Run, Swim, Throw, Cheat

By: Chris Cooper

Narrated by: Kieran Phoenix

Length: 10 hrs and 13 mins

Publisher's Summary

Drugs in sport are big news and the use of performance-enhancing drugs in sport is common. Here, Chris Cooper, a top biochemist at the University of Essex, looks at the science behind drugs in sport. Using the performance of top athletes, Cooper begins by outlining the limits of human performance. Showing the basic problems of human biochemistry, physiology, and anatomy, he looks at what stops us running faster, throwing longer, or jumping higher. Using these evidence-based arguments he shows what the body can, and cannot, do. There is much curiosity about why certain substances are used, how they are detected, and whether they truly have an effect on the body. Cooper explains how these drugs work and the challenges of testing for them, putting in to context whether the 'doping' methods of choice are worth the risk or the effort.

Exploring the moral, political, and ethical issues involved in controlling drug use, Cooper addresses questions such as 'What is cheating?', 'What compounds are legal and why?', 'Why do the classification systems change all the time?', and 'Should all chemicals be legal, and what effect would this have on sport?'. Looking forward, he examines the recent work to study the physical limitations of rat and mice behaviour. He shows that, remarkably, simple genetic experiments producing 'supermice' suggest that there may be ways of improving human performance too, raising ethical and moral questions for the future of sport.

©2012 Chris Cooper (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

Possibly an ok book ruined by awful execution

The book itself was quite technical in parts so was tough to transmit to the audio format. However, this was just made worse by awful awful narration and many references to diagrams that obviously the listener couldn't see. These diagrams should have been made available as a pdf like many other audiobooks do. Narration was truly woeful with many mispronunciations so bad they have to be heard to be believed.

Hard to get past these issues. The best audiobooks consider the format translation from print to audio. This book just seemed like it was decided just to pick the quickest and crudest way possible to try to cash in on the audiobook market

interesting subject ruined by narrator

Is there anything you would change about this book?

Longtime Audible users will know that on rare occasions a narrator can completely ruin a book. That is the case here. I was excited to learn about the subject, but the narration of this book is nearly unbearable.

The narrator reads every sentence like he is announcing the headline of an upcoming news story, seems to have no idea what he is talking about, and cannot connect ideas between sentences. It almost sounded like the book was being read by an illiterate high school student making a joke out of reading in class by trying to draw attention to himself.

I feel sorry for the author.

How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?

Different Narrator

Would you be willing to try another one of Kieran Phoenix’s performances?

No

A good listen

Terrible narrator cannot pronounce some of the words. This distracts from a very good story.

A very good insight to what goes on in sport

Excellent read, all backed up with scientific research. Well Narrated and the sections are split up perfectly

Bad narration impossible to ignore

The book adds scientific detail to a subject I find fascinating. However the narration with it's odd pronunciations and stilted cadence meant the content became more and more difficult to follow as the narration became increasingly distracting. Listening became a challenge rather than a pleasure.

Good Book. Very bad narration

The information in this book is excellent and very interesting but the patronising tone (as though reading to a 3 year old) and very frequent mispronunciations of the narrator made it very difficult to access the book.

Interesting view of drugs in sport but poor narration

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

Very interesting content and really interesting insights into the world of sports and performance enhancing drugs, good flow to story and well structured analysis.

What did you like best about this story?

Good balance between scientific detail without getting too into the weeds on any specific topic.

Would you be willing to try another one of Kieran Phoenix’s performances?

The narration of the book was really poor. The narrator mispronounced a range of words, both technical and non-technical terms and some fairly common names (eg claret and haemoglobin) which got very annoying. Coupled with this, the editing of the audio seems to result in levels and tones of voice changing every other sentence which gave the book an odd style and made it even harder to listen to.

Great book, poor reader.

The science and information in this book is fascinating and well explained by the author. However the narrator has lead me to wish I purchased the print version. The narrator sounds throughout the book as though he is trying to in from me I have been miss-sold payment protection insurance. Frequent miss-pronunciations such as 'Animalies' for anomalies, 'EPA for EPO' and while explaining the problems of athletes lying about their age making the error of saying 'humans do (rather than don't) lay down a growth ring each year', 'vampire chick' for vampire chic..... This would be a pedantic complaint if the errors were not constant.

A great book let down by terrible narration

If.you can get past the narrators odd cadence and distracting, unnecessary emphasis of every third word and flagrant mispronunciation and misreading there's a great book underneath.

Edit: the mispronunciation is getting so bad I may not finish the book. Crying shame

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