Next month, the gleaming Dinamo Stadium in Minsk will provide the setting for the first Europe versus United States athletics encounter in a generation.

We are forever being told that governing bodies in sport always have the best interests of athletes at heart.

I’m afraid my hackles were raised this week by an item on social media.

British sports ministers come and go, like English batsmen on a bad day against the Aussies.

As we were reminded yesterday by what happened at the Birmingham International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) Diamond League meeting, sport has the technology in place to establish even the narrowest of winning margins.

Often sporting multiple earrings and enough hair gel to open a salon, Australia’s Nick Kyrgios cuts an unusual figure on the tennis scene.

Last month, Uzbekistan wrestler Artur Taymazov became the 60^th athlete retrospectively disqualified from the London 2012 Olympic Games under the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) sample retesting programme.

The death of a Tokyo 2020 construction worker from heatstroke in the last few days has again cast the spotlight on the danger of extreme weather conditions.

Nelson Mandela was bang on the button when he declared: "Sport has the power to change the world. It has the power to inspire, the power to unite people in a way that little else does. It speaks to youth in a language they understand. Sports can create hope, where there was once only despair. It is more powerful than Governments in breaking down racial barriers. It laughs in the face of all types of discrimination."

It is mid-August, the height of the European holiday season; work stations at the International Olympic Committee (IOC)’s glassy new headquarters building in Lausanne are likely to be more sparsely populated than usual.

Apart from forecasting rain in Sandnes last weekend it was also possible to foresee a squall of family rows as a number of small, excited boys left the Extra supermarket with arms signed by the store’s illustrious sporting regulars - the Ingebrigtsen brothers.

It is approaching 50 days since the International Olympic Committee (IOC) rubber-stamped the suspension of the International Boxing Association’s (AIBA) recognition as the Olympic governing body for the sport, a decision hardly steeped in surprise.

“We are standing against mistrust, we are standing against selfishness, we are standing against any form of discrimination, we are standing against isolation, we are standing against division, we are standing against fragmentation."

Amidst the euphoria of this summer’s cricket World Cup and Ashes series, a FIFA Women's World Cup, an epic Wimbledon finals weekend and Shane Lowry winning The Open on home territory you had perhaps have been forgiven for having blinked and missed the "One Year to Go" celebrations ahead of the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo.