As those familiar with the plot will testify, this does not say much for the effectiveness of South Korean end-of-career athlete transition structures.

I recently predicted that questions concerning athletes’ rights, safety/wellbeing and representation were set to assume increased prominence.

It was, in all honesty, a fairly safe prediction, and already this month it is starting to happen.

My colleague Liam Morgan has written about the new survey of some 500 athletes published a few days ago by the advocacy group Global Athlete. 

No sooner had I digested the voices of discontent raised in that exercise than I found myself sitting in on a high-level gathering of British sports luminaries at Lancaster House, just around the corner from Buckingham Palace.

This was organised by Quest, the risk management firm chaired by Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington, a former Metropolitan Police Commissioner.

It sought to address issues related to athlete empowerment and how the focus of sports integrity work is shifting from general matters of governance/transparency to overtly athlete-related subjects.

This flurry of activity has prompted me to think through my own views on the lot of the elite athlete in 21^st century sport, which I will now attempt to share with you.

My starting-point is that, unless and until they acquire the stature of a Usain Bolt, a Serena Williams or an Anthony Joshua, even exceptional national and international-class athletes are extremely vulnerable.

Why? Because fulfilment of their dreams and ambitions depends on being selected for a series of teams and events.

This puts their future in the hands of coaches and administrators who, nearly always, are good people with the best interests of their teams and organisations to heart.

In those instances when they are not, however, or when something goes wrong or needs fixing, the affected athlete can face a quandary.

Does she dare speak out and risk being branded a troublemaker, perhaps jeopardising the life goals she has sacrificed much time and effort to pursue?

Worse still, can she have confidence that, if push came to shove, any case she raises would be assessed impartially on its merits, and that the skills or political clout of the alleged transgressor would not colour the outcome to her disadvantage?

There is, though, another side to the coin: an elite sports performance programme needs to be tough – there is little chance of it achieving the desired results if it is not.

Internal grievance procedures implemented by sports bodies need to take this into account, and to be leery of mistaking tough love for abuse.

Elite athletes tend also to be driven, exquisitely self-centred individuals: how could they not be, given the performance levels necessary to reach the top nowadays?

Selection decisions, and other issues, that may be devastating for them are not necessarily wrong.

Grievance procedures need to take that into account too.

Finally, while athletes may feel that they are inadequately remunerated – and, let’s face it, as with writers, there is a vast spectrum here between the majority and a lucky/hyper-talented few who are among the wealthiest individuals on the planet – there is a bigger picture.

Many athletes may accept that income from certain events should legitimately be redistributed for the benefit of sport.

But, if they do, it seems to me that they are then entitled just as legitimately to ask themselves how much of a say contemporary athletes a) have, and b) ought to have, in exactly where and how this income is redistributed.

How might athletes’ rights and wellbeing be better protected, or, as more than one participant at the Lancaster House discussion put it: What does “good” look like?

If it were up to me, one element of “good” would be an active and systematic mentoring programme for elite-level athletes.

This should begin when athletes enter the system, providing them with the support of someone who will fight their corner when they have genuine cause for complaint, and who knows the ropes.

Mentors should also encourage their charges to focus early on alternatives both in case their sports ambitions are thwarted and when their career as an active athlete comes to an end, frequently with more than half of their life still ahead of them.

Oh, and who could be better-qualified to serve as mentors than recently-retired elite athletes many of whom will be casting around for a new sense of purpose, some of whom may be glumly contemplating life as a pizza-box assembler in the gig economy, like our fictional hammer-throwing friend in Parasite?

In Thomas Bach-speak, that strikes me as potentially a “win-win”.

While it may work for some, relying on the parents of young athletes to highlight issues when they arise seems to me an inadequate alternative: for one thing, they are unlikely to be familiar with the ins and outs of the ecosystem their offspring is inhabiting; for another, how easy did you find it to discuss your problems with your mum and dad when you were a teenager?

When serious issues such as sexual abuse or persistent bullying are alleged/identified, athletes and mentors must be able to have recourse to an ethics body that has teeth and is independent from the main board.

Putting a representative such as an Athletes’ Commission chairperson on the board is all fine and dandy – and, indeed, should be done – to ensure athletes a voice on regular, day-to-day and planning issues.

But it is not enough to ensure just outcomes in cases of bad behaviour or worse that may involve influential or hard-to-replace figures.

Turning to the bigger picture, it seems to me that events such as the Olympic and Paralympic Games which, typically, do not compensate participating athletes with appearance money or prize money will eventually face a choice.

Either start to pay them; or secure formal acceptance from athletes for using the event to fund global sports, but give them a significant say in what the money is spent on.

There are quite a number of stakeholders who could make legitimate claims to have some sort of input into those decisions, so I would not offer active athletes 50 per cent of the voting power on this, or anything like it.

But the Games, self-evidently, are nothing without the world’s best athletes; they merit more of a say in this core question of what the extravaganza is ultimately for.

As for Rule 40 and all that, I think the problem with tweaking sponsorship rules in this context without doing anything else is that the biggest beneficiaries are likely to be those athletes who are already best off.

I suspect some of you may well have concluded if you have made it this far that the most challenging question here may not be, ‘What does “good” look like?’, but ‘How is “good” paid for?’

The short answer is that the money would almost certainly have to come out of existing high-performance budgets, where there is one, and be ring-fenced.

The thing is though, sport is under pressure and can ill afford many more “bad news” stories.

Good governance, like good journalism, costs; it may mean one or two fewer medals, but national sports bodies should see it as an investment in their uncertain future.