It was rather a shock to emerge from the monotony of a British winter into a dazzling paradise of sun, heat and palm trees when in Los Angeles last week for the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) Media Summit. Or it would have been, had it not been uncharacteristically raining when I first stepped off the plane…

This year, the United Nations’ theme for International Women’s Day is “Planet 50-50 by 2030: Step it Up for Gender Equality”.

Tennis racket manufacturers Head were all too willing to enthuse and gush about just how courageous Maria Sharapova had been in telling the world that she had failed a drugs test this week.

Tonight I was lucky enough to be invited to the European première of Race, the new film about Jesse Owens and his quest for greatness at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin.

Maria Sharapova’s announcement this week that she failed a doping test at the  Australian Open has had a notable performance-enhancing effect upon the already vigorous level of debate over drugs in sport.

In a week that must have set some sort of record for sports-related doping stories, I must admit that the one which caught my eye was the International Olympic Committee (IOC)’s dismissal of a plea by a Scottish Member of Parliament for Alain Baxter’s case to be reopened.

It seems pleasingly appropriate that as an absorbing exhibition of the life and times of Muhammad Ali opens in London, the wordsmith who immortalised so many of the exploits in and out of the ring for British fans should himself be in the limelight and subject to tributes from within the game.

Last week’s International Olympic Committee (IOC) Executive Board meeting at the new location of the Lausanne Palace Hotel was a low key affair. 

It may have been due to the lack of other meetings going on in the lakeside town, or because most of the Olympic Movement had just returned from its first major gathering of the year in Lillehammer, or as a consequence of the IOC’s overbearing restrictions on bid city lobbying these days. Or maybe it was simply due to a lack of available hotel rooms because of overspill from the Geneva International Motor Show...

There was an air of a crisis here on Thursday morning among the British media and the home crowd. A number of furrowed brows and a few questioning whether what they had just witnessed had really taken place.

The more things are supposed to change, the more they so often stay the same.

This week, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Executive Board rubber stamped the decision to allow a team of refugees to take part in the 2016 Olympic Games. IOC President Thomas Bach reasoned: "If you have 60 million displaced persons, more than at at any time in the history of mankind, then among them must be some athletes.."

As the second reading of the Bill to provide an English National Anthem looms in the House of Commons – March 4, last chance to post your Mother’s Day card if you’d forgotten – the indications are that the suggestion of Chesterfield MP Toby Perkins will be taken up.

I have put together a list of prospective winners and losers as a consequence of Gianni Infantino’s victory in the race for the FIFA Presidency, the most important Presidential election in sports since Thomas Bach became International Olympic Committee (IOC) President in September 2013.

Lennox Lewis, himself a former Olympic boxing gold medallist, calls it "preposterous". Barry McGuigan, another distinguished ex-Olympian  who also became a world champion, condemns it as "crazy".