Beginning Friday, July 27, the eyes of the world will be focused on London for the 2012 Summer Olympics.  For two weeks every four years, Americans will actually care about track and field, gymnastics and swimming. We’ll also debate whether the latest incarnation of the Dream Team could beat the legendary 1992 squad. And of course, we’ll enjoy some of the more obscure events such as trampoline, archery, badminton and poodle clipping… Poodle clipping?

If you believed everything you read on the internet, you might conclude that poodle clipping was an Olympic event contested in the 1900 Paris games. After further research, I have determined there was no poodle clipping event, but it is an excellent demonstration of how urban myths proliferate on the internet and it also shows the power of one of our favorite internet apps at Danburg, Google Alerts

Let’s start with Google Alerts. This is a great service from Google that sends me a daily email whenever one of my key phrases turns up on the internet. I’ve set up an alert for “Danburg”, one for “Boca Raton”, one for my own name and one for “London Poodle.” “London” is the name of a standard poodle owned by our own Jamie Danburg. “London” is the reigning AKC Eukanuba National Champion with over 70 best in shows. As you may know, we use London in our marketing and I set up the alert to make sure we don’t miss any of his victories.

But “London Poodle” also produces some strange results.  Back on April 17, my alert provided a link to the London Evening Standard’s article “100 Things You Need to Know About the 2012 Olympics.” The article was written to highlight that the Olympics would be starting in 100 days. Number 99 stated that poodle clipping was an event in the 1900 Olympics. My Google Alert did it’s job – it certainly was an article containing the terms “London” and “Poodle”.  But was it true?

Our Champion “London” the Standard Poodle

After further review, it turns out that the poodle clipping story was the work of The London Telegraph’s Chris Lyles. Lyles wrote on April 1, 2008 128 days before the Beijing Olympics

“128: The number of competitors who participated in the poodle-clipping event at the 1900 Olympics in Paris. The gold medal was won by Avril Lafoule, a 37-year-old farmer’s wife from the Auvergne region of France, who successfully clipped 17 poodles in the allotted two-hour time frame.”

OK, we all know you can’t believe everything you read on the internet, but it should be abundantly clear that you can’t believe anything you read on the internet on April 1. But people did believe him, as evidenced by the 20,400 results I got  when searching “Olympic Poodle Clipping” on Google. As it turns out, Chris Lyles pulled off one of the all-time great Olympic-sized April fools jokes.

Please check out our blog for more information on how to use Google Alerts, be careful about what you read on the internet and enjoy the Olympics – go U.S.A. !

And you can always trust danburg.com for great information on office and warehouse space in Boca Raton.