As Simon Clegg, the former chief executive of the British Olympic Association, who is now chief operating officer of Baku 2015, stressed on the eve of the first dedicated test event for the impending Games, the President was President of Azerbaijan's National Olympic Committee before he became President of the Republic.

"So therefore he understands sport. He gets sport," said Clegg. "He realises its value, and also how he can use it as a political vehicle."

The dynamic is essentially the same as that employed by neighbours Russia. And if Baku's Oympic aspirations - they bid unsuccessfully for the 2016 and 2020 Games - have been, at least temporarily, frustrated, the scale of its aspiration is still grand. "You will be amazed at what is being accompllshed here," said Clegg.

In 2016, Baku city centre will host a Formula 1 Grand Prix race. As for the Olympics - a successful staging of the European Games would hardly harm Baku's cause if it decides to seek a "third-time lucky" nomination.

More immediately, however, the European Games fits into this sporting template for Baku. But Clegg, and the Baku 2015 director of sport Pierce O'Callaghan have articulated the argument that the European Games also fits into the template of not just European, but Olympic sport. In so doing, they answer those who have questioned the emergence of and need for this event.

It is an argument which has clearly been heeded already, if the figures of those committed to appearing in Baku next year are anything to go by.

Baku 2015 chief operating officer Simon Clegg shows Azerbaijan's First Lady Mehriban Aliyeva around the European Games offices ©Baku 2015

"The original European Olympic Committees (EOC) concept was to try and attract 12 sports," said Clegg. "We now have 20 sports on the programme, and we have had to turn away 14 others - including some Olympic sports - which were desperate to be on the programme, which demonstrates the level of interest there now is in the European Games.

"Of those 20 sports, 16 are Olympic sports, with the others being basketball 3x3, beach soccer, karate and sambo. Of those 16 Olympic sports, 11 are offering either direct or indirect qualifying opportunities for the Rio 2016 Games.

"The programme is now closed. And already 52 per cent of our 6,000 athletes have qualified for their events."

The pace of building is swift. I went on a tour of the main venues in Baku on Independence Day - work continued unabated on the Aquatics Centre, which will house a 50m competition pool and a diving pool, as well as a pool measuring 51.47m - to be precise - capable of being divided into two 25m pools in future and made available to the general public. There will be technology to vary their depth to enable youngsters' swimming or old people's exercise.

Across the way from the Aquatics Centre work goes on to create the venues for water polo, beach volleyball and football.

The National Gymnastics Centre, on the other side of the road to the apartments that will form the Athletes' Village, is already complete and has passed muster by hosting this year's Rhythmic Gymnastics European Championships. The Crystal Hall - venue for the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest - merely requires adaption to host volleyball, boxing and taekwondo. In the meantime it awaits Jennifer Lopez and Will.I.Am...

The National Gymnastics Arena is set to be one of the most impressive venues of Baku 2015 ©Broadway Maylan 2

Given the relative short notice of its needs, Baku 2015 has had to adopt a pragmatic attitude to securing two of the flagship Olympic sports, athletics and swimming. Track and field will be on offer through the European Athletics Team Championships 3rd League, involving 15 national teams including Azerbaijan, while the swimming event will involve athletes aged between 16 to 18.

"Athletics and swimming are big sports, and it's important that they are on the programme," Clegg said.  "It was difficult because they both had existing commitments in terms of other events. You can't expect too come into the calendar in the space of 30 months and expect sports to give up contracts that they have signed in good faith."

The chief operating officer, who spent four years as chief executive of Ipswich Town Football Club - and worked with the combustible figure of Roy Keane when he was manager there - went on to explain the benefits he believes will fall to European, and also National Olympic Committees (NOC) once the Games have established themselves.

"The European Games will have positive benefits for EOCs and NOCs," he said. "At the moment, NOCs are coming under increasing pressure of reduced Government spending on sport.  If we ensure we have a really good experience in Baku and we secure the future of the competition, it can create a totally new revenue stream.

"If the athletes want to come, the broadcasters will want to broadcast, and the commercial gains will flow from that.

"There are also benefits in terms of preparing officials for the Olympic Games.  At the Olympic Games, the king person operating within the NOC is the Chef de Mission.  They have to make some really important decisions which can make the difference between athletes getting medals or not.

"If you want to have someone in that position who sees the job as a real performance issue, rather than someone in a blazer, how do you prepare people for that?  The European Games is a great opportunity to prepare people for the Olympics."

Patrick Hickey (left), head of the European Olympic Committees and architect of the European Games, has received strong support for his idea from Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev (right), who also leads the National Olympic Committee ©Baku 2015

Last week Baku 2015 announced an agreement with the Arab States Broadcasting Union (ASBU) which will mean guaranteed coverage of the 17 days of Games in 20 countries across the Middle East and North Africa.

The deal ensures coverage will be available in Algeria, Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

Clegg commented at the time: "This agreement is proof that interest in the inaugural European Games extends beyond the shores of our continent and we are confident that with more agreements in the pipeline that the European Games will attract a truly global audience."

Assessing the overall picture of television coverage, he added: "We have made significant progress. As well as the agreement with the ASBU, we have agreements now in place in Turkey, Belgium, Romania, Hungary, German and Austria. My expectation is that there will be coverage across the whole of Europe for the European Games, and I am also confident there will be coverage in every continent of the world.

"While it would have been preferable to have the highest level of swimming and athletics at the Games it has not hugely affected broadcasters' interests in covering these Games.

"In terms of tickets, we have 900,000 to sell and it is going to be challenging because you have to recognise there is not a great track record of selling lots of tickets here for events other than football or pop concerts.  We need to make sure prices are affordable in order to make sure we can fill the stands. That is the challenge.

"We have limited space in the city, and the number of international visitors to the Games will not be huge. You will be talking about dedicated sports fans, friends and family and participating athletes. Anyone with a ticket, or evidence that they have bought a ticket, will be able to stay in the country for 60 days before the Opening Ceremony and 30 days after without a visa. That is huge progress in this country. It opens it right up. And the intention is that these Games, and the attention they will generate will help change people's perception of this country."

By Baku hosting the first-ever European Games next year it will open Azerbaijan up to more international visitors than ever before, it is claimed ©Getty Images

The European Games will be the first international sports event in which a disability sport - visibility-impaired judo - will be totally integrated. "The rationale here is innovation," Clegg explained. "We have tried to do things that are different. I believe that involving a Paralympic sport in this way is the right thing to do and it gives the strongest possible message to disability sport in this country about integration."

Asked about the future of the European Games, he responded: "That is a matter for the EOC. I know they have spoken to a number of countries now. The next Games will be in 2019, and my expectation is that the EOC will be in a position to announce the next host city early next year.

"You couldn't wish for a better springboard for the European Games than Azerbaijan. But I suspect there will be a scaling down in the process.

"We are not trying to create an Olympic Games here. We are trying to create something that is unique and right and appropriate for Europe. Of course there is no history in this event, no facts on the shelf that we can look at and see what happened last time. We are creating sporting history for Europe here. The challenge is to be innovative and to create the best and most sustainable model for the EOC in terms of future European Games."

O'Callaghan took up a statistic highlighted by Clegg regarding the fall in the percentage of European medallists at the Olympics. Between the Seoul Games of 1988 and the Beijing Games of 2008, that figure fell from 74 to 38 per cent.

"If you were a student and your grades fell from 74 to 38, that would represent failure," said O'Callaghan, formerly head of communications for European Athletics. "There are separate Games for Pan-America, the Caribbean, Africa, Asia - and countries from these areas have been increasing their share of the Olympic medals. In future it can be a huge step towards the Olympics to have taken a medal in the European Games.

"Two years ago the European Games didn't exist. No sports had confirmed they would take part in it. Many said 'Yes, we are interested, please keep us informed.' So the pace of change has been quite frightening.

"People said to us beforehand that the sporting calendar was too crowded to allow a European Games. It is very busy of course, but we have found a really good slot.

"There will be 17 days of competition, which will mean three weekends - something that will work well for television broadcasting. There will be a total of 253 medals on offer.

"The key question we had to ask was: How can we assure the best athletes of Europe come to these Games?

"NOCs can't make athletes compete. So how do guarantee? We didn't want to go down the route of prize money. We felt there was a huge value in competing at the first European Games, and having the chance to become the first ever champion.

"But to have 11 sports offering either direct or indirect qualification for the Rio Olympics is huge for us."

Baku 2015 director of sport Piece O'Callaghan (left), seen here with four-time Olympic gold medallist Michael Johnson, believes the European Games is an important addition to the calendar that will help the continent's athletes develop ©Facebook

Boxing and wrestling were the two most recent sports to announce qualification opportunities, which they did on October 10.

Patrick Hickey, President of the EOC and a member of the International Olympic Committee's ruling Executive Board, said: "I am delighted to see that the sports programme at Baku 2015 continues to move in the right direction with boxing and wrestling now confirmed as part of their road to Rio 2016.

"Part of the European Olympic Committees' vision for the European Games was to create an elite competition that offered athletes increased opportunities to test themselves at the very highest level, so we are very pleased that Baku 2015 is delivering exactly that."

Clegg added: "The fact that so many international sports federations are including the inaugural European Games as part of their Olympic Games qualification process is testament to what a top quality event we will have here in Azerbaijan.

"The European Olympic Committees and President Patrick Hickey have ensured their vision of a major multi-sport event for the entire continent will be one of great value that will see Europe's finest athletes improve their chances of competing successfully at future Olympic Games."

In boxing, athletes who win a medal in each of the 10 men's weight categories at Baku 2015 will win a place at the 2015 World Boxing Championships. The top ranked boxers at that competition will then win a quota place for their NOC at Rio 2016.

In wrestling, European athletes and NOCs are obliged to compete in the Baku 2015 European Games as the first part of their qualification journey to Rio 2016.

O'Callaghan added: "The European Federations have completely embraced the vision of the European Games and it is a reflection of the world-class competition we will have at Baku 2015 that 11 of the 16 Olympic sports on our programme now include qualification opportunities for the next Olympic Games.

"Boxing and wrestling will be two of the most popular sports at the first European Games, so it is great to know that many of the athletes will begin their road to Rio 2016 here."

The 11 sports now offering Rio 2016 qualification opportunities are archery, athletics, boxing, cycling, shooting, swimming, table tennis, taekwondo, triathlon, wrestling and volleyball.

There has now to be a realistic expectation now that the Extraordinary International Olympic Committee session in Monaco from December 8 and 9 to discuss Olympic Agenda 2020 will encourage NOCs to make increasing use of the European Games as one of their key qualifying events.

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, covered the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics as chief feature writer for insidethegames, having covered the previous five summer Games, and four winter Games, for The Independent. He has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, The Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. His latest book Foul Play – the Dark Arts of Cheating in Sport (Bloomsbury £8.99) is available at the insidethegames.biz shop. To follow him on Twitter click here.