Читать книгу Now You Know Big Book of Sports - Doug Lennox - Страница 6

preface

The vast collection of human activity called sports provides a fascinating portrait of humanity at both its best and worst. Courage, endurance, skill, tenacity, invention, cowardice, greed, pain, luck, weakness, and strength — these are just some of the qualities of human endeavour that run through the history of athleticism. They are the subject of this book.

Through questions, answers, lists, statistics, charts, and sidebars, I have tried here to assemble as detailed a collection of the most unusual, puzzling, revealing, and downright fascinating facts about sports as possible.

Who gained a winning edge with drugs, who disgraced themselves with rage, who defied the odds, and who won the love of the world? Who died on the ski slopes, who cheated at golf, who fought to win another day? What’s inside a bowling ball? Where was rugby born? Why do the Japanese buy hole-in-one insurance? Where is the world’s oldest curling pond? Who owns the all-time record for the most career stage wins in the Tour de France? (It’s probably not who you think it is.)

All and more is here. From the power of F1 to the finesse of fencing. From the statistics of baseball to the brutality of boxing. From the speed of ice hockey to the strategy of football. A special section on the Olympics — Summer and Winter — offering material on every current official Olympic sport (plus a few extras) rounds out the collection just in time for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games.

Let the games begin!