The Complete Book of the Olympics is just that - the pre-eminent point of reference for sports enthusiasts and journalists alike, and the essential guide to the London games. At 1300 large-format, closely typeset pages, the tome is a prodigious and compendious work of reference. But it is also an amazingly readable book, for in the course of recording every single modern Olympic final at every single Games, it reveals the strange, the memorable, and the frankly unbelievable. Who knew that croquet or tug of war were once Olympic sports, or that a 72-year-old once won a silver medal for target shooting? This new edition is updated to include every final's result (to the first eight places) for every event at the Beijing 2008 Olympics, as well as a comprehensive preview of the London 2012 games.