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Alone

The Triumph and Tragedy of John Curry

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About this listen

One winter's night in 1976, over 20 million people in Britain watched John Curry skate to Olympic glory on an ice rink in Austria. Many millions more watched around the world. Overnight he became one of the most famous men on the planet. He was awarded the OBE. He was chosen as BBC Sports Personality of the Year.

Curry had changed ice skating from marginal sport to high art. And yet the man was - and would always remain - an absolute mystery to a world that had been dazzled by his gift. Surely, men's skating was supposed to be Cossack-muscular, not sensual and ambiguous like this.

Curry himself was an often-tortured man of labyrinthine complexity. For the first time, Alone untangles the extraordinary web of his toxic, troubled, brilliant - and short - life. It is a story of childhood nightmares, furious ambition, sporting genius, lifelong rivalries, homophobia, Cold War politics, financial ruin and deep personal tragedy. Alone reveals the restless, impatient, often dark soul of a man whose words could lacerate, whose skating invariably moved audiences to tears, and who - after succumbing to AIDS, as so many of his fellow artists and friends did - died of a heart attack aged just 44.

©2014 Bill Jones (P)2014 Audible Inc.
Biographies & Memoirs Entertainment & Celebrities Sports Winter Sports Celebrity Heartfelt
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A tragic story very well told . Well worth listening to.
There is no doubt that John Curry was an artistic genius but he would have been very difficult man to know but easy to love. A total enigma.

So sad.

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I originally read this biography of John not long after it came out, and recently listened to the audio version, which is a really well read production. It’s a fine biography of the greatest male skater in history.

Incredible story of a remarkable athlete

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oh my god, this book goes on and on..........didn't need to be this long, could've been summed up in one chapter!!!

BORING

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