It's a fate that could befall almost any journalist. You get the dream job - yes, the Beijing Olympics! - and you head out determined to make your mark.
By Andy Hooper

You'll barely stop for breath as you dash from Bird's Nest to Water Cube, via velodrome, filing thousands upon thousands of words to delight readers with your insight and razor-sharp wit. 

Or you get the archery. Not a bad gig, by any means, but perhaps not as sexy as, say, the marathon.

So how do you spice up those little snippets the subs can afford you? By picking up the China Daily and faithfully reproducing its 'Did You Know?' fact of the day, that's how!

But was Eddie Butler, former captain of the Wales rugby union team, turned journalist and commentator, wearing his thinking cap when he wrote following in his Friday piece?

"Having watched just about every one of the 29,500 arrows shot in seven days of archery competition, may I share with you something that has no point. At the Paris Olympics of 1900, there was a poodle-clipping competition. Seriously. A French farmer's wife won gold."

Read the rest here, but what Eddie hadn't checked for was the source of this gem.

A few months ago the Telegraph's Olympic countdown, faithfully compiled by our man (and pal of Eddie) Chris Lyles, unleashed the 1900 Olympic poodle-clipping event on an unsuspecting public. 

There were 128 days left before the Games. Yep, you're right - it was April 1.

Here's the April Fool in full:

128 days to go . . .

128: The number of competitors who participated in the poodle-clipping event at the 1900 Olympics in Paris. The event was held in the leafy environs of the Bois de Boulogne and it was the only occasion that it featured as an Olympic discipline.

This, no doubt, came as a relief to Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the French founding father of the modern Olympic movement, who had opposed its inclusion, but was outvoted by his International Olympic Committee colleagues.

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.

The poodle-clipping competition, held on April 1, was watched by 6,000 spectators, one of the larger audiences at the most chaotic Olympic Games of all.

The curious case of Olympic poodle-clipping is a classic web tale. Cut from the original Telegraph countdown and pasted into the blogosphere, it took on a life of its own, losing all its original context and eventually becoming a "fact" in Beijing.

And in fairness to Eddie, he's not the only one to fall for "Olympic poodle-clipping", which now garners almost 25,000 Google search results.

The BBC's live Beijing blog ran it on Tuesday because the Poodle and Dog Blog had already devoted a lengthy discussion to it. And the day before the Games began, the Mirror's website ran it, too.

Just a few of the many victims of Olympic poodle-clipping.

(There but for the grace of God...)