Simone Manuel's description of the racism she endured in her early years as a club swimmer was immensely sad to hear.

Former footballer Landon Donovan once enjoyed a brief stint in the Premier League, playing for Everton on short loan spells in both 2010 and 2012.

I wonder how Sepp Blatter would have reacted if he had been told in 2010 that a decade on from him relenting on his opposition to goal-line technology that a match would be won after the final whistle.

Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko was sworn in for another term in a low key ceremony last week as reports said that there were widespread arrests in the capital Minsk.

What a year 2020 is turning out to be. At the event level, COVID-19 has significantly impacted the ability to hold or host sporting events.

I have been waiting for this year's PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Sports Survey for some time.

"I don't know what they'll do to the enemy, but by God they frighten me!"

This coming Sunday (October 4), the London Marathon will take place in an ingenious, coronavirus-conscious format that would have been entirely novel to the men who co-founded this annual sporting celebration in 1981, John Disley and Chris Brasher; both sadly no longer with us.

It’s the end of my first year at UK Sport and what a year it’s been! At this point I expected that we would be celebrating the successes of our athletes at the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games. I certainly didn’t plan for, or predict, the year that we’ve had. 

Reading through the simplification measures proposed for Tokyo 2020 shows how complex the task of organising the Olympic and Paralympic Games really is.

For over a century, the five rings have been a symbol of the unity of the Olympic world. Only this week, in a message for International Peace Day, International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach claimed "The Olympic Games today are the only event in our world which manages to really bring the entire world together.

At the beginning of 2020 we all talked about "experiences" and "you are what you experience" and we were excited about the many sports events as sports industry conferences and Congresses that we planned to attend during this busy year.

I have been doing my bit for the rebirth of international sport these past few days.

Dusk was settling over the desert and a vast car park behind Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, where a stadium had been built to house the world-title fight between Muhammad Ali and Larry Holmes, exactly 40 years ago next month, when veteran ring announcer Chuck Hull called for quiet before the bout began. "Pray silence" he requested, "while Gladys Knight, of Gladys Knight and the Pips, sings our glorious national anthem."