Coffee Table Book of: Track and Field (Hardcover)

Description

Coffee Table Book of: Track and Field is a large-format coffee table book of track and field, printed edge to edge in colour, one picture to a page and the widest carried across two: the track, the sprints, hurdles and the steeplechase, the relay, the jumps and the throws, the marathon road, the ancient games and runners seen from far off.

It opens with the track: a small red oval far off in a green valley at dawn, dew on the synthetic surface, a heap of old cinders and a track under tall lamps at night.

Then hurdles and the steeplechase: a white hurdle alone on dewy grass, a hurdler clearing a hurdle against a sunrise sky, a heavy timber barrier at the rim of a water pit and a hurdle knocked over in its lane.

Then the throws: an iron shot on the grass, a throwing circle with its curved stop board, a discus with a metal rim, a tall cage of netting round an empty circle, a discus thrower winding up at sunset, a javelin stuck point first in dewy grass and a hammer on its steel wire.

Then the marathon and the road: a lone runner far off on a country road at dawn, a crushed paper cup on an empty road, a runner on a coastal headland, a road climbing in long bends up a green hillside and a runner on a straight road across flat fields at sunset.

Then the ancient games: a stone starting sill with grooves for the toes, a pair of stone jumping weights, a bronze javelin point green with age and an empty ancient stadium in a valley of olive trees at sunset.

Toward the end, distance running and the track from afar: a pack of runners on the far straight at dusk, a track under fresh snow, a small track in an alpine meadow below snowy mountains, a brass bell beside the track and a small track far off on a lakeshore at dusk.

Short notes run through the book. They are about the sport, its track, events, rules, implements, roads and history rather than about the pictures: the 3000 metres steeplechase with its 28 barriers and seven water jumps, poles once used to jump over canals and rivers before vaulting for height became a sport in the 1790s, the men’s javelin redesigned in 1986 so that it lands point first, and the marathon’s road distance, fixed in 1921 after early races of different lengths.

Printed in full colour on heavy 150gsm coated paper at 216 x 279 mm (8.5 x 11 inches), as a hardcover with the art printed on the case.