Two days in Sochi so far aside, I have never covered an Olympic Games before so, like many others, I have been reliant on television and images for my Olympic memories.

This was a theme explored in an insidethegames blog last week by my colleague Mike Rowbottom who described how for him Games of the past are a "slide show" of iconic images and recollections.

After the splendour of Russia's Torch Relay and its trips to the North Pole, Outer Space, Lake Baikal and Mount Elbrus - not to mention the recent influx of visuals documenting the arrival of athletes in Sochi - we expect this fresh onslaught of iconic images to continue over coming weeks.

But what of the photographers who actually take these images? What are their motivations and challenges and how has their job changed over time?

I must admit that, during my time as a journalist, I have not paid too much attention to their plight and the interaction that has occurred has tended to involve a photographer's frustrated protests after a snapping opportunity was prevented by my uncaring, if innocent, intrusions.

One particular example of this arose during the Flame Lighting Ceremony in Ancient Olympia last year when I, along with one journalistic colleague, managed to arrive at the crucial moment to photograph the handover of the Torch to ice hockey superstar Alexander Ovechkin and in doing so position myself directly in front of photographers who had spent all morning patiently waiting to ensure a perfect view.

There is also a slightly dismissive element on our part I feel due to the fact that we manage to not only take photos but write articles as well. But the validity of any superiority complex is of course nonsense and there is a world of difference between taking photos on a camera phone and taking them with the volume, precision and complexity of a Getty Images cameraman.

Besides, I struggle to believe that a professional photographer would spend half an hour baffled at a camera showing a black screen only for it to turn out that a piece of paper was blocking the lens - as the insidethegames team did en route to Sochi...

Photographers will be there for every second of Sochi 2014, as they were the for the Olympic Torch departure for Outer Space last year ©AFP/Getty Images


Luckily an opportunity arose to speak to Getty photographer Alexander Hassenstein to understand more about how exactly this advanced world operates.

Hassenstein joined the Berlin-based sports paper Deutsches Sportecho in 1990 after completing a classical traineeship in photography. He has since worked for Bongarts, as well as Getty, and has covered 11 Olympic Games and three FIFA World Cups alongside a multitude of other events - receiving numerous awards along the way.

He will be focusing on Alpine skiing in Sochi as part of 69 strong Getty team who will be uploading more than 2,000 pictures per day.

"In terms of sport nothing has changed during my career - it is still about athletes, competition and Olympic values", Hassenstein explains to insidethegames with a kind of youthful enthusiasm that you would have assumed nigh on 25 years in the industry would have quelled. "But in terms of photography there has been huge progress."

After starting with frames and slides and having to wait overnight before looking at prints in the morning, Getty are now "leaders sending pictures around the world immediately". 

I have been finding out about the 1920 Olympic ice hockey tournament.

Two reasons: 1. it was the first; 2. it was part of a Summer, not a Winter, Olympics.

Because of this I thought it might bolster the case for a reform I tend to bang on about at this point in the Olympic cycle: namely that the respective sizes of the Summer and Winter Games should be evened up by transferring some indoor sports - volleyball, handball, track cycling - from Summer to Winter.

After all, if ice hockey could glide smoothly from one to another 90 or so years ago, why shouldn't other sports make the same transition today?

I expect, if it ever happened, the sports chosen to make the switch would shout and scream, but to me it is almost a no-brainer for the Movement.

If ice hockey can feature in the Summer Olympics, why can't sports like track cycling be moved to the Winter Games? ©AFP/Getty Images



At a stroke you could make the Summer Olympics significantly less unwieldy, while adding greatly to the appeal of the Winter Games in parts of the world where the water never freezes.

Such a reform might also be used to ease the passage of more new, youth-friendly sports and disciplines - squash, say, or 3x3 basketball - into the Olympics by offering them a place on the Winter programme, as opposed to its overcrowded Summer counterpart.

In point of fact, that 1920 tournament is not as much help in buttressing my argument as I had hoped.

For one thing, as many of you will instantly have spotted, there was no such thing as the Winter Olympics in 1920; the first was held at Chamonix in 1924.

For another, the sporting calendar was considerably less crowded in those days, and John Logie Baird's first demonstration of moving silhouette images by television was still five years away.

There was hence no obstacle to events at a single Games being spread over several months, in this case from April to September, with the ice hockey confined to late April.

No matter; this inaugural Olympic tournament seems to have been a fascinating affair in its own right, not least because the Czechoslovakian team were able to skate away with the bronze medals in spite of a scoring aggregate of one goal for and 31 against.

Before the first Winter Olympics in 1924, the Antwerp Games of 1920 saw the first ice hockey tournament staged ©Getty Images

As implied by that sort of statistic, the competition had a built-in imbalance owing to the fact that the sport was, at that time, much better established across the Atlantic than in Europe.

The two North American teams - Canada and the United States - were therefore far stronger than the five European entrants - Czechoslovakia, Sweden, France, host nation Belgium and Switzerland.

The US actually beat the Swiss 29-0.

That said, most of the players who represented Canada - members of the Winnipeg Falcons club - were of Icelandic heritage.

Iceland itself has still never won an Olympic gold medal, the closest it has come being the silvers picked up by triple jumper Vilhjálmur Einarsson at the Melbourne Games of 1956 and the men's handball team six years ago in Beijing.

So perhaps it should claim some credit for that one.

The tournament's hard luck story was provided by Sweden, who won three games, and even managed a goal against the mighty Canadians, yet finished out of the medals after losing the key match 1-0 to the Czechs.

They seem, above all, to have been victims of the competition's strange structure, which saw them play six matches in seven days, and the Czechs only three.

After falling behind early in this crucial encounter, they appear, nevertheless, to have dominated the match without once being able to score.

Ice hockey at the Winter Olympics has gone from strength to strength, with the Canadian team winning at home in Vancouver in 2010 ©Getty Images



A splendid paper on the tournament by Kenth Hansen, entitled The Birth of Swedish Ice Hockey - Antwerp 1920, relates that according to Dagens Nyheter, a Swedish newspaper, the shot-count was 48-2 in Sweden's favour.

The 24-page document, available here.

It seems that in Sweden at this time, while a not dissimilar sport called bandy was widely practiced, ice hockey was not.

Assembly of an Olympic team had, therefore, to be done from scratch, to the extent that sticks had to be ordered from the US.

As Hansen writes: "The sticks arrived by SS Stockholm at the beginning of February, but were held up in the customs at Gothenburg.

"Several customs officers had been suspended because of theft of incoming goods, and the sticks remained in Gothenburg for the entire ice training period...

"Thus bandy sticks had to be used during training, which naturally made it hard to achieve the right stick technique until the proper American sticks finally arrived."

Getting to the Games does not sound a whole lot easier. Writes Hansen:

"The team travelled by third class train via Trelleborg and Sassnitz to Berlin, where Molander and Säfwenberg joined the team.

"The sight of the star player Nisse Molander was somewhat of a shock.

"He had had a cerebral haemorrhage, and was still so ill that he had to be led onboard the train."

Molander nevertheless played four of his team's six matches.

The tournament's defining clash was the fifth of the 10 games, the showdown between the US and Canada, which the Canadians won 2-0.

The clash between Canada and the USA was the defining moment of the Antwerp 1920 tournament...the two nations world meet again four years later at the first Winter Games in Chamonix ©Getty Images



Hansen quotes at length the report of a Swedish journalist, capturing the electric impact that what he calls "the best game yet seen in Europe" must have had on spectators in the sold-out stands of Antwerp's Ice Palace.

"Every single player on the rink was a perfect acrobat on skates," the report reads.

"The small puck was moved at an extraordinary speed around the rink in all directions, so that the spectators almost became giddy, and the players fought for it like seagulls that flutter about after bread crusts from a boat."...

The goalkeepers "had an inconceivable ability to be in the right position to fend off the [puck], even before the spectators had had time to realize there had been a shot.

"A few times the Canadian goalkeeper had to stop the puck with his hand, and despite his thick gloves his fingers were smashed until they bled."

Breathtaking stuff.

It has been largely forgotten today, but I would say that first US v Canada Olympic ice hockey match deserves to rank alongside Finnish long-distance runner Paavo Nurmi's three gold medals and one silver, Italian Nedo Nadi's five fencing golds and 72-year-old Swede Oscar Swahn's gold in shooting, making him the oldest Olympic champion, among the highlights of those Antwerp Games.

An outstanding website devoted to the first Canadian Olympic ice hockey champions may be found by clicking here.

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. To follow Owen on Twitter click here.

Close your eyes and think of the Olympic Games. What do you see? An image. It has to be. Of something.

In just over a week, the Sochi Winter Olympics will add infinite additional pictures to that potential store and the media's great game within the Games is already underway: that of predicting where and when the enduring images of this latest global sporting gathering will present themselves. As the Olympic flame makes its way through the volatile Chechnya region en route to its coastal venue, let us all hope those images will have to do solely with the world of sport.

For me, and doubtless many others, Games past are like a slide show. I close my eyes and select - Sydney 2000. Click. Australia's victorious 400m runner Cathy Freeman sitting on the track, momentarily emptied of all emotion, the eye in a storm of approbation for a hugely anticipated home gold medal performance.

A stunned Cathy Freeman takes in her achievement in winning the Olympic 400m title in front of a home crowd at the Sydney 2000 Games ©AFP/Getty Images

Click. The face of a friendly woman volunteer at the Dunc Gray velodrome who tells me, regretfully, that she wasn't supposed to speak to me. Never could work out why. Click. Haile Gebrselassie and Paul Tergat, side by side in the final 10 metres of the 10,000 metres, teeth bared, greats in extremis.

And select - Lillehammer 1994. Click. Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan on the same practice ice at the Hamar Arena amid the media frenzy over the attack on Kerrigan of which Harding was suspected to have had foreknowledge. Apparently oblivious to each other as every spectator in the venue makes the connection between them.

Click. The stricken expression on the face of British short track skater Wilf O'Reilly as he explains how his skate blade has broken for the second time during competition.

Tonya Harding (left) and Nancy Kerrigan not noticing each other during practice before their skating event at the 1994 Lillehammer Winter Games ©AFP/Getty Images

And select - Salt Lake City 2002. Click. The ceiling of the dark and claustrophobia-inducing passageway through which I had to process with a dense mass of people en route to the stadium for the Games Opening Ceremony.

Click. The figure of Australian short track skater Steven Bradbury gliding gently over the finish line as the rest of the field lay next to the barriers where they had slid on the final bend of the 1,000m final. The last man standing could have skated over the line backwards to claim gold, had he wished.

Australia's Steven Bradbury, last man standing in the 1,000m short track speed skating final at the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Games, glides over the line to claim gold ©Getty Images

Click. Sheryl Crow complaining about the cold as she played one of the outdoor concerts for Games goers. (What did she expect? Sunshine?)

Night after night at the London 2012 Games camera lights flickered around the packed Olympic arena as those packed in to watch the action in person garnered their own special images. The passage of those who thronged the concourses during those broadly - and mercifully - warm summer weeks would be halted on a random but frequent basis as people stopped to grab pictures on their mobiles. Millions and millions of images...

Among those collecting, but in a more orderly and perhaps more serious fashion, was Lidia Lundy, a young Russian woman who had moved to London some years earlier with a view to becoming involved in the 2012 Games, and who was one of the Games Makers who helped make the Olympicsa and Paralympics such a warm and successful occasion, working principally at the North Greenwich (O2) Arena.

Games Makers at the London 2012 Games featured in new book Inspired By The Games ©Lidia Lundy

There she joined a team which included Mike Blake, a former British Olympic Association employee. He was renewing his connection with the Olympics more than 30 years after being involved in the controversy over whether British competitors should boycott the 1980 Moscow Olympics, in line with the wishes of the British - and, of course, American - Government in the wake of Russia's invasion of Afghanistan.

Photographs taken in and around the Games by Lidia have now been published in a book entitled Inspired By The Games - Images of London 2012 (Indigo, £12.49, available via [email protected]. Blake has written a foreword article recalling the shortlived plans drawn up by the BOA's then chairman, Sir Denis Follows - encouraged by the Greater London Council leader Horace Cutler - for the capital to host the 1988 Olympics, thus preserving a 40-year cycle following the 1908 and 1948 Games.

Good idea. Bad time. Once the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan took place the then US President Jimmy Carter insisted on the US boycotting the Moscow Games of 1980 and, in Blake's words, "seduced Britain's relatively new Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher into expressing support."

The US President, Jimmy Cartner, persuaded Margaret Thatcher to support his idea of boycotting the 1980 Moscow Games in protest at the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan ©AFP/Getty Images

The article's headline: "Thirty-one glorious days that were thirty-four years in the making..." points the way to the joyous celebration which took place not 40 but 64 years after the 1948 London Olympics, which is itself celebrated in Lundy's pictures.

In Lundy's own recollections, life at the Games is described as "an every day festival". She adds: "I wouldn't call it a job, even after a 10-12 hour working day at the North Greenwich Arena. I gave it all, I took it all and I am happy to look back on these 'the best of times' and to share my personal images with you."

The images themselves chime in with many of the enduring memories of these Games - the excitement around the venues, the helpfulness and cheerfulness of the Games Makers, the stupendous scale of the Opening Ceremony, with its Mary Poppins figures, pictured here during the rehearsal, apparently floating down into the Stadium from the night sky, and, at the heart of things, the colour and conflict of Olympic and Paralympic competition, with much of the former being contributed by the crowds who flocked in each night to the North Greenwich Arena for gymnastics, trampoline, basketball and wheelchair basketball.

The National Health Service showcased at the Opening Ceremony rehearsal and captured in the lens of a Russian Games Maker ©Lidia Lundy



These are evocative images of the last Olympics. Now prepare for the latest batch...

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.

Vladimir Putin himself made the final push in Sochi's Olympic bid when he made a speech to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in Guatemala in 2007.

"The bid has enthusiastic support of the whole of Russia," he told the membership in an address in the Olympic languages of French and English.

It is was  a far cry from the early years of the Modern Olympic Movement.  

Russian General Alexei Dimitrievich Butowski , a founder member of the IOC, resigned, frustrated by the lack of enthusiasm in his homeland. "There is still a good deal of indifference to the cause of physical education generally, here in Russia," he said upon resigning.

Matters improved before the first world war as Russia founded a National Olympic Committee , but  after the October Revolution of 1917, the Party Commissars were suspicious of the Olympic Movement. In the inter-war years, Russia did not take part in the Olympics.

It was not until after the Second World War that sporting contact resumed. The Dynamo Moscow football team attracted huge crowds when they visited Britain.The Soviets did not send a team to London in 1948, but in 1951, the IOC voted  overwhelmingly to welcome them into the fold in time for the Helsinki Olympics .

By the end of the decade, Russians had become major players in Olympic sport and in 1960, at the IOC Session in Rome, Moscow was chosen ahead of Nairobi to stage the 1962 meeting of  the Olympic family.

Leonid Breshnev addressed the IOC Session the first time it was held in Russia in Moscow in 1962 ©Hulton Archive/Getty Images

The meeting was held in early 1962, a few months before the Cuban missile crisis reached its climax.

"No other country has made such a tremendous advance in such a short period," said IOC President Avery Brundage. "It has undoubtedly been due to the strong and broad foundation which has been laid in the last 40 years.

"Soviet people regard the opening of this session in the capital of the Soviet Union - Moscow - as recognition of the contribution made by athletes of our country and their organisation," said Leonid Breshnev, then chairman of the Praesidium of the supreme Soviet as he greeted the members

Political interference in Sport was a cause for concern at that session. The minutes talk of a "lengthy debate".

At the time, East and West Germany competed under a single flag and it was reported that Dr Ritter Von Halt, an  IOC member in West Germany, "gives a solemn undertaking that a unified German team is to participate in the 1964 Games in Tokyo."

The question of the two Koreas was rather more delicate. Provisional recognition had been given to the North, and the IOC proposed to ask South Korea, Olympic participants since 1948, if they would agree to a united Korean team.

They clearly expected the worst. "In the event of a negative reply...North Korea would be entitled to participate in 1964 as an independent team."

In fact the question did not arise. The North Koreans were excluded from  the Tokyo Olympics because they attended the unsanctioned Games of the New Emerging Forces (GANEFO) held in Jakarta in 1963.

This was an era when many  former colonies became independent. Jamaica, Trinidad and Barbados prepared for political independence, the IOC recognised their new National Olympic Committees. Mongolia and Dahomey - now known as Benin - also joined the Olympic Movement for the first time.

The membership of the IOC also had a growing number of members from African and Asian countries. For them, something had to be done about South Africa.

The Pretoria Government  enforced a strict apartheid regime which excluded much of its population from Olympic participation on racial grounds. This meeting decided, in what described as a "vast majority", to do something about South Africa.

In Moscow, the IOC resolved that "if the policy of racial discrimination practised by their government in this respect does not change before our Session in Nairobi in October 1963, the International Olympic Committee will be obliged to SUSPEND this Committee."

No significant progress was made and although the IOC sent working parties to try and resolve the problems, South Africa did not again take part in the Games until after Nelson Mandela walked free from prison.

South Africa were suspended from the Tokyo 1964 Olympics because of its apartheid policies and did not return until Barcelona 1992 following the release of Nelson Mandela
©Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Before the end of the session Constantin Adrianov was elected to the IOC Executive Board. He was the first from Russia to achieve such a post. It was a significant move for a country that was starting to think about staging the Olympic Games.

Moscow's eventual bid for the 1976 Olympics was unsuccessful, but in the early  seventies, as the political climate between East and West thawed, they tried again. Moscow staged the 1973 World University Games and in 1974, it was chosen by the IOC as host city for 1980.

The Games of the XXII Olympiad were to be a great coming out party for the Soviet Union. As part of the programme, an IOC session would  be again be staged in Moscow. The highlight would be the election of the a IOC President to succeed Lord Killanin.

The whole character of the Moscow Olympics changed shortly after Christmas 1979. Soviet tanks rolled into Afghanistan. Within days United States President Jimmy Carter had called for a boycott in protest. This was supported by West Germany, Canada and Japan. Despite pressure from their respective Governments, the British Olympic Association and its counterparts in Australia and New Zealand fought hard against political intervention and teams, albeit smaller than usual, took part in Moscow.

The Opening Ceremony of the IOC Session was held at the magnificent home of the Bolshoi Ballet.

It was to be the last time that Lord Killanin would address his colleagues as President of the IOC. "I deeply regret that many athletes, either through political dictation or the dictates of their own  consciences are not here with us at the Games," he said.

Although US did not compete, there were Americans in Moscow. The Winter Olympics earlier that year had taken place in Lake Placid and the Organising Committee were required to present their report. This was not done by the President of the Organising Committee but by Patrick Sullivan, legal advisor to the United States Olympic Committee.

The 1984 Organising chief Peter Ueberroth was also in the Russian capital. He  led a small group which presented a progress report on the Los Angeles Games.

"We knew we'd be treated as outcasts, " he wrote later. The boycott meant his backroom staff were denied the opportunity to  watch the operational side of an Olympic Games at close hand.

Moscow 1980 was heavily hit by the United States-led boycott and created a unique set of ceremonial problems for the IOC ©Allsport/Getty Images

A ceremonial matter caused unexpected problems for the IOC. Three flags  are raised at the Closing Ceremony to represent  past, present and future Games. The White House had made it clear that they did not wish the stars and stripes to be flown. Eventually, after Killanin and senior Executive Board members had discussed the problem, it was agreed that the flag of the City of Los Angeles could be flown instead.

Eighteen European National Olympic Committees had also decided not to use national flags or anthems, a measure followed by the Australian and New Zealand teams. The IOC gave their agreement to this.

By the time they left Moscow in 1980, the Olympic family also had a new leader. Four men contested the presidency Willi Daume from West Germany, Marc Hodler from Switzerland, James Worrall from Canada and Juan Antonio Samaranch, most recently Spanish Ambassador to Moscow. New Zealander Lance Cross withdrew his candidacy before the vote.

On the day before his 60th birthday ,Samaranch won on the first ballot. It was the last time an election would be held during a Session in Olympic year.

The Spaniard was to lead the IOC for 21 years and ushered in a new era of commercialisation. He finally  stood down in 2001, when, with remarkable  symmetry, the Olympic family met in Moscow once again. As the Movement gathered at the Bolshoi for the opening it  grown beyond all recognition. There were now 199 member nations and Samaranch had visited them all.

"I have endeavoured to build a united Olympic Movement. I am aware nevertheless that this unity is fragile and that it must be constantly protected," said Samaranch. He had used his diplomatic background to try and head off political boycotts.

One of his final acts was to open the envelope and reveal the host city for Beijing as the host city for 2008. Though he did not vote in the ballot, Samaranch had made no secret of his desire to take the Games to China.

Fittingly, Juan Antonio Samaranch stood down as IOC President at 2001 Session in Moscow, 21 years after having been elected in the Russian capital ©AFP/Getty Images

Moscow also became the first city to witness the election of two IOC Presidents.

The ballot was the most competitive to date with five candidates. Jacques Rogge of Belgium won on the second round of voting.

Back in 2001, the preparations for the Athens 2004 Olympics were a cause for concern. Rogge reported that the Games were" back on track" after a crisis in the previous year but advised vigilance from the IOC.

A  future host city  looks certain to be under the spotlight again when the 126th  IOC Session opens at the Radisson Blu Resort & Congress Centre in Sochi. New IOC President Thomas Bach has already warned  Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff  that the Olympic schedule for Rio 2016 was "incredibly tight" .

Now he takes charge of what is effectively the annual general meeting of the IOC for the first time. He has already called for changes to the Movement to develop  what he calls "a road map for the Olympic Movement".

Born in Hackney, a stone's throw from the 2012 Olympic Stadium, Philip Barker has worked as a television journalist for 25 years. He began his career with Trans World Sport, then as a reporter for Sky Sports News and the ITV breakfast programme. A regular Olympic pundit on BBC Radio, Sky News and TalkSPORT, he is associate editor of the Journal of Olympic History, has lectured at the National Olympic Academy and contributed extensively to Team GB publications.

Back in September 1981 a Norwegian football commentator  named Bjorge Lillelien became something of a legend when he famously screeched after Norway had shocked England with a 2-1 victory in Oslo: "Queen Elizabeth, Lord Nelson, Sir Winston Churchill, Lady Diana, Maggie Thatcher...your boys took a hell of a beating tonight!"

Those words came back to haunt the equally stunned Norwegian nation less than a fortnight ago when a young Brit, Andrew Musgrave, astonishgly beat them at their own game of cross-country skiing to win their national sprint championship, finishing ahead of their own Olympic prospects.

That night he went on Norwegian national television where he had been the lead news item, and impishly declared: "King Harald, Prime Minister Solberg, Thort Heyerdahl...your boys took a hell of a beating today."

To say the Norwegians were gobsmacked is an understatement. But speechless as they were, they had to appreciate the irony of the situation once they realised it was snow joke.

A bit of a card is our Andrew, a 23-year-old born in Dorset, raised in Scotland and Alaska, where his father worked in the oil industry, and joining a ski school in southern Norway before beginning an engineering degree in Trondheim.

There he has become as fluent in Norwegian as he obviously is in skimming across their snowy terrain.

Musgrave's elder sister Posy, 27, also a Team GB member in the Nordic events, was ecstatic after observing his achievement. "The best guys in the country were there and he just skied away from them, no-one could respond," she says. "Watching it was amazing, seeing the astounded Norwegian commentators."

Four years ago in Vancouver Musgrave had finished 58th as a teenage debutant.

Now, after intensive training in Norway, Musgrave says he feels "much stronger and faster", a statement with which the bemused Norsemen he left in his wake will concur.

Could it be that Musgrave now will emerge as Britain's most unlikely Winter Olympics hero?

He is certainly my tip to be one of the personalities of Sochi 2014.

Britain's Andrew Musgrave caused a major surprise when he won the Norwegian Cross Country Championships ©Getty Images

So who else might grab us by the snowballs once the Games begin next week?

I have gathered the views of an assortment of Summer and Winter Olympians past and present and the result is a fascinating cross-section of opinion  from those who appreciate the pressures of attempting to clamber aboard the podium.

First up,  Lord Coe, double 800 metres gold medallist who is now chair of the British Olympic Association. He believes Musgrave could be one of Sochi's most popular characters but opts for team-mate James Woods as the snowman most likely to spring a surprise.

"And that's not just because like me he comes from Sheffield and went to the same school .He's 18-years-old. a fun guy, quite small but really talented. He won a silver medal at  2013  Freestyle World Cup and if he wins a gold medal in Sochi he'll be a household name, and not just in Sheffield!"

Another Steel City star, Jessica Ennis-Hill,  the Olympic heptathon champion, also goes for a local choice, telling insidethegames: "Off the back of the success of Team GB in the London OIympics there is a lot of talk of medal hopes for the team in Sochi - and none more so for my good friend Shelley Rudman in the skeleton.

"We both train in Sheffield at the English Institute of Sport and when she is home work out in the gym together.

"Shelley is a complete inspiration - she has already won a silver medal at the Turin [2006] Winter Games and as a mum of Ella is balancing being a full time athlete with being an amazing mother. She is going into Sochi as the reigning world champion in skeleton and I know she will be expecting a lot from herself - she is the ultimate professional and has so much experience and will be leaving no stone unturned in her preparation.

"She will have it all worked out in her head. I will be tuned in to watch her; and not to forget Shelley's fiancé Kristan Bromley too. Kristan is a former world champion and is has been to three Olympics before.

"I wish everyone in the team lots of luck and hope that in just a small way the success of the team in the summer will be an inspiration to them all."

Shelley Rudman, a silver medallist at Turin 2006, will be among the favourites again at Sochi 2014 ©Getty Images

Unsurprisingly, the last Briton to win a Winter Olympics gold medal, Amy Williams ,suggests not Rudman but the more in-form Brit Lizzy Yarnold, current World Cup skeleton champion, to succeed her on  the top rung of the Sochi podium: "Lizzy has totally dominated the World Cup series this winter and if she can keep in that bubble at the Olympics she'll be untouchable.

"I like to think I've given her some help and advice. She is a raw talent, strong and powerful and someone who really enjoys the sport.

"She also happens to a friend and a tenant of mine as she lives in a flat I own in Bath."

When I caught the legend that is Franz Klammer hiking half-way up a mountain in his native Austria his first words were: "Give my regards to my good friend Seb Coe. We go way back and I look forward to renewing our acquaintance in Sochi."

The now 60-year-old "Kaiser Franz," was to the downhill what Coe was to middle-distance running. Olympic champion in 1976 and prolific winner of 25 World Cup downhill competitions. 

He is looking forward to see if the American veteran Bode Miller can win another Olympic gold at 35.

"I consider him one of the the greatest skiers of all time.,and one of the most exciting I have ever seen both in the downhill and Super G.

"I believe he is the most decorated Olympic skier in American history with five medals,  including one of every colour at the 2010 [Vancouver] Games. There will be many outstanding skiers in Sochi but in my opinion  Miller is still the one to watch."

South Korea's Yuna Kim will be favourite at Sochi 2014 to defend the title she won at Vancouver 2010 ©Getty Images

For Robin Cousins, Olympic figure skating gold medalist in 1980, the personality he thinks will captivate the TV viewers will be the defending  women's champion Yuna Kim, of South Korea. "She is the grand dame of skating, a beautiful woman on and off the ice. She  has such a graceful, classic style.

"There are some other excellent skaters, notably the Russians, but they are mainly kids. This contest is a woman versus girls and I take the woman  to win and become the world's skating sweetheart."

The all-Scottish women's curling team, skipped by bagpipe-playing Eve Muirhead, is favoured to emulate the golden glory of the squad led by Rhona Martin at Salt Lake City in 1992. Rhona, who has reverted to her maiden name of Howie, following a divorce, agrees GB hopes are high when it comes to the rolling stones but warns that Muirhead faces a crucial tactical battle of wits with the Canadian skip Jennifer Jones.

"She [Jones] is  very experienced  and very flamboyant- a real character. She is a a 39-year-old mother and a qualified lawyer who is not afraid to  take risky shots and plays the big angles cleverly.

"She and Eve know each other well and faced each other only last week in in the Inter-Continental Cup, which GB won. Eve is always cool under pressure while Jennifer is very demonstrative. Theirs should be an intriguing tussle."

Sir Steve Redgrave, five-times Olympic rowing gold medallist and a great winter sports enthusiast, is backing the British snowboardert  Zoe Gillings to provide the wow factor

"She deserves a taste of glory at last. I believe this is her third Games but she has struggled for funding. She's had to find the money to keep going  which is hard at the latter end of her career. But this seems to have given her quite a lot of focus.

"I can empathise with her as her situation has been rather like that of British  rowing at the start of my own career when we struggled for funding in the sport. I have a sneaking feeling Zoe might do quite well. I certainly hope so."

Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards continues to be one of the most popular athletes ever to compete in the Winter Olympics despite the fact it happened 26 years ago ©Allsport/Getty Images

Finally, we must not overlook the Eagle who dared in Calgary 26 years ago - Eddie Edwards..

Still treated as a pariah by the unamused  BOA and ignored by the BBC as a pundit for the Winter Olympics, he  continues to land on his feet, regularly trousering a good few bob on the back of his low flying feat.

After donning budgie-smugglers to win ITV's "Splash" he is currently on the  box again  every night this week in yet another "celeb" sports reality show, teaching  a dozen  or so notables from comics to cricketers how to become winter sports wonders on Channel 4's "Jump".

With fellow former Olympians Amy Williams and Graham Bell is in  Austria coaching , among others, Sir Steve Regrave,  Darren Gough, Anthea Turner, Marcus Brigstock and a Pussycat Doll in how to survive the perils of the downhill, speed skating and the skeleton. And, of course, ski jumping.

No Eagle to titillate us with his flight of fancy in Sochi but Edwards suggests we'll be glued to the box whenever the equally intrepid Japanese Noriaki Kosai, at 41 thought to be the world's oldest ski jumper, is poised to do his fling. "Kasai has competed in six Olympics during his career - a record for a ski jumper and I would love to see him finally get on the podium on either the small or big hill. Watch him take off. He has a crazy style-they don't call, him 'Kamikaze' for nothing."

Edwards adds: "I'm 50 now, and I'd  love to be jumping in Sochi but the  BOA don't want to know. But I reckon I could qualify for the 2018 Games in Pyeonchang. I'm lighter and fitter than I was in Calgary and I reckon I could jump further. All I need is a sponsor."

Might Ryanair be interested, as they also often land some distance from the destination?

There may be some eminently watchable personalities in Sochi but none will ever grab us by the snowballs quite like dear old Eddie.

Alan Hubbard is an award-winning  sports columnist for the 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.

In contrast to the predictability of other areas of life, one reason why so many of us are enthused by sport is in its ability to produce shocks and upsets as well as opportunities for that most athletic of concepts - the underdog.

While history documents several remarkable near-misses - the 19th century Zulus against the might of the British Empire and the Abyssinians against the Italians several decades later for example - a Darwinian concept of "survival of the fittest" inevitably prevails in war and conflict.

Similar traits can be found in both business and politics and, while the reality-television driven entertainment industry today revels in a "rags to riches" underdog storyline, it tends to do so in a far more artificial, clichéd and manufactured way than that found on a sporting field.

I was reminded of this by the remarkable success of Stanislas Wawrinka in slaying the three giants of Novak Djokovic, Tomas Berdych and Rafael Nadal to win the Australian Open yesterday, and also by last week's announcement that the Jamaican bobsleigh will revive their Olympic journey in Sochi for the first time since Salt Lake City 12 years ago.

An underdog story does not get much better than a tropical country competing at a Winter Olympic Games and this particular one was made particularly famous by the wonderful Disney film Cool Runnings.

Loosely based on the true story of the Jamaicans' Olympic debut at Calgary 1988, Cool Runnings chronicles four failed sprinters who convert to bobsleigh to pursue an Olympic dream and are gradually transformed from no-hopers into respectable medal contenders who miss out only when reality dawns in the form of a devastating crash.

The real Jamaican bobsleigh team compete at their first Winter Olympics at Calgary in 1988 ©Getty Images


Another of my all-time favourite films is the equally entertaining, if slightly sillier, sporting underdog story DodgeBall. Members of a struggling and dilapidated gym enter a tournament in Las Vegas in a desperate attempt to win the finances necessary to survive a rival taking over the gym. Despite their seeming lack of athletic ability they learn the "five d's of dodgeball" - "dodge, duck. dip, dive...and dodge" - and improve to win the tournament in exhilarating fashion.

Of course in real life sport, as with other fields, produces shocks much less often and in the professional world of today it is the teams or individuals with the best support, finance and opportunities who prevails most of all.

Most Winter Olympians from tropical countries, for example, will finish well behind the European and North American powers because they simply do not have the facilities, coaches and, dare I say it, snow to compete at that level. Even Jamaican bobsleigh's best success came only in the relative height of 14th place at the Lillehammer 1994 Games.

Some of the most famous Olympic underdogs, Equatorial Guinean swimmer Eric "the Eel" Moussambani and British ski-jumper Eddie "the Eagle" Edwards for example, are celebrated for their bravery and pluckiness but also for, arguably more than anything else, their sheer uselessness.

Another Calgary Olympian in ski-jumper Eddie "the Eagle" Edwards has made a career out of being a plucky, if unsuccessful, underdog ©AFP/Getty Images


To bring in a personal example my illustrious sporting career peaked with somewhat fortuitous qualification for two English Schools Championships in table-tennis and cross country running. Despite doing my best on each occasion, I was duly batted out of site by opposition exhibiting a different stratosphere of talent, training and experience.

The second half FA Cup comeback this weekend by Manchester City to win 4-2 from 2-0 down against lowly Watford exhibited a similar trait of reality trumping romanticism after false hope for the underdog.

When shocks do happen there are often mitigating circumstances.

Although it takes nothing away from the achievement, Wawrinka's victory at the Australian Open final came only when Rafael Nadal was shone of his best form due to injury, while cup upsets today in football tend to come when top flight managers adopt that peculiar tactic of resting their best players.

Underdog stories can also be, for want of a better term, a fluke. A great example of this being Australian short track speed skater Steven Bradbury's transition from last to first in the 1,000 metre final at Salt Lake City 2002 when all of his opponents crashed on the final corner.

It is also a sad but valid point today in sport that some shock victories have to be taken with a large pinch of salt. Quite aside from the possibility of results being fixed I have lost count of the amount of times, in cycling and athletics particularly, when someone has come from nowhere to win only for lingering doping suspicions to be belatedly confirmed in the form of a positive test result.

To return to DodgeBall it is a sad irony that when lead character Peter La Fleur is at his lowest ebb he is encouraged to soldier on by a chance encounter with none other than Lance Armstrong.

"Quit? You know, once I was thinking about quitting when I was diagnosed with brain, lung and testicular cancer, all at the same time," said the now disgraced former cyclist in the 2004 film before adding: "but with the love and support of my friends and family, I got back on the bike and I won the Tour de France five times in a row."

The likes of Lance Armstrong cast an element of doubt over all sporting underdog performances today ©AFP/Getty Images


But, and to return to a positive theme of a different kind, the sheer perseverance of shock results in the professional sporting world of today is remarkable and remains a top attraction of sport.

In recent years we have had Greece triumphing out of nowhere at the 2004 European Football Championships and Iraq doing the same at the Asian version three years later. Goran Ivanisevic winning Wimbledon after qualifying only as a wildcard in 2001, and Russian wrestler Alexander Karelin losing to the United States Rulon Gardner at Sydney 2000 after 13 undefeated years at international level.

Underdog stories can also come in the form of great champions of the past rolling back the years - think Muhammad Ali ousting George Foreman in the "Rumble in the Jungle" in 1974. Or they can be great comebacks in a particular match - think Manchester United and Liverpool in their respective Champions League Football triumphs of 1999 and 2005.

With a failed drugs test an obvious exception, it is also true that neither mitigating circumstances nor fluke results really detract from the glory of a great underdog victory.

Neither does the underdog have to win for their legend to be set. By finishing 14th the Jamaican bobsleigh team had upset the odds in 1994 and, by beating squads from the US, France, Russia and Canada they proved that they could compete on a level with the world's best even if they could not beat all of them. That respectability despite the vast catalogue of adversity will be the aim for most of the tropical participants at this year's Winter Olympics in Sochi.

Stanislas Wawrinka's victory at the Australian Open provided a first real underdog triumph of the year...and has set the tone for Sochi 2014 ©AFP/Getty Images


So in reality sport can, like other areas, be driven by the "survival of the fittest", with the best prepared, financed and supported prevailing. But its great attraction is that this is not always the case.

There is no script more precarious to predict than a sporting one, and while Hollywood may glamour and exaggerate the underdog template the success of Stanislas Wawrinka, hardly a real underdog but certainly one in comparison with those four giants of men's tennis, shows that the concept is alive and well in 2014.

And with the Sochi Games barely a fortnight away, and the precarious nature of most Winter sports deeming it particularly partial to an upset, one of the attractions ahead is the prospect of finding another great underdog story. 

Last week, Sky Sports presenter Charlie Webster courageously spoke out about the sexual abuse she suffered as a teenager at the hands of her athletics coach.

Her story, like those of countless others I've heard while at the Child Protection in Sport Unit, brought home how crucial it is that proper measures are in place to protect children in sport from being exploited.

Of course, it is important to emphasise that the vast majority of those involved in coaching children in sports have only the best interests of those they work with in mind.

Through a lifetime's involvement in sport as a participant and volunteer and through my work I've seen the best of our sports coaches, instructors and helpers. Most people involved genuinely care about the welfare of children and young people and have had a positive impact on their lives.

Unfortunately there are a small minority who instead seek to abuse the trust placed in them. This doesn't just happen in sport as many high profile cases, including that of Jimmy Savile, have demonstrated. Abusers often seek out positions of trust, across a number of sectors – sport, entertainment, education, health, child care - that will give them access to children so that they can manipulate and abuse them.

Sky Sports presenter Charlie Webster has spoken out about the sexual abuse she suffered as a teenager ©Twitter



Current cases in the media focus on the culture of celebrity. To children and young people their coaches have that status regardless of the level of participation.

So what can sports clubs do to protect children and young people from exploitation?

It is vital that rigorous child protection and safeguarding measures are put in place by all organisations working with young people.

The vast majority of sports organisations have already taken sensible steps towards protecting children, through the establishment of practice guidance and policies.

All clubs should have a code of conduct, setting out how staff and volunteers should act towards the young people in their care. These need to include proper complaints and disciplinary procedures.

There should also be safe recruitment procedures in place ensuring that only those who have been appropriately checked to work with children are appointed.

The case of TV personality Jimmy Savile has highlighted the issue of those who abuse a position of trust ©Getty Images


Coaches and those working directly with children and young people also need training to identify signs and indicators of abuse. They need to be prepared to respond appropriately to a child who may turn to them as a trusted adult if they are worried about abuse inside or outside of sport.

There needs to be a culture of openness that applies equally to children and young people, paid staff and volunteers alike. Charlie's story illustrated how abusers can be extremely sophisticated in the way they groom and manipulate children, exploiting their innocence and leaving them to suffer in silence.

Children should know who they can go and talk to and that they shouldn't be afraid to speak out and get the right support.  All clubs should have a trained club welfare officer who the children know they can turn to.

And staff and volunteers should be aware it is their duty to report concerns they have about a child's welfare and feel confident that there will be no negative repercussions for them if they do this.

We are also calling for the legislation that prohibits certain adults in positions of trust from having sexual activity with young people aged 16 to 17 in their care to be extended to cover coaches and instructors.

Charlie spoke of how she saw her coach as a role model - this is the case for many young people. Abusers know this and use it to manipulate and exploit young people. I've seen cases where coaches deliberately wait until a teenager turns 16 before exploiting them, knowing that legally they are able to do so.

While the majority of national governing bodies of sport and clubs have rules in place prohibiting relationships between adults and those in their care under 18, legally this is permitted.

It leads to the illogical position where an adult employed by a school could be teaching a 16 year old schoolgirl P.E. and be legally prohibited from having a sexual relationship with her, whereas if he was coaching the same girl in a  sports club this prohibition wouldn't apply. This is despite the fact that she would have the same vulnerabilities, and see the adult as a trusted role model in both situations.

Some might argue if those over the age of consent enter into a relationship with their coach there is no issue. But this is to ignore the power imbalance between the two which means that young people can easily be exploited. Sadly I've seen this happen all too often. This is why we are calling for the legislation to be changed.

For the majority of children, sport is a positive, enjoyable and safe experience. Taking some sensible steps to put proper safeguards in place to prevent abuse will help to ensure this is the case.

For guidance including template safeguarding policies and procedures click here.

Competing at the Olympics has earned fame for many. For many others, fame has followed a sporting career. (Hello Tarzan – or should we call you Johnny Weissmuller?) It is unusual, however, to find those who are already famous in other fields taking part in the Olympics.

"Who can he be thinking of?" I hear you ask in an ironic tone. Well, as of a month ago, I could have been thinking of Sir Paul McCartney's second wife, Heather Mills, who appeared set to ski for Britain's Paralympic team at the forthcoming Sochi Winter Games until an altercation with officials at an Austrian hotel over the ratification of a new prosthetic limb left her, as it were, out in the cold.

Mills now faces a fine of up to €1,000 (£817/$1,354) for allegedly verbally abusing and physically harassing the head of the International Paralympic Committee's Skiing Committee, Sylvana Mestre. I'm thinking the fine wouldn't be too much of a problem for her, but missing out on the Games following her World Cup silver in the adaptive slalom last year – she has now missed all relevant deadlines - surely will be.

Heather Mills looked on course for a Sochi 2014 appearance after taking World Cup silver in the adaptive slalom event in New Zealand last August. But her bid slid right off course after an almighty row ©Getty Images

On reflection, Mills's former husband qualifies in his own right, having played at the London 2012 Opening Ceremony after making a bit of a name for himself in a musical career.

But no. I am thinking of Vanessa Mae, the violinist who has sold more than 10 million albums worldwide, and who is now adding another string to her... er...violin after being selected to ski for Thailand in Sochi.

This is a truly inspirational outcome for the 35-year-old who took up skiing at the age of four, four years before acquiring the nickname "Teeny Paganini" when she became the youngest pupil at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing.

Under current Olympic qualification rules, countries with no skier ranked in the world's top 500 may send one man and one woman to the Games, to compete in slalom and giant slalom, and Mae, who has been training to this end since 2010, has done enough in qualifying to pass muster.

World renowned violinist Vanessa Mae is due to realise a childhood ambition having qualified to ski for Thailand at the forthcoming Sochi Winter Olympics ©AFP/Getty Images

She will be only the second Thai athlete to compete at a winter Games, where she will use her Thai father's surname of Vanakorn. "I am taking a plunge," she said four years ago. "It has been my dream, and I am hoping people will accept I just want to give it my best."

Having taken the plunge, she does not flatter herself that she will be making a big splash. She just wants to compete to her best ability - an attitude that the founder of the modern Games, Baron Pierre De Coubertin, would have readily embraced.

Sir Paul McCartney performs at the Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Games. He had previously made something of a name for himself in the world of music ©AFP/Getty Images

Mae is not exactly a one-off, but she is in rare company. There is a relatively rich seam of those who have arrived at a Games with names already established - a royal seam.

At the inaugural modern Olympics at Athens in 1896, two Greek princes accompanied the Greek winner of the marathon into the stadium. Thirty two years later another royal personage - Crown Prince Olav of Norway, later King Olav V, became the regal deal as he won a gold medal at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics as a member of the winning crew in the 6m sailing class.

Olav's son, Prince Harald, later King Harald V, also competed in Olympic sailing from 1964-1972. In 1960 another royal figure won an Olympic sailing gold in the Dragon class – Prince Constantine of Greece. His brother-in-law, Juan Carlos of Spain, took part in the 1972 Olympic sailing competition.

British subjects, among others, will recall Princess Anne's involvement in the three-day equestrian event at the 1976 Montreal Games, where she became the first member of the British Royal Family to compete at the Olympics, finishing 26th after recovering from a cringe-making fall during the cross country element. She confessed years afterwards that she had no memory not just of that fall, but of the whole of the second day's event. Give that girl a medal!

Princess Anne en route to winning the European eventing title at Burghley in 1971, five years before she made an Olympic appearance in Montreal ©Allsport Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Her husband-to-be, Mark Phillips, had been one of the team gold medallists in the three-day event at the previous Olympics, and at the London 2012 Games, of course, their daughter Zara Phillips was one of the home team silver medallists in the eventing.

There has been royal involvement in the Winter Games too, through Prince Albert of Monaco, who competed, as Albert Grimaldi, in the two and four-man bobsleigh from 1988 to 2002.

While Mae's switch from music to sport is unusual, there have been others who have arrived at the Games having made names for themselves in other sports. One of the first was Britain's Lottie Dod, silver medallist in the archery at the 1908 London Games having already won the Wimbledon singles title five times and the British Ladies golf championship once, not to mention having represented England at hockey.

Dod might also have excelled in a winter Games, had one existed in those days, as she also excelled at skating and tobogganing.

Then again, Mae might have had a cracking chance of Olympic gold had the Olympic artistic competitions, which included music, not been dropped from the main body of the Games after the 1948 version in London.

Spot the future winner of the 1912 Olympic literary gold medal - yes, it's Baron Pierre de Coubertin, seated left with fellow IOC members in 1896 ©Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Perhaps we might also add to our list the great Baron De Coubertin himself, who entered the 1912 Olympic art competition with a literary effort entitled "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing" - only joking, it was called "Ode to Sport". Now the good Baron entered under a pseudonym - "Georges Hohrod and Martin Eschbach" – but, guess what? He won the gold medal. Do you think anyone might have suspected?...

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.

FIFA Presidential elections are different. So it was probably par for the course that the first candidate out of the traps - and this more than 16 months before any vote - should at once cast doubt on his candidacy by refusing to make clear whether he would stay in the race if the incumbent President decides to run. Indeed, he admitted he did not think he could beat Joseph Blatter, who will mark 16 years in the post at this summer's FIFA World Cup in Brazil, if he does stand.

So what to make of Monday's well-attended media event in London at which Jérôme Champagne, a key member of Blatter's FIFA team until he was ousted four years ago, launched his candidacy to succeed Blatter as FIFA President?

The first thing to point out is that, while Champagne - for now - is making a virtue of being a one-man band and handling all aspects of his campaign himself, this was no hastily-thrown-together, half-baked affair.

The carefully selected venue was on Great Queen Street, where the Football Association (FA) was formed just over 150 years ago - shades of Ser Miang Ng's choice of the Sorbonne as the place to launch his campaign for the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Presidency last May.

The programme, as enunciated in three position papers available for anyone to read at www.jeromechampagne2015.com, is extraordinarily detailed, so much so that one seasoned observer commented that the new candidate needed a sub-editor.

Liz Nichol, arguably the most powerful woman in British sport, gently chides me for being a bit of a dinosaur.

This follows my admitted old-school view expressed in insidethegames recently over what I believe is the over-appliance of science and over emphasis on psychology in modern sport.

Now the charming and very able chief executive of UK Sport, whom I have known since she so effectively ran England Netball, counters my suggestion that sporting giants of the past, from Jesse Owens through to Muhammad Ali via Pele and Jack Nicklaus, would have scoffed at the idea of brain-washing sessions with a shrink to help revive or improve their performance.

I maintain that sport has become too reliant on mind games but Nichol argues: "Sport these days is an arms race. It is not like the old days."

Which is why the combined forces of UK Sport and the British Olympic Association have ensured that Team GB are armed to the teeth with the best available ammunition when they depart for Sochi with the aspiration of maintaining the Olympic and Paralympic momentum of 2012.

The 2014 British expedition with its contingent of 50 skiers, skaters, sliders and curlers will be matched one-for-one by a veritable army of support staff. A platoon of officials, coaches, physios, technicians, medicos and sports scientists will accompany a squad hopeful of returning from Russia with much more than love-all.

It was a pleasure last week to get the briefest of respites from the British winter by visiting Manila for the Olympic Council of Asia General Assembly and Asian Sporting Centenary celebrations.

As well as the weather - a happy median between the sweltering conditions at the Australian Open in Melbourne and the freezing ones covering much of Europe and North America - the event once again exemplified the wide-ranging power of sport and, in particular, the growth of it in the world's largest continent.

This first point was best illustrated simply by the decision to keep the event in the Philippines despite the ongoing repercussions of Typhoon Haiyan.

Although the luxury trappings of the Hotel Sofitel prevented much exploration of the true Philippines, it took only the plane descent into Manila to illustrate first-hand the flood plains which still ravage the countryside and keeps whole regions isolated physically as well as in terms of power and supplies.

Although the Typhoon had forced the postponement and transferral of the event from last November on Baracay Island, it would have been easier still to have moved it to a different country altogether. The fact that this decision was resisted typifies the solidarity and unity which has been a constant feature of Asia's first sporting century.

Hotel Sofitel did not give a true reflection of Manila but keeping the two day celebration in the typhoon-hit nation was a powerful gesture ©ITG




What better way to illustrate the significance of sport than the fact that, on arrival, OCA President Sheikh Ahmad Al Fahad Al Sabah immediately met with Philippine leader Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino to discuss a range of support issues. This followed a similar visit to, and meeting with, Turkmenistan leader Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov last week to discuss how hosting sporting events can raise the profile of his country.

Different reasons but still the same predominant theme of progress through sport.

Similar success has been achieved through numerous other mechanisms - from the work undertaken by Jordan-based charity Generations for Peace to the programmes outlined during the General Assembly by the Organising Committees for both Incheon 2014 and Tokyo 2020.

The OCA-Incheon Vision 2014 programme, for example, now in the final of its seven year focus ahead of September's Games, has benefited 642 participants from 30 National Olympic Committees in 148 different projects. In contrast, the Japanese Government's "Sport for Tomorrow" project has only just been announced but hopes to impact more than one million athletes in over 100 countries over the next six years.

Tokyo 2020 will give many more chances for sporting growth over the next six years ©AFP/Getty Images


The OCA and Asia has also been something of a pioneer for other continental associations.

As well as representatives from all 45 member nations of the OCA, figures were welcomed from the rest of the world - with IOC vice-president John Coates and Association of National Olympic Committees of Africa head Lassana Palenfo among those in attendance. As ever in the Olympic Movement the blend of different cultures and backgrounds present was remarkable and the motto of the Incheon Asian Games - "diversity shines here" - has never been more apt.

In a recent insidethegames article, Emily Goddard reported on the "protest zone" planned by Russian authorities for the Sochi Games, some 18 kilometres from the Games' hub.

In her piece, one discovers such gems as:

Vladimir Lukin, the Human Rights Commissioner of Russia and President of the Russian Paralympic Committee, welcomed the choice of Khosta and claimed it is easy to access. "It's possible to travel there by car, by bus or on the train from the centre of Sochi, or from the sports centre," he explained. "So if people want to exchange opinions and express their views on any topic, they can do it easily."

It's gratifying to know that it's easy to get to an island of freedom in a continent-wide sea of repression. Where, of course, protesters will find only other protesters protesting the repression of the right to protest. Should one expect more from the country's "Human Rights" Commissioner, whose response to the federal anti-gay law has been that the only issue will be for judges to not be too cruel in their application of the measure. A "Human Rights" Commissioner who happens to be the head of the host country's Paralympic Committee, which perhaps helps explain the International Paralympic Committee's silence when faced with these laws.

We also learn from Russia's deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak that:

"People can freely express their opinion [in the protest zone], while not breaching the rights of other citizens or the Olympic Charter."

This statement has the merit of making clear that in Russia, freedom of speech is a violation of the "rights" of Russian citizens. Really.

Judy Murray, whose son is currently fulfilling all the tennis dreams he - and she - ever had, is not a woman given to hyperbole. So when she describes the heat currently being endured by players at the Australian Open in Melbourne as "brutal" it is worth noting.

Andy Murray was diplomatic (as he has learned to be ever since he expressed the true feelings of every Scot with regard to the England football team and was hammered for it) about the conditions after winning his first round match in temperatures of more than 40 degrees Celcius. But even his diplomatic response was couched in terms of anxiety: "It doesn't look good for the sport when people are collapsing...you don't want to see anything bad happen to anyone."

Andy Murray works on his hydration during practice for this year's Australian Open, which has coincided with a worrying heatwave ©Getty Images

The reference to collapsing had to do with Canada's Frank Dancevic, who required medical attention after fainting during the second set of his first round tie and later described it as "inhumane" to expect players to perform in such conditions, adding: "Until somebody dies, they just keep going on with it and putting matches on in this heat."

Dancevic was not the only player who had words of criticism for the scheduling. Victoria Azarenka described her match as being like "dancing in a frying pan." John Isner of the United States – who gave ample evidence of his powers of endurance at the 2010 Wimbledon Championships when he took 11 hours and five minutes to defeat France's Nicolas Mahut 6-4, 3-6, 6-7, 7-6, 70-68 in what was the longest professional tennis match in history - commented: "It was like an oven - when I open the oven door and the potatoes are done." Serbia's Jelena Jankovic burnt her backside and hamstrings when sitting on an uncovered seat.

Frank Dancevic of Canada feels the heat during his Australian Open first round defeat to Benoit Paire of France, during which he fainted ©Getty Images

The second round brought no respite for the players - Croatia's Ivan Dodig said after retiring from his match after two hours and 22 minutes play that he feared he "could maybe even die", adding: "Thirty minutes after the match I could not walk."

Temperatures are forecast to remain between 42 and 43 degrees Celcius today and tomorrow. In the meantime, the tournament organisers are referring anyone interested to their yardstick for deciding whether or not it is too hot to play – yes, it's our old favourite the Wet Bulb Globe Temperature composite, which sounds like something for gardeners but is in fact a multiple gauge of temperature, humidity and wind. The "relatively low level of humidity" was the reason no red light occurred. Cue red faces.

Croatia's Ivan Dodig also feels the heat during a second round match in Melbourne from which he retired ©AFP/ Getty Images

All this follows the furore set in motion last week by an apparent confirmation that the 2022 FIFA World Cup finals, awarded controversially to Qatar, would be switched to autumn or winter months in order to safeguard players and spectators from the ferocious summer heat.

The comments of FIFA's general secretary Jerome Valcke to Radio France have swiftly been reclassified by a FIFA jobsworth as being no more than Valcke's "view". But given his lofty position, that view is presumably a good one - almost as good as that of the FIFA President, Sepp Blatter.

The official line is that there is no official line, and nor will there be until after this year's finals in Brazil. After that the international body for football merely has to find a way of distorting the calendar for 2022 so that the finals do not impinge on any domestic leagues, or the African Cup of Nations, scheduled for January 2023. Which could prove tricky.

"Moving in to the 21st century," tweeted Beckie Scott, the Canadian International Olympic Committee (IOC) member, on January 10.

"Finally joining Twitter!"

Thus prompted, I thought it would be interesting to check how many of Scott's 109 IOC colleagues had beaten her to the punch.

After all, no-one disputes how critical it is for theOlympic Movement that it continue to excite young people in a world of multiple alternative attractions.

And, while you probably would not expect members' personal social media accounts to be the Movement's main channel of communication in this vibrant virtual universe, they could certainly help create the impression that the bigwigs of international sport are tuned in to youth concerns.

In an increasingly digital age, only around 30 of the 110 IOC members appear to have accounts with more than 10 followers ©Getty Images

First, a disclaimer: it is sometimes hard to be absolutely certain that an account is truly what it purports to be in the Twittersphere; I might also inadvertently have missed some members' offerings altogether. If Ihave, apologies.

But, keeping this in mind, this is what I found.

First, the medium does not exactly appear to have swept through the IOC like wildfire: only around 30 of the 110 IOC members seemed to have accounts with more than 10 followers.

(Well under a week after joining, Beckie Scott already had more followers than all but 16 of her colleagues.)

Second, this is changing, with a high proportion of those most active on Twitter having become IOC members in the last few years.

But third, advanced age need not be a barrier to a fruitful and effective Twitter career.

The most successful Tweeter of all among IOC members,measured by the number of followers, after all, is a 77-year-old man from Visp, Switzerland who is seldom held up as the epitome of cool, even among sports administrators.

Sepp Blatter, President of FIFA, is top of the Twitter tree among the IOC's members
©Getty Images

Step forward Joseph Blatter, President of FIFA, world football's governing body, whose total of well over half a million followers is, I think, more than the aggregate of all his IOC colleagues added together.

Lying a strong second with around half Blatter's total of followers is Angela Ruggiero, the 34-year-old US ice hockey star.

Completing the podium is Gerardo Werthein, President of the Argentine Olympic Committee, who is one of two prominent businessmen in the top seven, the other being Camiel Eurlings, chief executive of KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, a new IOC member.

The full Top 20 is reproduced below:

Top 20

1. Joseph Blatter Switzerland 511,989
2. Angela Ruggiero USA 247,019
3. Gerardo Werthein Argentina 65,167
4. Stefan Holm Sweden 32,749
5. Tony Estanguet France 19,073
6. Kirsty Coventry Zimbabwe 16,967
7. Camie lEurlings Netherlands 5,999
8. Sheikh Tamim Qatar 3,545
9. Alexander Zhukov Russia 2,180
10. Sergey Bubka Ukraine 1,277
11. Claudia Bokel Germany 1,171
12. James Tomkins Australia 875
13. Barbara Kendall New Zealand 722
14. Marisol Casado Spain 607
15. Danka Barteková Slovakia 275
16. Pál Schmitt Hungary 248
17. Rebecca Scott Canada 198
18. Kun-hee Lee South Korea 146
19. Anita DeFrantz USA 85
20. Paul Tergat Kenya 62

Spectators in London used their mobile phones to record and photograph British athletes as they celebrated their London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic success at the post-Games athletes' parade ©Getty Images

It will be interesting to see how much this list has changed, and how much follower numbers have grown, in 12 months' time.

Unless IOC President Thomas Bach takes to Twitter with avengeance, I would be surprised if Blatter isn't the first IOC member to sail past a million followers, perhaps during this summer's FIFA World Cup in Brazil.

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.