Did you know...? If the subject of a question that begins like this is the Olympic Games, it's unlikely that any fan, even the most fanatical, will get it right. After a long journey through the history of the greatest sporting event, journalists Armando Freitas and Marcelo Barreto wrote the "Sportv Olympic Almanac" - which will be launched today at 19 pm at the Saraiva Bookstore at Ibmec (Av. Presidente Wilson 118, in downtown Rio). You probably knew, for example, that Adhemar Ferreira da Silva was the first Brazilian two-time Olympic champion. But did you know that he arrived in Helsinki to participate in the Games for the first time, greeting customs officials in Finnish because he had taken language lessons with an immigrant couple in São Paulo? They didn't know either and were delighted to discover this and other Olympic stories. Below is a list of some curiosities you will find in the "Sportv Olympic Almanac". In Athens in 1896, Irishman John Boland, a student of Greek mythology at Oxford, upon learning of the first edition of the Modern Olympic Games, decided to travel to Athens. Upon arriving, he received an invitation to participate in the tennis tournament. He ended up winning in both singles and doubles. The detail is that Boland competed wearing leather shoes with heels. In Los Angeles in 1932, at the end of a long and turbulent journey – on the Itaquecê, a ship ceded to the CBD (Brazilian Sports Confederation) by the National Coastal Navigation Company, on the condition that only those who sold 671 sacks of coffee transported in the holds could disembark – the largest delegation Brazil had ever assembled discovered that local legislation charged one dollar per passenger at the port of San Pedro. Since there were only 32 dollars and 82 athletes, the decision was to allow only those with a chance of winning a medal to board. But the others found a way around it, and 60 participated. In Munich-1972, during the marathon, a fake athlete – wearing a German uniform – was the first to enter the stadium. The crowd, unaware that the man was just a student, cheered him on relentlessly. The confusion also provoked booing from the public towards the winner of the race, the American Frank Shorter. Regarding sports, the curiosities are also numerous. For example, what is it that has two teams, a rope, looks like child's play, but has already awarded medals in five editions of the Games? A point for those who guessed tug-of-war, whose competitions in 1900 and 1920 yielded some fascinating stories. But the Olympic spirit can be summarized in the phrase of swimmer Eric Moussambani, from Equatorial Guinea, who recorded the worst time in a 100m freestyle heat at Sydney-2000: "I learned to swim only six months ago and had never been in such a large pool, since in my country there are only 20-meter pools." Minutes earlier, he had completed the race with great effort, to the applause of a packed stadium.