With the Winter Olympics well underway in Sochi, we can look back with pride at what was achieved at the London 2012 Games.

One of the outstanding successes of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games was the use of the 70,000 committed and enthusiastic volunteers - the "Games Makers" - who really did make the Games happen. No athlete gets to represent their country at a Games without a volunteer helping them along the way.

What lessons can the Sochi volunteers learn from them? According to Jenny Hicklin, the "Accidental Volunteer" who was based at the Velodrome in London and is now working at the transport hub in Sochi, the 50 or so London Games Makers out there will bring a lot of confidence, experience, knowledge and friendliness to the operation. This friendliness in turn is reciprocated by the Russian volunteers.

No doubt we would all like to volunteer at an Olympic and Paralympic Games or a major sporting championship. Sadly, this is not always going to be possible.

One of the outstanding successes of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games was the use of the 70,000 committed and enthusiastic volunteers ©Getty Images


But this doesn't mean that you can't volunteer locally. Community sports clubs are crying out for help, and there are many ways you can get involved. Join In is the volunteering charity created out of the 2012 Games. It has launched a recruitment drive, spearheaded by our Patron Eddie Izzard, to attract a nationwide network of coordinators to help grassroots sports clubs grow local sports participation. With seven out of ten sports clubs saying they need more volunteers to help them grow, Join In is rolling out its Local Leaders programme nationwide.

This scheme will see up to 250 volunteers becoming Local Leaders and using their knowledge and contacts to help Join In build lasting relationships between local sports clubs, community groups and potential volunteers.

"Accidental Volunteer" Jenny Hicklin with Sochi 2014 bronze medal winning snowboarder Jenny Jones ©Join In


Much has been said about sports participation and how we can get more people playing sport, but it has always been my view that one of the missing links to unlocking this is increasing the number of people who help out at local clubs. Our Local Leader recruitment campaign is something we trialled last year and will help us deliver our aim of recruiting and retaining 100,000 volunteers in community sport across the United Kingdom.

An extra pair of hands at a club can make a huge difference. The ripple effect of this will lead to clubs and their memberships expanding and more people getting active in their local community. If we can achieve this, it will be a lasting legacy of the 2012 Games.

Dave Moorcroft is Join In's director of sport. Find out more here.

It is almost impossible not to admire the success of UK Sport's elite sports funding and performance programmes.

The body's hard-nosed approach, with cash awards geared to outstanding achievement, has ensured that Olympic and Paralympic sports golden windfall of Lottery funding has not been squandered; it also powered Britain up the medals tables in Beijing and London.

Now though I fear we may be getting a tad overzealous.

Sentence two of UK Sport's February 4 press release outlining updated funding awards is the nub of it.

It reads: "Most rigorous annual investment review process ever confirms goal of becoming the first nation in recent history to be more successful in both Olympic and Paralympic Games post hosting is deliverable with targeted investment."

Don't get me wrong: to win more medals in Rio than in London would be both a stupendous achievement and infinitely preferable to finishing 36th in the Olympic medals table, as Britain did in 1996 in Atlanta.

Britain finished 36th in the Olympic medals table at the Atlanta 1996 Games ©Getty Images


But now that the country is again an Olympic power to be reckoned with, would this produce a significantly greater legacy for British sport than if the team finished a highly creditable fifth or sixth in the medals table?

After a week or two of fist pumping, the difference would be at best marginal, I'd say.

Furthermore, now that the underlying performance level of so many sports has risen so high, I suspect that some of the chief determinants of whether Britain matches London or falls some way short, at least at the Olympics, are essentially outside UK Sport's control.

Much, I think, will depend on issues such as whether track cycling changes its qualification criteria to permit more than one athlete per country per event and whether British athletes deliver in the new Olympic sports of rugby sevens and golf.

More importantly, there really is more to sporting legacy than Olympic and Paralympic medals, particularly now that, I repeat, 36th place is a dim and distant memory.

It's winter sports time, so let me use the much-cited example of Eddie Edwards who, along with Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, is probably the best-known Winter Olympian Britain has produced.

His comical efforts on the Calgary ski jump have been much scoffed at since 1988 by sports officialdom.

But with his single-minded determination to do his own thing and his oddball courage, he must have inspired more kids not to be deflected from pursuing their dreams, whatever those dreams may be, than a lorry-load of genuinely elite Olympians.

Eddie Edwards may not have won an Olympic medal but he must have inspired many children not to be deflected from pursuing their dreams ©Getty Images

Britain's medal lust was mitigated somewhat in the run-up to London because of the desire for Team GB to be represented in as many sports as feasible in its home Games.

That mitigating influence has now gone, leaving us with what is starting to appear to me too blunt an instrument.

Yes, earmark the bulk of elite performance funding to medal prospects.

But, to produce the best all-round Olympic legacy, a proportion should be ring-fenced for sports which, while they should be prodded continually to use the money wisely and adopt best performance practice, are in all likelihood going to be pushed to win a medal, be it in 2016 or 2060.

You never quite know when an inspirational Edwards-type maverick is going to emerge who, while not getting within a country mile of an Olympic podium, may inspire a significant number of youngsters to begin to make the most of their lives.

My other gripe is that UK Sport's methodology seems inadvertently to work against team sports.

UK Sport says, in essence, that everyone plays by the same rules.

"UK Sport's investment principles are reviewed every four years to align with targets agreed in consultation with Government," it told me.

"They are consistently applied to individual and team sports, to summer and winter, Olympic and Paralympic, on a meritocratic basis entirely focused on future medal-winning potential."

I accept that, but think of it this way: Snowboarder Jenny Jones' bronze medal at Sochi should, one imagines, help her sport to achieve a favourable funding settlement for the run-up to Pyeongchang 2018.

The extra cash, though, is unlikely to be lavished entirely on Jones herself, but used to nurture more Jenny Jones', ie to bring the sport as a whole up towards her level.

And quite right too.

Team sports though, expensive by their very nature, have, moreover only one shot in their locker - or one per gender - in terms of medal potential.

Jenny Jones' bronze medal at Sochi 2014 should help her sport to achieve a favourable funding settlement for the run-up to Pyeongchang 2018 ©Getty Images


The world's best handball player could be a Briton, but if the team as a whole did not perform and showed little prospect of improving to the point where it could be considered world class within a time horizon of around eight years, it seems clear to me that it would struggle to justify funding.

One cannot be quite categorical about this because of the complexity of the analytical tools UK Sport presses into service.

"UK Sport uses a number of different types of evidence when applying the investment principles at annual review points," it told me.

"Each sport's current and previous performance is scrutinised using major global event results and milestone targets agreed with the sport at the start of the four-year cycle.

"In addition, more rigorous evaluations of sports' future performance and medal potential in Rio and Tokyo have been undertaken using techniques such as trajectory, situational and precedent analysis.

"Analytics, current and previous results in major events are then considered in the context of information gathered through continuous improvement tools such as Mission 2016, the talent health check, and athletes' insights to create the most rounded, professional and rigorous understanding of a sport's current and future world-class performance potential."

I merely observe that of the 19 Olympic sports receiving slices of UK Sport's £272 million ($451 million/€332 million) investment cake in the run-up to Rio, only one - hockey - is a pure team sport.

For all its scrupulously objective complexity, the system can have brutal, and frankly rather mystifying, outcomes if you happen to be a) an outsider or b) an athlete whose Olympic/Paralympic prospects hinge on an ample and reliable flow of cash.

Of the 19 Olympic sports receiving funding from UK Sport, hockey is the only pure team sport on the list ©Getty Images


As evidence of this, I submit what has happened to British water polo in recent years.

When the funding pot for the Rio cycle was first divvied up just before Christmas 2012, while men's water polo was cut, the women's team got an impressive increase to £4.54 million ($7.53 million/€5.54 million).

This compared with £2.93 million ($4.86 million/€3.58 million) given to the sport in the London 2012 cycle.

In August 2012, the British team had placed eighth and last in the Olympic women's water polo competition, though it put up a good fight in the quarter-finals, losing only 9-7 to Spain, the eventual silver medallists - and current world champions.

So what happened when the Rio funding adjustments were announced on February 4?

That £4.54 million ($7.53 million/€5.54 million), or whatever was left of it, disappeared, or more accurately was redistributed, cut literally to nothing.

"Water polo was among the sports that were not able to demonstrate they had a realistic chance of performing well within the top eight in Rio 2016 and targeting a medal performance in 2020," UK Sport told me.

"We therefore made the decision not to fund in line with our investment principles, and to ensure this resource was re-invested to enhance and protect medal opportunities in the challenging Rio environment."

What changed so radically between December 2012 and February 2014?

Well one thing was that the team failed to meet its performance target at the 2013 World Championships.

This called for them to finish in the top 12.

They came 13th; furthermore, I am told, there were no play-offs for ninth to 16th place at the tournament, which might have enabled them to improve their ranking.

So is that what it comes down to? An Olympic programme obliterated for the want of one World Championship place?

If not, then I think UK Sport seriously needs to explain what else contributed to its decision to the affected athletes, who must be devastated.

British water polo's funding for Rio 2016 has been cut literally to nothing ©AFP/Getty Images



Frankly, it seems to me that the odds on the team finishing top eight in Rio and vying for a medal at Tokyo 2020 were every bit as long in December 2012 as on February 4, 2014.

That, surely, would have been the time to cut off funding; instead it was sharply increased.

Since then, notwithstanding the marginally disappointing Worlds, the team has appeared to be doing OK: they have qualified, after all, for this year's European Championships in Budapest, a championship place which, I am told, they may not now be able to take advantage of.

They are/were, if not potential champions, then at least consistent second-drawer performers, and may well have played a part in lifting sports participation rates among British women, which would be to the benefit of everyone.

At all events, nothing spectacular or unforeseeable, one way or the other, had happened in the pool; yet, in funding terms the plug has been yanked unceremoniously and the team beached in mid-Olympic cycle.

Quite apart from the team themselves, one wonders what the sport's leaders are supposed to say to the youngsters being developed with the help of what I am told is £90,000 ($150,000/€110,000) a year in funding from Sport England.

Change nationality, perhaps; or take up slopestyle.

There is, at least, an appeal process, which British Swimming announced this week it intends to make use of.

To me, a longer-term solution would again have been to ring-fence a proportion of UK Sport's Rio cycle funding for exclusive investment in team sports.

They could then compete for it among themselves, in line with accepted performance criteria, rather than vying with primarily individual Olympic sports which, by their nature, have far more medal opportunities.

Good as the UK Sport programme has been, it always struck me as a great shame that World Cup-winning rugby coach Sir Clive Woodward's talents were deployed, in the run-up to London 2012, at the British Olympic Association (BOA) and not UK Sport.

Had he been appointed performance supremo for Olympic and Paralympic team sports, leaving the brilliant Peter Keen in charge of their primarily individual counterparts, then I think that the results obtained might well have been even better.

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.

It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that the fourth and final luge event at the Sochi Winter Games – the mixed team relay, which is making its Olympic debut - will be won today by the nation that has already earned victory in the first three luge competitions.

Germany's dominance in the sport, which sends competitors hurtling feet first down a mile-long channel of twisting ice at 130 kilometres (80 miles) an hour, has been the central prop thus far in a Winter Games performance which has seen them reach the top of the medal list with the Games tipping into the second half of its programme.

While the German team may be besporting themselves around Sochi in team jackets which make Joseph's Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat look like Harris Tweed, the colour with which they have been mainly preoccupied has been gold.

Natalia Geisenberger, clad in one of Germany's natty Sochi 2014 jackets, inspects the gold medal she has just received for her performance in the women's luge event @ Getty Images

Going into today's competition, five countries have bettered the German total of eight medals – but none has so far been able to match their gold standard of six. (A very satisfying start to his first Olympics in situ for Germany's new IOC President Thomas Bach...)

In terms of efficiency, it puts one in mind of that great German footballer of the 1970s, Gerd Muller, who turned almost every chance into a goal. (Quick note to any Dutch football fans – sorry to have reminded you of the man whose goal beat your boys in the 1974 World Cup final. And a quick note to any English football fans – sorry to have reminded you of the man whose goal beat your boys in the 1970 World Cup quarter-final. Bonetti! Labone! Sort it out! Oh, it's probably too late now ...)

He shoots, he scores...Germany's hit rate at the Sochi 2014 Games has begun to resemble that of their legendary footballer Gerd Muller, seen here shooting the decisive goal of the 1974 World Cup final past Dutch defender Rudi Krol @ AFP/ Getty Images

Germany's golden strike rate – courtesy of Felix Loch in the men's single, Natalia Geisenberger in the women's single and the two Tobias's, Arlt and Wendl, in the doubles - has taken people aback in Sochi.

But most observers can hardly be surprised that they have earned such rich reward thus far on the winding chute of the Sanki Sliding Center. After all, luge is a part of this nation's great winter Games tradition.

Germany head the overall medals table since luge became a full Olympic event in 1964, having won 30 so far, of which 14 have been gold. One medal behind in second place – the former German Democratic Republic. As Arlt exclaimed, with some justice, in the wake of a victory which deposed Austria's Olympic champions of 2006 and 2010 to the silver medal position: "Germany is on top of the world in luge. It's our sport."

Germany's triumphant luge doubles pair in Sochi, Tobias Arlt and Tobias Wendl @ Getty Images

In terms of opponents, the field has been pretty limited for the main part of the sport's time in the Games. Put it this way - when the United States took silver and bronze in the pairs at the 1998 Nagano Winter Games, it was the first time any nation other than Germany, Italy, Austria and the USSR had won any medal in luge.

Since then only one other nation, Latvia, has found its way onto the luge medal podium at the Games. It is a tight group at the top – but the level of competition there is ferocious.

By winning bronze behind Loch in the men's singles event at Sochi, Italy's 40-year-old veteran Armin Zoggeler put himself top of the all-time individual Olympic luge rankings with six medals over the space of a 20-year career.

Italy's Armin Zoggeler celebrates his unique achievement of winning a sixth Olympic luge medal on the Sochi podium @ Getty Images

But if that table were judged in the same way as the medals table at the Games, then one man would be above the Italian whose fierce competitiveness has earned him the nickname of "Il Cannibale".Yes. You've guessed it. A German.

Georg Hackl will not trouble the Olympic scorers further given that he retired after the 2006 Games, where, like Zoggeler this week, he competed in the year he turned 40. But this slim, moustachioed soldier from Berchtesgarden in Bavaria has three consecutive Olympic victories to his name – from 1992 to 1998. Which is one more than the Italian has managed.

Zoggeler is a 6ft man mountain. Hackl, by contrast, is 5ft 8in - and no more than a man hillock. How he managed to defeat conspicuously more powerful opponents on big occasion after big occasion was something which seemed baffling to him.

What made Hackl's achievement even more baffling at the 1998 Nagano Games was that each of his four starts was slower than his Italian rival's - something which, in theory, should have made a crucial difference.

Asked the perennial question again after two more superbly executed runs had extended his first-day lead to just over half a second, Hackl replied with a gentle smile: "I don't know this myself, frankly."

Some contributing factors, at least, seemed clear. Hackl was a trained mechanic and metalworker, who devoted many hours to constructing his own luge. Nobody rode on a better sled.

And the rigorously toned physiques of his opponents may actually have been a disadvantage. Hackl was said to "gel" effectively as he moved - that is, he reduced wind resistance by relaxing and keeping his muscles loose.

There is an analogy here with sprinting, where – as any top performer will tell you – relaxation is the key. No strain, more gain.

After Hackl had come from behind to win the 1994 Olympics by a 100th of a second with his final run, the reported reaction of Austria's silver medallist Markus Prock was: "Again Hackl! He is always lucky!"

But how does someone manage always to be lucky? "His mental strength is phenomenal," Thomas Schwab, the then German coach, said. "It borders on virtuosity."

The American Adam Heidt, who finished ninth in 1998, reflected: "It's like a poker game. You don't show anything you have, you just keep smiling. Hackl is good at that. He's the best."

After the first day's competition in Japan, the Canadian and US teams protested unsuccessfully against the new, aerodynamic, yellow booties Hackl and the other Germans had worn. Hackl defended them as normal advances in design, worth perhaps 200ths of a second per run.

In the wake of his third Olympic success he laughed off another American question about the booties - "they were really special," he said. "Especially the colour."

Asked what were the chances of his continuing to the 2002 Olympics, he screwed up his face and put his finger and thumb together. "Things are more difficult now for me than when I was 20," he said with another grin. "We all grow older. Just look at yourselves."

Sixteen years on, I can confirm that the advice this multiple Olympian offered us in Japan has turned out to be correct. Thank you for that, Georg...

The aerodynamic apparel of lugers has given rise over the years to jokes about safe sex and flying sausages. References of the latter kind appeared to have got Hackl's hackles up – he was once reported to have taken out a writ to prevent his local paper referring to him as the "Speeding White Sausage".

Germany's Georg Hackl en route to the first of three Olympic luge titles at the 1992 Albertville Games - and looking nothing like a speeding white sausage @ Getty Images



Before driving down to Nagano town centre for the medal ceremony, Hackl stopped in at a little clubhouse the Germans had established at the site and managed a quick beer. (It may not surprise you to hear that we media types with him did likewise.) He then emerged, to ringing cheers, with something clamped triumphantly in his hand - a German sausage sandwich.

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.

The first Russian Olympic gold came in ice skating but Nikolai Kolomenkin's moment of glory was fully 16 years before the first Olympic Winter Games in 1924. He skated to gold during the 1908 London Olympics.

The Olympic Charter now describes winter sports as those practised on Ice and snow, but back then skating was part of a "winter" sports programme which included football, rugby union and hockey.

The events took place in late October and were among the last in an Olympic Games which had lasted the best part of six months.

The National Skating Association of Great Britain was put in charge of organisation. William Hayes Fisher, (later Lord Downham), chaired the Special Committee. This included one of the competitors, Edgar Syers, who as the honorary secretary of the figure skating club sat on the British Olympic Council.

The competition was held at the Princes Club in West London. Some overseas skaters chose to train in Berlin but the Olympic venue itself was specially opened two weeks before competition for practice.

There were strict rules on amateurism at the London 1908 Olympics ©Getty Images



For 10 hours a day the club was reserved for Olympic training, but for the remaining time, the general public were allowed in to use the rink. No concerns about security back then.

As with all other sports at the 1908 Games, there were strict rules on amateurism.

"A skater is not recognised as an amateur if since January 1st 1893 he has practised in his own person any sporting bodily exercise as a means for gain." Nor was he or she allowed to have taught skating professionally.

The rules also barred anyone who had "sold or pledged prizes won in sporting competitions" or "knowingly and without protest started in an open skating competition against a competitor who is not an amateur".

Twenty-one competitors from six countries were deemed to fulfil these criteria. This was what organisers called "an excellent and representative entry".

Each country was allowed to enter three competitors in each individual event.

The special figures event was held for the one and only time in London and Kolomenkin reigned supreme. He competed under the alias Panin, because in those days, being a sportsman was not always considered entirely respectable for a Russian gentleman. He was also apparently worried that his fellow students might make fun of him. It was clear he loved his sport for he played football and also cycled rowed and swam. He was also a good enough shot to compete in the 1912 Olympic pistol shooting event.

Figure skating made its Winter Olympic debut at the first games in Chamonix 1924 ©Getty Images



From all accounts, he was very modest, and only grudgingly allowed details of his life to be published in a newspaper.

The official report described Kolomenkin's efforts in the special figures as "far in advance of his opponents, both in the difficulty of his figures, and in the ease and accuracy of their execution. He cut in the ice a series of the most perfect intaglios with almost mathematical precision." This should not have come as a surprise. He had matriculated with a first class degree in mathematics from his university.

The skill involved was all very well, but the correspondent from The Times seemed a little bored by proceedings.

"The casual spectator is apt to find these tedious. The shades of difference which make them so absorbing to the learner escaping his uncritical eye," he wrote.

With one gold medal in the bag Kolomenkin also seemed set for a battle royal with the incomparable Swede Ulrich Salchow in the men's individual competition. They went toe to toe in the first phase, which involved the figures that were Kolomenkin's speciality and it was hard to separate them for "casual spectator" or expert alike.

Unfortunately, Kolomenkin felt unwell before the free programme and withdrew from the competition. This left the way clear for Salchow. He led a one, two, three for Sweden and the following year he executed the jump that gave him lasting fame.

Crowds at the London 1908 Olympics were treated to a feast of sport over six months, including the less common summer pursuit of figure skating ©Getty Images


Salchow was used to success in London. In 1902 he had won the world title at the Niagara Rink. In those days the competition was mixed and he beat a girl who was to become famous in her own right.

Florence Syers, from Kensington in London, was known as Madge by her friends. She was a trail blazer for women's sport . In an era when gender parity was unheard of, she had the beating of most men, Salchow excepted. Her success forced the International Skating Union to introduce women's competitions.

The Sporting Life newspaper said that skating "had not yet excited the great British public".

Even so, Theodore Cook's official report of the Games waxed lyrical about the crowd: "The rink was filled to overflowing with an enthusiastic crowd of onlookers, who witnessed perhaps the most strenuous, delightful and varied display of figure skating that has ever taken place.

"Syers was ahead from the start and showed her class in the free programme. She was as far in advance of her opponents as her compulsory figures had been. She excelled in rhythm and time-keeping, and her dance steps, pirouettes etc. were skated without a fault."

She also competed in the pairs with her husband Edgar. Curiously the other British couple in the event was another married couple, Phyllis and James Johnson who took silver behind the German pairing of Anna Hubler and Heinrich Burger. Madge and Edgar had to be content with bronze.

Troubled with illness in later years, Madge died in 1917 at the tragically early age of 35.

Since those heady days at the Princes Club, ice skating has become one of the crown jewels of the Winter Olympics.

Skaters such as Norwegian Sonja Henie, Dick Button, John Curry and Katarina Witt became superstars but not all became millionaires as a result of Olympic gold.  Jeanette Altwegg, the 1952 champion, chose instead to work for a children's village in Switzerland.

Born in Hackney, a stone's throw from the 2012 Olympic Stadium, Philip Barker has worked as a television journalist for 25 years. He began his career with Trans World Sport, then as a reporter for Skysports News and the ITV breakfast programme. A regular Olympic pundit on BBC Radio, Sky News and Talksport, he is associate editor of the Journal of Olympic History, has lectured at the National Olympic Academy and contributed extensively to Team GB publications.

Cards on the table. I am not the greatest fan of winter sports.

I suppose it goes back to the time many years ago when I took my one and only skiing holiday with my wife, an accomplished downhiller having spent some time in Canada.

While she was high above merrily skimming around on the red run for the experienced skier I was stuck down below falling about on the novices' green run being bellowed at by an unsympathetic Austrian instructor for repeatedly failing to master something called the Snowplough Position.

In the end I chucked the skis into a snowdrift and stomped off for a warming glass of gluhwein in the village hostelry where I spent the rest of the week.

Subsequently, I have to say that of all the international sports events I have covered in more than half a century, the one which lingers in my  consciousness as the most abysmal is the Winter Games of 1980 in Lake Placid.

It was so badly organised under the auspices of a local vicar (one Rev Bernard J Fell) the memory still sends cold shivers down my spine.

Small town America at its worst.

Lake Placid 1980 was a badly organised games ©AFP/Getty Images



I have attended several since without ever becoming enamoured by them, though Lillehammer was quite civilised, but I had hoped I might finally be wooed by watching Sochi on the box from my comfort zone.

Instead, thanks to the BBC, instead of being turned on I have been totally turned off, as I suspect have many more back home.

Commentaries and punditry ranging from the excruciatingly hyperbolic to embarrassingly orgasmic have been showered up on us by cheerleaders with microphones waving verbal pom-poms.

In particular those "experts" who regaled throughout the undoubtedly admirable performance of Jenny Jones winning the historic bronze medal in the women's slopestyle on Sunday exceeded even the appalling jingoism we usually get from NBC whenever an American gets near the Olympic podium.

They possess a bafflingly wide variety of slopestyle jargon in their vocabulary (I always thought a McEgg was something you got in a bun at McDonald's) but objectivity appears a foreign language.

For BBC read OTT.

So much so that the BBC had to issue an apology after receiving just over 300 complaints from viewers who variously described the coverage as 'partisan, puerile and idiotic'.

The BBC commentators got carried away as Jenny Jones claimed slopestyle bronze ©Getty Images



One rightly condemned the "shrieking with joy" as one of Jones' foreign rivals fell.

Most of the time the constantly whooping presenters Ed Leigh and Tim Warwood, both former snowboarders, bemused us with those curious slopestyle phrases like "third metres of rad", "phat" and, even "huck it", which sounded so much like something else even the professional aplomb of the usually capable Hazel Irvine was ruffled to the extent of saying sorry to viewers for what we, and she, misheard as offensive language.

There was also the moment when Jones' team-mate Aimee Fuller, who had failed to make it through to the final, joined the over-effusive commentary team but was overcome with emotion she had to put down the mic. Not only was she speechless, but apparently sobbing, screeching as Jones began her final run, "I can't look – someone else commentate."

And this was not enough, as Jones waited for her score Leigh declared:

"I can feel my pulse in my lower intestine." Warwood sniggered: "That's not your pulse, Ed."

How David Coleman and David Vine must be turning in their proverbial graves.

Dare I say it, but that's the problem with employing jocks rather than journos.

We have been introduced to some curious slopestyle phrases during the events in Sochi ©Getty Images



As I was also saying last week the problem is we in Britain just don't seem to take the Winter Olympics seriously.

And we never will while television continues to dispense such ridiculously oversold commentaries, which I fear will spread to other aspects of the Games whenever Team GB gets the scent of a medal.

Goodness knows what would have happened had Jones won gold rather than bronze.

The commentary box probably would have disappeared in an avalanche of mouth-frothing hysteria.

As the late Michael Winner used to say in those insurance commercials: "Calm down dears!"

This overkill could well be the result of the Beeb having to justify their massive Games outlay in terms of cash and personnel by convincing viewers that everything that happens in Sochi is earth-shattering.

Their hope is that those at home will be as beguiled as they were when Torvill and Dean captivated the world exactly 30 years ago. It is too hard a sell, as we don't have a T and D any more.

But we do have so far is a Jenny Jones, as personable and presentable an advert for a British Olympian as you could wish. Good luck to her...

The BBC's outlay for coverage of the Sochi Games has been significant ©AFP/Getty Images



But let's keep things in proportion. Alas, those wading through the floods to get to the Dog and Duck on Sunday didn't find those at the bar fervently discussing the glorious bumps and grinds of Jenny Jones but the inglorious decline and fall of Manchester United.

The BBC's much-criticised coverage has been compounded by their decision to screen the lamentable Friday night piste-take Après-ski. Fronted by comedian Alan Davies it is crass, corny and about as funny as broken ribs.

So will I ever warm to this year's Winter Olympics? I might if I turn down the volume on the box.

Actually, I do see what the International Olympic Committee is trying to accomplish by bringing events like slopestyle into the Games. A sort of hip-hop on snow it obviously has a particular appeal to kids, but as the Games venture more into the realm of It's a Knockout, you wonder how long it will be before putting snowball becomes an Olympic event.

I was remarking on this to my winter sports enthusiast missus, suggesting that some of the antics for which you now see people winning gold medals in the Winter Games are what you might try for a giggle while on an Alpine holiday. "You wouldn't find anything like that in the Summer Olympics," I sniffed.

"Beach volleyball to you," she retorted coldly...

There was no answer that.

I may have mentioned this before but this is my first Olympic Games as a journalist.

So, in comparison with more experienced and, dare I say it, more cynical media colleagues, I arrived expecting the unexpected and with what I hope was an enthusiastic and open mindset.

That said these expectations, in a Sochi specific sense, were not particularly high.

In my short time at insidethegames by far my favourite stories to write have concerned Sochi 2014. They are invariably critical, usually nitty-gritty political, and always provoke a good reaction - whether they concern gay rights hysteria, security fears, corruption allegations, environmental damage, poor organisation, doping, alien invasion... You get the drift.

The Opening Ceremony of the Sochi 2014 Olympics may go down in history as having been one of the most ambitious and accomplished of all time. The complexity and sophistication puts it on a par with the Lillehammer 1994 Games, which is widely regarded to have been a Winter opening without rival.

But there was one problem that became the focus of attention after the ceremony finished. You might not have noticed it if you were watching on television, as the delay from live to broadcast meant that a rapid replacement of prior footage could wallpaper over what really happened.

In the segment when the Olympic Rings were being spectacularly visualised from gigantic snowflakes, one of them failed to expand and achieve its circular form.

So what? You may say. In the press conference that followed, it was apparent that this was a source of frustration for the organisers, who implored reporters to focus on their achievements instead of this tiny failure. The artistic director even said that this was one of the simplest technical moments in the Ceremony.

One of the Olympic Rings fails to appear during the Sochi 2014 Olympic Opening Ceremony ©AFP/Getty Images


However, there is good reason why reporters will focus on it, as the presentation of the Olympic Rings is the second most important symbolic moment in the Ceremony, after the lighting of the Cauldron.

It wasn't always like this. In years gone by, the Rings would have just been erected within the stadium from the start of the show. However, in recent years, this segment has become a moment where the hair will stand up on the back of your neck and that moment was lost, at least for those who were in the stadium, which included Vladimir Putin, who was sitting next to International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach and not far from UN secretary general Ban Ki Moon.

So, the significance of this moment is easy to understand. After all, as much as the Games are about the athletes, they are also significantly about those Rings. The entire economic foundation of the movement relies on their sale to the highest bidder. The success of the Games rises and falls on the basis of who has the right to use the Rings.

Thus, the rings have come to symbolise more than just the Olympic values and so their failure to be properly visualised during the Opening Ceremony is to compromise the integrity of that powerful symbol. It is equivalent to the Olympic Cauldron failing to ignite. This need not mean embarrassment but it does mean that an important moment was lost for Sochi.

The Olympic Ring blunder was witnessed by all at the Sochi Olympic Stadium including Thomas Bach and Vladimir Putin ©AFP/Getty Images



It would be unfair for the world to judge the artistic merit of the Ceremony on the basis of this one technical fault. Art may deserve a bit more flexibility in terms of how we evaluate success, compared to sport, where only perfection matters.

However, what took place also means that we cannot award the organisers a perfect 10 for their delivery, even if it was the best Opening Ceremony of all time. But at least that means that the next host city has something to strive for how, beyond Sochi 2014.

Besides, the beauty of television means that it won't be difficult for the Olympic organisers to easily dodge international commentary on what happened. For the majority of viewers - and for the record - it never happened.

Professor Andy Miah is chair in ethics and emerging technologies in the School of Creative and Cultural Industries and director of the Creative Futures Research Centre at the University of the West of Scotland, Fellow of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, USA and Fellow at FACT, the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, UK. He is author of "Genetically Modified Athletes", co-author of "The Medicalization of Cyberspace" and editor of "Human Futures: Art in an Age of Uncertainty".

They promised an Opening Ceremony which would spotlight Russia's heritage and that was exactly what we got. Sochi's big night was rich in classical music, dance and staggering special effects from the very outset .

"Most people did not expect such a sophisticated show from us," said ceremonies producer Konstantin Ernst. Those who had seen Sochi's handover ceremony at Vancouver 2010 should not have been surprised. Then and now they had that little thing called "class".

It was precisely 20:14 hours  when it all began.The sound of Borodin's haunting Polovtsian Dances accompanied the ascent of a little girl called Luvov, played by 11-year-old Liza Temnikova from Krasnodar, a would be Olympic gymnast. Her flight on the high wire recalled the performance  of Australian youngster Nikki Webster,  who also flew through the air at the Sydney 2000 Summer Games.

"What mattered most was to have a little girl, not a woman," said artistic director Andrei Boltenko. "It was a heavy workload for Liza but we decided to take the risk. We wanted her to be kind and human."

As Luvov soared towards the heavens,artificial snow fell in the Fisht Olympic Stadium. Back in the days of bidding for the Games, Russian President Vladimir Putin had promised there would be snow in Sochi whenever it was needed

As in Beijing 2008, the costumes made extensive use of LED lights which switched to white red and blue, the national colours of Russia, as the choir of the Sretensky Monastery sang their national anthem.

By tradition, Greece were first into the Stadium, followed by Australia as the parade of teams made their entry according to the Russian alphabet.

The United States created quite an impression during the Parade of Nations in their Ralph Lauren designed uniforms ©Sports Illustrated/Getty Images

The Italians' outfits were designed by Giorgio Armani, those of the United States by Ralph Lauren. There were precious few national costumes, though the Bermudans wore their famous knee length shorts. Great Britain, predominantly in dark blue, wore Russian style hats, an echo of their 1960 uniform in Squaw Valley. Back then they were described as "Macmillan hats" after British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan who had just visited then Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev.

All teams had entered up a stair case in the centre of the stage. Viewed from above, the image of each country as seen from outer space was projected on the floor as they entered. Each team did only a half-a-lap of the Stadium before taking their seats. This was an  idea which had been used most  notably  at the 2006 Asian Games in Doha. Here too, it dramatically shortened the athlete parade which was by no means as lengthy as Tolstoy's most famous work.

War and Peace was instead the theme for a balletic presentation - a depiction of Natasha Rostova's first ball. The starring role played by Svetlana Zakharova, a prima ballerina with the Bolshoi.

Dancers perform a Dove of Peace routine during the Opening Ceremony
©Chicago Tribune/Getty Images

It's blue-sky thinking time at the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

It remains to be seen quite how radical the changes ultimately engendered by new President Thomas Bach's Olympic Agenda 2020 turn out to be, but IOC members appear for now to be embracing the spirit of innovation with some enthusiasm.

One aspect of the first day of the 126th IOC Session in Sochi that surprised me this week was the repeated support voiced for the idea of introducing more mixed-gender events onto the Olympic Games programme.

There are, as IOC members lined up to point out, plenty of sound reasons for such an initiative.

The Movement has made pretty good progress on gender equality, in terms of the absolute numbers of male and female athletes who compete at the Games, so perhaps it is time to adjust focus slightly. Mixed-gender events send an important and easily decipherable signal to societies in which girls are still brought up to feel inferior to boys. It might well improve the chances of small countries winning team medals.

I would certainly agree both that lots of good might come of this and that more mixed Olympic events are in any case coming: sailing is introducing a two-person mixed multihull event at Rio 2016; swimming is seemingly not far behind, with mixed relays set to be included in the 2014 World Short Course Championships in Doha in December, some four years after a mixed relay featured at the inaugural Youth Olympics in Singapore.

The Youth Olympics has already gone down the road of mixed events, with the 4x100 metre freestyle relay at the inaugural event in Singapore 2010 ©Getty Images


It is not terribly difficult, moreover, to think of other sports which would be well advised to follow suit as quickly as possible.

For example, athletics: mixed-gender 4x100m and 4x400m relays would be a great way to round off the Olympic track and field programme for a sport which, though the absolute bedrock of Olympic competition, could certainly do with some judicious gingering up.

For example, golf: I can imagine few better ways for this new Olympic sport to counter the rather fusty, conservative image that still dogs it in some circles than to introduce a mixed-gender pairs competition.

For maximum impact, I'd be minded to go for a foursome, rather than a four-ball, format, with male-female pairs playing alternate shots.

You could even argue that mixed-gender pairs would be a positive development in  canoeing and rowing, although I am not sure the case here is quite as strong.

As for mixed-gender tandem in Olympic cycling - hmm, I wonder.

Tandem cycling might be one mixed event not greeting an Olympics any time soon ©Getty Images



The truth is, as anyone who has taken part in a brainstorming might testify, it is easy to get carried away.

Whole worlds can be transformed in not much longer than it takes to write this column; then, little by little, the cold light of day intrudes, exposing flaws in all but the most authentic masterstrokes.

So, if I might be permitted to interject the slightest reality check into a most stimulating debate, it would be to argue that this will – and should be – a gradual, not an overnight, revolution.

New mixed events need to be thoroughly tried and tested by the relevant International Sports Federations (IFs) before being let loose at Olympic level, the apex of the global sporting pyramid.

I see little reason to doubt that the Olympic sports programme of, say, 2032 will feature many more mixed events than we have at present; but it could take quite some time for this proliferation to materialise.

I also think it is important to avoid gimmickry, and to ensure that IFs do not feel pressured to go down the mixed event path come what may, in order to procure a bright, new IOC-approved feather for their cap.

Thomas Bach's blue sky thinking has cultivated a refreshing spirit of debate ©AFP/Getty Images



I sensed perhaps the merest hint of this in an intervention made by Rita Subowo, an IOC member from Indonesia.

Ms Subowo said that, while she agreed with the idea of encouraging gender equity by introducing more mixed events, "I don't know how to implement it in my sport, in volleyball, because the height of the nets is different".

But, she added, almost quoting that famed same-sex songwriting pairing, Lennon and McCartney, "we will work it out".

I must confess this left me with the faintly sinister image of a "smart" volleyball net capable of detecting the gender of the next player to strike the ball and whirring up or down accordingly.

Hats off for now though to the new IOC regime, for the refreshing spirit of debate it is inculcating.

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.

Obviously it's relatively early days for the recently installed President of the International Olympic Committee, but Mr Bach is already on his mettle as far as the impending Sochi Games are concerned.

His wily assurance that athletes would naturally be free to express themselves during post-competition press conferences drew what looked and sounded like a flat denial from the organisers, only for the matter to be resolved when the organisers insisted that their flat denial had been misunderstood. Or was it "taken out of context"?

Whatever, freedom of expression will Rule OK in press conferences, which is good news for all the media representatives now gathered in the seething Black Sea resort and busying themselves with pre-Games reports featuring, among other things, the uncomfortably companionable toilet arrangements in the biathlon venue. Perhaps this is some kind of complement to the biathlon, given that it will require those seating themselves in the gents to offer the combined skill of making polite conversation while doing what they arrived to do.

Toilet arrangements at the biathlon and other venues are promising to earn Sochi the reputation of being the Friendly Games ©Steve Rosenberg/BBC

Naturally, many reporters have focused on the massive security presence all around them, above them and, for all we know, underneath them - although that story has yet to surface.

If pre-Games rhetoric was an Olympic event - well it is, really - and was scored, say, under the system which used to hold sway in figure skating, then Bach would surely be looking at a perfect 6 for his freedom-of-speech effort, although perhaps only a 5.5 for his most recent sally against those world leaders, invited or uninvited, who have decided to make a point of not attending the Sochi Games, which is being widely taken as a judgement upon the controversy over gay rights and the new Russian law which has flared in the space of the past year.

US President Barack Obama is among many world leaders "boycotting" the Sochi Games, with implied criticism of Russia's stance regarding gay rights ©AFP/Getty Images

Bach has a point when he asks politicians not to visit their disagreements "on the backs of the athletes" at the Games. But after all, it is only the politicians who are boycotting, not their athletes, as was the case in the 1980 and 1984 Games. Some might see even this as a positive thing...

These successes, however, are as rhetorical double salchows to the triple lutz which lies ahead in the President's programme - that is, characterising the Games.

IOC President Thomas Bach addressing the Session in Sochi this week
©AFP/Getty images

Already, surely, the President will have potential statements prepared for the Closing Ceremony, at which, custom has so often dictated, the latest Olympics will have to be labelled the "most something", or perhaps the "something-est" in history. The 64 billion rouble question is: what will the "something" be?

The Sochi Games could already be called the most expensive Games given their most popularised figure of $31 billion  (although just to make things confusing, last year's estimate of $51 billion, offered by the Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak has since been dramatically downgraded to $6.4 billion, which officials say is the true figure minus costs for improved transport links and other infrastructure). But such a truth is not what the host nation will be looking for on this occasion. Most compact Games? Again, true, but not the answer. Most heavily fortified Games (move over, Salt Lake City...)? Same goes.

Maybe the President will have to fall back on the diplomacy of "truly exceptional", the epithet given by his predecessor, Jacques Rogge, to the 2008 Beijing Olympics - Games which, incidentally, Rogge's predecessor Juan-Antonio Samaranch proclaimed as "the best I have ever seen."

Perhaps Rogge was remembering 1996 Atlanta Games, when the organisational travails, and indeed the bombing which resulted in two deaths and more than a hundred injuries, moderated even Samaranch to the observation that they had been "most exceptional".

The Closing Ceremony of the 1996 Atlanta Games which, beset by organisational problems and a fatal bomb blast, were described merely as "most exceptional" by the then IOC President Juan-Antonio Samaranch ©Getty Images

What is devoutly to be wished, of course, is that Thomas Bach will be able to declare that the Sochi 2014 Games have been "the greatest ever".

They might yet be, we will soon see - although for many people the background to these Games, with the serial allegations of corruption, the crudely and one senses temporarily ameliorated attitude to gay rights, and the real and present danger of terrorist attacks, has already characterised the Sochi Winter Games adversely.

However things turn out once the 22nd Winter Games are officially underway, the latest version is already a world away from the two which preceded it in Vancouver and Turin. There will be nothing ad hoc or carefree about these Games.

What can be said of them, unequivocally, is that they are a supreme expression of willpower - the will of President Putin, and by extension the nation over which he presides. Every sporting element of these Games has been created from scratch. The expense is matched only by the ambition and confidence of the enterprise.

That much was evident when I was one of the journalists invited to Sochi for the World Press Briefing in November 2012 and was taken on a two-day whistle-stop tour of the alpine and coastal venues.

On day one, our coach travelled past solid lines of lorries, diggers, cement mixers and mini-buses full of construction workers heading for the mountain ranges behind us, their wheels throwing up dust into the mountain air. The dust was flying too when we reached our destination just a few hundred metres away from the rolling, olive green water of the Black Sea. More lines of lorries. More mini-buses. More frenetic activity. It went on all day. It went on all night. It went on come rain. It went on come shine.

One of the workers who helped turn Sochi into 'the biggest building site in the world' in preparation for the 2014 Winter Games ©AFP/Getty Images

In his address to the gathered journalists Dmitry Chernyshenko, President and chief executive of Sochi 2014, described the locale as "probably the biggest building site in the world."

Tellingly, he added: "Every Games should surpass the previous edition - should be better, more efficient." And there you have it. The Russians have not gone to all this trouble merely to create a successful Games. It has to be a transcendent Games.

Dmitriy Chernyshenko, President and chief executive of Sochi 2014, has voiced Russia's towering ambitions well ahead of the Opening Ceremony ©AFP/Getty Images

And that, of course, holds true for tomorrow's centrepiece in the Fisht (short for Finisht) Olympic Stadium. "We've got an ambitious job to create the most outstanding Opening Ceremony ever," Chernyshenko asserted.

Such is the fearsome level of expectation with which IOC Presidents now have to contend. Good luck with it all, Mr Bach!

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.

Four years ago at the handover in Vancouver, Sochi's ballet dancers gave a tantalising glimpse of  what to expect at the Opening Ceremony this week. They danced to the third movement of Tchaikovsky's Symphony Pathetique. This same music had been used at the very start of the 1980 Olympic Opening in Moscow, the most spectacular Ceremony seen up to that time.

The 2014 Ceremony, to be held indoors in the Fisht Stadium, will certainly be as spectacular as many in recent history.The winter openings were not always so elaborate.

In the Lake Placid Games of 1932 it lasted less than half-an-hour. The Games were opened by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, not yet President but Governor of New York. The festivities began at 10 o'clock in the morning. The Great Britain team was comprised of four female skaters, from whom Mollie Phillips became the first woman from any nation to carry her country's flag.

At Garmisch-Partenkirchen in 1936, Nazi flags lined the roadside and until International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Henry Baillet Latour intervened, so did anti-Jewish slogans. A flame burned from a tower on the mountains as Adolf Hitler became the last head of state to open a Winter and Summer Olympics in the same year.

Molly Philips carried Britain's flag at the Opening Ceremony of the 1932 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, the first woman from any country to be given the honour ©Philip Barker



In post war years, the memory of those Games was an embarrassment to local authorities and the cauldron was pressed into service as a cattle trough. It has since disappeared.

There was a sensitive problem for Ceremony organisers at the 1952 Winter Games in Oslo. King George VI died a few days before .

"The musical programme for the opening was changed to a more solemn tone," said the official report.

King Haakon of Norway had been due to make the opening declaration but he flew to London for the funeral with Crown Prince Olav and Princess Ragnhild was asked to perform the ceremonial Olympic duties.

After the march past of the teams, there was a short speech and then the flags were dipped as a minute's silence was observed.

Karl Ritter von Halt, president of the Garmisch-Partenkirchen Olympic organising committee, speaks during the opening of the 1936 Winter Games, which was marred by anti-Jewish sentiment ©AFP/Getty Images





The Olympic Flame had been lit in the Norwegian village of Morgedal and brought by relay, the first time this happened at the Winter Games.

Walt Disney was given the job of designing the ceremonies for the 1960 Games in Squaw Valley, but even he could do nothing about the weather on the morning of the opening ceremony. A Sierra Nevada snowstorm threatened to ruin the spectacle but as the Greek team marched in, the sun appeared. Many at the time called this "The Miracle of Squaw Valley".

A colourful "Tower of Nations" depicting each participating country stood at the centre of the stadium and balloons were released as the flame was lit.

The opening words were spoken by American vice president Richard Nixon.

The sunshine appeared just in the nick of time at the Squaw Valley 1960 Opening Ceremony, designed by Walt Disney © AFP/Getty Images



When the Winter Games returned to the United States in 1980, it was again the Vice-President who opened them, but the reason seemed to be political. At the time of the Lake Placid Games, President Jimmy Carter was campaigning for a boycott of the Moscow Games in protest at the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and was hostile to the IOC.

"At the last moment I was informed that he had delegated his authority to vice president Walter Mondale," Wrote IOC President Lord Killanin later.

Lake Placid was the third and to date last city to stage the Olympic Winter Games twice. Innsbruck held her second opening ceremony in 1976 at  the Bergisel ski jump stadium where two cauldrons burned to mark the fact. Twelve years earlier in 1964, the Winter flame had been brought from Olympia in Greece for the first time. The ceremony  was subdued after two fatal accidents in training. Almost half a century later, another tragedy hit the Winter Games and a visibly shaken Jacques Rogge opened his speech at the Vancouver Games with a tribute to Georgian Luger Nodar Kumaritashvili, who was killed during a training run.

Grey skies greeted the Olympic flame as it arrived in Sarajevo for the 1984 Games but the colour purple provided the dominant theme for dancers. They wore legwarmers and headbands as they performed. The television series Fame was popular at the time. A specially written March of all The Continents greeted the competitors. The ceremonies at the Kosevo stadium were modest but well received and Yugoslav President of the Presidencies Mika Spiljak made the opening declaration. These were the first Games at which IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch presided and he clearly retained an affection for what he called "Dear Sarajevo".

Sarajevo’s Opening Ceremony in 1984 was modest, but well received ©AFP/Getty Images



In 1988, a massed choir sang the official song Come Together in Calgary as first nation tribes on horseback made a dramatic entry. The use of horses on such a scale was also seen twelve years later at the summer Games in Sydney. When Australia arrived in Calgary, the band played "Happy Birthday" in honour of the Aussies' bicentenary that year.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police provided an escort for the Governor General Jeanne Sauve, representative of the Queen who arrived in an open landau to open the Games. She made the announcement in French and English, as the Queen had done at the 1976 Summer Games in Montreal.

The Canadian snowbirds flew overhead as the flame was lit by 12-year-old Robyn Perry.

Albertville was the central resort of the 1992 Games. The Opening Ceremony was arguably the most bizarre of them all. Described by the American magazine Sports Illustrated as "Mind Warping" it began shortly before sunset. The organisers promised the Ceremony would "rupture the quiet tradition of the previous editions". An aerial ballet offered an original depiction of the Olympic sports, but what was harder to fathom was the decision that the narrators would speak in bizarre rhyming couplets.

The placards were carried by girls who wore giant costumes that resembled desk ornaments shaken to produce the effect of a snowstorm. Football superstar Michel Platini  brought the Flame to the stadium and joined youngster Francois Cyrille Grange to light the cauldron, but some were left with the feeling that it had "ruptured tradition" too much.

The most memorable moment of the Lillehammer 1994 Opening Ceremony came when a ski jumper heralded the arrival of the flame ©Getty Images



In 1994, the Norwegians reverted to a more classical theme and created a magical winter setting in Lillehammer to welcome the Games.

It all kicks off on Friday, the skiing, skating, slithering and jumping which go to make up the XXII Winter Olympics in the usually sunny but hopefully snowy Black Sea resort of Sochi; the most expensive and controversial Games in history.

A lot of time, money and effort has gone into making Team GB the best prepared and most ambitious ever to embark on such an expedition. We must hope it will be worth it.

The problem is, we in Britain just don't seem to take the Winter Olympics seriously - that is until we start winning medals. And there have been precious few of them.

True, some 24 million, one of the UK's highest-ever viewing figures, watched Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean Bolero their way to sporting immortality at Sarajevo 30 years ago. And Rhona Martin's curlers kept us glued bleary-eyed to the box as they rolled their stones to gold in Salt Lake City in 2002.

Rhona Martin (right) kept British eyes open into the early hours as she led her team of curlers to Olympic glory in Salt Lake City ©Getty Images



But by and large winter sports are seen as more fun than Games. Certainly in the eyes of TV producers.

A perfect example of this has been Channel 4's winter sports reality show The Jump, which  seems to have left viewers and critics cold.

There was no doubting the courage of the contestants and the hazards involved - Sir Steve Redgrave had to retire hurt nursing a broken hand and badly bruised ribs.

At least the Olympic rowing legend had sports cred - but the sight of so many C-list showbiz sorts pratfalling on skis and skates hardly whetted the appetite for the real thing to come.

The redoubtable Redgrave stood out in a motley mix which included a bearded comic, an ex-cricketer, a celebrity hairdresser, a long-forgotten TV presenter and a Pussycat Doll.

Over a week, this bunch of frost-bitten tyros tried their luck at the bobsleigh, skeleton, skiing and speed-skating with the worst pair having to perform a ski jump-off under the enthusiastic tutelage of Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards.

Eddie 'The Eagle' Edwards guided contestants on The Jump in the art of ski jumping, after his own efforts won him a legion of fans at Calgary 1988 ©AFP/Getty Images


It was eventually won by the 2009 X Factor victor Joe McElderry, a singer who is openly gay. Just as well he is not performing in Sochi then.

The Jump never really took off. Sadly it was downhill all the way.

As one caustic TV reviewer put it: "A lot of cold frantic, solitary sports that force contestants to dress up as Power Rangers and leave viewers with no idea what they are watching. There's only one thing worse than skilled professionals doing them at breakneck speed and that's some bungling amateurs doing them very slowly."

He added: "The Winter Olympics may be great fun to take part in but they're pretty lousy to watch."

Clearly this chap has an ice chip on his shoulder which won't thaw out when the BBC, with not far off twice the number of personnel (96 at the last count) deployed to cover the Games than GB have competitors, begin their own daily transmissions this weekend. These start at 7am on with an hour-long highlights programme starting at 7pm.

No doubt the Beeb are anxious that this coverage will be received somewhat less light-heartedly and that by the end of the 17 days shivering Britain will have learned to love the Winter Olympics.

In addition to 200 hours of network TV coverage presented by Clare Balding, Hazel Irvine and Jonathan Edwards, there will also be more than 650 hours of live action via six HD streams.

Then 2010 skeleton gold medalist Amy Williams and former Olympians Graham Bell, Colin Bryce, Emma Carrick-Anderson, Robin Cousins, Jackie Lockhart and Wilf O'Reilly will be among the luminaries assembled to impat their expertise in the hope of converting the muiltitude who know little about winter sports and care even less.

So it seems rather surprising that BBC 2 are supplementing the serious stuff with an accompanying programme hosted by comedian Alan Davies. Apres- Ski will air on Fridays at 10pm when Davies promises "to take a comic look at the news and action  of the Winter Olympics."

Or in other words, take the piste...

Alan Tyler, BBC Executive Editor for Entertainment Commissioning, says: "Alan is one of the best comic performers in the UK and a huge sports fan. We are delighted he is fronting what will be a fun take on a huge sporting event."

Oh dear! I fear the worst.

However this Friday it would be no surprise if both this suspect show and live coverage of the Opening Ceremony are eclipsed in terms of viewer appeal by a third BBC2 Winter Games offering.

Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean on their way to perfection in Sarajevo 1984 ©Getty Images



I strongly suspect more of us will be inclined to watch Torvill & Dean: The Perfect Day which airs at 9pm. In this hour-long long documentary, the iconic couple recall the events leading up to their gold medal winning performance on Valentine's Day 1984.

Six days later they will again dance on ice to recreate the same Bolero routine in the very place where it originated.

This follows a joint invitation from the mayors of Sarajevo and East Sarajevo to visit the city to mark the 30th anniversary of the great event. They will skate in the same stadium, originally called the Olympic Hall Zetra which was destroyed in the 1992-95 Bosnian war but rebuilt in 1999 and renamed Olympic Hall Juan Antonio Samaranch, after the former President of the International Olympic Committee.

Money raised from the performance will be used in Sarajevo to build a permanent ice rink, ahead of the 2017 European Youth Winter Olympic Festival.

"It will be an emotional day," says Torvill.  "To return to the place which provided such a life-changing moment for us will be an exciting and rewarding way to mark the 30th anniversary."

What T&D did then was a thing of beauty, but we should not overlook the fact that there is also ugliness in the real dangers lurking both on the ice  and in the mountains of Sochi.

Whatever the TV satirists might suggest. the Winter Olympics are no snow joke.

The safety of competitors in their particular disciplines must be as much a concern for the Russian hosts as the threat of terrorist attacks.

The death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili during a practice run in Vancouver 2010 is only too vivid in recent memory ©AFP/Getty Images



The grim shadow of the stricken Michael Schumacher hangs over winter sports which, lest we forget, contain more hazardous pursuits than any in the Summer Games.

The death of 21-year-old Nodar Kumaritashvili, a Georgian luge slider competing at the Vancouver Olympics, who crashed during a training run and hit a metal pole, is only to vivid in recent memory.

And Franz Klammer, one of the greatest-ever Olympic downhillers, has created a Foundation devoted to caring for the many youngsters badly injured in skiing accidents.

This week concerns have been raised by several snowboarders over the safety of the slopestyle course after training runs. They claim it is  "pretty dangerous" and warn of potential injuries, urging improvements before the competition starts.

Make no mistake, lives will be risked in Sochi in all sorts of ways; good reason to view these Winter Olympics and those who compete in them with respect and admiration rather than as a bit of a giggle.

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.

Two days in Sochi so far aside, I have never covered an Olympic Games before so, like many others, I have been reliant on television and images for my Olympic memories.

This was a theme explored in an insidethegames blog last week by my colleague Mike Rowbottom who described how for him Games of the past are a "slide show" of iconic images and recollections.

After the splendour of Russia's Torch Relay and its trips to the North Pole, Outer Space, Lake Baikal and Mount Elbrus - not to mention the recent influx of visuals documenting the arrival of athletes in Sochi - we expect this fresh onslaught of iconic images to continue over coming weeks.

But what of the photographers who actually take these images? What are their motivations and challenges and how has their job changed over time?

I must admit that, during my time as a journalist, I have not paid too much attention to their plight and the interaction that has occurred has tended to involve a photographer's frustrated protests after a snapping opportunity was prevented by my uncaring, if innocent, intrusions.

One particular example of this arose during the Flame Lighting Ceremony in Ancient Olympia last year when I, along with one journalistic colleague, managed to arrive at the crucial moment to photograph the handover of the Torch to ice hockey superstar Alexander Ovechkin and in doing so position myself directly in front of photographers who had spent all morning patiently waiting to ensure a perfect view.

There is also a slightly dismissive element on our part I feel due to the fact that we manage to not only take photos but write articles as well. But the validity of any superiority complex is of course nonsense and there is a world of difference between taking photos on a camera phone and taking them with the volume, precision and complexity of a Getty Images cameraman.

Besides, I struggle to believe that a professional photographer would spend half an hour baffled at a camera showing a black screen only for it to turn out that a piece of paper was blocking the lens - as the insidethegames team did en route to Sochi...

Photographers will be there for every second of Sochi 2014, as they were the for the Olympic Torch departure for Outer Space last year ©AFP/Getty Images


Luckily an opportunity arose to speak to Getty photographer Alexander Hassenstein to understand more about how exactly this advanced world operates.

Hassenstein joined the Berlin-based sports paper Deutsches Sportecho in 1990 after completing a classical traineeship in photography. He has since worked for Bongarts, as well as Getty, and has covered 11 Olympic Games and three FIFA World Cups alongside a multitude of other events - receiving numerous awards along the way.

He will be focusing on Alpine skiing in Sochi as part of 69 strong Getty team who will be uploading more than 2,000 pictures per day.

"In terms of sport nothing has changed during my career - it is still about athletes, competition and Olympic values", Hassenstein explains to insidethegames with a kind of youthful enthusiasm that you would have assumed nigh on 25 years in the industry would have quelled. "But in terms of photography there has been huge progress."

After starting with frames and slides and having to wait overnight before looking at prints in the morning, Getty are now "leaders sending pictures around the world immediately". 

I have been finding out about the 1920 Olympic ice hockey tournament.

Two reasons: 1. it was the first; 2. it was part of a Summer, not a Winter, Olympics.

Because of this I thought it might bolster the case for a reform I tend to bang on about at this point in the Olympic cycle: namely that the respective sizes of the Summer and Winter Games should be evened up by transferring some indoor sports - volleyball, handball, track cycling - from Summer to Winter.

After all, if ice hockey could glide smoothly from one to another 90 or so years ago, why shouldn't other sports make the same transition today?

I expect, if it ever happened, the sports chosen to make the switch would shout and scream, but to me it is almost a no-brainer for the Movement.

If ice hockey can feature in the Summer Olympics, why can't sports like track cycling be moved to the Winter Games? ©AFP/Getty Images



At a stroke you could make the Summer Olympics significantly less unwieldy, while adding greatly to the appeal of the Winter Games in parts of the world where the water never freezes.

Such a reform might also be used to ease the passage of more new, youth-friendly sports and disciplines - squash, say, or 3x3 basketball - into the Olympics by offering them a place on the Winter programme, as opposed to its overcrowded Summer counterpart.

In point of fact, that 1920 tournament is not as much help in buttressing my argument as I had hoped.

For one thing, as many of you will instantly have spotted, there was no such thing as the Winter Olympics in 1920; the first was held at Chamonix in 1924.

For another, the sporting calendar was considerably less crowded in those days, and John Logie Baird's first demonstration of moving silhouette images by television was still five years away.

There was hence no obstacle to events at a single Games being spread over several months, in this case from April to September, with the ice hockey confined to late April.

No matter; this inaugural Olympic tournament seems to have been a fascinating affair in its own right, not least because the Czechoslovakian team were able to skate away with the bronze medals in spite of a scoring aggregate of one goal for and 31 against.

Before the first Winter Olympics in 1924, the Antwerp Games of 1920 saw the first ice hockey tournament staged ©Getty Images

As implied by that sort of statistic, the competition had a built-in imbalance owing to the fact that the sport was, at that time, much better established across the Atlantic than in Europe.

The two North American teams - Canada and the United States - were therefore far stronger than the five European entrants - Czechoslovakia, Sweden, France, host nation Belgium and Switzerland.

The US actually beat the Swiss 29-0.

That said, most of the players who represented Canada - members of the Winnipeg Falcons club - were of Icelandic heritage.

Iceland itself has still never won an Olympic gold medal, the closest it has come being the silvers picked up by triple jumper Vilhjálmur Einarsson at the Melbourne Games of 1956 and the men's handball team six years ago in Beijing.

So perhaps it should claim some credit for that one.

The tournament's hard luck story was provided by Sweden, who won three games, and even managed a goal against the mighty Canadians, yet finished out of the medals after losing the key match 1-0 to the Czechs.

They seem, above all, to have been victims of the competition's strange structure, which saw them play six matches in seven days, and the Czechs only three.

After falling behind early in this crucial encounter, they appear, nevertheless, to have dominated the match without once being able to score.

Ice hockey at the Winter Olympics has gone from strength to strength, with the Canadian team winning at home in Vancouver in 2010 ©Getty Images



A splendid paper on the tournament by Kenth Hansen, entitled The Birth of Swedish Ice Hockey - Antwerp 1920, relates that according to Dagens Nyheter, a Swedish newspaper, the shot-count was 48-2 in Sweden's favour.

The 24-page document, available here.

It seems that in Sweden at this time, while a not dissimilar sport called bandy was widely practiced, ice hockey was not.

Assembly of an Olympic team had, therefore, to be done from scratch, to the extent that sticks had to be ordered from the US.

As Hansen writes: "The sticks arrived by SS Stockholm at the beginning of February, but were held up in the customs at Gothenburg.

"Several customs officers had been suspended because of theft of incoming goods, and the sticks remained in Gothenburg for the entire ice training period...

"Thus bandy sticks had to be used during training, which naturally made it hard to achieve the right stick technique until the proper American sticks finally arrived."

Getting to the Games does not sound a whole lot easier. Writes Hansen:

"The team travelled by third class train via Trelleborg and Sassnitz to Berlin, where Molander and Säfwenberg joined the team.

"The sight of the star player Nisse Molander was somewhat of a shock.

"He had had a cerebral haemorrhage, and was still so ill that he had to be led onboard the train."

Molander nevertheless played four of his team's six matches.

The tournament's defining clash was the fifth of the 10 games, the showdown between the US and Canada, which the Canadians won 2-0.

The clash between Canada and the USA was the defining moment of the Antwerp 1920 tournament...the two nations world meet again four years later at the first Winter Games in Chamonix ©Getty Images



Hansen quotes at length the report of a Swedish journalist, capturing the electric impact that what he calls "the best game yet seen in Europe" must have had on spectators in the sold-out stands of Antwerp's Ice Palace.

"Every single player on the rink was a perfect acrobat on skates," the report reads.

"The small puck was moved at an extraordinary speed around the rink in all directions, so that the spectators almost became giddy, and the players fought for it like seagulls that flutter about after bread crusts from a boat."...

The goalkeepers "had an inconceivable ability to be in the right position to fend off the [puck], even before the spectators had had time to realize there had been a shot.

"A few times the Canadian goalkeeper had to stop the puck with his hand, and despite his thick gloves his fingers were smashed until they bled."

Breathtaking stuff.

It has been largely forgotten today, but I would say that first US v Canada Olympic ice hockey match deserves to rank alongside Finnish long-distance runner Paavo Nurmi's three gold medals and one silver, Italian Nedo Nadi's five fencing golds and 72-year-old Swede Oscar Swahn's gold in shooting, making him the oldest Olympic champion, among the highlights of those Antwerp Games.

An outstanding website devoted to the first Canadian Olympic ice hockey champions may be found by clicking here.

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. To follow Owen on Twitter click here.