"Entering Berlin’s Olympic Stadium was like passing through Gatwick to fly here. Passport, bag x-ray, body scan, pat down. The new normal."

The reason it struck a chord is because of the question I had been pondering at the end of another bleak week for Europe: what does the lengthening shadow of terrorism mean for top-level sport?

Actually, the conclusion I had started to form was that, even though a football match had been among the apparent targets of the callous Paris attacks last November, the seemingly escalating terrorist threat had so far had remarkably little impact.

The Tweet confirmed me in this opinion.

Yes, the "new normal" might involve having to queue for body scans to get into a football international.

But as the journalist, the Daily Telegraph’s much-respected Paul Hayward, underlined in the same breath, we already do this in airports.

Otherwise, last week saw the scheduled March 29 match between Belgium and Portugal moved from Brussels, where vicious attacks last Tuesday (March 22) killed more than 30 people and shut down the airport, to Leiria.

Terrorism was also blamed for the switch of a European table tennis competition from Istanbul to Halmstad.

If that is the extent of the disruption, then big sport will have escaped lightly.

But will it be?

After all, a different type of warfare decimated the elite sports programme for years on end twice in the last century.

Away from the bright lights, meanwhile, a suicide bomber caused carnage last week at a local football tournament south of Baghdad.

An interesting contrast with the first half of the 20th century is how today’s western politicians preach the continuation of sport as a show of defiance, a demonstration that we remain uncowed.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls exemplified this recently when he insisted that this summer’s Euro 2016 football tournament - in France - would and should go ahead, saying: "The terrorists wanted to suppress life…The strongest answer to terrorists, in addition to the deployment of all intelligence and security measures, is life."

One positive thought is that high-profile championships such as Euro 2016 ought logically to be easier to protect than an ordinary weekend’s sports programme, which might see a whole string of major cities in dozens of countries playing host to biggish soccer matches and other occasions.

By comparison, Euro 2016 will feature one, two, three or occasionally four matches per day, played under a basic schedule known well in advance, affording plenty of time to prepare a defence plan and think through what the likeliest targets might be.

Even an Olympic Games, which we also have to look forward to this summer, requires the defence primarily of one city, and one city only, for a period short enough to enable a truly extraordinary level of resources to be deployed there, if deemed necessary.

One ingredient that you would think vulnerable as rituals of security are stepped up and we become inured, for example, to seeing military uniforms and guns on our way to events is any sort of party atmosphere.

So far as I can judge, though, the exuberant mood we associate with a good sports crowd is proving reassuringly resilient.

I doubt the procedures associated with "the new normal" did anything to dampen the exhilaration of England fans in Berlin at the spectacle of their team’s come-from-behind 3-2 victory.

Many people, meanwhile, commented on the extraordinary effect of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games on the prevailing atmosphere in staid, buttoned-up old London.

And London 2012 had been living in the shadow of terrorism since the day after the city won the bid in July 2005, a day which brought the so-called 7/7 bombings that left more than 50 people dead.

A bigger potential danger than any loss of atmosphere as far as sport’s business model is concerned is clearly if the climate of terror becomes so pervasive that significant numbers decide to steer clear of large-scale events.

Particularly if you have kids, people might reason, why take the risk? Television coverage is improving technically all the time, with digital technology bringing innovations such as an ability to select your vantage-point and to watch precisely the action you want to at multi-sports events.

You might even include terrorism among a list of factors - including high ticket prices and bizarre start-times spawned by a desire to maximise TV revenues - that have begun to militate against live spectating.

I was interested to read recent comments attributed to UEFA vice-president Giancarlo Abete where he appeared to envisage circumstances in which Euro 2016 matches might be played behind closed doors.

"Euro 2016 is the kind of event that we can’t delay or postpone," he is said to have told Italian broadcaster Radio24.

"If we talked about potentially cancellable games, such as a friendly or a competitive match, they could be moved to another date.

"We can’t exclude the possibility of playing behind closed doors, as we cannot exclude terrorism."

While local citizens will no doubt be determined to make the most of South America’s first Olympic and Paralympic Games, I would not be at all surprised if concerns over the Zika virus and terrorism deterred a certain number of overseas sports fans from attending Rio 2016 this summer - even if, logically, threat levels are low.

I would not be at all surprised, but I would think it a terrible pity.

As those lucky enough to have first-hand experience of top mega-events know, a big part of the magic resides in being absorbed for a short period into a truly multicultural, heterodox melange.

Watch the Olympic Games on television from your own country, by contrast, and, for all the technical wizardry, your focus tends naturally enough to be much more nationalistic.

In the modern world, the Olympic Games in particular would actually be a far more manageable proposition logistically as a TV-only event, with a minimum of live spectators.

They would be easier to keep safe, easier to schedule and there would be less risk of white elephants.

But I hope it never comes to that.

I do wonder if the threat from terrorism has now reached the point where it is likely to be a more significant consideration in where we decide to stage major events like the Olympic Games.

I am not sure this would be entirely rational: the Games are an obvious potential target whoever stages them; gauging comparative levels of threat seven years ahead of time, which is when the hosting decision is taken by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), strikes me as at best an approximate science.

Terrorism is, nonetheless, a topic that was included in the stage one candidature files of the current 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games bidding process, involving Budapest, Los Angeles, Paris and Rome.

Not surprisingly, given the events of last November, and prior to that the Charlie Hebdo shootings, Paris is judged a high risk for terrorism.

"The risk is assessed as high," the bid book says.

An asterisk then directs the reader to another sentence, in very small print: "The risk is currently assessed as high but the French authorities are committed to ensure this risk is reduced to medium by 2024."

If, come the IOC Session in September 2017, Europe still feels as besieged by terror as it does now in the immediate aftermath of the Brussels attack, this may prove a worrisome negative for the French bid - the type of negative that can be particularly frustrating for bid teams, as it is largely beyond their powers to counter.

It is fortunate for Paris 2024 in these circumstances that an event as big and high-profile as Euro 2016 should be coming to France between now and then.

Stage that tournament securely and successfully, and bid leaders ought credibly to be able to argue that they would do likewise if awarded the Olympic and Paralympic Games.