Terrifyingly, it is now getting on for 33 years since the actor and screenwriter Colin "Chariots of Fire" Welland gave that Oscar acceptance speech at which he proclaimed that, "The British are coming!"

It occurred to me this week, while sitting in on the London launch of what will surely be Sebastian Coe's winning campaign for the Presidency of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), that this was not a bad way of describing the current state of play in the upper echelons of world sport.

It is not just Coe with his eye-catching yellow and black branding and his "Growing Athletics in a New Age" mantra.

Last year saw the election of mild-mannered, Lancashire-born Brian Cookson to the Presidency of another leading International Sport Federation (IF), the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI).

In 2013, Sir Craig Reedie, a Scot who has been a top international sports administrator for two decades, having become a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1994, was also elected to his most prominent role yet as President of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

Sir Philip Craven, President of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), and Princess Anne are further British members of world sport's most powerful club; so is former skeleton athlete Adam Pengilly.

Another Briton, John McEwen, will learn next week whether he has been successful in his attempt, against a strong field, to become President of the International Equestrian Federation (FEI), that sport's world governing body.

Heck, England may soon even have a respected and potent voice in the weird and wacky world of FIFA, with David Gill, once chief executive of Manchester United, expected next year to become a member of the world football governing body's Executive Committee, and a vice-president.

If Sebastian Coe wins the race to become IAAf President he will be the first Briton to hold the role since Lord Burghley, head of the organisation from 1946 to 1976 ©Getty Images



And, of course, a remarkably high proportion of the communications, technical and other advisers who populate the realm of international sport in the 21st century are British as well.

I am not especially patriotic, so this sporting "rise of the Brits" is not necessarily a phenomenon I would choose to dwell on, but for one thing - the contrast with the position when I first started covering this domain nearly 15 years ago.

At that time, whatever way you looked at it, Britain appeared well on its way to genteel marginalisation in a world it once dominated.

Yes, Britain's Sydney 2000 Olympic medals count was far better than Atlanta four years earlier; but I doubt that anyone had started dreaming seriously of the heights to which Lottery funding and the principles of No Compromise would eventually carry us.

The UK continued to haemorrhage the few IFs it had left.

The departure for Dubai of the International Cricket Council (ICC) in 2005 probably created the biggest fuss.

But I also remember the International Badminton Federation (IBF)'s switch from, wait for it, Cheltenham to Kuala Lumpur, largely because of the mind-boggling cultural transition such a move implies.

UK Olympic bids prior to London 2012 were all well and good, but they never seem to have had any serious prospect of winning.

Much of the country, moreover, appeared largely indifferent to this seemingly inexorable downwards drift, as if focusing on other, supposedly more important aspects of life, such as house values.

Regrettable but inevitable seemed to be the prevailing view; what the French, with inimitable Gallic finality, term une fatalité.

Prior to London 2012 the UK looked a world away from hosting the Olympic Games
©Getty Images



At the first IOC Session I attended, in Moscow in 2001 (a biggie that brought us Beijing 2008, Jacques Rogge and the end of the Samaranch era), I remember being surprised when someone I slightly knew took me aside and told me, very much on the record, that if Britain didn't get its act together, it could forget about hosting the 2012 Games.

"Where was the senior British Government observer here?" my acquaintance - Michael Payne, then IOC marketing director and, of course, a Briton - asked rhetorically.

Now if (as I think it must have been) Payne's broadside (reported dutifully in the Financial Times) amounted to a considered, deliberate attempt to jolt his fellow citizens into action, well, it worked pretty well, didn't it?

I must say I do really welcome the transformation in attitudes that has reversed Britain's long sporting slide.

This is not because I get a kick out of Britannia ascendant; I really don't.

But I think as islanders, it is all too easy for us instinctively to turn our backs on the world and become, literally, insular.

Our rediscovered determination to be part of the cut and thrust of a sphere of activities we played a very big part in originating betokens a more open, committed and, I think, much healthier outlook on life.

And let's face it we are rebounding from a pretty low standing: even if Coe and McEwen both won their elections, we would still be a long way from a situation where Britain could accurately be described as once again dominant.

With the likes of Sir Craig Reedie and Brian Cookson heading some of the sporting world's most prestigious roles Great Britain is finally punching its weight on the administrative side of international sport ©Getty Images


Nevertheless, the trend of many decades has undeniably been reversed.

The UK is finally getting closer to punching its weight on the administrative side of international sport.

Meanwhile, the high-calibre infrastructure put in place for London 2012 and Glasgow 2014 should ensure that we procure more than our fair share of international sporting events over the next decade.

Who knows, perhaps eventually some of those lost international governing bodies will slink back.

At the time of the 1948 Olympics, I noted recently, the address of the IAAF (International Amateur Athletic Federation, as it was then) was listed in the Official Report as 71 St George's Square, London SW1.

That was under the last Briton to serve as IAAF President, Lord Burghley.

Hmm, I wonder...

David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 World Cup and London 2012. Owen's Twitter feed can be accessed here.