SPORTS CRAZY - A LIFETIME IN KIWI SPORT

BY ROY WILLIAMS

Publication date: 1 August 2014, RRP: $39.99         

In Sports Crazy, Commonwealth gold medallist Roy Williams shares
personal memories and fascinating vignettes of key New Zealand sporting events
from his long career in and around top-level sport.

Roy Williams won gold in the decathlon at the Commonwealth Games in Kingston in 1966.  He had a 15-year national and international athletics career, during which time he represented New Zealand in basketball, won New Zealand Sportsman of the Year (now the Halberg Award) in 1966, and was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2002. He also worked as a sports journalist at the Auckland Star for 25 years, and coached athletics and basketball for many years.  Roy is the younger brother of Yvette Williams, our first and most famous Olympic gold medal-winning New Zealand woman (Helsinki, 1952).

With this outstanding career of New Zealand sport behind him, Roy now tells of a sporting life during a simpler time. He talks about the strictly amateur days of New Zealand sport, from the mid-1940s right through to the current fully fledged professional era where top sportsmen and women are multi-millionaires.

Roy was at the very centre of key sports-related events over the decades: he was at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games when Palestinian terrorists took hostage and shot dead Israeli team members, on tour with the All Blacks when the Keith Murdoch affair erupted, at dinner with the Queen when she was here for the 1974 Commonwealth Games, and a few years later at dinner with Muhammad Ali when he came to New Zealand. Roy attended many Commonwealth and Olympic games and was frequently on tour with the All Blacks both at home and overseas in his role as sports reporter for the Auckland Star. 

In the foreword to the book, close personal friend Les Mills CNZM MBE, writes 'Coming from the pen of a meticulously organised journalist and an international sportsman of the top order, it [Sports Crazy] lifts the lid on a number of previously undocumented and contentious issues that deserve to have a searchlight trained on them …’  'This book will form part of our sporting folklore — of a lifestyle that has largely disappeared and an era that will never be replicated.'

RRP: $39.99 incl. GST | BATEMAN -  Publication date: 1 August 2014