Gold Medal for Weird

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Overview

The world's greatest sporting events, chock-full of guts, glory and going for gold. If you want to read about that, you'd better look elsewhere. The gold medals handed out in this book are for inept athletes, shameful scandals, freakish weather, cheaters, chokers and much worse. But it's not all bad. You'll also read about athletes who went from chump to champ and warm your heart to stories of high-stakes heroism and fair play. There may still be hope for humans — and sports ...

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More About This Book

Overview

The world's greatest sporting events, chock-full of guts, glory and going for gold. If you want to read about that, you'd better look elsewhere. The gold medals handed out in this book are for inept athletes, shameful scandals, freakish weather, cheaters, chokers and much worse. But it's not all bad. You'll also read about athletes who went from chump to champ and warm your heart to stories of high-stakes heroism and fair play. There may still be hope for humans — and sports competitions! Read about
• unbeatable runners who tested positive for turtle's blood and caterpillar fungus
• the snowboarder whose hot-dog move cost her a gold medal
• live animal hunting, dueling with pistols and other events now (thankfully) discontinued
• a medal-winning gymnast with a wooden leg
• the sailor who gave up a chance at the gold medal to save a drowning competitor

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Editorial Reviews

Children's Literature - Marilyn Courtot
With the Olympics coming up, there is probably more interest than usual in the ancient games and some of the other medal winners in sports. Sylvester has compiled lots of weird and amusing facts which will be great fun for kids and some teachers/parents may be able to use the book with an interesting antidote each week until the games start. In his opening readers are told that if they want information about the big summer and winter Olympics then they will have to go to other books; this book is mainly for laughs. Like John Pius Boland who was visiting a friend in Greece in 1896 where the games were taking place. He decided to compete as a tennis player and won both singles and doubles and then went back home to Ireland for a successful career in politics. Did you know that ads during the opening ceremonies of the Olympics bring in as much as thirty million dollars, and that Montreal lost more than a billion dollars on the games and it took thirty years to pay off the debt? (The Australians also incurred some debt building the opera house in Sydney but ran a lottery and paid it all off in a year). All the sports-related factoids are accompanied by amusing black-and-white sketches. For just plain fun and lots of sports related trivia, pick up this compact book. Reviewer: Marilyn Courtot
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781554530212
  • Publisher: Kids Can Press, Limited
  • Publication date: 8/28/2007
  • Pages: 112
  • Age range: 7 - 12 Years
  • Product dimensions: 7.00 (w) x 7.00 (h) x 0.90 (d)

Meet the Author

Kevin Sylvester is a journalist who happened to fall into sports rather than a 'sports guy.' He's also a documentary-maker, writer, producer, and sketch artist. Kevin is well known as the host of CBC National Radio Morning Sports. His first book was Sports Hall of Weird (2005).

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Customer Reviews

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