Every city has a stadium and every stadium has a story. Inside a stadium, be it a cathedral of sport or a collection of sheds, one can feel the mood of a nation or a community. Starting out at Olympia, where it all began, and ending up in Sydney, site of the 2000 Games, the author, a self-confessed stadium addict, encounters anarchic bacchanalia in Pamplona's bull-ring, meets priests at a Gaelic Football final in Dublin and gets to lie prostrate on the hallowed turf of Lord's Cricket Ground.