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Daniel Etchells: Smart Cities & Sport Summit sets the tone for Olympic Agenda 2020

As the culmination of the Olympic Agenda 2020 decision-making process moves ever closer, the Smart Cities & Sport Summit in Lausanne, provided an insightful prelude for what's to come.

When Thomas Bach, President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), announced the reform process in December 2013, it was seen by many as a somewhat unnecessary step, especially after the success of the two most recent Summer Olympic Games in Beijing and London.

But, following the withdrawal of four of the six candidates in the race to host the 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games, coupled with the growing scepticism of many countries across Europe about the benefits of bidding to host major sporting events, the perception of Agenda 2020's importance has significantly changed.

The Summit is the new initiative of the World Union of Olympic Cities (WUOC), an association of former and future Olympic hosting cities, supported by the IOC, which was created in 2002 with the goal of facilitating effective dialogue in order to ensure the continued positive impact of the Olympic Games.

It has been billed as the most prestigious platform ever for the exchange of ideas and experiences among cities of all sizes as the WUOC, led by its President Daniel Brélaz, aims to reach out to its peers from around the world to share experience and best practice, and to learn from world class experts from the wider sports industry.

The World Union of Olympic Cities welcomed the "Smart Cities & Sport Summit" participants at the Olympic Museum ©ITG

While I would agree the Summit served its intended purpose, the three-day event held from November 5 to 7 in the Olympic capital arguably raised more questions, many of which will be answered at the IOC's Extraordinary Session in Monaco on December 8 and 9.

The day before my trip to Lausanne (November 3), I received an e-mail from Héloïse Lacroix, project manager at TSE Consulting, the international consulting firm specialising in sport.

I had been invited to a press briefing at which Molebatsi Bopape, Minister of Sports, Arts, Culture and Recreation for Guateng in South Africa, would share the sporting ambitions of the Province and its plans for the future.

It also stated in the e-mail that Guateng, of which Johannesburg is the capital city, had hosted numerous international events, including the 2010 FIFA World Cup, and that it is the most populous and urbanised Province in South Africa with over 12 million inhabitants contributing over a third of the country's Gross Domestic Product.

All well and good, but what relevance did this have to the Summit I thought to myself?

Although initially scheduled to take place on Wednesday (November 5) in the city's Mövenpick Hotel between 4pm and 5pm, the briefing was re-scheduled for the earlier time of 12:30pm at the stunning Beau-Rivage Palace hotel, where the SportAccord International Federations Forum was being held.

My research in the build-up to the event had informed me that the Palace was extremely well renowned amid the hotel hierarchy and whether self-proclaimed or not, the statement across the welcome sign, which read "one of the leading hotels of the world", certainly backed up what I'd read. The general surroundings and the quality of the food at the conference's Gala Dinner, which was held at the Palace, further reinforced that.

The "Smart Cities & Sport Summit" was held at the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) business school on the shores of Lake Geneva ©ITG

The "Smart Cities & Sport Summit" was held at the International Institute for Management Development business school on the shores of Lake Geneva ©ITG

I have to say, the briefing was somewhat of a slow burner but when the real reason behind it finally became clear, it was well worth the wait from the perspective of news worthiness.

Bopape's announcement that Guateng intends to bid to host the 2024 Olympic Games, should the IOC deem it acceptable for regions rather than just cities to do so as part of the Agenda 2020, really set the tone for an interesting few days.

One would have to think that a move away from the traditional bidding procedure would breathe new life into the process and perhaps encourage more countries to bite the bullet and put their name in the hat to host major sporting events.

A joint commitment is much less of a financial risk than a sole commitment and although at this stage we can only assume that the IOC will implement this new rule to suit, it seems a perfectly conceivable solution to the worrying trends that have developed.

It's a case of "if, buts and ands" at the moment but Guateng has firmly put its cards on the table and effectively said to the IOC, we're ready when you are.

The opening reception of the Summmit itself was held at the newly-renovated Olympic Museum, which was just as impressive as I had expected it to be.

The aura and sense of history about the place was incredibly powerful and it was a genuine pleasure to have been given the opportunity to visit.

Here, President Brélaz, who is also the Mayor of Lausanne, welcomed participants to the event before city representatives were encouraged to mingle between themselves and discuss the conferences that were to follow in the coming days.

Moderated by Rick Burton, Professor of Sport Management at Syracuse University in New York, and Bill Morris, an expert advisor to the IOC and other international clients, there were four sessions held on day one (November 6) of the Summit and two on day two (November 7) at the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) business school on the shores of Lake Geneva.

The Beau-Rivage Palace hotel lived up to its billing from what I saw of it ©ITG

Several questions were posed. How can major sports events be integrated into wider city plans? How can sports cities and partners collaborate? How can a city succeed in building public support for sport investments? What is the role of sport in an active and healthy city? Can sports events contribute to a better life for citizens of the host cities?

Among those tasked with answering the questions were Dr Andrew Smith, reader in tourism and events at the University of Westminster, Professor Dominique Turpin, President of IMD business school, Ron Hutcheson, senior vice-president of leading full service communications agency Hill+Knowlton Strategies, Philippe Furrer, head of the Youth Olympic Games' culture and education, creative services and special projects, and Mihir Bose, a Financial Times journalist.

Nevertheless, it was the keynote speech of Michael Payne, the former IOC director of marketing and television for more than 20 years, who has seen the bidding process from both sides having played a part in the success stories of London 2012 and Rio 2016, that really struck a chord with its audience and brought a real sense of context to everything that had been discussed beforehand.

Starting out his career in the early 1980s, Payne pointed out that there were hardly any bidding cities at that time and argued that the Olympics is now in stronger health and offers greater return than ever before.

The 1984 Olympic Games were awarded to Los Angeles by default after Tehran, the only other city interested on an international level, declined to bid due to the concurrent Iranian political and social changes.

But following the legacy of the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal, a financial disaster for the Canadian city, support for an LA bid from its citizens was limited to say the least.

Payne said a lot of media commentators at the time were writing the obituary of the Olympics, saying they've been wonderful for the 20th century but have become too big, too political and too expensive.

That was until the Spaniard Juan Antonio Samaranch, who served as IOC President between 1980 and 2001, played an instrumental role in revitalising the Games.

Could the Agenda 2020 have the same effect and inject new life into the Games, at a time where there is clearly an issue surrounding the management and communication of the bidding process?

The spacious conference room provided the ideal setting to promote the exchange of information and experiences between cities ©ITG

Payne argued that national federations and governing bodies have got to become clearer on the bidding process and most importantly, the costs and benefits of hosting major sporting events.

By the same token, he also said there is an onus on bidders to properly communicate why they're bidding.

He described the current research on what it means to bid as "iffy" and insisted a lot more work can be done to spell out the real benefits, "so that people are not just fishing in the dark".

The long-time advisor of formula one chief executive Bernie Ecclestone, suggested that the IOC is suffering from a hangover at the moment over the misunderstandings of the cost of the 2014 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games in Sochi and identified the need for it to be more aggressive in setting a communications agenda going forward to minimise the manipulation of figures by the media.

Furthermore, he anticipates that there will be much more debate about balancing the business dynamics when looking at creating a legacy, and urged bidders to think about long-term prospects.

"Get it wrong and you're in trouble," said Payne.

"And nobody is immune from that.

"But get it right and you have got a very bright future.

"And in what is an ever-more competitive environment for cities needing to find a way to stand out and needing to find a way to create their identity, sport remains an absolute key part of their battle."

President Bach has said that the IOC needs to evolve and it will be intriguing to see the recommendations tabled early next month.

Only then can we begin to assess the impact it will have on the state of the Olympic Games brand.

Daniel Etchells is a reporter for insidethegames. To follow him on Twitter click here.

Mike Rowbottom: Pulled strings for Vanessa Mae – and hovering handcuffs for Germany's doping offenders

So strings were pulled to enable Vanessa Mae to compete at the Sochi Winter Games. A discordant passage, to be sure. The manipulation of the world-renowned violinist's qualifying races in Slovenia, confirmed on Tuesday pending a possible appeal, effectively deprived another prospective Olympian of a rightful place.

The notion of athletes being deprived of their dues surfaced again this week in a tweet issued by British Olympian 1500 metres runner Andy Baddeley, and re-tweeted by world marathon record holder Paula Radcliffe:

"Doping is fraud. Medals, moments and money are STOLEN from clean athletes. Bravo Germany #cleansport"

The plaudits were in response to this week's news that Germany - having debated the idea for many years - appears on the brink of making sports doping a criminal offence for its elite athletes.

On the fiddle - International violinist Vanessa Mae received a four-year suspension this week from the International Ski Federation after the races in which she qualified for Sochi 2014 were shown to have been fixed ©Getty Images

The proposed law, which is due to be presented to the German Parliament next Spring, would include jail terms of up to three years for professional athletes found guilty of taking performance-enhancing drugs.

About 7,000 German professional athletes who are covered by the national testing programme will be affected by the new law, which would not extend to recreational athletes.

Foreign athletes caught doping while competing in Germany would also risk prison, as would doctors or others found to have provided drugs, with jail terms of up to 10 years being envisaged.

Despite Germany's healthy total of eight golds, six silvers and five bronzes at this year's Sochi Winter Games, the nation also suffered the embarrassment of a high profile doping positive as experienced biathlete Evi Sachenbacher-Stehle was ejected from the Games after a failed drugs test and subsequently banned for two years.

Biathlete Evi Sachenbacher-Stehle caused Germany embarrassment this year when she was thrown out of Sochi 2014 following a positive doping test ©Getty Images

There is an irony in the fact that Germany is seeking to break new ground in the fight against doping in sport.

In March 1997, legal action by two German athletes - Martin Brehmer and Susan Tiedke-Greene - allowed them to be reinstated halfway through four-year suspensions.

These were among numerous similar appeals in Germany, Russia and Spain, where restraint-of-trade legislation in civil law regarded a ban of two years, rather than four, as an appropriate punishment for athletes found guilty of serious doping.

On the eve of the 1997 World Championships, athletics world governing body, then still known as the International Amateur Athletic Federation, felt obliged to reduce the standard ban to two-years in the wake of several costly and unsuccessful legal battles.

But tides of opinion have changed, and the World Anti-Doping Agency, now responsible for global anti-doping policy in the majority of sports, has made numerous bullish statements with regard to legal acceptance of stronger sanctions.

From January 1 next year, the four year ban will return as the IAAF's standard punishment for serious doping offenders, under the World Anti-Doping Agency Code.

The zeitgeist has altered - and now Germany is tackling a problem which has beguiled it in a uniquely damaging fashion in the space of the last 40 years.

It was not until the fall of the Berlin Wall 25 years ago that the full scale of East Germany's State Plan 14.25 emerged. It had offered a generation of East German athletes a simple choice: follow a state-run doping programme, or forget about pursuing your career.

East German athletes on parade in Berlin in 1965 ©Universal Images/Getty Images

Almost a decade after the revelations, some of those athletes, grievously harmed both physically and mentally by the substances they had been obliged to ingest, were able to confront some of the doctors and coaches involved in the programme in a court of law, with the latter being charged with grievous bodily harm.

Doping emerged into the limelight in Germany once again last year following a report into the historic use of performance-enhancing drugs on the western side of the country.

While there was no evidence of a state-run system such as had existed on the other side of the Wall for a quarter of a century, the report - commissioned by the German Olympic Sports Confederation in 2008 and undertaken by researchers from Berlin's Humboldt University -showed that the Federal Institute for Sports Science (BISp) had experimented with anabolic steroids, testosterone, estrogen and blood doping, which had been used systematically since the beginning of the 1970s.

The 800-page "Doping in Germany from 1950 to today" - not all of which was published - claimed that West Germany's system of doping was not developed as a response to that of East Germany, but ran parallel to it, reportedly in a number of sports, including football and athletics.

According to John Huberman in "Athletes in Handcuffs? – The Criminalisation of Doping", one of a collection of related studies in "Doping and Anti-Doping Policy in Sport: Ethical, Legal and Social Perspectives (ed McNamee & Verner, Routledge, 2011)", the legal actions which followed revelations of the East German doping regime "associated 'German' doping practices and criminal medical practices in a way that has had no counterpart in any other country."

In 2007, a move to criminalise sports doping was rejected, as the prospect of "athletes in handcuffs" was deemed unacceptable.

But the impulse to cleanse and clarify remained. Two years later, as Huberman notes, the Bavarian Minister of Justice, Beate Merk, commented: "Why is there so much anxiety about the legal system?...It is obvious that sport is not going to rid itself of this problem on its own."

Plans to clamp down on doping were laid once again by the coalition Government which formed under Angela Merkel's third term as Chancellor last year - which brings us to the present position.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has presided over an administration which has returned to the previously debated idea of criminalising sports doping ©Getty Images

Will it be accepted? And if so, will it be acceptable? These questions remain unanswered.

Speaking to BBC Sport in the wake of the news of the German initiative, Professor Werner Franke, a leading expert in performance-enhancing drugs who helped research the 1991 book "Doping: From Research to Deceit", uncovering the East German system, sounded a warning note.

Franke's main criticism was that the law would target only professionals, who are rare in Olympic sports, adding that even an Olympic athletics champion could argue in a court that the law didn't apply to them.

He also cast doubt on how effective proposed sanctions against doctors supplying substances would be, claiming they would not be obliged to give any evidence about their clients in German law.

Can Germany have come this far for a law with zero effect? Surely not...

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. His latest book Foul Play – the Dark Arts of Cheating in Sport (Bloomsbury £8.99) is available at the insidethegames.biz shop. To follow him on Twitter click here.

David Owen: "Parlons Platini" - new book offers insight into UEFA President’s thinking, in spite of offputting format

The question and answer format is much resorted to in France. To one more versed in the "cut-to-the-chase" school of Anglo-American journalism, however, it can come across as woolly, evasive and self-indulgent.

By relating a conversation word for word as it happened, or purporting to, the convention both implies that every cough and splutter uttered by the protagonists is worthy of the reader's attention and largely abdicates the editing function.

So it was with a certain amount of trepidation that I embarked on Parlons Football (Let's Talk Football), the new book by UEFA President Michel Platini, whose format consists of a daunting 288 pages of Q and A.

If Platini were not one of FIFA President Sepp Blatter's most likely successors, I probably would not have bothered.

And indeed I did find that the book was not without the longueurs that are an occupational hazard of the genre.

But I also have to say that, having reached the end of it, I felt I had attained a significantly deeper understanding of what makes one of football's most powerful - and inventive - administrators tick than I possessed when I started.

And that is probably the only justification that a book such as this needs.

Michel Platini's new book Parlons Football deals with his brilliant playing career and his controversial time as President of UEFA ©Amazon

There are also moments when the playfulness that the format can lend itself to, especially in the hands of an experienced and knowledgeable interviewer such as Gérard Ernault, who first met Platini as an 18-year-old in a Nancy café, where he played pinball and ordered a milk and grenadine syrup, comes vividly into its own.

I am thinking, for example, of when Ernault asks Platini how he finds FIFA today.

"Blatterian."

Is that a criticism or a statement of fact? "Statement of fact."

You were Joseph Blatter's ally for a long time. "But I am not his enemy..."

The UEFA President must have been feeling particularly playful that day.

A page later, when Ernault remarks, "No, you don't regret anything", he accepts the implicit invitation to pick up Piaf's trademark lyric. "Non, rien de rien. Non, je ne regrette rien."

Michel Platini's time as a footballer has done much to shape his administrative career
©David Cannon/Allsport

As a footballer, he was of course one of the greats.

One of the lessons I will take from the book is how profoundly his playing experience, at times vividly recalled, has shaped his thinking as one of the game's most influential administrators.

For example, he floats the idea of replacing FIFA's representatives on the International Football Association Board (IFAB), which decides changes to the laws of the game, with an academy of former players.

I think his preoccupation with keeping the game flowing is also largely a consequence of this.

He remembers the epic 1982 World Cup semi-final game between France and West Germany, lost on penalties after a breathtaking 3-3 draw as "THE moment of my life as a player...From hope to despair, the life of a man in a single match".

He nevertheless recalls just as vividly a single volleyed cross-field pass executed by László Kubala of Barcelona in a friendly match in the town of Metz that he witnessed at the age of eight.

This was of course exactly the sort of beau geste with which Platini himself was later to become associated.

So much so that it comes as something of a surprise when he attributes his relatively early retirement - at the age, as Ernault writes, of 31 years 10 months and 26 days - to his dwindling goal tally. "I was no longer scoring goals. I no longer had a goal."

Michel Platini said he could never forget the Heysel Stadium disaster where a wall collapsed before a Juventus - Liverpool match killing 39 people and injuring some 600 more
©Getty Images

And then there is Heysel, when Platini scored the goal that won the European Cup for Juventus on one of the blackest days in European football history.

The awful evening, when 39 people lost their lives, still haunts him - how could it not? But his comments also make plain that there is a direct link between that ghastly, soul-draining experience and his drive as UEFA President to forge a better relationship between European football and the European Union.

"Football's responsibilities at Heysel are evident," he says.

"But how blind were the [public authorities] in the face of the increasing violence in European football in the 1970s and 1980s!

"Responsibilities were shared. European football had become too distant from Europe itself.

"I have done nothing since becoming President of UEFA but undertake a rapprochement with the European Commission."

The book contains a certain amount of grist for those looking to second-guess possible future administrative decisions.

He sees no point in having an age ceiling for referees, provided they remain good and fit enough.

He wants to see players sin-binned for 10 minutes, signalled by a white card, if they dispute decisions with too much gusto.

Michel Platini's opposition to goal technology is still a mystery given its proven effectiveness in the English Premier League and other international competitions ©Getty Images

He would like UEFA to be granted a bigger role in the monitoring and settlement of player transfers, and for agents' fees to be capped at three percent.

He also claims that in January 1998, Blatter suggested that he - Platini - run to succeed João Havelange for the FIFA Presidency, a position that Blatter himself of course ended up taking.

"He got this idea from Havelange in person," Platini maintains.

"'Platini President, you general secretary, that would be very elegant.' It would perhaps have been very elegant, but it wasn't very realistic.

"In January 1998 I had my hands full with the World Cup [staged in France that year], but more especially I didn't feel at all ready to exercise such a responsibility."

Many of Platini's turns of phrase will also stick in the mind, whether or not one agrees with them.

"Today...it's easier for a referee to earn respect than a teacher or a parent"; "Doping falsifies sport, match-fixing kills it"; "The quality of a player resides firstly in his mastery of the ball, only then comes mastery of space."

One thing I still cannot fathom, though, even after 288 pages of Q and A, is his opposition to goal-line technology - especially now both the Premier League and dear old FIFA have shown it can be deployed without interrupting the flow of the game.

David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 World Cup and London 2012. Owen's Twitter feed can be accessed here.

Alan Hubbard: Draconian stance on women in sport must be stamped out in light of volleyball scandal

A woman named Ghoncheh Ghavami is currently languishing - though hardly an appropriate phrase - in a stinking Iranian jail for the heinous crime of trying to watch an international volleyball match in Tehran.

Words fail me - almost.

I can think of a few choice ones to describe those responsible for imposing such scandalous punishment. Despicable and despotic don't even come close.

The 25-year-old law student, who is British-Iranian (though dual nationality is not recognised in Iran) was arrested in June after attending an International Volleyball Federation (FIVB) World League match between Iran and Italy.

She was among a group of women who had peacefully gathered asking that females should be allowed in to watch such events only to be arrested and allegedly beaten before being freed.

Ms Ghavami was re-arrested later and subsequently put on trial accused of "spreading propaganda".

Women are banned from attending men's sports events in Iran, as they are in a number of similarly chauvinistic countries who attempt to hide their medieval prejudices behind a cloak of religion and culture.

I recall attending the multi-nation Islamic Games in Saudi Arabia where women were not only barred from competing but watching or reporting!

It was like being in Ancient Greece - only the men weren't naked.

Ghoncheh Ghavami was in prison for more than 120 days before her one year prision sentence was revealed by her lawyer ©Amnesty International

Ms Ghavami was in prison for more than 120 days before news of her year-long sentence was revealed. She is now said to be on hunger strike after being held in solitary confinement in Tehran's infamous Evin Prison.

She has told her lawyer that during her prolonged isolation, interrogators put her under psychological pressure, threatening to move her to the even more notorious Gharchak Prison where hardened criminals are held in awful conditions. They told her she "would not walk out of prison alive".

Yet in some respects this sporting suffragette is lucky. Had the incident happened in Saudi Arabia she'd probably have been given 100 lashes too.

Iran barred women from volleyball games in 2012, extending a long-standing ban on football matches and other sports. The authorities argued that women need protection from 'the lewd behaviour of male fans.'

Clubs in Italy's League Series A and the Super League have held protests against Ghavami's arrest by holding up banners before their matches calling for her to be freed.

Clubs in Italy have held protests over Ghoncheh Ghavami's imprisonment by holding up banners before matches calling for her release ©Facebook

Amnesty International has described Ms Ghavami, who is from Shepherd's Bush in West London, and a graduate of the University of London, as a prisoner of conscience, and called for her immediate release.

More than 700,000 people have signed an online petition urging this, while naturally Britain's Foreign Office johnnies are now ringing their hands and expressing their "concern".

As for sport's international governing bodies - well true to form they just seem to be sitting on theirs.

This appalling case has been largely under-reported in the national and international media and it has taken publicity and pressure from insidethegames to prod a reluctant FIVB into some sort of meaningful action.

Now, following Nick Butler's exclusive story that they would not award any further events under their jurisdiction to Iran until Ms Ghavami is freed and the ban on women attending matches is lifted, FIVB say Iran will no longer host the 2015 Boys' Under-19 World Championships, which instead will be held in Argentina. They have also written to Iran's President. Good luck with that.

So consider Iranian wrists suitably slapped.

The phrase too little too late comes to mind.

FIVB President Ary S Graca sent a letter to Human Rights Watch before an October meeting explaining that he had written to the President of Iran asking for Ghoncheh Ghavami's release ©Human Rights Watch

So far the FIVB have made no move to shift next year's World League fixtures from Iran as it is not terribly convenient to do so, and claim they have no influence over next year's Asian Volleyball Championships which have been awarded Tehran.

Why not? Is it not the purpose of a governing body to govern?

Which brings us to the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Just what are they doing about it?

Not very much its seems. As per usual when matters of discrimination arise.

Oh yes, they've written a letter to Iran's National Olympic Committee seeking further information. But what more do they need?

A letter? Iran has no IOC member but why have Messrs Kiumars Hashem and Shakrok Shahnazi, listed as Iranian NOC President and secretary-general respectively, not been hauled before the IOC Executive Board and warned that unless this shameful wrong is righted Iran will be suspended from the Olympic Movement with immediate effect.

For Iran has previous. There have been a number of occasions in international competition, including the London Olympics, when Iranians have been drawn against Israeli opponents and told to feign injury or illness rather than compete.

Clearly the soft-softly diplomatic approach doesn't work with such intransigent bigots.

It is time the IOC stopped being so pusillanimous over such issues which defile international sport. And this latest one is particularly odious.

Iran, and those other nations which practise such intolerance contravene the very spirit of Olympism. If they refuse to play by the rules of a club which claims to demand equality they should be kicked out.

Let the IOC and other sports bodies recall Nelson Mandela's wise words: "Sport has the power to change the world."

Sport was largely responsible for hammering the final nail into the coffin of apartheid in South Africa once they had been made the pariahs of international competition.

What is happening in Iran now is simply another form of apartheid, and one which requires to be similarly and summarily stamped out.

Alan Hubbard is an award-winning 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.

Nick Butler: ANOC is becoming increasingly significant under Sheikh Ahmad

In insidethegames team meetings from time to time, particularly when we have a new staff member, we are given a lesson about the basic structure of the Olympic Movement.

On a whiteboard the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and its President, Thomas Bach is circled in the centre. To one side is SportAccord, headed by Marius Vizer and representing 92 International Federations. On the other side, you have the Association of National Olympic Committees (ANOC), led by Sheikh Ahmad Al Fahad Al Sabah of Kuwait.

There are various other bodies wielding influence, of course, including bid committees, consultants, legal and anti-doping institutions and, dare I say it, Governments, but these are the three basic actors.

Considering the IOC also represents the National Olympic Committees, the precise role of ANOC is perhaps the most ambiguous. Speaking to other journalists last week when waiting - as one tends to do - for a Sheikh Ahmad press conference, we were discussing just what exactly ANOC does and how its work, structure and organisation differs from that of the IOC.

This is an interesting topic.

From when ANOC was set up in 1979 in San Juan, through the 33 year tenure of Mexico's Mario Vázquez Raña, the organisation was relatively limited in both scope and ambition. It serviced the needs of the NOCs but was low profile and more like an unofficial arm of the IOC.

But this has changed since Sheikh Ahmad assumed the Presidency in 2012, and evidence of this growth was clear for all to see at last's weeks General Assembly in Bangkok. It was not an event to be missed. All 204 NOCs were present, plus "observers" from Kosovo and Macao, while around 40 IOC members and 14 International Federations also attended, along with both Bach and Vizer.

Two new events encapsulate the rise of ANOC and its President.

The ANOC Gala Awards Ceremony, was held for the first time during the Assembly last Friday (November 7). Billed as the "Oscars of Sport" it recognised top athletes of the past and present, including 800 metres Olympic champion and world record holder, David Rudisha, and the nine-time Olympic gold medal winning gymnast, Larisa Latynina, along with teams, administrators and National Olympic Committees.

Larisa Latynina accepts the Outstanding Performance Award from Thomas Bach during the ANOC Gala Awards ©Getty Images

There was something slightly predictable about the fact the two main NOC awards went to the United States and Russian Olympic Committees (forgive slight bias, but weren't the British Olympic Association at least equally deserving of the London 2012 award, especially as they finished third overall in the medals table ahead of Russia, having won just one gold medal only four Games previously? But I digress...) and some presentational and logistical tweaking could certainly be made.

Overall, the event was a success, and with social media to be incorporated into the awarding of next year's winners, the Ceremony is set to grow and grow.

The second event is the World Beach Games, approved by the General Assembly in Bangkok and currently seen as most likely to be held for the first time in 2017. Coming out of the shadow of the Asian Beach Games, and with an exciting blend of established and less established disciplines and sports freshly adapted to the sand, it is a fascinating concept, with full backing, albeit with no direct organisational input, from the IOC.

The only slight confusion I have is that when the event was first muted, it was billed as a collaboration between ANOC and Sport Accord, but this latter involvement was not really mentioned during the Assembly. More discussions regarding potential dates and location will take place over coming months, with concrete details promised at the 2015 ANOC General Assembly in Washington D.C., so we can expect this to all be resolved soon.

The Asian Beach Games, held in Muscat in 2010 and taking place for a fourth time in Phuket next week, is the inspiration behind the World Beach Games ©Getty Images

Along with the usual presentations by Organising Committees and Commissions, one word raised time and time again during the Assembly was "autonomy". Something also repeatedly highlighted by Bach, making sure all NOCs are free from Government interference is a key focus for both the IOC and ANOC, with the recent UN Directive on the autonomy of sport hailed as a key breakthrough.

Again, there is some slight ambiguity here. What about, for instance, those NOCs where the President is also the political leader of the respective nation? Belarus, Qatar and Azerbaijan, to name three examples. But there has been success this year with regard to India, Pakistan and The Gambia, and it is hoped others, like Egypt, will soon follow suit.

ANOC are working with the IOC here and, more generally, repeatedly reiterated their support for the ongoing Olympic Agenda 2020 reform process. By exploring some of the same issues, it is hoped ANOC and the continental federations will complement Agenda 2020 and contribute to the discussion.

In this regard, a Working Group consisting of NOC and Bid Committee representatives has been convened by the European Olympic Committees, to look into why so much of the European public has turned against the idea of an Olympic bid. A good idea, and undoubtedly a crucial issue, although I do feel the Group would benefit from having wider input, from journalists, consultants and politicians as well as from those implicitly within the Olympic bubble...

Solving the dwindling desire for European Olympic bids is a challenge for ANOC and the EOC as for the IOC ©Facebook

Other important discussions took place in the various continental meetings held the day before the General Assembly began. The issue of "autonomy" was raised once again in an eventful Association of National Olympic Committees of Africa discussion, where hopes to return the African Games to ANOC rather than Governmental control as soon as possible provoked heated discussion.

During the Pan American Sports Organization General Assembly, elections to the ANOC Executive Council drew the headlines. But, more generally, jostling and political manoeuvring also took place as Presidential contenders begin to put themselves forward ahead of the expected stepping down of former ANOC chief Vázquez Raña, absent through illness last week, when his latest term in office ends next year.

In the Olympic Council of Asia Advisory Council meeting, meanwhile, concern was expressed about the expanding scale of Asian sporting events as well as the danger of athletes from elsewhere being enticed to compete for Asian nations.

Nationality issues are also a challenge for the Oceania National Olympic Committees, with the Samoan representative raising concerns over the eligibility rules in rugby ahead of the sports Olympic return to the programme at Rio 2016. Could some of those many players who have left the Pacific Islands to compete for other nations be able to return to Samoa, Fiji or Tonga at Rio 2016? The ANOC President promised to work with the International Rugby Board to address the issue.

The Pacific Islands hope that star players, including Fijian born New Zealand legend Joe Rokocoko, could be enticed back to their birth nations at Rio 2016 ©Getty Images

This rugby issue was another example of Sheikh Ahmad embracing the opportunity to tackle an issue in the sports world. In recent weeks he has spoken passionately about problems in cricket, defended the Qatar 2022 FIFA World Cup in the face of an international media onslaught, and voiced his opinions on a range of other issues, from the woman jailed in Iran for attending a volleyball match to the wearing of hijabs in sport.

Considering how enthusiastic he was about welcoming the "return" of the United States into the Olympic fold ahead of next year's ANOC General Assembly, maybe he will next turn his gaze on American sports? Or maybe Formula One in the post Bernie Ecclestone era?

In his press conference after the end of the General Assembly, Sheikh Ahmad made clear that he sees himself as a representative of all different cultures around the world. Someone to defend countries like Iran, Qatar and China in the face of a western media assault, but to also represent European and North American interests.

"There are problems with cultures we have to accept," he said. "This is the excitement of life. This is the duty of sport to bring cultures together."

So while ANOC is one of those three powerful actors in the sports world, still sitting on one side of the IOC, it is the one whose influence is growing the most, in a large number of different ways. With Sheikh Ahmad freshly elected last week to serve for another four years, the organisation is now poised to grow in further, both in terms of visibility and power.

Nick Butler is a reporter for insidethegames. To follow him on Twitter click here.

Brian Oliver: Kiribati goes weightlifting crazy after country's first ever Commonwealth Games medal

David Katoatau, the first Commonwealth Games champion from the remote Pacific nation of Kiribati, deserves another gold medal. He has had an astonishing impact on sports participation in his homeland - a clear example of the Commonwealth Games leaving a sporting legacy.

Kiribati had never won a medal of any colour before Katoatau's victory in the 105 kilogram category in weightlifting in Glasgow this summer. He danced his way off the stage, celebrated with a Pacific Islands party in the Athletes' Village, and returned home a hero.

Last month Katoatau toured the islands of Kiribati - 21 of them are inhabited - visiting schools, institutions and local communities to show off his gold medal, demonstrate his skills and show many hundreds of youngsters the basics of weightlifting. The aim was to encourage young people to take up the sport for themselves. The results were remarkable: 1,753 signed up to a talent identification programme, more than half of them girls. That's nearly two per cent of Kiribati's population.

Every year the Oceania Weightlifting Institute organises a sweep of the region looking for promising athletes and promoting the sport. They sign up youngsters who compete locally in weightlifting, which is the most popular sport around the Pacific islands - even more so than rugby.

Those who show the most promise are put forward for elite coaching and the best are taken on by the Oceania Weightlifting Institute in New Caledonia. This year's top performers, selected by their national federations, will have a week's training camp in New Caledonia in December.

They are all funded, as is the talent ID programme and the Oceania Institute, by grants from the International Weightlifting Federation, and National Olympic Committees throughout the Pacific.

David Katoatau won Kiribati's first-ever Commonwealth Games medal when he claimed gold at Glasgow 2014 ©Getty Images

"What a phenomenal result," said Paul Coffa, the Australian coach who worked in developing weightlifting in Nauru before moving on to Fiji, Samoa and New Caledonia. He set up the Oceania Institute in 2004.

"David is a national hero because of his Commonwealth Games performance and he put in a lot of work on his tour, but we couldn't have dreamed we'd get this many youngsters taking an interest.

"I'm especially thrilled that so many of them are girls [925, with 828 boys]. We ran the talent programme in 14 countries and overall the numbers were fantastic - 4,338 entries from 166 schools visited. That's almost 1,700 more than last year."

David Katoatau was given a heroes welcome when he returned to Kiribati after his gold medal at Glasgow 2014 ©Brian Oliver

That entire increase is still less than the number recruited by Katoatau, 30, who was been coached by Coffa for more than 10 years. He has now been given an International Olympic Committee (IOC) coaching scholarship and has returned to New Caledonia to work on earning his qualifications. His aim is to and stay in the sport after retiring from competition.

The programme, which started three years ago, has grown year by year. Many of the athletes who have come through the talent-spotting system have competed at the Oceania Championships, Olympic Youth Games, and in Glasgow at this year's Commonwealth Games. There will be plenty more at the next Commonwealth Games, in the Gold Coast in 2018.

"It's truly amazing in that such a short time the national federations have been able to tap in on the work they've done at school level to produce the next generation of champion weightlifters," said Coffa. "Without the financial support of the International Weightlifting Federation and also the Oceania National Olympic Committees, this would not have been possible. This is a unique programme in the world of weightlifting."

David Katoatu's Glasgow 2014 gold medal has sparked a weightlifting boom in Kiribati ©Brian Oliver

Coffa, the most successful coach in Commonwealth Games history, has helped to create a remarkable boom in weightlifting throughout the Pacific islands over the past 20 years. It was prompted by the Commonwealth Games success of another of Coffa's former athletes, Marcus Stephen.

When Stephen won Nauru's first medal in Auckland in 1990 it led to a national holiday being declared. Weightlifting took off and at one point Nauru, with a population of 9,500, had more competitors registered than China. Stephen was President of Nauru for four years and is still a prominent politician, as well as a high-ranking official at the International Weightlifting Federation.

Brian Oliver, author of '"The Commonwealth Games: Extraordinary Stories Behind the Medals", and a former sports editor of The Observer, was weightlifting media manager at London 2012 and Glasgow 2014.

Paul Osborne: FIFA was not wrong to give Qatar the World Cup, but should have sorted out the dates first

In my latest global travel escapade for insidethegames I made a visit to Doha, capital of a little known Gulf State named Qatar. Little known, of course, before it was awarded football's, and arguably the world's, most popular sporting spectacle - the FIFA World Cup in 2022.

Since stunning the world in Zurich on December 2, 2010, Qatar has become a global sporting powerhouse, relentlessly pursuing international recognition through huge sporting, and business, ventures.

Be it its takeover of French football giants Paris Saint-Germain in 2011 through Qatar Sports Investment, Qatar's Sovereign Wealth Fund established in 2005 to manage the oil and natural gas surpluses by the Government of Qatar, a group which also holds a five-year sponsorship deal with Spanish giants Barcelona; through to its unquenchable thirst to host major international sports events, which has reached a peak of 43 over the next 12 months, Qatar is a nation on the up.

As the richest country in the world per capita it, quite frankly, can afford to be.

Although in Doha to cover the third edition of the Doha GOALS Forum, established during the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games as a platform for world leaders to create initiatives for global progress through sport, a lot of my time was spent contemplating the FIFA World Cup.

As both a football fan and a sports journalist, the 2022 World Cup has become somewhat of an obsession. Never has FIFA's flagship tournament thrown up such a wave of debate, debacle and disruption as that of the 2022 edition in Qatar.

FIFA has faced a storm of criticism since awarding the World Cup to Qatar in 2022; from workers' rights to searing heats to corruption allegations ©Getty Images

Now, I'm not planning on talking about the masses and masses (and masses) of criticism that has engulfed the tournament in relation to corruption and migrant worker issues, although the latter appears to be widely forgotten as recent developments of the proposed timing of the event and how that will effect the powerful European leagues have dominated the media.

Unless you've been living under a rock, you'd have heard the constant discussions of these former topics and, although obviously hugely important and quite disturbing at times, I'm quite sure that the 2022 World Cup will be played in Qatar regardless. Regardless of whether they have caused huge disruptions to the sporting calendar as a whole that is...

With this in mind, the timing of the tournament has become the latest spanner in the works for FIFA, as dates are thrown around any which way by some of football's biggest sporting leaders.

Traditionally played in the months of June and July, although seeping into the latter dates of May on five occasions in its 84 year history, the World Cup is, and always has been, a summer tournament.

Qatar's searing summer heats, reaching upwards of 50 degrees Celsius, have more or less put these dates out of question. For daytime play at the least.

After questions were originally raised on alternative dates, and fingers began to point at FIFA's apparent dismissal of a technical report that rated a summer tournament in Qatar as "high risk", FIFA President Sepp Blatter succumbed to wide calls for a shift from these traditional summer dates. Winter dates were therefore suggested and a tournament in November/December, or January/February thought most likely.

FIFA President Sepp Blatter will not want the World Cup to clash with the 2022 Winter Games following promises made to IOC President Thomas Bach ©Beijing 2022

As a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Blatter favoured a move to November/December in order to avoid a clash with the 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games, set to be held in either Beijing or Almaty.

Blatter also made a promise to IOC President Thomas Bach that the World Cup and Winter Olympics would not clash - a promise Bach is confident will be kept, he told exclusively my insidethegames colleague Duncan Mackay earlier this week.

Sir Craig Reedie, President of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and a vice-president of the IOC, echoed this sentiment in Doha where he claimed that the 2022 Winter Games will probably have to be held on the last 16 days of February due to the two candidate cities they have on offer. A January/February World Cup would also clash with the Super Bowl, the annual Championship game of the National Football League (NFL).

Not only would this conflict cause huge losses to viewing figures, with the event, held on Super Bowl Sunday, traditionally the first Sunday in February frequently the most watched American television broadcast of the year and the third most watched sporting events in the world, it would also cause enormous issues commercially as major broadcasters such as Fox, who have paid $425 million for the rights to the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, kick up a fuss.

A move to January and February would cause major problems in America as the dates would clash with the nation's biggest sporting spectacle - the Super Bowl ©Getty Images

The dates of November and December would, however, cause significant disruption in North and South America, where football leagues are beginning to wrap up around these dates.

UEFA, the governing body for European football, has also called out against an end of year tournament due to disruptions it would cause to the group stages of the Champions League.

The majority of European football leagues, bar the English Premier League, have long winter breaks around January and February, meaning a Winter World Cup here would cause the least amount of disruption to their calendars.

A third option has also been put forward by top European clubs who feel a tournament in May would cause the least disruption to any of their calendars.

The European Club Association (ECA), which represents more than 200 of the continent's biggest teams, suggested playing the 2022 tournament between 28 April and 29 May.

The Association of European Professional Football Leagues (EPFL), which counts the Premier League, Spain's La Liga and the German Bundesliga among its members, on the other hand, suggests the World Cup starting in late May and ending in June.

The ECA's suggestion would cause major issue with the Muslim Holy month of Ramadam, which will fall on April and early May that year, with eating and drinking in public strictly forbidden in Qatar during that time.

The EPFL option brings back concerns over heat and the risk to players, officials and fans, despite assurances by Qatar that it can provide climate-controlled venues.

Europe's top clubs and leagues want the 2022 World Cup to stay in the summer in order to avoid major disruptions to their domestic seasons ©EPFL

Qatar itself was also keen to stick to the traditional months of June/July, however, following continued warnings over temperature concerns, organisers have recently changed tact, stating they are happy to host the tournament at anytime.

Both the ECA and EPFL are now thought to be working together to think up a new plan to have the tournament played in May.

One suggestion, put forward by Harold Mayne-Nicholls, the administrator who led the FIFA Inspection Group that evaluated the bids for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, was to host the event in May but have games kick off in the late evening and early hours of the morning, after claims that a Winter World Cup would be impossible due to the many clashes it has with other major sporting events.

Another curve-ball was thrown on Wednesday by UEFA President Michel Platini when the Frenchman told media at St George's Park that the World Cup will "never be in April, May or June - It will be in winter" - a contradiction of the views expressed by many of Europe's top clubs.

He said he was free to the idea of moving the Champions League in order to accommodate a change of date for the World Cup.

A FIFA task force, set up in October 2013 to find alternative dates for the World Cup, have met twice in Zurich to discuss the best options available for the move.

In its last meeting on Monday it is believed that a date in January/February was heavily favoured over one in November/December. This task force is expected to deliver a final recommendation to FIFA's ruling Executive Committed by March 2015. A decision one would think would be followed by football's governing body.

A task force headed by Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa (left), President of the Asian Football Confederation, is believed to be favouring a move to January and February for the 2022 FIFA World Cup ©Getty Images

It could cause major problems for Blatter and his friends at the IOC if the dates of January and February were recommended, however.

Blatter has major influence within both bodies but one could not see him going against recommendations given to him by a task force he himself set up.

That would leave him breaking a promise made to IOC President Bach last year, not something anyone would want to do likely.

This begs the questions; was it smart for 68-year-old to make such promises to Bach? Is there anything he can do about it?

A quick answer to both would be no.

This is truly a lose-lose situation for Blatter, and more importantly, football's image to the world.

They have nominated a country that, despite earlier assurances, cannot host a World Cup in the summer; they have fought tooth and nail with one another on when to host the event; and they brought the integrity and reputability of football to an all time low through this squabbling, secrecy and indecision.

Now this isn't me saying that Qatar shouldn't host a World Cup. The country has the money, it has the facilities and it has the drive to ensure the Word Cup is as successful as possible.

This is me saying that Qatar should be awarded a World Cup at a sensible time. It was clear from the onset that a Summer World Cup would be nigh-on-impossible. FIFA should, therefore, have voted for whether they felt Qatar should host a World Cup outside of the traditional months of June and July. In 2010 there was 12 years before the World Cup would be held.

That was more than enough time to warn all parties involved, directly or not, that this tournament would be held in months outside of the norm.

Then FIFA had to decide conclusively on what dates the tournament would be held, and vote with this already on the table. With members, the media and the public in the know so a situation like this didn't arise.

Okay, you may still have other criticisms surrounding the awarding. But so did Brazil. And where did those complaints go as soon as the first whistle was blown? Who was talking about the workers that a died in the construction of the stadiums when Marcelo knocked the ball past his own keeper in Brazil's opening match against Croatia?

Nobody, or rather, very few.

Transparency, listening and just a bit of forward thinking was all that was needed by FIFA and this mess could, and probably would, have been avoided.

Maybe they'll do better next time....

Paul Osborne is a reporter for insidethegames. To follow him on Twitter click here.

David Owen: Paris bid team need to conjure up that 1998 feeling

Soon after exiting the metro in Paris's pleasant university district, I pass a bright golden statue of Thomas Paine, activist-philosopher, author of Rights of Man and, as the plinth says, "Englishman by birth, French citizen by decree, American by adoption".

I ponder what this 18th century man of the world would have made of the Olympic Movement while strolling past a park-worker contentedly blowing fallen plane leaves into piles as geometrical as the Louvre pyramids.

At its best, the French capital still has that certain je ne sais quoi.

But, having not visited for a number of years, I was also struck by the quantity of graffiti, the number of sans-abri or homeless people and by how badly some bits of the urban fabric – the RER suburban railway, for example – looked in need of TLC.

And by how relatively little (other than seeming more run-down) the complexion of the streets had changed since I lived there in the late 1990s.

On a long walk from the Gare du Nord to the Boulevard Saint-Germain, the most eye-catching innovations seemed to be the arrival of Starbucks, a sprinkling of electronic cigarette outlets and the contraction of the Monoprix supermarket brand to Monop.

One thing that has changed is the level of support in France for the National Front: this has risen significantly.

Support for far-right candidate Marine Le Pen is growing in France, indication that the country is fed-up with the current status quo ©Getty Images

I was astonished to glean from breakfast TV that, based on a new opinion poll, the far-right party's probable 2017 Presidential candidate, Marine Le Pen, might be on course to top the poll with a score of around 30 per cent.

Of course, this is mid-term and Le Pen is still short of the sort of ratings needed to give her a realistic shot at becoming head of state of one of Europe's biggest and most influential countries.

Nonetheless, my snapshot impression was of a society that is stuck, on hold, in a bit of a rut, while pressure from those fed up with the status quo gradually builds.

Or, you might say, a society in dire need of something inspirational to capture its collective imagination.

Something like a global pageant of sport showcasing the very best of humanity?

Well, possibly.

The purpose of my visit was to sit in on an event at which French sports leaders outlined the latest state of thinking regarding a Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic bid.

The gathering was long, detailed and well-attended, albeit without the presence of the French Sports Minister, who was away in Canada.

French sports leaders have thrown their full support behind a proposed Paris for the 2024 Olympics and Paralympics ©CNOSF

It brought to light some intriguing ideas: an Olympic school not for the elite, but for kids in danger of dropping out; a "citizens' ticketing system", where those who pitched in and did their bit for the national Olympic effort could be rewarded with free tickets and other items; a "Tour de France" of Olympic personalities, bringing people close to their sporting heroes; a telethon to help fund an eventual bid.

But at the end of it, I was left with the feeling that we are still a long way short of fashioning a project capable of lifting a morose, many would say overtaxed, French nation, let alone an electorate of International Olympic Committee (IOC) members who will probably have tempting alternatives, including a strong bid from the United States, to fall back on.

There has been progress since that traumatic moment in Singapore nearly a decade ago when then IOC President Jacques Rogge broke into his envelope and said "London" when most were expecting him to say "Paris".

I have never, for example, heard the UK capital praised so extravagantly on French soil as during Tuesday's meeting, particularly by Bernard Lapasset, President of the French International Sport Committee (CFSI).

We need evidently to add "improving Britain's reputation with its old foe" to the extensive list of London 2012 legacy benefits.

Scars from Paris' unsuccessful bid for the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics, awarded to London, still run deep in the French capital ©Getty Images

However, overcoming the disappointment of 2005 and acknowledging the qualities of your victorious opponent are necessary but far from sufficient parts of the process of finally stitching together a winning Olympic and Paralympic bid.

You might have hoped, moreover, that French sports leaders would have taken less than nine years to reach this point.

While they are still dwelling on London, their focus is inevitably backwards and inwards when any strong bid needs to project forwards and outwards.

I don't want to sound too negative; London 2012 was very far from the finished article at this point in that bidding process; Paris is a magical and resourceful city; it is still quite possible that a compelling, imaginative blueprint will coalesce.

But I did leave Paris with the feeling that the gap between where we appear to be at the moment and the creation of a project capable of mobilising and inspiring young people, along with the sort of voters who have sent Marine Le Pen to the top of the opinion polls, is uncomfortably big.

A multi-ethnic French football team provided the country with a massive lift when they won the 1998 FIFA World Cup ©Getty Images

For all its contributions to the cause of international sports competition, starting with the modern Olympics themselves, France is far from the most sports-mad country in Europe.

But there was one moment in recent history when sport for a time completely transformed the national mood: that was in summer 1998, when a strikingly multi-ethnic French football squad captained by Didier Deschamps upset the odds and won the World Cup on home soil.

That's the sort of effect that those working towards a bid need to aim for.

David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 World Cup and London 2012. Owen's Twitter feed can be accessed here.

Mike Rowbottom: Mamma Mia! The perils of rushing to judgement!

Watching the BBC quiz "Pointless" the other day, as I do occasionally - that is, on all occasions when "Pointless" is being broadcast - I noticed an odd phenomenon.

I don't much like musicals, but there seems little doubt that two of the most popular of recent years are "Mamma Mia!" and "The Lion King". Yet, as more than one competitor discovered, when both were nominated in 2000 for the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Musical, they lost out to "Honk!" – which, as any theatre expert with access to Wikipedia will tell you, is a musical adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's "The Ugly Duckling", incorporating "a message of tolerance".

So, the message here? Well, let me put it another way.

Alvin Stardust, whose funeral took place this week, had a fabulous musical and theatrical career which lasted more than half a century. His star was never higher than in the 1970s, when he embraced glam rock and enjoyed a series of number one hits including "Coo Ca Choo", "Jealous Mind" and "Red Dress", although he had also had considerable successful in the previous decade under the name of Shane Fenton.

He was by all accounts a gent, and hugely popular. But was he a historically significant pop music performer?

The late Alvin Stardust at the peak of his pop powers in 1975. He was a great performer - but was he a historically significant one? ©Hulton/Getty Images

The Museum of London clearly thought so back in the mid-70s, when they put together a major display in their new Barbican home featuring one of his star-spangled jumpsuits and his trademark black gloves.

I did some work experience at the Museum shortly before it moved from its old base at Kensington Palace, and got to wander through its giant storehouse. I sat in Charles Dickens' chair. I held the torch which had lit the cauldron at the 1948 London Olympics. And I stared somewhat bemusedly at the Stardust stage outfit, thinking to myself: "Why Alvin Stardust. Why not, say, David Bowie?"

(At the time I was also probably thinking why not Jimi Hendrix, Captain Beefheart or Frank Zappa? To which the obvious answer was - "not born in London, not even English, dummy.")

Fair play - Alvin Stardust, or Bernard Jewry to give him his real name, was a Londoner all right, born in Muswell Hill. But so was David Bowie, originally David Jones - a Brixton-born lad who also did the glam rock thing and so much else thereafter.

So the message here? Well it's a roundabout way of saying that most judgements, and particularly arbitrary ones, can turn out to be either wrong or at the very least questionable.

And it is as true in the sporting as in the musical domain.

Ten years ago, Richard Gasquet of France was being talked of as the rising star of world tennis. In 2002, aged 15, he had become the youngest player to qualify for a Tennis Masters event and subsequently the youngest player to win a tour-level main draw match as he beat Argentina's Franco Squillari in the first round in Monte Carlo.

A 15-year-old Richard Gasquet en route to a first round win at the Masters Event in Monte Carlo in 2002 ©Getty Images

Still aged 15, Gasquet made his Grand Slam debut in the French Open, and while he was beaten in the first round he still managed to take a set off the eventual champion, Albert Costa. Gasquet is still a massive talent, but to date his best results in a grand slam event are the semi-finals he reached at Wimbledon in 2007 and at the US Open last year.

It may sound odd to describe an Olympic gold medallist in the sprint relay as someone who underachieved. But in the case of Great Britain's Mark Lewis-Francis this is still a viable position. Simply because, as a teenager, this product of Darlaston, in the West Midlands, was so startlingly good that he appeared on the brink of becoming a world-beater.

I was working for The Independent at the time, and more than once phoned through to the staff room of the school Lewis-Francis attended in order to ask some helpful teacher to round him up and present him on the other end of the line.

In 2000, already world youth champion, he turned down the chance to run for Britain at the Olympics in Sydney, preferring to contest the World Junior Championships, where he won the 100 metres. It was viewed by some as a miscalculation, by others as a sensible step towards future attainment.

Mark Lewis-Francis celebrates a 100m gold at the 2000 IAAF World Junior Championships - Olympic gold would follow, but in the relay, not the individual event ©Getty Images

Donovan Bailey, Canada's 1996 Olympic champion, said after racing against the young Briton before the 2000 Olympics: "Mark is, quite simply, the most phenomenal and exciting athlete I've seen. Britain must be so excited because he'll win the Olympic 100m in Athens".

A year later, in Edmonton, I watched Lewis-Francis set what would have been a world junior 100m record of 9.97sec in his quarter-final heat at the IAAF World Championships - only for the time to be ruled out for record purposes because of a wind gauge malfunction.

Despite his obvious disappointment, it seemed only a matter of time before this youngster ran another sub-10sec 100m. But, despite his glorious anchor run at the 2004 Athens Games, where he held off the former United States Olympic and world champion Maurice Greene on the last leg to claim gold, he never did.

When 18-year-old James Wilson came on as a sub for Manchester United in Sunday's 1-0 defeat at Manchester City, he looked immediately capable of disturbing the reigning Premier League titleholders' defence. Wilson made his mark during his United debut in May, scoring twice in a 3-1 win over Hull City. He is being talked about in exciteable terms, and rightly so.

But it is always the same for young players - they can't just be good, they have to be "The Next..." - in United's case, the next George Best, the next Eric Cantona, the next David Beckham. And so the pressure is there for this bright young product of United's Academy system.

City themselves had a similarly shining talent in 2006 in 19-year-old Michael Johnson. But injuries laid him low, and he was released by City at the age of 26.

Michael Johnson, a rising star at Manchester City in 2008 - and now out of the game
©Getty Images

During the same time span, another arresting performer, wide midfielder David Bentley, was transferred from Blackburn to Tottenham for £15 million ($24 million/€19 million). The initials may have been a subliminal prompt, but he was described in some quarters as "the next David Beckham". He went on a series of loans to other clubs before quitting the game.

Of course, these things can often work the other way. The history of Southampton Football Club contains a surreal period when Sir Clive Woodward, having guided England's Rugby Union team to World Cup victory in 2003, found himself working as performance director alongside "H" - the quintessentially Cockney manager Harry Redknapp. Oh what a happy time there wasn't.

Shortly before Woodward made his inevitable departure from the club there was a press opportunity there at which he spoke about his aims and ambitions. The man who had guided England's rugby union team to their greatest triumph in Australia three years earlier proudly displayed a small lounge which had been created for the club's youth players. It was not what you would describe as a groundbreaking achievement.

We were then ushered into the club's indoor facility and invited to watch one of the trainees taking a few potshots at goal. The youngster took a penalty. We watched. He missed. We made our judgement. We erred.

His name was Gareth Bale.

Sir Clive Woodward pictured in 2004 at Twickenham with the trophies England's rugby union players have won under his guidance, including the World Cup (second left). But his impact on Southampton FC was less spectacular ©Getty Images

Having made it clear just how precarious are any predictions of historic import or future success, let me conclude by cautiously predicting a big future for a 17-year-old rower I saw in action at the Fuller's Head of the River Fours raced on Saturday, Sam Mejier.

This young man has already won the Pairs Head race this year, in company with the boatman at Westminster School, where he is a pupil. He came to the Tideway after successive weekends of single sculling triumph in the youth section at the Head of the Charles Regatta in Massachusetts and then the prestigious Armada Cup rowed on Lake Wohlen near Bern, in Switzerland.

Meijer's disappointment at only finishing third overall on the day in a composite Imperial College/Westminster School quadruple scull behind two superfast Leander boats stuffed with world champions and experienced internationals testified to a competitiveness that could see him performing at the same level before too long.

Fingers - or should that be oars - crossed.

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. His latest book Foul Play – the Dark Arts of Cheating in Sport (Bloomsbury £8.99) is available at the insidethegames.biz shop. To follow him on Twitter click here.

Daniel Etchells: Excellent timing of historic squash merger with Olympic Agenda 2020 on the horizon

Last week's announcement of a historic merger agreement between the Professional Squash Association (PSA) and the Women's Squash Association (WSA) couldn't have been much more timely if it tried.

With the Olympic Agenda 2020 set to culminate in an Extraordinary International Olympic Committee (IOC) Session in Monte Carlo on December 8 and 9, talk of gender equality, parity of prize money and increased playing opportunities under a single unified body certainly hit all the right notes.

A lengthy consultation process involving the sport's major stakeholders over the past 10 months has come to fruition at just the right time, with the PSA set to operate as the governing body for both the men's and women's ranks from January 1, 2015.

It seems like the perfect plan but talking exclusively to insidethegames, PSA chief executive Alex Gough insists it's more a coincidence rather than an intentional ploy to coincide a hugely significant moment in squash's history with an equally important period for the Olympic Movement.

One thing that isn't a coincidence though is the PSA's commitment to gender equality and creating a commercially viable sport.

Gough, a former squash player who reached a career high of world number five in 1998, says that all the discussions held with the IOC have "been around these sorts of areas" and that "it makes perfect sense" to take their advice on board and act upon it accordingly.

The announcement of the merger, and the PSA's continued commitment to paying equal prize money, provided a swift response to a study published by BBC Sport two days earlier, which reported that the biggest disparities in prize money were found in football, cricket, golf, darts, snooker and most interestingly in this case, squash.

Alex Gough (right) during his playing days ©Getty Images

The study confirmed that Laura Massaro, the first English woman to hold world and British Open titles simultaneously, who was instrumental in bringing equal prize money to the British National Squash Championships and increasing women's prize money for the British Open, received £16,300 ($26,000/€20,800) less for winning her world title than men's world champion Nick Matthew, who secured £28,600 ($45,600/€36,400), when he won his third world crown in November 2013.

But Andrew Shelley, chief executive of World Squash Federation, told BBC Sport: "The Tours are committed to equal prize money and, indeed, this was reinforced at the recent World Squash Federation Conference."

He also said the sport's World Championships would bring in equal prize money "soon".

Last year, the US Open became the first major tournament to offer equal funds for both the men's and women's competition and Tommy Berden, chief executive of the WSA, has claimed more events are expected to follow suit in the upcoming year.

Speaking about the commitment to paying equal prize money, Gough added: "We've just got to keep driving the commercial value of the sport upwards, so that it's workable and the men's and women's games are the same.

"It's not something we're going to be able to do overnight but it's certainly a goal that we're going to drive towards."

The PSA aims to secure parity in prize money between the men's and women's games ©PSA

Squash has suffered a number of knock-backs in its push for Olympic recognition and Gough has been involved in three unsuccessful bids in recent years, all of a very different nature.

In 2005, squash was actually among the two sports, along with karate, recommended for inclusion on the London 2012 programme by the IOC Session in Singapore only to be denied when they failed to muster the two-thirds majority required in a subsequent vote to grant them Olympic sport status.

Four years later, another campaign fell by the wayside when the IOC decided to add golf and rugby sevens to the Rio 2016 programme, replacing baseball and softball, whose last appearance was at Beijing 2008, to put the sports back to the maximum of 28.

And in 2013, the bid saw seven candidate sports, made up of squash, karate, wushu, sport climbing, baseball/softball, rollersports and wakeboard, vying to be added to the programme in place of wrestling, which was initially dropped in February but then reinstated seven months later.

As an ex-player and a true fan of the squash, Gough believes it would be the pinnacle of the sport to make it onto the programme in the future.

"There are a lot of sports in there where it is the pinnacle and squash would be amongst those," he said.

"Everyone saw what it meant to the guys and the girls in the Commonwealth Games, another very big multi-sport Games that squash featured in pretty heavily this year.

"And you can see what it meant to everyone that won medals at that Games.

"Obviously the Olympics is that next level up.

"It's still the ultimate ambition for squash and we're going to keep pushing hard to try and achieve it."

Daniel Etchells is a reporter for insidethegames. To follow him on Twitter click here.

Alan Hubbard: All opinions matter but women's boxing is on an upward curve

You won't find Frank Warren joining political (or should that be politically correct?) leaders Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg wearing one of those cringe-worthy T-shirts proclaiming: "This is what a feminist looks like".

Indeed, the veteran British boxing promoter has really raised the hackles of the right-on brigade by declaring that women boxers "don't float my boat" and that in his view boxing is not a sport for women.

I know this is an opinion Warren has held for some time and it is by no means a singular one in the fight game particularly among leading promoters, managers and male boxers.

The now retired world heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko has remarked that the thought women slugging it out in the ring "makes me want to throw up". And I once saw Amir Khan bury his face in a programme at ringside for the duration of an inaugural women's bout at an Amateur Boxing Association of England (ABA) Championships.

Girls, he said later, should stick to tennis.

Now insidethegames readers will be aware that this is not a stance I share.

I have always been a strong advocate of women's right to fight should they wish but I also believe Warren has the right to air his own, if deeply controversial, thoughts on the subject

This he did in his new weekly column for the Independent, attracting a fusillade of angry feminist counter-punching from readers and on radio phone-ins.

Veteran promoter Frank Warren has made a vast contribution to male boxing, but is less keen to make a mark on the women's side ©Getty Images

He then slugged out with the lucid Lucy O'Connor, former European champion and GB boxing captain on BBC Radio 5 live, a debate as fiercely and closely contested as any bout Warren has ever promoted in his 30 years in the business. I thought they fought draw.

Warren says his article was prompted by the death in South Africa last Saturday (October 25) of female boxer Phindile Mwelase, a 31-year-old professional light-welterweight who fell into a coma after being knocked out in a bout in Pretoria on October 10. She sadly never recovered.

It certainly seemed especially tragic as it was the third fatality for a South Africa sportsperson in less than four days after the runner Mbulaeni Mulaudzi was killed in a car crash and the national football captain, goalkeeper Senzo Meyiwa, was murdered by robbers at his girlfriend's home on Sunday (October 26) night. All this in the wake of the Oscar Pistorius affair.

As Warren pointed out, inevitably female participation in boxing now will be under intense scrutiny when the International Boxing Association (AIBA) Women's World Championships begin in Jeju City, South Korea, next week, with Hartlepool's Savannah Marshall bidding to become the first ever British women to become a two-time world champion.

"I wish her and the other Brits well, but it is not an event I will be following," he wrote.

"I make no bones about it. I don't like women's boxing. Never have and never will. I admire anyone who does any sport at whatever level and some women like to express themselves through boxing, but I've never hidden the fact that I am not a fan.

"It is not male chauvinism because I'm all for equality in sport and in life but I am just not comfortable seeing girls attempting to belt bits off each other in the ring, no more than I am knowing they are now fighting on the front line in wars.

"For one thing I worry about the effect being repeatedly hit in the stomach might have on their reproductive system. There have been cases of women boxers turning up at a weigh-in and found to be pregnant. Obviously they were not allowed to fight but what was happening to their bodies all the sparring sessions beforehand?"

London 2012 flyweight champion Nicola Adams is the best known female boxer on British shores, having also won a Commonwealth Games gold medal at Glasgow 2014
©Getty Images

However, Warren does admit that what Nicola Adams did in the Olympics was "absolutely brilliant" though he says he would not choose to watch her fight nor to promote her should she turn professional.

"Call me an old git, but that's how I see it. It is probably a generation thing because my sons Francis and George, who work with me on Queensberry Promotions, say they would happily put female boxers on the bill.

"Okay, so Nicola has shown us there is more to women's boxing than just handbags at ten paces but I do not believe it is something the average fan would pay to watch. As a promoter I don't think it is commercially viable in this country.

"The interest is not there, and never has been going back to the days when Jane Couch was a pioneer female professional. She was always pressing me to promote her but I declined."

That was certainly a brave decision as I recall that the feisty "Fleetwood Assassin" once flattened a bloke in a Blackpool bar when he kept patting her bum after she asked him to stop!

I do agree with Warren that it something of an anomaly that AIBA, the international body which brought women's boxing into the London Olympics, has ordered headguards for male boxers in major tournaments to be removed but say women must still wear them. "Their apparent reasoning is that spectators don't like to see girls getting hit in the face," says Warren. "Well, I don't like to see them getting hit anywhere.

"I'm not saying the only place for women in the ring is carrying the round cards. Good luck to the ladies who punch.If they want to fight each other, that's their choice, as it mine is not to watch it."

Fair enough.

I doubt whether Savannah Marshall and her fellow GB flag-flyers will be fazed by Frank's frankness. They've heard all the arguments and are still in there punching.

Savannah Marshall will be seeking to become the first two-time female British world champion on Jeju Island next week ©Getty Images

Savannah Marshall will be seeking to become the first two-time female British world champion on Jeju Island in South Korea next week ©Getty Images

At 23 six-footer Savannah, is no longer quite as shy as a couple of years ago when team-mates dubbed her "The Silent Assassin" because of her impressive knock-out record and dislike of interviews. She will be accompanied to Jeju Island by flyweight Lisa Whiteside, lightweight Chantelle Cameron and light-welterweight Sandy Ryan from GB Boxing's Podium Potential squad.

All four boxers will compete for England and will be joined by 2014 European Championship silver medallist, Stacey Copeland, who has been selected by England Boxing at welterweight (69kg).

They are now preparing for the tournament at a training camp in Japan, along with the Wales team of lightweight Charlene Jones and Commonwealth Games middleweight bronze medallist, Lauren Price.

With London 2012 gold medallist Adams and fellow Olympian Natasha Jonas absent following respective shoulder and foot surgery - word is that Adams' next bout will be with other contests in the "I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here!" ITV reality show - the focus will be on Marshall.

She made history in China on her 21st birthday in 2012 as Britain's first ever women's world boxing champion with victories over the eventual American Olympic gold medallist Claressa Shields and Elena Vystropova of Azerbaijan.

But just three months later she was to experience heartache as, hampered by apparent nerves and a hand injury, she suffered a shock first-round loss at London 2012.

She was back on form this summer, beating Canada's Ariane Fortin to take gold at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.

With 335 combatants from 74 countries boxing in ten weight divisions over four two minute rounds, the upcoming World Championships are the biggest female fight-fest since girls first swapped lip gloss for gumshields back in the nineties.

It is heartening to see how women boxers have punched a hole through old prejudices - even the Boxing Writers' Club, the last remaining all-male bastion in sports journalism, has now reversed a 60-year ban on admitting women to its annual awards bash, and have twice had female speakers as principal guests.

With all respect to Frank Warren, female fists have punched a hole in the glass ceiling and globally boxing has become very much a woman's world.

As Savannah and the sisters of the ring will ably demonstrate by socking it to 'em next week.

Alan Hubbard is an award-winning 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.

Nick Butler: Doha campaign for IAAF World Championships is formidable bid but just one part of Qatar’s growing sporting CV

When arriving in Doha last Wednesday (October 29) alongside two other journalists, we were asked whether we wished to travel together in one car to our hotel from the airport, or separately in different vehicles. I knew then that our whistle-stop two-day visit was going to be a step up in comfort and efficiency from what we were normally used to.

It is fair to say that Qatar, a country still relatively unknown internationally as recently as the turn of the century, has generated much attention in recent years: for political and commercial reasons but also for sporting ones.

The Gulf nation's successful bid for the 2022 FIFA World Cup - in our Olympic-themed eyes the second biggest event in sport - has provoked huge attention, and a lot of it has been far from positive.

But, it is also important to highlight the good work the country has done in a sporting sense. There is much.

Over the next 12 months, Qatar will host 43 major international sporting events, including World Championships in squash, swimming, handball, boxing and Para-athletics. At a time when there is much apathy towards bidding for major events in other parts of the world, this contribution should not be underplayed. Only Russia, with its "Decade of Sport", comes close to matching the oil and gas-rich nation in the sheer quantity of events taking place.

After the World Cup in 2022, the Olympic Games would be an obvious next step, and, presumably, the culmination of this sporting ambition. Following failed bids for the 2016 and 2020 editions, officials in Doha are being very coy on whether a bid for the 2024 Games will be launched at this stage.

"It is too early to say," Qatar Olympic Committee secretary general Sheikh Saoud bin Adbulrahman Al Thani said, before adding with a smile: "When we do decide, you will be the first to know".

At the moment, the focus is on Doha's bid for the 2019 International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) World Championships. This was also the reason for our visit, to coincide with an inspection by the IAAF Evaluation Commission. Three years ago, Doha suffered a narrow defeat to a very strong London bid for the 2017 edition. This time, they believe they have improved upon and learnt much from their first attempt, and are seen as strong favourites against bids from Barcelona and Eugene.

The World Championships in 2019 would be held in the Khalifa International Stadium, a facility currently still undergoing renovation work ©Doha 2019

With action to be held at the renovated Khalifa International Stadium, the bid will feature marathon races held in the dark on specially lit roads, as well as an innovative Athletes' Village within a residential development project at Msheireb Properties. This would mark the first World Championships in which athletes live alongside the local population rather than cocooned in a hotel.

More generally, it is hoped the bid will act as a catalyst for athletics in the Middle East, a region that has never hosted an outdoor IAAF World Championships before, while it would also help develop female sport and bring a sense of unity to a divided region, it is claimed.

Holding the Championships at the end of September and the beginning of October is a way to avoid the searing summer heat associated with the Gulf, and while daytime temperatures could still soar as high as 35 degrees, this is no hotter than weather seen at other championships of the recent past, as well as what can be expected at next year's event in Beijing.

Much attention is being taken to ensure appropriate conditions for workers, with commitments from all parties that standards have been set and will be maintained. With empty seats seen at the Khalifa Stadium at international football matches, failing to fill a 45,000 to 47,000 capacity venue is another concern. Empty seats were a common sight at last year's World Championships in Moscow, and even more so at the recent Asian Games in Incheon, and this does detract from the spectacle of an event.

By means of comparison, in athletics mad Eugene, where competition would be held in the smaller Hayward Field venue, a full house could be virtually guaranteed. But the popularity of athletics in Qatar cannot be underplayed, and the country's annual international meeting, held annually in one form or another since 1997, and currently the first stop on the lucrative Diamond League circuit, is renowned for strong support and a raucous atmosphere.

The next and final test for Doha, as for Barcelona and Eugene, will come in Monaco on November 18, where all three will present to the IAAF before a decision is made following a report from Sebastian Coe, vice-president of the world governing body who is heading the Evaluation Commission.

The IAAF Evaluation Commission, led by vice-president and former London 2012 chairman Sebastian Coe, touring Doha's facilities ©ITG

But Doha 2019, or indeed any other major event, is just one drop of oil in a vast barrel of Qatari sporting investment. It was the sheer extent of this investment that struck me most during my visit.

On the first day we started by visiting the Qatar Olympic Academy, a new state-of-the-art facility training the next generation of Arab-speaking sports administrators. After a swift stop to witness a series of basketball matches for the Qatari youth as part of a nationwide school sports programme, we headed to the anti-doping laboratory, the first of its kind in the region, it is claimed.

Visiting the laboratory, currently in the final stages of being accredited by the World Anti-Doping Agency, was a somewhat surreal experience. While the walls were covered with Quran quotes and pictures of animals, the rooms contained equipment to test for erythropoietin (EPO) and to measures changes in the body's composition. It is a way to further Qatar's contribution to the sports world.

Next up was my highlight, the Aspetar Hospital, billed as the first specialised orthopaedic and sports medicine hospital in the Gulf region. With experts drawn from all over the world, it contained equipment I did not even know existed, including an array of anti-gravity and underwater treadmills, as well as 25 two-person altitude rooms, enough space to house two football teams.

It is no wonder the facility is being used by an abundance of international talent, ranging from Bayern Munich during their winter break, to the Welsh Rugby team via Algerian and Ivory Coast football teams ahead of the FIFA World Cup earlier this year, not to mention leading athletes, including sprinter Justin Gatlin and Doha 2019 Ambassador, and two-time Olympic shot put champion Valerie Adams.

The Aspetar Hospital is the first specialised orthopaedic and sports medicine hospital in the Gulf region ©Aspetar Hospital

While a lot has been written about the large number of Qatari athletes who have been imported from elsewhere - something only too obvious during the athletics competition at the Asian Games - it was refreshing to see the focus on developing home-grown talent. At the Aspire Academy, every Qatari child between the ages of four and 12 is tested for their sporting potential, with an emphasis on nurturing the best talent rather than adopting a "survival of the fittest" approach.

"We don't have the numbers to adopt the Chinese or American approach, where if some don't make it, others take their place," said the facilities head Chris Earle, former director of sport at Loughborough University in England.

But what they do have is machines like a robot-like football training device which allows players to hone their ball control skills in a controlled environment. "There are only three of these in the world," we are told.

By this point, statements like this are becoming rather familiar and, by the next afternoon, when we travel around the Qatar National Convention Centre, where the IAAF Congress would be held alongside the Championships in 2019, anything else would come as a shock.

Alongside numerous conference rooms, with every place having a plug socket and seemingly perfect wifi - an asset that should never, ever be underestimated - the Centre boasts Damien Hurst originals and its own philharmonic orchestra, not to mention distinctive décor of the giant spider variety.

The IAAF Evaluation Commission pose with Qatari officials during their visit to inspect Doha's 2019 World Championships bid ©ITG

On a general level, the impression I am left with is one of huge efficiency and ambition, fuelled by vast investment and support.

Yes, I still don't feel placed to comment about elements of how the country secured the FIFA World Cup, but I do feel that, whatever people say about temperature and its place in the football calendar, the Qataris will be able to host it and it will be a success. Given their technological prowess, by 2022 they could probably change the temperature of the whole nation if they had to...

I am sure an IAAF World Championships in Doha in 2019 or, dare I say it, a future Olympic Games, would be similarly successful. And given the effort they have put into it, they deserve every bit of success they get.

Nick Butler is a reporter for insidethegames. To follow him on Twitter click here.

David Owen: How a looming funding squeeze threatens to undermine UK Sport's good intentions

Well hallelujah and well done to UK Sport.

By embarking on a public consultation on how it spends its high performance funding over the Olympic quadrennium culminating with the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the elite sports agency has demonstrated that it is, to paraphrase the old Midland Bank advertising slogan, "the listening quango".

The 'No Compromise' doctrine that still animates its funding decisions has proved the most brilliantly successful sports programme I have witnessed.

But, having lifted Britain to an unsustainable third in the medals table at London 2012, it has plainly served its purpose.

Perhaps, after Rio 2016, we can move on to a system which both defines success in a more useful and sophisticated way than simply counting Olympic/Paralympic medals, and which does not leave team sports at a disadvantage when competing for funding with primarily individual sports.

There is a problem though: before you decide how to share out your cake, it is usually advisable to procure it; and, as far as I can see, the Tokyo 2020 cake is very likely to be significantly smaller than its Rio 2016 counterpart.

What is more, the looming cake shortfall is partly UK Sport's fault.

London 2012 was so successful that when it ended, not only had Team GB bagged 185 medals - a truly astonishing 29 of which were Olympic golds - but a tidy balance attributable to UK Sport had accumulated in the so-called National Lottery Distribution Fund.

Team GB won an incredible 185 medals at London 2012, but could the short-termism of UK Sport's aim for Rio cost them hitting these heights in future Games? ©Getty Images

At March 31, 2013, UK Sport's first financial year-end after London 2012, this balance stood at just under £78 million ($125 million/€99 million).

This money could have been used to supplement other funding, from the Exchequer and the National Lottery, over quite a long period.

Unfortunately, it is starting to look like the vast majority may be consumed over just one Olympic cycle, in pursuit of a publicly-stated Rio 2016 target of 66 Olympic medals that might most kindly be described as short-termist.

UK Sport's 2012-13 annual report sets out the position with admirable clarity.

This stated: "In December our board agreed a financial plan for 2013-17, allocating c.£550 million ($880 million/€700 million) over the period, this was made possible by the budgeted release of £46 million ($74 million/€59 million) from our Lottery balance over the 2013-17 period...

"The financial plan for 2013-17 was made possible by the planned release of £46 million ($74 million/€59 million) from the lottery balance, unless a similar balance can be established by late 2015, and assuming all other factors remain constant, then there will be significantly less to invest in the subsequent cycle than there has been towards Rio."

So, with a year to go until "late 2015", how are things looking?

Actually, worse: this is because "all other factors" have not remained constant; namely, Lottery proceeds in the first part of the 2013-2017 cycle have fallen.

They dropped by 14 per cent in UK Sport's 2013-14 financial year, from £88.3 million ($141.2 million/€112.3 million) to £75.7 million ($121 million/€96.3 million).

A funding shortfall could see the funding cut for UK Sports Federations, as was seen with British Basketball at the beginning of this year ©Getty Images

And - guess what? - minutes to a UK Sport board meeting last June suggest that the Lottery balance may ultimately be further drawn down to make up the shortfall.

"Board noted that Lottery income in 2013-14 was lower than the [Department for Culture Media and Sport] projection for the year which have traditionally been a reasonable guide," the minutes state.

"Current estimated balance at the end of the cycle is £24 million ($38 million/€31 million) and Board agreed that any further reduction presents a risk to the Tokyo strategy but an absolute minimum held should be £15 million ($24 million/€19 million)."

Let's assume for a moment that the £78 million ($125 million/€99 million) balance in March 2013 has shrunk to £15 million ($24 million/€19 million) come March 2017.

That would mean that £63 million ($101 million/€80 million) would have been absorbed in the one solitary Rio cycle and that, even if the remaining £15 million ($24 million/€19 million) were applied to Tokyo, a further £48 million ($77 million/€61 million) would need to be found from somewhere for the cake not to shrink.

What are the chances of such sums being forthcoming?

Well, UK Sport's Exchequer funding is set to fall from £240 million ($384 million/€305 million) over the 2009-2013 period to £158 million ($253 million/€201 million) between 2013 and 2017, so to get it from there would require a policy U-turn.

With a general election coming next year, you could not say this was entirely out of the question, but given the pressure on public finances, you would have to think it unlikely.

That leaves the Lottery, which does now have a new boss, Andy Duncan, who is doubtless brimming with new ideas.

Even if National Lottery Funding was to meet the expectations for Rio 2016, it is unlikely to touch the numbers needed for Tokyo 2020 ©Getty Images

It looks though as if the Lottery will do well to keep up with expectations for Rio, much less find an extra £48 million ($77 million/€61 million) for the Tokyo cycle.

UK Sport's expected Lottery receipts for 2013-2017 when last I checked in the summer were £337 million ($539 million/€429 million).

Yet if you multiply what the Lottery actually contributed in 2013-2014 by four, you arrive at a figure of just under £303 million ($485 million/€386 million).

Lottery operator Camelot's latest financial figures, released earlier this month, revealed that returns to good causes in the period from April 1 to September 27 have at least stopped falling.

But they were up only 0.4 per cent from a year earlier.

So while the final figure derives from a complex equation, it would be no surprise if UK Sport's share of the Lottery pot in Year 2 of the Rio cycle were again less than £80 million ($128 million/€102 million).

Yes, you probably still wouldn't altogether rule out the possibility of UK Sport's Lottery receipts coming within striking distance of that £337 million ($539 million/€429 million) figure for the full four years from 2013-2017.

But for them to get up as high as £385 million ($616 million/€490 million) in 2017-2021, or perhaps even higher if Exchequer funding is further slashed, already seems a tall order - unless sports bodies such as UK Sport are awarded a bigger share of the overall Lottery handout.

So, respect to UK Sport for embarking on this new review of whether its investment principles should be modified, but let it not distract from the looming Tokyo cycle funding squeeze and the needless short termism that has contributed to it.

David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 World Cup and London 2012. Owen's Twitter feed can be accessed here.

Mike Rowbottom: Why rowers always make me feel I am not worthy

If I had to make a judgement, I would say the London Marathon has probably been the most beautiful event I have ever covered as a sports writer (certain West Ham United victories exempted, although of course as a member of the Fourth Estate I have always maintained a strictly neutral viewpoint here).

The reason being its almost unique blending of talent - at the front the finest marathon runners in the world, in the middle, respectable club athletes, at the back, people who have, perhaps, never previously regarded themselves as being capable of managing such a feat of endurance.

(I've run it once. On the day I wasn't thrilled with my time. But upon reflection I felt deeply grateful to have been a part of something so magnificent.)

Runners at Tower Bridge during last year's Virgin London Marathon - a glorious event
©Getty Images

I say "almost", because there are a regular series of events which rival the London Marathon for its range of abilities, and these take place on the Thames, following the reverse of the annual Boat Race course - that is, from Mortlake to Putney.

We are talking here of the annual Head of the River races involving Pairs, Fours and Eights. They too are glorious.

This weekend another gathering of scullers and sweep rowers is on the calendar as the Tideway hosts the 60th Head of the River Fours race, sponsored by Fuller's Brewery.

More than 1,600 athletes from across the UK, Europe and further afield will compete in quadruple sculls, coxed and coxless fours.

At the business end of the race there will be talents such as Olympic single sculls bronze medallist Alan Campbell, racing for Tideway Scullers, who won last year and will thus lead off this Saturday (November 1). The men's elite coxed four event includes a Leander crew featuring Olympic champions Pete Reed and Alex Gregory, and a Molesey crew including two of the crew which won world title for Britain in the fours this year, George Nash and Mo Sbihi.

A pressing sub-plot on the day will involve the men's and women's Oxford and Cambridge University crews, who will be cutely deployed in a number of fours ahead of their big day of April 11, where the women will row on the traditional course for the first time.

And at the other end? Well, I guess it will be a case of the usual hyper-organised overachievers making their mark.
.

Racing at the Head of the River Eights in 2002 on the Mortlake to Putney course
©Getty Images

For many years, my interaction with rowing was interviewing athletes such as Steve Redgrave, Matt Pinsent, James Cracknell, Tim Foster and Greg Searle. But for the last six years I have covered the sport at a less rarified level. And discovered it is "oarsome".

Some years ago I decided to do a little feature at a Fours Head and interview a novice crew from Vesta Rowing Club which was starting from the back of the grid, as it were.

This crew's performance was such that they had risen 20 or so places in the rankings on the day. And as I spoke to the four of them - three of whom had been rowing for less than six months - I began to understand one of the basic truths about rowers: they're all a bit scary.

Scary, that is, in as much as they are all disciplined, committed, organised people, willing to work very hard and endure much pain for their goals and ambitions. And that physical excellence - evidenced in bodies that correspond very often to ideals of perfection - is very often a concomitant of professional excellence.

The Vesta four were of a professional calibre to make you feel unworthy. They were bankers, they were completing MPhils, PhDs. By and large, it's what rowers do.

The upside of this is that rowing constantly reminds one of the eternal truth of the ancient Roman axiom: mens sana in corpore sano.

The downside is, as previously mentioned, an inescapable feeling of inferiority among those who are, say, simply charged with reporting the events.

Pete Reed, pictured (right) with his former pairs partner Andy Triggs Hodge, is a double Olympic champion who will be involved in rowing's answer to the London Marathon
©Getty Images

Oh, and did I mention valour?

I am recalling now the members of an Army eight who spoke matter-of-factly about returning for a second or third time to a mysterious place called Eric. Upon investigation, it transpired that the place was not Eric, but Herrick - that is, Operation Herrick, the generic codename for the British Army's operation in Afghanistan.

No other sport has more consistently sent me away with a sense of being unworthy. But so what? No other sport has offered more inspiring examples of application and effort.

A couple of examples.

At the 2012 Head of the River Eights Race, the Cambridge lightweight crew, taking part in the event a week before they were due to compete in their Boat Race at Henley, included Matthew White, who had arrived at the University - to read medicine at Peterhouse - having, in his own phrase, let obesity get the better of him.

Having started at University weighing 107 kilograms, after two years of novice college rowing, this young man from Wakefield weighed 72.5kg, right on the lightweight limit, having lost nearly five-and-a-half stones.

"The training I did for college rowing meant I lost the weight," he added." Rowing has given me a healthy lifestyle, and it has also been a lot of fun."

After last year's Veteran Fours Head I spoke to the Broxbourne D quad crew in the Tideway Scullers bar as they waited for the results.

The Broxbourne four, which included Andy Kelly, a double masters world champion, had been buoyed by recent wins in the National Championships and at Henley as they targeted Walton D4x, category winners for two years running, who had finished 30 seconds clear last time round.

But as he sat with his crew-mates in the bar - drinking tea, it should be said - Quintin McKellar voiced a doubt: "I think that if we had won it we would all be absolutely shagged - and I don't think we are."

Sadly for Broxbourne, McKellar's intuition proved correct. Walton had won again,18min 04.7sec to 18:30.1.

Anna Watkins, pictured in 2012, the year she and Katherine Grainger won Olympic gold, has been a regular entrant to the Head of River races ©Getty Images

Two years earlier, at the Head of River Fours, some of Britain's most vaunted Olympians had taken a relatively rare opportunity to represent their clubs in what is the closest thing rowing has to the London Marathon.

The women's elite heavyweight quad win was won by a Leander crew comprising Olympic silver medallists Debbie Flood and Fran Houghton, double world champion Anna Watkins - who would win Olympic gold in the pair with Katherine Grainger the following year - and Rachel Gamble-Flint.

Olympic champion Peter Reed joined three of the world champion men's four crew - Rick Egington, Matt Langridge and Alex Gregory - plus GB silver medallist cox Phelan Hill to win the elite coxed four category.

Second place overall went to the lightweight quad of former world champions Richard Chambers, Paul Mattick, Olympic champion Mark Hunter and under-23 world champion Keiron Emery.

For Hunter, the Fours Head represented a very satisfying day at the end of what he described as "a really difficult season", albeit that it had ended with another world title in the lightweight double sculls with his fellow 2008 Olympic champion Zac Purchase, who came back when it mattered after missing most of the racing as he recovered from a viral illness.

"We came from nowhere and retained our title," Hunter said. "That shows what a good combination we are. If we can perform next year like we did at the World Championships, the Olympic title is ours to lose. That's the way we are looking at it."

Alas, for Hunter and his compadre, London 2012 was to end in shattering defeat.

Such are the trials of seeking the immortal podium places of this sport. But there is more to it than this.

At last year's British Rowing Masters Championships at Holme Pierrepont in Nottingham, women competitors made up around 40 per cent of the entry.

Among them was Nicki Trewhitt of Durham RC, who won successive eights golds in the Women's Masters D and C events. That brought the 43-year-old resident of Stanley, County Durham's total of masters golds to four after the two she had won in the single and double scull - in company with Caroline Scholl - two years earlier.

Like the majority of her fellow crew members, Nicki had come to rowing relatively late at the age of 38.

"I was getting older and I felt like I needed to keep myself fit," she explained. "I had an office job at the time and I was finding it very stressful. I really wanted to find something that was going to knock that stress out of me. I tried trampolining, and aerobics, but they didn't work.

"But I had gone on a cruise with my dad, and there was something about the water and being on a ship that I found really relaxing, so I made enquires at Durham Rowing Club."

Initially coached in sweep oar rowing, Nicki took up sculling in 2010-11, having been advised to make the switch after undergoing two serious operations in the space of a year to deal with complications involving scar tissue which had formed as a result of an incident in 1994 when she was attacked with a knife and stabbed in the stomach.

"They were big operations because they found I was suffering from gangrene. I started sculling afterwards as it would strengthen both sides up evenly," she said.

"When I was at school rowing would have been the last thing I would have chosen - too much like hard work! But I think now: 'Why didn't I get introduced to this earlier?' It's absolutely the best thing I have ever done. It's great. I've got another life now."

And there you have it - a sport which energises a huge range of different talents. The spectators jammed on Hammersmith Bridge this weekend will have plenty to take in.

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. His latest book Foul Play – the Dark Arts of Cheating in Sport (Bloomsbury £8.99) is available at the insidethegames.biz shop. To follow him on Twitter click here.

Gregor Nicholson: New four-year ban for drug "cheats" will also net athletes who fail to check medications and supplements. Is the message clear?

A wide welcome has been given to the increased ban for serious first-time doping offences from two years to four years which will become effective on January 1, 2015, under the revised World Anti-Doping Code.

As the new Code states, this tougher ban will apply in cases where an anti-doping rule violation (ADRV) is deemed to be intentional and "is meant to identify those athletes who cheat".

However, the net which will tighten on those who clearly set out to dope will also ensnare athletes who ignore the risk of doping, a threat which has not been clearly publicised either by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) or UK Anti-Doping (UKAD) in either of their recently published athlete guides to the new Code.

Under the current 2009 Code, which expires on December 31, an athlete who tests positive has a degree of wriggle room to argue for a reduced sanction by three avenues *(see footnote); by establishing that he bears no fault or negligence, no significant fault or negligence, or that the prohibited substance he ingested was not intended to enhance his sport performance.

This third avenue for a reduced sanction under the 2009 Code was restricted to certain substances classed by WADA as Specified Substances and has been the basis for anti-doping judicial bodies, including the Swiss based Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), to reduce sanctions in many cases to a few months or as little as a reprimand. However, this specific avenue no longer exists under the 2015 Code with WADA attempting to clarify what has been a hotly contested issue.

Those familiar with doping adjudications will be aware of the two approaches to the issue which has caused considerable consternation in the anti-doping world in recent years, has exercised many top legal minds around the globe and been a persistent thorn in one of WADA's core principles, that of universal harmonisation.

Conflicting approaches were taken by different CAS panels in what is known as the Oliveira/Foggo debate by reference to two doping cases. On the one hand it was deemed that the "intent to enhance sports performance" test applied to the athlete's specific use of the actual prohibited substance (as in the CAS decision in the Oliveira case) and on the other hand that the test applied to whether the athlete's use of the product which was shown to contain the prohibited substance was intended to enhance his sport performance (as in the CAS decision in Foggo).

The case of Australian rugby league player Kurt Foggo, banned for two years after testing positive for the stimulant methylhexaneamine before the Court of Arbitration reduced it to six months, was a landmark ruling ©Getty Images

So contentious has been the issue that the wording has been removed altogether from the 2015 Code. However, intent is still an important factor, maybe even more so, and in the new Code it now relates to whether or not the commission of the anti-doping rule violation was intentional. So what difference will this make?

Whether or not an anti-doping rule violation for the presence, use, attempted use, or possession of a prohibited substance was intentional will be the first test to be applied in considering the sanction for any such doping case after January 1, 2015. The burden to establish this shifts between the athlete and the anti-doping organisation depending on the classification of the prohibited substance. For Specified Substances, the burden is on the anti-doping organisation to establish to the comfortable satisfaction of the judicial body hearing the case that the violation was intentional. For non-Specified Substances (e.g. an anabolic steroid) the burden is on the athlete to establish on the balance of probabilities that the violation was not intentional.

A measure of how important it is to WADA that a repeat of the Oliveira/Foggo debate is avoided and that the term "intentional" is clearly understood is evidenced by the incorporation of their definition within the actual text of the revised Code (Article 10.2.3). Usually, terms which require a definition are listed in the now 13-page appendix of definitions or an explanatory commentary is added as a footnote to the relevant Code article.

Rightly so, WADA must guard against the Code opening the door for any form of leniency for athletes to get away with doping and to receive a reduced sanction by means of deliberate ignorance or by passing the buck entirely to their support personnel and claiming personal innocence. The upshot of WADA's definition of "intentional" however, is that it will also capture those who just don't bother to check the ingredients of whatever medication or supplement they are taking. To paraphrase the new Code, if an athlete "manifestly disregards the risk that their conduct might constitute or result in an anti-doping rule violation", they will be subject to the new tough sanction of four years if they return a positive test. They will be treated just as a deliberate cheat would be.

The new World Anti-Doping Code is due to come into force on January 1, 2015 ©WADA

The 2015 Code does provide increased scope for reductions in sanction for offences involving Specified Substances, right down to a reprimand if the athlete can establish that he bears no significant fault or negligence. There is also similar scope for all prohibited substances under the entirely new provision for "contaminated products". However these avenues will only apply in cases where the first test of the case has established that the anti-doping rule violation was not intentional as specifically defined in the Code. You can't intentionally commit an anti-doping rule violation and then seek to claim no significant fault.

An examination of the multitude of doping cases previously dealt with under the contentious and soon to be obsolete provision of "no intent to enhance sports performance" indicates that in some cases the athlete was found to have a high degree of fault in ingesting a prohibited substance but having demonstrated no intent to enhance sports performance, was given a reduced sanction sometimes down from four years to a few months.

Where the lines are drawn by anti-doping judicial bodies between "manifestly disregarding risk", "significant fault" and "no significant fault" has the potential to become another area of contention which exercises legal minds on both sides of the doping fence and harms WADA's goal of harmonisation. The definition of "no significant fault" has not changed under the revised Code so it must be assumed that the threshold test applied by anti-doping judicial bodies in determining what constitutes significant fault also remains unchanged. CAS jurisprudence will be important in this regard.

In addition, what constitutes a contaminated product has been tightened up and clearly defined in the Code. All told therefore, the reduced sanctions which previously were applied legitimately by anti-doping judicial bodies in many medication and supplement cases may no longer be possible.

The message to athletes needs to be strong and clear. Don't expect any leniency if you test positive after taking a medication or supplement without checking whether or not it contains a prohibited substance. From January 1 the doping cheat's four-year ban will apply.

*Footnote: Under the 2009 Code if an athlete can successfully argue that he bears no fault or negligence and could not reasonably have known or suspected, even with the utmost caution, that he had used or been administered any prohibited substance, the applicable sanction can be eliminated entirely. Or if he can establish that his fault or negligence was not significant, then the applicable sanction can be reduced by up to one half.

The third means by which the sanction can be reduced under the 2009 Code is restricted to certain substances classed by WADA as Specified Substances. Examples of Specified Substances are the stimulants methylhexaneamine (MHA) which has been the cause of many recent positives attributed to nutritional supplements, and ephedrine which can be found in some medications and herbal remedies. Not classed as Specified Substances, and therefore not applicable for a reduced sanction on this basis, are things like anabolic steroids, growth hormone, EPO, blood doping, gene doping and some of the more potent stimulants such as cocaine and amphetamine. Currently, if an athlete can establish how a Specified Substance entered his body and that his ingestion of the substance was not intended to enhance his performance then based on the athlete's degree of fault the otherwise applicable sanction of a two-year ban can be reduced, and often has been by doping judicial bodies including CAS, to a few months or as little as a reprimand.

Gregor Nicholson spent 22 years in sports administration with Scottish Athletics and the Scottish Rugby Union prior to establishing his own sports management company MACS in Sport Ltd. He is an independent member of the International Rugby Board (IRB)'s Anti-Doping Advisory Committee and has been a regular member of IRB judicial committees and review panels for international doping cases.

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