Best Sports Writing of the Year

Recognising original and insightful works that transcend sport – in selecting the winner, judges will be looking for compelling storytelling with literary merit that leaves a lasting impact on the reader.

WINNER 2026

The Last Bell

McRae, Donald ISBN: 9781398504202
Paperback / softback

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For fifty years Donald McRae has followed boxing. As criminality and corruption spread, his love for the sport dimmed.

In 2018, grieving his sister’s death and his parents’ illness, he turned back to boxing – just as Tyson Fury’s improbable resurrection proved the ring could still offer redemption. McRae takes us close to champions including Fury, Canelo Álvarez, Katie Taylor and Oleksandr Usyk. He doesn’t shy away from exploring huge themes – doping, state repression, war – and he doesn’t flinch from recording the thudding hits or the heartbreak a fighter feels in defeat. And in telling the devastating story of Patrick Day, he confronts death in the ring. The Last Bell is McRae’s most personal and unflinching book, a clear-eyed reckoning with life and the sport he can’t let go.

- Browns Books Synopsis