The Big Read

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.

By Cathy Wood

Spend any time around Sarah Winckless at Eton Dorney Lake - the venue for the rowing events at London 2012 - and rowers gravitate towards her.

Old and young, international and recreational, short and tall they want to say hello and share their experience of rowing on the river that had such significance during Winckless's racing career.

It's not just her stature - 6 foot 3 inches - or sheer physical presence, it's her pleasant, put-you-at-your-ease, I-know-what-it's-like attitude that draws them in.

By Mike Rowbottom

One of the reasons Tim Brabants, Britain’s kayaking gold medallist at the Beijing Games, decided to remove himself for a third time from his medical career to have one more bash at the Olympics in London was a conversation he had with some Australian fellow competitors.

They told him that taking part in a home Games, as they did in Sydney ten years ago, multiplied the Olympic experience "by tenfold".

By the same token, however, the pressure of expectation on home performers also rises exponentially.

By David Owen

It was on a sultry Moscow Monday nearly nine years ago, in the pistachio and white splendour of the Hall of Columns on the fringes of the Kremlin, that the Samaranch era appeared to draw to a close.

That was where the election of Jacques Rogge, the then 80-year-old Juan Antonio Samaranch’s successor as International Olympic Committee President, was announced with all the solemnity of a state investiture.

That event constituted my baptism into the mysterious ways of the Olympic Movement.

By Mike Rowbottom

The volcanic cloud bedevilling European airspace is threatening to prevent Oliver Townend fulfilling an ambition this week that has only been achieved by one other three-day event rider.

Having established himself at the top of his profession at the age of 26 by winning at Badminton and Burghley last year, Townend is geeing himself up to complete the Rolex Grand Slam by winning in Lexington, Kentucky this week, which would earn him a £233,000 ($358,000) jackpot and match the performance of his compatriot Pippa Funnell in 2003.

Townend’s two horses for this event - Ashdale Cruise Master and ODT Master Rose - await him in the United States. As does the chance of a lifetime. If air traffic continues to be halted in Britain, he plans to cross over to Ireland and fly from there.

By Duncan Mackay

Prince Feisal Al Hussein of Jordan, the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) newest member, is a passionate believer in sport’s power to change the world however deep the grudges run.

Bordered by Syria to the north, Iraq to the northeast, Saudi Arabia to the east and south and Israel to the west, the Prince probably knows more than most about how conflict can rip the heart out of a region.

But Prince Feisal, the younger brother of Jordanian King Abdulla II and among the new intake of IOC members during the Vancouver Olympics, has been practicing what he preaches through his fledgling Generations for Peace project, which has already brought together thousands of children from 31 conflict-prone countries.

By Mike Rowbottom

There is just a little suggestion of poacher-turned-gamekeeper about the overall team coach/manager for the Australian team at this weekend’s IAAF World Cross Country Championships in Bydgoszcz.

Twelve years ago, this team manager went directly against team orders in going for the double at the World Cross Country Championships in Marrakesh - and won both her events.