For two sets totalling almost two-and-a-half hours, Andy Murray matched the great Serb Novak Djokovic in yesterday's Australian Open men's singles tennis final. Given how brilliantly the world number one was playing throughout, that was no mean feat.

As ever, Djokovic was sliding and scampering and scurrying around the baseline, returning balls he simply had no right to over and over again before launching a stupendous winner from some ridiculous angle. But Murray was doing exactly the same, taking the faintest whiff of every chance and refusing to be downhearted whenever an opportunity slipped away.

They were two of the very best sets of tennis I have ever seen, and, if anything, Djokovic appeared the more vulnerable of the two, clutching first his hand and then his ankle with injuries seemingly apparent only after he lost a point, and showing rare tactical naivety by charging to the net behind several timid approach shots.

With two sets on the board, I got up to have breakfast, confident I would be back in time for the business end of another spellbinding set.

Alas, by the time I returned, Djokovic had sealed the crucial break and momentum had swung once and for all. Murray, like a marathon runner who had kept up with his opponent for so long, finally faced one surge too many, and hit the wall of mental and physical exhaustion. The two lingering weaknesses in his game - his second serve and his mental fragility - were suddenly exposed and Djokovic was in no mood to take pity.

Over four sets at the Australian Open Novak Djokovic (left) was too strong for Andy Murray ©Getty Images





The third and fourth sets passed in a blaze of Djokovic winners and Murray errors and the match was wrapped up little more than an hour after the end of the second set. An eighth Grand Slam title for Djokovic, and a fifth Australian Open triumph, in comparison with six losses in eight Grand Slam finals for Murray, with four of them coming in the early-year heat of Melbourne.

If he was not from the same era as Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, Djokovic would surely already be considered among the best players of all time. His movement, agility, returning, fitness, mental strength, resilience and tactical nous is among the best in the game's history, and his lack of obvious weakness, particularly over five sets, is startling.

For Murray - lest we forget, a two time Grand Slam winner and reigning Olympic singles champion himself - it was another reminder that he remains a few steps behind the very best, at their best. While his timid second serve is a weakness which rarely proves fatal, his mental lapses are something he cannot afford. Indeed, his racquet-smashing histrionics in the third set yesterday were reminiscent of an earlier and less successful period of his career,

But, despite the disappointment, the match got me thinking about how much there is to admire in both men, just as there seems to be with Nadal and Federer and most of the other top players. As both finalists showed in their post-match comments, they are rivals on the court but respectful and, if not close friends then at least amenable, off it. There was no trash talking beforehand and no gloating afterwards, but mutual respect as they swapped compliments on the birth of Djokovic's first son and Murray's engagement to long-term girlfriend Kim Sears.

And so, with "due time" plainly elapsed, Sergey Bubka on Wednesday put an end to the waiting and declared his candidacy to succeed Lamine Diack as President of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF).

His announcement brings the mouth-watering prospect of two out-and-out heavyweights of the sport - Bubka and Britain's Sebastian Coe - slugging it out in the run-up to the IAAF Congress in August in Beijing for the right to lead athletics into a new era.

The thing is, the two rivals are not just former athletics superstars; they have taken time to absorb the many and varied arts of effective administration.

For Coe, the prime testing ground was, of course, London 2012, and he graduated summa cum laude.

Bubka, meanwhile, has been steadily building a reputation in the Olympic Movement as a committed and energetic advocate of sport's power to make the world a better place.

If he has so far been denied a moment of such transcendent triumph as Coe's appearance at the 2012 Olympic Closing Ceremony, his work on the IOC Athletes' Commission and as chair of both the Evaluation and Coordination Commissions for the inaugural Youth Olympic Games in Singapore in 2010 should not be underestimated.

All things considered, the six-month-plus campaign represents a golden opportunity for athletics to shrug off recent negative publicity and bask in the glow of what should be a genuinely stimulating contest between the two individuals who are probably best equipped for the job of taking this bedrock Olympic sport boldly and vigorously into what remains of the 21st century.

What a contrast with another sporting election currently unfolding before our astonished gaze.

Athletics legends Seb Coe (left) and Sergey Bubka (right) are going head to head to replace Lamine Diack (centre) as IAAF President ©AFP/Getty Images



In this one, a wider assortment of characters have declared their intention to run.

But, unlike the IAAF, where an ageing President, in place since 1999, has accepted that it is time to make way for new blood, at FIFA, the incumbent, first elected in 1998, fights on, notwithstanding the dreadfully tarnished image of the body he heads in certain parts of the world.

What is more, such is FIFA President Sepp Blatter's enduring grasp on the levers of power that hardly anyone expects a remotely close contest, in spite of the growing list of alternatives.

In the list of prices Tweeted this week by Graham Sharpe, bookmaker William Hill's media relations director, Blatter, 79 in March, was white-hot favourite at an almost unbackable 1/16.

If there is an opposition strategy, it seems to be to weaken the incumbent over time so as to leave him in no doubt that he should not even think about presenting himself yet again in 2019.

So, full marks to athletics for the way the succession is being managed, and C-minus (at best) to football.

And yet: let's pause for a moment to reflect on the two sports' respective positions in the world.

One is almost certainly the biggest such pursuit the planet has ever known, both in terms of the income it generates and its grip on popular imagination.

Sepp Blatter (left) replaced Joao Havelange (right) as FIFA President in 1998 and is odds on favourite to be re-elected ©Bongarts/Getty Images



The other, 26 years on from Seoul, is still mired in doping allegations and afflicted by public scepticism.

One can stop the world for a minute, once every four years, when the Olympic men's 100 metres final is on; the other does so for weeks on end when its flagship tournament, also a quadrennial affair, is in full swing.

But it also, I am confident, animates more water cooler conversations, day in day out, than any other sport and most other topics.

Indeed, with the advent of digital media, even its best-known national club game - the so-called clásico between Barcelona and Real Madrid - shows signs of going global.

Or look at the London 2012 Olympic Stadium, theatre for the exploits of local heroes such as Jess Ennis, Mo Farah and Greg Rutherford, but now being made fit for Premier League football, at great expense, to give it a shot at a viable future.

Look, for that matter, at the sports pages of my daily newspaper, just over 50 per cent of whose acreage today, Thursday, is devoted to a single sport: football.

This newspaper finds room for a solid 500 or so words, maybe more, on Luis Figo, a big-name candidate in the FIFA election who, for all that, stands a vanishingly small chance of winning.

As for Bubka confirming his challenge: 113 words of wire copy – and that includes the headline.

So, conclusion - in spite of its many problems football has got the most important bit right: the product.

Yes, there are still lacunae; yes, it remains hard, even after last year's World Cup, to imagine soccer amounting to more than the third- or fourth-biggest team sport in the United States, the world's economic powerhouse.

Athletics requires more globabl stars like Usain Bolt and street racing could become more common ©AFP/Getty Images



But there are fewer and fewer places where a winning national football team won't get a substantial proportion of the country's population glued to their TV sets when they play.

The sport's three or four biggest stars, meanwhile, are global icons on a par with anything Hollywood can offer.

In short, when you consider what football has achieved in spite of the sport's well-publicised governance issues, you realise that athletics needs to change- and preferably before the retirement of its one global megastar, Usain Bolt - or risk a future outside the cultural mainstream, except for that minute every four years when the earth's fastest human being is crowned.

Incidentally, one other area where FIFA scores over the IAAF, and this may surprise you, is financial transparency.

You can actually get a reasonable picture of FIFA's finances from its annual accounts, especially if you look at all four sets published over a World Cup cycle in conjunction with one another.

I was stunned to be told this week that the IAAF has not published its audited accounts beyond its national members since moving from London to Monte Carlo in 1984, three decades ago.

Athletics - and many other sports - could then, it is reasonable to suppose, draw valuable lessons from the global success story that is football.

But some of these lessons in how to expand your public, and how to keep them enthralled, seem at first glance rather surprising.

For one thing, football is remarkably low scoring - indeed, in a small percentage of matches, nobody scores.

This means though that in the majority of games, the outcome is in doubt almost to the end; it also means that anyone can beat anyone else on a given day, even if quality will tell over time.

At 90 minutes plus stoppage time, football matches are also rather long, albeit not by the standard of other professional team sports such as baseball, cricket (in traditional format) or American football (if you count all the intervals when the game is on hold for one reason or another).

Given that one of the most noteworthy sports phenomena of my lifetime has been the spread of mass participation marathons and half-marathons, you wouldn't think that athletics would need lessons in how short is not always best.

And maybe it doesn't; I think it is fair to say though that football's demonstrable ability to keep thousands of people regularly enthralled in events that last about as long as a regulation feature film runs somewhat counter to what appears to be the preferred approach to perking up flagging sports within the Olympic Movement.

While it is not a wholly positive development, one thing that football has done better than any other sport is to transform itself into soap opera.

Hence all those football-themed water cooler conversations: 'What happens next?' is a hugely compelling question when people care about the protagonists.

The Coe vs Ovett rivalry was one of the big draws of athletics for many fans ©Getty Images



It sustains interest, keeping society talking about you in the intervals between periodic doses of sporting action.

If people care about the competitors, they will sit just as raptly through a 10,000m race, or even I daresay a 50km walk, as a once-around-the-track 400m.

One of the most pernicious consequences once a sport develops a reputation, rightly or wrongly, for being drug-addled is that people, unless motivated by blind patriotism, cease to care.

It will be one of the most important tasks of athletics's new top man to rekindle somewhere the sort of passions that animated Coe's track rivalry with Steve Ovett back in the day.

In Britain, and I'm pretty sure well beyond, we were all rooting for one or the other as we went about our everyday business.

The inimitable Bolt has performed wonders to keep his sport on the map since his outrageous accomplishments in Beijing in 2008; he might have done even more had there been a convincing rival to play Ovett to his Coe.

Athletics, more than sports such as football and cycling, is also a prisoner of the stopwatch and the measuring tape.

A big ingredient in the excitement it promised while I was growing up was the possibility of a new world record.

While Bolt, David Rudisha of Kenya and, more recently, the French pole vaulter Renaud Lavillenie have demonstrated that excitement can most certainly still be generated via this route, and while I have not been keeping tally, I have the sense that world records have become rather too scarce in recent times.

Though when they do occur, their rarity makes them even more special, it might be a sensible juncture to look at other ways of injecting a bit of what footballer Thierry Henry would doubtless term va va voom into the sport.

An increased role for street racing using portable tracks laid temporarily in scenic city centres might be one way of achieving this.

With times hard to compare from venue to venue, it might help to throw the spotlight back onto the athletes themselves and their mano a mano racing amid well-known landmarks.

Hey, if the concept took off, you might even eventually spare Olympic organisers the headache of what to do with an 80,000-seat athletics stadium you need for about a month and a subsequent world championship if you are lucky.

No, not even I could see that happening within the time-span of a Coe or Bubka Presidency.

But it gives a flavour of the sort of fresh thinking that this ancient sport could use.

Qatar, hosts of the World Handball Championships which is moving towards a conclusion this weekend, are making history.

Handball history, that is, having reached the semi-finals which take place tomorrow by beating a German side which had reached the last eight with a 100 per cent record.

There was much genuine joy among the 15,000 who witnessed the latest triumph in the purpose-built Lusail Arena a little way up the coast from Doha.

It may have been that the noise was swelled by the celebrations of the 60 voluble, musical Spanish handball followers who were signed up by the Qatari organisers for the duration of the tournament on an all expenses-paid mission to cheer on the home team at max volume.

They apparently did the business even when Qatar were playing against their own nation. The way things are going, if Qatar overcome Poland and the defending champions can overcome Olympic champions France, they could be doing the same thing all over again in the final.

Qatar's band of mostly naturalised players celebrate their historic quarter-final win over Germany at the World Handball Championships in Lusail ©Getty Images

Qatar's coach, meanwhile, is the man who led Spain to that World Championship win two years ago, Valero Rivera, whose son, of the same name, is playing for Spain.

Looking down Qatar's World Championship roster of 16 players, ten of them were born in other countries and are competing as naturalised Qataris, mostly playing for Qatari clubs.

Speaking at the Opening Ceremony of the European Youth Olympic Festival (EYOF) on Sunday (January 25), Peter Mennel, the Austrian Olympic Committee's (ÖOC) secretary general, proudly stated that the border between co-hosting nations Austria and Liechtenstein had "practically disappeared" since winning the bid process for the event at the 39th General Assembly of the European Olympic Committees in Belgrade more than four years ago.

"Most of you might not even be able to tell which country you are in and this is actually what we hoped for," added Mennel, head of the EYOF Executive Board, as he addressed the 5,000 spectators at the Montafon Nordic in Tschagguns.

Having spent close to four days here at the first-ever Olympic event to be co-hosted by two countries, I have to agree with him.

As the chief executive of the EYOF 2015, Philipp Groborsch, told my insidethegames colleague Mike Rowbottom just a few days ago, the unique border agreement between the two nations, which annuls the need for controls on EYOF accredited personnel, means they will "grow together into one" for the five-day duration of the Games.

The sense of unity has been strong wherever I've been, and no more so than in Schruns during the two medal ceremonies which have taken place thus far.

It has taken the FA Cup to rekindle the dying embers of my lost love affair with football. For the moment, anyway.

Like my insidethegames colleague Nick Butler, I was captivated by the ridiculously sublime weekend which saw the mighty not only fall but in the case of Premiership giants Chelsea and Manchester City being rumbled, tumbled and humbled at home by distinctly lesser mortals.

However, I doubt the restorative effect so desperately necessary for the game as a whole will be any more than temporary.

But let's be grateful for small mercies.

The world's oldest knock-out competition, now in its 144th year, has of late been derided as archaic, anachronistic and an irrelevance for the sport's elite now that the great gods of the Premier League and the Champions League dominate every kick.

Joyously the happenings of last Saturday in particular reminded us that football can be an unpredictable delight and not just an unapologetically ugly cash-cow.

Only one of the top six Premier League clubs were left with a guaranteed place in the next round, the managers of Tottenham Hotspur and Southampton dolefully following the shamefaced Jose Mourinho and Manuel Pellegrini down their own home tunnels after Manchester United had left their Cambridge entrance exam paper blank.

So it was indeed a crazy cup weekend before Arsenal and West Ham United, followed on Monday by Stoke City, restored some semblance of sanity - and Premier League pride - among the league's senior citizens.

But for a few hours the hideously pockmarked game had become a thing of beauty again, albeit I fear only fleetingly.

Bradford City's shock win against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge on Saturday was one of the highlights on a fantastic weekend of FA Cup action ©Getty Images

If you, like me, watch sport to be entertained and to enjoy some respite from the complexity and controversy of normal life, it's fair to say that 2015 has been something of a disappointment so far, because just as many negative headlines have been generated in sport as everywhere else.

Near the top of the pile is the ever-flowing avalanche of criticism surrounding FIFA, following the latest hardening of the opposition movement at last week's Summit in Brussels.

I have been trying to second guess what sports Tokyo 2020 is most likely to move under its revised Olympic venue plan.

This may become clearer next month, possibly as soon as the next International Olympic Committee (IOC) Project Review meeting expected on February 4 and 5.

But for now much uncertainty persists, with suggestions surfacing last month that as many as 14 sports might be affected.

What is driving this in part is the Brave New IOC World, ushered in by Agenda 2020, in which compactness is no longer such a cardinal virtue for Games planners and sustainability/cost containment much more of one.

John Coates, chairman of the IOC's Tokyo 2020 Coordination Commission, made this pretty plain in November, telling Reuters: "[The IOC] has come out and specifically said that we should make the maximum use of existing facilities.

"That, so far as I am concerned, overrides the eight kilometre philosophy which we had as part of the bid."

IOC Coordination Commission chair John Coates has encouraged Tokyo 2020 organisers to take advantage of existing facilities ©AFP/Getty Images



Tokyo 2020, for its part, last month acknowledged it had been reviewing the original venue plan since June, telling me the review was "being conducted from the perspectives of legacy, the impact of the Games on Tokyo residents and venue construction and maintenance costs".

We already know, for example, that a smaller design for the National Stadium that will be the Games' centrepiece has been unveiled.

This should restrict the cost of this big-ticket item to far closer to the $1.5 billion (£1 billion/€1.3 billion) estimated in the original bid book, but I don't see why it would make any difference to the sports and ceremonies it is planned to stage there.

We also know, as I reported at length last month, that the rowing and flat-water canoeing venue is up in the air.

It has been suggested to me that as many as eight alternatives may now have been assessed without a satisfactory and cost-effective solution emerging.

As yet, one still cannot state categorically that the originally envisaged Sea Forest Waterway will not be built; but this would probably require the city to agree to foot a potentially quite hefty bill for non-event-related preparation work.

If the waterway proposal is dropped, would it have a knock-on effect for the temporary equestrian cross-country and mountain bike courses planned for the land to either side of the channel?

The rowing and flatwater canoeing venue is one facility that is still up in the air
©Getty Images



When I put this question to the International Cycling Union (UCI) this month, they told me that a staff member was travelling to Tokyo to discuss venue plans – "and the different options being offered to us".

The International Equestrian Federation has told me that the eventing cross country for the 2020 Games "will be held in Tokyo".

This is no great surprise, since it would clearly not be practical to move the cross country too far away from the other three-day event elements, which have been earmarked for the Dream Island Stadium.

I would be far from astonished though to see switches for both horse riders and mountain bikers when the revised masterplan is revealed.

It is possible too that the more relaxed attitude to the compactness of the Games may open up fresh options for other cycle disciplines, with both the BMX course and the velodrome conceived as temporary venues costing a combined $74 million under the original blueprint.

Also close to the Sea Forest zone, on the other side of Tokyo Gate Bridge, is a proposed permanent sailing facility, the Wakasu Olympic Marina, that was costed at $105 million (£68 million/€86 million) in the original bid book.

If Sea Forest is dropped from Tokyo 2020's plans, I would be far from surprised to see this bite the dust too, simply on the assumption that there must be pre-existing sailing venues in the Tokyo region that could be pressed into service for the Olympics and Paralympics at lower cost.

Still with water sports, I gather that a move is in prospect for the proposed Kasai canoe slalom course, costed at $36 million (£24 million/€32 million) including overlay.

Since I understand that this is merely to a different position in the same parkland area, however, consequences for competitors (and overall costs) would appear to be limited.

The Saitama Super Arena, one hour outside Tokyo, is one pre-existing venue which could be used ©Wikipedia



Perhaps the biggest saving against price estimates contained in the bid book will come if, as expected, basketball and badminton are moved to pre-existing venues.

This would mean that Youth Plaza Arenas A and B would not need to be constructed at a cost, in the Bid Book, of more than $400 million (£267 million/€357 million).

The 37,000-seat Saitama Super Arena, one hour north of Tokyo, now looks red hot favourite to host men's basketball.

Badminton, with its particularly high ceiling requirement, may be more of a challenge to place, but one imagines, again, that suitable halls within reach of central Tokyo must exist, even if temporary seating for additional spectators needs to be provided.

It has, meanwhile, occurred to me to wonder - given that Tokyo 2020 is also coming under pressure to add new sports and disciplines to the Games programme - whether organisers might be more inclined to find space for 3x3 basketball, with its clear youth and urban appeal, as a consequence of the flexibility that the sport appears to be showing with regard to the likely switch of its main venue.

We should also know more about how Tokyo 2020 will go about choosing any additional sports in two weeks' time: the recently-constituted Additional Event Programme Panel is expected to agree the process at the February IOC Project Review meeting.

As for other adjustments, I am hearing word of a proposed reconfiguration of the International Broadcasting Centre (IBC)/Main Press Centre (MPC), along with the suggestion that this may have a knock-on effect for sports slated initially to be accommodated at the Tokyo Big Sight halls nearby.

That is to say wrestling, taekwondo and fencing.

The competition schedule set out in the bid book confines taekwondo to four days in the latter stages of the Games, making it feasible for the sport to share a venue with other indoor disciplines.

That all adds up to 10 sports that seem to face a moderate to high chance of being moved under the new masterplan.

I am not convinced that the final tally will be as high as 14, but if it is, who else might be affected?

Well, I have received various indications along the way that little is thought likely to change with respect to archery, modern pentathlon, aquatics and judo.

And when our eyes fastened on volleyball, on the basis that the planned Ariake Arena carried a $200 million (£133 million/€178 million) price-tag in the bid book, the International Volleyball Federation (FIVB) told us it understood that "no changes have been made to our sports venues".

The National Stadium is being re-built with a slightly downscaled design, despite the continuation of an opposition movement ©Getty Images



Hockey, located in the planned Seaside Park Hockey Stadium, priced at $52 million including overlay, might be one possibility; so, conceivably, might gymnastics, placed in the bid book in a $100 million (£66 million/€87 million) temporary facility not far from the proposed velodrome and BMX course.

I should emphasise, though, that I have no remotely hard information one way or the other (not yet) on either of these.

Handball, table tennis, weightlifting and boxing are all earmarked for existing venues, are all relatively low cost and, hence, I would think are all unlikely to be moved.

The football proposals seem to me to make good use of the country's 2002 World Cup legacy, while Ariake Tennis Park - though $67 million (£60 million/€45 million) of works is said to be required - hosts the Japan Open Tennis Championships and is hence, perhaps, the obvious Tokyo 2020 venue.

That, then, is my best stab for now at this new Olympic pursuit of venue hopping; we should all be rather better informed by this time next month.

This week saw the Brussels Summit on FIFA's future take place in the European Parliament and I'm as proud as I could possibly be that I, on behalf of SKINS, was involved.

As SKINS chairman, I consider myself privileged to have played a part in a series of sporting causes in my time, but as I write today, I reckon this is the biggest yet.

FIFA is the global governing body of the world's most popular team sport, but it is a discredited organisation that the world recognises is in need of root and branch change. At the European Parliament, we debated that change and committed global support for the organisation that SKINS and I are supporting, New FIFA Now.

I'm proud of the waves that we made with Change Cycling Now when we pulled together an influential group of legendary riders and global influencers to join a movement and enforce change to the Presidency of the International Cycling Union (UCI).

It was the first time in 40 years that a sitting President of an International Federation lost his job, attempting to be re-elected and Pat McQuaid did so because he was presiding - very poorly - over an administration that was short-changing the fans.

With Choose The Right Track in 2013, we joined forces with Canadian athlete Ben Johnson to further the cause of anti-doping in worldwide sport. A month after we completed a global tour with this notorious but reformed drugs cheat, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced an additional $20 million (£13 million/€18 million) of funding into anti-doping and the fight against match fixing and corruption. I'm not naive enough to think it was all because of us, but I believe we played a significant part in the debate.

SKINS has previously helped Brian Cookson (right) successfully bid to replace Pat McQuaid (left) as President of the International Cycling Union ©Getty Images



And so to now.

FIFA's untrustworthy leadership has resulted in allegations of corruption and constant scrutiny and ridicule of its alleged "commitment" to transparency. FIFA remains in denial and the world has had enough. For us, as a company that repeatedly enforces the values of the true spirit of competition, it means that New FIFA Now is a cause we passionately believe in and support because FIFA has to change.

And why wouldn't a company with our background promote and attend an event such as this in Brussels and stand shoulder to shoulder with figures who know, far better than I do, what FIFA is REALLY like?

Shortly after breaking the record for women's Alpine skiing World Cup victories in Cortina d'Ampezzo on Monday (January 19) with a 63rd career race win, Lindsey Vonn spoke of the pressure which had lifted off her shoulders, having tied the record in the previous day's downhill.

"I feel a lot lighter," Vonn admitted. Her boyfriend Tiger Woods, meanwhile, was also feeling lighter - by one tooth.

His preternaturally pristine dentistry developed a sudden gap when he was knocked out by a swinging camera in the crush at the finish line, having turned up incognito - ish - for an intended surprise visit.

The United States' golfing legend - albeit ranked 43rd in the world at the time of writing - had watched the record-equalling effort on the internet from Florida before making a flying visit to see if Vonn could follow on. He turned up in the Italian Alps with a skull mask covering most of his face - although the surprise element fell a bit flat.

"I knew it was him immediately," Vonn said. "He loves that stupid mask."

As for the tooth - well, they say love hurts.

Tiger Woods supports his girlfriend Lindsey Vonn during her competition at Val d'Isere in December 2013 ©Getty Images

Shoot me down in flames if you don't agree, but I found something endearingly childish about Woods this week.

After Tiger Woods, Invincible Master, and then Tiger Woods, Incorrigible Womaniser, it was novel at least to see this version emerge on the Alpine slopes - Tiger Woods, Love- and Camera-struck Nerd.

While Vonn may have recognised her beloved straight away, she had certainly not been expecting him to be there. Woods had last seen her race in December 2013 in Val d'Isere, when she skied off course before ending her comeback bid for the Sochi 2014 Olympics following serious knee injuries.

"This is a much better memory [than Val d'Isere] that we can have forever," Vonn added.

Forever is a long time, however. Particularly for high profile sporting figures, as history records.

"Who cares?" is a cry one often hears - or rather sees - in response to such tales of twinned hearts. 'Let's get back to the real business in hand - the economy...'

But whenever two well-known figures get together, there is public interest. It's just a fact.

A lot of people care, even if they don't care deeply.

If only because of the phenomenon whereby TV viewers all over the world have invested hours of emotional energy in watching these sporting phenomenons in action, and feel a bit as if they know them.

Lindsey Vonn supports her boyfriend during the 2013 President's Cup competition
©Getty Images

Such sporting unions make a lot of sense given the common understanding both parties will have of the pressures to succeed in an increasingly prying world. That said, you can't help thinking there are some uniquely difficult inbuilt problems when legends collide in love.

"I'm sorry - did I just hear you ask the world's number one golfer to put out the bins?"

"Well pardon me, but if you'd noticed I do have the small matter of retaining a French Open title next week. We've discussed a million times how I have to listen to my body right now. And anyway you slipped to four..."

Well I've conducted a little survey of sporting couples in recent times, and I am now in a position to offer a short guide to what does and doesn't work when it comes to athletes and romance.

Rule 1. Golf and skiing go together well. Although golfers sometimes need to beware the ski slopes, as we have seen in the case of Tiger Woods.

And thinking about it, skiers sometimes need to beware golf courses - recalling Olympic champion Bode Miller's horrendous miscued tee-shot in 2012 which hit his wife, beach volleyball player Morgan Beck, in the eye: 50 stitches, but thankfully no lasting damage thanks to a pair of sunglasses.

Maybe we need a different Rule 1. Golf and tennis go together well. For instance, multiple Grand Slam tennis champion Chris Evert married not quite multiple golf Majors winner Greg Norman. And golf's world number one Rory McIlroy was an item with former world number one tennis player Caroline Wozniacki.

Former world No1 tennis player Caroline Wozniacki caddies for her boyfriend Rory McIlroy. But their planned marriage was later called off and they have split up
©Getty Images


But then Evert and Norman they got divorced after 15 months. And McIlroy and Wozniacki are no longer an item.

Alright, let's try another Rule 1. Always stick to your own sport.

So here we find happy tales.

Years ago, before Steffi Graf got married to fellow tennis champion Andre Agassi, someone shouted out to her during a match at Wimbledon: "Steffi! Will you marry me?" Upon which she shouted back, jestingly, "How much money have you got?"

It was funny then, and we can still laugh at it now, as both Graf and Agassi have oodles of money, much of which they direct towards charitable causes.

Steffi Graf and Andre Agassi play doubles in a charity exhibition match in 2011 ©AFP/Getty Images

Roger Federer is a doting husband to former tennis player Mirka Vavrinec, whom he met while they were competing for Switzerland at the Sydney 2000 Olympics. They now have twin boys, and twin girls.

But hang on. There's Chris Evert again. Romance with fellow US tennis player Jimmy Connors - very much the fellow. Then marriage to the English player, John Lloyd. Then divorce.

Athletics. What about that? Who could forget how Emil Zatopek, triple gold medallist at the 1952 Olympics, met his future wife Dana Zatopkova, the javelin gold medallist, at those Games.

And then, years later, there was the touching tale of retired British 400m hurdler Chris Rawlinson coaching his wife, Australia's Jana Pittman, to the 2006 Commonwealth and 2007 world 400m hurdles titles.

Chris Rawlinson congratulates his wife Jana Pittman after helping coach her to the Commonwealth 400m hurdles title in 2006 ©Getty Images

But by 2009 they had separated.

A year later, however, they re-married in England.

A year later, however, they were reported to have split again.

So there we have it. No Rule 1 after all.

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.

This last year has been a productive one for the sport of archery and our Federation. World Archery continued to innovate across the sport to make it more engaging for athletes, fans and the media.

Nowhere was this clearer than during the Archery World Cup, known for being hosted in iconic locations, which culminated in the Olympic Capital of Lausanne in 2014.

Appropriately, the first ever Brazilian archer to make the Final posed for a photograph in front of the official clock counting down to his home Games - Rio 2016 - after collecting his silver medal.

Those who watched the live broadcast and the millions exposed to the highlights on Eurosport and other channels in territories around the globe saw new graphics made possible by Falco-Eye, a highly-accurate laser scoring mechanism that pinpoints the exact position of arrows in the target.

World Archery has supported Falco-Eye's development with the aim of introducing it as standard at future Olympic Games and high-level international archery and multisport events. In the Lausanne venue, spectators tested VoGo - one of the world's most advanced instant video replay systems - produced by Olympic TOP Partner, ATOS.

Images from multiple broadcast cameras were fed directly to the audience's smart devices in real time and at the same time.

Archery continued to play a key role in international multisport events and was included in both the Incheon 2014 Asian Games and the Nanjing 2014 Summer Youth Olympic Games.

Li Jiaman's thrilling women's gold, via a shootout, at the Summer Youth Olympic Games, was one highlight ©World Archery



World Archery constantly looks to engage the younger generation in the sport and Nanjing 2014 showed not just how appealing archery is to young people - but how impressive the sport's young athletes can be. International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Dr Thomas Bach commented on how exciting it was for a gold medal match at Nanjing to end in a tiebreaker decider.

In its second Games appearance, after debuting at Singapore 2010, the mixed team event made another strong case for its inclusion on the full Olympic programme. It is a proposal our Executive Board strongly supported at its meeting at the end of the year.

World Archery's commitment to being an accessible sport for all was strengthened when the
International Paralympic Committee announced that Para-archery would be included as a core sport on the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic programme in October.

The talk of Games will only increase as we transition from a successful 2014 into an exciting
2015. Our Road to Rio begins in Copenhagen at the World Archery Championships in July. The week long competition, which will draw over 600 of the world's best archers, includes the primary qualifier for the next Olympic Games and will draw considerable attention from the press.

Having already hosted a world-class Archery World Cup Final in 2009, I have no doubt that
Copenhagen will do the important event proud.

Teenager Marcus Dalmieda is poised to become an archery mega-star at Rio 2016 ©World Archery



After Brazilian archers had the opportunity to shoot their national championships in the
Sambodromo - the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Archery Venue - in November 2014, the rest of the world will have the same opportunity in the autumn of this year at the official test event.

World Archery will remain in frequent dialogue with the Rio 2016 Organising Committee to ensure the very best conditions for our athletes during the Games - which are now just over one year away.

This year's Archery World Cup season marks the 10th anniversary of an international circuit that has had such drastic impact on the development of our sport, dramatically increasing worldwide interest, exposure and participation over the past decade.

Shanghai, Antalya, Wroclaw and Medellin host the four stages for the third year in a row, with the Final set to take place in Mexico City in October.

Before we look towards the new season, we have an opportunity to recognise the outstanding contributions of our athletes, officials and volunteers in 2014. The first World Archery Gala and Award Ceremony will be held during the fourth stage of the 2014/15 Indoor Archery World Cup in Las Vegas.

Public voting for the Athlete of the Year awards has drawn over 25,000 ballots to date and
remains open until the end of January, and can be done via the World Archery website here. The gala will be broadcast on Archery TV and I hope you will join me in thanking everybody who has contributed to the growth and success of our sport during 2014.

World Archery will work closely with IOC President Thomas Bach as he implements the Agenda 2020 reform process ©World Archery



The New Year also brings an opportunity for World Archery to work in close collaboration with the IOC, led by President Thomas Bach, as it implements its visionary Olympic Agenda 2020.

At our Executive Board meeting in December, we embraced the unanimously approved Agenda 2020 by identifying a number of key recommendations that World Archery could act upon.

As an organisation, we will continue to work with the IOC throughout 2015 to help implement these changes to ensure a brighter future for archery and the entire Olympic Movement.

I look forward to seeing each and every one of you on the archery field in 2015. 

Prof Dr Uğur Erdener is the President of World Archery, as well as the President of the National Olympic Committee of Turkey and a member of the International Olympic Committee's Executive Board. 

We are barely into 2015 yet there is growing evidence that Girl Power - a trite phrase but nonetheless a pertinent one - will be an increasingly influential aspect of sporting life in the year ahead, on and off the playing field.

Already, we have seen how Sport England's admirable This Girl Can campaign, masterminded by chief executive Jennie Price, is having an impact on getting women who may not normally be so inclined to do more sport and exercise, with six million plays on Facebook of the compelling commercial that grabbed the attention of viewers during a Coronation Street ad-break last week.

We also witnessed the Youth Sport Trust's chair Baroness Sue Campbell forcefully reminding politicos that the losing battle between the PlayStation and the playing field among schoolchildren must be urgently addressed by the next Government.

Now this week, two more of British sport's female twin strikers, Sports Minister Helen Grant and Football Association (FA) Board member Heather Rabbatts, both themselves black, have teamed up to address the issue of the worrying lack of coaches and administrators from the ethnic minorities in football.

Key figures from the game have been summoned to a summit meeting at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport and pressed about what football is doing to encourage greater diversity.

Last year came to an end with a flurry of athletics doping accusations following the three-part series of German TV documentaries seemingly exposing, first, systematic doping within the Russian team, and then the existence of a list of high profile athletes whose suspicious readings were supposedly ignored by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF).

The usual flurry of commissions were convened in response, and getting to the bottom of these allegations is clearly the big challenge in 2015, with the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) having now announced that their three-man Panel, headed by International Olympic Committee stalwart, Richard Pound, will draw conclusions by the end of the year.

The year 2014 has been a great year for the World Taekwondo Federation (WTF) for good reasons and the year ahead of us is shaping up to be an exciting one.

In 2014, we continued to work to grant our athletes more and better opportunities. Our World Taekwondo Grand Prix Series - giving athletes new opportunities in which to compete at the highest level, and even win a little prize money - matured, with tournaments taking place in Suzhou, China; Astana, Kazakhstan; and Manchester, Great Britain. The 2014 Grand Prix Final took place in Queretaro, Mexico.

Queretaro was the location for another event designed to raise the public profile of our athletes: the first-ever WTF Gala Awards Dinner. The same city was the setting for our World Cup Taekwondo Team Championships, which saw some tag-team battles that will go down in the annals of our sport as among the most exciting ever fought.

The WTF endorses universality, and working on the principle that in our sport, "No Athlete is Left Behind", we have been energetically promoting Para-taekwondo. The 5th WTF World Para-Taekwondo Championships in Moscow, Russia were the best-ever.

The Para-Taekwondo World Championships, at which Canada's Lisa Standeven secured her fourth under 58kg world title, was among the highlights of 2014 ©ITG



The inaugural World Cadet Taekwondo Championships, which took place in Baku, Azerbaijan, were also a huge success.

In December 2014, the International Olympic Committee unanimously passed all 40 items that make up the Olympic 2020 Agenda. The WTF fully supports this roadmap for the future of the Olympic Movement.

The year ahead of us is shaping up to be another exciting one for the WTF.

In 2015, our top event will be the World Taekwondo Championships in Chelyabinsk, Russia in May. As this will be the biggest event prior to the Rio 2016 Olympics, I eagerly anticipate some spectacular action. The Championships will use the octagonal rings and the electronic headgear, which was first used at the Manchester Grand Prix Series in 2014.

We will see the 2015 Grand Prix Series take place in Moscow, Russia in August; Samsun, Turkey in September; and in Manchester, Great Britain in October. The 2015 Grand Prix Final and the 2nd WTF Gala Awards Dinner will take place in Mexico City, Mexico in December.

The WTF Grand Prix Final will return to Mexico following the success of last year's event in Queretaro ©WTF



We are also going all-out to place Para-taekwondo on the official programme of the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics. We will find out early in 2015 whether our application has been successful, so please cross your fingers. But regardless of that result, we are going to maintain our current dedicated focus on Para-taekwondo, ensuring that ever more disabled athletes get the opportunity to take part.

Now I think the time has come for a major paradigm shift in how the WTF oversees, administers and promotes taekwondo.

After taking office in 2004, I had two chief aims. The first was to ensure fairness and transparency in referring, judging and administration. The second was to ensure that taekwondo was as exciting and dynamic as possible. I think it is fair to say that we are almost there on both counts.

Thanks to colossal efforts over decades, taekwondo has become one of the world's top participation sports. Now, it is time to build upon that foundation and make it one of the world's top spectator sports.

Taekwondo has come a long way from the judging controversies that plagued the sport at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, where Britain's eventual bronze medallist Sarah Stevenson was among those on the receiving end ©Getty Images



This means making our events more media-friendly and upgrading marketing and promotion to lure the crowds. And this means giving our elite athletes the exposure they deserve, by helping them become taekwondo stars. In this regard, we will further activate our tag-team matches.

To be sure, this directional shift is going to require different mindsets to those the WTF has employed thus far; this new goal represents a towering challenge. To achieve it, the WTF leadership hopes to leverage the full support of the global taekwondo family.

I wish all members of the WTF family a successful and prosperous 2015.

Dr. Chungwon Choue is the President of the World Taekwondo Federation. Click here for a full report of the WTF Extraordinary Council meeting in Bangkok on January 16, where some of these plans were put into fruition.

There was no mistaking the elephant in the room at this week's Pan American Sports Organization (PASO) General Assembly in sunny Puerto Vallarta: it was the elephant not in the room.

Mario Vázquez Raña, the 82 year-old Mexican newspaper magnate, has presided over PASO since 1975, the year of Margaret Thatcher's election as leader of Britain's Conservative party and the fall of Saigon.

He has marked the body with an indelible stamp: scarcely 10 minutes went by in and around this week's meetings without someone commenting, publicly or privately, on Don Mario's negotiating skills, business acumen, generosity or autocratic management style.

But the last few months are forcing PASO to face up to the fact that a remarkable era is nearly over.

First, last September, this Puerto Vallarta General Assembly was postponed after Vázquez Raña underwent surgery; then in November he missed a PASO Extraordinary General Assembly in Bangkok; and now this week, having been hospitalised for six days in mid-December, he was unable to make it to Mexico's palm-fringed Pacific coast.

Happily, PASO's most pressing current concern - the 2015 Toronto Pan American and Parapan American Games - looks to be in good shape; and the vastly experienced, not easily impressed eye of Michael Fennell, President of the PASO Technical Committee, is available to make sure it stays that way.

But it seems inevitable that there will now follow a (potentially lengthy) period when nothing more strategic than the succession issue will be at the forefront of many PASO members' minds.

Mario Vázquez Raña has presided over PASO for almost 40 years but the last few months are forcing PASO to face up to the fact that a remarkable era is nearly over ©PASO




First vice-president Ivar Sisniega, who chaired the General Assembly after learning just two days before the event that Vázquez Raña would be absent, may have been justified to say that he was "gratified to see the level of mature and serious debate that took place in a very responsible fashion".

It is hard to imagine, though, that the agenda would have been wrapped up inside a day (albeit quite an intensive one) had Vázquez Raña been in the hot seat.

And with so many major international events, including an Olympics and a Youth Olympics, coming to the Americas from this year onwards, it would be highly preferable if the long-term leadership question were not left hanging for too long.

Nobody, at least that I met, expects Vázquez Raña to remain as President beyond 2016.

But the date of that General Assembly is not yet known - and given that what was to have been the 2014 Assembly did not take place until January 2015, that could leave the Mexican in situ for up to another two years.

Equally, the transition may come considerably earlier than that.

An Executive Committee meeting set for March was announced with the comment, "At that time, decisions will be made for the future leadership of our organisation".

I was subsequently advised, however, that this was a reference to a statute review process that is currently in train, rather than anything more dramatic.

Carlos Nuzman, President of the Brazilian Olympic Committee and the man at the helm of Rio 2016, is a leading candidate for the succession of PASO ©Getty Images



This may itself have an important bearing on the outcome of a future Presidential election, since it may lead to a change in voting entitlements.

At present, as it was explained to me, each of the 41 PASO National Olympic Committees (NOCs) has a vote, and an extra vote is granted for each time a country has hosted the Pan American Games.

This, of course, increases the voting power of larger nations, particularly Mexico, which has hosted on three occasions.

Should the system revert to a straight one country one vote, the influence of the Caribbean members in particular would be increased, especially if they were to vote en bloc.

Based largely on my attempted straw poll around the wide, airy corridors of the conference hotel, I would say that the leading candidates for the succession seem to be as follows:

Carlos Nuzman, PASO's second vice president, from Brazil; Sisniega, another Mexican; and José Joaquín Puello from the Dominican Republic.

It is very possible that another Caribbean candidate may also emerge, with Keith Joseph, PASO's third vice president, from Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Richard Peterkin, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) member from Saint Lucia, those most frequently mentioned in this connection.

Conceivable dark horses include José Quiñones, if he can overcome his domestic difficulties in Peru, any US or Canadian candidate, and perhaps others.

Neither Nuzman, 72, or Puello, 74, are spring chickens exactly; Nuzman, moreover, will presumably have his hands full until Rio 2016 has come and gone.

But it could be argued that a transition candidate may be in PASO's best interests, while the body transforms itself from a creature, essentially, of a single individual into something much more modern and transparent.

An interesting presence in Puerto Vallarta was Pere Miró, IOC director of relations with NOCs and Olympic Solidarity ©Getty Images


An interesting presence here in Puerto Vallarta was Pere Miró, IOC director of relations with NOCs and Olympic Solidarity, who acknowledged it was his first PASO General Assembly since Vázquez Raña resigned as President of the Association of National Olympic Committees (ANOC) and head of Olympic Solidarity in March 2012.

This seemed a signal that the first rays of light on PASO's new era are just starting to creep over the horizon.

While the immediate future for PASO looks uncertain in many ways, one thing I would not be worried about, based on what I have seen here, is the organisation's ability to make a success of the post Vázquez Raña era.

The body seems to have an excellent multicultural balance, notwithstanding a big wealth gap between its richest and poorest NOCs; it is also imbued with plenty of men - and women - who have already shown themselves to be able sports administrators, with skills in a variety of areas.

I have little doubt, for example, that the more media savvy could quickly engineer a profile boost for the Pan American Games - and for that matter PASO itself - if given a freer rein.

They have plainly waited a long time, some of them, for additional responsibilities to be thrust upon them.

For a few, opportunity will shortly knock.

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.