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| Torchbearer-Patricia Moreno | Earl Fowler
Movie Entertainment
February 2010
The two prevailing myths about this month’s Vancouver Games played themselves out near my house on the first day of the four-month Olympic torch relay across Canada.
Excited relatives of the first of 12,000 torchbearers staked their claims to little patches of sidewalk, where they cheered as their loved ones passed by hoisting a sacred flame to signify decency, fair play and the world’s greatest festival of sport.
The scores of protesters who blocked the route a few blocks up denounced the Games as a predatory money grab by the International Olympic Committee.
To them, the IOC is a corrupt,self-perpetuating oligarchy steeped in a tradition of bribery and influence peddling, whose allegiance is not to sport but to multinational sponsors.
The truth, as usual, lies somewhere in between, but books about the Games tend to lean heavily in one direction or the other.
In the Olympic splendour camp, there are three standouts:
Canada’s Olympic Hockey History, 1920-2010, by Andrew Podnieks, Fenn, 256 pages, $40:
A coffee-table hardcover about every men’s and women’s Olympic team Canada has produced.
Home Ice: Canada’s 2010 Men’s Olympic Hockey Team Guide, by Lorna Schultz Nicholson, Fenn, 196 pages, $25
A paperback aimed at fans with an age 9-to-12 reading level.
The Complete Book of the Winter Olympics: Vancouver 2010 Edition, by David Wallechinsky and Jaime Loucky, Arum Press, 352 pages, $29
Along with an encyclopedic tally of medals, distances, rules and scoring systems, this paperback is bursting with lore and anecdotes dating back to 1908.
On the exposé side of the ledger, check out Dishonoured Games: Corruption, Money, and Greed at the Olympics (Vyv Simson and Andrew Jennings), Inside the Olympic Industry: Power, Politics and Activism (Helen Jefferson Lenskyj); and Selling the Five Rings: The IOC and the Rise of Olympic Commercialism (Robert Barney, Stephen Wenn, Scott Martyn).
The one we’ll recommend here, though, is the more balanced account by Montreal lawyer Dick Pound, the former IOC vice-president and ex-head of the World Anti-Doping Agency who wrote Inside the Olympics: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Politics, the Scandals and the Glory of the Games, Wiley, 304 pages, $23. Pound doesn’t shrink in his 2004 bombshell from documenting drug fiascos and political wrangling, but the 1960 Olympic swimmer – who went on to negotiate TV and sponsorship deals that transformed the IOC into a multibillion- dollar enterprise – clearly still carries a torch for idealism.
If you do too, hang on to $30 for a purchase after the flame has been doused. John Wiley & Sons is planning a March 29 release of A Path of Northern Lights, Complete Edition: The Vancouver 2010 Olympic Torch Relay.
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