Top reads: Five books to truly get you in the Olympic spirit

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  Courtesy Simon & Schuster​

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  Courtesy Simon & Schuster​

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  Courtesy Picador

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  Courtesy Atlantic Books

Five books to truly get you in the Olympic spirit

Today We Die A Little: The Rise and Fall of Emil Zátopek, Olympic Legend

by Richard Askwith

Of all the new non-fiction books with Olympic connections, this is the finest and most inspiring. Askwith thinks Zatopek should be one of the most beloved Olympians of all time – his treble of 5,000m, 10,000m and marathon golds at the Helsinki Olympics in 1952 will surely never be repeated — and yet his story has rarely been told. Amazingly, the Olympic marathon was the soldier’s first attempt at the distance, and his crowning glory was all achieved with wonderful generosity of spirit.

The End Of The Perfect 10

by Dvora Meyers

David Goldblatt admits that he loves watching gymnastics once every four years — Simone Biles being his current favourite competitor — so he might not remember that the 10-point scale was abandoned a number of Olympics ago after myriad controversies. That might sound like an odd starting point for a book, but Meyers’s great achievement is to make changing the scoring system a completely intriguing premise for an all-encompassing investigation of the sport.

Dancing With The Devil in The City of God

by Juliana Barbassa

If there’s one book that makes sense of what the Olympics means to Rio – and perhaps, more pertinently, what effect it has already had – it is without doubt Barbassa’s. She documents the city’s battles with poverty and corruption, and how the 2014 Fifa World Cup and this month’s Games gave the iconic Brazilian metropolis a chance to change. Combining personal narrative with history and reportage, Barbassa reveals a city both chaotic and ­seductive.

You Will Know Me

by Megan Abbott

Thrillers about fictional sportspeople are always a tricky sell – particularly when there’s a YA element to proceedings – but Abbott finds a believable storyline in the tale of gymnast Devon Knox, who has dreams of competing in the Olympics. Embroiled in a hit-and-run accident, Knox is a deliciously unknowable enigma – much like the hot-housed teenagers we see in Rio, with their strange fixed grins as they finish their finely-tuned routines.

Barracuda

by Christos Tsiolkas

This is without doubt the best recent novel with the Olympics as a backdrop. Promising swimmer Danny Kelly is fired up not so much by the Sydney Olympics of 2000 as the dream of competing in them. Tsiolkas was brilliant at skewering the successes and failures of middle-class Australian life in bestseller The Slap, and this is a fantastic look at what happens when prodigies don’t actually get to wear a gold medal around their necks and proudly sing the national anthem.