Olympic style countdown clocks are ticking down to the start of the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup, which starts tomorrow and is shaping up to be one of the sporting highlights of 2017.

The great cities of the world might have fallen out of love with the Olympics; but there is little sign of the great sponsors of the world doing so.

Sport and tragedy have never been alien bedfellows, inexorably linked through horrendous events such as the Munich massacre, the Bradford football stadium fire and the Ibrox, Heysel and Hillsborough disasters.

So, football's law-making body, the International Football Association Board (IFAB) is considering a series of "radical" ideas aimed at addressing perceived "negatives" within the laws of the game. 

I had a brief jaunt westwards last week to Miami for a tantalisingly titled "Best Practices" Seminar organised by the United States Olympic Committee (USOC).

The Olympic world was rocked on Friday (June 16) when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and McDonald's jointly announced they no longer had the appetite to continue their partnership. 

Whenever the International Olympic Committee (IOC) conducts one of their Coordination Commission visits, you can be sure the words "on track" will be used to describe the progress of the respective organiser.

On Wednesday, the long awaited Independent Review into the Climate and Culture of the World Class Programme in British Cycling was published. It was a significant moment for British Cycling and for the UK high performance system more broadly.

It may seem a pointed question – but what is the point of a mixed relay? Is it something you actively want to see in sport - in the way you do, say, a men’s relay? Or a women’s relay?

It is August 25, 2004, in the Athens velodrome and I am all strapped-in in the media seats waiting for my first taste of track cycling.

You would have had to search pretty hard to spot the word sport in any of the political party manifestos leading up to the recent General Election in Great Britain.

The highlight of last week’s International Olympic Committee (IOC) Executive Board press conference in Lausanne was a complicated analogy about two big birds circling somewhere between the sky, a roof and somebody’s hand. In terms of clarity, it was about as helpful as footballer Eric Cantona’s memorable bird-related quote about seagulls, sardines and a trawler when sentenced for kung-fu kicking a spectator in 1995.

There has been a general ignorance in England to the FIFA Under-20 World Cup, which has been taking place since the middle of May. Until the England team reached today’s final against Venezuela.

As an Englishman, it is difficult to look at the difficulties and travails of Australian sportsmen without at least a tinge of a smile.