IT IS a measure of the esteem in which selected writers of reference works are held that their volumes are known by the author's name, rather than the title. So it is with the Complete Book of the Olympics, referred to in press boxes around the world with the words: "Hey, pass the Wallechinsky." And we do pass the Wallechinsky. We pass it off as our own research. And of course it is, just as it was with David Wallechinsky. But whereas we put in minutes retrieving the nugget, he has dedicated years to a scholarly pursuit of the anecdotes behind the pursuit of Olympic gold.

And what a feast it is. Those of us following the vaudeville double act which was Michael Johnson and Maurice Greene attempting to secure Olympic 200m selection will have been told innumerable times that there is a time-honoured, first-three-past-the-post policy in the US Olympic trials. And so there is, most of the time. But turn to page 19 of your Wallechinsky and you will find that the 1964 Olympic 200m winner, world record-holder Henry Carr, only finished fourth in his trial "but was given the nod by US coaches over the third-place finisher, Bob Hayes". Just as well Hayes won the 100m in Tokyo.

Wallechinsky was introduced to the Olympics at Rome in 1960 by his father, the novelist Irving Wallace. So started the affair whose trials and tribulations are lovingly recorded in this fascinating anthology. For it is not simply an escape hatch for the tired hack, it is an invaluable source of anecdote and information for anybody following an Olympic Games. Before any final, treat yourself to the history of the event, the personalities, their triumphs and tragedies.

It's almost impossible to open the book at random and not find something interesting. My attempt came up with Valentina Yegorova, the Russian winner of the 1992 marathon gold, of whom it says: "When Yegorova qualified for the Olympics, all her neighbours in the small farming village of Iziderkino couldn't wait to watch her on television. There was just one problem - nobody in the village owned a television set. So all 1,500 villagers chipped in and bought a single, black and white set that was placed at the entrance of the home of Yegorova's parents . . . they stayed up past midnight to watch Yegorova receive her gold medal."

Wallechinsky deserves all the gold he gets from this book.