Apparently Wladimir Klitschko, the current multi-belt world heavyweight champion who won super-heavyweight gold at the 1996 Olympics, may be given an astonishing opportunity to repeat it at Rio 2016.

Last year, international governing body the International Boxing Association (AIBA) announced that professional boxers would be allowed to compete in the Olympic Games under certain conditions, and they have raised the age limit from 36 to 40.

The 38-year-old Klitschko previously had declared his interest in competing again in the Olympics, though it was thought the Ukrainian Boxing Federation would not endorse such a controversial move. However, as insidethegames has exclusively revealed, they have now said they would not rule it out.

While the new Olympic regulations prohibit the inclusion of pro boxers with more than 20 bouts, AIBA have strongly intimated that exceptions might be made for "superstar fighters". Presumably this includes not only Klitschko, but Floyd Mayweather jnr and Manny Pacquiao, who would be tremendous TV attractions. Which is obviously the object of the exercise.

Twenty years after winning gold at Atlanta 1996, could Wladimir Klitschko be back in the ring in Rio? ©Getty Images



Klitschko himself says: "I already have an Olympic gold medal and it would be fantastic to get another 20 years later. I'd like to think that in two years I will still have enough health and motivation to perform in the Olympics. It was while watching the Games in London that I decided this would be my dream."

In order to qualify for Rio, Klitschko, who holds all the alpha-belts - WBA, WBO and IBF - bar one (the WBC version recently vacated by elder brother Vitali fell into the clubbing hands of one Bermane Stiverne last weekend) would have to take part in AIBA's Pro Boxing (APB) tournament before the Games in order to qualify.

Just how realistic is this? Highly unlikely you would think, unless Wladimir had retired from the ring by then and had time to spare.

Yet while it may seem to defy logic, the L word is in not in abundant use in the fistic lexicon.

You can argue that it is brutally unfair – and highly dangerous - to allow fighters of the stature of Klitschko, Mayweather and Pacquiao, if so inclined, to pit their potentially lethal fists in Olympic competition against young tyros who are truly amateurs, notably from Africa and Asia.

But by introducing APB, in which elite boxers competing under largely professional rules are afforded preference for Olympic qualification, AIBA have already created a path of inequality to the Games.

So where does the International Olympic Committee stand in all this? Hardly in a neutral corner.

If National Basketball Association players can take part in the Olympics, as they did for the first time in Barcelona 1992, it will prove hard to stop professional boxers competing at the Olympics ©NBAE/Getty Images



By allowing fully-fledged pros, several of them global superstars, to take part in many sports, not least basketball, football, tennis, show jumping and ice hockey, they surely have opened the floodgates and may have set a precedent that could be successfully legally argued if any established pro boxer wished to compete in the Games.

If Britain can have Andy Murray in the Olympics, why not Amir Khan?

The resurgent Bolton fighter my well jump at the chance to improve on the silver medal he won in Athens - and Mayweather the bronze he took in Atlanta where Wladimir Klitschko won his gold.

Meantime "Dr Steelhammer" PhD, concentrates on helping fight the equally erudite Vitali's corner for Ukraine in their homeland's ongoing political struggle, insisting "Ukraine must stay as it is and not fall apart". An Olympian task in itself.

In the ring he also has a new ambition which may put any Olympic aspirations on hold.

The multi-lingual brothers always insisted they would never fight each other but now that 42-year-old Vitali has formally retired to the political arena, Wladimir plans to finally unify the division they dominated for the best part of a decade.

Stiverne's acquistion of Vitali's WBC belt, recognised as the most authentic of them all, with a sixth round stoppage of American Chris Arreola in Los Angeles, opens up a whole new fight game.

Wladimir is keen to challenge him to make a clean sweep of the titles once he has fulfilled his own obligation of a mandatory defence of his IBF belt against the unbeaten Bulgarian Kubrat Pulev.

Like Kubrat Pulev, Bermane Stiverne is not a name which springs readily to then lips, even of boxing's cognoscenti. But that of his promoter does - a certain Don King.

Bermane Stiverne, pictured with promoter Don King, is the first heavyweight champion not named Klitschko since 2008 ©Getty Images



Boxing's shock-haired Godfather has been resurrected, nudging 83, with his fighter's conquest of Arreola.

It is almost 40 years since King loudly proclaimed his advent with his promotion of the bizarre Rumble in the Jungle between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. His empire has crumbled in recent years as the richest prize in sport shifted base from north America to eastern Europe, but he now inimitably declares himself back in business: "Let the word go forth that I am back and so is the heavyweight title."

The much-travelled Stiverne, who fought for Canada as an amateur and trained in Florida earlier in his pro career, is the first heavyweight champion of Haitian descent and the first champ not named Klitschko since 2008

He is one of 14 children whose mother brought the family from impoverished Haiti to the United States, and then to Canada, when Bermane was 10. As an amateur, Stiverne stopped Liverpool's Olympic bronze medalist David Price in a 2004 tournament in Finland.

Las Vgas-based Stiverne came from behind to record his 13th  consecutive win on Saturday, and mentor King will certainly want him make them both a pile of money against less threatening contenders  (maybe such as Britons Tyson  Fury or Dereck Chisora) before taking on Klitschko or the huge American  hope Deontay Wilder.

Aka the Bronze Bomber - he was also a semi-finalist in Beijing - Wilder is a 6ft 7in monster of a puncher who has despatched all 31 opponents well inside four rounds, among  them former Olympic  champion Audley Harrison who was brutally blitzed in a few seconds.

The United States has not had a credible world heavyweight champion since Evander Holyfield held a version of the title 12 years ago. Now they see Wilder as the division's saviour.

Deontay Wilder could be the United States' best hope of righting the wrong of London 2012, when the country failed to win a single men's boxing medal for the first time ©Golden Boy/Getty Images



American failure to win a men's boxing medal at London 2012 was a matter of huge embarrassment – the first time it had happened in Olympic history.

Maybe Alabama-born Wilder is their only chance of winning one in Rio if he, like Klitschko, fancies pursuing another Olympic  dream.

Klitschko v Wilder in the Olympic super-heavyweight final? NBC's television executives must be drooling at the thought of it. Even with Don King one again calling the shots.

But such a prospect must have the original Olympic ringmaster Baron De Coubertin turning in his Lausanne grave.

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.

Last Wednesday at insidethegames we had a textbook case of what my family would call "Sod's law".

From 10am in the morning onwards, with excuses ranging from holiday to being some 35,000 metres over mainland Europe on a flight to the Middle East, we were without our entire team of editors. Yet with stories timed to "go-live" on the website throughout the day this was no problem, and on the off chance a major story broke we had the physical capability to publish others.

At 11am there was an announcement on changes to the Olympic cycling programme at Rio 2016. Yes, this was important enough to merit breaking news and the executive, or amateur-executive, decision was made to go ahead and publish.

And so it was in New York City, on or around November 6, the day when International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations, that the Olympic deal of the century so far began to be put together.

At a dinner with NBCUniversal (NBCU) executives, Bach says he floated the idea of a long-term partnership with a broadcaster that had already screened every Summer Games since 1988.

After a further get-together in Sochi, the 2014 Winter Olympic host, the finishing touches were put to a breathtaking $7.7 billion (£4.5 billion/€5.5 billion) deal for US broadcasting rights to the Olympic Games between 2021 and 2032 this week.

The whole process took just six months - and this at the instigation of a man fewer than 60 days into his new job at the time of his bold opening gambit.

If you wanted to quibble, you might say it was overdoing it a bit to claim, as the IOC did, that the agreement ensures the "long-term financial security" of the Olympic Movement.

The panjandrums of this singular world, after all, would grumble and groan if this were the only deal in town, leaving them to scrape by for 12 years on a mere $8 billion (£5 billion/€6 billion).

By agreeing to these terms with Comcast/NBCU, moreover, the IOC is accepting relatively conservative growth from its most lucrative broadcast market far into the future, in a period of dizzying technological change that could do almost anything to global viewing habits and therefore rights values.

As Comcast chairman and chief executive Brian Roberts understatedly acknowledged: "No-one can be quite sure what the world looks like in 2032".

IOC President Thomas Bach and chairman and chief executive of Comcast Corporation Brian Roberts sign an agreement to secure the United States broadcast rights to the Olympics until 2032 ©IOC

What the deal has done, though - and it is no small thing - is secure far in advance perhaps 20 per cent of the revenue that the Movement would realistically want to have at its disposal over its 12-year span.

And, of course, the terms of this landmark agreement will inevitably colour negotiations on the web of smaller deals that Bach and his chief lieutenants will gradually begin turning their minds to.

As Bach said, bathing in the glow of what he described as a "happy day" for the whole Olympic Movement, "this kind of deal is not only about money".

Particularly since it comes so early in the German's Presidency, and at a time when a period of relatively quick-fire change on several fronts is expected, the agreement raises all manner of questions.

I would like to consider a few of them here:

Will strategic broadcasting deals of this sort of duration become more common?

Well, as people get used to being able to watch what they like, when they like and, increasingly, where they like, you can see that this is likely to have certain consequences.

First, desirable content is likely to become ever more valuable; second, investment in technology is likely to become ever more onerous for media companies.

If these media companies are confident that content which is popular today will continue to be so in a decade or two's time - and the Olympics appears to fall into this category - you can understand why a desire to capture reliable income streams to justify and pay for costly capital investment might make long-term agreements attractive.

Of course, if you are in something for the long haul, you must be sure you are comfortable with your partner.

But the IOC and NBCU have now worked together long enough to know each other warts and all. This is even though Comcast is a relatively recently-arrived owner, having announced its intention to acquire a majority stake in NBCU in late-2009; it now has full ownership.

The nature of this deal and the logic underpinning this sort of strategic partnership in the right circumstances has certainly got me wondering whether the IOC might not even now be quietly engaged on discussions with other trusted partners to gauge whether a long-term contract might be mutually beneficial for them too.

Talks between the IOC and NBC about extending their television deal until 2032 were already well underway when Thomas Bach was interviewed by the channel during Sochi 2014 ©NBC

What does this deal tell us about Bach's preferred management style?

In the early stages, Bach's Presidency has been positively collegial, with everyone encouraged to chip in to the Olympic Agenda 2020 reform debate.

This, though, looks to have been decision-making by kitchen cabinet, with the IOC President accompanied at the initial New York dinner by just two senior IOC officials - Christophe De Kepper, director general, and Timo Lumme, managing director, television and marketing services.

"We kept it among the three of us," Bach confided this week.

Indeed, the composition of IOC Commissions, such as the TV Rights and New Media Commission, charged with "preparing and implementing the overall IOC strategy for future broadcast rights negotiations" - which Bach himself will chair - for 2014 was not even announced until last month.

There are perfectly sound reasons, notably to avoid leaks and promote nimble decision-making, for restricting information flow to a favoured few in this way.

But I wonder if this might not lead to a greater tendancy among IOC members and others to take the Presidency's apparent collegiality with more of a pinch of salt.

If it does, it could in turn colour the Olympic Agenda 2020 process as it gears up to make some particularly big calls affecting the Movement's future around the end of the year.

Is the deal likely to have any impact on plans for a new Olympic TV channel?

Not directly; the feasibility study that Bach indicated he expected to have delivered "in the next couple of weeks" will have a more direct bearing.

I would not though be in the slightest bit surprised, if the undertaking gets the green light, to see Comcast somehow involved in bringing it to fruition.

Presumably, after all, one of the chief aims of a dedicated channel would be to get more people watching Olympic-related content in between Games, rather than when Games are on.

In this way, the venture should be complementary to the interests of Olympic rights-holders, if sensibly handled.

The new long-term deal between the IOC and NBC appears to have strengthened the chances of the United States hosting the Summer Olympics for the first time since Atlanta 1996, when they staged the Centennial Games ©Getty Images

Does the deal increase the chances of the United States hosting a Summer Games in the near future?

If your definition of "the near future" embraces the 2020s, then undoubtedly yes.

Mark Lazarus, chairman of the NBC Sports Group, was completely justified in stating this week that "our success with the Games has never been contingent on the location of those Games".

But, seen in the context of the rapprochement between the IOC and the US that has been gathering momentum since October 2009, when President Barack Obama was tempted to Copenhagen for the 2016 host-city vote only for Chicago to be eliminated first, this deal has the feel of a pretty big statement.

United States Olympic Committee (USOC) chairman Larry Probst indicated this week that we should know by the end of 2014 if there will be a US bidder for the 2024 Summer Olympics and Paralympics, the next one available after Tokyo's win in the 2020 contest.

If Bach does not find himself heading to the US in 10 years' time for what may very well be the last Games of his Presidency, then a strong US candidate could be all but unassailable in 2028.

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.

Ryan Wilson runs fast, but talks slowly – and thoughtfully.

As an athlete, this 33-year-old product of Columbus, Ohio has taken his time to reach the heights, having made his debut in the US team last summer - nine years after turning professional.

Wilson made his breakthrough count as he took silver in the 110 metres hurdles at the IAAF World Championships in Moscow behind another American making a belated golden breakthrough, David Oliver.

Speaking in Doha ahead of Friday's opening IAAF Diamond League meeting, Wilson - who will be competing at the Qatar Sports Club track for the first time - sat alongside two fellow US athletes in 23-year-old Christian Taylor, the ebullient Olympic triple jump champion, and 25-year-old Curtis Mitchell, another competitor who made a breakthrough in Moscow by taking bronze over 200m.

When I raised the topic of mitigating doping bans by cooperating with anti-doping authorities - less than a week after it emerged that US sprinter Tyson Gay had had his suspension halved to one year after providing the US Anti-Doping Agency with helpful information - there was a short and significant pause.

While the two younger men decided not to respond, Wilson stepped painstakingly up to the mark.

Ryan Wilson (left), pictured finishing behind fellow US high hurdler David Oliver in Stockholm last year, has made the case for reducing doping bans in exchange for information ©AFP/Getty Images

Half-an-hour earlier, sitting in the same chairs as the US athletes, three Kenyan competitors had answered the same question with vehement criticism of the "plea bargaining"' arrangement.

The ruling involving Tyson was made in accordance with article 10.5.3 of the World Anti-Doping Agency's code, which enables an athlete to have up to 75 per cent of his or her ban reduced if they provide "substantial assistance" to the anti-doping authorities.

When the new WADA code comes into operation in January next year, athletes testing positive could avoid any ban at all if they are able to offer sufficiently cogent information on how and where they had received assistance to the authorities.

Tyson Gay running in Lausanne on July 4 last year - ten days later news of his positive test at the US Championships emerged ©AFP/Getty Images

Kenyan Olympic champions Asbel Kiprop and Ezekiel Kemboi, and world 800m champion Eunice Sum, all voiced their opposition to such calculations and insisted that life bans should be applied to those found guilty of doping, even for first-time offences.

"I think it is the wrong message to send," said the quietly spoken Kiprop, a double world 1500m champion whose experience of Olympic gold, from Beijing 2008, was tarnished by the fact that he finished behind a man whose performance was belatedly disqualified by a positive doping test, Bahrain's Rashid Ramzi.

"If reductions on bans are going to be made, athletes will take advantage of it. They should tell what they know anyway," Kiprop added.

Asbel Kiprop, seen celebrating his 1500m world title last summer, is vehemently opposed to 'plea bargaining' doping suspensions ©Getty Images

Kemboi, whose wide smile and flamboyant celebration dancing after his 3,000m steeplechase victory in 2012 provided the London Games with one of its enduring images, also objected to the idea of reducing bans in exchange for information. "Personally I don't think it is a good idea," he said. "If a ban is four years, let it be four years. If you are an athlete and you have cheated, you have to pay. Take your ban."

The Kenyan's attitude is one Wilson fully understands. But he believes the WADA approach, while it may stick in many people's throats, has wider and more profound benefits for the sport.

Kenya's Eunice Sum, pictured after her surprise 800m win at last year's IAAF World Championships, believes life bans should be introduced for first-time doping offences
©Getty Images

"It makes sense," he said. "You know, unfortunately, we live in a world where people will give up information in the same way as with the legal system.  Currently if you are willing to cooperate with law enforcement you see the same types of leniency from prosecutors and judges. So I don't think it's out of the realm of history.

"If you've committed offences, oftentimes there needs to be a bit of a carrot for you in order to cooperate. And I think it's 'win-win' in a sense. I know it's disappointing that someone may not get punishment that is perhaps equal to the crime, or a punishment that is equal to the same crime that someone else committed, but at the same time I think it's important at this point - we are talking about specific cases - we generally don't know all the information.

"So to speak on them is really coming from a relative position of naivete to not know all the information involved. But on another point, if people are interested in a clean sport and there's people engaging in practices that aren't clean, and they have information that will help clean up the sport that we can't get otherwise, then however disappointing it may be in a sense  I would prefer to have the information, personally, to help achieve the overall goal."

As his two younger colleagues stared ever more fixedly at the table in front of them, Wilson added a final element to his argument:

"I see why, if you are talking about this Tyson case, I see why some people are up in arms. It seems kind of crazy. But if you sit and think about it from another angle you begin to understand why there is some sense in it."

It is, to be sure, a complex subject – and a debate that will doubtless be re-visited on numerous occasions in the space of the next year.

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 £12.99) is available at the insidethegames.biz shop. To follow him on Twitter click here.

For Sugar Ray Robinson, Joe Bugner, George Foreman and Muhammad Ali, read Janet Evans, Ian Thorpe and Michael Phelps.

If my childhood was punctuated by pugilists on the comeback trail, this role now seems to have been usurped unexpectedly, at least to me, by denizens of the 50-metre swimming-pool.

When the Baltimore Bullet returned to competitive swimming at the Arena Grand Prix in Mesa, Arizona last month, finishing second to Ryan Lochte in his first final since retiring, I decided that a trend had been established.

This was an athlete, after all, who had provided one of the most jaw-droppingly memorable 25 seconds or so of sporting action it has been my privilege to witness, powering back from fifth at the turn to claim his fifth gold medal of the Athens 2004 Olympics in the 100m butterfly.

And I am not even much of a swimming fan.

While I was not sure that I had a great deal to contribute on the subject of why some of the world's greatest swimmers had sought toreturn to competition, I was pretty sure I knew someone who would: step forward Duncan Goodhew, Great Britain gold medallist in the 100m breaststroke at the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow - and a man who had written a number of penetrating and insightful pieces about swimming and swimmers for the Financial Times sports pages in years gone by.

Goodhew's first response was to say, in effect, that there is nothing new under the sun: Mark Spitz, another of the very top swimmers of all time, winner of that astonishing haul of seven gold medals at the Munich Olympics of 1972, had attempted a comeback 20 years later; and there have no doubt been others.

Michael Phelps made his comeback last month at the Arena Grand Prix in Mesa, Arizona ©Getty Images

The Briton also pointed up a similarity between the amount of work top swimmers and top boxers need to do, referring to the adage, "the more you put in, the more you get out".

His main line of thinking, though, focused on two characteristics of swimming that could, or so one might construe, make it particularly taxing to quit competitive swimming when the time came.

And this bearing in mind that, as he put it, "For any top athlete, retirement is brutal".

For one thing, he argues, swimming is a particularly "objective" sport.

"You know how many strokes you swim per length.

"You know the times.

"You know exactly when you are making progress, and not.

"So it's probably one of the most objective sports you can take part in.

"The training is all comparable to what you have done before."

This transparency, Goodhew explains, can easily feed through into the swimmer's state of mind.

"You get a real high as you do your workouts," he says.

"Breakfast can be a weigh-ho experience because you had a good workout.

"You can tell people who had a bad workout because they are having a bad breakfast."

Duncan Goodhew believes many swimmers return to action becauser "retirement is brutal" ©Getty Images

The other characteristic of swimming that might be germane to us here is that, as Goodhew puts it, it is "very environmental.

"You spend four hours a day actually submerged in the water, in this completely different environment."

The former breaststroker was seeking to highlight both the beauty of this situation - phenomena like sunshine dancing on the bottom of the pool – and its cocooning quality.

"You feel you are in a different world," he concludes.

By the end of his explanation, I am left with a sense of how training could become almost a mystical experience.

So: routine, discipline, transparency and a world apart in which you frequently feel relaxed, empowered and happy.

When you see it like that - and you set it against retirement, where, in Goodhew's phrase, "one day you have complete order and focus and direction in your life; the next you don't have it" - and it starts to appear surprising that all swimmers don't attempt comebacks.

Goodhew repeatedly emphasises that he has no particular knowledge of the situations faced by the names cropping up in our conversation, and I certainly don't, but it seems reasonable to conclude that, even in the case of a swimmer as well-known and talented as Phelps, money is probably well down the list of motivating factors.

"Swimming is not a well-paid sport," Goodhew says matter-of-factly.

In this characteristic, at least, boxing can be very different.

Time is, of course, the enemy of any athlete on the comeback trail.

But it can be particularly so, it seems, in the case of male swimmers, whose upper body strength, according to Goodhew, may deteriorate once they give up "quickly and pretty finally".

The other side of the coin is that, unlike I would argue some other sports, swimming is an activity that former competitors continue to enjoy long after their last competitive race.

"Some swimmers, you slice them any which way and water will come out," Goodhew says.

"It's seeped into the soul almost.

"I judge my day: a good day is a one-swim day; a great day is a two-swim day."

To make a weak attempt at gift-shop-mug humour: old swimmers never die, it seems; they just keep on crawling.

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.

Two figures hit you between the eyes when you enter the reception area of UK Sport's airy headquarters in London's Bloomsbury: 65 and 120. These, posted prominently on the wall, indicate the record number of medals won by Team GB respectively in the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics.

The perfect riposte, they might argue, to the bitter criticism of the organisation's resolutely hard-line policy of funding only those sports with genuine podium potential.

Any background mood music surely would have to be the triumphalist: We Are The Champions though those now cast into the financial wilderness, like basketball, water polo and synchronised swimming, might find the enduring Queen hit's accompanying refrain No Time for Losers rather more appropriate.

The opprobrium attracted by this "all or nothing" philosophy  has been well-chronicled, not least in  these columns, and even raised in parliament. Now it is will be vigorously defended by UK Sport's chief executive Liz Nicholl, one of its prime architects, at a public forum in Whitehall next week when she gives a keynote speech that will leave the assembled sports and business bigwigs in no doubt that playing hardball with Natonal Lottery cash means that Britain is no longer a nation of plucky losers.

In little over a decade Britain has gone from 36th to third in the Olympics medal table, largely because of the so-called "no compromise" approach that has seen hundreds of millions of pounds pumped into our best medal prospects.

"No compromise," latterly has become the buzzphrase of UK Sport, a well-run body recognised as the sporting arm of Government, with Nicholl, who became its chief executive five years ago, the driving force behind the campaign to win even more medals at the next Olympics, at Rio in 2016, which would make Britain the first nation to do so after hosting a Games.

Arguably Nicholl, not least because of her financial muscle - UK Sport is distributing some £350 million ($579 million/€419 million) in the run-up up to Rio 2016 - is now  the most powerful woman in British sport, displaying a Iron Lady quality in  standing firm against the critics.

I have known and liked Liz Nicholl  for many years, watching her progress from the relatively genteel world of  netball, where she was a Welsh international, to the sharpest end of sports governance.

Unfailingly engaging and approachable, the slim and remarkably youthful-looking 61-year-old seems the least likely to be cast in the  role of a hard-hearted Hannah. But, she argues, hers has been a necessary ruthlessness.

UK Sport chief executive Liz Nicholl believes the results of Team GB at London 2012 justified her tough "no compromise" approach ©ITG

In an exclusive interview with insidethegames Nicholl spoke of her resolve not only to fully implement UK Sport's funding policies but to fight the corner for more women to be given significantly influential posts in sports administration .

The message to sport's also-rans is clear ."Our remit is to deliver in Olympic and Paralympic success through medals, and that is our focus as an organisation," Nicholl says. "We have been very clear with all the sports about our approach and sit behind all our investment decisions.

"We want to reach down and fund every sport and athlete that has medal potential over an eight year period - until Tokyo 2020 - and that's what we've done. The sports that are disappointed now are sports that we uniquely funded for London but had we not had London they would not have been the recipient of UK Sport funding.

"They had a period of 2006 to 2013 to see what they could do but they weren't able to demonstrate that they could reach the performance standard to put them in a position to access funding from us.

"I completely understand the concerns of those sports having to manage without those resources but it is not as if we changed our approach; this has always been the case.  All sports had a chance to prepare for the possibility that this might happen. Clearly now they will be regrouping and thinking about how they manage and what other resources can be made available."

UK Sport is doing its job, she argues, and it is up to governing bodies who have lost funding to get themselves to a position where they can challenge for medals. She also feels critics are forgetting the that several million a year of public cash is poured into grassroots sport by Sport England.

"Do we, as a nation, value the drive to deliver more medals in Rio? If we do, you have to invest what we've got in that. Once you start to take a broader approach and start to invest in sports that are a long way off medal potential, you reduce the amount for those that do have medal potential. That would be a compromise and we have a no-compromise approach."

I asked whether one solution might be to adopt the Canadian system of having a reserve funding for less successful sports.

"We invest what we've got in sports that have got medal potential," says Nicholl. "We are not sitting on pots of money here that we could suddenly set aside to spread further across the sports that we are withdrawing funding from. That would cost several millions of pounds to anything well.  We had the basic funding in place in the lead up to London but that was in order to give the sports the chance of a creditable performance. That cost a lot of money."

Ben Ainslie, winner of four consecutive Olympic gold medals, has been at the forefront of the success of Britain's sailors, who have been awarded with more money than ever which some critics claim could help other sports ©Getty Images

But instead of simply giving dishing out even more millions to successful sports, like the £25 million ($42 million/€30 million) to sailing, why not give them a little less and distribute some of the money saved to the struggling sports?

"I can understand people thinking that might be an option, but here at UK sport, unless you get the right money to the right athletes to the right sport, you won't get the right result," says Nicholl.

"If you compromise the investment and give the sports less than they need, they won't succeed. We would be putting at risk medal opportunities to fund sports that don't have medal potential. That would jeopardise the mission to deliver more medals.

"We have a formal appeal process so we are committed to enabling any sport that has a grievance to challenge a decision that we make. We gave all the sports that were affected to have time with our board to make a case for their funding to give us new information or strategies that we might not have considered. There were eight sports that were affected. Badminton and weightlifting came away from that representation with a good outcome and of the six remaining, one [synchronised swimming] has gone to formal appeal."

"At the end of every cycle, prior to our investment in the next four years, we always review our principles and investment approach which is very thorough. This year we are investing £350 million and we do not do that lightly, so we will be taking time over the next 12 months to see whether anything should change for the period beyond 2016 and on to Tokyo. We want to do the right thing with the resources we have and if there's any improvements we can make, we shall."

Nicholl adds: "I was thrilled to be appointed as chief executive of UK Sport, something I never imagined in my younger years when I was with netball, especially going into the London Games.  I have been with UK Sport since 1999 so I have seen the journey from the advent of National Lottery funding and managing those responsibilities since then. I am proud of what the organisation has achieved and it has always been my aim to do the best for British sport in all the decisions in which I have been involved."

So there we are. Strong views from views from a woman who is not the first to put a pair of high heels through sport's glass ceiling, and one we who is determined to not be the last.

Is it tough being in what is still regarded as essentially a man's domain?

"I spent the first 16 years of my working life in netball , predominately a women's sport," says Nicholl. "It was a good place to practise my leadership skills but I also had posts as vice-chair of CCPR (Central Council for Physical Recreation) and Commonwealth Games England which gave me confidence in my own ability around tables there were more men in suits than women.

"I remember my first meeting here when I was director of performance in UK Sport and had to meet the performance directors for the first time - they were all men. I came out of that meeting at Bisham Abbey with a wry smile on my face thinking that there was going to be a huge challenge ahead."

Former netball player Liz Nicholl is the most prominent member of a growing group of female administrators in British sport ©BBC

Nicholl has been very vocal in the past on the lack of women in sport, even advocating sanctions against governing bodies who have been dragging their heels in appointing them to their Boards. But things are improving, she says.

"Sport is not quite as male-dominated as it was," she says. "There is certainly a sea-change as far as administration is concerned. It's gradual but it's definitely, definitely changing. If you just look at the number of sports that we fund that have women non-execs on their boards, 25 per cent and increasing, with an influx of women in some really significant roles.

"It's a small number still as a percentage and there's still a lot of progress to be made. As far as getting women more involved I think it's good to start at the top, getting more balanced and diverse boards. I feel more women are coming forward now to seek these positions but where there is a real challenge across the system is women in coaching.

"At participation level there are probably about 30 per cent of female coaches but it gets smaller and smaller as you approach the elite level. We have to try and create an environment where more women come through in these high performance areas. There should be a better balance of male and female coaches but it's going to be a longer journey and we have to start with athletes who retire and persuade them to go into coaching.

"There are now so many great female role models in British sport - Nicola Adams, Katharine Grainger, Sarah Storey, Jess Ennis-Hill, Ellie Simmonds and Jade Jones to name but a few - and we must build on this.  At UK Sport we have been something of pioneers with our previous chair, Baroness Sue Campbell.  I meet quarterly with all the home country Sports Councils and we are all women apart from a male chief executive of Sport Scotland. Wales, Northern Ireland and England all have female chief executives which is quite significant. You wouldn't t have dreamt that this would be the picture ten years ago.

"Here at UK Sport all the major event consultants are women.  About six in all. If you look at the English Institute of Sport, a wholly owned subsidiary of UK Sport, across the board of 200 staff, medics, coaches, and practitioners there's a good balance of male and female."  

Of UK Sport's own staff of 110, half are women.

England 2015 chief executive Debbie Jevans is making her mark in a sport that has previoulsy been male-dominated ©Getty Images

Nicholl is at the bridgehead of a growing phalanx of female power players. These include Debbie Jevans, who was outstanding as Sebastian Coe's director of sport in 2012 and is now the head honcho of next year's Rugby World Cup. Sally Bolton, herself from the macho world of rugby where she was the architect of the successful League version here last year, has just been appointed by UK Athletics to run the 2017 World Championships.

The highly-rated Jennie Price is Nicholl's opposite number as chief executive at Sport England while Sallie Barker has taken over the same role from Tim Lamb at the Sport & Recreation Alliance.

Ex-gymnast Barbara Slater is the BBC's head of sport and Karren Brady football's leading lady as  the feisty chief executive of Premier League West Ham United, is  now overseeing their move to the Olympic Stadium.

And, of course, of course, we have a female Sports Minister in Helen Grant.

"This is a good time for women in sport," says Nicholl, pointing out that there were more GB female medalists in the Sochi 2014 Winter Games than men, and almost as many as men in Summer Games.

Married  to a retired sports management consultant, with two grown up children, and recipient of an OBE, Nicholl says that though she doesn't play netball any more she runs twice a week and is a regular at a gym.

The great legacy of the Olympics, she insists, is that "we have created  a nation believes it can win."  And she is "uncompromisingly" determined to see that winning aura maintained.

No time for losers then? Liz Nicholl's smile suggests her audience can be certain of one thing when she addresses them next week.

Sport's Iron Lady is not for turning.

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.

When attention across the globe turns to Glasgow this summer for the Commonwealth Games there will be a lot at stake for all those competing, with a chance to make or break both careers and reputations.

As with the Olympic Games there will be no prize money on offer in Glasgow. But medal success at an event like this remains the best means for an athlete to unlock the door to commercial success.

Do you ever get that feeling that someone is against you? That anything you do will somehow turn around and smack you on the back of the head?

As I sit here at god-knows-what time in the morning, on a nice wooden bench in the departure lounge of Incheon International Airport, I get the strong impression that someone, somewhere wants to wipe that all too cheesy grin off my face.

As for the reasoning behind my unfortunate circumstance? That would stem from the fact that the hotel I wish to be staying in, and most likely sleeping in at this very moment, is the other side of the airport customs gate, putting it mere metres away from my current, slightly uncomfortable position, but a hefty boarding pass out of reach - as I have been reminded on countless occasions by the majority of airport staff.

My week-long trip to South Korea, incredible as it has been, has been tainted by these all too common occurrences.

As I set out in pursuit of an International Olympic Committee (IOC) Coordination Commission visit to the venue of the 2018 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games, Pyeongchang, held up briefly by a trip to the South Korean capital for a conference related to good governance in sport, I found myself wondering what it is I must have done to find myself in such an unusually high number of "frustrating" situations.

As well as getting lost on the way to my hotel on my very first evening in Seoul, a situation that was saved by an incredibly friendly group of Koreans who took it upon themselves to escort me directly to my hotel lobby, I also found myself shut away in a bus terminal toilet as I hid from an overly enthusiastic taxi driver who was, very kindly, offering to drive me to the Alpensia Resort, venue of the IOC Coordination Commission meeting, after I had managed to take a bus which dropped me a depressing hour away from my intended target.

Now, these incidents could easily have been solved by careful planning and an average sense of direction, both of which I appear to have miserably misplaced. However, throughout my stay in Pyeongchang, I got the underlying feeling that the international identity of these next Winter Games had also somehow, like me, got lost.

There is no doubting the hard work and commitment that has gone into the preparations for Pyeongchang 2018 with the IOC Coordination Commission confident in these preparations following its recent visit ©Pyeongchang 2018



I don't speak here about the preparations that have gone into the organising of the Games, which in my personal opinion seem highly impressive and well planned.

Nor do I speak of the undoubted success I believe the Games will achieve come the start of play in 2018.

The one problem I think should, could, and probably will, be addressed is the distinct lack of know-how about the Pyeongchang 2018 Games from the international community as a whole.

As the sole representative for foreign media at the Coordination Commission visit, this issue may not be a fault of the Pyeongchang Organising Committee in itself. However, I do believe that it is time for Pyeongchang to really up their efforts on the global level and tell the world that they are here; that they are ready for the Games; and that everyone should now stand up and recognise who they are.

An example of this became apparent to me just a few weeks ago, while attending my weekly quiz at the local pub. A question was asked regarding the whereabouts of the 2018 Winter Olympic Games, a fairly simple question for anyone within the Olympic Movement.

However among my friends, all of who are very knowledgeable about sport, there was confusion and a complete mind-blank in identifying the answer.

The same can be said about the majority of friends and family who I explained my visit to South Korea to.

"Why are you going there?", "What an Earth do you need to go all the way over there for?" Two common responses to my informing these friends and relatives of my upcoming trip to the east Asian nation.

After visiting Pyeongchang and seeing the preparations that are underway in order to make these Games a success, it is a shame to know that such a wide range of people - including the limited number of friends I have aforementioned - are still unsure of the whereabouts of the next edition of this grand sporting event.

Now that Sochi is done and dusted its time for Pyeongchang to stretch its wings and show the world what it will bring to the Games in four years' time ©Getty Images



Visiting the sites of each venue I can see that a huge amount of hard work and effort has gone into the detailed planning of these facilities, with countless hours put in to ensure the readiness of the Games come four years' time.

It is due to this that I feel, and I'm sure many others do to, that it is now vital that Pyeongchang 2018 opens itself up to the world to give a real account of itself and ensure that the world knows that in four years' time, thousands of athletes will be making their way to this outstanding country to participate in the 2018 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Now that Sochi is done and dusted, and Pyeongchang has been passed the hosting mantle, this pursuit of global recognition should come much easier for the Organising Committee. However, measures still need to be taken and processes still put in place to ensure that everyone, from all corners of the world, know where Pyeongchang is, what is stands for in the sporting world and why it will provide a fun and invigorating Games when the spotlight turns to it in 2018.

The world's oldest-ever Olympian, Walter Walsh - who competed in the shooting event at the 1948 London Games - died on Tuesday, six days short of his 107th birthday. A remarkable statistic - involving an even more remarkable human being.

According to Bill Vanderool, writing in the American Rifleman magazine in October 2010, Walsh's 100th birthday party involved his family serving him three cakes, marking three key elements of his life. The first had the seal of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI); the second that of the United States Marine Corps; the third bore the five Olympic rings.

By the time Walsh experienced his first Olympics - at which he finished 12th in the 50 metres free pistol event - he was already 41, with a war record of conspicuous gallantry as a lieutenant colonel in the First Marine Division.

Before that, however, he was one of the first "G-men" (slang for Government men) with the FBI, which he joined in 1934 having graduated from Rutgers Law School.

According to a piece which appeared on the USA Shooting site to mark his 106th birthday on May 4 last year, Walsh was soon involved in tracking down many of the notorious crime figures of that age. As a 27-year-old rookie agent he discovered the body of Chicago gangster Baby Face Nelson after a shoot-out which had left two FBI agents dead.

A year later he helped to bring to justice Arthur "Doc" Barker of the infamous Barker Gang. Barker complained about being arrested by a "damn baby-faced kid". Later on the same day, Walsh shot and killed gangster Rusty Gibson.

In 1937, Walsh came close to being killed himself as he was working undercover as a salesman in a sporting goods store in Bangor, Maine to help bring down another criminal band - the Brady gang. In a shoot-out he took bullets to the chest and right hand before shooting gangsters James Dalhover and gang leader Al Brady.

Gangsters during the US Prohibition age - top left, Al Capone, top right, Machine Gun Kelly, bottom left Baby Face Nelson, bottom right Doc Barker, who Walsh brought to justice during his time as an FBI G-man ©AFP/Getty Images

Interviewed later about his FBI career, Walsh responded: "I thought to myself, this might be a good outfit to tie up with. I am not trying to pin medals on myself but the people in the FBI knew that I was very handy with firearms."

Those skills had been laid down when, as small child, he had begun shooting pegs off his aunt's clothesline with a BB gun which he exchanged at the age of 12 for a .22 calibre rifle which he used to shoot at rats in the city dump.

The firearm he used at the 1948 Olympics was uncommon in the United States at the time. Speaking to the highly respected US sports journalist Alan Abrahamson in 2011, Walsh recalled that during his Olympic competition there had been "the usual exchanges of friendship between members of the various teams. On some of the teams - I'm thinking of the Germans particularly - they spoke in a broken fashion better English than we did."

Walsh, who died of natural causes surrounded by his family at his Northern Virginia home, added: "You had these people competing. They were all trying to do the same thing. They were trying to speak to each other with various degrees of difficulty. It brings about a mixture between these people. You get by with stuttering and making hand movements. It was a great experience for me. And I enjoyed it."

Walsh returned to the Olympic fold at the 1972 Munich Games, where he served as team leader for USA Shooting, which won four medals.

The former G-man surpassed another American, Rudy Schrader, as the oldest Olympian ever on January 18, 2013. Schrader was a gymnast at the 1904 St Louis Olympics who died in 1981.

The oldest living Olympian is now Swiss Hans Erni, who participated in art competitions at the 1948 Olympics. The oldest living Olympian in a current Olympic sport is believed by Olympic historians to be 1936 Chinese discus thrower Guo Jie, who is 102.

Among the handful of living Olympic centenarians is Evelyn Furtsch Ojeda, who became the first US female Olympic champion to turn 100 on April 17 this year and is now, according to Olympic historians, the seventh oldest surviving Olympian.

Then 18, Furtsch Ojeda - who had been able to run at the Olympic trials in Chicago only thanks to the $190 raised door-to-door by the people of her hometown in Tustin, California - ran the second leg for the 4x100m relay team that won gold in the world record time of 46.9sec at the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics.

Speaking to garycohenrunning.com, Furtsch Ojeda recalled that the four women had never run together before and had practised baton exchanges during the Olympics at a local high school.

Anchored by six-foot blonde Wilhemina von Bremen, the US quartet won on a photo finish with Canada.

Furtsch Ojeda was an Olympic team-mate of Babe Didrikson Zaharias, who won the 80m hurdles and javelin and took silver in the high jump in Los Angeles.

Evelyn Furtsch Ojeda's 1932 Olympic team-mate Babe Didrickson Zaharias, pictured winning the javelin, said of herself 'I am the greatest' ©Getty Images

"[Zaharias] was always bragging about herself," Furtsch Ojeda told garycohenrunning.com. "Saying things like, 'I am the greatest. She didn't interact with me personally...she was the star and got all of the publicity!"

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 £12.99) is available at the insidethegames.biz shop. To follow him on Twitter click here.

Easter Monday brought one of those chance juxtapositions: FIFA Presidential candidate Jérôme Champagne's third campaign letter bounced into my inbox just as those rumours of David Moyes's impending departure from Manchester United started seriously swirling.

One of the many things that Moyes's fate demonstrates is that transition seasons are no longer acceptable among football's super-elite.

His ousting in this way helps to illustrate the validity of Champagne's point that a "financial iron curtain" now separates this tiny elite of which United is part from the remaining 99 per cent (or so) of clubs around the world.

But if Champagne's core observation, expressed with characteristic erudition, is uncontestable, does it automatically follow that his central conclusion - that a better balance is more than ever necessary - is uncontestable too? I am not so sure.

Instinctively, I have to say, I am with him: inequality on this scale cannot be healthy.

Then again, Champagne and I are around the same age. When I was a kid, the only way of seeing a complete football game was to visit the nearest club (or park).

Jérôme Champagne is correct to say there is financial inequality between the elite clubs and the rest, but his central conclusion is less of a given ©AFP/Getty Images



Nowadays, of course, you can see the world's finest players live and in close-up at the flick of a switch in the comfort of your living-room - and pretty much anywhere else.

Why, if you can afford the subscription fees, wouldn't you choose that option? Unless like me, and perhaps Champagne, and undoubtedly millions of others of similar vintage, you had acquired in your formative years a taste for watching honest triers flog through the mud as the blood-flow to your fingers and toes congealed to a trickle.

My love of the game stemmed more than anything from enjoyment of playing it. This seems to me the critical point: as long as boys and girls can still join local clubs to play, how much does it matter if the heroes who fill their dreams are from just up the street, or another continent?

Particularly in our rather stridently nationalistic times, you could argue that another continent is better, since it might foster a precocious appreciation of the benefits of multiculturalism and ethnic plurality.

Similarly, for that tiny proportion of kids gifted and dedicated enough to make a career in the game a viable option, isn't it ultimately better if the sport's structures enable them eventually to play at the level best befitting their talents, rather than being stuck with a comparatively mediocre club because it happens to be local?

This happens a lot, inevitably, in international football: Gareth Bale, like Ryan Giggs before him, may never grace a World Cup because he happens to be Welsh.

Gaerth Bale may never grace a Wolrd Cup in a Welsh shirt, so isn't it only fair that his talent is allowed to be seen on the world stage through his club football? ©Getty Images



So it redresses this particular balance if all players are free to find their natural level within the club game.

Yes, you can debate the age at which a big geographic move away from the immediate family environment should be deemed acceptable, but it is hard to argue against the principle of doing everything possible to enable players from whatever background to fly as high as they can in club football.

I suppose the key piece of evidence that would persuade many of us to side with Champagne over the imbalance issue that he identifies is if there were irrefutable proof that concentration of elite success in so few hands was damaging the game's popularity.

Perhaps surprisingly, I cannot see much of an indication that this is in fact the case.

Clearly live football is as big a draw as ever on TV; if it wasn't, broadcasting rights fees for the sport's most desirable programming would not have escalated in the way that they have.

And it is hard to make a watertight case that the increased predictability that goes along with financial polarisation is adversely affecting stadium attendances either.

Looking at the five big west European leagues that harbour the vast majority of the super-clubs, Germany's Bundesliga had record-breaking attendance levels of more than 44,000 a game in 2011-12; English Premier League attendances appear relatively stable at high proportions of capacity, in spite of high ticket prices; Spain's La Liga seems stable too, although Deloitte's annual review of football finance noted that, excluding Barcelona and Real Madrid, aggregate matchday revenue fell four per cent in 2011-12; Italian crowds are far below their late 1990s heyday, but are higher than in 2006-07 when average attendance in Serie A dropped below 20,000; in France attendances and matchday revenues have been sliding, although Germany's experience after hosting the 2006 World Cup suggests that the spate of stadium investment ahead of Euro 2016 may lead to a far healthier trend by the end of the decade.

Attendances for games in the five big European leagues, including the Bundesliga, are generally holding their own ©Bongarts/Getty Images



Then again, the spread of business sizes covered by Ligue 1 is now huge, with individual club revenues, excluding transfers, ranging in 2012-13 from around €20 million to €400 million.

I do fear that as the Champions League becomes ever richer and an ever more dominant focus of international attention, the competitiveness of national leagues - and let us remember that both England and Spain might have wholly unexpected champions this season - may be allowed to erode still further.

The rationale for this would be to ensure that there is a strong, experienced national competitor in the Champions League year in, year out.

If I were Barcelona or Real Madrid, this is one of the arguments I would be deploying to counter lobbying for a switch to a collective model for the sale of La Liga's broadcasting rights.

That said, I think that the danger of national competition being sacrificed on the altar of European competitiveness is greatest in the smaller leagues which are never likely to earn multiple Champions League slots.

For one or two national leagues - notably the Premier League – their global appeal may generate sufficient, broadly-enough distributed, income to forestall this.

But this too, as Champagne flags up, has a cost, if it slows the development of national leagues in countries whose populations are glued to the English title race.

For all these reasons I actually wonder if the "least worst" course might not be to go with the flow of present trends and allow the super-elite to set up their own self-contained European Super League if they want to.

There is every chance that this would be a compelling competition. And corralling the giants in this way might allow national leagues to become more unpredictable again.

There would also be drawbacks: national league competitors might be reduced to the status of feeder clubs and could be pauperised.

But I think the pros and cons are more finely balanced than many allow. I certainly don't think, as Champagne suggests, that creation of a "purely elitist NBA-style competition" would mean the end of football.

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.

When Simon Clegg arrives in Baku tomorrow it will mark another milestone in the remarkable career of a man who has become one of the most ubiquitous and significant players in sports administration.

The 54-year-old former British Olympic Association chief executive, who, as insidethegames reported yesterday, takes over from departing American Jim Scherr as chief operating officer for the inaugural European Games to be held in the Azerbaijani capital next year, has a career pedigree as impressive as any winner of Crufts. But he reckons this move is one which presents arguably the greatest challenge.

"I'm very clear about what my role is," he told me as we chatted in a Surrey hostelry on the eve of his departure. "When you consider it normally takes seven years to organise an Olympic Games, to deliver an event of this magnitude within a matter of months is no mean undertaking, particularly for a country with no great record of staging major events.

"You go to Azerbaijan feeling slightly apprehensive but you come away completely blown away by the investment they are making not only in sport but the whole nation for the quality of life for its people.

"So I have no doubt that Baku will produce something of which the city, the nation  and Europe will be very proud."

Simon Clegg has an impressive career pedigree that he will now use in the build-up to Baku 2015 ©Getty Images



Britain too, as the UK involvement is substantial.

Baku was chosen only in December 2012 to host the Games which were the brainchild of European Olympic Committee president Patrick Hickey. Up to now Clegg, originally hired in a special advisory capacity as executive director of the Games, had been spending a week every month in Baku.

He now moves there full time to assume the chief operating officer post following former United States Olympic Committee chief Scherr's surprise decision to return to the US to spend more time with his own marketing company.

One of Clegg's first tasks will be to help find a replacement for another American, the Games' prospective communications director Darryl Siebel, who did an outstanding job in a similar capacity for the BOA but following a disagreement with Baku over his commitment to the Sochi Winter Games opted out and has now become assistant director of sport at the University of Las Vegas.

Siebel had worked as chief communications officer at the United States Olympic Committee under Scherr between 2003 and 2009.

Few sports administrators have had a career as varied as former Army major "Cleggy", never one to dip his toe in at the shallow end. This ranges from managing the British biathlon team to becoming deputy general secretary and then chief executive of the BOA for 12 years, directing an IOC session in Birmingham, overseeing the 48-nation European Youth Olympic Festival in Bath and running Ipswich Town FC as its chief executive from 2009 to 2013 where daily dealings with one of the game's more combative managerial figures, Roy Keane, surely armed him for any confrontations that Baku might bring!

Working with Roy Keane (left) at Ipswich Town Football Club will have done Simon Clegg no harm for any confrontations he may face in Baku ©Getty Images



While at the BOA he led their political lobbying campaign to persuade a then reluctant British Government to back a bid for the 2012 Olympics. On returning from Singapore in 2005, where he was one of three British signatories on the 2012 host city contract, he led a meeting of Olympic national governing bodies and national agencies to set a target of aspiring to finish fourth in the 2012 medal table, one met in stunning fashion four years early.

Clegg, who was made a CBE in 2006 for his contribution to London's successful bid, also managed British teams at 12 Olympic Games, six as Chef de Mission, but in 2009 decided that a restructuring at the BOA left him no option but to leave in "bittersweet" circumstances after a total of 20 years.

However, he did secure a walk-on part in 2012 as the official Olympic attaché for the Pacific island of Guam!

Subsequently he became a consultant to Madrid's 2020 Olympic bid and is currently chairman of Great Britain Badminton and a member of the BOA executive board under new chairman Sebastian Coe.

And so to Baku, where he reminds us there are now only 13 months before curtain-up. "There have been Asian and Pan American Games since 1951 and All-African Games since 1976, but despite the athletic prowess and commercial strength of Europe there has never been a European Games," he says.

"This has been talked about for some years and it seemed a natural opportunity for Azerbaijan, who have twice bid unsuccessfully for the Olympics, and surely will bid again, to grasp with both hands as they were building the facilities anyway."

The Caspian Sea will provide a stunning backdrop to the street athletics during Baku 2015 ©AFP/Getty Images



The Games are expected to attract some 6,000 athletes from 49 countries - including Team GB - competing in 19 sports.

Some state-of-the-art stadiums exist, including the 60,000-seater national stadium are well under construction and others like the multi-purpose venue designated for archery, are being refurbished.

Guess who the archery centre is named after? The name Tofiq Bahramov will certainly be familiar to English and German football fans. For back in 1966, when Azerbaijan was part of the Soviet Union, it was the famously moustachioed figure of Bahramov who signalled the contentious third goal which secured England's World Cup victory at Wembley, unhesitatingly insisting Geoff Hurst's shot in extra time had crossed the line.

He remains Azerbaijan's most celebrated sporting figure.

Linesman Tofiq Bahramov, who played a crucial role in the destiny of the 1966 World Cup final, is Azerbaijan's most celebrated sporting figure with Baku's archery centre named in his honour ©Getty Images



"Think Paul Deighton [former LOCOG chief executive] but on a slightly smaller scale," is how Clegg describes his own role. "These are not a replica of the Olympic Games but they are important to the Olympics because several sports that will be ranking events for Rio 2016.

"The programme will be meaningful and dynamic, with some sports that are not currently in the Olympics such as karate and beach soccer.

"There will also be beach volleyball, boxing, judo, taekwondo, shooting, gymnastics, wrestling, volleyball, road and mountain cycling, BMX - and street athletics along boulevards with a background of the Caspian Sea. A tremendously atmospheric environment.

"This is a fantastic opportunity to be involved in moulding an event which will have a profound impact on European sport.

"For the past nine months I have been working closely with the Minister for Youth and Sport, Azad Rahimov. We have confidence in each other and complementary skills which we believe will deliver a very successful event on time.

"But we must remember this is not a marathon. It is now a sprint for the next 13 months."

Father-of-two Clegg will be joined by his wife Hilary for the duration in Baku where there are familiar faces among the administrative staff of 350, many recruited from LOCOG including another American, Doug Arnot, who was 2012's director of Games operations. Their jobs range from commerce to ceremonies.

"There is a great team in place and the opportunity to create something new is really exciting," adds Clegg, who once said of his own career: "There are a lot of people who talk the talk in British sport. I hope I walk the walk."

As far as staging prestigious international events is concerned, Baku is probably best known as host city for the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest, in which the UK's Engelbert Humperdinck finished a dismal 25th. The high expectation is that Simon Clegg's production number will be an infinitely bigger hit for Britain's reputation.

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.

Speaking as part of an extensive interview with insidethegames, International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) President Adham Sharara has claimed ever-increasing Chinese dominance is a "major problem" in the sport.

In December 2012, UK Sport announced its investment into elite sport for the Rio cycle until 2016.

GB women's water polo was awarded £4.5 million ($7.53 million/€5.54 million) for the four-year cycle.

UK Sport said it was investing in "42 summer Olympic and Paralympic sports with credible medal potential in 2016 or 2020".

The review process after the London Olympics, which led to these decisions, was described by the agency as "more detailed and robust than ever before, and the four year investment has been targeted to support an eight year athlete pathway where there is the greatest potential for medal success".

Yet in February 2014 UK Sport declared that we, along with a number of other sports, had no credible medal potential for 2016 or 2020. This meant that, as of May 6, 2014, there would be no further money.

So what happened in between these two announcements?

I was appointed as performance director in March 2013. I immediately made what, in my view, were the necessary changes for the run-up to Rio 2016.

This meant a significant increase in staff, including a new head coach, as we sought to make best use of the sizeable uplift in funding the sport had received.

The majority of players played abroad this season as they sought valuable experience among Europe's best. This was as a preliminary to the GB squad being centralised from May 2014, in a brand new high performance centre in Beswick, Manchester, for the last two years before the Games.

After Great Britain's women's water polo debut at London 2012, eyes were firmly fixed on competing at Rio 2016 ©AFP/Getty Images



Only two other countries have a similar centralised approach for their national teams, with others having professional club leagues that their Olympic athletes play in.

This two-year centralisation programme was to be fundamental to creating competitive advantage over our international rivals in preparation for Rio.

Unfortunately with zero funding, this will not now materialise.

We did miss our milestone target in 2013: we came 13th at the World Championships against a target of finishing in the top 12.

It is right and proper that milestone targets are a factor in the process by which UK Sport makes its annual assessments of the progress individual sports are making - but they are not the sole factor. Two other Olympic sports missed their milestone targets in 2013 yet received more funds following UK Sport's annual investment review.

We have been told that through their annual review, conducted between September 2013 and January 2014, UK Sport has re-evaluated our journey to Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020.

The people making these decisions need to get them right the first time - not just to ensure that public funds are used in an efficient and effective manner, but because of the huge human impact when prior commitments are reversed.

All bar one of my staff relocated from across the country to Manchester to join the programme. Our head coach brought his young family across from Greece only last November.

Even so, we all acknowledge that abrupt change can happen in any professional working sphere. I know that all these people will work through our dramatically changed circumstances and add value to future sports organisations.

The biggest impact is emotional.

For example, I received the news of the failure of our representation direct to the UK Sport Board as we landed back at Heathrow airport from a trip to Russia. Just 18 hours earlier, two 17-year-old squad members had made their senior international debuts. Telling them and the other players and staff the bad news was one of the worst moments of my professional life.

The British team did miss their target of a top-12 finish at the World Championships, but so did two other Olympic sports which have been given more funding ©Getty Images



I was, in effect, informing them that their Olympic hopes and dreams were over even before they had properly started.

For the older women, some of whom have been elite athletes for 10 years, the funding announcement brings about an enforced life change.

It can be difficult enough for athletes to stop/retire even when they are doing so at their own chosen time. When the decision is forced on them in this abrupt and dramatic way, it inevitably heightens concern and anxiety about how the transformation might affect them.

The approach taken by UK Sport to assisting these athletes in the transition has been a disappointment. All UK Sport-funded athletes receive Athlete Personal Awards (APAs) - financial support intended to enable them to meet the costs of being an elite athlete, and to focus on their training and competition. There is a range in the level of awards: the GB women's payments are between £650 ($1,100/€800) and £880 a month ($1,300/€975).

UK Sport has decided to stop these payments on June 15, although they have granted some extra finance for the squad to at least compete in the European Championships in the last two weeks of July.

Every athlete who left the GB programme in my time as performance director has received three months' APA after their leaving date to help them on their way in making the transition into a new career and lifestyle.

You cannot expect someone to give their all for their country one day and then walk straight into a new career and life the next.

In the wake of advice from the axed sports, UK Sport has now sought to put in place a supporting counselling service for athletes. It is vital that this service remains available not just from the immediate cessation of funding, but in months to come when the full reality of the situation may well make its greatest impact on the athletes.

The experience of water polo and the other axed sports raises the whole issue of athlete transition from Olympic and Paralympic competition. It needs a major reassessment.

Victory over world champions Spain this week shows what the British team is capable of
©Graeme Thompson



Many of the professional sports - rugby League, football, cricket and so on - have recognised that there are significant issues that need to be addressed. These sports have now put in place support networks for retiring and retired players.

Similar proactive structures need to be initiated and developed by UK Sport in conjunction with the governing bodies and programmes they invest into. This needs to be an obligation of the investment.

It is easy to walk alongside people when they have won medals, but the true test of any organisation/person is to walk alongside individuals in their darkest times.

For any athlete faced with stopping training/competing, regardless of how successful they have been, that moment when they are obliged to move outside their elite sport "bubble" can be the darkest time.

In the period of the last three months of trying to reverse the funding decision, while listening to the debate over its merits, the significant amount of support for our cause from the media, sporting figures and politicians has been heartening.

The debate over whether team sports should have a different funding approach is definitely merited as there is a dwindling number now being funded by UK Sport.

Other reasons for investment, such as the ability of sports like water polo and synchronised swimming to produce role models for youngsters, are important as well. I know what a big impact role models and a clear pathway into your preferred sport can have since I started my career as a sport development officer.

In my view, however, GB women's water polo merits funding from UK Sport on performance criteria alone. The squad is good enough to qualify for Rio and win a medal in Tokyo - the principles on which UK Sport made their initial investment.

I do not agree with UK Sport's revised assessment of our chances. That was even before our victory last Tuesday over world champions Spain.

The last three months have brought the full range of emotions for everyone associated with GB water polo.

It is not just the senior squad players who have felt anger, disappointment and frustration. These emotions are shared by the young athletes on our talent pathway from the age of 13, their parents and the volunteer personnel in schools and clubs whose commitment to the sport remains unstinting.

Standing out amongst all of those emotions is pride. I am very proud to have been the performance director to the GB women's water polo team, albeit for far too short a period. And I know the pride the players have taken in their sport as they pushed to surpass new boundaries of achievement.

Tuesday's win over Spain was a public demonstration of that.

They are a group of women who epitomise all that being a team should be and who have risen – together - to every challenge.

They move forward with self belief and respect, regardless of others' judgement of them, and they are right do so.

Graeme Thompson is performance director of the GB women's water polo team – until next Wednesday when he is due to be made redundant.

Shortly before making her sixth Olympic appearance at the London 2012 Games, Britain's archer Alison Williamson was asked if she planned to extend her career to the Rio 2016 Games.

"Never say never!" she responded, with a characteristic wide grin.

But this week, at the age of 42, the Athens 2004 individual bronze medallist has decided it is time to say "never" as she has announced her retirement from international competition.

Perhaps it might have been different had Williamson - who won individual and team silver at the 2010 Delhi Games - been able to have another crack at earning Commonwealth Games medals in Glasgow this summer. But archery - which has only appeared at the 1982 and 2010 Commonwealths in Brisbane and New Delhi respectively - was not included in the Glasgow 2014 programme.

Alison Williamson competing at the London 2012 Games - her sixth consecutive Olympics ©Getty Images

"I just couldn't continue to dedicate the hours needed to be competing at the top level any more," said Williamson, a primary school teacher from Stafford whose first Olympic success came aged 10 when she won silver at the Wenlock Olympian Games, the event established in 1850 by the Dr William Penny Brookes, which is credited as an inspiration for the modern Olympics.

"It has been an amazing journey. The sport has been a part of my life since I was six years old."

Williamson is a member of Long Mynd Archers in Church Stretton - a club founded by her parents, coaches Tom and Sue, who attended the London 2012 archery venue at Lord's cricket ground as volunteer Games Makers.

She was on the short-list to carry the British flag in the Opening Ceremony, and although that task eventually went to cyclist Sir Chris Hoy, she received an MBE for her services to archery in the 2012 Queen's Birthday Honours List.

Hers has been an historic achievement. She was only the third Briton to have competed at six Olympics following javelin thrower Tessa Sanderson, who won gold at her third Games in 1984, and fencer Bill Hoskyns, who competed from 1956 to 1976, winning two silver medals.

Tessa Sanderson, javelin winner at Los Angeles 1984, was the first British woman to compete in six Olympics ©Allsport/Getty Images

By dint of the London 2012 programme she was able to beat fellow Britons Nick Skelton and Mary King, show jumper and eventer respectively, to that Olympic mark.

Reflecting on her imminent landmark appearance, she commented: "Some people watch television and dream about getting to the Olympics. I have just been very fortunate to get the chance to do six."

A year before London, Williamson told me, with a rising giggle that seemed at odds with the serious, concentrating persona on display during her competitions, how watching television played a significant part in her preparations for events where noisy spectators sometimes provide a potential distraction to the concentration of the archers.

Such had been the case, for example, at the 2010 Delhi Games, where Williamson, Amy Oliver and Naomi Folkard were narrowly beaten by India in the team event after a final where noisy and on occasions untimely support for the home nation appeared to affect the English efforts, most critically when the 23-year-old Oliver only managed to score six out of 10 in the final round.