YouTube. It's a treasure trove, isn't it?  My top three items from the last couple of weeks: Complete recording of Red Hot Chili Peppers' Stadium Arcadium. As my son would say, "all killer, no filler" - and I feel relatively OK about listening to it all for free as I did buy the CD, which then got "borrowed" by person unknown.

West Ham 3, Stoke City 4, season 1967-68 - an archetypal performance from the team boasting three World Cup winners and a perverse habit of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. West Ham were 3-0 up at half-time, with Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters scoring sumptuous goals, before allowing George Eastham and Peter Dobing the freedom of Upton Park, which they exploited ruthlessly to ensure full points went back to the Potteries.

There used to be an Arsenal fanzine entitled "1-0 Down, 2-1 Up". West Ham should have had one called "3-0 Up, 4-3 Down."

Third item - Ian Stewart winning the 1969 European 5,000 metres title in Athens with one of the most brilliant, pig-headed, irresistible track victories I have ever seen. As he shirked irritably out of leading, then ruthlessly tracked the new front runners before forcing his way past them when it mattered, this Brummified Scot offered the ultimate demonstration of a Man on a Mission.

A year later, wearing the blue of Scotland, Stewart won another sensational victory in the 5,000m at the Edinburgh Commonwealth Games, seeing off the challenge of Kenya's Olympic 1500m champion and 5,000m silver medallist Kip Keino and, finally, fellow Scot Ian McCafferty to take a second major title in a European record of 13min 22.85sec.

Ian Stewart en route to a famous victory in the Scottish vest at the 1970 Edinburgh Commonwealth Games, where he defeated a field which included Kenya's then Olympic 1500m champion Kip Keino (right) ©Getty Images

Stewart's victory, and that of fellow Scot Lachie Stewart (no relation) in a 10,000m that saw the world record holder, Ron Clarke of Australia, having to settle for silver, were two of the keynotes of those first Edinburgh Games.

They had their echo in the 10,000m victory earned on the same Meadowbank track by Dundee's Liz Lynch, later McColgan, in the 1986 Commonwealth Games.

Twenty eight years on, Glasgow awaits similar landmark performances from home competitors at the Commonwealth Games which are due to open on July 23.

Among the track and field athletes with realistic ambitions of mounting the podium on home soil is Lynsey Sharp, the European 800m champion, whose prospects of getting into the mix in a field which is due to include Kenya's World champion Eunice Sum have been heightened by a personal best performance of 1min 59.67sec at the International Association of Athletics Federation's Diamond League meeting in Lausanne earlier this month.

Lynsey Sharp has her sights on success at the impending Glasgow 2014 Games ©Tom Miles



Injury robbed Sharp of the chance to represent Scotland in the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games. But four years later she stands ready to extend a family tradition set by her father, Cameron Sharp, who won five Commonwealth sprint medals, including gold in the 4x100m at the 1978 Edmonton Games at the age of 20.

So far, however, the daughter's attempts to find any clips of her father - who suffered serious brain injuries in a 1991 road accident - in action have proved unsuccessful. "I tried checking on You Tube but unfortunately I couldn't find anything," she told me this week. "I occasionally see him when they play stuff on BBC."

Apart from his Commonwealth record, Sharp represented Britain at the 1980 Moscow Olympics and also won European 200m silver in 1982. But his daughter reckons his Commonwealth memories are the best as far as he is concerned.

"I think his Commonwealth medals they are more important to him than the European medal," she said. "He's very Scottish, so he really enjoyed representing his country."

Lynsey's father, Cameron Sharp (left) pictured after winning bronze in the 1982 Commonwealth Games 200m alongside joint gold medallists, England's Mike McFarlane (centre) and and fellow Scot Allan Wells  ©Getty Images

While Sharp has clearly passed down some of his athletic ability to his daughter, she has also gained valuable genes from a Scottish international 800m runner - her mother, Carol, competed for her country at the 1982 Commonwealth Games in Brisbane.

Although Sharp's hopes of competing in the Commonwealth arena were frustrated in 2010 - "I thought at the time, 'I'd rather miss Delhi than Glasgow four years' later'" -  she had already made her mark in that arena two years earlier by taking 800m bronze at the Commonwealth Youth Games in the Indian city of Pune, where gold went to South Africa's future world champion Caster Semenya.

"The Commonwealth Youth Games were really important to me," she said. "That was my first major medal. I ran the heat at 8.00am, and the final at 5pm the same day. The temperature was 42 degrees!"

Winning her most recent major medal was a far more comfortable experience in terms of the weather conditions - Helsinki, venue for the last European Championships in 2012, was about 20 degrees cooler - but more vexed.

I was among the spectators at the Olympic Stadium who saw her recover from a barge and stumble to move swiftly through the field in the final 20 metres and take the silver medal behind Russia's Yelena Arzhakova.

Russia's Yelena Arzhakova, pictured winning the 2012 European 800m title in Helsinki, was subsequently stripped of her title following a doping ban. The gold went belatedly to Lynsey Sharp, pictured back left, whose final charge took her into silver medal position on the day ©Getty Images

That performance was enough to earn her a controversial appearance at the London 2012 Olympics after Britain's head coach Charles van Commenee had persuaded the other selectors to give her a place in the 800m even though she had not run the A standard selection time.

The decision meant that three rival 800m runners who had run the time - Marilyn Okoro, Jemma Simpson and world bronze medallist Jenny Meadows - did not make the trip. The first two athletes appealed, unsuccessfully, and much hoo-hah ensued on social media and elsewhere.

Sharp, a 24-year-old law graduate from Edinburgh Napier University, made the semi-finals in London. In June last year she was in the sporting headlines again as she was upgraded to European champion when Arzhakova was stripped of her medal following a two-year doping ban imposed for an "abnormal haemoglobin profile" in her biological athlete passport.

At the time Sharp said she had considered retiring from athletics, explaining: "I have thought 'What's the point in doing this if this is what I'm up against?' It's a bit depressing that it's still going on. You hope there are way more clean people than there are doping."

Reflecting on her position now, she admits she was in something of an emotional turmoil.

"I felt proud when I heard about getting the gold medal, but I also felt a lot of anger and frustration," she said. "But it was never a serious thought to give the sport up. It means too much to me to do that."

Lynsey Sharp is belatedly presented with her European gold medal in an emotional ceremony at the Sainsbury's Glasgow International Games this January ©Getty Images

Turmoil over the subject of doping is also something which may have afflicted her father. At the 1982 European Championships he was narrowly beaten in the 200m by Olaf Prenzler who, as a member of the East German team, would most likely have been obliged to partake of the state doping regime for sportsmen and women which was later revealed to have been systematically developed in that country from the 1970s onwards.

Like swimmer Sharron Davies, who was beaten to Olympic gold by East Germany's Petra Schneider, who later admitted doping, or like British sprinter Kathy Cook, who also lost out to athletes subsequently implicated in doping, Sharp has reasons for ruefulness.

His reflections may also have been affected by the belated admissions of two of his fellow sprint relay gold medallists from Edmonton, David Jenkins and Drew McMaster, that they had doped during their careers.

Asked how her father viewed his, and her, experiences in this unsatisfactory area, Sharp said: "He has never discussed that with me, but I am guessing he would just say 'Yeah, well, it's gone.'  But I think he understood about the mix of emotions I felt when I heard about the Russian girl."

Now, however, the 24-year-old British 800m champion is focusing her full attention on achieving success on the recently laid track in Hampden Park where she finished sixth in last Saturday's Diamond League meeting. One more race, in Madrid this Saturday (July 19), will complete her preparations.

"The English girls are going to be very strong in Glasgow, and of course the Kenyans, who will have the world champion running," she said.

"I don't think any of the other girls had an issue with me over the Olympic selection. It wasn't really my problem, but I think I've proved it wasn't a very stupid decision.

"London was a really valuable experience for me it terms of looking ahead to the Rio [2016] Games. And I hope that running a personal best this year also shows I am a serious contender."

Her father was not well enough to watch her compete in London two years ago. But he is planning to be at Hampden Park. It is likely to be emotional.

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, covered the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics as chief feature writer for insidethegames, having covered the previous five summer Games, and four winter Games, for The Independent. He has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, The Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. His latest book Foul Play – the Dark Arts of Cheating in Sport (Bloomsbury £8.99) is available at the insidethegames.biz shop. To follow him on Twitter click here.