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Beryl - WINNER OF THE SUNDAY TIMES SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023: In Search of Britain's Greatest Athlete, Beryl Burton

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While the former is probably her career-defining result, the latter ended in failure – yet it was just as interesting and was worth every page.

I like to think I know more about cycling than the average person, but I'd never heard of Beryl Burton before hearing about this book and I feel ashamed to say that. But without this book - which is niche even by the standards of British sporting books - I doubt I’d ever have heard of her and imagine that’s true for many others.

There are lessons here for us all, from school kids to politicians, about what it means to be truly complete, and what it will take to make inclusion a reality. At a time when the predominant image of people with disabilities was just starting to shift out of asylums, hospitals, and the dark places where they had been relegated for so long, Beryl Potter laid the foundation for the inclusion movement in Canada. Despite the inevitable similarities to another Burton biography, there is enough new material here for it to be an equally compelling proposition – so the same score is justified. Jeremy Wilson brings alive this extraordinary woman's achievements (and problems, too - she wasn't always the best mother) in this fabulous biography.

For anyone interested in the social history of the disability movement in Canada, this important memoir is required reading. Beryl Burton, an almost forgotten amateur cyclist who worked on a rhubarb farm in Yorkshire, was not simply the undisputed ruler of British women's cycling for 25 years, but also broke the men's record in a 12-hour time trial. Wilson takes the more traditional route, using a major publisher, with the associated improvements in marketing and distribution. Wilson's account doesn't airbrush away Burton's weaknesses and eccentricities, yet he honours her achievements carefully and in a way that helps readers see how extraordinary they were. Since our earliest beginnings, every documented society has gathered to perform elaborate rites and ceremonies - from mass worship to body modification - yet ritual poses a deep paradox: why do we give the utmost importance to otherwise pointless activities?The book elicits a range of emotions from awe at her achievements to being disturbed by some of her eccentricities and inevitability bewildered and saddened by the actions of cycling’s governing bodies and many of those who ran them at the time. A survivor of more than one hundred surgeries, a dangerous opioid addiction, and multiple suicide attempts, Beryl Potter devoted herself to bettering the lives of other people with disabilities and made a tremendous contribution to disability awareness from the 1970s to 1990s. The tragedy of it all was that Beryl couldn’t just stop being or thinking that she could be an elite athlete in her 50s. To my mortification, I had not heard of Beryl Burton, so pretty much all the material in this was new to me. Alyson Rudd, chairwoman of the William Hill Sports Book of the Year award * The Times Best Sports Book of The Year * Jeremy Wilson provides a convincing case in his tribute to this elusive and remarkable figure -- Best Sport Books of the Year * The 42 * An incredible story about one of the nation's greatest-ever athletes that you probably haven't heard of - until now.

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