The Big Read

By David Owen

It has been an exciting week. The Candidature files of the three cities vying to host the 2020 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games have landed. This means that, for the first time, it is possible to compare the detail of the three rival projects. If, that is, you are prepared to sift through nine dense, if showy, volumes.

Don't worry: I've done it so you don't have to, and the first thing I would say, if my red-rimmed eyes do not deceive me, is that, though it is a short shortlist, it is a very varied one.

By Philip Barker

The man who changed the face of world sport forever was born 150 years ago on New Year's day.

His name was Pierre de Coubertin  and he was the driving force behind the revival of the Olympic Games. Last summer, London 2012 paid their own tribute by asking his great grand nephew Antoine de Navacelle to carry the Olympic Torch, at the very spot where the 1908 Olympic marathon had finished.

"It is a fantastic opportunity that I have been given to carry the torch on his behalf " said De Navacelle. "London and Paris are very much concerned with the same story because Pierre de Coubertin came to England in his youth."

By Mike Rowbottom

Jessica Ennis, Bradley Wiggins, Alistair Brownlee, Mo Farah. How good would it be for England if all four of those Olympic champions were able to turn up at the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games, now less than 600 days away? (All these competition countdowns...it's getting like Christmas shopping days...)

Answer, of course, very good. And all the signs are that this dream-list could become reality once Scotland welcomes back the version of Games it last hosted in Edinburgh in 1986.

England's experience at the Delhi 2010 Commonwealth Games – despite the dire prognostications about dengue fever and dirty rooms – turned out to be largely positive as they were narrowly beaten by the hosts on the final day to the runners-up spot behind Australia, the perennial – sorry, quadrennial – leaders of the medal table.

By Lauren Mattera

Since former World Taekwondo Federation (WTF) President Kim Un-Young, successfully placed taekwondo as an official sport into the Olympics in 2000, after being a demonstration sport for the 1998 Games in Seoul, the martial art has had its fair share of ups and downs.

A sport criticised for its Korean dominance, shouldering fears over its safety, carrying the opinion that it is a poor spectator sport and the unforgettable controversy surrounding its transparency created during the Beijing Games.

But the re-election of President Chung Won Choue in 2009, along with the growth of worldwide participating athletes, the increase in global WTF Federations, the efforts of the technical committee to introduce the Protector Scoring System (PSS) and an overview of their rules, taekwondo has worked hard at evolving as a fair, exciting and media-friendly sport – deeming it is as one of the most popular sports of this summer's Games.

By Duncan Mackay

Bud Greenspan, who along with Leni Riefenstahl was undoubtedly the filmmaker who has done more than anyone to bring the Olympics to life on celluloid, was an unabashed fan of the 17 days of glory.

"They're two weeks of love," he once told an interviewer. "It's Like Never Never Land. Like Robin Hood shooting his arrow through the other guy's arrow. It's a privilege to be associated with the best in the world. How many times are you with the best in the world in something? They bring things forward that they don't ordinarily do."

For Greenspan, an unforgettable New Yorker who in later years always wore large, dark-framed glasses atop his shaved head because, his partner claimed, it was the only way he could remember where they were, the Olympics was a labour of love from the moment he discovered it when, as a 21-year-old, he delivered news of the 1948 Olympics in London to the folks back home by dialling in long distance to report what he had seen.

By Mike Rowbottom

In the inky blackness of the Krasnaya Polyana mountains at night there is discernibly what looks at first glance like the constellation of the Plough. On second look, it is no such thing – merely a similar pattern of twinkling lights on a dormant crane.

When daybreak arrives, the crane swings back into action as the remorseless business of transforming the landscape into one capable of hosting the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games continues. The organisers are not so much reaching for the stars – although, uniquely, their Torch Relay will reach outer space at one stage in its journey – as constructing them – setting about the task of building a Games, and in effect a small city, from scratch.

The scale of the ambition is awesome, almost brutal. And in addressing the World Press Briefing for the Olympics and Paralympics this week – an event held deep within that mountain range wherein the Alpine events will take place in just over a year's time – it has been articulated both by the Mayor of Sochi, Anatoly Pakhomov, and the President of Sochi 2014, Dmitry Chernyshenko.

By Mike Rowbottom

The doors to the biggest exhibition of athletics memorabilia are now open in Barcelona as part of the International Association of Athletics Federation's (IAAF) Centenary celebrations.

Items from 256BC to the present day have been assembled from all around the world for the six-week display in the Museu Olímpic i de l'Esport Juan Antoni Samaranch, next door to the 1992 Olympic stadium on Montjuïc.

All the names you would expect to see are featured. There are medals won by Britain's fabled middle distance trio of Steve Ovett, Seb Coe and Steve Cram. There is a bronze of the Flying Finn, Paavo Nurmi. There are spikes worn by Alberto Juantorena, and by Don Quarrie. There is a programme from the match that produced the Four Minute Mile at Iffley Road, Oxford, signed by Chris Brasher, Chris Chataway and Roger Bannister. There are shoes worn by Yelena Isinbayeva.

By Mike Rowbottom

My friend Russell was one of the 70,000 whose efforts as Games Makers helped the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics run as smoothly as in a happy dream. His task was to oversee a part of the cycling course for the road racing and time trial events, which meant that, as a long-time cycling enthusiast, he had the opportunity to watch some of his heroes and heroines whizzing past while, of course, making 100 per cent sure that all was in order roadside.

Russell's Olympic journey was probably typical of that made by many of his fellow volunteers, and what follows here is a three-part log of that journey – before, during and after.

That journey began with a sense of commitment and a wish to be involved in something glimmering tantalisingly on the horizon. But in Russell's case – and no doubt in the case of many other Games Makers – there was a measure of amused scepticism at the process of "orientation".