His Holiness Pope Francis seems like a good sport, and he certainly sounds as if he knows his stuff about playing the game. He also has a cute sense of timing.

His wise words to the President of the International Olympic Committee and members of the European Olympic Committees - among them the Lords Coe and Moynihan - gathered before him in the Vatican recently carry a certain resonance which sport should take as a yellow card.

Let us pray it gets this Papal message:

"When sport is viewed solely in economic terms or as the pursuit of victory at all cost, we run the risk of reducing athletes to mere products from which to profit. Athletes themselves enter into a system that sweeps them away; they can lose the true meaning of their activity, that joy of play which attracted them as young people and which drove them to make so many sacrifices to become champions. Sport is harmony, but if the immoderate pursuit of money and success takes over, this harmony can be lost."

His homily could not be more apt, coinciding with the latest allegations about the so-called Beautiful Game; match-fixing in the lower-echelons of English football.

Pope Francis met International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach last month and warned sport of the dangers of money ©IOC

It transpires that not content with efforts to rig games in most of the world's major leagues, and even World Cup qualifiers, the illegal betting gangs in Asia have turned their attention to what they perceive as a more susceptible target, English non-league football.

Arrests have been made in what is believed to be the biggest match-rigging scandal here for decades and interestingly two of the alleged culprits have Singaporean connections.

Singapore, it seems is the epicentre of the betting scams. There an illegal gambling cartel has been operating for years. The infamous Dan Tan is currently on trial for match fixing and out on bail. There is also another Singaporean bookie, Wilson Raj Perumal, who did some time in a Finnish jail and who is now believed to be in Budapest helping Hungarian authorities. He's said to be linked with one of the two men charged with match fixing in the UK.

Having worked in Singapore in the eighties, when sport was considered an irrelevance on an education-is-everything Government agenda - I am surprised is that such cynical law-breaking has been not ruthlessly stamped out.

Strange that in a place no bigger than the Isle of Wight and where the rules are draconian - Singapore's is a still literally a hang-'em-flog-'em doctrine - is that they have been unable to crack down on the hucksters who clearly proliferate in their society. We not talking about the odd dodgy flutter here, but serious corruption.

Singapore IOC member Ser Miang Ng has worked hard to promote sport in his country but his efforts are being undermined by it being the centre of match-fixing ©Getty Images

The man I feel most sorry for is Singapore's International Olympic Committee member Ser Miang Ng, who campaigned honourably, albeit unsuccessfully for the IOC Presidency and has done more than anyone to to elevate his tiny nation from a sporting wasteland to international credibility, hosting an historic IOC congress, the Youth Olympics and now staging, among other events, the best-run of all F1 Grands Prix.

He is surely embarrassed by the activities of those seedy compatriots who are making the Singapore Sting even more potent than the Singapore Sling.

Once all forms of gambling were prohibited in safe, sanitised, squeaky-clean Singapore

Now there are two Las Vegas-styled casinos and many betting shops on the island. Fair enough. Business is business. But surely there needs to be a tougher crackdown those who are responsible.

Interpol says the illegal gambling market is worth $500 billion (£308 billion/€368 billion) in Asia. And sport these days is one of the world's major sources of revenue.

To transpose an old Yorkshire adage, where there's brass, there's muck.

So is sport as bent as a boomerang?

Well, some of it certainly is. We have ample evidence of result-rigging in football, cricket and snooker. And don't get me started on horse racing.

I once crossed swords with the redoubtable Clare Balding who had termed boxing "dirty and corrupt". The phrase pots and kettles immediately sprang to mind. I have never seen a boxer throw a fight though I accept there have been some outrageous decisions which suggested certain judges had been nobbled - most notably in Olympic boxing before Dr C K Wu's deep clean operation.

But, dear Ms Balding, there are far more pulled horses in your questionable sport than pulled punches in boxing.

Horse racing presenter Clare Balding has criticised other sports for being "dirty" but not been prepared to acknowledge problems in her own ©Getty Images

Tennis is also easy to fix - you simply have to hit the ball into the net and I swear I saw that happen in a Grand Slam final some years ago before the sport became totally professional, and with prize money putting latter-day players beyond such temptation.

Yet Chris Eaton, once a top cop with Interpol,who has been involved in looking at World Cup qualifiers believed to be fixed, does not accept that big earners are not susceptible to bribes.

Loads-a-money Premier League stars may earn humongous salaries that you think would make them immune to the approach of the fixers but he points out there are ways and means of compromising even the wealthiest individuals.

"You can approach players on high incomes and trap them into personal betting debts, honeypots or many other ways to coerce them to get involved in fixing Games."

Might this technique even be used in the Olympics?

Indeed could, you actualluy fix an Olympic event? You bet you could - so to speak.

A false start in the 100 metres, for instance. Plenty would bet on that, and so easy to manipulate.

Former IOC President Jacques Rogge has, more than anyone, highlighted the dangers of match-fixing ©Getty Images

"Sport is in danger," Jacques Rogge warned before stepping down as IOC overlord. "We had a clear signal from Governments, Interpol and international federations that there is illegal betting that threatens the credibility of sport. It is a big problem in the entire world. There is no safe haven. Illegal gambling is now a greater scourge for world sport than doping. "

"It's even worse," he added in an interview earlier this year: "Imagine a team sport with one player being doped; that one player will not make the difference to the result.

"But if you have match rigging with the goalkeeper being paid off and jumping over the ball, it's the whole match that is lost. So the scale is far more important in terms of match manipulation."

There is no doubt that his successor Thomas Bach shares similar sentiments, then IOC having formed a commission to tackle illegal betting and match-fixing to ensure they do not become become issues in future Games.

But I fear they might. So far the Olympics have been largely unaffected by illegal betting or match-fixing although last year badminton came under fire at the London Games when women's doubles pairs from South Korea, China and Indonesia deliberately threw their matches in order to get a more favourable draw.

All four pairings were disqualified and banned.

Athletes and officials are forbidden from betting on the Olympics and the IOC has been co-operating with legal betting agencies in the past few Games to monitor betting patterns for any suspect or unusual wagers.

Irish sailor Peter O'Leary was investigated for illegal betting on the eve of London 2012
©Getty Images

The Irish sailor Peter O'Leary escaped with a warning after betting on a direct competitor to win at the 2008 Beijing Games. O'Leary had placed two bets worth a total of €300 (£249/$408) on a British boat to capture the gold in the Star class at odds of 12-1.

Hugh Robertson, until recently Britain's Sports Minister, with a portfolio which embraced the gambling industry, said the integrity of the Games could be shattered by the "enormous" threat of illegal gambling rings trying to fix results.

As for football, it can be no surprise it is the principal target for the fixers when it has so eagerly climbed into bed with the gambling business through so many sponsorship dealp deals with bookmaking concerns.. Half-a-dozen Premier League sides wear shirts featuring online betting outfits and the even the Football League now has a five-year deal as the Sky Bet Championship.

If nothing else it brings whole new meaning to the phrase fixed odds.

Wonder if the Pope does the pools?

Alan Hubbard is a 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, and 10 Commonwealth Games

With Summer sports basking in a post-season recess and Winter ones still to reach full speed, the most engrossing sporting event currently going on, for Englishmen and Australians at least, is the non-Olympic battle that is cricket's Ashes series.

For those not familiar with the peculiarities of cricket, the rivalry between these two stalwarts of the game stretches back to 1882. After a touring party from Down Under overcame the hosts for the first time, the Sporting Times published an obituary citing that "English cricket had died, and the body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia."

The tradition of an urn being presented to the winners had begun and over the 131 years since one of sports oldest, bitterest and most fiercely fought rivalries has emerged.

Yet even by historic standards the current series is in danger of plunging to new lows.

Australian captain Michael Clarke has already been fined after his muttered comment of "get ready to have your f****** arm broken" to an opponent was picked up by a microphone. Clarke's teammate David Warner meanwhile, banned earlier in the summer for punching England's Joe Root in a bar, gloated to the press that another England batsman was "poor and weak". The batsman in question, Jonathan Trott, has since returned home due to a long-term stress related illness.

After one newspaper has refused to refer to England's Stuart Broad by name, or as anything other than a "a 27-year-old medium pace bowler" following an earlier transgression, the local press has got in on the action. This weekend a stadium announcer was also stood down after a series of mocking and racially-motivated remarks towards the tourists. In case I am giving that impression, England have been far from blameless in this rather petty diatribe.

And yet, while this pettiness has been much criticised, the hostility creates a nostalgic throwback to a more halcyon age where sport was a more gladiatorial battleground and rivalries therein were defined as much by personal as competitive animosity.

Plenty of words have been exchanged on and off the field during the Ashes Series
©Getty Images


Other instances of such hostile rivalries do occasionally exist today, but they are rarer and rarer and more than ever confined to the often manufactured disputes of professional boxing.

Take tennis for example. After the polar opposites of McEnroe and Borg we had the American foes Sampras and Agassi. Now we have the quartet of Federer, Nadal, Djokovic and Murray who manage to reach new levels of ability but by all the while remaining, if not best friends, then at least affable and respectful

Sprinting is the same. A sport once defined by testosterone fuelled posing, "trash-talking" and gloating has been transformed in recent years by the joyless abandon of Jamaican stars epitomised of course by Usain Bolt. By the time one of the best trash-talkers, Justin Gatlin, returned from a second doping ban and allegedly spat in Bolt's lane as if to mark his territory in 2011, it came across as outlandish as it was unsuccessful.

The Olympics have long been defined by great rivalries as much as elsewhere in sport.

There have been disputes with distinctly political overtones. The Munich 1972 basketball final between the United States and Soviet Union epitomised this in the context of the Cold War era. A more extreme example was the Melbourne 1956 "Blood in the Water" water polo tie between the Soviets and Hungary which came so shortly after the former's invasion of the latter, and deteriorated into a full blown brawl in the closing stages.

There have also been personal battles - often between two rivals from the same country. Steve Ovett and Sebastian Coe at Moscow 1980 is the most famous example. The most bitter one however involved US figure skaters Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding ahead of Lillehammer 1994, where Harding was embroiled in scandal after her accomplice assaulted Kerrigan in order to ensure her absence.

Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan were embroiled in one of sports most infamous rivalries ©AFP/Getty Images


All of these examples were well before my time so a severe brainstorming session seems necessary in order to find some more recent instances. I could not think of too many.

In swimming there have been great rivalries - think the "race of the century" in Athens and Phelps and Lochte in London - but to find a truly hostile one France versus US in the men's freestyle relay seems the most appropriate. After the French vowed to "smash" their opponents in Beijing the Americans produced a scarcely believable comeback to snatch gold before the French got their revenge four years later in London. The section on the Beijing race in Phelps' No Limits is a must read ahead of any sporting grudge match...

In speed-skating we have had recent battles between the South Koreans and the wonderfully named American Anton Apollo Ohno, in sailing there was the laser class dual between Sir Ben Ainslie and Robert Scheidt which ended in effigies being burnt of the Briton in Brazil. To return to England and Australia there was cycling's Victoria Pendleton and Anna Meares who, after a decade of sparring, embraced on the track after winning a gold apiece in London.

There has also been a continuation of battles on national lines. At London 2012 we saw a Serbia versus Croatia handball match where the crowd as much the players were embroiled in dispute. Four years earlier in Beijing we had the infamous women's beach volleyball encounter between Russia and Georgia which took place in the backdrop of the political dispute between the two.

"They are not even Georgians," cried the Russian pair after tasting defeat. "Sore losers" was the blunt reply.

How much longer will the Winter Youth Olympic Games (YOG) be with us?

This might seem an odd question at a time when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has just revealed the bidders for the 2020 Games.

But I am far from convinced that this particular Olympic model will fly far beyond its third edition.

Yes, I can see a sort of logic in thinking that, if a Summer Youth Olympic Games is good for the Movement (and the world), then a winter version is called for as well.

But in today's increasingly crowded international sporting calendar, I just don't think that the Winter Olympics is a strong enough global franchise to warrant such a junior spin-off.

The Sochi Games, let's face it, though a huge deal for Russia, would not be regarded by most people around the world as the biggest sports event of next year.

The Summer Youth Games have been taking the Olympics into new areas of the world ©Getty Images


The Summer Youth Games seems to be working in part because it is taking the Olympics into new areas.

At a time when money is scarce, and the commitment of time and resources needed to stage a Summer Olympics has become so colossal that few dare contemplate it, the Youth Olympics offers an opportunity for cities to bask in the Olympic brand's unique aura at far lower cost.

Hosting a Winter YOG could in theory offer cities the same sort of benefit.

However, the geographic bounds of the Winter Games are much more tightly constrained than their summer counterpart because of the climatic conditions required for snow and ice sports to take place.

And in these regions of the world, the depth of demand for a mini Winter Games seems disappointingly modest.

The inaugural Winter YOG in 2012 did at least attract four bidders - Harbin, China; Kuopio, Finland; Lillehammer, Norway and Innsbruck, Austria, the eventual winner.

But the first issue of a new magazine will often sell out.

Harbin, Kuopio, Lillehammer and Innsbruck - the eventual winner - bid to host the 2012 Winter Youth Olympic Games ©Getty Images


For 2016, Lillehammer was the only bidder, never a comfortable position for an event owner.

And with both confirmed Winter YOG hosts so far having hosted past editions of the Winter Olympics, the junior event can hardly be said to be planting the Olympic Flag on virgin territory.

The 2020 race will at least be contested by two cities which have not hosted an Olympic Games before.

But a competition between the city in which the IOC is headquartered - Lausanne - and a place - Brașov - that Wikipedia tells me is the seventh most populous city in Romania (albeit one that used to be called Stalin City) hardly bespeaks a world straining at the leash to put its stamp on this new, bite-sized Olympic product.

In a conference call he gave while on the stump ahead of his election as IOC President, Thomas Bach suggested incorporating new forms of sport and physical activity that were fashionable among, and attractive to, young people into the Youth Olympics.

If what he has in mind is to use the Youth Games more systematically as a testing-ground for new formats and sports that might eventually progress to the Olympic Games proper, this seems an excellent idea that should work well in the context of the Summer Games.

Thomas Bach has suggested incorporating new forms of sport and physical activity into the Youth Olympics to make it more attractive ©Getty Images


The Winter Games, though, has already been experimenting with new events, with the aim, presumably, of maintaining its relevance and boosting its appeal.

In the case of snowboard cross, which made its Winter Olympic debut in 2006, moreover, the Movement has had a notable success.

I am not sure anyone would have gained anything had that sport been earmarked for a dry run or two at the Winter YOG before winning approval to progress to the big stage.

What it boils down to, in my view, is this: the Olympic Movement still has work to do to reform the Winter Games; any distraction, be it Winter YOG or anything else, risks diluting this focus.

The Winter Olympics can never be a truly global event while it is confined to snow and ice sports.

Some indoor sports, such as volleyball, are perfectly placed to feature in the Winter Olympics ©Getty Images


As I have argued in the past, the Winter Games would be a far more compelling proposition for far more people in a wider range of countries if it expanded its scope to some of the indoor sports that currently take up space on the outsized Summer Olympic programme.

Volleyball and handball seem naturals to make the switch, especially with beach volleyball able to provide that sport with a continued summer presence.

And if squash and netball are worth Olympic places, far better to use them to increase the Winter Games' appeal than try to shoehorn them into the Summer programme.

The arrival of a new leader should, one hopes, provide a little space for people in positions of influence to reflect on such heretical proposals.

In the meantime, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Winter YOG's chapter in the book of Olympic history is likely to be a short one.

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 him on Twitter click here.

Since it began in 1954, the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award – originally the Sports Review of the Year Award – has engendered debate and disagreement.

What do you mean "No it hasn't?" I insist it has.

Even the original award looked, and still looks, debateable, given that, in the year Roger Bannister produced the athletics equivalent of climbing Mount Everest by running the first sub-four minute mile, the dear old silver-plated four-turret lens camera - as we don't know it - was presented to Bannister's chum and fellow runner Christopher Chataway.

The latter, of course, had played a telling part in the former's achievement by pacing the early part of that iconic race at Iffley Road, Oxford along with Chris Brasher. But his primacy was established on the basis of his feat in the London versus Moscow match at the White City, where he tracked the European champion, Vladimir Kuts, until the final few strides of the 5,000 metres before bursting past to win, taking five seconds off the world record as he did so.

It was a stupendous piece of running. But Bannister's was a momentous piece of running.

Roger Bannister breaks the Four Minute Mile in 1954. It wasn't quite enough to earn him the BBC award, but good try  Hulton Archive ©Hulton Archive

By the end of 1954, not only had Bannister produced his historic flourish at Oxford, but he had also won what has come to be known as the Miracle Mile at the British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Vancouver, where he beat the Australian who had surpassed his world record mark, John Landy. And he had followed up three weeks later by taking the European 1500m title in a championship record time.

Two factors clearly told in favour of the dashing Chataway - his race was fresher in the minds of the public, as it took place four months after the Four Minute Mile. And it was broadcast live on TV, going out across Europe to a record audience of 12 million viewers.

Chris Chataway beats Vladimir Kuts at the White City. This was enough to win the BBC award
©Hulton Archive

Sadly for Bannister, the Good Sports Awards were not created until 1990 - for one year only - and in any case he would not have qualified as, unlike all four recipients, he had not been involved in a high speed motor racing accident. Had those awards been in existence then, however, he would surely have received one, given that he was graciousness itself during the live broadcast from the Savoy Hotel where he was asked, as runner-up, to present the award to the winner.

In retrospect, that was probably where it all went wrong for Bannister, who had to content himself in later life with becoming a distinguished neurologist and Master of Pembroke College, Oxford.

Since that contentious start, the annual awards - which this year mark their 60th anniversary - have created a sequence of questionable results. Two that spring to mind - 1997, when the affable, naturalised Canadian Greg Rusedski got the winner's camera after finishing runner-up in the US Open, and 2009, when veteran Manchester United player Ryan Giggs got the award the year after his team had won the European Cup, with Jenson Button, who had finally secured the Formula One world title, pushed down to second place.

Ryan Giggs, a great footballer admittedly, won the BBC Sports Personality Award in 2009 for no apparent reason ahead of Formula 1 champion Jenson Button ©Getty Images


The awards have also involved a proliferation of categories over the years. Aside from the rash of Good Sports which broke out in 1990 there have been other one-offs. In 1969, for instance, having guided Leeds United to the League title, Don Revie was given the Manager of the Year award. In its splendid isolation, it now appears like the Don Revie Award for being Don Revie.

In 1983, in a fit of generosity, the event bestowed upon Alan Bond and his crew on Australia II the International Team Award, nominally for winning the America's Cup but in effect for giving their complacent US rivals a well-merited putdown.

Alan Bond was honoured for skippering the Australia II boat to the America's Cup - ahead of America @Getty Images

In retrospect, too, the one-off Special Team Award given to the British men's 4x400m relay squad after their victory at the 1986 European Championships looks like a warm-hearted indulgence. But then athletics, for whatever reason, has proved far and away the most popular sport over the years as far as BBC viewers have been concerned.

Track and field has garnered more than twice as many first places as its nearest rival, Formula One - 17 to six, with football and boxing joint third with five. Its pre-eminence is even more overwhelming when the total number of "podium placings" is taken into account, with athletics earning 46 total placings to F1's 13 and football's 20.

Cricket and cycling are currently joint third in the overall winners' rankings with four victories apiece. But tennis, now on three winners, looks likely to be joining them once the envelope has been opened at the First Direct Arena in Leeds on December 15.

Andy Murray has already been installed as 1-40 favourite after becoming the first British man to win Wimbledon since Fred Perry in 1936.

If that landslide comes to pass, Sir Ben Ainslie would surely be left wondering what he has to do to win having followed a fourth Olympic sailing gold with an inspirational performance which prompted Team Origin to return from the - metaphorical - sea bed to win the America's Cup. Cue debate and disagreement...

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.

Taken at face value, it was just a harmless - and rather imaginative - public relations stunt. But I wonder whether FIFA President Sepp Blatter's present on Friday to the head of the Roman Catholic church of a Latin edition of the FIFA Weekly, the governing body's new publishing venture, doesn't offer us a deeper glimpse into the mind of the man who has run world football these last 15 years, even though it was an idea of the FIFA communications division.

For quite a long time now, I have felt that the Swiss master sports politician has been preoccupied with convincing people of the power of the game of football, and by extension of the man who runs it, to be a social, and even political force for good.

There is plenty of circumstantial evidence that might lead you to this conclusion: FIFA's slogan, "For the game, for the world"; the attention lavished on development of the sport in Palestine; Blatter's recent visit to Iran, coinciding with a particularly significant point in the country's nuclear dealings with the west, and the emphasis he put on the importance of allowing Iranian women access to football stadiums; the Executive Committee meeting on Robben Island in 2009; the very request for an audience with Pope Francis itself.

FIFA President Sepp Blatter claimed that the Pope told him to "give hope to the poor through football" ©Osservatore Romano

I believe this quest is part of what motivates Blatter, a man now deep into his eighth decade, to keep going in his mentally gruelling, globe-trotting post.

Now if you set such ambitious goals for your sport, a bit of history can come in very handy; intelligently deployed, it can vest your enterprise with the same aura of respectability and permanence that a marble foyer bestows on a bank.

With its mid-nineteenth-century origins (earlier if you include the village-against-village free-for-alls to which some trace the sport's beginnings), football doesn't do badly in the history stakes.

But its longevity, of course, pales into insignificance when set against another sports movement with which Blatter is extremely familiar.

The first ancient Olympiad is generally dated at 776BC, just the 2,639 years before the foundation of the Football Association.

If truth be told, the parallels between what went on at Olympia and a Modern Olympic Games are strictly limited.

For example, the raison d'être of the Ancient Olympics was overtly militaristic, which is certainly not the case today, however frequently athletic success might be pressed into the service of nation-making.

And no attempt has been made by modern Games-makers, so far as I am aware, to recreate the goings-on at the ancient shrine of Zeus, as colourfully evoked by Classical specialist Nigel Spivey in his book, The Ancient Olympics.

"Oxen were brought in by the hundred to be sacrificed to the god," Spivey writes. "Their bellowings resounded down the valley as they were axed before a crowd and the precincts steeped black with their blood. Ash, bones, and bovine offal piled up over centuries into a huge pyramid; it must have reeked to high heaven."

You get the point.

The Olympics can trace its heritage back to 776BC ©Getty Images

And yet these ancient roots have been pressed most effectively into service to invest what actually is a highly successful multinational business with an aura of elemental dignity, simplicity and virtue.

This was most evident, for fairly obvious reasons, in the Athens Olympics of 2004.

But the umbilical link between ancient and modern is re-established ahead of every Games when the Olympic Flame is rekindled at Olympia from the sun's rays.

It is a stroke of luck that the cradle of Olympism also happens to be the cradle of democracy.

But, while the International Olympic Committee (IOC) of which Blatter is part, has become adept at warding off importunings to meddle in non-sporting affairs when it suits it, the Movement's ancient heritage has specifically been utilised to legitimise a biennial sortie into the minefield of international diplomacy.

This is what is known as the Olympic truce. And while it is hard to imagine a national leader confronted by a perceived casus belli taking a blind bit of notice, it is equally hard not to approve of the sentiment underpinning it: that a period of peace be observed for the Games's duration to enable participants to journey there with peace of mind.

Sepp Blatter is keen to position FIFA so it is seen as a force for good and meeting Pope Francis will undoubtedly help that process ©Osservatore Romano

Much as Blatter might wish it were otherwise, there seems to be zero grounds for thinking that games of "pediludum" were among the entertainments laid on for the delectation of spectators in the Roman Colosseum.

Yet I cannot help wondering whether the Olympic Movement's masterful use of its ancient heritage wasn't somewhere in the mind of the FIFA President on Friday when he handed the fruit of FIFA's playful excursion into the classics to a pontiff who, one suspects, might have preferred a Spanish version.

Blatter's subsequent comments would certainly buttress the arguments of anyone thinking that part of the reason for requesting the audience with one of the world's foremost faith leaders was to add legitimacy to his own efforts to push beyond the bounds of sport.

The Pope, he said, "asked me personally to give hope to the poor through football.

"He also requested that we use our footballing efforts to promote, intensify and continue to strive for world peace."

Or as a Latin scholar might put it, "pax vobiscum".

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 him on Twitter click here.

Baku: Is it a bird, is it a plane, is it a new PlayStation game or something you might order with sushi in a Japanese restaurant?

Of course, insidethegames followers will be well aware that in fact it is the capital of Azerbaijan and an ambitious player in sport's international marketplace.

But for the world at large, this four-letter word is one that will become increasingly familiar in the sporting lexicon as sports organisations seek fresh, hospitable environments to promote and stage major events.

One such happening has been secured for 2015 - thanks to more than a little help from expertise honed in London here during 2012.

More of the forthcoming inaugural European Games anon.

Baku is an ambitious player in sport's international marketplace ©AFP/Getty Images


The backdrop to Eastern Europe's newest and most vibrant hub is fascinating. Baku, a city of some two million, has certain geographic distinction. At 28 metres below sea level, it is the lowest lying national capital - and largest city in the world located below sea level.

Unlike those Middle East hotspots jostling for positions of sporting power, it is climatically agreeable for much of the year, largely because of its northerly latitude that it is located on a peninsula projecting into the Caspian Sea.

While the majority of Azerbaijanis are Muslim, theirs is a sufficiently liberal form of Islam to comfortably exist in what by statute is a secular state, which ensures religious freedom. Religious minorities include Russian Orthodox Christian, Catholics and Jews.

Previous claims to fame include hosting last year's Eurovision Song Contest and the 2011 World Amateur Boxing Championships.

Now Baku's hosting of the first European "Olympics" will greatly assist its enlistment to the international sporting establishment.

Baku hosted the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest won by Sweden's Loreen
©AFP/Getty Images


Baku has twice bid for the full-blown Olympics - those in 2016 and 2020 - but did not make the cut. Few doubt that one day it will.

According to the Lonely Planet rankings, Baku is also among the world's top ten destinations for urban nightlife. Though Las Vegas it isn't - yet.

But there are enough petro-dollars knocking around to have leading professional boxing promoters sniffing it out as a tax-friendly haven for future big fights.

Baku's long-term sports strategy includes hosting the European Youth Olympic Trials in June 2014, the European Athletics Convention in October 2014 and the Islamic Solidarity Games in 2017.

Such is its potential that Darryl Seibel, high-flying communications chief of the British Olympic Association (BOA), will be departing after the Sochi Winter Games in February to become the full-time orchestrator of the PR build-up for the European Games, which run from June 12-28, 2015.

Athletics has yet to commit but there will be 18 sports plus the newly added element of Street Games, a total involvement of more than 5,000 competitors from 49 countries.

Darryl Seibel will become the full-time orchestrator of the PR build-up for the 2015 European Games following the conclusion of Sochi 2014 ©Getty Images


"It is a tall order to put together a first-time event as it brings many challenges," says Seibel. "We are doing it in a very compressed calendar, as the European Olympic Committee (EOC) only agreed to go ahead last December.

"With an Olympic Games you have seven years to prepare; we have to do this in two and a half.

"The model is very much like that of the Asian or Pan-American Games."

Seibel is American, as is the Games chief operating officer Jim Scherr. But the bulk of the engine room will be comprised of Britons, most of who are being recruited on the back of 2012.

"The team being put together has some outstanding talent, much of it from London 2012," Seibel told insidethegames.

"These include key posts like venues, housing, transportation and logistics - areas where London 2012 really excelled."

Among those already on board are James Macleod, who was in charge of LOCOG's service division, and new sports director Pierce O'Callaghan, who has worked with the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) and the EOC.

Simon Clegg has been appointed to oversee the EOC involvement in the European Games as senior consultant and executive director ©Getty Images


However, perhaps the most intriguing presence is that of Simon Clegg, the former BOA chief executive, latterly chief executive of Football League club Ipswich Town and consultant to Madrid's 2020 Olympic bid. Last week he was elected to the BOA Board that once employed him for 20 years. Clegg will oversee the EOC involvement in the Games as senior consultant/executive director.

Current BOA chair Sebastian Coe has given the Euro Games his endorsement. "He is very enthusiastic," says Seibel, "especially as there will be so many in Baku who worked with him on 2012."

Seibel himself became involved when approached by former United States Olympic Committee (USOC) secretary general Scherr, with whom he worked first with at US Wrestling and subsequently for six years as top spin doctor at the USOC from 2003-2009.

"The opportunity to work again with Jim certainly appealed to me," he says.

The move was accelerated when Seibel failed to land the vacant post of BOA chief executive, for which he had applied and was a serious contender before they settled for the commercial nous of new incumbent Bill Sweeney, former head of Puma business development.

Seibel, much admired for his handling of the BOA image during an impressive 2012 media-friendly campaign - he was one of then chairman Colin Moynihan's more inspired hirings - would have stayed with the BOA had he got the chief executive's job.

Coe wanted him to stay put, but he will go with the good Lord's blessing and good wishes. So Siebel is currently dividing his time between working for the BOA on Sochi 2014 and advance planning for Baku 2015.

Baku 2015 illustrates Azerbaijan's sporting ambitions @Francesco Vignali/Baku 2015


"There is no doubt that working with the BOA, not just on the 2012 project, and with the British media, has been the most rewarding chapter in my professional career," he added.

Whether Coe will seek another high-flyer to replace the personable American is an interesting question.

Jackie Brock-Doyle, his London 2012 communications director would have been ideal but she has since moved onwards and upwards as chief executive of international PR outfit Good Relations. Coe could promote Seibel's extremely capable number two Miriam Wilkens. There are also a couple of well-respected journalists with outstanding Olympic credentials who might interest him - Adrian Warner, who leaves the BBC next year, and Ashling O'Connor, late of The Times.

Meantime, Baku beckons for Seibel and comrades of the Class of 2012.

"Baku is a fantastic place, a city on the move and one where those of us who work in international sport are going to be spending an increasing amount of time in the coming years," Seibel concludes.

Knowing Seibel's propensity for a professionally masterminding a lively promotional campaign, we can be certain we'll be hearing a great deal more about this ultra-ambitious sporting citadel. All of it good.

Alan Hubbard is a 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 you consider the brokering of the breakthrough nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, it was not a bad weekend for international harmony.

In comparison, outcomes from the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) General Assembly in Athens may not have had quite the same global significance but, given the vast strides forward the Movement has made in recent years, they certainly wielded much.

Held nine years after Games' which resulted in wide-ranging improvements for the disabled in Greece, and one year on from the unprecedented success of London 2012, keeping the bandwagon rolling ever forward is the greatest challenge by far.

When asked what had changed the most since he first assumed the Presidential Office in 2001, Sir Philip Craven described a transformation from a "disability organisation to a sporting organisation."

The recent Lords Committee Report on the Olympic Legacy "Keeping the Flame Alive" raises further questions as to why so little effect has occurred in athletics.

Athletics is the major and most inclusive of sport of the Olympic Games and its current state throughout Britain hinges around the continued failure of the Government's quangos, Sport England and UK Sport to have implemented an independent and on-going system of scrutiny and accountability ever since funding began in 1998 to properly evaluate how funding is being spent and what it actually achieves in benefit to the sport.

One of the main reasons is because the Sports Minister and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Select Committee continue to rely solely on whatever their quangos report, albeit unverified, and have continued to ignore - or at least act upon - statistically evidenced representations which prove and strongly contradict what the quangos claim for increased medal achievements at global events - Olympics and World Championships - and also the false and grossly misleading grass roots participation figures given and from which our elite have always emerged.

The promised athletics legacy from London 2012 has simply not happened ©Getty Images


For example, Sport England's "Active Peoples Survey" claims an average of 90,000 people at 16 year+ participating in track and field at least once per week on athletics tracks throughout the year. But a simple analysis of competition results shows less than 4,000 over 16 year olds actually competing regularly. And the drop off rate from the sport altogether between 16-25 is very alarming.

With 200 tracks available around the country Sport England's claimed 90,000 per week would mean an average 450 on each track at least once per week. A wholly ridiculous assertion.

UK Athletics, the body funded by UK Sport to develop our elite through its "no compromise" approach, has produced no improvement for all global medals since Atlanta 1996 - six medals - when they were unfunded through to London 2012 - six medals - yet after £300 million ($486 million/€359 million) in public and commercial funding UK Sport's original progressive target by 2012 was for 12 medals.

UK Athletics bureaucracy has now grown to become the largest national governing body for athletics in the world with over 140 employed in addition to their subsidiary, England Athletics with 80 employed, tasked to develop the grass roots.

Neither body was elected by the sport but imposed on the clubs by UK Sport and Sport England and are totally unaccountable to those they purport to represent. They have been set up as Private Limited Companies and are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

Regular competitive participation, particularly in track and field, continues to
decline ©AFP/Getty Images


Quite incredibly, UK Sport carries out no scrutiny of how funds are spent and what it achieves and specifically encourages UK Athletics - and all other funded National Governing Bodies (NGB) - to "self assess" relying wholly on what the NGB care to tell them which in turn is reported to the DCMS by UK Sport as factual.

Liz Nicholl, current chief executive of UK Sport, was previously called back by the Public Accounts Committee and reprimanded for presenting a highly misleading and inappropriate medal count from the last Olympic cycle.

Following the Olympics there was a huge wave of eager young kids, mainly from the lower half of the seven to 14-year-olds, wanting to do athletics and many clubs were inundated and most had to make waiting lists because they simply could not cope. But one year on interest has waned and the real problem for the clubs is the lack of under-20s and seniors and the lack of coaches, officials and team managers to cater even for them.

The promised legacy, so massively promoted in securing the Games that promised a whole new generation would be inspired to take up sport, has simply not happened. And ever since the Games, the Government Sports Minister and quangos claim huge success and continue to promote the falsity of "increased participation" - meaning any kind of physical activity once a week - when in reality regular competitive participation, particularly in track and field, continues to decline.

The full Lords Committee Report can be downloaded here.

John Bicourt is an English former record holder and represented Britain in the 3,000 metres steeplechase at the 1972 and 1976 Olympics. He has coached, advised and managed a number of Olympic and World Championship athletes from Britain, Australia, South African, Kenya and the United States, including medallists and world record holders. He is an elected officer of the Association of British Athletics Clubs.

Strike up the bouzouki and break out the retsina: I think I have spotted a positive story concerning Athens's Olympic - or, to be precise, Paralympic - legacy.

When I read that the 16th International Paralympic Committee (IPC) Conference and General Assembly is to be staged in the Greek capital from today, it took me back to an interview I conducted with Costas Cartalis, former general secretary for the Olympic Games at the Greek Ministry of Culture, well before the fiscal crisis that has devastated the country asserted its grip.

In the context of a general assessment of the cost and impact of the 2004 Games, Cartalis put the preparatory upgrading of the city's hotel stock firmly in the credit column.

Prior to the upgrade, he told me, there were only about 40 rooms with wheelchair access in the entire city.

"Even the Acropolis has become accessible to people with disabilities."

I cannot believe, in short, that the IPC would have been able to hold such an important - and, with 450 people expected, such a big - event in Athens without the new infrastructure put in place for those history-steeped Olympic and Paralympic Games of nine years ago.

It is only a modest legacy, admittedly; it is hard to imagine that delegates, congregating inter alia for a Presidential election pitting incumbent Sir Philip Craven against Alan Dickson, his fellow Briton, will provide more than the tiniest economic stimulus, no matter how enthusiastically the eventual winner celebrates victory.

The Athens 2004 Paralympics helped improve facilities for the disabled in Greece
@Getty Images

But it makes a change from reading accounts of white elephants said to have been bequeathed to the city by the Games.

Frankly, even the most meticulously-planned set of venues would probably have been left surplus to requirement given the magnitude of the economic catastrophe that has swept through the country since the Paralympic cauldron was extinguished.

I left Athens after that visit with a more nuanced view of the 2004 legacy than some.

Yes, the sports venues could and should have been much better thought through.

"Even if we had a significant dearth of sports facilities, [some of] these facilities would still be useless," Christos Hadjiemmanuil, former President of Hellenic Olympic Properties, a body set up by the Government to determine the long-term future of many venues, told me at the time.

"We don't need a 5,000-seat arena for weightlifting.

"Or a 7,000-seater for badminton when nobody here knows what the game looks like."

Yet most of the associated transport improvements have been much more successful, even if they inflated the public-sector budget deficit for a time.

"They got probably 25 years of infrastructure in one fell swoop," another seasoned observer of the regional economy told me.

"If you are an ordinary Athenian, it is just so much easier to get around."

Whatever your view, nearly a decade on, on what the 2004 Games did for Athens, Sir Philip and his colleagues can rest assured, as they attend their deliberations, that they have gathered in a place that really needs their help.

And had those Games been staged somewhere else, then I think the present conference would have been held elsewhere too.

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 him on Twitter click here. 

On the eve of the latest Ashes Test series in Australia, former England fast bowler Steve Harmison has told BBC Sport that Kevin Pietersen - on the brink of his 100th Test match - is "the best player ever to wear an England shirt".

Why?

I don't mean why in the sense of "has Pietersen scored more runs than any other England batsman?" or "is his average superior to any other England player?" or even 'is his style so superlative that watching him score 10 runs surpasses the pleasure of watching anyone else compile a double century?'

And I don't question Harmison's knowledge of the man in question, given that they were team-mates during England's victorious Ashes campaigns of 2005 and 2009.

No. What I mean is, why does the judgement always have to be who is the "best ever"? It is such a banal idea. Why do people think they have to keep straining towards such questions?

Thus we have heard in recent times how Rafael Nadal is the greatest-ever tennis player. Is he really? What about that other rather good player, the one who still holds the record of 17 Grand Slams...whatshisname?..people used to say the same thing about him....nope...name's gone...

Do you remember this tennis player? He was very good, the greatest ever of all time some said, and his name is Roger Federer @Getty Images

And then there was that other one, the one with the dodgy back who won seven Wimbledons...name's on the tip of my tongue...

Of course, all competitive sport works towards the establishment – Roger Federer! Of course! - of who is best. But while the relative judgement of times or scores is absolute, there is rather more involved – and Pete Sampras! Yes! - in ascertaining the relative values of less specific factors.

In all - or at least all available - seriousness, Federer's record and overall style has prompted many observers within the game to describe him as the "greatest ever", although Andre Agassi, who won all four Grand Slams himself, has said Nadal is now "making the argument"to be considered greater even than the greatest ever. Hyperbole upon hyperbole.

Within athletics, currently, there is no great argument going on about who is the paramount track and field performer - it is Usain Bolt, the sprinter who in the past five years has raised the consciousness of his sport to well beyond its own boundaries. How many times in those years have I heard this affable Jamaican referred to as "the greatest athlete of all time"? (This is of course a rhetorical question, but if you would like to answer it, something along the lines of "more times than you can remember" would probably hit the mark quite well.)

Perhaps it would be best to leave such questions until the end of ever, when we can all be sure.

Usain Bolt at this summer's IAAF World Championships in Moscow - is he the "greatest ever'"- or is it not quite that simple? @Getty Images

During last weekend's World Athletics Gala at the International Association of Athletics Federation's base in Monaco the second batch of athletes to enter the organisation's Hall of Fame offered the poignant sight of champions past moving gingerly onto a stage to claim their glittering prizes to a backdrop of their young, dynamic selves slaying all opposition at the 1948 or 1952 Olympics.

I watched with particular interest as Marjorie Jackson-Nelson, Olympic 100 and 200 metres champion 1952, and Harrison Dillard, Olympic 100m champion in 1948, 110m hurdles champion in 1952, stepped up to receive their awards. Although Dillard, now 90, required a photofinish to be given his 100m gold, he was a clear winner in his preferred event of the hurdles, while the footage of Jackson-Nelson showed her so far ahead of her rivals that those in the auditorium gave a little gasp. Curiously, neither appeared to give their younger selves particular attention.

Harrison Dillard (far left) wins the 1948 Olympic 100m title at Wembley Stadium on a photo-finish from fellow American Barney Ewell (second right) @Hulton Archive/Getty Images

My own interest in these two athletic marvels stemmed from an earlier press conference at which they had been joined by the more recent Olympic champion, Marie-Jose Perec, 200 and 400m double winner at the 1996 Atlanta Games.

Although the trio had gathered ahead of the Gala to reflect on questions of sport and life in general, the question asked which occupied them the most was - yes, you've guessed it - "Who has been the greatest athlete of all time?"

Auen enquiry that, as Dillard - still lean enough to merit his old nickname of "Bones" - wryly pointed out, that would continue to be debated down the generations, without any definitive answer.

"What a question!" Dillard responded with a smile. "Obviously Usain Bolt is currently the finest athlete of our time. Times change, and conditions change. I never ran on synthetic surfaces. Who is to say how an athlete of 75 or 100 years ago would perform if they could run on today's tracks, and have access to today's training and medical methods? It makes for wonderful arguments."

Harrison Dillard - still lean, but not at all mean, at 90 @Getty Images

Asked specifically about the relative merits of Bolt and Jesse Owens, who won four golds at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Dillard replied: "Usain Bolt's performances surpass those of Jesse's. But does that mean Usain is a greater athlete than Jesse? Not necessarily. When you consider what Jesse had to do to win those four golds in Berlin, in an atmosphere where Adolf Hitler was promulgating his ideas about Aryan Supremacy - for a young black man to go there and win four golds, that was some athlete.

"As I say, it is a good argument to have, and I get into it with my friends. But I have a little time to talk about it now!"

Jackson-Nelson also recalled the massive differences between the days when she was competing and now.

"We all ran on cinders," she said. "Things were so different for us. When we went away to the Olympics we had to go without wages for three months.

"To see Usain Bolt running on the television is a great pleasure to me, he is so magnificent to watch. He is one in a million."

Marjorie Jackson sets a world record in the 220 yards heats at the 1950 British Empire Games in Auckland @Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Perec was similarly just and diplomatic in her response. "He is a phenomenon," she said.

And in so saying, I believe all three got the balance refreshingly right. Nobody was leaping in to make claims or counter-claims for x, y or z. All had seen life enough to know that such hubbub was no more than a noisy distraction from the biggest challenge, summed up by Jackson-Nelson: "The most important thing is life, and how to live it."

This paragon of Australia has retained a similar wry humour to Dillard's in circumstances which have often been far from easy.

"My husband died of leukaemia when he was 45 and that left me with three children to bring up myself," Jackson-Nelson said. "I was Governor of South Australia for seven years, between 2001-2007 and I have also done a lot of work raising money for the Peter Nelson Leukaemia Research charity - I have raised six and a half million dollars so far. And I am just about to become a great grandmother for the second time.

"I think one of the worst things we do to our young people today is tell them that they have to win to be any good. There is too much emphasis on being the number one all the time. If you are an athlete and you train hard and you improve your times, then you are a winner."

Now we are in a different territory from the deliberation over who is the greatest of the great. And it is a healthier place to be.

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.

I'm pleased to be writing these notes after visiting sunny Cape Town where I was invited to speak at an international conference on drug-free sport and, as most of you will know by now, it's a subject that's very close to my heart.

In the weeks since the former Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson and I completed our round world tour promoting the SKINS' platform Pure Sport, I've received messages of support from all corners of the globe. That, in itself has given us more incentive to continue and the event in Cape Town is just one of a series of post-tour events I've been asked to attend and speak at. It tells me that our recent visits to the UK, Canada, USA, Australia, Japan and South Korea for Pure Sport's first initiative, #ChooseTheRightTrack was absolutely ON the right track.

In recent months, the notion that drug-free sport is a concept embraced by the vast majority of the sport-oriented population has been confirmed beyond all doubt. The problem is, it's usually the activities of the minority which take the headlines.

Ben Johnson and I have completed our round world tour promoting Pure Sport ©Bongarts/Getty Images


When athletes are caught and federations and even nations are challenged because of failing anti-doping practices, there are massive headlines, but when there's a collection of determined people who are focused on supporting the notion of clean, fair sport it takes a lot more effort to get the journalists engaged! I've no complaints about that and having spent the last months in the company of reporters across the world, I understand their motivation because human instinct is that gossip and wrongdoing is much more interesting than doing the right thing. Bad news sells.

That's why events such as the one in Cape Town are so important. Over the two days, a series of senior sports administrators, experts - and me - debated and promoted what most of us regard as the "good things" in sport. I'm proud to have been invited to sit on the same platform as David Howman, World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) director general. Equally, I'm delighted to have followed chief executive of United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), Travis Tygart onto the stage to discuss the role sponsors such as SKINS can - and should - play in ensuring proper governance and efficient doping controls. And to go one step further, how great do you think I feel that following ME was Edwin Moses, USADA's chairman and multiple Olympic gold medallist! Edwin is probably best remembered for being unbeaten over almost 10 years - nine years, nine months and nine days without a loss.

Actually, forget the fact it's me, what SKINS is doing to promote this subject is clearly the right thing to do and what's more, it's being noticed. A couple of weeks ago I was in Aarhus, Denmark delivering a similar speech on sponsors' responsibilities; the same message I delivered in Cape Town. Sport has a history of accepting sponsors' money and providing brand exposure in exchange, but I think the message is beginning to hit home that the extra element of corporate responsibility must be weaved into the process. Of course, sport itself has to ensure sponsors are associated with a clean and wholesome product otherwise brands will run away in droves and take their money with them - just like they did when cycling's problems were being aired and the cycling federation's ex-President Pat McQuaid was refusing to acknowledge it (How wonderful it was to have been part of the process that saw him replaced).

Edwin Moses followed me onto the platform at an international conference on drug-free sport in Cape Town ©Getty Images


I believe sponsors can no longer pay for the exposure a sponsorship package will give them and then calmly sit back and simply wait for the association to benefit their business. Sport these days is such a complex, multi-billion dollar business that anyone who touches it is inextricably linked by a chain of responsibility. Sure, as sponsors we want a "bang for our buck" but there's no point in operating commercially if you're not prepared to stand up for every athlete and sports fan who wants to watch or take part in a fair contest. As I see it, what is the point of SKINS selling products to enhance performance and recovery to people who compete at any level, if they believe the top-level sport we're supporting is rotten to the core? It's guilt by association and it makes no sense at all.

So yes, I'm proud to have been in Cape Town and was equally delighted to have been in Aarhus before. Further, I'll be chuffed to bits when I'm joined by Ben Johnson in Dubai later this week to take part in a "Sport versus Crime" conference organised jointly by the Dubai Government and the Dubai Police. This is an event which takes the discussion to a different level by focusing on how cheating in sport can be the first step towards deeper social issues, and equally how clean sport and genuine competition can point people away from crime and towards social integration.

I'm delighted that SKINS is now seen as being a positive voice in the global debate. It confirms how important it is for commercial bodies and sponsors to support the march towards ethical and clean sport rather than pay the money, turn a blind eye, enjoy the exposure and be done with it.

Jaimie Fuller is the chairman of SKINS and the founder of pressure group Change Cycling Now, whose members include Greg LeMond, Paul Kimmage and David Walsh. To follow him on Twitter click here.

According to the British boxing promoter Frank Warren, when Mike Tyson fought fellow American Lou Savarese at Glasgow's Hampden Park 13 years ago the former world heavyweight champion was, if you'll pardon the expression, "strutting around like a dog with two dicks".

Well, now we know why. Tyson claims in his new autobiography that he fooled the UK drugs testers by utilising what he calls his "whizzer" - a false penis filled with someone else's clean urine.

Tyson's story that he slipped it into his shorts before the post-fight test - a ruse he says he employed several times during his 21-year, 58-fight career - following his 38-second demolition of Savarese - will be of acute embarrassment to the testers.

It seems it was him and not them taking the pee.

No doubt the last thing Sir Craig Reedie, who took over as sport's anti-drugs czar last week, anticipated having to get to grips with Iron Mike's prosthetic penis.

Mike Tyson claims that he wore a false penis filled with someone else's clean urine to trick the drug testers during his career, including when he fought Lou Savarese ©Getty Images Europe


But the revelation will be of as serious concern to the freshly-elected President of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) as any current issues over the Jamaican, Kenyan and Russian testing systems, or the fall-out of the Lance Armstrong scandal which now includes Armstrong's own allegation that international cycling chiefs actually helped him cheat.

For how the druggies avoid being detected is very much on the agenda of the 72-year-old Scot who, allied to his vice-presidency of the International Olympic Association (IOC), is now the most influential figure in global sport, and one with surely the most crucial job.

For Tyson's alleged ruse is certainly not unique.

There are many instances where female athletes have been known to insert "clean" catheters before being tested, a favoured method in the dark days of Eastern bloc domination of women's athletics.

The use of masking agents and renal blocking agents - which do not secrete certain banned substances - still can be reasonably effective methods of avoiding detection.

Less sophisticated and supposedly more fallible a few years back was the consumption red wine before a test.

So too, I am reliably informed, was the ingestion of huge doses of oestrogen - also a masking agent - by some female athletes who persuaded friendly medics to prescribe it for alleged menstrual problems.

Until the whistle was blown, Lance Armstrong was sport's supreme cheat ©Getty Images


Of course, until the whistle was blown, Armstrong was sport's supreme cheat, skilfully avoiding doping controls. Those efforts included providing inadequate whereabouts information and dropping out of races to dodge testers.

The Bulgarians also had it down to a fine art. We now know that their weightlifting team would fast for two to three days before a competition.

Fasting, according to the experts "lowers the amplitude and pulsatility of luteinising hormone, thus, lowering the endogenous production of testosterone".

In addition, fasting also causes an increase in the excretion of steroids.

As a result, their urine samples would show lower levels of testosterone and other steroids because by the time they were tested, they virtually excreted most of the evidence away.

This trick was not the only one for which the Bulgarians were infamous.

Combating the tricks of the trade is a crucial aspect of the battle ahead for new WADA President Sir Craig Reedie ©AFP/Getty Images




They would use the diuretics to urinate out lots of fluid. By ingesting an abundance of water, the diuretics would just accelerate the clearance of steroids or other banned substances from the blood.

As for the Tyson technique, the chances of anyone getting away with such deception these days have diminished as much more intimate scrutiny of the genitals by testers is required while water is passed. Plus the advent of blood testing, which is far more difficult to fake.

But there will always be those who will try.

Combating such tricks of the trade - and they get dirtier by the day - is a crucial aspect of the battle ahead for WADA's new warlord. I suspect it is one Sir Craig will relish.

The retired financial adviser from Glasgow, who says he sees this as "my last big job in sport", is a man of quiet demeanour but, as he demonstrated as a principal architect of London's triumphant 2012 Olympic bid and leader of the IOC's 2020 Evaluation Commission, one whose diligence, integrity and masterfully diplomatic networking, commands worldwide respect.

He will require all those qualities as he leads the quest to counter what he describes as "the biggest current threat to the validity of Olympic sport".

Former British Olympic Association (BOA) chair Sir Craig, a founder director of WADA and latterly its treasurer, and a driving force behind the formation of UK Anti-Doping, was instrumental in drawing up the controversial BOA bylaw that prevented convicted dopers representing Britain at future Olympics, regrettably ultimately overturned.

So it was surely personally satisfying that in Johannesburg last Friday, when he assumed office, WADA finally endorsed four-year bans for first-time offenders, effectively forcing them to miss a Games.

Mike Tyson reveals all in his new book, Undisputed Truth ©WireImage




If he so wished, Reedie might have the opportunity for an admonitory tête-à-tête with Tyson when the self-styled one-time "baddest man on the planet" (or should that be maddest?) comes to Britain next year with his one-man stand-up show.

Though knowing ear-munching Tyson's propensity for blowing a fuse in the ring and out, one doubts the wisdom of any such confrontation.

What isn't in doubt is Tyson's reliance on drugs, so graphically disclosed in a new tell-all tome. He admits he spent a significant stretch of his turbulent career addicted to cocaine and marijuana.

He says his ferocious appetite for drink and drugs - "I was a full-blown cokehead" - dated back to trying cocaine at the age of 11 and first being given alcohol as a baby in New York.

Recalling his shock 2004 loss to Britain's Danny Williams, he revealed he was taking drugs until shortly before the fight.

He blamed a $200,000 (£124,000/€148,000) fine for testing positive for marijuana after a 2000 fight against Andrew Golota in Detroit on the fact that he was tested before having a chance to get the "whizzer" from an unnamed member of his team, whom he claims carried the device from fight to fight, including the one in Glasgow.

Frank Warren has said he is now considering legal action against Mike Tyson over his alleged use of a prosthetic penis ©Getty Images


Warren, who promoted the fight, told insidethegames he is now considering legal action against Tyson because if true, the fighter would have been "in serious breach" of contract.

Warren's in-house lawyers will also be scrutinising the explosive £20 ($32/€24), 600-page book titled "Undisputed Truth" when published here this week, some of which may be destined to become pulp fiction.

Warren's legal team have warned publishers HarperCollins that certain allegations made against the promoter "are untrue and defamatory" and demand their removal.

Warren also says he isn't sure whether to believe the false penis story of that Glasgow drugs test "which could be one of those things which sells books".

So is the tale of Tyson's "whizzer" wheeze really the Undisputed Truth?

Or just a wee fib?

Sir Craig is one Glaswegian who'd certainly like to know.

Alan Hubbard is a 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.

In his closing remarks at the Conference for Smart Textile Opportunities for Sport in Lausanne last week, moderator Bill Morris drew a comparison between now and the time of the Ancient Greeks.

In what he described as a "eureka moment" - with deliberate irony I hope - he highlighted how the Ancient Greeks wore no advanced technology, in fact nothing at all, when they competed so long ago. Sport in those idyllic days was purely about being faster, higher and stronger, or "citius, altius, fortius", by human means alone.

There was nothing that equipment, medicine, or even advanced training could do to make you better than the rest.

Imagine if the European Olympic Committees (EOC) were to purchase the Olympic Games broadcasting rights for Europe, or the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) bid against NBC and the other networks for the US rights.

Preposterous, right?

Yet this, in effect, is what has just happened in the Caribbean.

On Monday (November 11), the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced it had awarded the rights for Rio 2016 in this region of palm trees and Olympic sprinters to CANOC Broadcasting Inc (CBI).

Much the most interesting part of the announcement, however, came in the final paragraph: "CBI is a company that has been formed by the National Olympic Committees (NOCs) and Commonwealth Games Associations (CGAs) across the Caribbean to purchase, monetise and manage the broadcast rights for the Olympic Games and other sporting properties."

This notion of NOCs entering the television rights business intrigued me so much I picked up the phone to Larry Romany, CBI's chief executive.

To summarise, Romany, who was President until recently of the Trinidad and Tobago NOC, gives me to understand a) that he wants to provide high-quality, Caribbean-focused coverage throughout the region; and b) that as much as possible of any margin the company makes would be used to develop Caribbean sport.

"We want to utilise the great value the Olympic rings have always had and allow the islands to appreciate what it really is to be part of the Olympic Movement," he tells me.

In many ways, key to the success of the venture will be the nature of the offer to sponsors/advertisers Romany intends to make.

Rather than treat the region as a hotchpotch of island microstates, with individual TV companies left to do their own deals for access to what, inevitably, are pretty small pockets of viewers, even for the most popular events, CBI itself would sign up sponsors wishing to target the entire 40-some million-strong region.

It would then embed the branding of these companies into all its programming.

CBI has said it will target Olympic TOP sponsors - such as McDonald's, regional multinationals and local sponsors ©Getty Images

He might not like the analogy, but it strikes me as an attempt to do for the regional sports advertising market what, a generation or two ago, the West Indies did for Caribbean cricket.

"We will bring all the sponsors to the table and be responsible for selling all sponsorship," he explains, adding that CBI will target Olympic TOP sponsors, regional multinationals and local sponsors.

"Some advertising time - perhaps 90 seconds out of 14 or so minutes of advertising per hour - will be reserved for local companies interested only in their local market.

"We will negotiate with TV stations on terms for broadcasting the programming in their particular market on a revenue-sharing basis.

"By doing that we can control ambush marketing."

Romany emphasises that an as-yet-undisclosed production company would put the programmes together and that the IOC will provide 10 different feeds of the action from Brazil, enabling different languages and points of interest to be catered for: if a St Lucian high-jumper is in action at the same time as a Haitian wrestler, there should be enough flexibility to enable each market to get the pictures it is most likely to be interested in.

So far, so innovative and interesting - and let's not forget that the region possesses the biggest current Olympic star of all, Usain Bolt - but is there not significant financial risk involved for the regional sports bodies?

After all, the IOC has not done this deal on the cheap: I understand CBI is paying $2.5 million (£1.6 million/€1.9 million) - a drop in the ocean compared to the $4.1 billion (£2.5 billion/€3 billion) the IOC expects to raise all told from broadcasting rights for the Olympic cycle encompassing Sochi 2014 and Rio 2016, but more than triple the $750,000 (£465,000/€555,000) paid in the previous quadrennium, and that was for both Winter and Summer Games.

The region possesses the biggest current Olympic star of all - Usain Bolt ©LatinContent/Getty Images



Romany does not attempt to deny that the possibility of making a loss exists, but he makes three points.

1. CBI's model should help the whole region really get the most out of the Olympics and help sponsors to understand the full value of the Caribbean market. Both of these things would be beneficial from the regional NOCs' perspective and, hence, if necessary worth paying a certain amount for.

2. The regional NOCs know the score and realise it is possible - though not expected - that they might have to make further contributions to CBI.

3. "We feel that we are in a fairly good position regarding interest from sponsors. We don't think we will make a lot of money, but we don't believe we will lose any.

"Sponsorship revenue generated from the last Olympic Games from the three biggest island markets alone - Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados - would give us enough money to pay for everything we need."

And if the model works, what plans have been made for reinvesting the surplus in regional sports development, as touched on in Monday's announcement?

Romany explains that revenue-sharing would be on two levels: sports development programmes, targeting what he terms a "priority list" of development issues; and direct funding to regional NOCs for developing their own athletes.

He makes the point that smaller territories, such as Montserrat and the Turks and Caicos Islands, often have almost no access to funding, yet have a tendency to produce good athletes.

He pledges, moreover: "There is no way any of this profit is going to end up in any individual's hands."

The objective, he suggests, is to keep central costs, including the acquisition of further rights, down to such a degree that 85-90 per cent of any surplus would be channelled into development programmes.

Larry Romany says CBI will "utilise the great value the Olympic rings have always had and allow the islands to appreciate what it really is to be part of the Olympic Movement" ©SVGNOC


He makes clear, too, that Rio 2016 is seen as just the start.

CBI would "most definitely" bid for the Winter Olympics in the next cycle, and expects to be in the market for future Pan American and Commonwealth Games, as well as world championships of particular interest to the region.

"We have every intent of owning the Olympic rights in perpetuity," he says.

As proof of their seriousness, CBI is to start making monthly video and radio magazine programmes from February 2014, "so that TV companies get Olympic content over an extended period, rather than just having a two-week bite at the cherry when the Games are on".

The Caribbean is a particularly fragmented region, but it does make you wonder if there might be other parts of the world where such a model could prove beneficial.

At any rate, I wish Romany and his colleagues well.

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.