Total Olympics ― Every Obscure, Hilarious, Dramatic, and Inspiring Tale Worth Knowing from the World's Largest Sporting Event

An amusing miscellany of more than 100 years of legendary, obscure, hilarious, and inspiring Olympics history, including the heroes, the records, the forgotten moments, the sports themselves (ski ballet? tug of war? firefighting?), the controversies, and the athletes who achieved Olympic glory (or shame).Motto of the modern Olympics: Faster, Higher, Stronger. But now add Stranger! Stranger, as in the 1908 Olympic marathon, which featured Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a 22-year-old pastry chef, and Champagne (yes, it was the runners’ drink of choice). Or the 1948 “austerity games” in London―teams had to bring their own food, female athletes sewed their own uniforms. Or imagine rooting for these one-time Olympic sports: tug of war, firefighting, rope climb, live pigeon shooting, and―wait for it―painting. (Picasso for the gold!)Compulsively readable, highly entertaining, trivia- and curiosity-pac