It was in the early seventies when I made my first visit to South Africa. It was at the invitation of an organisation called the Committee for Fairness in Sport, which had assured me that the gross racial divide in those wretched days of apartheid was not as obscene as the most of rest of the world believed, and that sport was forming a bridgehead for change.

I had my doubts, and I was not wrong. They took me to witness a purposely-staged "mixed" cycle road race but when I asked one of the black riders if I might interview him he began to tremble.

So I suggested he sat down on a bench alongside me, but he shook his head. "No sir, it is not permitted for me to be seated in the presence of a white man," he said. Later, when an invitation to a black sports official back to my hotel for a beer was also politely declined. It wasn't permitted for blacks to either enter the hotel or drink alcohol with a person of paler skin, either.

Soon after my return to London, a small group of us were talking to the late British boxing promoter Harry Levene. I mentioned I had just been to South Africa."Wonderful country," he enthused. "So hospitable. I go there on holiday every year. Great climate, lovely food, fabulous wines. And do you know, when you fly into Johannesburg you look down and see that every house has a swimming pool. I don't know what those blacks have got to complain about."

Such was the bigotry of a time when Nelson Mandela was still languishing in his cell on Robben Island. Some 20 years later he was released from an incarceration that had lasted for almost three decades; only then did the long road to freedom in sport truly begin.

Once there was only blind prejudice in South Africa. Now, thanks to Mandela, there is wide-eyed pride.

I make no apology for adding to the eulogies that have followed the passing of surely the bst-loved and sagest statesman of our age. I met him only once, albeit a brief handshake at a London garden party, but treasure the moment as much as I do the longer time spent in the company of my other sporting idols, Muhammad Ali and Jesse Owens.

What an exhilarating dinner party guest that trio would have made.

Mandela loved sport, and above all he loved boxing. He was no slouch himself as a scrapper, an accomplished amateur in the fifties who might well have become good enough to stand on the Olympic rostrum had not fate, and those Boer-ish numbskulls in Pretoria not conspired against him.

And had he turned professional, who knows, dear old Harry Levene might even have promoted him.

Nelson Mandela and Muhammad Ali, two of the biggest icons in history, were fans of each other ©Getty Images

Mandela's own sporting heroes were Ali and Joe Louis, and he said if he had not become President of South Africa, he would have liked to be heavyweight champion of the world.

Actually, in many ways he was.

"Boxing is egalitarian," Mandela once said. "When you are probing your opponent's strengths and weaknesses you are not thinking abou his colour or his social status. In the ring, rank, age and colour and wealth are irrelevant."

His boxing background provided the ideal strategy for what was to come in the tortuous negotiations with South Africa's white rulers. As he said: "Boxing training teaches you how to attack and defend and to pace yourself for what could be a long contest."

Thankfully, at the end of that gruelling championship fight, Mandela's hand was hoisted in triumph.

Perhaps more than any other nation, South Africa always craved recognition for its sporting prowess, and thereafter how adroitly he used this as a political tool to create racial harmony and eradicate the bitterness, resentment and downright hatred that had gone before.

Much has been made of him donning the green and gold Springbok jersey, emblazoned with the number six of captain Francois Pienaar for the final of the rugby World Cup in 1995.

But his worthiest contribution to South Africa's sporting redemption had been his manoeuvring to get a multi-racial team back into the Olympics from which the country had been belatedly expelled in 1970.

South Africa was still under white rule at the time and a year before the 1992 Barcelona Olympics he and the ANC party leadership had secretly met a top level delegation from the International Olympic Commitee, which included iconic hurdler Ed Moses, in East Transvaal. It was there, in a small air terminal, that the plan restore South Africa to the Games was formulated.

Even so Mandela had to threaten to block the team's departure unless there was faster integration of the hitherto segregated sports bodies.

He won the day, and was guest of honour at the Games.

Those Olympics were the watershed for South African sport, which hitherto had been a whites-only preserve where black or "coloured" athletes were precluded by law from training or competing with their minority white masters, an iniquitous situation which boycotts had damaged but failed to destroy.

Nelson Mandela asked Sam Ramsamy earlier this year when South Africa would host the Olympics ©Getty Images

According to Sam Ramsamy, who ran the outlawed SANROC (South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee) from exile in London during the apartheid era, and is now a senior IOC member, one of Mandela's ambitions was to bring to Olympic Games to South Africa.

"It was one of his very last wishes," he says. "And one I hope we will fulfil.

"Madiba always stated that sport is a uniting factor, a universal language that can transmit to very many people what no politician can do. And that we will always remember.

"Undoubtedly the [FIFA] World Cup held in South Africa in 2010 was something he was proud of because he always wanted such a major global event in South Africa. He was part of the team that went to Zurich to campaign for it. He also campaigned to try and get the Olympic Games.

"When I last spoke with him, about eight months ago, he said, 'Sam, when are we going to get the Olympic Games'? I said 'We're trying our very best'. And hopefully we can commemorate Nelson Mandela's activities, his passion for sport and his passion for the Olympics in trying to get the Games to South Africa in the very near future."

Nelson Mandela carries the Athens 2004 Olympic Torch in Cape Town, the South African city that the Greek capital beat to be awarded the Games ©Getty Images

Cape Town, along with Rome, Stockholm and Buenos Aires was defeated by Athens in the race to host the 2004 Olympic Games. South Africa had been expected to bid for the 2020 Olympics before the Government announced it would not support such a move for economic reasons.

However Durban has now been linked with a bid for the 2024 Games.

Of course the Mandela sporting legacy deserves to stretch well beyond an Olympics.

"Sport can create hope where once there was only despair," he said." It is more powerful than Governments in breaking down racial barriers and fighting all forms of discrimination."

These words surely must be an integral part of his epitaph when they bury Nelson Mandela this weekend.

Alan Hubbard is a sports columnist for the The Independent on Sunday, and a former sports editor of The Observer. He has covered a total of 16 Summer and Winter Games, 10 Commonwealth Games, several football World Cups and world title fights from Atlanta to Zaire.