Few things capture the imagination like supporting Great Britain's medal winning heroes at the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Who can forget the steely resolve of Sir Chris Hoy as he became the most successful GB Olympian of all time, Nicola Adams winning the first ever women's boxing gold medal, Jonnie Peacock powering to gold or Ellie Simmonds' dominance in the pool and of course her smile that can light up a room.

But it's important not to be complacent over the number of medals and wealth of inspirational moments the nation has enjoyed in recent years.

You only have to cast your mind back to Atlanta 1996 to recall how difficult things were before the advent of National Lottery funding for high performance sport. Great Britain experienced a sobering Olympic Games winning a solitary gold to finish a lowly 36th in the medal table and there were even tales of athletes selling their kit to make some money.

But that low point proved to be a transformational moment for high performance sport in Great Britain. It resulted in the creation of UK Sport in 1997 and the decision to invest National Lottery funds in to sport.

This funding has turbo-charged the sporting system in Great Britain to such an extent we are now among the sporting super powers at the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Prior to Sydney 2000 I'd been to four Olympic Games as either manager or coach with the sailing team. We had won at least one medal at each of them and also scored many top eight positions.

There's no doubt we had some talented athletes and the beginnings of a high performance system that could deliver success, but we were still being consistently outgunned by the bigger, richer nations.

Less than 20 years ago at Atlanta 1996, Great Britain won just a solitary gold medal courtesy of rowers Steve Redgrave and Matthew Pinsent ©Getty Images




The advent of National Lottery funding changed all that - at last we had the resources to compete on equal terms. I was Deputy Chef de Mission of the GB Olympic team in Sydney 2000 when we saw the first evidence of the rapid progress being made as GB finished 10th in the Olympic medal table, and in sailing we won three gold and two silver medals.

Fast forward to London and UK Sport had developed a world class high performance system culminating in Team GB and ParalympicsGB finishing third in the medal tables at London 2012 with an outstanding 65 and 120 medals won respectively.

The impact goes beyond that though, with London 2012 creating 213 Olympic and Paralympic medallists, each a wonderful role model, committing to inspiring the next generation by visiting schools and community groups. At the last count more than 10,000 visits have been made.

After London 2012, surveys showed the achievement of GB's athletes ranked alongside national institutions such as the NHS and the Armed Forces in fostering national pride.

The outstanding success continued at Sochi 2014, which was the most successful Winter Olympic Games for 90 years, and best Paralympic performance for 30 years with Kelly Gallagher and her guide Charlotte Evans winning ParalympicsGB's first ever winter gold medal.

The journey doesn't stop there though, we're seeking to build an even stronger more sustainable high performance system for Rio 2016 and future Summer and Winter Games.

National Lottery Funding in British high performance sport has led to huge success at recent Olympic and Paralympic Games, including Kelly Gallagher and her guide Charlotte Evans winning ParalympicsGB's first ever winter gold medal at Sochi 2014 ©Getty Images


The sustained investment has allowed this country to attract and retain some of the world's best coaches and support staff, help develop elite training centres and deliver, alongside our science medicine and technology arm, the English institute of Sport, the talent ID campaigns that have fast-tracked athletes like Helen Glover, Lutalo Muhammad and Lizzy Yarnold to Olympic glory.

It's also worth reflecting on some of the other statistics; since National Lottery funding began it has supported more than 4,500 athletes on UK Sport's World Class Programme and between them they have won a staggering 633 Olympic and Paralympic medals.

I've always said that to win consistently at the highest level you need a steady stream of talented athletes, a system that nurtures and trains them and the resources to do the job. The National Lottery provides the fuel that feeds the engine.

Without it I believe GB would still be languishing at the lower end of the medal table with a pool of frustrated, talented athletes looking enviously over at their more privileged rivals thinking, if only...

Rod Carr was chief executive of the Royal Yachting Association from 2000 to 2010, having previously been racing manager and performance director, team manager at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, and team coach at Los Angeles 1984, Seoul 1988 and Barcelona 1992. He was Deputy Chef de Mission for the whole of Team GB at Sydney 2000. He joined the UK Sport Board in 2005 and was appointed chair in 2013.

As a former parliamentarian Lord Coe - then plain Seb - knows what it was like to fight an election. So he will be well suited for a bout of tasty political scrapping having formally declared his candidacy for the Presidency of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF).

Doubtless his familiarity with the hustings will stand him in good stead in the upcoming set-to with one-time chum Sergey Bubka when the 213-strong IAAF electorate go to the polls in August of next year to determine a successor to long-serving former Senegalese judge Lamine Diack.

And the fact that London 2012's award-winning spinmeister Mike Lee has been brought in as Coe's PR "campaign manager" suggests that his Lordship is aware that the contest may not be quite the shoo-in many anticipate.

Ukraine's pole vault icon promises to fight Coe tooth and nail for one of the most prestigious posts in global sport. The word is that he has started to garner support, notably from allies in Eastern Europe, and will be suggesting that Coe's many other commitments undermine his ability to do fulfil the role effectively.

Coe certainly seems be treating his campaign as seriously as he did when elected (albeit for just one term) as Conservative MP for Falmouth and Camborne in 1992.

Hence the acquisition of Lee to the Coe cause. After setting up his own agency, Vero Communications, post-2012, ex-UEFA spokesman Lee has built a formidable portfolio which includes the successful, if highly controversial, championing of Qatar for the 2022 football World Cup, the Rio Olympics in 2016, Pyeonchang's 2018 Winter Games, the 2018 Summer Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires, the inclusion of rugby sevens into the Olympic programme and significantly the election of Britain's Brian Cookson as President of of the International Cycling Union (UCI).

Seb Coe announced his candidacy for President of the IAAF where he will battle with Ukrainian Sergey Bubka ©Getty Images

Lee's influence is already evident with British Olympic Association (BOA) chair Coe, 58, calling a media conference at BOA headquarters tomorrow to unveil his IAAF presidential  "manifesto" for a campaign which even has its own logo: SEBCOE2015.

It is likely to be one which includes the-reshaping of athletics to appeal to a younger audience.

"I want us to have a renewed focus on engagement with young people and a real understanding of the global landscape that is shaping the next generation of athletes and fans," he tells us.

"If we are guided by these principles as we review and reform our sport then I am convinced that athletics can enter a new era with confidence and ensure a bright and exciting future."

Fighting talk. Just as well because 50-year-old Bubka will also have a heavyweight in his corner. Literally so - the giant Vitali Klitschko, the now retired former world champion and courageous anti-Putin political activist who has become Mayor of Ukrainian capital Kyiv.

At the height of the Ukrainian civil unrest they were on different sides of the nation's political divide, but have now united with "Dr Ironfist" backing Bubka all the way in a bout which could turn nasty.

For there are reports that Bubka is prepared to "fight dirty" by focusing on the many and varied hats worn by Coe, and even suggesting that his day jobs could bring a conflict of interests.

Could this become the athletics' very own grudge match? If so, it is one fight fan Coe will relish.

Once he and Bubka were the best of buddies, but latterly the relationship has cooled.

Sergey Bubka will be in the race with Seb Coe to become the new President of the IAAF ©Getty Images



Yet they have much in common. Both are Olympic legends and prolific world record breakers in their respective disciplines; have served in their national parliaments and are IAAF vice-presidents who head their domestic National Olympic Committees (NOC).

However Bubka's personal reputation took a knock when he backed the wrong side during Ukraine's political in-fighting and he also received flak as President of the Ukraine NOC when one of his senior officials was suspended over a London 2012 ticket-selling scam.

And the phenomenal pole vaulter certainly set the bar too high by challenging for the Presidency of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), of which he is a member, getting only four votes out of 92 in a second round ko last year.

This Presidency is a perch many believe Coe could occupy one day but first he must to get on to the IOC itself. Becoming head honcho of world athletics would automatically guarantee him the seat that could be his springboard for a loftier ambition.

Much may depend on who 81-year-old Diack wants to succeed him as IAAF chief after 16 years. For some time it was thought Coe was to be the anointed son and he certainly gained brownie points by insisting that London's Olympic Stadium remained a home for athletics after 2012, and a venue capable of hosting a World Championships, which it will do in 2017.

But Bubka clearly has other ideas by putting it about that unlike himself, Coe would be only a part-time President.

This summer Coe was strongly tipped to become chairman of the BBC Trust but after indicating initial interest he declined to put himself forward, declaring: "On reflection, I haven't the capacity and I now want to concentrate on my current commitments and the IAAF election. As everyone knows, athletics is in my DNA."

He also ducked out of another potential electoral tussle, repeatedly rejecting overtures from Downing Street to run for Mayor of London because he preferred to eye the IAAF prize, insisting: "My future is in sports politics, not real politics."

Sergey Bubka has claimed that Seb Coe's roles in other organisations such as the British Olympic Association will have dire effects on his ability to perform as a full-time President of the IAAF ©Getty Images



But even as a no-Coe area, sport could figure prominently in the 2016 Mayoral race.

The former Olympics Minister Dame Tessa Jowell, surely the best-equipped among the declared runners to become Labour's candidate, believes that if selected she could be facing a shock choice from the sporting world in the battle to succeed Boris Johnson.

Jowell tells insidethegames there is growing speculation in Westminster circles that the West Ham United vice-chairman Karren Brady - now Baroness Brady of Knightsbridge - is being wooed by the Tories as their choice to stand in 2016. "The feeling is that their candidate will come from the House of Lords and there is a lot of talk about approaches being made to Karren Brady," says the woman who as Culture Secretary first persuaded a reluctant Tony Blair to bid for the London Olympics during Labour's administration - and was instrumental in getting Coe appointed to lead the London bid after American Barbara Cassani unfortunately proved a square peg in the Olympic rings.

It is no secret that, having repeatedly failed to persuade Coe to run, the Conservatives are anxious to field a high profile personality to try and follow the idiosyncratic but popular Bojo.

Brady, 47, has the profile. The "First Lady of Football", previously managing director at Birmingham City and currently right hand woman to Labour peer Lord Sugar on TV's "The Apprentice" is, like Jowell, London-born. She is politically ambitious and is a close friend of both David Cameron and George Osborne. She also sits on Sport England. 

Should she be interested the timing could be right as by the time of the election in May 2016 she will have overseen West Ham's move into the Olympic Stadium, a remarkably benevolent deal which she helped orchestrate. However she would face a formidable opponent in 67-year-old Jowell, by far the most electable of those vying to be the Labour candidate, who include London MP's David Lammy and Diane Abbot and former politician and rugby international Derek Wyatt.

Karren Brady looks like a likely candidate to run for Mayor of London after Seb Coe refused the opportunity to run in order to focus on his campaign for IAAF Presidency ©Getty Images



Jowell says she often chatted with Coe when they were on the 2012 Board about the possibility of them both running for Mayor. "We are good mates and joked that maybe we should do it as a job share!"

So what about those other jobs? Are they really a crucial factor in the IAAF election? Does Coe have too many fish to fry?

The executive chairman of CSM Sport and Entertainment is also global advisor to Nike and works with Chelsea FC, as well as a columnist for The Daily Telegraph.

He is also listed as strategic adviser and ambassador of PruHealth and PruProtect's wellness programme 'Vitality' and Senior Independent Adviser, Deutsche Bank UK.

But he has promised that if he is elected to become the first British IAAF President since Lord Burghley, the 1928 Olympic 400 metres hurdles champion who held the position from 1946 to 1976, then he will devote himself to that role..

Which leads to the question of whether he could remain in one of his other principal posts as BOA chair. This must be highly doubtful.

If he does vacate it after the Rio Olympics then a strong candidate to take it on would be the former Sports and Olympics Minister Sir Hugh Robertson.

He is known to be considering standing down as an MP at the next election and has the pedigree for a top job in sports administration. It would make him the second ex-Tory Sports Minister, after Lord Colin Moynihan, to run the BOA.

Meantime it's seconds out for Seb v Sergey showdown. Can't wait. Ding, ding.

Alan Hubbard is an award-winning sports columnist for The Independent on Sunday and a former sports editor of The Observer. He has covered a total of 16 Summer and Winter Games, 10 Commonwealth Games, several football World Cups and world title fights from Atlanta to Zaire.

One of the most exciting areas of the Agenda 2020 reform process due to culminate in Monte Carlo in a week's time concerns proposed changes to the Olympic sports programme.

With the programme more flexible, and with host nations having increased say on what sports are showcased, all sorts of sports and discipline have seen the signals and are jostling for position keen to compete on the biggest stage at Tokyo 2020 and beyond.

These include some that have long been clamouring for an Olympic debut - or return - such as baseball/softball, squash and karate, as well as others, like surfing and skateboarding, who were realistically nowhere near being seriously considered as recently as a year ago. 

My sense of surprise after 36 hours in Ashgabat, the first capital east of the Caspian Sea to the north of Iran, was augmented by the fact that I had just read Chapter One of The Lost Heart of Asia by travel writer Colin Thubron.

Published in 1994, the text describes Turkmenistan as he found it at the start of the post-Soviet era.

"Ashkhabad...evoked no feelings at all," he wrote. "Scanned from any height, the city looked impermanent, almost pastoral: a shanty-town whose tin and asbestos roofs drowned in trees against the vaporous Kopet Dagh [a mountain range]."

The clue was in the date: 1994. Yes, as we drove around the city in our media coach, with curtained windows, we did glimpse a very occasional block or two that might have answered to Thubron's description.

But otherwise the fabric of the city, at least the quite considerable areas that we were shown, has been utterly, utterly transformed in the space of two decades, utilising the proceeds from selling Turkmenistan's extensive natural gas and oil resources.

I cannot think of a place, outside the Greek islands at least, whose stock of buildings is so universally white, and this was not an effect contrived by the recently fallen snow.

Wide city street after wide city street is flanked by solid, new-built, eleven or twelve-storey, white apartment blocks.

Ashgabat is renowned for its white marble buildings, many of which look particularly striking at night ©AFP/Getty Images



Ashgabat, said our guide Batyr - "Call me Bat" - is "in the Guinness records book for having more marble buildings than any other city", and I can well believe it.

The impression of uniformity was accentuated because shops and cafés seemed, as far as I could tell to be very discreetly signposted, certainly by western standards; I don't recall seeing any big store-front or showroom-style windows.

Those edifices that did stand out tended to be monuments, a few upmarket hotels and (surprisingly) Ministries. A taste for gold-coloured domes and gold-coloured statues, in contrast to the white, was also evident.

The overall effect - particularly given the energy with which the country under President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov is endeavouring to market itself as a host of major sports events - is of a Central Asian Doha, but with elements of a central Asian Berlin and a central Asian Milton Keynes thrown in.

After a while, however, the surprise, even wonder, engendered by one of the world's most extraordinary construction sprees turns into a sense of disorientation.

This is caused, I think, by the contrast between things that have changed to the nth degree since the Soviet period and things that have changed, you suspect, very little.

For example, while the apartment blocks look many times more solid and comfortable than any Soviet era tower block I have ever encountered, and while the urban streets are thronged with Nissans and Toyotas guzzling petrol priced (according to Bat) at four-and-a-half litres a dollar, the city's layout remains, I thought, eerily reminiscent of a Communist capital.

Turkmenistan flags flying near the Independence Monument in Ashgabat, one of the central sites of the capital ©AFP/Getty Images



Based on what our party observed, moreover, Berdimuhamedov - whose picture is everywhere - appears to enjoy the sort of fawning adulation among his entourage that one used to associate with Communist leaders.

Again, surprisingly, there is very little street advertising evident – which I remember being the first thing that struck me the first time I set foot behind the old Iron Curtain.

(Having said that, a sizeable building with three big screens on its façade, one of them featuring Mickey Mouse, is, I was told, a toy store.)

There is, it was confirmed, no McDonald's, though there is, apparently, a native Turcoman burger joint.

Our visit to the carpet museum, and an impressive 301 square metre, wall-mounted rug, also hinted at a reluctance to re-write history until it was officially rewritten.

This monster, our guide (not Bat) said proudly, was the biggest hand-made carpet in the world, as vouched for, once again, by that Guinness records book.

And yet, a few minutes later, the same guide informed us that a new, bigger, 378 square metre "giant carpet" had been made, also in Turkmenistan, in 2011.

In another trait that made you think Turcoman time must move in two dimensions - either at express pace or not at all - extract a camera in the centre of town and you are very likely to be confronted by a soldier or policeman telling you that photography of whatever it is that caught your eye is not permitted.

This happened to us, most surprisingly, at a statue of Lenin that we were told was one of just three things, along with a bank and a flour factory, that survived a devastatingly destructive earthquake in 1948.

These photo-stopping officials were, for the most part, friendly enough. It made me wonder if this was not partly a make-work scheme for soldiers of a country recognised by the United Nations as the first neutral state in the world.

This gesture is commemorated by the grandiose and wonderfully-named Arch of Neutrality.

We were in Ashgabat to witness the signing of an historic agreement opening the door for athletes from the Oceania region to participate for the first time in the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games (AIMAG), which the city is hosting in 2017.

Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) President Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah - clearly as impressed with the city's construction boom as any of us, and no doubt more familiar - suggested at one point that all Ashgabat needed to make itself a worthy host of even bigger events was experience.

Turkmenistan's desire to host more events has been complemented by sporting success, including for sambo player Gulbadam Babamuratova (second left) who won the first gold medal of the Asian Beach Games earlier this month ©OCA



In other words, the infrastructure is here: though the current airport seemed underpowered, a new one is expected to be ready in 2016.

Based on the venues so far built within the $5 billion (£3.5 billion/€4 billion) Olympic Complex that is taking good shape now near the centre of town, you would have to conclude that the Sheikh is right.

The complex's new velodrome looked particularly impressive and it will be interesting to see whether the idea of linking venues via an on-site monorail now becomes de rigueur.

The continent is, of course, about to embark on a period in which a particularly high proportion of the biggest international sporting events are set to be staged there.

The 2018, 2020 and, more than likely 2022 Olympic Games, the 2022 World Cup, the 2019 Rugby World Cup, the list goes on.

"Welcome to Asia - now to 2022," Sheikh Ahmad proclaimed, as ebullient as I have seen him.

"This continent has grown to become a sporting superpower," the visiting Sebastian Coe, no mean sporting superpower himself, asserted.

In terms of event hosting, he too was right.

David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 World Cup and London 2012. Owen's Twitter feed can be accessed here.

As a columnist for The Globe and Mail in Toronto, Cathal Kelly ticked all the boxes with his recent reflections upon United States baseball star Alex Rodriguez and the conundrum of performance-enhancing drugs which his recent bust has provoked.

Kelly's teaser tweet, linked to his article, did the job: "Alex Rodriguez did drugs. So would I. And so would you."

Reports in the Miami Herald earlier this month detailed the New York Yankees fabled third baseman's confession to the Drug Enforcement Administration in return for criminal immunity in the Biogenesis PED case.

According to the report, Mr. Rodriguez - who has never publicly admitted his systematic doping - was spending $12,000 (£7,500/€9,500) per month on human-growth hormone, testosterone cream and "vitamin" injections.

The essence of Kelly's argument was this: highly paid professional athletes will naturally do whatever it takes to maintain their careers.

Alex Rodriguez, of the New York Yankees, has been suspended for doping abuse. The Globe and Mail columnist Cathal Kelly doesn't particularly care ©Getty Images

"I believe it for the same reason any of us believes anything speculative," Kelly writes.  "Because were I in their position, that's what I would do...

"I don't care if they do drugs, because I don't care to police the behaviour of others. If I feel drugs are ruining the game - any game - I'll watch something else. Mostly, I don't want to know."

Kelly adds: "I would also quite happily, and without any sense of shame, bald-facedly lie about it to anyone who asked. People don't want to hear the truth about this, They don't care one way or the other. They prove it by continuing to watch baseball."

You might describe this as the argument of a devil's advocate. Maybe, though, it's simply what Cathal Kelly believes, and he is entitled to his extremely well expressed opinion, which deftly summarises a widely held attitude towards cheating in sport which, inevitably, refers back to cheating in life:

"If you believe you'd do better, I'd wonder if you've ever cut a corner?.. This is no different than that. Athletes are entertainers. Drugs make them more entertaining."

Kelly dismisses the opinions of anyone other than athletes who have found themselves with similar prompts and temptations to A-Rod: "I'm only interested in hearing from those who faced the choice."

Canada's multiple Olympic medallist kayaker Adam van Koeverden has written a strong riposte to Kelly's column in The Globe and Mail ©Getty Images

Well Kelly has had his wish, in the form of an equally cogent response in The Globe and Mail from Canada's Adam van Koeverden, Canada's sprint kayaker who won Olympic gold and bronze in 2004 and silver at the last two Games.

I read that Sepp Blatter is furious about the International Olympic Committee (IOC)'s reluctance to allow him to remain a member beyond its mandatory retirement age of 80.

This raises the following question: if true, is he furious enough to exercise his nuclear option by allowing the 2022 World Cup to clash with the 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games, to the considerable detriment of the latter?

If he does, the FIFA President would lay himself open to charges of being self-seeking, or even breaking his word.

This is because he promised in November 2013 that the 2022 tournament would not be hosted in January or February.

There it is, clear as day on the FIFA website: "We will not play the World Cup in January and February.

"It would be totally disrespectful to the Olympic family and organisation when they have the Winter Olympic Games in January and February.

"We have also consulted our economic and media partners.

"So many different partners are with FIFA and the Olympic Games so we can not have the partners in two competitions at the same time."

Blatter would also risk offending China - widely seen as a future World Cup host in waiting, not to mention one of the most powerful nations on earth.

This is because Beijing has only Almaty to beat to win the right to stage those 2022 Games.

This would be a development of some symbolism, coming only 14 years after the Chinese capital hosted the 2008 Summer Games.

Moving the FIFA World Cup to January or February could cause a huge conflict with Sepp Blatter and China, as Beijing is one of just two bidding cities for the 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games ©Beijing2022



The thing is though, you hardly need superhuman powers to see that, if the blazing Qatari summer is to be avoided, as many actors in this interminable sporting soap opera seem to desire, January/February is a pretty sensible option.

This is because it would probably be less disruptive to the European leagues, where most money in football is concentrated and where most of the biggest stars play, than a date towards the end of the year, as it would coincide, in part, with the midwinter break.

Blatter, moreover, might not actually have to press his nuclear button.

The IOC's age limit is the subject of the 37th of 40 recommendations to be put to the IOC membership for approval at a Session in Monte Carlo on December 8 and 9.

When I asked an IOC source whether this would be done in a series of Yes/No votes, or if members had a right to make changes to the text put in front of them, I was told, "they can amend should they wish".

This being the case, if word was quietly spread to the effect that if the IOC were intent on obliging Blatter to retire as a full member on 31 December 2016 when he might still very well be FIFA President, then he, Blatter, would regard himself as no longer beholden to his pledge on the timing of the World Cup, I would think it might quickly spark pandemonium among the winter sports brigade.

This might, in turn, prompt IOC members to conclude that, on balance, it might be preferable to let the Swiss septuagenarian have his way, by amending the recommendation which, at present, would allow a one-time extension for up to five members who would otherwise have to retire at 70, but not those, like the FIFA President, for whom 80 is the current limit.

Blatter has this status by virtue of bye-law 2.7.1 to Rule 16 of the Olympic Charter, which maintains the age-limit of 80 for members elected, as he was, before 11 December 1999.

The actual wording of the bye-law states that any IOC member elected before this date "must retire by the end of the calendar year during which he reaches the age of 80, unless he was elected before 1966". [my italics]

This brazenly unexplained exception - now redundant, since the senior IOC member, Russia's Vitaly Smirnov, was elected in 1971 - enabled João Havelange, Blatter's predecessor as FIFA President, who joined world sport's most powerful club as long ago as 1963, to remain an IOC member until he was 95.

Sepp Blatter could potentially use the threat of a World Cup/Winter Olympics clash to amend the rule which will cause him to lose his IOC membership in 2016 ©Getty Images



Perhaps the fact that the IOC was willing to allow the previous FIFA President, who represented Brazil at the Olympics in both swimming and water polo, to remain a member into advanced old age explains his successor's alleged fury.

I struggle to understand otherwise why Blatter appears to attach so much importance to his IOC post - unless that is he fears the issue might be used against him in next year's FIFA Presidential election.

After all, other trusted FIFA colleagues - Issa Hayatou of Cameroon and Lydia Nsekera of Burundi - are also IOC members and could be delegated to.

Moreover, 81-year-old Lamine Diack appears to be presiding over the quintessential Olympic sport of athletics much as before, even though he has now been moved upstairs to honorary IOC member status on account of his age. (Honorary members do not have voting rights)

Yet the way the FIFA President spoke out against age limits at the IOC Session in Sochi in February, arguing that imposing an age limit was an act of discrimination, suggests his IOC membership does matter to him considerably.

I don't know if he will do it.

It could backfire embarrassingly and his busy schedule leaves him with little time to gauge the likely effect on his fellow IOC members of any attempt to bring the 2022 World Cup timing issue into play.

The Club World Cup begins in Morocco the day after the Session.

If the gambit worked, however, and he were able to bend the IOC to his will, what a prelude it would make to a potentially tense FIFA Executive Committee meeting in Marrakech on December 18 and 19.

Blatter is already expected to announce there the exact size of the additional bonus for football development that national associations can look forward to receiving in the early part of 2015.

It could all add up to an impressive counter-thrust after one of the stickiest patches of his 16-year FIFA Presidency.

But it would be a dangerous game and require a cool head and a steady hand to pull off.

David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 World Cup and London 2012. Owen's Twitter feed can be accessed here.

Back in the seventies a few of us were chatting to the late boxing promoter Harry Levene about his recent holiday in South Africa, a country then still in the vicious stranglehold of apartheid.

"How was it, Harry?" we enquired.

"Wonderful," he enthused. "Fantastic country. Lovely weather, great food, superb wines, marvellous lifestyle. Do you know, when you fly into Johannesburg you look down and see that every home has a swimming pool. Honest, I don't know what them blacks have got to complain about."

Fast forward to 2014  and we discover that such pitiful dinosaurs are far from extinct.

Dave Whelan, the chairman of football club Wigan Athletic, has had to apologise for making equally outlandish comments about Jewish people, among other crass observations, while remaining adamantly unapologetic about hiring as the Championship side's new manager Malky Mackay, currently under investigation by the Football Association for sending a series of outrageous tweets that were not only racist, but disgracefully sexist and homophobic.

A sample of the axed Cardiff boss's charmless musings includes the following:

On South Korean footballers:" *** chinkys. There's enough dogs in Cardiff for us all to go round."

On the football agent Phil Smith: "Go on fat Phil. Nothing like a Jew that sees money slipping through his fingers."

On a football official:" He's a snake...a gay snake. Not to be trusted."

And of a female agent Mackay tweeted to a football crony: "I hope she's looking after your needs. I bet you'd love to bounce on her falsies." What a wag!

And surely to cap it all  there's the distribution of a picture of a game called "Black Monopoly" with every square marked:"Go to jail."

Malky Mackay was appointed manager of Wigan Athletic, despite the FA's investigation into the homophobic, sexist and racist text messages he allegedly sent while at Cardiff City 
©Getty Images



Whelan's attempts to justify recruiting Mackay included the suggestion: "It is telling the truth. Do you think Jewish people chase money a little bit more more than we do? Jewish people love money. Everyone loves money." And: "If any Englishman said he has never called a Chinaman a chink he is lying."

And naturally Whelan informs us that some of his best friends are Jewish. He has "hundreds of them." Probably Chinese, too. And as for blacks, well, as he points out, he often goes to Barbados on holiday.

We recall that the 78-year-old multi-millionaire boss of a sports goods empire has some previous in this respect.

Two years ago he said he couldn't understand why there was so much fuss over John Terry's alleged racist jibe to Anton Ferdinand during Chelsea's game against Queen's Park Rangers.

The FA's decision to charge Terry was "barmy" he insisted as the player had been cleared by a  court of law. In any case, he added, black players have just got to get on with it. "If you were to actually play football and go out on that field and listen to how many players fall out with each other, insult each other. It's colossal. At the end of the game, you shake hands and it's all done."

Dave Whelan is now facing huge criticism for signing Malky Mackay as manager of Wigan Athletics and the comments used to defend the signing of the controversial figure
©Getty Images



What Mackay has done, says Whelan now, "is so tiny in reality...it's not all that serious when you read it. I don't see that there's anything for the FA to investigate."

Well maybe the FA, who say they are now also investigating Whelan's own comments, will think otherwise. Or maybe not. For football's authorities are compromised, embarrassingly stuck over a barrel of self-protection.

The reason is that Mackay's odious missives were sent privately to a friend, though later made public by his former chairman at Cardiff City, Vincent Tan, a Chinese-Malaysian. And earlier this year one of the game's own head honchos, no less a personage than Richard Scudamore, chief executive of the Premier League, was similarly looked into after sending sending blatant sexist emails, for which he was to fulsomely apologise, but no action was taken against him because they, too, were deemed "private". Simply laddish banter between chums, as Mackay claims his were. So that's all right then?

As was Sheffield United's initial reluctance to reject a request from one of their former star players, convicted rapist Ched Evans, to resume his playing career with the club after serving half his sentence.

Public opinion, led by Sheffield's Olympic heptathlon champion Jessica Ennis-Hill, who said she wanted her name removed from stand named after her if Evans was re-signed, forced the club's eventual U-turn.

So Evans needs to seek employment elsewhere. Who might sign him? Maybe a text to Messrs Whelan and Mackay at Wigan Athletic would receive a sympathetic response.

Sheffield United were forced to go back on their decision to resign convicted rapist Ched Evans after he served half his prison sentence, due to public outcry and a threat by Olympic heptathlon champion Jessica Ennis-Hill ©Getty Images



On top of this domestic rubbish heap a continued avalanche of sleaze continues to engulf the game's toxic international governing body, FIFA, the latest debacle its blatant distortion of the summary of the report of the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bidding process.

There is now little doubt that corruption within FIFA is endemic and possibly incurable.

FIFA may be the wealthiest sports governing body but it is ethically bankrupt.

The Beautiful Game it supposedly represents has become an ugly monster, irrevocably scarred by greed and corruption.

Football's problem is one of leadership. There is none, leaving it to wander aimlessly in a moral maze.

There is a desperate need for a change of direction yet how can this happen under current President Sepp Blatter, who to the dismay of most European nations is to stand for re-election  for a fifth term next year?

At least Blatter, not noted for his Anglophilic tendencies, must be less than enamoured to learn that a man with a distinctly English-sounding name could oppose him.

Harold Mayne-Nicholls has said he is seriously considering opposing Sepp Blatter in the latest Presidential campaign ©Getty Images



Harold Mayne-Nicholls does rather sound like one of those Foreign Office johnnies and in fact he is a former diplomat, though a Chilean of English-Croatian descent.

To add to the beleaguered Blatter's angst, Mayne-Nicholls, 53, once in charge of the Chilean FA, also works as a journalist and was the FIFA technical official whose warnings about Qatar's suitability to host a summer World Cup were ignored by its Executive Committee. He led the technical commission which assessed each bid for the 2018 and 2022 tournaments.

Now he confirms he is seriously considering standing against the wily Swiss glad-hander. He says: "I wrote a column a few months ago for El Pais in Spain in which I point out the need for fresh air. What has happened lately has not served the image of FIFA or, indirectly, football. There is a complete disconnect between what the fans think is needed and the administration of the game. That leads me to believe that you can both accomplish change while maintaining what works well. I do not think it is wise, in the long term, to maintain both the same individuals and structures."

Blatter, who as insidethegames revealed last week, must forsake his seat on the International Olympic Committee when he reaches his 80th birthday in March 2016 - a rule which he angrily describes as "an act of discrimination" - faces a possible three-pronged fight for the Presidency he has held since 1999.

Another former top FIFA official, Frenchman Jérôme Champagne, has already declared his candidature.

So is the Blatter bubble finally about to burst?

Sadly, as unlikely as Malky Mackay becoming the next manager of the Chinese national women's team or Dave Whelan taking out a subscription to the Jewish Chronicle.

Alan Hubbard is an award-winning sports columnist for The Independent on Sunday and a former sports editor of The Observer. He has covered a total of 16 Summer and Winter Games, 10 Commonwealth Games, several football World Cups and world title fights from Atlanta to Zaire.

Malaysian water skier Aaliyah Yoong Hanifah has just competed at a third Asian Beach Games on the Thai holiday island of Phuket.

After narrowly missing out on the medals at Muscat 2010 and Haiyang 2012, she won a superb silver this time around, illustrating the solid progression you would expect from someone who has competed in the upper echelons of the sport for a few years.

She also celebrated her 11th birthday in July, and was joined in the Malaysian team by younger brothers aged nine and seven.

One of my favourite things about journalism is the fact that occasionally, and particularly when you attend relatively lesser known events like the Asian Beach Games, you stumble across a story which is almost too good to be true. For their sheer youth alone, this is one of those occasions.

I had heard tales about the pre-teenage water skiing prodigies during the Games, but had not had a chance to visit the Bangneow Dam Reservoir where action took place, only to find myself in an airport security queue with the entire family when leaving Phuket this morning.

Interviewing an 11-year-old was a new challenge for me, but I needn't have worried. Despite weighing just 32 kilograms and being tiny, even for her age, Aaliyah came across as articulate, comfortable talking to a journalist, and impressively fluent in English, as well as Malay, benefiting no doubt from attending an international school in her home city of Kuala Lumpur.

"I first skied when I was five," she told insidethegames. "Then I entered my first competition when I was six and competed in the Asian Beach Games the year after that. Competing against older people there was not a challenge because I knew them all anyway. It's been a fun journey and I am improving all the time."

Aaliyah Yoong Hanifah (left) competing at her first Asian Beach Games at the age of seven at Muscat 2010, where she was narrowly beaten by elder sister, Phillipa (centre)
©Chandan St Clare via OCA




Competing in the tricks event, which favours lighter athletes but still requires plenty of strength and power, she came fifth in Muscat, behind a Chinese cleansweep and her 32-year-old half-sister, Philippa. Aged seven years and four months, Aaliyah also became the youngest competitor in any Asian multi-sports competition.

I read the news on Wednesday, oh boy - 95 words precisely, in my newspaper at least, on those 40 landmark Olympic Agenda 2020 recommendations.

'What is wrong with these people?' I thought. 'Don't they recognise the importance of a sports movement powerful enough to redraw the map of London?'

Then I reflected: if you take the 40 recommendations at face value, 95 words is probably about what they are worth for a mainstream news organisation.

A blueprint to make bidding for and staging the Olympic Games a slightly less daunting, slightly less costly process, and to inject slightly more flexibility into the way the sports programme is chosen, is hardly calculated to set pulses racing around the breakfast tables of Peoria or Antananarivo.

Even the most eye-catching proposal - recommendation 19: "The International Olympic Committee (IOC) to launch an Olympic Channel" - is something it should have done years ago.

The proposals, if passed next month, will pave the way for some useful innovations, but Thomas Bach's five-ring revolution it ain't.

I don't blame the IOC President for this.

As his compatriot Otto von Bismarck observed, politics is the art of the possible.

It would be disastrous for Bach, little more than a year into his tenure, were he to advocate a truly radical series of reforms and then get shot down in flames.

Furthermore, whatever may have been written in recent months as the race for the 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympics has disintegrated before our eyes, the Olympic model is far from broken.

Thomas Bach's Agenda 2020 recommendations were not the five-ring revolution that some thought it might be ©Getty Images



The Movement generated more than $8 billion (£5 billion/€6.5 billion) from broadcasting, sponsorship, ticketing and licensing in the four year cycle culminating with the London 2012 Games.

What is true is that the broadcasting and international sponsorship revenues that play such an important part in funding National Olympic Committees (NOCs) and International Sports Federations (IFs) are set to pause for breath in the 2013-2016 quadrennium.

Instead, the main engine of growth looks set to be local sponsorship - but these proceeds are earmarked chiefly for the countries where the Games are staged, in this case Russia and Brazil.

So there is no crisis - but what is also self-evident, at least to me, is that the Movement has a structural problem that these recommendations will do, to use the technical term, diddly-squat to address.

The structural problem is that the Winter Games is not a global event because vast sweeps of the globe scarcely ever experience snow and ice.

So as a marketing platform for host countries they are far less powerful than their Summer counterpart.

And yet the hassle factor for the host population is nearly as great.

The solution is obvious.

No, nothing to do with the Jamaican bobsled team.

They should simply move some indoor disciplines with fans in lands where the water never freezes from the bursting-at-the-seams Summer Games to Winter.

Volleyball, for me, would be one strong candidate to make the switch; boxing another.

Volleyball is a sport that could be moved to the Winter Olympics to entice non-traditional winter nations to host the Games ©Getty Images



And why not offer sports, such as squash and karate, which have been battering at Lausanne's door in a so far unsuccessful attempt to get into the Olympics, the opportunity to join the Winter programme?

You get some idea of why Agenda 2020 has steered clear of this sort of thing, if you remember what happened to poor old Brian new-kid-on-the-block Cookson, President of the International Cycling Union (UCI), when he had the temerity earlier this year to suggest something similar.

"Let's think about the Winter Olympics," Cookson said. "Why does it have to be snow and ice?

"If you have a problem with Summer Olympics where the whole thing is perceived as overheated with too many facilities, too many sports, too many competitors and so on, why not look at moving some of the other sports indoors that traditionally take place in the northern hemisphere winter?

"Why not look at combat sports like judo, or other indoor sports like badminton?

"You could even say what about putting track cycling in the Winter Olympics?"

I agree with almost every word of that; yet poor old Cookson ended up having to apologise to International Judo Federation President Marius Vizer - and I can see why - for talking about sports other than cycling.

But if Agenda 2020 is not a suitable forum for giving such ideas a serious airing, you have to wonder what is.

The Winter Games has, I think, one other shot at gingering up interest in its rather jaded concept and producing a more competitive race for 2026, and that is if there is a strong southern hemisphere candidate.

But that would be a short-term fix.

The fundamental problem - that the cost-benefit analysis is not nearly as attractive as for a Summer Games while you do not have a genuinely global product - will remain.

Don't get me wrong: there are a fair few things in these 40 recommendations that it will be good to have: non-discrimination on sexual orientation as a fundamental principle; stronger relationships with organisations managing sport for people with different abilities; proper ceremonies for athletes who win medals after the event as a consequence of disqualifications; an insistence that Olympic Movement organisations comply with basic principles of good governance (though there is nothing about what the consequences would be if they don't).

But there is much that seems vague (recommendation 28 on the key issue of autonomy); little flashes of the old self-indulgence (is it really necessary to spell out quite so baldly that "the field of play for the athletes to always be state-of-the-art for all competitions"?); and the odd line that is plain silly (is the IOC's "ultimate goal" really "to protect clean athletes", as recommendation 15 would have it? I'm not saying that's not important, but I'd have thought its "ultimate goal" was to organise outstanding Games).

The other short-term problem that I fancy the IOC may now face is that if the mainstream media judges the content of Agenda 2020 to be worth only 95 words of its real estate, it may focus instead on where next month's Session, at which the members will pass their verdict, is taking place.

Monte Carlo, with its casino and luxury car showrooms, is a delightful place; but it is not necessarily the ideal backdrop for an organisation at present struggling to convince people that it is in tune with these waste-averse, exceptionally cost-conscious times.

David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 World Cup and London 2012. Owen's Twitter feed can be accessed here.

Everyone wants to know...what will the Rio 2016 mascots look like? One thing I can reveal: we will have two, one for the Olympic Games and one for the Paralympic Games.

I could say more, but only if you sign a non-disclosure agreement (LOL).

It has been said this week, in the aftermath of Doha earning the right to stage the International Association of Athletics Federation's (IAAF) World Championships in 2019 at the second time of asking, that the awarding body has ignored the elephant in the room.

There is some truth in that - but the question is, which elephant?

The mammal in question, according to some British newspapers was Qatar's lamentable record in terms of the hundreds of migrant workers who have died during the building of facilities for the 2022 World Cup Finals.

The discussion with the IAAF Council overran by more than an hour ahead of the decision to award the Championships to Doha ahead of Eugene by the narrow margin of 15-12 votes, which meant the official press conference offered the opportunity for just one question to the jubilant team who had succeeded where they had failed three years earlier in seeking the 2017 World Championships in competition with London.

It did not concern the issue of migrant workers' mortality.

Nicholas McGeehan, Middle East researcher for Human Rights Watch, told British newspaper: "The IAAF must surely have known that Qatar's labour system remains deeply exploitative so this raises the question as to how important it considers the lives and welfare of the migrant workers on whom the 2019 World Championships will depend."

Mustafa Qadri, Amnesty International's researcher on migrants' rights in the Gulf, warned of real concerns that the World Championships and the 2022 FIFA World Cup will "take place under a shadow of migrant labour abuse".

The Khalifa International stadium,which will now host the 2019 IAAF World Championships, is being rebuilt - but Doha has a bad record in terms of workers who have died or been injured in creating the venues for the 2022 World Cup finals ©Getty Images

Meanwhile, Labour's Shadow Minister for Sport, Clive Efford, said: "The IAAF must be aware of the scandal of the treatment of migrant workers in Qatar.

"This is an appalling decision that risks bringing the sport into disrepute. I urge the IAAF to reconsider their decision."

Not going to happen. Even though there was a veritable herd of elephants in the room when the 27 voting members of the IAAF Council deliberated in their Monaco HQ on Tuesday before the final vote.

Among the other large mammals with trunks in the Council chamber were the questions relating to Qatar's annexing of the 2022 World Cup Finals, and the subsequent FIFA inquiry into allegations of related corruption, an inquiry which has cleared both Qatar and Russia, who will stage the 2018 World Cup Finals, of any wrongdoing - and which has subsequently been repudiated by the FIFA Ethics Investigator Michael Garcia, who has said the eventual report contained "numerous materially incomplete and erroneous representations of the facts and conclusions".

Other trumpetings had to do with political tensions in the Gulf which prompted Egypt to withdraw from the World Short Course Swimming Championships due to take place in Doha from December 3 until 7, and which also caused the withdrawal from Doha's hosting of the 2015 World Handball Championships of Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates - both strong supporters of Doha's original bid for the event.

Bahrain and the UAE were said to have taken this action in protest at Qatar's alleged support of Islamist groups in the Middle East, including the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

Although not confirmed, it is believed this was also the reason for Egypt's withdrawal from the World Short-Course Championships, although this country is still down to contest the World Handball Championships. Following meetings this week, Bahrain and the UAE have now gone back on their boycott of the World Handball Championships.

But, arguably, the biggest large grey mammal in the room had a label around one of its tusks with the word "Temperature" on it.

The Qatar Olympic Committee's senior adviser, Aphrodite Moschoudi, told the Council that moving the Championships from its traditional mid-August spot to 28 September to 6 October would be an advantage.

"There are two great things about these dates," she claimed. "First the temperature in Doha at this time of year is no different from several recent World Championships. Second, it would allow us to introduce the innovation of staging the Championships as a fantastic grand finale to the season, which we know is something you often discuss."

The women's 1500m in progress at the 2013 IAAF Diamond League meeting in Doha, where temperatures were greater than will be the case during the 2019 World Championships, the Doha bid team assured the IAAF ©Getty Images

But during the last week of September and the first week of October this year the mean temperature was 37 degrees in Doha. That is not comfortable in any language.

In May this year, Scottish athlete Eilish McColgan wrote about visiting her mother, former world 10,000 metres champion Liz Lynch, who has relocated to Doha.

"Walking out of the airport at 9pm was a complete shock to the system and I was definitely not prepared for Doha's hottest day in 'oh so many years'

"Opening the door was like walking into a human furnace. It genuinely felt like the sun was directly in front of my face, within touching distance. My first track session was at seven in the evening as the sun set but, even so, it was over 100 degrees Fahrenheit."

Eilish McColgan, pictured before this season's IAAF Diamond League meeting in Glasgow, knows at first hand what the temperatures are like for athletes in Doha ©Getty Images

I can empathise with that. Exiting a plane at Doha in September, en route to the Sydney 2000 Olympics, felt like entering an oven. Even at 10pm.

There are other voices, however. Britain's now retired 110m hurdler Andy Turner tweeted this week: "Having raced in Doha 3 times I think they will put on a spectacular world champs. Athletes just need to adjust training plan, #simples"

The decision Doha have made in terms of timing the Championships has also created questions as well as answers.

"I wonder who has the Indoor champs in 2020, will they be happy with Doha 2019 in October?" tweeted Britain's former world 400m hurdles champion Dai Greene.

So what happened in the IAAF Council chamber which delayed this week's decision by an hour?

The Doha 2019 bid team celebrate Tuesday's news in Monaco that they have been awarded the IAAF Championships ©IAAF

The truth was that both Doha and Eugene tempted the IAAF by offering expansion into, or in the case of the United States, a return to virtually untapped markets for the sport in terms of visibility of athletics among their populations.

Both of the bids which reached the second round following the elimination of Barcelona were economically rich, which was naturally of interest to the IAAF's existing commercial partners and also offered the IAAF the chance to attract new partners

One of the biggest elements in favour of Eugene - which was described by world 1500m and mile record holder Hicham El Guerrouj as "the Mecca of track and field" - was its certainty of filling the stadium at Hayward Field – a stadium that would have been transformed into a state-or-the-art arena through a $2 billion (£1.3 billion/€1.6 billion) investment.

The minus for Eugene, however, was the perception that it was a relatively unknown location for a sporting event which purports to be the third largest in the world behind the Olympics and the World Cup. There were concerns that awarding the Championships to Eugene might make the IAAF appear a little desperate.

An additional thought within IAAF circles was the notion that If Eugene was the only venue in the United States wanting to stage its World Championships, was it really a realistic potential market for the sport?

The minuses for Doha were obvious - its political situation, the question of workers and human rights, the question of whether the renovated Khalifa International Stadium would be filled for a nine-day  event. And of course, the temperatures.

But the concern was that if Doha was to be rebuffed a second time, would it decide to invest its huge wealth in other areas such as equestrianism or motor sports?

The sense is that the IAAF has squeezed the Doha lemon before it all goes sour – and left the US market, with the NBC's massively renewed $7.75 billion (£5 billion/€6.2 billion) deal to cover the Olympics through to 2032, for its next task.

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 £12.99) is available at the insidethegames.biz shop. To follow him on Twitter click here.

I am delighted that my old sparring partner Dr C K Wu has been re-elected as President of the International Boxing Association (AIBA) for a third term. There is no-one better equipped to oversee his branch of the business.

Many of his reformist ideas have revived and transformed a sport that was in danger of losing its Olympic status because of the malpractices of a previous regime.

There is no doubt that since his initial election in 2006 he has kept his promise to make what used to be known as amateur boxing more honest and transparent, restoring its credibility.

But what still puzzles me is that this does not seem to be sufficient. Why continue his crusade to try and embrace every facety of boxing, from the professional game downwards, under his personal umbrella?

AIBA are not boxing's FIFA - and thank God for that!

Unification of Government of this fractured sport may be an ideal, but logically it is not one that is achievable in his lifetime or mine. Nor should it be. The two aspects of glove are worlds apart.

C K Wu was re-elected President of the AIBA at the organisation's Congress in Jeju ahead of the Women's World Boxing Championships ©AIBA



At 68, Taiwan's Dr Wu has won many battles but he cannot win the war.

Among his many successes are the inclusion of women's boxing in the Olympics and establishing their own World Championships for the ladies who punch; the removal of the word "amateur" as well as, in men's major international events, headguards and vests (though the jury may still be out on that one); the introduction of purse money for World Series Boxing (WSB) - which the British Lionhearts will now re-enter under a new franchise - and AIBA Pro Boxing (APB) which may well deter some decent prospects from entering the fully-fledged pro sport too soon.

Plus a more plausible and less corruptible scoring system.

I am all for that.

However professional promoters understandably will continue to protect their own fiefdoms by rejecting AIBA's advances.

Indeed, the only figure among them who intimated even mild interest was Richard Schaefer, the former Swiss banker who ran America's Golden Boy. But he has now left the organisation.

Dr Wu should be content that under his governance AIBA, and the boxing it controls, is now in a better state than it has ever been. Leave the pros to fight their own battles.

What I do sincerely hope is that any previously mooted notion of introducing fully-fledged pros, including established world champions, into the Olympics has been scrapped.

Those of us who watched the current multi-world heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko's  destruction of leading mandatory contender Kubrat Pulev, a hitherto undefeated bruiser from Bulgaria, in Hamburg last Saturday night will testify how foolhardy and dangerous this is.

Allowing the likes of Klitschko, Floyd Mayweather jnr, Manny Pacquiao, Sergey Kovalev, Amir Khan or even less accomplished pros loose on comparative tyros even under restrictive Olympic regulations would be courting potentially disastrous mismatches.

Totally unfair. Imagine a club tennis player getting through to an Olympic final to face Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer or Andy Murray. It would be the same in boxing.

Allowing the likes of Wladimir Klitschko to contest in the Olympic Games against current amateur boxers would be a huge mismatch ©Getty Images


As I say, what Dr Wu has achieved so far is admirable but he now must tread warily lest he takes professionalising the sport too far. For he will be aware there are still those on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) who do not share an enthusiasm for boxing and would happily see it ditched, especially in the event of a series of ring mishaps or, heaven forbid, a fatality.

APB boxing, where single champions will be crowned in 10 weight divisions, seems to be setting itself up as an alternative to the pro system's diverse and sometime meaningless labels but laudable as this may seem it will still be no contest when it comes to attracting global public interest.

The crowds will still flock to watch mega promotions like the 80,000 blockbuster at Wembley Stadium between Carl Froch and George Groves, or this weekend's multi-million dollar showdown featuring Pacquiao against New York's Chris Algieri in Macau.

When the freshly-constituted British Lions enter the WSB fray the home venue it is more likely to London's York Hall, where the capacity is measured in hundreds. Would they fill Wembley Arena's 10,000 seats or even the 7,00-seater Copperbox in the Olympic Park?

Even with the upgrades the AIBA have made to amateur boxing, they could still find it hard to fill stadiums as easily as major professional boxing bouts ©Getty Images



Both WSB and APB need to unearth their own superstar as main attractions - Anthony Joshua would have been a tremendous draw - but like him they surely would be snapped up by professional promoters who, backed by TV contracts, have flapping chequebooks that even AIBA's deep coffers cannot match.

Meanwhile we should savour another virtuoso performance from Wladimir Klitschko, my favourite heavyweight champion since Muhammad Ali.

With his ex-champ-turned freedom fighter brother Vitali, now the mayor of Kyiv, at his shoulder during the victory celebrations, Klitschko draped himself in the Ukrainian flag and stuck his two index fingers in the air.

Was it a reminder that he is the world's numero uno - or a symbolic gesture aimed at Russian President Vladimir Putin?

Jimmy Connors once said that a Centre Court crowd would pay to watch two monkeys contest a Wimbledon final. In Germany, they'd certainly pay to cheer their adopted idol fight Mickey Mouse. Though in fairness few of his opponents would fit that description.

Of his last five foes, four have had unbeaten records. Saturday's victory was his 17th successive title defence in a second reign as champion and he is now 24-2 overall in world title fights.

He has not lost since 2004, has unified three major titles and is inching closer to two of boxing's most illustrious records.

His 17 consecutive defences are third all time in the heavyweight division behind Larry Holmes' 20 and Joe Louis' 25, the record for any weight class. Klitschko has also held the title for a just over than eight-and-a-half years, second only to Louis' heavyweight record of 11 years, 8 months, 8 days.

Wladimir Klitschko has become a true ambassador for the sport of boxing ©Getty Images



The 2006 Olympic champion, now 38, has never avoided fighting anyone - except of course his elder brother brother, who held the WBC title until he quit to enter the political ring earlier this year.

It is rare to encounter any sporting figure these days, especially in the fight game, who is both a gentleman and a scholar. However, the description fits Wladimir Klitschko like the gloves which earned him Olympic gold medal in Atlanta and various versions of the world title

Unlike some, I have always been an admirer of the Klitschkos,men of genuine intellect who are more likely to be seen with a copy of Goethe under their arm than The Ring Magazine, dignified and sleaze-free ambassadors for their sport. Both are multi-lingual and hold doctorates in sports science and philosophy. They have been great for the game.

So what now for "Wlad the Impaler"? He fights again in the US in January but my guess is that it is all building up to an eventual clash of Olympic champions between him and Joshua within the next 18 months.

When Wladimir defeated Russia's Alexander Povetkin in Moscow last year it was the first fight between respective Olympic heavyweight champions since Ali encountered Joe Frazier and George Foreman in the seventies.

They have already sparred with each other and Klitschko v Joshua would be any promoter's dream fight. But you never know, the way boxing is going it might even be the Olympic super-heavyweight final in Rio!

Alan Hubbard is an award-winning sports columnist for The Independent on Sunday and a former sports editor of The Observer. He has covered a total of 16 Summer and Winter Games, 10 Commonwealth Games, several football World Cups and world title fights from Atlanta to Zaire.

There is something very surreal about turning up for work armed with flip-flops and shorts, and packing suntan lotion and sunglasses alongside the laptop and dictaphone before heading for the beach.

But such is life on Asian Beach Games reporting duty, and, funnily enough, I don't hear too many people here complaining...

Holding top-level sport on the beach is a novel and somewhat bizarre idea. Yet since the first Asian event was held in Bali in 2008, it has been immensely successful and following confirmation last week that a World Beach Games will take place, probably for the first time in 2017, the concept is here to stay, with the event set to occupy an increasingly prominent position in international sport.

Having already attended four major multi-sport extravaganzas this year - the Winter Olympics in Sochi, the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, the Summer Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing and the Asian Games in Incheon - this event is unsurprisingly the odd one out, with the biggest differences in atmosphere, promotion and expenditure.

Enough, as disco queen and noted football authority Donna Summer observed sagely in the 1970s, is enough.

With the Garcia report fiasco now piled on top of the 2022 World Cup timing fiasco, right-thinking football leaders have a responsibility to come together and get behind a challenger strong enough to unseat long-term incumbent Joseph "Sepp" Blatter in next year's FIFA Presidential election.

FIFA's mono-dimensional World Cup-based economy has been going gangbusters enough in recent times for the seemingly endless stream of corruption allegations against football officials to be no more than a superficial irritant, of little apparent consequence for one of sport's most successful business models.

But the issue here has become one of competence - and while no-one can justifiably claim that Blatter is uniquely responsible for FIFA's status as a laughing-stock of epic proportions, let alone the decision to award the World Cup to Qatar without nailing down when the competition would be played, it is the Swiss septuagenarian who is top dog. He should carry the can for the organisation's worsening credibility crisis.

It is a risk and no mistake. A truly credible challenger would require more heft than declared candidate Jérôme Champagne can probably muster.

That means an individual of sufficient stature to entertain realistic hopes of one day succeeding Blatter.

But, of course, if you ran against him and lost, your chances of securing the Swiss master-politician's endorsement when he did at last decide to call it a day would presumably be severely compromised.

Football leaders must now unearth a credible challenger capable of ousting Sepp Blatter from the FIFA Presidency ©Getty Images


And, even at 79 next birthday, even with FIFA's reputation in shreds, Blatter's unsurpassed familiarity with the rules and regulations that govern the global game, along with his impregnable support in some parts of the world, make him a formidable electoral foe.

One imagines that this, coupled with the outcome of past electoral contests pitching Blatter against, first, Issa Hayatou and, then, Mohammed Bin Hammam, must be part of the explanation for why only Champagne has so far had the gumption to throw his hat into the ring for next year's vote in Zurich on May 29.

But with investigator Michael Garcia's extraordinary intervention last Thursday (November 13), FIFA's stock has sunk so low that tactical considerations of that ilk ought now to be cast aside - for the good of the game.

It is a risk, but it is not an impossible task.

What is needed is for three confederations - UEFA, the Asian Football Confederation and the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football seem the most likely candidates - to agree on a top-drawer challenger, perhaps at a push an éminence grise of unimpeachable character who would serve only one term, and throw their collective weight behind him.

That trio of confederations accounts at present for 134 of FIFA's 209 member associations, comfortably enough, on the face of it, to ensure victory for a favoured common candidate.

The real world, of course, is not that simple: it is hard, for example, to imagine that Russia would vote against Blatter having secured the World Cup under his Presidency, and Vladimir Putin's nation has the diplomatic clout, no doubt, to sway others to its way of thinking.

But such a scenario would assure us of a real contest, with the outcome far from a foregone conclusion.

A daring challenger could even find a certain amount of ammunition to seek to turn one of Blatter's strongest weapons - the Goal football development programme that he launched in 1999, a year or so after becoming FIFA President - against him.

FIFA's last financial report contains a budget for the 2015-2018 business cycle. This indicates that while overall revenues are projected to rise by 31.6 per cent, the expected increase for development projects is a comparatively meagre 12.5 per cent - from $800 million (£510 million/€638 million) to $900 million (£574 million/€719 million).

That equates to just 18 per cent of total revenue.

A truly credible challenger would require more heft than declared candidate Jérôme Champagne can probably muster ©Getty Images


Electing a new President is, however, only the first step in a series of reforms that will be necessary to restore FIFA's credibility as governing body of the world's biggest sport.

You need to enable the new President to take charge once in situ yet forestall any possibility of him outstaying his welcome.

This will require the Confederations - who actually wield more voting power in the FIFA Executive Committee than the President himself - to consent to clipping their own wings.

I would advocate doing this by completely remodelling the Executive Committee's structure to reflect the realities of the modern game.

Each Confederation should have just one seat on the Executive Committee, the same as the President.

You might argue that Britain, by virtue of its status as cradle of the game, should also retain its seat.

Other than this, seats should be allotted by function, not geography.

Match officials should have a seat; so should sports medicine practitioners, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the women's game, educators, players, sponsors, broadcasters and so on.

The other indispensable reform would be to place a strict limit, say two four-year terms, on the length of time a FIFA President can serve.

Simple stuff, really - although getting it agreed would not be - but enough to enable football's governing body to operate in what Donna Summer might have termed a state of independence.

David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 World Cup and London 2012. Owen's Twitter feed can be accessed here.