Top five sports books to read over the monsoons

4. David Walsh – Seven Deadly Sins

When Lance Armstrong was banned for life by the World Anti Doping Authority last year, and subsequently confessed to having taken performance enhancing drugs in an interview with Oprah Winfrey, relief was Irish journalist David Walsh’s overwhelming feeling. Relief that the days of torment were over, relief that he would no longer be chastised, blackmailed or threatened by Armstrong, relief that neither he nor his courageous sources would be intimidated, sued and referred to as ‘trolls’ by the Texan.

Seven Deadly Sins is Walsh’s account of the downfall of Lance Armstrong. It recalls his fifteen-year pursuit of the cyclist, his obsession with revealing the truth, and his unflinching desire to remain strong and committed to his beliefs in the follow up to some of the nastiest tactics in sport.

Inevitably, Armstrong does not come out of this story well, yet the work is about far more than Armstrong. It is a bible for journalists across the world, and inadvertently displays one of the biggest problems of the industry – the conflict of interests surrounding that of access in the journalistic world. The ‘criticise me, and don’t expect to get that exclusive interview for your newspaper’ problem.

When the issue of journalistic freedoms and Leveson laws next enters the public domain, politicians would do well to read Walsh’s account. They would quickly realise that freedom of the press, when used responsibly, should be triumphed, not trashed.