When I saw the headline of an article in CBC News last week, entitled: “Pan Am Games could boost a Toronto Olympic bid, IOC President says”, I half-chuckled to myself. With the exception of India, Thomas Bach has spoken positively about every single city of which a theoretical Olympic bid at some point is muted, and as well he might because it is his mission to generate as much interest as possible.

I was always told as a youngster never to judge a book by its cover.

After being told a couple of months ago that Canadian entertainment company Cirque du Soleil would be creating the Toronto 2015 Pan American Games Opening Ceremony, I must admit to an immediate sense of excitement and also an awareness that the curtain raiser for the event would be in safe hands.

We sentimentalise the past, retaining what was best and worst while the humdrum slips out of mind.

So anyway, Cuba’s prodigious young triple jumper Pedro Pablo Pichardo was making the point that he should really be called by his full name, Pedro Pablo Pichardo Peralta, because, as he explained, most of his compatriots have two first names and two second names, and thus he takes the second name of his father, Pichardo, and also that of his mother, Peralta.

A final scoreline of 46-0 would not look out of place in some sports. Back in May, rugby union side Northampton Saints were on the right end of that very result against London Welsh in what could be described as a "comfortable" Aviva Premiership win.

Vijender Singh and a GB women’s football team may be as far apart as Bhiwani Junction and Clapham Junction but they have one thing in  common. Neither are on track for at the Olympic Games in Rio next year, albeit for very different reasons.

Breaking through and excelling as an athlete is a path strewn with potholes and obstacles, but the greatest challenge in professional sport is, as ever, simply managing to get over the finishing line and winning.

It was a party fit for a king as the Beach Volleyball World Championships came to a close with the completion of the men’s competition won by Brazil’s Alison Cerutti and Bruno Oscar Schmidt.

Everywhere you went in the build-up to the glittering Pacific Games Opening Ceremony here, the mention of the visit of British Royal Prince Andrew was never far away.

I am sitting on a peeling brown painted bench in Ryonan Park, 43 kilometres west of central Tokyo, eating a rice-ball wrapped in seaweed in a very fine drizzle.

In just over three weeks time, the best archers on the globe will converge on Copenhagen for the 48th edition of the World Archery Championships, which offer the first opportunity for direct qualification to next year’s Rio Olympics.

On one of the final days of the Baku 2015 European Games a tweet caught my eye that Team Sky boss Sir David Brailsford was set to announce their team for the 2015 Tour de France live on Sky television that morning.

I have absolutely no idea if Mo Farah is, or ever has been, on performance-enhancing drugs or whether his American coach Alberto Salazar has been systematically feeding them to his athletes.