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Duel in the Sun: Alberto Salazar, Dick Beardsley, and America's Greatest Marathon
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Product Description
-One was a humble farm boy from Minnesota. The other was the most electrifying distance runner of his time. In 1982, they battled stride for stride for more than two hours in the most thrilling Boston Maraton ever run. Then the drama really began. . . .+ Thus John Brant sets the stage for the epic race that took place 23 years ago between Alberto Salazar and Dick Beardsley. Since Beardsley was only 26 and Salazar 23 at the time, everyone assumed that this would be the start of a long and glorious rivalry.Instead Beardsley soon began a descent into drug addiction that brought him perilously close to dying. Salazar+s decline was more gradual, his vigor slowly giving way to baffling symptoms that left him completely exhausted. Brant+s portraits of the painkiller-addicted Beardsley and the depression-plagued Salazar are at once sensitive and hair-raising. The supporting characters are also richly drawn, from Alberto+s father, Jose Salazar, a towering presence with a fascinating history and a former close friend of Fidel Castro, to Bill Squires, Beardsley+s coach, a Casey Stengel-like figure whose oddball goofiness masks an encyclopedic knowledge of distance running. This elegantly written story is riveting nonfiction at its very best.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #413305 in Books
- Published on: 2006-02-21
- Released on: 2006-02-21
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Hardcover
- 256 pages
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
In 1982, Alberto Salazar and Dick Beardsley ran the entire 26.2 miles of the Boston Marathon neck and neck, finishing within two seconds of each other. For both, it was the pinnacle of a running career cut short, for Salazar because of a mysterious malaise, and for Beardsley because of a drug addiction that developed after a farm accident. Brant, a Runner's World writer, weaves the tension of the race into the story of the decline of both runners. He's clearly a running enthusiast; few others would write of the race as "one of the signature moments in the history of distance running—perhaps, in the history of any sport." The story is sad yet triumphant; despite the end of serious running careers, both men made successes of their lives. Brant tells their tales reverently; his style creates distance instead of allowing readers into the runners' heads. While Brant's writing tends to be unfocused and melodramatic (when describing the women watching the marathon, he writes that they sounded "like Zulu women ululating on the hot road to Durban, raging gleeful keening"), runners especially will enjoy the suspense of the race. B&w photo insert. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Within the running community, the 1982 Boston Marathon is arguably the most memorable race in the modern era. It was a neck-and-neck battle between the favorite, Alberto Salazar, and an upstart at what would be the zenith of a sudden, meteoric rise, Dick Beardsley. Brant, a contributor to Runner's World since 1985, re-creates the principals' careers leading up to the race, describes the race itself, and, most significantly, analyzes its aftermath. Neither runner was ever the same again. Beardsley suffered a mind-boggling series of physical setbacks that led to a serious addiction to pain killers. Salazar gradually slid into a paralyzing depression. Many inspirational sports stories, both fiction and nonfiction, center on individuals who found themselves trapped by some form of destructive self-indulgence before battling their way to the top. Neither the ebullient Beardsley nor the regal Salazar chose their personal burdens, but each approached life as a marathon, and both have overcome adversity and are now cruising comfortably down the stretch. Two inspiring tales, well told. Wes Lukowsky
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"Americans love their champions impossibly mythic. With this gripping retelling of the most exciting Boston Marathon in recent memory, John Brant leads readers not simply across the grueling 26.2 miles that Alberto Salazar and Dick Beardsley ran in 1982, but through later challenges that made their defining athletic achievement look easy." --Donovan Webster, author of The Burma Road and Aftermath: The Remnants of War
"A beautiful, heartbreaking book. Before the finish line, we've been to Castro's Cuba and on pilgrimage to Croatia, we've faced down addiction and depression, have made final peace with the failings of our bodies, and are left with the final triumph of two men, at odds, though bound by will and desire. Like that marathon 25 years ago, Duel in the Sun is absolutely riveting." --Michael Paterniti author of Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America with Einstein's Brain
"This reads like a thriller, but packs the full payload of meticulously researched non-fiction with details that even I, who actually ran Boston that year, had been unaware of. Deeply moving, Duel in the Sun gives loving, but also ruthless portraits of two extraordinary athletes." --Benjamin H. Cheever, author of The Good Nanny and the forthcoming history of running Strides
"John Brant gives us a wonderful, in-depth look at a classic battle. Even better, he gives us an intimate look at two wildly different American distance runners—their dreams, their triumphs, their foibles, their epic struggles, and the day their lives converged in the streets of Boston." --Don Kardong, 1976 U.S. Olympic Team
"So prodigiously obsessive that they were impossible even for their coaches to restrain, Alberto Salazar and Dick Beardsley lived out their natures--and their futures--in one great, killing race. Both were driven by the need for consuming effort. Both succeeded--to the point of near obliteration. John Brant's extraordinary book lets us enter and share each's gloriously defining dementia. We emerge, as they themselves have,knowing a peace that could not have been harder earned." --Kenny Moore, writer for Sports Ilustrated, two-time Olympic marathoner, and author of Bowerman and the Men of Oregon
Customer Reviews
Great story, book could have used more work
I remember the '82 Boston marathon well, and was thrilled to discover this book. The story of the race between Alberto Salazar and Dick Beardsley is fascinating, and for the most part it is well told here. However, the book could have used a little more refinement before publication. It is repetitious at points and lacks detail at many others. For example, the author includes a chapter on Salazar's comeback victory in the '94 Comrades ultramarathon, which is an amazing story in its own right. However, that chapter is a mere five pages long, including the large font first page, with several italicized sections surrounded by white space. That's pretty skimpy.
As much as I enjoyed reading about the race, I was often frustrated at wanting to know more detail than the author provided. If the story itself wasn't so compelling, I'd give this book three stars -- not because what was published isn't good reading, but because there's so much more that could have been done to tell the story more fully.
Racing Past The Finish Line
Like running a marathon, there are great highs and some steep lows in Duel in the Sun, but it is well worth the read.
Author John Brant chronicles the lives of Alberto Salazar and Dick Beardsley before and after their epic stride-for-stride thriller in the 1982 Boston Marathon. It was a struggle between two athletes seemingly racing toward peak years of performing on the international stage. But the race took more out of each runner than anyone imagined.
Salazar - perhaps the last great American distance runner - was a superstar on the track, grass and the roads and had the cockiness of Jimmy Connors while delivering a KO punch on his opponents like the young George Foreman. Beardsley was the "everyman's" runner, whose times at a variety of shorter distances paled to his competition, but was coming of age physically and financially in the long distances on the roads.
The book is as much biography and history as much as a review of the race. At times it seems as if Brant is rushed in his writing, which is surprising since the text is a light 203 pages, with the photograph section in that count.
But it is penned at a time when the running boom has long-since cooled, but raced when events like the Boston Marathon commanded front-page stories on sports pages and magazines, and oftentimes covered for hours on live regional or national TV.
And perhaps the best lesson learned is not what happened during the cheers of the fans as Salazar and Beardsley matched strides to the tape, but how that two hour and nine minute journey impacted their lives after the finish line.
Duel In The Sun
I had previously read Beardsley's book "Staying The Course: A Runner's Toughest Race" so I knew most of the details about the 1984 Boston Marathon but "Duel in the Sun" is an excellent book due to the behind the scenes details of not only the race but the lives of Alberto Salazar and Dick Beardsley. You don't have to be a marathon runner to truely appreciate what these two men went through in their lives as well as in their running.
