It was significant that the five-ringed Olympic flag was hoisted alongside the Stars and Stripes at Muhammad Ali's magnificent memorial service in his home town of Louisville, Kentucky, on Friday. The perfect requiem for a heavyweight.

There are few hard and fast Dos and Don’ts for sportswriters, but one of those you can rely on goes something like this: when tempted to wax philosophical about your specialist subject, the essays of George Orwell are generally best avoided.

Last week’s International Skating Union (ISU) Congress was held close to Mlini, a picturesque fishing village on the Dalmatian coast which has somehow managed to foster a thriving tourist industry without losing its authentic and unspoiled vibe.

It gives me great pleasure to announce my official start as the new CEO of Lausanne 2020, which began this past March 1, 2016.

As we settled into the press tribune ahead of the Baku 2015 European Games Opening Ceremony at the plush Olympic Stadium, a volunteer began distributing a piece of paper which revealed the name of the headline act; American pop star Lady Gaga.

In many respects the way that sport earns money hasn’t changed much for more than half a century. 

In the maelstrom of lies that swirls around the issue of doping in sport, one occasionally glimpses truth. Even if it confirms wrongdoing, just a glimpse of truth can be strangely reassuring - a reminder that language may, after all, be used for communication rather than obfuscation.

Never underestimate the capacity of an organisation to say one thing and do another.

What, I wonder, would the sadly departed Muhammad Ali have had to say about the very idea of professional boxers mixing it in the Olympic ring with those, who, despite the attempts of the International Boxing Association (AIBA) to persuade us otherwise, are still essentially amateurs.

“We had three main priorities here,” said International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach to open his press conference following last week’s meeting of the Executive Board in Lausanne. “Preparations for Rio, preparations for Rio and preparations for Rio.”

Somewhere in California, FIFA President Gianni Infantino breathed a heavy sigh of relief as the explosive news that former head of the corruption-plagued organisation Sepp Blatter and two other top officials siphoned $80 million (£55 million/€71 million) in bonuses and pay rises hit the headlines.

Muhammad Ali was not someone to argue with, in the ring or out, so when he told the world he was "The Greatest", we believed him, because he surely was. Perhaps not the greatest boxer - Ali himself always acknowledged that Sugar Ray Robinson held that title - but certainly the greatest world heavyweight champion, and, as every opinion poll has ever indicated, the greatest sports figure in history.

Sixty years ago, the city of Melbourne was making ready for the Olympics. It was the first time they had been staged in the Southern Hemisphere, but this sporting gathering did not include equestrian events.

Speaking to the people in charge of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games bid this week, I was put in mind of British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s comments in launching the Labour Party manifesto as he set out to secure a second term of office following the landslide victory of 1997.