Coming up Friday: Olympic history, all 1200 pages worth
David Wallechinsky has done it again -- an epic volume of Summer Olympic history with his latest updated anthonlogy that weighs more than three pounds (and it's softbound) and is about two inches thick.
"The Complete Book of the Olympics" doesn't even include the Winter Games -- that's a separate volume.
We talked to David about some of the ideas he has for improving the Games -- most notably, adding a week to them, if he could only convince NBC to do it -- and the process he goes about to produce such a book every four years.
You will also pick up, whether you like it or not, more Olympic history for your memory bank. After a more careful read, we were amazed (not in a Hewell Howser kind of way) to find out things like:
==In the women's 100 meter backstroke at the 1932 L.A. Games, Holland's Zus Braun, the defending champion, qualifed for the final with a Olympic record 1:18.3, but she had to withdraw. She said she had an insect bite that developed into blood poisioning. That was the official story.
She later admitted that while standing on her seat to watch Buster Crabbe win the 400 meter freestle, she was stabbed in the left leg. The next day she had a high fever and couldn't compete. She speculated she was attacked by gamblers who bet against her. Who could they have wanted to win?
urned out, an American, Eleanor Holm, the daughter of a Brooklyn fire captain, won. (She's pictured here).
And her story hardly ended there. The Madonna of her day, she continued the '36 Games, where the IOC expelled her for her drunken behavior and shooting craps on the ship taking the U.S. team to Berlin. Holm became a socialtal misfit, marrying and divorcing, starting as Jane in the "Tarzan's Revenge" movie in 1938, a divorce to Billy Rose became "The War of the Roses."
==Also at those L.A. Games: Bertil Sandstrom of Sweden went from second place (and a silver medal) to last in the equestrian dressage because he was accused of encouraging his horse by making clicking noises. He claimed the noises were a creaking saddle. The Jury of Appeal said no.
==One more from those L.A. Games: The U.S. government suspended its prohibition to allow visiting athletes from France, Italy, etc., to bring their own drink.
==At the 1912 Games in Stockholm, where Jim Thorpe made his name, Otto Herschmann, president of the Austrian Olympic Committee, was second in the team sabre fencing event. He's the only sitting national Olympic committee president to win an Olympic medal. He later died in a Nazi concentration camp in 1942.
==Wallechinsky lists every athlete who was kicked out -- man, woman and horse -- because of illegal or banned substance. Do you know who was the first of the 68? At the 1968 Games in Mexico, modern pentathlete Hans-Gunnar Liljenwall of Sweden was kicked out for excessive alcohol.
==And in the list of those who competed for the U.S. baseball team in the '92 Games: There is one Anthony Garciaparra. That's Normar. Anthony is his real first name.
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