This happened to me last week in the formal, luxurious but impersonal setting of the French Residence in London’s swanky Kensington district, just up the road from a royal palace.

It had been arranged that I should interview a relatively recently-installed Sport Ambassador for the French State.

The designated subject was soft power, in particular how France is using the build-up to the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games to brush up its image and shore up its place in the world.

Given a certain proclivity for L’Ėtat Français to cut a high-and-mighty dash in public, especially in foreign parts, I was expecting an interlocutor in keeping with the surroundings: formal and impersonal.

I could not have been more mistaken; the first thing that struck me about Laurence Fischer was how soft-spoken and shy she appeared: I think she was nervous about the prospect that evening of having to address a gathering that included stars such as Jonathan Edwards and Olivier Giroud, as well as sports business heavy-hitters, in English.

Her check trouser-suit was also far removed from the twin-set-and-pearls look I had unconsciously been expecting.

We sat down in a corner of the drawing-room overlooking a manicured lawn.

It gradually became apparent that neither of us had much of originality to impart on France’s Olympics-related statecraft.

I knew Fischer, 45, was a three-time karate world champion, but we didn’t get very far with the topic of that sport’s inclusion in the Tokyo 2020 Olympic programme either, except that she was pleased at the prospect.

She became considerably more animated when the subject turned to a very recent visit she had made to Madagascar.

She had discovered that rugby on the island was a sport particularly associated with the lower classes; she showed me video of a haka performed with great gusto by local players, explaining how the ceremonial challenge delivered by the New Zealand All Blacks to opponents before every match had struck a chord with Madagascans.

I asked her about other visits, and we spoke briefly about Afghanistan. Then, just before our time was up, she mentioned Bukavu and Denis Mukwege, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning gynaecologist from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

It was only when she stood up to speak later that I realised quite what she was alluding to.

Fischer has been deploying karate in that lake-side city near the border with Rwanda to help some of the many women who have been victims of rape there to regain their humanity and find the strength and motivation to start rebuilding shattered lives. 

Her short speech at the French Residence was a tour de force, her passionate intensity far from being undermined by her broken English was accentuated by it.

Perhaps the best way of describing it is to say it was about as un-Ambassador-like as you could imagine, but in a good way, a very good way.

She was, she said, "not just a representative of France, but a citizen of the world…

"It’s the fight of my life now."

It is very difficult here to convey the empathy and transparent sincerity that emanate in powerful waves from this essentially self-deprecating and soft-spoken individual when she talks about the women she has encountered in these less fortunate corners of the world.

But you can access videos - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wJr9bVVzec and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nFd6PBLGtE - that leave as powerful an impression as she created last week.

Now here’s the thing: after more than a century of near continuous growth, sport has been on the defensive in the past few years.

With the exception of football, the global juggernaut, it finds itself under increasing pressure to explain how it remains relevant to Generation Z.

In such circumstances, it can ill afford to compartmentalise itself in a bubble or silo; it needs to keep demonstrating how it can make a real difference to real people.

To give them their due, many leading sports administrators have taken this on board and devised/supported all manner of well-meaning initiatives to demonstrate how their sport can be more of a force for good in the world.

After something like a quarter of a century of monitoring the sector, however, I formed the view long ago that these moves are nearly always more authentic and convincing when they come from the bottom up, not the top down.

As I once wrote, "sports administrators are at their worst when claiming some dubious extra dimension of significance for the gloriously trivial pursuits over which they preside".

Someone like Fischer who, I think largely off her own bat, has made the connection between karate and rape victims and expended much time and energy on the ground ensuring that something tangible, effective and inspirational is being done to give life to that initial insight is worth their weight in gold.

If the International Olympic Committee is, in turn, to punch its weight in this unpredictable new era for sport, Fischer is exactly the sort of individual who needs to be made a member.