It will be the single most dramatic moment of the 125th International Olympic Committee (IOC) Session in Buenos Aires. When the envelope is torn open to reveal Istanbul, Madrid or Tokyo as 2020 hosts of the Olympics, the decision will transform the very life of the winning city.

Three is the smallest number of cities to contest a final vote for a summer Games since 1981, when the South Korean capital Seoul beat the Japanese city Nagoya to win the 1988 Games. Many considered this a high risk. Although a ceasefire had been in force since 1953, the two Koreas were still technically at war.

"Seoul had not had many contacts with the Olympic family back then," recalled IOC member Un Yong Kim later.

Up to that time his country had only staged one World Championship, in shooting, but "Seoul was more modern than many people realised," said Kim and against the odds those Games were very successful.

As recently as 1978, the IOC had a one horse race. Tehran, then ruled by the Shah, announced in 1975 that they would bid for the 1984 Olympics but later withdrew. Los Angeles was left as the only candidate. They announced their Games would be staged by private enterprise and upset purists when they decided to charge runners to participate in the Olympic Torch relay.

A former travel company executive Peter Ueberroth led the Organising Committee and turned a handsome profit. It proved a turning point for the Olympic Movement as cities now queued up to host the Games.

Seoul 1988 was considered to be a successful Olympics but there originally had been doubts over the decision to award the Games to the South Korean capital


This had not always been the case. In 1904, Berlin graciously stood aside after an impassioned plea from Roman Mayor Prospero Colonna to stage the 1908 Games.

Then IOC President Pierre de Coubertin said Rome was "a sumptuous toga with which to clothe Olympism". But Rome soon ran into financial difficulties and the eruption of Vesuvius put paid to their dreams. London stepped in. The Romans had to wait until 1960 for another chance.

The Games grew rapidly and German Kaiser Wilhelm attended the opening of Berlin's stadium intended for the 1916 Olympics, but war soon made them impossible.

Antwerp held the first Games when the fighting stopped but there was no shortage of candidates for the 1924 Games. A total of 14 cities expressed initial interest,and six eventually made presentations before Paris was chosen to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the foundation of the IOC.

Amsterdam in 1928 made it five European Cities in a row. There was no continental rotation but Coubertin had by this time suggested that one in three Games should go to "the new world". In 1932 Los Angeles held the Games.

For 1936, there came bids from Buenos Aires in South America and Alexandria in Africa. IOC President Henri de Baillet-Latour informed his colleagues of additional interest from Dublin, Budapest, Helsinki, Rome, Barcelona and four German cities. The IOC chose Berlin. It proved a fateful choice when the Nazis later came to power.

A decision to award the 1936 Olympics to Berlin proved fateful when the Nazis under Adolf Hitler came to power


Military aggression soon forced the IOC to move the 1940 Games from Tokyo after the Japanese invaded Manchuria and the Games were re-assigned to Helsinki.

War made Olympic sport impossible, though the sequence of Games includes the 12th, which were scheduled for Helsinki in 1940, and the 13th, which had been set for London in 1944, although both were cancelled.

Only a few days after the war ended, IOC President Sigfrid Edström, determined the Games should resume as soon as possible, called the Executive Committee together in London. Voting was by post and London was chosen to host the 1948 Olympics.

Helsinki's installation, initially planned for 1940 finally saw Olympic competition in 1952.

Until this point, the Olympics had been staged exclusively in Europe or America. In 1949, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Montreal were all eliminated by the final round of voting along with Mexico City. Melbourne beat Buenos Aires by a single vote and became the first Southern Hemisphere city to host the Games.

The road to 1956 proved rocky, however. Three years out, IOC member Hugh Weir reported on "one thing that worries us". They had received a letter from Earl Page of the Australian Health Ministry. "To permit horses to enter Australia for the Olympic Games would involve our livestock industries in a serious risk which would be quite unwarranted," he wrote.

The IOC were unhappy but, at their 1954 Session in Athens, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Berlin, Paris, Los Angeles and Stockholm all bid for the Equestrian Games. The Swedes polled 25 of the 47 votes and competitions were held in the very stadium where the horses had made their debut in 1912.

The first Olympics had yet to visit Asia but when the IOC gathered in Munich to choose the host city for 1964 Tokyo beat Detroit, Vienna and Brussels in the first round of voting.

The massacre of Israeli athletes overshadowed the 1972 Olympics in Munich

The Olympics continued to seek new horizons. Mexico City were elected 1968 hosts despite concerns over high altitude. Concerns over the size and cost were growing. Munich's magnificent facilities for the 1972 Games proved a lasting legacy for the city, but a huge financial cost and the killing of Israeli athletes overshadowed everything.

"Money has been stressed too much. The Olympics could no more have a deficit than a man a baby," said Montreal Mayor Jean Drapeau as he masterminded their successful bid for 1976.

Unusually, severe winters and industrial unrest caused delays and costs spiralled. Montreal's showpiece stadium was unfinished when the Olympics began. Local taxpayers continued to pay for them well into the 1990s.

The future seemed bleak when the United States, Germany, Japan and Canada led a boycott of the 1980 Moscow Games after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Even IOC President Lord Killanin called the Games "joyless". Many felt they had no future, but despite a tit for tat Soviet bloc boycott in 1984, Los Angeles showed a profit of some $225 million (£144 million/€171 million). As a result,The next host city competition was the most competitive in years.

Los Angeles in 1984 was so successful that it helped revive interest among cities around the world wanting to host the Olympics

Amsterdam, Brisbane, Birmingham,Paris, Belgrade and Barcelona presented their case for 1992 to the IOC. New Delhi withdrew before the final vote. Barcelona's success was masterminded by charismatic Mayor Pasqual Maragall.

Belgrade, Manchester, Melbourne and Toronto all joined the rush to bid for the 1996 Centennial Games. 1896 hosts Athenians dreamed of "The Golden Games". Instead, the IOC chose the Southern American city of Atlanta. The Greek capital did eventually stage the Olympics in 2004.

In the meantime, the campaign for 2000 was contested by five cities, but the real head to head was between Sydney and Beijing, whose bid came barely four years after the massacre of students in Tiananmen Square.

Sydney's bid chief later revealed he had planned a campaign which highlighted China's shortcomings in human rights but "could not be sourced back to Australia". Others on his committee vetoed the plan.

When decision day came in Monte Carlo, Beijing led after three rounds but Sydney eventually edged home by two votes.

Beijing's time finally came in Moscow in 2001 when Juan Antonio Samaranch pulled their name from the envelope to host the 2008 Games.

Election day is now a television spectacle in its own right. Voting is computerised, members press a button on a handheld box. It is a far cry from the days of postal ballots. The result is known only to the scrutineers, drawn from senior IOC members. A television special increases the drama before the envelope containing the name of the winning city is handed to the IOC President.

As would be Olympic cities increased in number, a qualifying competition was introduced. Cities submitting their initial responses to the IOC Questionnaire are "Applicant Cities". In 2005, Havana, Istanbul, Leipzig and Rio fell by the wayside at this stage, as the IOC chose London, Madrid, Moscow, Paris and New York as "Candidate Cities".

The rules had been tightened after the bidding excesses in the race for the 2002 Winter Games were exposed. IOC members were no longer allowed to visit bidding cities.

Celebrities remained keen to support the Olympic Movement David Beckham's presence in Singapore in 2005 on behalf of London 2012 caused a media frenzy.

The Paris team called on President Jacques Chirac, Madrid were supported by Queen Sofia, a reserve for the Greek sailing team in 1960. When Madrid bid again for the 2016 Games, her Olympian husband King Juan Carlos, a sailor at Munich 1972, came before the IOC.

Air force One also swept into Copenhagen as President Obama made the case for Chicago, but it was Brazil's President Lula who celebrated alongside Pele.

IOC President Jacques Rogge announces that Rio de Janeiro have been awarded the 2016 Olympics and Paralympics

Long-serving Canadian IOC member Dick Pound, concerned at the parade of national leaders asked colleagues to "give some consideration to our policy of having heads of states attend presentations by bid committees. I am not sure that we may be on the best possible ground there. There are some risks that we should assess and not simply be flattered by the attention of heads of states."

When the road to 2020 began, Baku and Doha were amongst applicants but only Madrid, Istanbul and Tokyo made the cut. All three made presentations at the extraordinary IOC session in Lausanne in July, but on Saturday (September 7) in Buenos Aires, only one can fulfill their Olympic dream.

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 Sky Sports 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.

In a week when Britain's first competitors at next year's Sochi Winter Games were announced - Scotland's world champion women's curling team, skipped by Eve Muirhead and coached by the woman who skipped Team GB to gold at the Salt Lake City 2002 Winter Games, Rhona Martin, news also arrived of a competitor who won't be taking part in the next Olympics in Russia: Simon Cho.

Cho, who won a bronze medal for the United States in short track speed skating at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics and an individual world title the following year, has been banned for two years for tampering with a rival's skates.

News of Cho's suspension came on the day the US team for the short track event was announced. Having initially denied wrongdoing, Cho - who is banned by the International Skating Union (ISU) until August 2015 - confessed last October to deliberately altering the blades on the skates of Canadian rival Olivier Jean at the 2011 World Team Championships.

Olivier Jean, whose skate blades were illegally tampered with by Simon Cho at the 2011 World Team Championships

He described this action as "the biggest mistake of my life", and alleged that his coach had put pressure on him to do it after becoming convinced the Canadians had helped other athletes to knock out the US team.

His coach, Jae Su Chun, denies having had any role in the sabotage.

Cho admitted to using a blade-bender, normally used to keep skates to the correct radius in short track, to tamper with the Canadian's skates before competition started.

"I always knew it was wrong that day," Cho said. "I hope that I can make up for my mistake and continue to skate in the future." Well, he has his wish. But it will not be the near future.

This unhappy speed skater thus takes his place in a long and inglorious history of those who have cheated in sport by means of altering equipment, either to their own advantage, or to the disadvantage of their opponents. Cho's illicitly used blade-bender now joins a bewildering array of similarly nefarious props.

Tonya Harding, whose boyfriend was charged with hitting rival Nancy Kerrigan on her knee with a bar, ran into her own problems at the 1994 Winter Games as her laces came undone


Remaining for the moment within an ice arena, the lead-up to the women's figure skating at the 1994 Winter Games in Lillehammer was transformed into a soap opera when the very basic prop of an iron bar was forcefully applied to the knee of the leading US hope, Nancy Kerrigan. The drama deepened when it transpired that the bar had been wielded by the boyfriend of Kerrigan's main US rival, Tonya Harding. As the wheels of justice turned slowly, Harding was allowed to compete in Norway, which was good news for the media but not, ultimately, for her, as she produced a ragged display in a competition where Kerrigan took the silver medal.

That was an extraordinary piece of manipulation. But the most infamous example of this kind is the "magic épée" wielded at the 1976 Montreal Olympics by the Soviet Union's modern pentathlete Boris Onishchenko, who had won individual silver and team gold at the previous Games in Munich. It was magic because it could register hits without having to touch an opponent. Abracadabra!

How so? Well, it was internally wired with a circuit-breaker that Onishchenko was able to activate to record a "hit" on the electronic scoring system. He was eventually rumbled by his old rival and friend Jim Fox, of Britain, and was swiftly disqualified, automatically knocking the Soviet team - defending champions - out of the running.

Boris Onishchenko, pictured in fencing gear, was disqualified from the modern pentathlon competition at the 1976 Olympics when his épée was found to be rigged to register "hits"



The Ukrainian was very soon Back In The USSR - and has not been seen outside it since. Of course, the British newspapers loved it. Next day the headlines were all about "Disonischenko".

Twenty years before Onishchenko's embarrassment, a couple of other Soviet competitors were found to have benefited from another nifty piece of equipment enhancement.

When Yuri Stepanov produced a world record in the high jump of seven feet one inch (2.16 metres) early in the summer of 1957 it provoked surprise among observers of the sport who were unfamiliar with this new talent. Stepanov had not even made the Soviet Olympic squad at the previous year's Games in Melbourne.

And when, shortly afterwards, Olympian Igor Kashkarov - who had cleared only 6 feet 10½ inches to finish third at Melbourne in 1956 - managed a jump of 7 feet ¼ inch, questions began to be asked.

Then the French daily L'Équipe published a picture of Stepanov in action.

Interest swiftly focused on his shoes, the soles of which looked unusually thick and bouncy. In Moscow the high jumpers' coach, Nicolai Komenkov, insisted that there was nothing wrong with the soles. But no chance was offered for them to be examined, and so the then International Amateur Athletics Federations (IAAF) got involved.

"The rules say nothing about the foot gear of a high jumper," said the IAAF spokesman Paul Mericamp, "but the Federation has to take a stand on this phenomenon." Before long the rules did say something about suitable footwear for high jumpers and the spring-heeled-Jack soles were banned. But Stepanov's world mark stood.

Michael Palin, seen here picking up the Fellowship Award at this year's BAFTA Ceremony, hides a secret shame involving conkers


It may pain some readers to learn that that very nice man, Michael Palin, has also been found to have indulged in illegal technical manipulations in order to further his own ambitions at a World Championships - or the World Conker Championships, to give them their full title.

This shameful episode in the life of the former-Monty Python-comedian-turned-travel-writer-and-broadcaster took place in 1993 during a competition held on the Isle of Wight - Mecca for Conkerers, in case you didn't know.

Palin was found to have committed two of the prime crimes of the conkers competitor: not only had he baked his conker; he had also soaked it in vinegar. Not nice, but these things have to be faced full on if they are to be properly addressed. At least he didn't, as some have, paint his conker with clear nail varnish.

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. To follow him on Twitter click here.

Britain's hopes of a Winter Olympics fit to follow last year's golden summer are going downhill fast. Which happens to be exactly the Games plan for Sochi next February.

High speed and hi-tech form the blueprint which it is hoped could see Team GB enjoy some replica of the success that captivated the nation during London 2012. No winter sports squad has been better prepared or funded than that assembled for a recent dry run at Bath University for the coming assault in the Caucasus Mountains which form the breathtaking backdrop to Russia's chic Black Sea resort.

Even if winter sports fail to grab you by the snowballs at this time of the year, the British Olympic Association's (BOA) summer camp for more than 50 assorted skiers, sledders, skaters and curlers was indicative of the aim to achieve Britain's most successful Winter Games since 1924, which saw four medals - gold in curling, silver in bobsleigh and bronze in figure skating and ice hockey.

There is certainly a resolute belief that Britain can return with more than the solitary medal - gold from Amy Williams in the skeleton - won in Vancouver four years ago.

The optimistic mood was captured even in mid-August, six months away from Sochi, with a display of team bonding which included a manufactured snowball fight on Bath's lush green pastures.

So, with apologies to Shakespeare and Richard III, will Sochi be Britain's winter of content, made glorious summer by this sun of Bath?

Shelley Rudman is a strong medal hope for Britain at Sochi 2014

The thought of which is reflected in the podium aspirations of Britain's potentially best prospect for gold in them thar Sochi hills...Shelley Rudman, the 32-year-old Wiltshire-born mum who risks life and limb every time she hisses head first down the ice tunnel flat on her face at 90mph on a brakeless bob skeleton, the oddball event in which she is the current world champion.

That skeleton, which actually does reside in a cupboard at her home, now in Sheffield, is certainly something of a bone-shaker - 40kg of hi-tech machinery which, when put on ice, goes like a bomb, exploding into 60 seconds of sheer terror.

There are 18 curves on a skeleton run, all of them dangerous. "At first there's just this incredible silence inside your helmet," the delightful Rudman told insidethegames during a break from her training on Bath's push-start track. "Then all you can hear is the clattering as you're going down.

"When you do a corner, well it's a great feeling, a tremendous thrill - whoosh! Then you seem to float your way down. A fraction of a second can be the difference between first and last." Not to mention injury-or worse.

Rudman is certainly no stranger to danger, like being been flung off and bounced along the inner walls of the ice.

She can still painfully recall one particularly dramatic crash at Salt Lake City. "I went hard into bend six. The pressure slammed my head down and I just nutted the ice. I couldn't remember anything. Suddenly I saw I was flying towards bend twelve, and thought, 'Wow, what happened to the last four bends?'

"I could just see the darkness rising. I knew it was blood filling my helmet. That's when you start panicking. You think, 'How much damage have I done?' I could feel the blood leaking out of my helmet and my nose was broken. I had to have an operation because the septum had divided."

Nodar Kumaritashvili suffered a fatal crash during a training run for Vancouver 2010

A day before the last Games opened in Vancouver a young Georgian luger, Nodar Kumaritashvili, suffered fatal injuries during a training run on the track also used for bobsleigh and skeleton, the fourth athlete to have died during Winter Olympics preparations.

Conscious of this the Russian organisers have introduced a novel feature for Sochi, small hillocks designed rather like sleeping policemen to slow the sledders down. "It's strange having to negotiate uphill as well as down," says Rudman. "But look, this is a risk sport - we all know that. The inherent danger is part of the thrill."

Skeleton has been Great Britain's most successful Winter Olympic sport in recent Games, never failing to produce medal since its inception in 2002.

Rudman herself won a silver in Turin in 2006 but four years later it was her teammate, the now-retired Williams who became the golden girl. Their relationship was ice cool, and the sixth-placed Rudman admits: "It was a bit of a downer. I needed some time to get over it."

But this winter's World Championship victory coupled with the overall World Cup title last season, has sent those Sochi hopes soaring. "Now I have to get things right for the big one. It has been back to the drawing board."

That board is something she pores over with her partner Kristan Bromley, 41, aka Dr Ice, who won the men's world title in 2008 and is a renowned bob skeleton boffin, a former graduate trainee with British Aerospace, now a professor of physics who has applied years of research in refining an object that once resembled a tea tray into such a sophisticated piece of aero-dynamics. Yet he says when he was first asked in the nineties what he knew about bob skeleton he thought they were referring to a bloke.

But what is it about the sport that so attracts women, who in this country, seem better equipped to master it than men? "I doubt it is anything physiological," says Rudman, like Williams a former hurdler, who took it up while a student at Bath. "Maybe there's that something extra inside us which tells us we have to prove to ourselves that we can be as good, if not better than men at certain sports, and this is one of them."

Rudman and fiancé Bromley have a five-and a half-year-old daughter, Ella, but say marriage is on the back burner until after the Games.

"Having Ella really helps me," says Rudman. "Sometimes she comes with us to competitions. I can be on the start line and she'll shout, just as it falls quiet, 'Go, go, mummy!' Or I can be in the crouch position and she'll yell, 'I love you mummy!' Those are special moments but, as soon as I'm ready, I don't hear anything. I'm on my own.

"Winning the World Championship is a real motivation for the Olympics, but the expectations now are enormous."

Which is why Britain's coolest runner says she needs to be utterly focused. "Everybody is expecting me to bring back gold."

Expectations are also high for Elise Christie as Britain's first World Cup champion at 1,000 metres


Expectations are high elsewhere too. Short-track speed skater Elise Christie is Britain's first World Cup champion at 1,000 metres and says: "I do think this is going to be the most successful Winter Olympics ever for Britain."

And Scotland's curlers led by bagpipe-playing Eve Muirhead - who comprise Team GB - are current world champions reckoned to have a great chance of emulating Rhona Martin's squad of 2002.

While Britain's bobbers had a poor Games in Vancouver results have improved and last year Mica McNeill and Jazmin Sawyers claimed a historic Youth Olympics silver in Innsbruck.

Paula Walker and Gillian Cooke have been consistently in the World Cup top 10 and the men's four-man had a fifth-placed finish at this year's World Championships in Switzerland.

James Woods could win Britain's first Olympic medal on snow


It is also hoped that the addition of the former Olympic sprinter Craig Pickering can boost the prospects of the two-man squad. "Modern bobsleigh requires a fast, explosive start and a recruitment drive to bring in top-class athletes has meant we are now amongst the fastest starters in the world," says performance director Gary Anderson.

Britain has never won an Olympic medal on snow - Alain Baxter's slalom bronze in 2002 was rescinded for failing a drugs test - but that could be rectified in Sochi following the debut of snowboarding slopestyle, where in New Zealand 21-year-old James Woods has become the second British winter athlete to reach a World Cup podium this season, after a similar silver for Jenny Jones.

A phrase frequently heard immediately after London 2012 was: "Follow that!"

This is exactly what leading lady Rudman and GB's Winter Games ensemble are keen to do in sport's next big production number. The rehearsals are going well, but Sochi's slopes are particularly slippery, so fingers crossed.

As they say, there's no business like snow business.

Alan Hubbard is a 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.

It was with a certain amount of sadness but not surprise that I read a report in the British Medical Journal online last week that stated that seven-year-old children are not doing enough exercise.

The new research found that half of all seven-year-olds do not get enough exercise - and girls are far less active than boys. It also highlighted that only 51 per cent of all seven-year-olds in the UK achieve the recommended hour of exercise every day, with the figure being just 38 per cent in girls compared with 63 per cent in boys.

We see a lot written in the media about how as a nation we are not supporting children at an early enough age to understand and enjoy the benefits of PE and sport. You often hear of the problem, but less frequently will people put forward viable solutions.

It is my belief, and that of the Youth Sport Trust, that if young people enjoy taking part in physical activity early on in life they will go on to lead active healthy lifestyles, but if they have a bad experience, particularly at school, they could be put off for ever.

And this is where the problem lies for many primary schools. Through our research on Bupa Start to Move, a programme focused on improving PE in primary schools, we have discovered that many primary school PE teachers lack the confidence to deliver the subject well.

This can be for a number of reasons but there is one that stands out above most. For many, their lack of confidence is borne from initial teacher training not dedicating sufficient time to what constitutes high quality PE and how it should be delivered.

This is why we are working with Bupa to offer training to primary school teachers to boost their confidence and understanding of PE. It is going very well with more 1,700 schools expecting to benefit from the training this year alone.

John Steele believes that it is important that young children have a positive experience of PE if physical activity is to be part of their lives after they leave school

Our work with another partner, Matalan, is also addressing some of the key challenges in this area. Part of Matalan Sporting Promise gives teachers the opportunity to attend free workshops and to receive resource cards, posters, and access to online resources all aimed at boosting primary school PE. This programme has reached thousands of schools already and is growing all the time.

In addition to our work in this area, Government investment over the next two years which kicks in from September, is dedicated to primary school PE and school sport and has the potential to make a significant contribution if schools channel the funding correctly.

There is guidance available to schools in how to best utilise the funding, but in my opinion they should be focusing on enhancing their own teaching staff in how to best deliver PE, which will lead to sustainable solutions, rather than outsourcing their funding to external providers that will leave no real legacy once the funding ends.

The Department of Health also recently announced an additional £3 million ($5 million/€3.8 million) towards Change4Life Sports Clubs, which the Youth Sport Trust deliver. These clubs have been created to increase physical activity levels in less active seven- to nine-year-olds, and are proving successful in educating young people about the importance of living a healthy active lifestyle.

Whilst these are all very positive steps, there is much work still to be done to tackle growing levels of inactivity amongst children. It is a problem for all of society not just schools and it is widely recognised that we are at risk of a ticking health time tomb if we do not take action to tackle the issue.

We must give every opportunity for young people to enjoy taking part in physical activity and sport - so that the type of research findings we have witnessed this week, become a thing of the past.

John Steele is the chief executive of the Youth Sport Trust

As the arduous campaign trail undertaken by the three cities bidding to host the 2020 Olympics rolls ever forward, the briefest of visits was paid by them to Nanjing last week for the start of the Asian Youth Games.

Short it may have been, but with the contest hanging on a knife-edge, the memories locked within this ancient Chinese city could ultimately give a clue to Japan's undoing come the vote in Buenos Aires on September 7.

On 13 December, 1937, the city, known then as Nanking, was overpowered by Japanese forces as they surged across China.

Whenever I see the United States 110 metres hurdler David Oliver I am always pleasantly relieved that his head remains on his shoulders. Three years ago, I chatted to this powerfully built and affable product of Denver, Colorado as we travelled on an open-top bus around the 2012 Olympic Park as part of the publicity drive - as it were - for the following day's London Grand Prix at Crystal Palace. As we caught a distant glimpse of the as-yet unfinished Olympic Stadium, Oliver - who is 6ft 2in tall - rose from his seat on the top deck to get a picture of it on his mobile phone. A low bridge loomed suddenly in front of us. And had the American not sat down just as suddenly after deeming his snap satisfactory then, well, as I say, it's nice to see he remains in one piece.

In emotional rather than physical terms, however, Oliver was all over the place in the wake of his recent victory at the IAAF World Championships in Moscow, a victory watched by his mother, the former 400m hurdler Brenda Chambers, who earned the right to compete in that very same stadium 33 years earlier but was unable to do so because of the US boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics.

On the eve of this week's IAAF Diamond League meeting in Stockholm, as he sat in a glass-walled hotel conference room with a panoramic view of the city's glorious Riddarfjord, Oliver reflected on the emotions which had arrived unbidden after he had crossed the line in his final. And the 31-year-old's subsequent description of 2013 as the year when he had to reinvent himself in order to stay in the game contained honesty one rarely encounters in such publicity appearances.

David Oliver stands on the podium during the medal ceremony for the men's 110 metres hurdles at the 2013 IAAF World Championships

During the summer months, we've been working on a massive project that I truly want every single person who reads this blog to be involved in. Don't worry, it doesn't end with you buying something, but it does provide you with a voice in a massive international survey we've undertaken on the health of world sport. I'm convinced it will interest every sports-mad person who cares passionately about the future of sport and equally convinced the results will give us all something to discuss on a worldwide scale.

Regular readers will know by now that I have a passion for fair and clean sport. The Skins brand reflects those values too, not because they're mine but because they are the fundamental principles that all of us associated with Skins genuinely believe in. In fact, we believe that the vast majority of sports fans believe in them too but the sad fact is that sometimes the majority can be treated like the minority when blazer-wearers get involved.

I'm sure we've all felt it at some point or other. There can be millions of sports fans shouting the same message, but if for some political or self-serving reason the blokes in blazers don't agree, they pretend they're deaf or we're not shouting loud enough. As sports fans, we're continually fed a diet of meaningless rhetoric that is intended to keep us off their backs, retain their cosy status quo and allow them to carry on sitting in their ivory towers.

The survey gives sports fans a place to air their views on doping

Back in 1976 when I edited the magazine Sportsworld, then the official publication of the British Olympic Association, I received a telephone call from a Melbourne radio station in the middle of the night following the British figure skater John Curry's breathtakingly artistic gold medal winning performance in the Innsbruck Winter Games.

"Hi," said an Aussie voice. "We've all been watching your guy John Curry win the Olympics. Isn't he something? Understand you know him quite well." I concurred that indeed I did.

"Great. Look mate, would you mind telling us a bit more about him - we're all keen to know. Can we go live with an interview now?" "Sure," I replied.

"OK...We've got Alan Hubbard, editor of Sportsworld magazine live from London who knows this Pommie skater John Curry we're all talking about...Tell me Alan, is he a poofter?

I recall I quickly mumbled something about his sexual orientation being his own business.

"Well," came the response. "He sure looks a poofter from here!"

Thankfully, things have moved on since then - even in Australia. But not, apparently, in Russia and significantly certain other discriminatory outposts where being gay, as the late Curry eventually revealed he was, is still tantamount to being a pariah.

Gay Pride? More like Gay Prejudice.

John Curry was outed as gay by a German tabloid newspaper

The British actor and writer, Stephen Fry is a hero of mine. Not only is he an extremely talented, funny, self-effacing public figure, he is also a sports-tragic and very eloquent with an ability to provoke discussion on a wealth of topics and issues. Last week, he highlighted a current issue which I immediately thought reflected a much wider problem that's prevalent in sport as a whole.

In an open letter, Stephen called for a ban on next year's Winter Olympics in Sochi because of Russia's anti-gay law which, among other similar restrictions, prohibits public displays of affection from same sex couples.

Like the diva who used to burst between comedians Morecambe and Wise at the end of their television shows - "I'd like to thank all of you for watching me and my little old show here tonight...if you've enjoyed it, it's all been worthwhile, but for now, from me, it's 'Goodnight – and I love you all!'" - Yelena Isinbayeva took centre stage at the World Athletics Championships here last night.

I am going to be honest here and say that I hesitated before attending the press conference the multiple world and Olympic pole vault champion gave after returning from four years of upsets, injuries and absences to resume her place at the top of the event.

Naturally, she had her own press conference, three times as long as the standard version allotted to her vanquished rivals, Olympic gold and silver medallists Jenn Suhr and Yarisley Silva. But then Yelena was the star, the local heroine, at the epicentre of adoration which formed itself into huge roars of acclamation as she faltered, then regained her confidence and, finally, sailed beyond all opposition with a first time clearance of 4.89 metres.

Three wise men from the East have descended on London in recent days bearing the gift of the gab.

Just short of one month from now, one of them could be installed as the most important single figure in world sport –- the ninth president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

The trio - Ukraine's Sergey Bubka, Singapore's Ser Miang Ng and Tawian's Dr C K Wu - represent half the record field in the six-strong race and all three have chosen London as the sounding base for their prospects.

We have yet to hear first hand from the other three, Germany's Thomas Bach, Puerto Rico's Richard Carrion and Switzerland's Denis Oswald and the word is we won't. So it is probably unfair to make a finite judgement except in the measurement of our waistlines following such lavish hospitality from Messrs Bubka, Ng and Wu.

Maybe it was the sight of octogenarian International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) President Lamine Diack with his arm around Seb Coe's shoulders at the London Anniversary Games which initially prompted Bubka to host the British media to a slap-up lunch at the swank London eaterie Quaglinos.

The Ukrainian, who consistently raised the bar in his illustrious pole vaulting days as an Eastern Bloc icon under the Soviet banner, now seeks to raise his political profile in a bid to become the next IOC President.


Failing this, he will challenge Coe for the top job in world athletics now that Diack has finally indicated he will step down in 2015.

Actually, in many ways this charismatic Olympic legend would make a cracking IOC President.

He's especially hot on doping and shares with Ng and Wu - as well as Coe - the desire to implement a four year ban on druggies and those in their entourage who supply them. As well as downsizing the Games.

But, at a mere 49, Bubka, who heads a large bakery empire in his homeland, among other things, may be deemed a tad too young to run what is essentially an old boys' club. Maybe his time will come.

Ser Miang Ng may not be a name which trips easily off the tongue but it is one with which I suspect we may become distinctly familiar in the coming years. Bach, as the longest-serving vice-president, is the recognised favourite to succeed Jacques Rogge but as one sage Olympic watcher observed, he could be uncomfortably in the 2005 Paris position - too premature a shoo-in who could fall at the final hurdle.

I sense a groundswells of support for Ng, not least because seven of those eight Presidents have been European - including the last four in the 41 years since American Avery Brundage - and many members clearly feel it is time for a new Continent to get a look in.

The dapper Ng, 64. is emerging as the most likely of the six candidates to provide it when the vote is taken in Buenos Aires on September 10.


Like Bubka, he came to London and presented impeccable credentials when launching his media campaign over lunch at Forman's Fish Island in the shadow of the Olympic Stadium

A quietly-spoken multi-faceted businessman - he heads the tiny Republic's largest supermarket chain - he is a former politician and diplomat and yachtsman.

His manifesto would see making the IOC more of a democracy, giving the members more say, his first move taking them on a pilgrimage to Olympia to remind them of Olympism's core values.

Significantly, he has been been instrumental in transforming Singapore, where as I know from my own time there working in The Straits Times in the Eighties, sport was virtually a dirty word and education everything under hard line Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yu, into the vibrant sporting hub of South East Asia.

Now Singapore sport swings where once it was stifled. It is the home of the superbly-organised night Formula One Grand Prix and next year wll open a state-of-the arts sports complex ideally suited to host a future Commonwealth Games.

Much of this remarkable change of philosophy is down to Ng who imnitiated the nation's new Sports Policy. He orchestrated the 2005 IOC Session, when London won its 2012 bid, and was the architect of the subsequent inaugural Summer Youth Olympics in 2010.

And so to Wu. This week saw the turn of our pugnacious Taiwanese sparmate, the 66-year-old would-be world boxing czar who heads International Boxing Association (AIBA) to entertain us to a sumptuous afternoon tea in the appropriately named Queenberry Room at London's newly-refurbished Café Royal, ancestral home of boxing's famed National Sporting Club. We went suitably gloved up for that one. Actually, he came out of it rather well.

"He's a consumate politician," murmured my colleague Colin Hart, doyen boxing scribe of The Sun as the immaculately-attired construction billionaire set out his Presidential stall.

They all are, of course. Indeed, there is much real politicians could learn from those who practise the same dark art in sport.


Timing for one thing. Wu shrewdly performed a dramatic U-turn disguised as a stroke of humanitarianism when, between our sips of Earl Grey and munching of cucumber sandwiches and strawberry tarts, he declared that he had personally rescinded the decision which banned English boxers from competing internationally.

He even apologised to those schoolboy and youth boxers who had been deprived of the opportunity of a lifetime, taking part in recent European Championships, while still laying the blame at the door of the Amateur Boxing Association of England for the ongoing dispute with the International Boxing Association (AIBA). "It is something I very much regret," he told me.

As insidthegames has reported, Wu decreed that the ban is now lifted even if the situation remains unresolved before next month's World Junior Championships in Kyiv and October's senior Championships in Kazakhstan. .

He seemed to have absorbed the lesson that one man he cannot afford to upset is his "very good friend" Lord Coe, who is not only the British Olympic Association (BOA) chairman but but an ardent boxing aficionado and someone, as Wu says,"might make a very good IOC President himself one day."

Then well-connected Coe also happens to have the ear of some influential IOC members.

The BOA had been less than enamoured with the written response from AIBA to their request that the banned English schoolkids due to box in their Euro Championships might do so under an AIBA flag. In no uncertain terms they were brusquely told to mind their own business.

Wu told us before his media conference that the unfortunate wording of the letter was not authorised or signed by him and he regretted it had caused offence. It was certainly not what the doctor ordered.

So someone might be in for a rollicking.

Wu had entered the London ring on the backfoot, aware of his unpopularity over the ban while maintaining that the suspension of ABAE was justified, as, not for the first time, they had infringed AIBA regulations.

However we pointed out just how ludicrously unfair it was was that, for example, Nicola Adams, lauded by AIBA as the world's first female Olympic boxing gold medallist just a year ago, and now a national treasure, should be barred, along with every other English boxer from schools level upwards, by the same organisation which claims a prime objective is to protect and further the interests of boxers.


Wasn't making them collatoral damage to a spat between blazers contrary to the spirit of sport-and Olympism? Thankfully Wu has got the message. Good for him,

Irrespective of the outcome of the dispute there will be on no further ban on the boxers."No matter what the Disciplinary Commission is, I will allow the boxers to go, he says. It is my personal decision." That's how autocracy works.

His was a purposeful charm offensive but did Wu woo the sceptics? We agreed afterwards that he had talked an extremely good fight, which you would expect from, a boxing man. And some of his ideas for reforming the IOC, not least in in restoring inspection visits of bidding cities by members, inside his proposed one-off eight-year term were eminently sensible. "I always deliver," he vowed.

If elected, the IOC would certainly know it had a forceful President. But the nagging thought persists that it might become even more of an autocracy than it was under "Slavery Avery".

What was then amateur boxing clearly needed something of a dictatorship when he came in and cleaned up the corrupt mess left by the previous regime. He says he even had threats on his life, but when he took over seven years ago his message to AIBA's members was unequivocal."You have to follow me. I am the boss now."

Actually I do quite like Wu. Basically boxing's bossman is an honourable bloke with much to offer in necessary reform of the IOC. But he may have seriously harmed his chances by relentlessly pursuing his impossible dream of governing world fisticuffs in all its forms and allowing fully-fledged pros - albeit those having had less than 20 pro fights - into the Games.

This could be downright dangerous, risking gross mismatches - or worse.

It is like taking the sport back to the bad old days of the boxing booths and could cost him the Presidency.

As yet the case for the three other candidates remains publicly unheard, so the jury is still out.

But if I were an IOC member I think I could be persuaded at this stage to rock the boat and give my vote to Ser Miang Ng, the Singapore sailor. I like the cut of his jib.

If he can effect such a sea change in once sport-apathetic Singapore, think of what he might do should he rule the waves at the IOC.

Alan Hubbard is a 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.

I must admit that I was very excited to return to the Copper Box. It was the venue for my first Olympic experience last summer when I watched - blissfully ignorant but captivated nonetheless - as Britain's handball team were ripped to shreds by the eventual champions France.

This time I was here to watch another lightening-paced indoor sport as Britain's basketball men returned to action with an intriguingly poised clash with Puerto Rico.

With its multi-coloured seats and two-tiered format the Copper Box does not seem particularly remarkable at first glance. Yet the close-to-the-action feel is perfect for spectacles like handball and basketball and, once again, the box was rocking as 6,000 fans roared Britain on their way.

After the Sainsbury's Anniversary Games athletics and the Prudential RideLondon Grand Prix cycling, this was the third Olympic nostalgia-fest which I have been dispatched to in recent weeks and once again I could only be impressed at how London 2012 fever burns as bright as ever one year on.

Yet while athletics and cycling are sports long synonymous with British success, it was particularly pleasing how the euphoria has stretched to a sport in which Britain's only pre-2012 Olympic experience also came at home in 1948 and Britain remains a relative minnow in comparison with the world's very best.


This is beginning to change. At London 2012 Britain performed creditably in losing to the eventual runners-up Spain by just a single point before comfortably seeing off China in their final game.

Given the background to the imminent IAAF World Championships in Moscow, and the enforced absence of notables in the highest of high profile events, the 100 metres, the sport is in urgent need of good news. Fast. What we want is excitement, the pure essence of sport. We need a fresh spring of it to gush through the Moscow Luzhniki Stadium.

Is that too much to hope for? It's happened before at the World Championships...

What I want to do now is to take you back, way back in time...then forward a bit, to 1999.

Bleach blond hair. Attitude. A recent history of bother in a McDonald's restaurant near his home at Canvey Island. In other words, Dean Macey.

Blond ambition...Dean Macey in action over 400m en route to putting himself on the world map with silver in Seville, 1999

At the IAAF World Championships in Seville, the most sensational performer to come out of Canvey Island since Dr Feelgood announced his arrival at world level in exuberant fashion, charging through his sequence of ten events despite - inevitably - nagging injury problems, and eventually winning silver behind the then defending champion and world record holder Tomas Dvorak of the Czech Republic.

The achievement was mighty - but it was the manner of the 21-year-old's showing which left an indelible impression. At times the man who slogged his guts out at his home track appeared like the old Victor comic figure, Alf Tupper, who would set out in battered gear against a field of immaculately clad toffs with the imprecation "I'll run 'em!"

I can still see him storming home to win his 400m event. I can still see him walking gingerly into his post-event press conference nursing injuries to his ankle and elbow.

Placed third before the concluding 1500m event, Macey ran himself to a standstill but finished unsure of whether he had earned a place on the podium or not. "I was walking around and people were shouting 'silver', 'second'", he said. "I didn't know whether to be sick, cry or pass out."

Macey may have been a silver medallist on that occasion, but he was always a gold medallist as far as talking was concerned, right up there in the Ato Boldon league.

Dean Macey (right) on the podium at the 1999 Seville World Championships alongside bronze medallist Chris Huffins and champion Tomas Dvorak of the Czech Republic

His days of shelf-stacking and working as a part-time lifeguard to make ends meet were formally consigned to the past within a couple of months of the Seville World Championships as he signed a three-year sponsorship with Asics worth an estimated £180,000 ($280,000/€210,000)

But as the brightest new star in the British athletics firmament spoke about his deal in the trendy setting of the Design Museum at London's Butler's Wharf, his words confirmed that, while you could take the boy out of Canvey Island, you couldn't take Canvey Island out of the boy. And what's more, the boy didn't want you to.

Macey still lived in his family home with his parents, still saw his mates in the pub - "they don't ask to buy me drinks, although they ask me if I should be downing them quite so quick, that's for sure" - and was still, well, Dean Macey.

To label Macey as an overnight success would have been an exaggeration. He had spent five years working to reach that point, having turned down the possibility of a career in football - he was on Arsenal's books as a youngster - in favour of athletics' most gruelling challenge. However, after his dramatic arrival into the public eye - "this time last year I was nowhere" - he confessed that it had taken a while for the measure of his achievement to sink in.

"I sit down and think about it from time to time, and it sends shivers up my spine," he said. "I kind of overshot my mark." He added: I've got no worries at the moment. My life is great - no other way of putting it."

Alas and alack, his athletics life was to be compromised all the way to the end, in 2008, by injuries and ill fortune.

He missed out on an Olympic medal by one place in 2000 after Estonia's Erki Nool had been controversially reinstated on appeal, taking gold, after what appeared to be three fouls in the discus.

Close, but no Olympic cigar - Macey missed out on a medal by one place at the Sydney 2000 Games after Erki Nool's controversial reinstatement. About which he abstained from comment...

A year after his Olympic disappointment, Macey returned to the World Championship arena in Edmonton – or Deadmonton, as it was named, by British 200m runner Marlon Devonish I believe. (The derogatory reference was taken up readily by the press and occasioned a diplomatic incident when it was noticed in the copy of the correspondent working in Canada for the Daily Telegraph – at that time one of the most accessible papers locally on the internet.)

There, as he had in Seville, he produced another personal best - 8,603 points, which was the most he ever achieved - but had to settle for bronze as Dvorak and Nool took gold and silver respectively.

Injuries forced him to miss the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, which would surely have offered him the chance of a first big gold, and after an eleventh hour qualification for the 2004 Olympics following injury he finished once again in fourth place.

Two years later, at the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, Macey - despite operating well below par because of injuries - earned the gold his career so richly deserved.

Gold at last - Macey takes a well-deserved place at the top of the podium at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne

And yet you could argue that the high point of his career came in the aftermath of the 2000 Sydney Olympic competition, when, despite being invited by the massed media to comment adversely on Nool's reinstatement, and his subsequent relegation from the podium, he consciously refrained from doing so - despite what he must have been feeling. It was an example of outstanding sportsmanship.

Somewhere in Moscow, now, there will be a relatively unknown male or female athlete whose name may resound in two weeks' time as Macey's did. We hope. We trust.

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. To follow him on Twitter click here.

Are women getting a square deal in sport? Not according to Maria Miller, Britain's Culture Secretary and her opposite number on the Opposition front bench, Harriet Harman.

Both formidable leading ladies have taken up the cudgel (I hesitate to use the word battleaxe) in the cause of greater sporting equality on the playing field and in the boardroom.

Not enough women, they argue, are in sport's corridors of power.

Now that may sound curious coming from two women who are actually in perfect positions of political power as far as sport is concerned.

Miller is actually Britain's Games Mistress with a portfolio in her Governmental department which embraces sport - as does that of Harman in hers. They are the governesses respectively of Britain's Minister for Sport Hugh Robertson and the Shadow spokesman Clive Efford.

So methinks they may protest a tad too much, especially as the chief executives of both Government quangos, UK Sport and Sport England, the bodies responsible for dishing out the cash that keeps British sport flowing and glowing, are also female - Liz Nicholl land Jennie Price.


And until recently UK Sport had a female chair, Baroness Sue Campbell - still chair of the Youth Sport Trust - while Sport England might have had one too in Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson had not Miller, allegedly such a champion of women's rights, played petty politics and put the block on her appointment.

Yet Miller, who understandably, like Harman, boycotted The Open golf championship at Muirfield because the club's ban on women members, says:" "I want to see much better female representation in sports administration.

"Governing bodies that are funded by the taxpayer are expected to have boards that are 25 per cent women by 2017 or put their funding at risk."

Ardent feminist Harman not only stridently concurs but has pitched in by writing to Christian Prudomme, director of the Tour de France to propose a women's Tour event to be held alongside next year's Grand Depart which takes place in Yorkshire, only to be told to get on her bicyclette.

At the risk of being labelled a male chauvinist - which ladies I assure you I am most definitely not - I do believe that sport is more inclusive than it has ever been and that the profile of women's sport has never been higher, nationally and internationally.

Of course there are pockets of resistance like the intransigent men of Muirfield and other all-male golfing preserves (though there numerous all-women clubs too); our own Football Association, where the admirable Heather Rabatts is a lone voice for both women and ethnic minorities; and FIFA, where President Sepp Blatter seems only interested in women if they are wearing suspenders (he was once head of the society for the preservation of that garment).

Elsewhere the barriers are coming down fast, notably in the media. The newspaper for which I write, the Independent on Sunday, has become the first national publication to pledge to increase its coverage and raise awareness of women's sport.

The paper has called for greater efforts to ensure school sport appeals to girls, better publicity and broadcast coverage for sportswomen, better pay for female athletes, more corporate investment and sponsorship and women on the boards of all national governing bodies.

It is surely coincidence that the IoS has a new editor - who happens to be a woman. Interestingly, one of its rivals, the Mail on Sunday, has just appointed the national newspaper industry's first female sports editor.

And there is certainly no, lack of female presence writing on the sports pages of most papers now, while our TV screens sometimes seem dominated by female sportscasters, presenters and interviewers.

Sky Sports is veritable catwalk of feminine pulchritude, invariably blonde. Managing director Barney Francis tells me he receives at least a dozen applications a day from wannabe presenters, nearly all of them women.

Oh, and by the way, the head of BBC Sport is a woman - the ex-gymnast Barbara Slater. And now we learn that Charlotte Green is to be the first female reader of Radio 5 Live's classified football results, succeeding the venerable James Alexander Gordon.

On the box names polished performers like Clare Balding, Gabby Logan and Sue Barker are as professional and knowledgeable as any male counterpart. And why shouldn't they be?


London 2012 was something if a watershed for women's sport, with more women than ever representing Team GB. In a total of 542 British athletes 262 - 48 per cent of the team - were women.

Then first medal for Team GB at London was a woman - road cyclist Lizzie Armitstead and the first gold was from women rowers Heather Stanning and Helen Glover. Also London was the first time women were able to compete in all sports, with the debut women's boxing.

Overall 2012 saw record participation from women, who made up approximately 44 per cent of Games competitors. With the inclusion of female athletes in National Olympic Committee (NOC) delegations from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Brunei Darussalam, all NOCs had sent women to the Games by 2012 and women athletes outnumbered men on 35 NOC delegations, from some of the smallest teams to the largest.

Indeed, think 2012 and you think women. I asked my 11-year-old grandson the half dozen British personalities he remembered best from the Games. After Mo Farah the next five were all women...Jessica Ennis, Nicola Adams, Laura Trott, Gemma Gibbons and Sarah Storey.

Whisper it softly, but the glass ceiling does appear to be cracking, if not shattering, even in the predominantly old boys' club that is the International Olympic Committee, where three of the 15-person Executive Board are now women.

Not enough, but at least they are influential. The wonderfully accomplished Nawal El Moutawakel of Morocco is one of four vice-presidents, German Claudia Bokel heads the Athletes' Commission and Sweden's Gunilla Lindberg is chair of the Coordination Commission overseeing the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang.

Germany's Claudia Bokel, head of the IOC's Athletes' Commission, is one of the leading ladies in the Olympic Movement and a rising star

Shame that none of the six candidates in the upcoming Presidential election are women because El Moutawakel in particular, who had considered standing, may well have given the chaps a run for their money.

Last week insidethegames reported a significant international breakthrough in hitherto African male domains - Isha Johansen becoming President of the Sierra Leone Football Association thus joining Lydia Nsekera of the Burundi Football Federation as the only two female presidents' of national football associations in the world.

And Yulia Anikeeva, acting-President of the Russian Basketball Federation since June, has been voted into the position full-time.

On the debit side back home the Independent reports that British Cycling is one of five national sporting governing bodies without a single woman on its board. Of the 46 national governing bodies (NGBs) that receive money from Sport England, British Cycling, British Taekwondo, the British Wrestling Association, Goalball UK and GB Wheelchair Rugby still have all-male boards.

In many governing bodies, there are women on the board, but a tiny proportion in leadership positions. The British Judo Association, for example, has two women on its board, but only four per cent of all leadership roles are taken by women.

Despite the stellar performance of so many female competitors in the Games, senior sporting figures say the bodies that govern their sports are failing to give women a strong enough voice.

Leora Hanser, director of campaigns at the Women's Sport and Fitness Foundation (WSFF), said: "It is really disappointing that after the Olympics last year, WSFF's research found that six sports governing bodies still don't have a single woman on their board. A lack of diversity means that they are missing out on areas including participation, investment and media profile."

The former England cricketer Rachael Heyhoe Flint, who is one of two women on the Board of the England and Wales Cricket Board, said: "I can't see any reason not to have a woman provided they merit a place. If Boards said, 'We won't have anyone of a certain ethnicity or nationality' that would be illegal."

While former Paralympian icon Baroness Thompson adds: "I struggle to understand why some governing bodies are holding out. They're missing out on a massive opportunity. I'm tired of hearing things like 'there's not enough good women in sport'. We all know that's nonsense."


This is true, but let's be honest, there is a major problem with some women's sport which has little public appeal, particularly team sports. How many really want to watch it?

Surveys suggest that even many women don't. A women's football international would never fill Wembley, however much it was publicised though we in the media must shamefully admit that even if England won the women's World Cup it would still be recorded downpage to a Wayne Rooney groin strain.

There is another obstacle to be overcome, too. According the WSSF most girls think getting sweaty isn't feminine. "We're facing a health crisis and with young girls aspiring to be thin instead of fit, it ls only going to get worse," they say.

But actually, in so many other ways, things are getting very much better, albeit slowly.

Thankfully women are no longer sporting suffragettes because, in the immortal words from the days of that great emancipator Billie-Jean King and women's lob, you've come a long way, baby.

Yes, there's stiil a way to go, but perhaps not quite as far as our two Girls On Top, Mrs Miller and Ms Harman, seem to think.

Alan Hubbard is a 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