I have already started reading two of the books I received for Christmas. One, Andrew Jennings' fascinating 1996 epic, The New Lords of the Rings: Olympic Corruption and How to Buy Gold Medals, I have already completed. The other, a new biography of iconic British war leader Winston Churchill - The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History - written by the current Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, I am halfway through.

Johnson, best known in Olympic circles for his presence throughout the Games of London 2012, shies away from the wealth of facts and prose seen in many historical biographies, instead highlighting in a much more readable fashion his idol's endearing legacy on the modern world, successfully pointing out how the course of 20th century history would have been very different without him.

A fascinating figure, in a political career spanning six decades Churchill's achievements ranged from the creation of Britain's Royal Air Force to the reorganisation of the Middle East, including the formation of Israel, while his military career also contained the dubious honour of being shot at on four different continents.

But he was also no stranger to failure and controversy. Politically incorrect even by the standards of his day, he supported ill-judged causes such as the campaign against Indian independence, while he swapped between the Liberal and Conservative political parties with the same ease with which sportsmen switch teams today.

But Churchill will always be best remembered for his role as British Prime Minister between 1940 and 1945. After taking over shortly before the seemingly insurmountable Nazi advance bore down on the English Channel, he masterminded the Allied fight-back, working with the United States and Soviet Union to eventually clinch victory from the jaws of defeat.

British leader Winston Churchill was instrumental in the Allied victory in the Second World War ©Hulton Archive/Getty Images



While there has been a revisionist tendency to play down his and Britain's significance to the path of the War, it is undebatable that the outcome would have been very different without him, and his fighting spirit, encapsulated in one speech vowing to offer "Blood, toil, tears and sweat", has lived on in the British psyche ever since.

Perhaps the greatest orator the country has ever produced, it would be fascinating to see how Churchill would cope in modern politics, or in an organisation like the International Olympic Committee, where, I suspect, he would find it hard to avoid upsetting many of his colleagues - although he would certainly liven up some of the speeches.

It is harder to picture him as a sportsman, yet, despite his rotundness, Churchill was actually a renowned rider and polo player, and a less successful golfer, throughout his life. But, as someone more used to reading sporting biographies than political ones, I found many similarities between aspects of his character and those of a professional athlete.

A renowned drinker who encapsulated a "work hard, play hard" philosophy, Churchill would seem best suited to a dangerous sport - he flew his first plane barely a decade after the Wright brothers embarked on the first ever flight - with motor racing a sport which would surely have interested him. He would undoubtedly sit on the maverick side of the sporting spectrum, holding more in common with swashbuckling sporting figures like Usain Bolt or Muhammad Ali than cleaner-cut ones like Lionel Messi and Roger Federer.

But like those two successful sporting mavericks, he combined his panache with a relentless work ethic, determination and attention to detail, and was famed during the War for a brutal working day which saw him often convene meetings for the middle of the night.

Sporting outsiders, such as Muhammad Ali when he overcame George Foreman during boxing's "Rumble in the Jungle" in 1974, inherited some Churchillian bulldog spirit ©AFP/Getty Images





He would also have been a natural at the mind games and skulduggery required in modern sport, once allegedly responding to the female MP Bessie Braddock who rebuked him for being drunk by remarking: "And you, madam, are ugly. But I shall be sober in the morning". The art of sledging in cricket would have been an obvious area of strength.

But it was for his ability as an underdog, to never give up and prevail against insurmountable odds, where his expertise is most obvious. At time of writing during the Third Round of football's FA Cup, in which non-league sides such as Blyth Spartans, who play in the seventh tier of English football, have been taking on some of the biggest sides in the game, his legacy here lives on.