However stunning the exploits of the next couple of weeks, though, I somehow doubt that these Games will displace another event, which took place more than three decades ago, as the most consequential sport-related gathering ever held in England’s second city.

This came in June 1991, not long after the unassuming John Major had succeeded Margaret Thatcher as United Kingdom Prime Minister and while a politician called Boris - Boris Yeltsin - was emerging as the coming man in Russia.

Against this backdrop, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) jetted into Brum for its 97^th Session.

The meeting, in the city’s brand new £160 million ($192 million/€190 million) International Convention Centre, was billed as "the most important sports conference in Britain for more than 40 years."

There were a number of reasons for this.

The local press rhapsodised over "Birmingham’s busiest royal day for years", with Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, the Duke of Edinburgh and IOC member Princess Anne all present and correct.

According to the Birmingham Mail, "a global spotlight fell on Birmingham as the city took its great leap forward on to the world stage, with the Queen in a starring role."

Formally opening the Session, the monarch told the multinational assemblage of delegates:

"You and your colleagues are charged with great responsibilities as you seek to maintain the highest traditions of the Olympic heritage, to encourage the pursuit of excellence, and to promote the contribution which friendly competition in the sporting arena can make to the growth of understanding between nations.

"In this task you have the full support of this country."

IOC members proceeded to select the host of the 1998 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games, choosing the Japanese city of Nagano in preference to rivals from the United States, Sweden, Spain and Italy.

The Session also played a part in further augmenting the rapidly growing momentum behind moves to allow South Africa back into the Olympic Games.

IOC members gave the 11-member Executive Board and IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch the authority to readmit South Africa once the last pillars of apartheid had been removed.

The official announcement welcoming the nation of Nelson Mandela back into the fold duly came the best part of a month later, on July 9 1991.

All important stuff, particularly this last item.

Yet there was something else that made this 97^th Session particularly consequential for the international sports movement, even though it was all but ignored by the mainstream media of the day.

This was the line-up of new members who were duly welcomed into sport’s most prestigious club during its sojourn in the West Midlands.

The newcomers included the controversial figure of Mexico’s Mario Vázquez Raña, already a key power-broker as President of the Association of National Olympic Committees (ANOC).

According to journalist and Olympic historian David Miller, writing in his Official History of the Olympic Games and the IOC, when the names of the candidates for new members were announced, "there was a request from the floor to know whether Vázquez Raña had the support of his own country."

Miller goes on: "Amid confusion, Samaranch called for a show of hands from those opposing him."

Some nine members raised their hands.

"Samaranch then asked for those in favour, and once some 20 hands had risen he announced: ‘Right. Elected.’"

Regardless, the Mexican was a figure of substance in the sports movement for much of his adult life.

Also elected in Birmingham was Switzerland’s Denis Oswald, a former oarsman who is still on the IOC’s Executive Board and, notably, chaired the London 2012 Coordination Commission.

And then there were two others: a Belgian surgeon called Jacques Rogge and a German lawyer called Thomas Bach.

Birmingham, in other words, is the city where both the eighth and the ninth IOC Presidents gained entry to the glittering body they went on to head.

No-one could have known it at the time, but this simple fact makes that 97^th IOC Session an enormously significant sports gathering.

And it gives the city where this year’s Commonwealth Games are centred a highly unusual claim to Olympic fame as the only place bar Paris where more than one IOC President has been inducted into the club.