First, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) - can you believe it? - brings out a report claiming that 85 per cent of all permanent Olympic venues since 1896 remain in use.

Eighty-five per cent!

I must admit I am taking their word for it, which is bad journalistic practice and not a course of action I would routinely recommend.

However, if the true figure is anything like 85 per cent, ie 17 permanent venues for every 20 ever built, then how can erecting the things be such a sin?

I mean, could it be that the much-maligned Sochi masterplan is not the fearful waste of Russian resources we had for so long fondly imagined?

Might it in fact turn out rather to be a stroke of visionary genius?

There is one further potential caveat which presents itself: one would ideally like to know HOW these venues are being used.

If, to select an imaginary facility at random, let us say a lavish, state-of-the-art, hugely expensive weightlifting arena were being used as a storage facility or a university examination hall, one might justifiably question whether this was a wholly positive outcome.

The other thing that happened in recent days which has impinged on my thinking regarding Olympic-related construction was the chaos at the Champions League final.

I am not suggesting for a moment that this was linked to the design of the Stade de France, which will host athletics and rugby at the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

But the whole dreary saga - which has for the time being dented France’s reputation as a major sporting events host - did serve to remind me how this now 24-year-old stadium is, well, not the Bird’s Nest, and how it could scarcely be sited in a less scenic location.

It did occur to me during that rather fraught and tetchy 2024-2028 Olympic bidding process that there must be some in France who would have wanted to use the Games as a pretext for constructing a shiny new national stadium.

But this bid battle coincided with peak post-Sochi Thou Shalt Not Build mania in Olympicland.

An expensive infrastructure programme would probably have resulted in yet another Olympic defeat for France’s incomparable capital city.

After the traumas of the unsuccessful 2008 and, more particularly, 2012 bids, that could not be countenanced.

To be honest, a big infrastructure bill might also have taken quite a bit of selling to French taxpayers, indulgent as they are towards relatively high levels of public spending.

The truth of the matter is, of course, that when well-designed and carefully planned in synch with a host city’s culture, amenities and general infrastructure, permanent sports facilities can be a worthwhile investment.

This was the case before Sochi and has remained so afterwards.

The dramatic shift in attitudes that occurred when decision-makers realised that the scale of Sochi’s real and reputed spending might put other cities off bidding was, frankly, ridiculous and says a lot about the way we too readily allow public relations manipulators to influence our thinking.

The overall economic situation in Western Europe was also far from ideal.

The bidding process has become a much more opaque and shadowy beast now.

Perhaps this will create the breathing-space to end this Olympic mini-era in which permanent construction that does not come with a mighty convincing justification and copper-bottomed legacy plan has been so frowned-upon.

It might actually be that said mini-era has already ended.

As I have stated before, though it has not been inconvenienced by the sort of public scrutiny to which it would have been subject under the transparent bidding process that the IOC has abandoned, Brisbane 2032 strikes me as a reassuringly old-fashioned Olympic project.

By this I mean that the Games are seemingly to be used as justification and immovable deadline for a major infrastructure upgrade.

If this hunch turns out to be on the money, then reports such as the one which has just emanated from Lausanne might come in very handy for Games planners as they seek to persuade Gold Coast taxpayers, many of whom are likely to be sceptical, of the wisdom of what they are proposing.

The secret, as ever, will be to make sure that anything built corresponds with the region’s genuine needs for the next 50 years, insofar as these can be agreed and predetermined, and not just the demands of the 50-day (ish) 2032 Olympic and Paralympic project.

Not all Olympic buildings are white elephants, but it requires skill, discipline, honest debate and a genuine sense of civic responsibility to prevent them propagating.