How to Watch the Olympics: Scores and laws, heroes and zeros – an instant initiation to every sport

How to Watch the Olympics: Scores and laws, heroes and zeros – an instant initiation to every sport

by David Goldblatt (Author), JohnnyActon (Author)

Synopsis

The Olympics is the world's biggest sporting event - and it moves centre stage for London 2012. Yet the sports the world is familiar with - football, cricket, rugby, baseball, motor sports - are either missing or have a token presence. In their place are games that most of us have not a clue how to play or to watch. Which is where this witty, insightful book comes into play, offering the back story behind each Olympics sport and, by means of fiendishly clever diagrams and prose, explaining the rules and finer points. Once you've read David Goldblatt and Johnny Acton's accounts, you'll be on tenterhooks to see whether the Danish or the Koreans triumph at handball, just what the Italian fencers are up to, and if Greco-Roman wrestling really is like a game of chess.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 400
Publisher: Profile Books
Published: 01 May 2012

ISBN 10: 1846684765
ISBN 13: 9781846684760
Book Overview: The games are finally here! This is the one book on the Olympics you really do need

Media Reviews
The perfect event-by-event primer for sport's biggest occasion * Independent *
Those planning Olympic spectatorship in 2012 will not find a better vade mecum than How to Watch the Olympics, David Goldblatt and Johnny Acton's crisply informative guide to all 29 sports in next summer's games * Observer Sports Books of the Year *
A handy and witty guide to the finer points of competition * Independent on Sunday Sports Books of the Year *
Author Bio
David Goldblatt is the author of the World Football Yearbook and The Ball is Round: a Global History of Football. He writes the Sporting Life' column in Prospect, teaches sociology of sport at Bristol University, and broadcasts regularly on' the politics of sport for BBC Radio. Johnny Acton is a writer who specialises in digging up obscure nuggets of information and making complex subjects accessible. He has written books on everything from pickling food (Preserved with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall) to the history of balloons (The Man Who Touched the Sky).