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| RRP $24.99 AUD Published July 2016 by Allen & Unwin and Profile Books |
I love everything about the Olympics and always watch as much as I physically can, with gymnastics, diving, weightlifting and synchronised swimming being some of my favourite events.
Reading How to Watch the Olympics - An instant initiation into every Olympic sport at Rio 2016 by David Goldblatt and Johnny Acton was the perfect preparation and I learned a lot about different sports that I didn't know beforehand.
Set out alphabetically by sport, this handy reference guide was informative without being overwhelming and entertaining with a light sense of humour throughout.
Some tidbits were memorable, like this one from the sport of badminton on page 76:
"The shuttlecock may be mere cork and feathers but struck correctly it can split a watermelon in two."
While enjoying the Olympic footage, I often found myself recalling knowledge from the book: "oh, they don't have to row inside their lanes, they can row across the buoys as long as they don't interfere with anyone else" and "in synchronised swimming they can't touch the bottom of the pool, and the spectacle they put on before they dive into the water is called deckwork which isn't included in the scoring."
How to Watch the Olympics was a great companion for armchair Olympic viewers like me and I'll be sure to have it beside me in 2020 for the Tokyo Olympics.
My rating = ***1/2
Carpe Librum!
