"God answers my prayers everywhere except on the golf-course."
The Official Commemorative Book (London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games)
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Tom Knight and Sybil Ruscoe, Chicester, Wiley, 2012. ISBN 978-1-119-97314-0
This book is quite simply the perfect souvenir of the 2012 Olympics for those of us who were involved in the games in any way or who wish we had been.The book captures the drama and passion of London 2012. It includes statistics and records plus inspiring quotations from victorious British olympians and evocative colour photographs. It goes behind the scenes to give insights into the years of preparation and delivery as seen by architects and builders, volunteers and organisers. The Cultural Olympiad, torch relay, iconic venues and the legacy are not neglected.
Of course, the book focuses on the Olympics as a great sporting spectacular. 140 of the book’s 312 pages cover the Olympics, sport by sport and almost event by event with reports, pictures and quotes. There are nineteen pages on athletics. As one example, the account of the women’s 400 metres not only tells the story from the perspective of and with quotes from both the winner, Sanya Richards-Ross and the silver medallist, Christine Ohuruogu – but even finds time to tell us that the bronze medallist, Deedee Trotter took 25 minutes to do her eye make-up on the day of the final.
Some Olympic books include a patronising page on the Paralympics. Not this one. The Paralympics are reported in the same fashion as the Olympics with 77 pages being devoted to them. Ellie, David, Oscar, Jonnie, Hannah. Alessandro, Lee and the Storeys are all there!
All the photos are excellent, often spectacular but with the book’s large format, the double spreads leap out of the book.
Finally like any good sports book there are pages (16 in this case) of records and statistics – all the medal winners included.
It is a book to read from cover to cover or a book to dip into to recall and refresh memories or to inform yourself for the first time about the greatest show on earth.