Archives de catégorie : Sport

THE BALANCE d’Aimee Boorman

From Paris Olympics star and legendary gymnast Simone Biles’s longtime coach, an insider’s look at the making of a champion.

THE BALANCE:
My Years Coaching Simone Biles
by Aimee Boorman
with Steve Cooper
foreword by Simone Biles
Abrams Press, Frankfurt 2024

THE BALANCE is coach Aimee Boorman’s inside account of the growth of a transcendent athlete and the tumultuous events—from the dictatorial coaching of Martha Karolyi to the sexual abuse by Larry Nassar—that upended the lives of many girls, including Biles.

Simone Biles is one of the greatest athletes of all time. She’s won six all-around world championships and eleven Olympic medals (seven gold). Five gymnastics moves are named after her, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom (the youngest recipient ever), and at an age when most elite gymnasts have retired, Biles is not just still competing—she’s dominating. She soared in Paris last summer, bringing home more Olympic gold. She’s having so much fun that LA 2028 is not out of the question.

But when coach Aimee Borman met her at a gym in Texas, Simone was just a seven-year-old kid. An exceptionally athletically gifted one, to be sure, but not yet great. That would take time, care, love, and balance.

Boorman helped shape Biles, both pushing her and holding her back, protecting both her mental and physical health. “She’s like a second mom to me,” writes Biles, and Boorman was the National Team coach in 2016, where the US—and Biles—took home all-around gold.

THE BALANCE combines unprecedented insider perspective on a legend, newsworthy details on gymnastics history, and compelling lessons on coaching, leadership, and development.

Aimee Boorman, a Chicago native, is a decorated and globally respected gymnastics coach, whose career included 12 years coaching the sport’s all-time greatest, Simone Biles. Boorman was named USA Gymnastics Coach of the Year four times (2013–2016) and US Olympic Committee Coach of the Year (2016). She was head coach of the US Women’s Gymnastics Team at the Rio Olympic Games and coached for the Dutch Gymnastics Federation at the European Championship, the Tokyo Olympic Games, and the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Japan in 2021. Boorman holds a bachelor of science in management and a master of sport from USA Gymnastics, and is actively representing the United States as a FIG Brevet judge. She is also a cofounder of Global Impact Gymnastics Alliance. She has three sons—Jamie, Chris, and Ben—with her husband, James Boorman, whom she has been married to for 25 years.

Steve Cooper is a journalist with over two decades of writing, reporting, and editing experience, covering marriage, business, technology, entrepreneurship, and gymnastics, which he has also covered as a photographer. He is the coauthor of Life is Short, Don’t Wait to Dance with former UCLA Gymnastics head coach Valerie Kondos Field, and is COO of GymCastic, the largest gymnastics podcast in the world.

THIS IS NOT A BOOK ABOUT EVEREST de Melissa Arnot Reid

A searching, uplifting memoir by the celebrated, groundbreaking climber: a journey of overcoming where the mountain’s highest peaks can only be reached by traversing the dark crevasses of the soul.

THIS IS NOT A BOOK ABOUT EVEREST
by Melissa Arnot Reid
Sugar23, April 2025

At twenty-seven, when Melissa Arnot Reid accepted a tank of oxygen just short of the summit of Mt Everest, she felt ravaged by defeat. Driven by a relentless, lifelong quest to prove to herself, her family, and the world that she was enough, she had set herself an incredible goal to be become the first American woman to summit Everest without oxygen, in the manner of history’s greatest alpinists. The failure battered her spirit and left her struggling to keep her tenuous grip on hope.

In the candid and adventurous spirit of Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, THIS IS NOT A BOOK ABOUT EVEREST is a story of a life in which the most dangerous mountain faces became a refuge until suddenly Ithey, too, no longer seemed safe. From a childhood marked by conflict, betrayal, and predation, Reid propelled herself to the top of the mountain climbing world, summiting and guiding on the world’s most challenging peaks, and establishing herself as woman unafraid to throw elbows in a milieu dominated by men. And yet for every summit she attained, her valleys of inner turmoil–over her estrangement with the family she believed she’d destroyed as a child; over relationships that cycled through deception and infidelity grew deeper and more self-destructive. Eventually, she could not keep these worlds from colliding, especially after a series of tragedies at dangerous elevations took the lives of her mentors and friends. Forced at last to face herself, Reid made her most perilous climb vet -toward the uncertain promise of forgiveness and self-acceptance

A beautiful, aching memoir of a journey with life-and-death stakes on the mountain and off, THIS IS NOT A BOOK ABOUT EVEREST bares the soul of one of the world greatest climbers, offering views on the awesome, rarified heights visible only at thin-air altitudes and the dark depths home to demons at once personal to Reid and yet familiar to anyone who has struggle to love themselves.

Melissa Arnot Reid is the first American woman to summit Everest without supplemental oxygen. It was her sixth summit of the highest ground on earth, cementing her place in mountaineering history. In doing so, she became a media star, in demand from many publications, television shows, and organizations looking for inspirational speakers.

OUTOFSHAPEWORTHLESSLOSER de Gracie Gold

In this explosive tell-all memoir, Gracie Gold, Olympic medalist, offers an unprecedented look inside the pressure-packed world of figure skating and reveals her battle to survive mental illness, eating disorders, and crippling perfectionism.

OUTOFSHAPEWORTHLESSLOSER
A Memoir of Figure Skating, F*cking Up, and Figuring It Out
by Gracie Gold
Crown, February 2024

When Gracie Gold stepped onto center stage (or ice, rather) as America’s sweetheart at the 2014 Sochi Olympics, she instantly became the face of America’s most beloved winter sport. Beautiful, blonde, Midwestern, and media-trained, she was suddenly being written up everywhere from The New Yorker to Teen Vogue to People and baking cookies with Taylor Swift.

But little did the public know what Gracie was facing when the cameras were off. In 2017, she entered treatment for what was publicly announced as eating disorder and anxiety treatment, but what was, in reality, suicidal ideation. While Gracie’s public star was rising, her private life was falling apart: Cracks within her family were widening, her bulimia was getting worse, and she became a survivor of sexual assault. The pressure of training for years with demanding coaches and growing up in a household that accepted nothing less than gold had finally taken its toll. As Gracie entered treatment, she was asked to cite only her eating disorder and anxiety in the announcement: suicidal ideation wasn’t “palatable.”

In OUTOFSHAPEWORTHLESSLOSER, Gracie shares the less “palatable” parts of her life, revealing exclusive, and harrowing, details about her struggles: the battles with her family, her coaches, the powers-that-be at her federation, and the voice in her head that she calls « outofshapeworthlessloser. » Gracie’s memoir is not only a forceful reckoning from a world-class athlete, but also an intimate account of surviving as a young woman in a society that rewards appearances more than anything and demands perfection at all costs.

Gracie Gold is a two-time U.S. figure-skating champion and an Olympic bronze medalist. Gold is the first and only American woman to win an NHK Trophy title and holds the record for the highest short-program score ever recorded by an American woman. Her writing has been published in The Cut. She lives in Wilmington, Delaware, and trains in suburban Philadelphia.

UNFAIR PLAY de Sharron Davies & Craig Lord

A legendary Olympian exposes the toxic sexism that threatens women’s sport.

UNFAIR PLAY:
The Battle for Women’s Sport
by Sharron Davies & Craig Lord
Swift Press, April 2023
(via Randle Editorial and Literary)

Despite being more popular than ever, women’s sport is in danger. Modern gender ideology, which denies fundamental differences in human biology, is undermining the integrity of women’s sport.
Sharron Davies has been here before. She missed out on Olympic Gold because of blatant doping among East German athletes in the 1980s. Female athletes are now once again facing an unfair playing field: biological males are being allowed to compete directly against women under the guise of trans ‘self-ID’. This time, the cheating is officially condoned. This callous indifference towards women in sport, argue Sharron and journalist Craig Lord, is merely the latest stage in a long history of official sexism.
Unlike in the past, however, this time female resistance is too strong to ignore. Davies and Lord show how the tide may be turning, and outline how women can win the fight for their rights.

Sharron Davies MBE is a legendary British Olympian, the UK’s top female swimmer throughout the 80s. In 1980, she won Olympic Silver (losing out only to a drugs cheat). She has since become a leading BBC sports pundit.
Craig Lord is an award-winning swimming and Olympic correspondent, who’s been writing for The Times for three decades.

GOOD FOR A GIRL de Lauren Fleshman

A memoir and manifesto about women and sports, told through the experiences of a highly decorated runner. From the time Lauren first laced up her sneakers to out-sprint the boys in her neighborhood, though puberty when half of all girls abandon sports for good, and into elite running where she had to be “fast and fuckable” to fit into the Nike machine, Lauren felt she was bumping into a system that was not made for her.

GOOD FOR A GIRL:
A Life Running In A Man’s World
by Lauren Fleshman
‎ Penguin Press, TBD 2022
(via Levine, Greenberg, Rostan)

Lauren Fleshman is very, very good at running. She was a two-time USA Champion, finished 7th in the world, and is widely known for having a devastating (but entertaining to watch) finishing kick. For the past 25 years, she can now clearly see that at every step of the way she was bumping up against a system that was never made for her. This is a #metoo story that follows Lauren while she racked up the miles:

● From puberty, where sports diverge by gender, where boys develop the types of bodies sports were designed around, and 50% of girls quit.
● To college, where she entered a system built by and for men, one full of cracks to fall through and landmines to step on, that refused to acknowledge and account for the different physiology of women who were consistently hurting themselves to fit in.
● To being a professional runner for Nike where she learned that she needed to be Fast and Fuckable to succeed in their marketing machinery.

Running is the highest participatory sport in the world, and women are taking it over. In one generation we’ve gone from being pulled off the Boston marathon course for the crime of running while female to making up 60% of the 59 million Americans who run and the 18 million who race. It’s a women’s sport now, and we are only just beginning to realize it.

Lauren Fleshman is considered one of the greatest distance runners in USA history. Her professional racing career saw two USA Championship Titles and five World Championship berths for Team USA. She is endeared as much for her failures as her accomplishments, because of her unique approach to sport and legacy in the running community. Her influence has remained strong since retiring from elite racing in 2016, when she transitioned to Head Coach of Little Wing Athletics, the only woman led, woman run, woman sponsored professional running team in the world. Lauren currently serves on the Board of Directors for USATF, advocating for better governance, safe sport, and the protection of athlete’s rights.