-profile litigation swept through the world of bigtime college athletics. In THE LAST TEMPTATION OF RICK PITINO, Michael Sokolove not only lifts the rug on the Louisville scandal but also places it in the context of the much wider problem, the farce of amateurism in bigtime college sports. In a world in which even assistant coaches can make high-six and seven-figure salaries, as long as they keep the "elite" athletes coming in, shoe deals can reach into the nine figures, and everyone is getting rich but the players, can it be surprising that unscrupulous parties would pay athletes, creating in effect a black market in young men, a veritable underground railroad of talent? But a few bad apples are one thing. In THE LAST TEMPTATION OF RICK PITINO, Michael Sokolove shows an elaborate, systematic machine, involving hundreds of thousands of dollars in illicit payments and connecting at least one of the largest apparel companies in the world with schools across the country. The Louisville-Adidas scandal has revealed a web of conspiracy whose scope has shaken big-time college sports to its core, delivering a devastating blow to the fantasy of amateurism, of "scholar athletes." A Shakespearean drama of greed and desperation involving some of the biggest characters in the arena of sports, THE LAST TEMPTATION OF RICK PITINO is the definitive chronicle of this scandal and its broader echoes.