There’s some banter flying around on social media this week following Sir Steve Redgrave’s tongue-in-cheek assessment of whether, as was suggested to him, he was the greatest Olympian of all time.

As we approach the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death on May 3, it seems fitting to observe that the great writer – whose play The Tempest provided part of the inspiration for the London 2012 Opening Ceremony - bequeathed us the perfect summary of the Tokyo 2020 logo saga: Much Ado About Nothing.

The magnificent Panathinaiko Stadium in Athens is where representatives of Rio de Janeiro will tomorrow formally take charge of the Olympic flame for 2016 after Greek rower Katerina Nikolaidou has lit a special golden cauldron to end a journey of 2,235 kilometres around Greece.

As votes were being cast to elect the new President of SportAccord on Friday (April 22), leading candidate Patrick Baumann could be spotted trotting around the Swiss Tech Convention Centre, chatting to delegates while periodically taking phone calls.

“Kenya… Kenya beat Fiji in the final of the Singapore Sevens”.

The entire room waited with bated breath as former SportAccord President Marius Vizer took the microphone during this week’s Association of Summer Olympic International Federations (ASOIF) General Assembly.

The Rio 2016 Olympic flame is now well underway in its majestic progress across Greece before making for Brazil, but there is something about the surroundings in Ancient Olympia that make the start of the journey very special indeed. The lighting ceremony has the capacity to inspire many emotions, but for the athletes of the world it serves as the ultimate clarion call for the Games.

Adam Scott regrets he will be unable to attend the Rio 2016 Olympics golf competition owing to a subsequent engagement.

It is hardly a case of ‘Crisis? What Crisis?’

Back in the early sixties, when it became known that high-altitude Mexico City would be staging the 1968 Olympic Games, the estimable but irascible Chris Brasher declared in The Observer: “There will be those who die...!”

Truth, wisdom dictates, must invariably lie towards the middle of two polar opposite views. So if two sides are telling you something completely different about a given topic, you can be fairly sure that neither are totally right and neither are totally wrong.

I was pleased to read the report on FIFA and Human Rights from Professor John G Ruggie of Harvard University.

Finally, Budapest 2024 has decided to join the other three candidate cities on the start line.

Before I can, like all of you, rejoice in the upcoming celebration of the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, my thoughts are elsewhere.