Nick Butler: A great weekend of pure sport in London

In recent weeks, and as ever in the Olympic Movement, it has become easy to lose track of what sport is really about.

For at insidethegames we have focused mostly on elections, bidding cities, potential bidding cities, and former potential bidding cities, not to mention commercial deals, construction timetables and doping scandals.

Even when sport is on the agenda it is usually restricted to contexts such as "whether new disciplines will be added" or "whether the venue for this sport will be ready".

I am not complaining about any of this, but it is important to remember that sport remains at its core an athletic pursuit and, given this, it was a pleasure to spend last weekend in London immersed in top quality sport.

This began with the latest round of the World Triathlon Series in Hyde Park on Saturday. While many Olympic sports are constantly battling to adapt and evolve to modern times, and even to protect a position on the ultra-competitive Olympic programme of today, triathlon is one sport most definitely on the up.

When covering the Grand Final on the same course last year, from my perspective the event felt more an extension of the London 2012 legacy. Both in terms of participation and spectators, the story was about grassroots engagement as the sport continued to reap the benefits of the post-Olympic wave of sporting euphoria.

This time around the story was much more about triathlon itself.

Quite rightly, the current period is being hailed as a golden era for the sport. This is because of the domination of the three London 2012 medal winners: British Olympic champion Alistair Brownlee, younger brother Jonathan, and Javier Gómez of Spain, the runner-up in London who has gone on to win the 2013 world title and the opening three races of the 2014 series.

No-one other than these three had won a World Triathlon Series race for 18 months and, heading into the weekend, no one had ever beaten all three in the same race in a streak stretching back to 2009.

A comparison can be drawn with the situation in men's tennis, another sporting rivalry entering the all-time-great stakes. In a pre-race interview, Jonathan Brownlee described himself as a Novak Djokovic style all-rounder, before poking fun at his elder sibling's recent injury troubles by describing him as a Rafael Nadal.

"When Alistair turns up he really means business but when he's off-form he goes out in the first round," he quipped.

But as we saw in tennis when then Swiss number two Stanislas Wawrinka won the Australian Open earlier this year, shocks do happen. In Hyde Park this weekend, triathlon had its Wawrinka moment as Spanish number two Mario Mola sprinted to a shock victory to deem the terrific trio at the top of the sport a fabulous foursome.

Mario Mola breaks the tape to complete a shock victory in Hyde Park ©Getty Images

Even more amazingly, Alistair, Jonathan and Gomez finished fourth, fifth and sixth respectively, as South African Richard Murray came second and Portugal's Joao Pereira enjoyed a breakthrough performance in third.

The race took place over half the Olympic distance - in a sprint format consisting of a 750 metres swim followed by a 20 kilometres cycle ride and a 5km run - so time will tell if this really does represent a changing of the guard. Yet the result certainly ruffled a few feathers and greater depth and shock results are invariably a good thing in sport.

The fact that Murray should be competing against the Brownlee brothers at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow this summer will also add some extra spice to that contest.

One slight frustration facing the sport in an Olympic sense is that they only have two events on the programme and the sport can therefore last a maximum of two days. To alleviate this, there are hopes to introduce a mixed team relay in time for Tokyo 2020, with this event also set to feature on the Commonwealth Games programme.

Para-triathlon events, which also took place at Hyde Park this weekend, have already been introduced in time for Rio 2016.

The women's ranks are another area of strength. With Non Stanford the reigning world champion, Helen Jenkins a double former world champion and Jodie Stimpson the winner of the opening two races in the 2014 campaign, the British challenge is certainly alive and well here. But the rest of the world is not far behind and, as she proved with a dominant victory at Hyde Park, American Gwen Jorgensen is currently the best of the bunch.

Gwen Jorgensen outclassed the field with a comprehensive victory ©Getty Images

But there was so much else going on in the sporting world in the British capital alone last weekend.

After leaving Hyde Park to take the southbound Victoria line, I was confronted by a mass of black, green and gold shirts as Northampton Saints celebrated their thrilling 24-20 overtime victory over Saracens to win their first ever English Premiership rugby union final at Twickenham.

It was an extra-significant weekend for the sport as two of the Northern Hemisphere's greatest ever players: Irish centre Brian O'Driscoll and England's 2003 World Cup winning fly half Jonny Wilkinson, played their final matches.

And both won. ODriscoll's Leinster beat Glasgow Warriors 34-12 to win the RaboDirect Pro-12 League, while Wilkinson kicked all but three of his team's points as his adopted club Toulon defeated Castres 18-10 to win the French Top-14 League.

Both belong to a different age to the Olympic-era of rugby set to begin at Rio 2016. Yet both were huge pioneers in the evolution of the game from the amateur to the professional ranks over the last 15 or so years and the sport would not have enjoyed the same rise without them.

Brian O'Driscoll and Jonny Wilkinson each played their last matches this weekend
©Getty Images

Yet by Saturday evening the sporting kaleidoscope was turning its attention to North London as 80,000 fans descended on Wembley for the second instalment of the boxing super-middleweight showdown between Carl Froch and George Groves.

The most hyped British fight in years, in front of the biggest audience British boxing has enjoyed since before the Second World War, captured the attention of vast swathes of the public who would never usually watch the sport.

On my train to London I enjoyed hearing fans attempt to predict the likely outcome. "The heart says Froch but the head says Groves," said one. "A draw" said another, while a third was bolder, and ultimately closest, in his prediction.

"The seventh round," he said. "I don't know what will happen but it will happen in the seventh."

The best thing about the fight was that it did not disappoint. After ebbing and flowing for the first seven rounds, four-time world champion Froch produced a devastating combination in the eighth, ending with the "the best punch of his career" to leave his opponent on the canvas as Wembley erupted.

While many may oppose the violence of boxing, as well as the pantomime-style histrionics that invariably dominate the build-up to big fights, there is no doubting the sheer mental and physical brilliance of the athletes.

Equally impressive was the magnanimity displayed by both the winners and the loser in the aftermath. After all that had happened, Groves could still admit he had lost to the better man and Froch that he had faced the biggest challenge of his career.

The Carl Froch versus George Groves showdown at Wembley did not disappoint
©Getty Images

This is just a snapshot of sport taking place in one city this weekend.

There was much more happening elsewhere: from the shocks and epic battles taking place across the channel at Roland Garros as the French Open entered its second week, to the conclusion of the Giro d'Italia as Colombian climber Nairo Quintana added to his impressive CV with a superb victory.

And then, as canned lager deals appear in supermarkets and flags are posted to car windows in a quadrennial display of patriotism, we are reminded that the World Cup is about to begin.

While we have been focusing overwhelmingly on the negative aspect of preparations for the World Cup, the latest round of warm-up-matches made me realise that the second greatest sporting event of them all, after the Olympics of course, is beginning in less than two weeks time.

So while the administrative focus we have at insidethegames is important, with the allegations over the awarding of the 2022 World Cup edition to Qatar one reason why this should remain an area of interest for all journalists, it is nice once in a while to forget the finance and politics and to enjoy sport.

And the way this summer is shaping up we will have plenty of opportunities to do just that.

Nick Butler is a reporter for insidethegames. To follow him on Twitter click here.