By Mike Rowbottom

Jessica Ennis, Bradley Wiggins, Alistair Brownlee, Mo Farah. How good would it be for England if all four of those Olympic champions were able to turn up at the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games, now less than 600 days away? (All these competition countdowns...it's getting like Christmas shopping days...)

Answer, of course, very good. And all the signs are that this dream-list could become reality once Scotland welcomes back the version of Games it last hosted in Edinburgh in 1986.

England's experience at the Delhi 2010 Commonwealth Games – despite the dire prognostications about dengue fever and dirty rooms – turned out to be largely positive as they were narrowly beaten by the hosts on the final day to the runners-up spot behind Australia, the perennial – sorry, quadrennial – leaders of the medal table.

By Lauren Mattera

Since former World Taekwondo Federation (WTF) President Kim Un-Young, successfully placed taekwondo as an official sport into the Olympics in 2000, after being a demonstration sport for the 1998 Games in Seoul, the martial art has had its fair share of ups and downs.

A sport criticised for its Korean dominance, shouldering fears over its safety, carrying the opinion that it is a poor spectator sport and the unforgettable controversy surrounding its transparency created during the Beijing Games.

But the re-election of President Chung Won Choue in 2009, along with the growth of worldwide participating athletes, the increase in global WTF Federations, the efforts of the technical committee to introduce the Protector Scoring System (PSS) and an overview of their rules, taekwondo has worked hard at evolving as a fair, exciting and media-friendly sport – deeming it is as one of the most popular sports of this summer's Games.

By Duncan Mackay

Bud Greenspan, who along with Leni Riefenstahl was undoubtedly the filmmaker who has done more than anyone to bring the Olympics to life on celluloid, was an unabashed fan of the 17 days of glory.

"They're two weeks of love," he once told an interviewer. "It's Like Never Never Land. Like Robin Hood shooting his arrow through the other guy's arrow. It's a privilege to be associated with the best in the world. How many times are you with the best in the world in something? They bring things forward that they don't ordinarily do."

For Greenspan, an unforgettable New Yorker who in later years always wore large, dark-framed glasses atop his shaved head because, his partner claimed, it was the only way he could remember where they were, the Olympics was a labour of love from the moment he discovered it when, as a 21-year-old, he delivered news of the 1948 Olympics in London to the folks back home by dialling in long distance to report what he had seen.

By Mike Rowbottom

In the inky blackness of the Krasnaya Polyana mountains at night there is discernibly what looks at first glance like the constellation of the Plough. On second look, it is no such thing – merely a similar pattern of twinkling lights on a dormant crane.

When daybreak arrives, the crane swings back into action as the remorseless business of transforming the landscape into one capable of hosting the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games continues. The organisers are not so much reaching for the stars – although, uniquely, their Torch Relay will reach outer space at one stage in its journey – as constructing them – setting about the task of building a Games, and in effect a small city, from scratch.

The scale of the ambition is awesome, almost brutal. And in addressing the World Press Briefing for the Olympics and Paralympics this week – an event held deep within that mountain range wherein the Alpine events will take place in just over a year's time – it has been articulated both by the Mayor of Sochi, Anatoly Pakhomov, and the President of Sochi 2014, Dmitry Chernyshenko.

By Mike Rowbottom

The doors to the biggest exhibition of athletics memorabilia are now open in Barcelona as part of the International Association of Athletics Federation's (IAAF) Centenary celebrations.

Items from 256BC to the present day have been assembled from all around the world for the six-week display in the Museu Olímpic i de l'Esport Juan Antoni Samaranch, next door to the 1992 Olympic stadium on Montjuïc.

All the names you would expect to see are featured. There are medals won by Britain's fabled middle distance trio of Steve Ovett, Seb Coe and Steve Cram. There is a bronze of the Flying Finn, Paavo Nurmi. There are spikes worn by Alberto Juantorena, and by Don Quarrie. There is a programme from the match that produced the Four Minute Mile at Iffley Road, Oxford, signed by Chris Brasher, Chris Chataway and Roger Bannister. There are shoes worn by Yelena Isinbayeva.

By Mike Rowbottom

My friend Russell was one of the 70,000 whose efforts as Games Makers helped the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics run as smoothly as in a happy dream. His task was to oversee a part of the cycling course for the road racing and time trial events, which meant that, as a long-time cycling enthusiast, he had the opportunity to watch some of his heroes and heroines whizzing past while, of course, making 100 per cent sure that all was in order roadside.

Russell's Olympic journey was probably typical of that made by many of his fellow volunteers, and what follows here is a three-part log of that journey – before, during and after.

That journey began with a sense of commitment and a wish to be involved in something glimmering tantalisingly on the horizon. But in Russell's case – and no doubt in the case of many other Games Makers – there was a measure of amused scepticism at the process of "orientation".

By Tom Degun

Going into the London 2012 Olympics few people predicted that taekwondo would be one of the hits of the Games. But to anyone who witnessed the competition at ExCeL it was a stunning triumph where competitors from 21 countries shared the 32 medals on offer to finally end doubts that this was a sport whose roots had spread beyond its birthplace in Korea. 

Of course, to the partisan home fans, the best moment came when British teenager Jade Jones claimed a stunning victory in the lightweight -57kg category over China's Hou Yuzhuo, the world champion. But there were so many other memorable moments that will long live in the memory.

Perhaps my personal favourite was the bronze medal won by Afghanistan's Rohullah Nikpai in the -68kg category. It wasn't a gold medal – but somehow it felt like it. 

By David Gold

With eight sports bidding for inclusion on the Olympic programme in 2020, and just one set to be given the nod by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Antonio Espinos has his work cut out.

The Spaniard is the President of the World Karate Federation (WKF), and in between trips around London during this summer's Olympic Games, Espinos met with insidethegames at the Park Lane hotel where he has been busy working on the 2020 bid.

The IOC could not have been in any closer proximity, meaning London 2012 was particularly crucial for karate, as it was for their fiercest rivals, squash, baseball and softball. Like them, karate is hoping to make it third time lucky after bids for 2012 and 2016 failed. In the case of their bid to be a part of the Olympics which have just concluded in London, karate was especially unfortunate, having won the support of a majority within the IOC, but not quite the two thirds of the voters they needed to win that particular race. For 2020, wushu, roller sports, wakeboard and climbing are also in the running to make it onto the Olympic programme.

It's a personal tale of heartbreak, grief, frustration and fear – and International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Jacques Rogge is being urged to try and resolve it once and for all.

Six years ago, on July 15, 2006, the National Olympic Committee of Iraq (NOCI) was holding its AGM in central Baghdad when a group of unknown gunmen, unmasked and in broad daylight, burst in and kidnapped its President Ahmed Al-Samarrai along with the majority of his colleagues.

Thirteen of them were released shortly afterwards but the rest, including Al-Samarrai, disappeared and have never been seen since.

By Mike Rowbottom at the Olympic Stadium in London

In the space of less than an hour here the host nation won three – yes, three – of the five track and field gold medals on offer through Jessica Ennis in the heptathlon, Mo Farah in the 10,000 metres and, rather more unexpectedly, Greg Rutherford in the long jump.

The athletes thus achieved the hat-trick that had so narrowly eluded Britain's rowers earlier in the day as they had to settle for two golds and a silver.

By Louisa Gummer

Some £27 million ($42.5 million/€34.5 million), 148 hours of rehearsals, but not one sequin.

It's been a long, long time since that first audition way back in November. I have learned many things during that period. New phrases: for example "de-bibbing" (to remove the bib you are wearing) and "pre-stacking the vom" (filling up the entrance with the people who come on after you, before you then go in too). New skills: like taking a hedge down a flight of stairs in time to an insistent rhythm without falling over. New facts: granulated tea was invented by someone who had blatantly never tasted actual tea in their lives and hot chocolate stains concrete! I have also learned a lot about myself – my boredom threshold is seemingly quite low for instance. The following notes from my rehearsal diary might give you a taste of what it was really like to be a volunteer performer at what has been described as "the biggest show on earth."

By Mike Rowbottom

This was a stripped down Opening Ceremony, revealing the truth of so many elements of Britain's history that we take as read in a vivid and beautifully modulated show which presaged a coup de theatre which confounded all the – heated - discussion about Who Would Light The Olympic Cauldron.

Not David Beckham. Nor Daley Thompson, nor Kelly Holmes, nor even five-times Olympic champion Sir Steve Redgrave, although all played their part in bearing the Torch on the final stages of long journey to this stadium in east London.

Finally, the ancient Flame was transferred to its temporary resting place by collective youth – seven young athletes nominated by seven of Britain's greatest Olympians and acting jointly to ignite a "Flame of Unity" composed of copper "petals" within a giant bowl in the centre of the stadium which formed itself into a group of firebrands.

 By Philip Barker

It has been described as the first gold medal of the Games.

For the man who revived the Olympics, the Opening Ceremony was much more than that.

"It must involve solemnity and a ceremonial that must always be in keeping with the prestige that warrants its noble titles and stay strictly within the limits of good taste and moderation," wrote Baron Pierre de Coubertin.

London 2012 certainly seems to have got its Olympic Rings in a twist over the embarrassing security cock-up that has some suggesting the wheels are coming off Lord Coe's hitherto smooth-rolling bandwagon. That is clearly not the case, although they have been wobbling a bit of late.

Wherever the overall responsibility lies for the failure to hire sufficient security guards, the appointed providers G4S should have received a P45 when the deficiency was revealed.

Instead it is apparently now down to the Government's Plan B, in which war-weary troops and hastily-trained students make up the numbers to help ensure the Games protection is adequate. No gold medals there then.

By Mike Rowbottom 

All-round talents. They're good looking. They're bright. They're usually musical. Generally speaking, they're sporty. And more often not, they're nice as well. God.

Olympic sports, in my experience, are a particularly rich habitat for the all-round talent. Rowing is one of the worst offenders – sorry, paramount examples. Bodies beautiful on the water and brains bountiful on dry land. It is a phenomenon which seems to hold good all the way through the sport.