In one of my more ill-advised acts of the year, I forgot to purchase a plug adapter for my insidethegames laptop pre-flight to Tokyo this week. Upon running out of charge without the necessary tools to regain power, I made a second ill-advised move.

An acquaintance of mine whose talented son is on the books of a London football club was saying recently how shocked he was to learn that the boy had to undergo a random drugs test. The lad is nine-years-old.

During the midst of a fairly standard Bank Holiday Weekend at insidethegames, headlined by the relative normality of several more sports announcing their withdrawal from SportAccord, our office was enlivened - or some would say dampened - by my decision to change from our normal musically-themed radio station of choice to the ball-by-ball coverage of an absorbing cricket Test Match between England and New Zealand.

The European Games in Baku will be the newest addition to the sporting calendar, but the first major multi-sport event in Europe took place over 150 years ago.

There are some things that happen in life that change you forever. Time becomes a before and after and it is hard to imagine how things were prior to the event taking place. For my 30 years, I think I’ve had my fair share of these moments, mostly good, like the arrival of my two beautiful children and nephew, travelling to places such as Iceland, Bosnia and Jordan, a short stint as a roadie with a band and then there is working at insidethegames.

I’ll say this for SportAccord President Marius Vizer: sports politics is much more gripping when he is around.

I was just going to write something momentous about world sport when I saw a tweet from a friend saying he had been attacked while he was on a new running route. By a hawk.

A compression wear brand telling Adidas what to do? Surely not…

Sport, as well as the Tories, got a surprise result in the British General Election. The new team moving into the Whitehall locker room at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has a heartening game-changing look about it.

It may hold the rather dubious honour of having American nu metal act Limp Bizkit and English veteran Sting as the best known musicians to have played within its walls, but the 7,500 capacity Traktor Ice Arena in Chelyabinsk has this week provided another strong advert for Russia’s reputation as an efficient host of major sporting events.

More than three decades ago at the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow, youth sambo was showcased during the Opening Ceremony.

While it’s a common misconception that sambo was formally recognised as a demonstration sport of the Games, its flirtation with the leading international multi-sport event remains the most significant example of such to this day.

Is there any other issue in sport that provokes the amount of debate, controversy and outrage as doping?

Is there any other problem that attracts the headlines quite so frequently on a regular basis?

Alarmingly, doping in sport is a freight train that shows absolutely no signs of slowing down, and what a shame that is.

There is no question which sporting story has dominated the news in Britain this week - and for once it has nothing to do with football.

So Haile Gebrselassie is no longer involved in competitive athletics. The 42-year-old Ethiopian phenomenon, who announced his retirement after last weekend's Great Manchester Run, has won two Olympic and eight world titles. He has earned victory in 11 major marathons. And he has set 27 world records on track and road.