We are at the halfway point in Lausanne 2020. Already a week has passed since young Swiss ice dancer Gina Zehnder lit the flame to set the Winter Youth Olympic Games in motion.

When I was 11 I briefly received some professional football coaching - that is, some coaching from an ex-professional player. Ian Husband was his name, dad of my football-mad friend Hamish, and he had made a living playing for Scottish teams, including Airdrieonians.

I have written before that under Thomas Bach's Presidency, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has become less like a parliament and more like a corporation.

Suddenly, the dedicated followers of fashion have become fascinated by the fight game - and I'm not talking about it just as a sport competing with football, cricket and rugby as one of the nation's favourite activities to take part in and watch.

I’ll be honest. When I first heard that sport climbing was going to become part of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, I thought: "Really? Why?". Now I know.

The one-day International Olympic Committee (IOC) Session here in Lausanne was short on decisions, but firmly showed the direction of travel for the organisation on several issues set to dominate the headlines in the coming year.

The Tokyo Paralympics later this year will be the greatest yet. Venues packed with enthusiastic spectators, slick organisation, phenomenal sport. Everything London 2012 delivered, but with higher quality sporting contests. 

This week, 3x3 ice hockey is one of the new attractions at the Lausanne 2020 Youth Olympic Games. The small-team format has been successfully introduced in basketball and Olympic bosses will no doubt keep a keen eye on its progress here.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) Session rarely makes any actual decisions these days.

It has been a particularly grim start to the year, with Australia burning and the Middle East - again - simmering.

Why is it that so many of my media colleagues seem to have written off José Mourinho, and now have only words of dismissive contempt for the Portuguese man-of-war they so revered when he first arrived here to manage Chelsea back in 2004?

A few years back I was in Romania to cover Arsenal’s Champions League match against Steaua Bucharest, and, finding myself with a few spare moments - this was before online journalism had fully gripped its denizens - I visited the Palace of the Parliament grandiloquently established by the former dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, who was by then deposed, disgraced and dead.

This weekend is one of the most celebrated in the English football calendar, with the third-round stage of the FA Cup seeing the introduction of teams from the top two divisions against hopefuls from the lower tiers of the pyramid.

Tokyo was one of the first cities to bring in the New Year, but the start of 2020 had more significance for the Japanese capital than most other places.