The Scot celebrated his eightieth birthday last May and will hence attain his IOC age limit at the end of this year.

He has served 27 years as a full member, having entered sport’s most prestigious club in 1994, as part of a vintage intake which also included Robin Mitchell of Fiji, gold medal-winning former Soviet sprinter Valeriy Borzov and broadcasting expert Alex Gilady.

Having begun his long career in sports administration at the Scottish Badminton Union in 1964, the year of Tokyo's first Olympics, Sir Craig has served on a long list of national and international bodies, including the British Olympic Association, where he was chairman from 1992 until 2005, the Association of National Olympic Committees, where he spent nearly a decade on the Executive Committee, and the now imperilled General (now Global) Association of International Sports Federations, where he was treasurer for two years.

His most challenging post was probably as President of the World Anti-Doping Agency from 2014 until the end of 2019, a term dominated by the Russian doping crisis.

If that taxed him to the utmost, the University of Glasgow graduate also enjoyed many causes for celebration during not far off six decades at the coal-face of sports decision-making.

The London 2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics and Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games would be two obvious high points, as would the IOC’s decision, taken during a Session in East Berlin in 1985, to add Sir Craig's sport of badminton to the Summer Olympic programme, commencing with the Barcelona Games in 1992.

Within the IOC, Sir Craig was a member of the Executive Board between 2009 and 2012, and a vice-president between 2012 and 2016.