For those of you who know me, you realize I’ve been obsessed by the Olympics and Olympic Stats for almost 50 years now. For those who don’t, you’ll soon find out.

I’ve been able to write almost 25 books on the Olympics Games – you can find many of them on Amazon, mostly dealing with the history of the Olympics, books such as Historical Dictionary of the Olympic Movement (with Ian Buchanan and later with Jeroen Heijmans), The Golden Book of the Olympic Games (with Erich Kamper), a series of books on the early Olympic Games, from 1896-1920, and my first book, also done with Ian Buchanan, with Quest for Gold: The Encyclopedia of American Olympians.

In 1991, along with Buchanan, Kamper, Ture Widlund, David Wallechinsky, Stan Greenberg, Ove Karlsson, and others, we formed the International Society of Olympic Historians (ISOH) – you can check us out here – http://www.isoh.org/. We met at a pub in the Knightsbridge section of London, the Duke of Clarence, although the pub no longer exists, and formed the society on a cold, rainy London December day. ISOH has since grown to almost 500 members world-wide, with a very nice journal, the Journal of Olympic History, for which I was the first editor, from 1991-96 – now edited by Volker Kluge, pre-eminent German Olympic historian. I also had the privilege of serving as the second President of ISOH, from 2000-2004, following Ian Buchanan. The current President is David Wallechinsky, author of the great book, The Complete Book of the Olympics, which has had a new edition after Olympic Games since 1984.

So come along for the ride – I’ll be posting lots of Olympic information in the run-up to Sochi 2014. If you want to follow me on Twitter, its @bambam1729, and on my tweets, I’ll keep everyone informed when I’ve put new material here on OlympStats. During Sochi, I’ll be posting new historical and statistical data several times a day, always updating via Twitter. Welcome aboard.

Bill Mallon MD