“All I know most surely about morality and obligation I owe to football”,
Kriss
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Stuart Weir, Marshall Pickering, London 1996 (169 pages) ISBN 0-551-03029-1
If you are on the look-out for books suitable for non-Christians, new Christians or for Christians keen to deepen their relationship with God, then the above books are worth considering. Kriss, the biography of athlete and television personality Kriss Akabusi, is particularly relevant to non-Christians because of the way Kriss's faith comes through loud and clear without dominating the book. The biography skilfully moves from the athletics track to Kriss's spiritual struggles and, in so doing, introduces evidence and ideas which encourage the reader to consider the truth and relevance of the Christian faith. The emphasis of the book is more on 'the why' you should become a Christian rather than 'the how'. As Kriss says: 'Work hard to achieve all you can, but ultimately without God you won't find meaning or satisfaction to life. Evangelicals Now
Popular Christian sportsman, Kriss Akabusi, is the subject of Stuart Weir’s biography. Taking as its starting point the 1992 Olympics In Barcelona, the book covers Kriss’ career, exploring what drives him to achieve in his chosen field and looking at how his faith affects his life in sport. Church of England Newspaper, 13 December 1996
Originally published on November 5 and sold out by November 30. This popular book has now been reprinted. This is Kriss Akabusi’s biography and, follows his outstanding career in athletics. This is not the first book written about him, but this one, written by fellow Christian Stuart Weir, perhaps reflects most strongly Kriss’s commitment to his religion. As Akabusi says: “Work hard to achieve all you can, but ultimately without God you won’t find meaning and satisfaction to life.” Athletics Weekly 5 February 1997
Kriss Akabusi is an ebullient presenter of BBC TV’s Record Breakers, an athlete with an international reputation and an Olympian-sized laugh. He is also a dynamic, unabashed follower of Jesus Christ and as such he has been an inspiration to all who endeavour to stand for Christ in the world of sport.
Author Stuart Weir, co-director of Christians in Sport, makes a bold attempt at compressing the story so far of such a life-centred character into twelve clearly-written chapters.
We discover that ‘the first three years of his life involved a succession of nannies and foster parents’ while his Nigerian parents developed their careers in law, accountancy and nursing. When they returned to Nigeria, Kriss and his brother were left to enjoy the benefits of a British education. It was during this period that ‘my brother and I learned, very young, that we must cling together and fight for our survival. We were the only constant in each other’s lives’, which may cast some illumination on the subsequent confession that while ‘everyone thinks I’m outgoing, the truth is I don’t let anyone close to me’.
In sport at school he was keen but not outstanding, evoking the comment from his now red-faced sports master, ‘Kriss has no athletic potential’.
He joined the army as a boy and emerged a man and a better athlete. The rest is universally catalogued in the record books. His journey to faith came via reading the Good News Bible and writings that established the historicity of Jesus, culminating in a ‘very vivid dream’ in which he saw Jesus. The result was ‘a real feeling of peace and tranquillity’ and ‘in that moment all my head knowledge about Jesus went into my heart’.
The book is highly commendatory and the appendices will prove a gold mine for quiz enthusiasts, especially ‘Ten things you didn’t know about Kriss Akabusi’.
As a runner, I enjoyed this volume, particularly the chapter on ‘the mother of all relay races’ which details the first British victory since 1936 over the Americans in the 4 x 400 metres.
As a reader, I was disappointed by the lack of any serious appraisal of his place in world athletics, the absence of his views on sport and the big money prizes for top athletes, from a biblical perspective, but most surprising is the total omission of what his wife thinks about it all! Doug Barnett in Christianity Today, January 1997