I vividly remember the shout of a university coach during a particularly gruelling, no doubt-hungover, Saturday morning run.

"It's only pain you're feeling, f****** physical pain," he yelled. "That's all you've got to worry about."

Poetic it may not be but there is something peculiarly true to this. Sport has a unique ability to make life seem very simple and to make life, for a short-time only, a battle only to break the barriers of lactic acid.

There is something satisfyingly simple, if horrible, about completing a training run ©Denver Post/Getty Images

Unfortunately, however, this is less the case at a professional level, where physical and mental hurdles are but one part of an altogether greater challenge.

Top-level sport these days is a way of life: a brand, a business, an opportunity to make money, headlines and duly raise the profile of individuals, companies, and whole countries. At major events all too often sporting challenges fade into the background in comparison with wider issues.

Take the two foremost events of 2014 for example. The FIFA World Cup so far has been dogged by issues of faltering construction, disorganisation and popular protest, while the Winter Olympics and Paralympics in Sochi have been clouded by supposed human rights violations, spiralling costs and security concerns.

Scoring goals and reaching the bottom of the course first has been reduced to a mere footnote.

Over the last year, the dual concerns of doping and corruption in sport have reared their ugly heads time and time again. This reached the level where during the Tour de France, vast swathes of the cycling world revelled in the rare instances of failure by Team Sky but, when they did well, refused to praise and made assumptions and accusations of doping.

When sport does boil down to the athletes themselves, difficulties can also exist. England's Ashes debacle has now ended with the expected 5-0 demolition as depression, premature retirement and a remarkable loss of confidence has eroded once formidable cricketing powers. And in football, Arsenal's Theo Walcott was pelted with coins while receiving injury treatment by visiting fans only to be castigated for a harmless, if ill-advised, gesture to remind the Tottenham contingent of the 2-0 score-line.

In an insidethegames blog last month, my colleague Mike Rowbottom wrote beautifully about "getting back to basics" and enjoying "small scale sport" as an alternative to the problems of the professional world. But in a week where my local football team Forest Green Rovers has spent a reported fortune to purchase a player - Lee Hughes - who achieved infamy and three years behind bars for death by dangerous driving, even this is questionable.

The death of an all time football great in the Mozambique born Portuguese star Eusébio yesterday created a parallel between today's sporting world and the more simple, less professional style of the past. 

Eusébio on target against eventual winners England in the semi-final of the 1966 World Cup...he was the tournaments leading goal scorer ©Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Surely one of the greatest ever sportsman to be born in Africa, Eusébio famously applauded Manchester United's Alex Stepney after the goalkeeper made a vital save to bring about Benfica's defeat in the 1968 European Cup final. For Eusébio, sport was about being the best you could be while honouring integrity and fair play, and not worrying about too much else.

We must look at professional sport today to find areas where these values remain.

We in Britain can celebrate the many great successes of the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics, now almost two years ago remarkably, while the last year brought glorious success for tennis player Andy Murray, as well as for two other great African born sportsmen in Chris Froome and Mo Farah.

Even a partisan Englishman must grudgingly accept the way Australia's cricketers have been so conclusively transformed from a bunch of also-rans into a formidably effective unit.

Many factors contributed to all these successes but most important was an unscrupulous attention to detail and sheer hard work. The simple yet formidable challenge of "f****** physical pain".

We must hope that in 2014, the year of sport will be remembered most for events on rather than off the field of play. There are opportunities for new heroes to be born, and for established ones to cement their legend, while the Winter Olympics in particular offers excitement of a different kind to the summer variety.

A brief watch of the women's snowboard cross final at Turin 2006, with the brilliant commentary of the BBC's Ed Leigh, is all that we need to remember this.

"Ohhhh, drama! Jacobellis is down, oh look at her, this... incredible, FRIEDEN! FRIEDEN!"

That is the sort of high that can only be found in sport.

Lindsey Jacobellis crashes out in the thrilling first ever women's snowboard cross Olympic final ©Getty Images

The Tour de France starting in Yorkshire, the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, the Youth Olympics in Nanjing, and, at the end of the year, the Asian Games in Incheon are other top events to look forward to. We can also enjoy, for yet another year, the battle between four of the greatest male tennis players in history which will commence in a matter of days at Melbourne's Australian Open.

Sport then can produce many emotions, and a huge variety of subplots and intrigue. But at all levels sport offers, at its best, an unrivalled sense of excitement and satisfaction: for the lowly runner ploughing his way hopelessly up a hill to the top players in the world battling it out on Centre Court, up Mont Ventoux or on the slopes of Sochi.

Like other walks of life, the sporting world of today is not a perfect one, and is certainly not always glamorous and exciting.

But it sure can be and, if one thing is certain, 2014 will bring more highs and lows and plenty in between in what is set to be another great sporting year.