A strange race is winding towards a still not wholly predictable conclusion in a strained atmosphere, as Olympic bigwigs gather beside the River Plate for a hugely significant International Olympic Committee (IOC) Session.

After the slick and sophisticated war-games of recent Olympic-host contests, this three-way fight between Istanbul, Madrid and Tokyo to host the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games has at times been more like a session of rock, paper, scissors.

This is by no means entirely the fault of the three teams of contestants, who are trying their hearts out: the world has become a more turbulent and unpredictable place since the last such race reached its denouement in Copenhagen, in the presence of the world's most powerful man, and some of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune hurled at the current trio of candidate cities would be beyond the capacity of any bid committee entirely to control.

In such circumstances, the city that takes the chequered flag in the Buenos Aires Hilton on Saturday (September 7) evening may be determined in no small measure by the extent to which the mood of IOC members, their troubles largely rinsed away by still copious floods of televisions and marketing dollars, has been transformed by the tribulations afflicting so many people and organisations outside the bubble.

All is still to play for at the IOC Session in Buenos Aires


The more chastened and uneasy this unique electorate feels about the state of the world, the more circumstances are likely to favour Madrid's increasingly shrewdly managed bargain-basement Olympic project.

The tense atmosphere is a result partly of another high-stakes race whose outcome is soon to be determined: the competition to succeed Jacques Rogge as IOC President.

With September 10 the key date for that particular contest, six of the biggest beasts in the Olympic jungle are campaigning every bit as assiduously as the bid cities themselves, while endeavouring outwardly to maintain every appearance of business as usual, of camaraderie and bonhomie.

At such times, every statement can be loaded, every gesture stiff with self-conscious calculation; the contestants would not be human were this not so: one of them, after all - but only one - will inherit the mantle of the most powerful man in sport, in all probability for 12 years.

These last few days before IOC members pass their verdict promise to be made almost more uncomfortable because so many observers suspect that one of the candidates - Germany's Thomas Bach - though not impregnable, is close to having the race in the bag.

Thomas Bach is close to having the IOC Presidency within his grasp



While the candidates and their staunchest supporters are pouring their energies into what will surely be one of the most intense weeks of lobbying of their lives, therefore, the minds of others now streaming into Buenos Aires will be starting to turn to manoeuvring for position in the eight-year Presidential term that lies ahead.

It is all very uncomfortable.

The body language late last night when Executive Board members and their wives/partners returned to the Hilton lobby from a steak dinner across town was incredibly revealing.

While the partners, in one corner, seemed genuinely to be revelling in each other's company, the Board members, hunched around a bar-room table 20 metres away appeared uncharacteristically stiff and subdued.

Having so many of the IOC's top brass visibly consumed by this other contest must, of course, be frustrating for the bidding cities that must sense more keenly than anyone how tight and turbulent their race is.

Even with the huge strides Madrid has made in recent months, aided by several formidable strokes of luck, it remains impossible to call a winner with any degree of confidence.

What I think can be said is that the victor will be decided by the second-choice votes of the third-placed candidate.

Madrid has polled strongly in the past in the first round of voting; for this reason, and this reason alone, I see them as the least likely of the three to go out at this stage.

They also have the small advantage of presenting last on Saturday.

This gives them the opportunity to send IOC members off to a well-earned lunch with the words of Felipe, Prince of Asturias, the bid's newly-unearthed rock star, ringing in their ears.

Felipe, Prince of Asturias, (centre) adds royal clout to Madrid 2020's bid

Istanbul and Tokyo have each had formidable external issues to deal with inconveniently close to the finish line that would almost certainly have destroyed their chances in any other recent contest of this type.

Both are still hanging in there, bloodied but unbowed. Either might yet win.

Hasan Arat, the Istanbul bid's relentlessly upbeat chairman, offered a neat turn of phrase at a media conference in the Sheraton.

"I am a basketball player," he said, beaming like Turkish sunshine.

"I need to play the last three seconds."

Every member of all three teams in this strangest of contests would do well to follow this advice.

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.

Later this week, I will have the honour of being part of the team that makes wrestling's final presentation to the full membership of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). This will be, without question, one of the most important days in the three thousand year history of our sport, but it will be especially significant for women around the world.

Women's wrestling officially joined the Olympic programme at the Athens 2004 Olympic Games and as we approach our ten-year anniversary, we are faced with the possibility of disappearing from the very programme we fought so hard to be a part of.

To understand how important opportunities for women's wrestling are, you only need to look at my fellow presentation team member, Lise Legrand and myself. Both of us were originally inspired by male wrestlers to try our hand at what was a male-dominated sport. It is our hope that our hard work, determination and our Olympic medals, now serve as inspiration to young female wrestlers from around the world to break down gender barriers and achieve their own personal dreams.

And now our sport will embrace the Olympic dreams of female athletes more than ever. Starting at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, FILA has added two additional weight classes for women while reducing two for men, providing the opportunity for more women to participate in the Olympic Games. These women will not only add more excitement to the Olympic Games, but when they return home, they will encourage even more women to participate in sport.

Over the last six months, the Federation of Associated Wrestling Styles (FILA), now under the direction of its new President, Nenad Lalovic, has introduced additional groundbreaking changes that have modernised this ancient sport. These changes were necessary and if we are honest, we should have initiated them on our own and long ago.

Nenad Lalovic, pictured with IOC President Jacques Rogge, has led a period of groundbreaking change for wrestling


It took significant action from the IOC Executive Board for us to recognise what we needed to do. We have made tremendous progress in just six short months and I am excited about how our sport will evolve even further. We will accept nothing less than a "new wrestling", which is an innovative, exciting and modern sport.

FILA has created or restructured seventeen Commissions to better govern our sport and we are ensuring gender and athlete participation and balance on each Commission. This new governance will dramatically improve our sport every day, not just in Olympic years. I have taken this restructuring and the possibilities that come with it to heart, as I have decided to stand for one of the seats available to athletes. I want to help ensure that these changes are enacted and we continue to make improvements to our sport.

The new rule changes make sure that wrestling is about speed, strength and strategy. A wrestler can no longer be passive and win a match. The point system has changed to reward action, which is making our sport more attractive to spectators, the media and sponsors. Wrestlers at our junior and cadet levels learned this at their recently completed World Championships and have shared positive feedback with FILA on the new scoring system.

Social media is playing a big part in the campaign to save Olympic wrestling


Wrestling is focusing on digital technology and social media, as well. Over the last six months, FILA has incorporated Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and more into its daily communications with FILA Bureau Members, wrestlers of all nationalities and Olympic wrestling fans. FILA's Facebook page and Twitter account are now followed by a record number of fans enjoying photos, videos and content provided by FILA.

What do Boy George, Stephen Fry, Peter Tatchell and yours truly have in common?

No, I am not gay - but we have all been branded "Russophobes". In my case, it follows my recent piece in insidethegames, critical of Russia's anti-gay stance over the next year's Winter Olympics in Sochi (Gay Pride-more like Gay Prejudice) and subsequently in the Independent on Sunday.

A splenetic email from Russia - with no love lost - insists that their Foreign Ministry permanently bans me from entry into the country. While there appears to be no official endorsement, the ways things are you begin to wonder who is behind it.

I am described as a "Pathological Russophobe" and listed as such in a pictorial "rogues gallery" with Georgie boy, luvvie Fry - who petitioned the Prime Minister for a British boycott of Sochi 2014, Gay Rights campaigner Tatchell and a host of international luminaries said to be similarly disposed.

Well, sorry to disappoint you tovarich Levatomov - for that apparently is the identity of the sender according to his email address - but not only am I straight but I actually love Russia, which I have enjoyed visiting several times, even though before the Moscow Olympics they did try to confiscate a sports magazine, in which I had interviewed Sebastian Coe, as "bourgeois propaganda" and bugged our rooms.

I am described as a "Pathological Russophobe" and listed as such in a pictorial "rogues gallery" online


Good sense of humour though.

I still dine out on recalling how at the end of the Games a few of my colleagues and I threw a farewell party at the now demolished Rossiya Hotel, once the world's largest, where I had been strangely upgraded to a suite after my protest at the attempted confiscation of my magazine - against International Olympic Committee (IOC) regulations.

As the Georgian champagne popped, someone suggested that as we suspected the room might be bugged we should offer a toast. Jokingly we raised our glasses and said: "To all our listeners - Cheers!"

A few seconds later, the phone rang and a Russian voice chuckled: "And cheers to you too, tovarich!"

Yet it must be said that away from the Olympic arena the atmosphere was depressingly sterile. No birds sang in Red Square, no kids clamoured for autographs outside the Lenin Stadium or Olympic village.

Our hotel corridors were patrolled by KGB men with loose suits and blank stares. Although there wasn't a gun in sight, there was no shortage of armoury, tanks rolling monotonously along the banks of the Moscow River.

The sport provided a golden lining to the cloud that hovered over Moscow.

How different it will be if the Games were to be held in this beautiful, energising city now.

The Moscow 1980 Olympics camouflaged a very different lifestyle


Some of the Russian student friends I made hastened to point out that the Olympics - like those later in Beijing - camouflaged a very different lifestyle, one of grim austerity. They murmured about an escalating "war of ideology" with their nation.

One wonders now whether those Olympics sparked the thought processes among the younger generation that led first to glasnosts and the eventual throwing back of the Iron Curtain.

Even now, a wooden replica of Mischa the Bear, the mascot whose teardrop provided such a moving farewell to the Games, is among the most treasured of my Olympic souvenirs

Since my first visit there with Sir Alf Ramsey's England football team in the early seventies, I have always found Russian sportsfolk helpful and hospitable.

That's one reason why I oppose any proposed boycott over Sochi as fiercely as I did over those Summer Games 33 years ago, which in the circumstances, with half the world staying away because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan - what an ironic twist to that tale now - I thought were brilliantly orchestrated.

As no doubt, Sochi will be too.

Mind you, after that missive from the rancorous Russian I now might think twice before accepting any invitation to a cup of Earl Grey at Mayfair's Millennium Hotel with one of their diplomats. Especially if his name ends in "ov".

However, it does seem that the Russians are backtracking somewhat from the original vehemence of that anti-gay legislation and that there will be no discrimination against gay competitors, of whom Russia have always had a fair quota of their own in sport, not least in skating.

But any suggestion of anything "abnormal" in public view remains a no-no.

Konstantin Altunin is reportedly seeking asylum in France


Take this instance. Recently four satirical paintings by artist Konstantin Altunin were removed from the Saint Petersburg Museum of Power during a raid by Russian police. The Associated Press reported that the artist behind the controversial works fled Russia in the aftermath of the raid and is reportedly seeking asylum in France.

His paintings apparently were confiscated due to their mocking depiction of Russian political figures. One featured President Vladimir Putin, who has as summer residence in Sochi, and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in women's lingerie. Oh dear!

The museum has not reopened since the incident.

On the subject of Sochi. Gay Blades may be the least of Russia's Winter Games worries in view of the latest sports scandal, in which a prospective American Olympian short track speed skater has been banned for two years by the International Skating Union (ISU) for sabotaging the skates of a rival Canadian during an international event.

Simon Cho, a bronze medallist in Vancouver, claimed he had been pressured by a coach, Jae Su Chun, who was also suspended, into tampering with the skates of Canada's Olivier Jean.

Simon Cho has been banned for sabotaging rival's skate


Those who follow the sport say it is not the first time that attempts have been made to blunt or bend the blades of rivals in both speed and figure skating.

And in the past it has even been known for itching powder to be put into the costumes of other competitors in the dressing room. Might this have led to St Vitus Dancing on Ice, we wonder?

No doubt cheating in all its forms plus any lingering concerns over Sochi will be on the agenda of the IOC Session in Buenos Aires, which begins this week.

But the priority will be the triple-pronged election that will see a new President installed, a host city named for the 2020 Games and a decision on which of three sports - wrestling, squash or baseball-softball - is on the road to those Olympics in seven years' time.

As a strictly personal footnote I hope we get a wind of change - or at least a stiff, refreshing breeze, with Singapore's progressive Ng Ser Miang ending Europe's domination of the Presidential office, continent-straddling Istanbul finally rewarded for their perseverance and squash receiving a deserved Olympic berth after being squeezed out for too long.

But I am not holding my breath.

The bookies say the smart money is on the favourites, Thomas Bach, Tokyo and wrestling - and they're not often wrong.

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.

It will be the single most dramatic moment of the 125th International Olympic Committee (IOC) Session in Buenos Aires. When the envelope is torn open to reveal Istanbul, Madrid or Tokyo as 2020 hosts of the Olympics, the decision will transform the very life of the winning city.

Three is the smallest number of cities to contest a final vote for a summer Games since 1981, when the South Korean capital Seoul beat the Japanese city Nagoya to win the 1988 Games. Many considered this a high risk. Although a ceasefire had been in force since 1953, the two Koreas were still technically at war.

"Seoul had not had many contacts with the Olympic family back then," recalled IOC member Un Yong Kim later.

Up to that time his country had only staged one World Championship, in shooting, but "Seoul was more modern than many people realised," said Kim and against the odds those Games were very successful.

As recently as 1978, the IOC had a one horse race. Tehran, then ruled by the Shah, announced in 1975 that they would bid for the 1984 Olympics but later withdrew. Los Angeles was left as the only candidate. They announced their Games would be staged by private enterprise and upset purists when they decided to charge runners to participate in the Olympic Torch relay.

A former travel company executive Peter Ueberroth led the Organising Committee and turned a handsome profit. It proved a turning point for the Olympic Movement as cities now queued up to host the Games.

Seoul 1988 was considered to be a successful Olympics but there originally had been doubts over the decision to award the Games to the South Korean capital


This had not always been the case. In 1904, Berlin graciously stood aside after an impassioned plea from Roman Mayor Prospero Colonna to stage the 1908 Games.

Then IOC President Pierre de Coubertin said Rome was "a sumptuous toga with which to clothe Olympism". But Rome soon ran into financial difficulties and the eruption of Vesuvius put paid to their dreams. London stepped in. The Romans had to wait until 1960 for another chance.

The Games grew rapidly and German Kaiser Wilhelm attended the opening of Berlin's stadium intended for the 1916 Olympics, but war soon made them impossible.

Antwerp held the first Games when the fighting stopped but there was no shortage of candidates for the 1924 Games. A total of 14 cities expressed initial interest,and six eventually made presentations before Paris was chosen to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the foundation of the IOC.

Amsterdam in 1928 made it five European Cities in a row. There was no continental rotation but Coubertin had by this time suggested that one in three Games should go to "the new world". In 1932 Los Angeles held the Games.

For 1936, there came bids from Buenos Aires in South America and Alexandria in Africa. IOC President Henri de Baillet-Latour informed his colleagues of additional interest from Dublin, Budapest, Helsinki, Rome, Barcelona and four German cities. The IOC chose Berlin. It proved a fateful choice when the Nazis later came to power.

A decision to award the 1936 Olympics to Berlin proved fateful when the Nazis under Adolf Hitler came to power


Military aggression soon forced the IOC to move the 1940 Games from Tokyo after the Japanese invaded Manchuria and the Games were re-assigned to Helsinki.

War made Olympic sport impossible, though the sequence of Games includes the 12th, which were scheduled for Helsinki in 1940, and the 13th, which had been set for London in 1944, although both were cancelled.

Only a few days after the war ended, IOC President Sigfrid Edström, determined the Games should resume as soon as possible, called the Executive Committee together in London. Voting was by post and London was chosen to host the 1948 Olympics.

Helsinki's installation, initially planned for 1940 finally saw Olympic competition in 1952.

Until this point, the Olympics had been staged exclusively in Europe or America. In 1949, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Montreal were all eliminated by the final round of voting along with Mexico City. Melbourne beat Buenos Aires by a single vote and became the first Southern Hemisphere city to host the Games.

The road to 1956 proved rocky, however. Three years out, IOC member Hugh Weir reported on "one thing that worries us". They had received a letter from Earl Page of the Australian Health Ministry. "To permit horses to enter Australia for the Olympic Games would involve our livestock industries in a serious risk which would be quite unwarranted," he wrote.

The IOC were unhappy but, at their 1954 Session in Athens, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Berlin, Paris, Los Angeles and Stockholm all bid for the Equestrian Games. The Swedes polled 25 of the 47 votes and competitions were held in the very stadium where the horses had made their debut in 1912.

The first Olympics had yet to visit Asia but when the IOC gathered in Munich to choose the host city for 1964 Tokyo beat Detroit, Vienna and Brussels in the first round of voting.

The massacre of Israeli athletes overshadowed the 1972 Olympics in Munich

The Olympics continued to seek new horizons. Mexico City were elected 1968 hosts despite concerns over high altitude. Concerns over the size and cost were growing. Munich's magnificent facilities for the 1972 Games proved a lasting legacy for the city, but a huge financial cost and the killing of Israeli athletes overshadowed everything.

"Money has been stressed too much. The Olympics could no more have a deficit than a man a baby," said Montreal Mayor Jean Drapeau as he masterminded their successful bid for 1976.

Unusually, severe winters and industrial unrest caused delays and costs spiralled. Montreal's showpiece stadium was unfinished when the Olympics began. Local taxpayers continued to pay for them well into the 1990s.

The future seemed bleak when the United States, Germany, Japan and Canada led a boycott of the 1980 Moscow Games after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Even IOC President Lord Killanin called the Games "joyless". Many felt they had no future, but despite a tit for tat Soviet bloc boycott in 1984, Los Angeles showed a profit of some $225 million (£144 million/€171 million). As a result,The next host city competition was the most competitive in years.

Los Angeles in 1984 was so successful that it helped revive interest among cities around the world wanting to host the Olympics

Amsterdam, Brisbane, Birmingham,Paris, Belgrade and Barcelona presented their case for 1992 to the IOC. New Delhi withdrew before the final vote. Barcelona's success was masterminded by charismatic Mayor Pasqual Maragall.

Belgrade, Manchester, Melbourne and Toronto all joined the rush to bid for the 1996 Centennial Games. 1896 hosts Athenians dreamed of "The Golden Games". Instead, the IOC chose the Southern American city of Atlanta. The Greek capital did eventually stage the Olympics in 2004.

In the meantime, the campaign for 2000 was contested by five cities, but the real head to head was between Sydney and Beijing, whose bid came barely four years after the massacre of students in Tiananmen Square.

Sydney's bid chief later revealed he had planned a campaign which highlighted China's shortcomings in human rights but "could not be sourced back to Australia". Others on his committee vetoed the plan.

When decision day came in Monte Carlo, Beijing led after three rounds but Sydney eventually edged home by two votes.

Beijing's time finally came in Moscow in 2001 when Juan Antonio Samaranch pulled their name from the envelope to host the 2008 Games.

Election day is now a television spectacle in its own right. Voting is computerised, members press a button on a handheld box. It is a far cry from the days of postal ballots. The result is known only to the scrutineers, drawn from senior IOC members. A television special increases the drama before the envelope containing the name of the winning city is handed to the IOC President.

As would be Olympic cities increased in number, a qualifying competition was introduced. Cities submitting their initial responses to the IOC Questionnaire are "Applicant Cities". In 2005, Havana, Istanbul, Leipzig and Rio fell by the wayside at this stage, as the IOC chose London, Madrid, Moscow, Paris and New York as "Candidate Cities".

The rules had been tightened after the bidding excesses in the race for the 2002 Winter Games were exposed. IOC members were no longer allowed to visit bidding cities.

Celebrities remained keen to support the Olympic Movement David Beckham's presence in Singapore in 2005 on behalf of London 2012 caused a media frenzy.

The Paris team called on President Jacques Chirac, Madrid were supported by Queen Sofia, a reserve for the Greek sailing team in 1960. When Madrid bid again for the 2016 Games, her Olympian husband King Juan Carlos, a sailor at Munich 1972, came before the IOC.

Air force One also swept into Copenhagen as President Obama made the case for Chicago, but it was Brazil's President Lula who celebrated alongside Pele.

IOC President Jacques Rogge announces that Rio de Janeiro have been awarded the 2016 Olympics and Paralympics

Long-serving Canadian IOC member Dick Pound, concerned at the parade of national leaders asked colleagues to "give some consideration to our policy of having heads of states attend presentations by bid committees. I am not sure that we may be on the best possible ground there. There are some risks that we should assess and not simply be flattered by the attention of heads of states."

When the road to 2020 began, Baku and Doha were amongst applicants but only Madrid, Istanbul and Tokyo made the cut. All three made presentations at the extraordinary IOC session in Lausanne in July, but on Saturday (September 7) in Buenos Aires, only one can fulfill their Olympic dream.

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.

In a week when Britain's first competitors at next year's Sochi Winter Games were announced - Scotland's world champion women's curling team, skipped by Eve Muirhead and coached by the woman who skipped Team GB to gold at the Salt Lake City 2002 Winter Games, Rhona Martin, news also arrived of a competitor who won't be taking part in the next Olympics in Russia: Simon Cho.

Cho, who won a bronze medal for the United States in short track speed skating at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics and an individual world title the following year, has been banned for two years for tampering with a rival's skates.

News of Cho's suspension came on the day the US team for the short track event was announced. Having initially denied wrongdoing, Cho - who is banned by the International Skating Union (ISU) until August 2015 - confessed last October to deliberately altering the blades on the skates of Canadian rival Olivier Jean at the 2011 World Team Championships.

Olivier Jean, whose skate blades were illegally tampered with by Simon Cho at the 2011 World Team Championships

He described this action as "the biggest mistake of my life", and alleged that his coach had put pressure on him to do it after becoming convinced the Canadians had helped other athletes to knock out the US team.

His coach, Jae Su Chun, denies having had any role in the sabotage.

Cho admitted to using a blade-bender, normally used to keep skates to the correct radius in short track, to tamper with the Canadian's skates before competition started.

"I always knew it was wrong that day," Cho said. "I hope that I can make up for my mistake and continue to skate in the future." Well, he has his wish. But it will not be the near future.

This unhappy speed skater thus takes his place in a long and inglorious history of those who have cheated in sport by means of altering equipment, either to their own advantage, or to the disadvantage of their opponents. Cho's illicitly used blade-bender now joins a bewildering array of similarly nefarious props.

Tonya Harding, whose boyfriend was charged with hitting rival Nancy Kerrigan on her knee with a bar, ran into her own problems at the 1994 Winter Games as her laces came undone


Remaining for the moment within an ice arena, the lead-up to the women's figure skating at the 1994 Winter Games in Lillehammer was transformed into a soap opera when the very basic prop of an iron bar was forcefully applied to the knee of the leading US hope, Nancy Kerrigan. The drama deepened when it transpired that the bar had been wielded by the boyfriend of Kerrigan's main US rival, Tonya Harding. As the wheels of justice turned slowly, Harding was allowed to compete in Norway, which was good news for the media but not, ultimately, for her, as she produced a ragged display in a competition where Kerrigan took the silver medal.

That was an extraordinary piece of manipulation. But the most infamous example of this kind is the "magic épée" wielded at the 1976 Montreal Olympics by the Soviet Union's modern pentathlete Boris Onishchenko, who had won individual silver and team gold at the previous Games in Munich. It was magic because it could register hits without having to touch an opponent. Abracadabra!

How so? Well, it was internally wired with a circuit-breaker that Onishchenko was able to activate to record a "hit" on the electronic scoring system. He was eventually rumbled by his old rival and friend Jim Fox, of Britain, and was swiftly disqualified, automatically knocking the Soviet team - defending champions - out of the running.

Boris Onishchenko, pictured in fencing gear, was disqualified from the modern pentathlon competition at the 1976 Olympics when his épée was found to be rigged to register "hits"



The Ukrainian was very soon Back In The USSR - and has not been seen outside it since. Of course, the British newspapers loved it. Next day the headlines were all about "Disonischenko".

Twenty years before Onishchenko's embarrassment, a couple of other Soviet competitors were found to have benefited from another nifty piece of equipment enhancement.

When Yuri Stepanov produced a world record in the high jump of seven feet one inch (2.16 metres) early in the summer of 1957 it provoked surprise among observers of the sport who were unfamiliar with this new talent. Stepanov had not even made the Soviet Olympic squad at the previous year's Games in Melbourne.

And when, shortly afterwards, Olympian Igor Kashkarov - who had cleared only 6 feet 10½ inches to finish third at Melbourne in 1956 - managed a jump of 7 feet ¼ inch, questions began to be asked.

Then the French daily L'Équipe published a picture of Stepanov in action.

Interest swiftly focused on his shoes, the soles of which looked unusually thick and bouncy. In Moscow the high jumpers' coach, Nicolai Komenkov, insisted that there was nothing wrong with the soles. But no chance was offered for them to be examined, and so the then International Amateur Athletics Federations (IAAF) got involved.

"The rules say nothing about the foot gear of a high jumper," said the IAAF spokesman Paul Mericamp, "but the Federation has to take a stand on this phenomenon." Before long the rules did say something about suitable footwear for high jumpers and the spring-heeled-Jack soles were banned. But Stepanov's world mark stood.

Michael Palin, seen here picking up the Fellowship Award at this year's BAFTA Ceremony, hides a secret shame involving conkers


It may pain some readers to learn that that very nice man, Michael Palin, has also been found to have indulged in illegal technical manipulations in order to further his own ambitions at a World Championships - or the World Conker Championships, to give them their full title.

This shameful episode in the life of the former-Monty Python-comedian-turned-travel-writer-and-broadcaster took place in 1993 during a competition held on the Isle of Wight - Mecca for Conkerers, in case you didn't know.

Palin was found to have committed two of the prime crimes of the conkers competitor: not only had he baked his conker; he had also soaked it in vinegar. Not nice, but these things have to be faced full on if they are to be properly addressed. At least he didn't, as some have, paint his conker with clear nail varnish.

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. To follow him on Twitter click here.

Britain's hopes of a Winter Olympics fit to follow last year's golden summer are going downhill fast. Which happens to be exactly the Games plan for Sochi next February.

High speed and hi-tech form the blueprint which it is hoped could see Team GB enjoy some replica of the success that captivated the nation during London 2012. No winter sports squad has been better prepared or funded than that assembled for a recent dry run at Bath University for the coming assault in the Caucasus Mountains which form the breathtaking backdrop to Russia's chic Black Sea resort.

Even if winter sports fail to grab you by the snowballs at this time of the year, the British Olympic Association's (BOA) summer camp for more than 50 assorted skiers, sledders, skaters and curlers was indicative of the aim to achieve Britain's most successful Winter Games since 1924, which saw four medals - gold in curling, silver in bobsleigh and bronze in figure skating and ice hockey.

There is certainly a resolute belief that Britain can return with more than the solitary medal - gold from Amy Williams in the skeleton - won in Vancouver four years ago.

The optimistic mood was captured even in mid-August, six months away from Sochi, with a display of team bonding which included a manufactured snowball fight on Bath's lush green pastures.

So, with apologies to Shakespeare and Richard III, will Sochi be Britain's winter of content, made glorious summer by this sun of Bath?

Shelley Rudman is a strong medal hope for Britain at Sochi 2014

The thought of which is reflected in the podium aspirations of Britain's potentially best prospect for gold in them thar Sochi hills...Shelley Rudman, the 32-year-old Wiltshire-born mum who risks life and limb every time she hisses head first down the ice tunnel flat on her face at 90mph on a brakeless bob skeleton, the oddball event in which she is the current world champion.

That skeleton, which actually does reside in a cupboard at her home, now in Sheffield, is certainly something of a bone-shaker - 40kg of hi-tech machinery which, when put on ice, goes like a bomb, exploding into 60 seconds of sheer terror.

There are 18 curves on a skeleton run, all of them dangerous. "At first there's just this incredible silence inside your helmet," the delightful Rudman told insidethegames during a break from her training on Bath's push-start track. "Then all you can hear is the clattering as you're going down.

"When you do a corner, well it's a great feeling, a tremendous thrill - whoosh! Then you seem to float your way down. A fraction of a second can be the difference between first and last." Not to mention injury-or worse.

Rudman is certainly no stranger to danger, like being been flung off and bounced along the inner walls of the ice.

She can still painfully recall one particularly dramatic crash at Salt Lake City. "I went hard into bend six. The pressure slammed my head down and I just nutted the ice. I couldn't remember anything. Suddenly I saw I was flying towards bend twelve, and thought, 'Wow, what happened to the last four bends?'

"I could just see the darkness rising. I knew it was blood filling my helmet. That's when you start panicking. You think, 'How much damage have I done?' I could feel the blood leaking out of my helmet and my nose was broken. I had to have an operation because the septum had divided."

Nodar Kumaritashvili suffered a fatal crash during a training run for Vancouver 2010

A day before the last Games opened in Vancouver a young Georgian luger, Nodar Kumaritashvili, suffered fatal injuries during a training run on the track also used for bobsleigh and skeleton, the fourth athlete to have died during Winter Olympics preparations.

Conscious of this the Russian organisers have introduced a novel feature for Sochi, small hillocks designed rather like sleeping policemen to slow the sledders down. "It's strange having to negotiate uphill as well as down," says Rudman. "But look, this is a risk sport - we all know that. The inherent danger is part of the thrill."

Skeleton has been Great Britain's most successful Winter Olympic sport in recent Games, never failing to produce medal since its inception in 2002.

Rudman herself won a silver in Turin in 2006 but four years later it was her teammate, the now-retired Williams who became the golden girl. Their relationship was ice cool, and the sixth-placed Rudman admits: "It was a bit of a downer. I needed some time to get over it."

But this winter's World Championship victory coupled with the overall World Cup title last season, has sent those Sochi hopes soaring. "Now I have to get things right for the big one. It has been back to the drawing board."

That board is something she pores over with her partner Kristan Bromley, 41, aka Dr Ice, who won the men's world title in 2008 and is a renowned bob skeleton boffin, a former graduate trainee with British Aerospace, now a professor of physics who has applied years of research in refining an object that once resembled a tea tray into such a sophisticated piece of aero-dynamics. Yet he says when he was first asked in the nineties what he knew about bob skeleton he thought they were referring to a bloke.

But what is it about the sport that so attracts women, who in this country, seem better equipped to master it than men? "I doubt it is anything physiological," says Rudman, like Williams a former hurdler, who took it up while a student at Bath. "Maybe there's that something extra inside us which tells us we have to prove to ourselves that we can be as good, if not better than men at certain sports, and this is one of them."

Rudman and fiancé Bromley have a five-and a half-year-old daughter, Ella, but say marriage is on the back burner until after the Games.

"Having Ella really helps me," says Rudman. "Sometimes she comes with us to competitions. I can be on the start line and she'll shout, just as it falls quiet, 'Go, go, mummy!' Or I can be in the crouch position and she'll yell, 'I love you mummy!' Those are special moments but, as soon as I'm ready, I don't hear anything. I'm on my own.

"Winning the World Championship is a real motivation for the Olympics, but the expectations now are enormous."

Which is why Britain's coolest runner says she needs to be utterly focused. "Everybody is expecting me to bring back gold."

Expectations are also high for Elise Christie as Britain's first World Cup champion at 1,000 metres


Expectations are high elsewhere too. Short-track speed skater Elise Christie is Britain's first World Cup champion at 1,000 metres and says: "I do think this is going to be the most successful Winter Olympics ever for Britain."

And Scotland's curlers led by bagpipe-playing Eve Muirhead - who comprise Team GB - are current world champions reckoned to have a great chance of emulating Rhona Martin's squad of 2002.

While Britain's bobbers had a poor Games in Vancouver results have improved and last year Mica McNeill and Jazmin Sawyers claimed a historic Youth Olympics silver in Innsbruck.

Paula Walker and Gillian Cooke have been consistently in the World Cup top 10 and the men's four-man had a fifth-placed finish at this year's World Championships in Switzerland.

James Woods could win Britain's first Olympic medal on snow


It is also hoped that the addition of the former Olympic sprinter Craig Pickering can boost the prospects of the two-man squad. "Modern bobsleigh requires a fast, explosive start and a recruitment drive to bring in top-class athletes has meant we are now amongst the fastest starters in the world," says performance director Gary Anderson.

Britain has never won an Olympic medal on snow - Alain Baxter's slalom bronze in 2002 was rescinded for failing a drugs test - but that could be rectified in Sochi following the debut of snowboarding slopestyle, where in New Zealand 21-year-old James Woods has become the second British winter athlete to reach a World Cup podium this season, after a similar silver for Jenny Jones.

A phrase frequently heard immediately after London 2012 was: "Follow that!"

This is exactly what leading lady Rudman and GB's Winter Games ensemble are keen to do in sport's next big production number. The rehearsals are going well, but Sochi's slopes are particularly slippery, so fingers crossed.

As they say, there's no business like snow business.

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.

It was with a certain amount of sadness but not surprise that I read a report in the British Medical Journal online last week that stated that seven-year-old children are not doing enough exercise.

The new research found that half of all seven-year-olds do not get enough exercise - and girls are far less active than boys. It also highlighted that only 51 per cent of all seven-year-olds in the UK achieve the recommended hour of exercise every day, with the figure being just 38 per cent in girls compared with 63 per cent in boys.

We see a lot written in the media about how as a nation we are not supporting children at an early enough age to understand and enjoy the benefits of PE and sport. You often hear of the problem, but less frequently will people put forward viable solutions.

It is my belief, and that of the Youth Sport Trust, that if young people enjoy taking part in physical activity early on in life they will go on to lead active healthy lifestyles, but if they have a bad experience, particularly at school, they could be put off for ever.

And this is where the problem lies for many primary schools. Through our research on Bupa Start to Move, a programme focused on improving PE in primary schools, we have discovered that many primary school PE teachers lack the confidence to deliver the subject well.

This can be for a number of reasons but there is one that stands out above most. For many, their lack of confidence is borne from initial teacher training not dedicating sufficient time to what constitutes high quality PE and how it should be delivered.

This is why we are working with Bupa to offer training to primary school teachers to boost their confidence and understanding of PE. It is going very well with more 1,700 schools expecting to benefit from the training this year alone.

John Steele believes that it is important that young children have a positive experience of PE if physical activity is to be part of their lives after they leave school

Our work with another partner, Matalan, is also addressing some of the key challenges in this area. Part of Matalan Sporting Promise gives teachers the opportunity to attend free workshops and to receive resource cards, posters, and access to online resources all aimed at boosting primary school PE. This programme has reached thousands of schools already and is growing all the time.

In addition to our work in this area, Government investment over the next two years which kicks in from September, is dedicated to primary school PE and school sport and has the potential to make a significant contribution if schools channel the funding correctly.

There is guidance available to schools in how to best utilise the funding, but in my opinion they should be focusing on enhancing their own teaching staff in how to best deliver PE, which will lead to sustainable solutions, rather than outsourcing their funding to external providers that will leave no real legacy once the funding ends.

The Department of Health also recently announced an additional £3 million ($5 million/€3.8 million) towards Change4Life Sports Clubs, which the Youth Sport Trust deliver. These clubs have been created to increase physical activity levels in less active seven- to nine-year-olds, and are proving successful in educating young people about the importance of living a healthy active lifestyle.

Whilst these are all very positive steps, there is much work still to be done to tackle growing levels of inactivity amongst children. It is a problem for all of society not just schools and it is widely recognised that we are at risk of a ticking health time tomb if we do not take action to tackle the issue.

We must give every opportunity for young people to enjoy taking part in physical activity and sport - so that the type of research findings we have witnessed this week, become a thing of the past.

John Steele is the chief executive of the Youth Sport Trust

As the arduous campaign trail undertaken by the three cities bidding to host the 2020 Olympics rolls ever forward, the briefest of visits was paid by them to Nanjing last week for the start of the Asian Youth Games.

Short it may have been, but with the contest hanging on a knife-edge, the memories locked within this ancient Chinese city could ultimately give a clue to Japan's undoing come the vote in Buenos Aires on September 7.

On 13 December, 1937, the city, known then as Nanking, was overpowered by Japanese forces as they surged across China.

Whenever I see the United States 110 metres hurdler David Oliver I am always pleasantly relieved that his head remains on his shoulders. Three years ago, I chatted to this powerfully built and affable product of Denver, Colorado as we travelled on an open-top bus around the 2012 Olympic Park as part of the publicity drive - as it were - for the following day's London Grand Prix at Crystal Palace. As we caught a distant glimpse of the as-yet unfinished Olympic Stadium, Oliver - who is 6ft 2in tall - rose from his seat on the top deck to get a picture of it on his mobile phone. A low bridge loomed suddenly in front of us. And had the American not sat down just as suddenly after deeming his snap satisfactory then, well, as I say, it's nice to see he remains in one piece.

In emotional rather than physical terms, however, Oliver was all over the place in the wake of his recent victory at the IAAF World Championships in Moscow, a victory watched by his mother, the former 400m hurdler Brenda Chambers, who earned the right to compete in that very same stadium 33 years earlier but was unable to do so because of the US boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics.

On the eve of this week's IAAF Diamond League meeting in Stockholm, as he sat in a glass-walled hotel conference room with a panoramic view of the city's glorious Riddarfjord, Oliver reflected on the emotions which had arrived unbidden after he had crossed the line in his final. And the 31-year-old's subsequent description of 2013 as the year when he had to reinvent himself in order to stay in the game contained honesty one rarely encounters in such publicity appearances.

David Oliver stands on the podium during the medal ceremony for the men's 110 metres hurdles at the 2013 IAAF World Championships

During the summer months, we've been working on a massive project that I truly want every single person who reads this blog to be involved in. Don't worry, it doesn't end with you buying something, but it does provide you with a voice in a massive international survey we've undertaken on the health of world sport. I'm convinced it will interest every sports-mad person who cares passionately about the future of sport and equally convinced the results will give us all something to discuss on a worldwide scale.

Regular readers will know by now that I have a passion for fair and clean sport. The Skins brand reflects those values too, not because they're mine but because they are the fundamental principles that all of us associated with Skins genuinely believe in. In fact, we believe that the vast majority of sports fans believe in them too but the sad fact is that sometimes the majority can be treated like the minority when blazer-wearers get involved.

I'm sure we've all felt it at some point or other. There can be millions of sports fans shouting the same message, but if for some political or self-serving reason the blokes in blazers don't agree, they pretend they're deaf or we're not shouting loud enough. As sports fans, we're continually fed a diet of meaningless rhetoric that is intended to keep us off their backs, retain their cosy status quo and allow them to carry on sitting in their ivory towers.

The survey gives sports fans a place to air their views on doping

Back in 1976 when I edited the magazine Sportsworld, then the official publication of the British Olympic Association, I received a telephone call from a Melbourne radio station in the middle of the night following the British figure skater John Curry's breathtakingly artistic gold medal winning performance in the Innsbruck Winter Games.

"Hi," said an Aussie voice. "We've all been watching your guy John Curry win the Olympics. Isn't he something? Understand you know him quite well." I concurred that indeed I did.

"Great. Look mate, would you mind telling us a bit more about him - we're all keen to know. Can we go live with an interview now?" "Sure," I replied.

"OK...We've got Alan Hubbard, editor of Sportsworld magazine live from London who knows this Pommie skater John Curry we're all talking about...Tell me Alan, is he a poofter?

I recall I quickly mumbled something about his sexual orientation being his own business.

"Well," came the response. "He sure looks a poofter from here!"

Thankfully, things have moved on since then - even in Australia. But not, apparently, in Russia and significantly certain other discriminatory outposts where being gay, as the late Curry eventually revealed he was, is still tantamount to being a pariah.

Gay Pride? More like Gay Prejudice.

John Curry was outed as gay by a German tabloid newspaper

The British actor and writer, Stephen Fry is a hero of mine. Not only is he an extremely talented, funny, self-effacing public figure, he is also a sports-tragic and very eloquent with an ability to provoke discussion on a wealth of topics and issues. Last week, he highlighted a current issue which I immediately thought reflected a much wider problem that's prevalent in sport as a whole.

In an open letter, Stephen called for a ban on next year's Winter Olympics in Sochi because of Russia's anti-gay law which, among other similar restrictions, prohibits public displays of affection from same sex couples.

Like the diva who used to burst between comedians Morecambe and Wise at the end of their television shows - "I'd like to thank all of you for watching me and my little old show here tonight...if you've enjoyed it, it's all been worthwhile, but for now, from me, it's 'Goodnight – and I love you all!'" - Yelena Isinbayeva took centre stage at the World Athletics Championships here last night.

I am going to be honest here and say that I hesitated before attending the press conference the multiple world and Olympic pole vault champion gave after returning from four years of upsets, injuries and absences to resume her place at the top of the event.

Naturally, she had her own press conference, three times as long as the standard version allotted to her vanquished rivals, Olympic gold and silver medallists Jenn Suhr and Yarisley Silva. But then Yelena was the star, the local heroine, at the epicentre of adoration which formed itself into huge roars of acclamation as she faltered, then regained her confidence and, finally, sailed beyond all opposition with a first time clearance of 4.89 metres.

Three wise men from the East have descended on London in recent days bearing the gift of the gab.

Just short of one month from now, one of them could be installed as the most important single figure in world sport –- the ninth president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

The trio - Ukraine's Sergey Bubka, Singapore's Ser Miang Ng and Tawian's Dr C K Wu - represent half the record field in the six-strong race and all three have chosen London as the sounding base for their prospects.

We have yet to hear first hand from the other three, Germany's Thomas Bach, Puerto Rico's Richard Carrion and Switzerland's Denis Oswald and the word is we won't. So it is probably unfair to make a finite judgement except in the measurement of our waistlines following such lavish hospitality from Messrs Bubka, Ng and Wu.

Maybe it was the sight of octogenarian International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) President Lamine Diack with his arm around Seb Coe's shoulders at the London Anniversary Games which initially prompted Bubka to host the British media to a slap-up lunch at the swank London eaterie Quaglinos.

The Ukrainian, who consistently raised the bar in his illustrious pole vaulting days as an Eastern Bloc icon under the Soviet banner, now seeks to raise his political profile in a bid to become the next IOC President.


Failing this, he will challenge Coe for the top job in world athletics now that Diack has finally indicated he will step down in 2015.

Actually, in many ways this charismatic Olympic legend would make a cracking IOC President.

He's especially hot on doping and shares with Ng and Wu - as well as Coe - the desire to implement a four year ban on druggies and those in their entourage who supply them. As well as downsizing the Games.

But, at a mere 49, Bubka, who heads a large bakery empire in his homeland, among other things, may be deemed a tad too young to run what is essentially an old boys' club. Maybe his time will come.

Ser Miang Ng may not be a name which trips easily off the tongue but it is one with which I suspect we may become distinctly familiar in the coming years. Bach, as the longest-serving vice-president, is the recognised favourite to succeed Jacques Rogge but as one sage Olympic watcher observed, he could be uncomfortably in the 2005 Paris position - too premature a shoo-in who could fall at the final hurdle.

I sense a groundswells of support for Ng, not least because seven of those eight Presidents have been European - including the last four in the 41 years since American Avery Brundage - and many members clearly feel it is time for a new Continent to get a look in.

The dapper Ng, 64. is emerging as the most likely of the six candidates to provide it when the vote is taken in Buenos Aires on September 10.


Like Bubka, he came to London and presented impeccable credentials when launching his media campaign over lunch at Forman's Fish Island in the shadow of the Olympic Stadium

A quietly-spoken multi-faceted businessman - he heads the tiny Republic's largest supermarket chain - he is a former politician and diplomat and yachtsman.

His manifesto would see making the IOC more of a democracy, giving the members more say, his first move taking them on a pilgrimage to Olympia to remind them of Olympism's core values.

Significantly, he has been been instrumental in transforming Singapore, where as I know from my own time there working in The Straits Times in the Eighties, sport was virtually a dirty word and education everything under hard line Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yu, into the vibrant sporting hub of South East Asia.

Now Singapore sport swings where once it was stifled. It is the home of the superbly-organised night Formula One Grand Prix and next year wll open a state-of-the arts sports complex ideally suited to host a future Commonwealth Games.

Much of this remarkable change of philosophy is down to Ng who imnitiated the nation's new Sports Policy. He orchestrated the 2005 IOC Session, when London won its 2012 bid, and was the architect of the subsequent inaugural Summer Youth Olympics in 2010.

And so to Wu. This week saw the turn of our pugnacious Taiwanese sparmate, the 66-year-old would-be world boxing czar who heads International Boxing Association (AIBA) to entertain us to a sumptuous afternoon tea in the appropriately named Queenberry Room at London's newly-refurbished Café Royal, ancestral home of boxing's famed National Sporting Club. We went suitably gloved up for that one. Actually, he came out of it rather well.

"He's a consumate politician," murmured my colleague Colin Hart, doyen boxing scribe of The Sun as the immaculately-attired construction billionaire set out his Presidential stall.

They all are, of course. Indeed, there is much real politicians could learn from those who practise the same dark art in sport.


Timing for one thing. Wu shrewdly performed a dramatic U-turn disguised as a stroke of humanitarianism when, between our sips of Earl Grey and munching of cucumber sandwiches and strawberry tarts, he declared that he had personally rescinded the decision which banned English boxers from competing internationally.

He even apologised to those schoolboy and youth boxers who had been deprived of the opportunity of a lifetime, taking part in recent European Championships, while still laying the blame at the door of the Amateur Boxing Association of England for the ongoing dispute with the International Boxing Association (AIBA). "It is something I very much regret," he told me.

As insidthegames has reported, Wu decreed that the ban is now lifted even if the situation remains unresolved before next month's World Junior Championships in Kyiv and October's senior Championships in Kazakhstan. .

He seemed to have absorbed the lesson that one man he cannot afford to upset is his "very good friend" Lord Coe, who is not only the British Olympic Association (BOA) chairman but but an ardent boxing aficionado and someone, as Wu says,"might make a very good IOC President himself one day."

Then well-connected Coe also happens to have the ear of some influential IOC members.

The BOA had been less than enamoured with the written response from AIBA to their request that the banned English schoolkids due to box in their Euro Championships might do so under an AIBA flag. In no uncertain terms they were brusquely told to mind their own business.

Wu told us before his media conference that the unfortunate wording of the letter was not authorised or signed by him and he regretted it had caused offence. It was certainly not what the doctor ordered.

So someone might be in for a rollicking.

Wu had entered the London ring on the backfoot, aware of his unpopularity over the ban while maintaining that the suspension of ABAE was justified, as, not for the first time, they had infringed AIBA regulations.

However we pointed out just how ludicrously unfair it was was that, for example, Nicola Adams, lauded by AIBA as the world's first female Olympic boxing gold medallist just a year ago, and now a national treasure, should be barred, along with every other English boxer from schools level upwards, by the same organisation which claims a prime objective is to protect and further the interests of boxers.


Wasn't making them collatoral damage to a spat between blazers contrary to the spirit of sport-and Olympism? Thankfully Wu has got the message. Good for him,

Irrespective of the outcome of the dispute there will be on no further ban on the boxers."No matter what the Disciplinary Commission is, I will allow the boxers to go, he says. It is my personal decision." That's how autocracy works.

His was a purposeful charm offensive but did Wu woo the sceptics? We agreed afterwards that he had talked an extremely good fight, which you would expect from, a boxing man. And some of his ideas for reforming the IOC, not least in in restoring inspection visits of bidding cities by members, inside his proposed one-off eight-year term were eminently sensible. "I always deliver," he vowed.

If elected, the IOC would certainly know it had a forceful President. But the nagging thought persists that it might become even more of an autocracy than it was under "Slavery Avery".

What was then amateur boxing clearly needed something of a dictatorship when he came in and cleaned up the corrupt mess left by the previous regime. He says he even had threats on his life, but when he took over seven years ago his message to AIBA's members was unequivocal."You have to follow me. I am the boss now."

Actually I do quite like Wu. Basically boxing's bossman is an honourable bloke with much to offer in necessary reform of the IOC. But he may have seriously harmed his chances by relentlessly pursuing his impossible dream of governing world fisticuffs in all its forms and allowing fully-fledged pros - albeit those having had less than 20 pro fights - into the Games.

This could be downright dangerous, risking gross mismatches - or worse.

It is like taking the sport back to the bad old days of the boxing booths and could cost him the Presidency.

As yet the case for the three other candidates remains publicly unheard, so the jury is still out.

But if I were an IOC member I think I could be persuaded at this stage to rock the boat and give my vote to Ser Miang Ng, the Singapore sailor. I like the cut of his jib.

If he can effect such a sea change in once sport-apathetic Singapore, think of what he might do should he rule the waves at the IOC.

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.