How To Watch The Olympics: Scores And Laws, Heroes And Zeros – An Instant Initiation To Every Sport by David Goldblatt and Johnny Acton (From The Northern Echo)
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Book Review: How To Watch The Olympics: Scores And Laws, Heroes And Zeros – An Instant Initiation To Every Sport by David Goldblatt and Johnny Acton (Profile Books, £10.99)
4:15pm Monday 9th January 2012 in Books
ONE of the many joys of the Olympics is the chance to immerse oneself temporarily in a sport which is normally consigned to the outer reaches of the Eurosport 2 schedules.
So anyone looking for an armchair companion for London 2012, who will guide them through the taekwondo repechages and the big handball clash between France and Denmark next summer, could do worse than go for this book.
David Goldblatt and Johnny Acton follow the simple formula of providing a chapter on each of the 26 Olympic sports from archery to wrestling via hockey and rowing.
The book lacks the sprawling comprehensiveness of Goldblatt’s history of world football, The Ball Is Round, but is all the more usable for that.
The basics and some of the niceties are explained through diagrams and neat but chatty writing, while there are lots of historical nuggets with which you can impress/bore friends and passing strangers.
