The Big Read

By Tom Degun in Singapore

Haiti's footballers, who travelled here to the inaugural Summer Youth Olympics cloaked in tragedy and sadness, are riding a massive wave of sympathy to stand on the brink of winning the most unlikeliest gold medal of these Games.

The country's boy’s footballers brought some much needed joy to their earthquake-stricken nation as they remarkably defied the odds to book their spot in the boy’s final with a 2-0 win over Singapore at the Jalan Besar Stadium last night.

The Caribbean country made global headlines at the start of the year after a devastating earthquake ripped it apart and left their sports system, along with everything else, in tatters.

By Tom Degun in Singapore

So it has begun.

The inaugural Youth Olympics in Singapore was officially declared open President S.R. Nathan last night (August 14) and then with a flick of his wrist, the nation’s young hero Darren Choy, the 16-year-old two-time junior sailing world champion charged with leading the home medal charge at the Games, lit the spiralling Youth Olympic flame high into the night sky.

The event’s preceding Choy’s lighting of the flame were no doubt spectacular and on the stunning setting of the Marina Bay, the world’s largest floating stage, an extravagant firework display, thunderous drumming, a legion of young dancers of all ages and fire breathing dragons - which were admittedly metallic - marked a new chapter in the history of the Olympic Movement.

By Cathy Wood

Ask anyone lucky enough to have been at the men’s Olympic triathlon at Vouliagmeni in Athens in
2004 to recall their lasting memory of that day and you’ll probably be surprised by the result.

Chances are they won’t remember it was a New Zealand one-two across the finish line or that the five-lap cycling circuit included a hill with an 18 per cent grade in parts.

What stayed with many long after the event had ended was the heart-warming moment a British athlete ran in his bicycle shoes more than a mile uphill, in the searing August heat, to find a replacement back wheel after another competitor had crashed into, and crushed, his.

The triathlete in question was Marc Jenkins.

By Cathy Wood

Spend any time at the home of the London Organising Committee and you quickly learn this is a world governed by acronyms.

So there's LOCOG (the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games) and OCOGs (Organising Committees of the Olympic Games), the IOC (International Olympic Committee) and  IPC (International Paralympic Committee), IBC (International Broadcast Centre),MPC (Main Press Centre) and ABC.  Well maybe not ABC, an American broadcasting company, but you get my point.

So it comes as something of a relief to discover Chris Holmes, Director of Paralympic Integration, has a title not easily shortened (then again DOPI could catch on) and a remit that's pretty easy to understand.

By Mike Rowbottom

As Britain’s leading athletes set about gaining their places for the European Championships at the Aviva European trials and UK Championships in Birmingham, here’s the question: Who’s it going to be?

Because every year someone, in some event, pops up with something gloriously unexpected. And that uncertainty adds immeasurably to the anticipation of this annual examination of athletics credentials.

By Mike Rowbottom

Graham Taylor didn’t get where he is today - UK Sport’s recently appointed Head of Coaching - by being imprecise.

Before being annexed by the man to whom he will be reporting, UK Sport’s director of Performance, Peter Keen, Taylor had more than 20 years of experience in top class motor sport, much of it as a race engineer in Formula One and World Touring Cars.