How Did a Dead Horse Win the Derby?
How Did a Dead Horse Win the Derby? will be packed full of fascinating stories from a broad range of sports; from the most popular, such as football, rugby, and cricket; to the more arcane, including lacrosse, hot air ballooning, and cheerleading; to the downright obscure – forgotten sports such as speedball, gossima, tejo, pedestrianism, Aztec lacrosse, and catball.
Each of the questions in this book will not only be amusing and attention-grabbing in their own right, but will also suggest answers which illuminate some interesting facet of sporting history. The question ‘How did a dead horse win the Derby?’, for example, is hopefully not only intriguing, but also serves to set up a fascinating story which reveals something of the history of turf racing, the Jockey Club, and the Derby, as well as providing an opportunity to present some of the many ingenious betting scams which have been attempted down the years.
Therefore, this book will aim to avoid the kind of mundane sporting trivia which clogs up the aisles of bookshops every Christmas. Anyone wanting to know Bradman’s batting average, or how William Webb Ellis did (or, in fact, didn’t) invent rugby, or which football club’s name can’t be coloured in, will not find the answers here.
Instead, this book will strive for the bizarre, obscure, and little-known. Have you ever wondered why a bullfighter’s cape is red (it’s not the reason most people think)? Or whether a jockey has to be alive to win a race? Did you know that the first versions of water polo were actually played on horses? Or why the numbers on a dartboard are in that particular order? And, given this order, where should an average darts player aim? Have you heard about the runner who managed to set a world record, despite colliding with a sheep mid-race? And is there really a cursed toad buried under the pitch of Brazilian football club Vasco da Gama?
Book Author
David Haviland is a writer, editor, and ghostwriter, with a number of bestselling books to his name, which have been sold to publishers all over the world, and widely serialised.
David has collaborated with Francesca Gould on a number of amusing trivia books, including Why Is Yawning Contagious? (Piatus, 2007), Horny Lizards and Headless Chickens (Piatkus, 2009), and Self-Harming Parrots and Exploding Toads (Little, Brown, 2010). David’s next book is a collection of medical trivia, called Why You Should Store Your Farts in a Jar…, which will be published by Penguin in December...
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