How to Watch the Olympics: Scores and laws, heroes and zeroes: an instant initiation into every sport - Softcover

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)

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.