After the Salt Lake City Olympics I thought I had heard all I wanted to hear about the Pairs Competition. When I heard a new book about the SLC scandal was coming out I thought who cares what more can be said about that. But to my surprise The Second Mark turned out to be engrossing, a true couldnt put it down book.The book is fascinating, not for rehashing the much hashed story about the FrancoRusso conspiracy that fixed the 2002 Olympic Pairs competition, but for the mesmerizing story of how the teams made it to the Olympics in the first place. The book focuses on all three teams that won medals in Salt Lake City; Russians Yelena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze, Canadians Jamie Sale and David Pelletier and Chinese Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo. The book tells the story of how each team first entered skating, became pairs skaters and made their way up the torturous ladder to the Olympic games.

Website: http://www.unseenskaters.com/biography/lindmatt.html