It seems like just two minutes ago that we were in Trafalgar Square celebrating International Paralympic Day just after the one year to go mark and already we are here at the six months to go marker until the London 2012 Paralympic Games.

In no time at all, 80,000 of us will be gathered at the Olympic Stadium watching the Opening Ceremony and then hopefully the best Paralympic Games ever.

The last six months of preparation for any Games sees a lot of key things falling into place.

Tomorrow will see exciting announcements made about the Paralympic Torch Relay and the Opening Ceremony, both of which will further raise the profile of the Paralympic Games.

I am particularly pleased with the plans for the Paralympic Torch Relay. London 2012 and the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) have worked closely as a team to develop a concept that will not only capture the attention of the whole country, but also act as a blueprint for Organising Committees of future Games.


Large scale events will be held in London, Edinburgh, Belfast and Cardiff as well as other communities across the UK and I think it is brilliant that the actual Paralympic Flame, that will be used to light the Cauldron in the Opening Ceremony on August 29, will be created at Stoke Mandeville, a place steeped in Paralympic history.

The Games are coming home in six months time and it is only right that we celebrate the significance of Stoke Mandeville, the Paralympic Movement's birthplace.

From Stoke Mandeville, a total of 580 torch bearers will carry the Paralympic Flame towards Stratford in a 24 hour relay that will be a truly memorable event.

The next few months will also see London stage a number of Paralympic specific test events starting with wheelchair rugby in April before archery, athletics, boccia and wheelchair tennis take centre stage in May.

I think these events are vitally important, not only for giving the athletes and the public an idea of what they can expect come August and September, but they help London 2012 iron out any issues before the start of the Games.


With six months to go athletes - such as Britain's Richard Whitehead, pictured - around the world are also enjoying more publicity than ever before with many featuring in advertising campaigns for a number of big sponsors.

The signs are that this wave of publicity is set to continue, with more global media than ever before looking to attend the Games.

Early indications are that around 2,500 written media and photographers will be in London together with 3,500 staff from radio and television broadcasters.

With a global television audience set to be in excess of four billion, London 2012 is shaping up to be the biggest Paralympic Games ever.

I can hardly wait.

Sir Philip Craven is the President of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), an International Olympic Committee (IOC) member and sits on the London 2012 Board

"Australian Olympians to embrace social media for London 2012".

"Twitter will be London 2012's lead news platform".

"London 2012: Team GB badminton hopefuls apologise for Twitter feud".

All headlines in the last few weeks serving to back-up the recent assertions made during Social Media Week that London 2012 will be the first "truly social media Olympics".

The explosion in the number of registered users on social media platforms and their increased access to them via smart phones means that we will doubtless see more tweets/posts per second about the Olympics at key moments this summer than any sporting event so far - the 2012 Super Bowl had 12,000 Tweets per second at peak moments according to statistics quoted at the Socialympics Social Media Week panel co-hosted by sponsorship consultancy Synergy and social media agency Jam - but I wonder if we are in danger of getting caught up in talk of the medium at the expense of the message.


In the run-up to the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, the talk was again all about this being "the Social Olympics" and we at insidethegames saw the way in which athletes and spectators alike turned to Twitter and Facebook at key moments, be it to express sadness at the death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili, excitement at the visit of Arnold Schwarzenegger (pictured) to the Athletes' Village, or awe at Sean White's unleashing of the Tomahawk to take the halfpipe gold. 

But while we saw athletes and the public taking to social media and expressing themselves, what we didn't see too much of in 2010 were any brands successfully getting in on the social media act. Other than a virtual snowball fight organised by Coca-Cola, and some P&G activity in the US around their "Thank You Mom" campaign, any social brand activity was largely lost in the overall social noise.

The BBC held a panel during 2012 Social Media Week to share their plans for including social media into the broadcast mix, which will also include 24 HD live streams and broadcasts of both the Opening and Closing Ceremonies in 3D.  So with the host broadcaster acknowledging how the audience intends to spend time on social media to enhance their Olympics experience, what opportunities are there for brands, sponsors and non-sponsors alike, to do the same?

Just being present on Twitter and Facebook isn't enough, consumers will smell a "sell" a mile off in this new sophisticated social media world.  It needs imagination and commitment to make this social media work for you, to engage meaningfully with consumers in this new space.

A complete Olympics exclusion zone in social media world is impractical, so although there are clear guidelines over what can and cannot be said by non-sponsors it is still possible to hijack the Olympics for your brand with a creative approach.  With five months to go until London 2012 how many brands are already getting their social media messages right?


Jam's research, released during Social Media Week, suggested that only 0.5 per cent of Olympic social media chatter is around the official sponsors. The research also highlighted the way in which non-sponsor Nike has successfully stolen the thunder from sponsor adidas in their social media presence, with Nike's #makeitcount athlete-centric campaign and hashtag receiving some 70,000 mentions on Twitter so far, meaning they are currently 14 times more likely to be discussed in Olympic conversations than adidas.

Olympic sponsors McDonalds are yet to unleash any real Olympic messages at all. They are known to have been tentative with their social media strategy until recently, and their experience in January with the Twitter hashtag #McDstories backfiring may make them tread carefully with any planned Olympic social media campaigns.

Even offering something that consumers actually want isn't always enough to ensure a strong brand presence in social media. Gordon Lott of Lloyds TSB has expressed surprise with the high level of social media engagement seen from the recent Lloyds TSB Torchbearer Campaign. Around 50,000 people attended the Torchbearer Roadshows up and down the UK, 20,000 photos were taken of those people with the Olympic Torch and 60 per cent of those photos were downloaded, which Lott states was a great demonstration of the way in which social media can interact with experiential campaigns.

Interestingly however, despite his pleasure with those figures, the Lloyds TSB London 2012 Facebook page currently only has 3,706 likes, suggesting that longer-term engagement in social media is hard to come by.


Engagement is the buzzword for all social media strategies around London 2012, and is in danger of becoming as over-used in Olympic circles as the L-word, legacy. Hugh Chambers (pictured), chief commercial officer of the British Olympic Association was heard to talk during Social Media Week about how Team GB are positioning themselves as a team of 900 athletes, 60 million strong, by engaging with the British public and how important social media is seen to enable this. I did wonder how much Hugh really took this engagement message to heart when I realised that he has his own Twitter profile protected, thus choosing not to engage very much at all.

What can we predict with any certainty? There may well be controversies caused by an athlete's inappropriate comments at some point. There is likely to be strong frustration vented when the public realise the level of the IOC's ability to take down any audio and video footage from inside Olympic venues being shared on social media in order to protect their broadcasting rights. But we can't really guess what the messages of London 2012 will be, which stories and trending topics will capture the social media imagination. 

After all, who would have predicted that #vuvuzela would have been a worldwide trending topic for every single day of the 2010 World Cup?

What we can say is that there will be unprecedented use of social media to capture the flavour of London 2012, and that the way the Games are recorded and experienced will be enhanced by it.  The race to the gold medal for best brand on social media is still wide open, with the creative and prepared likely to stand a better chance than the complacent and bemused, but a late entry could well steal it at the finishing line.

It's all still a very open field.

Louisa Gummer is the social networking manager of insidethegames

Five of the seven British milers sponsored by New Balance were recently in the premises formerly known as Wapping Hydraulic Power Station and now referred to simply as the Wapping Project. Among spotlit shoes resting on gobbets of Victorian cast iron machinery, Andy Baddeley, Tom Lancashire, Colin McCourt, James Brewer and Ricky Stevenson all spoke about their rising hopes in a year when they will be contending for the three 1,500 metre places available at the home Games along with all the other elite British milers elsewhere.

So for all the camaraderie on the night, each of these talented runners knew it would very soon be a case of Every Man for Himself. It's not an easy position to hold – but, unless you are a relay runner, you have it easier as an athlete than as a rower.

As Britain's elite male and female rowers gird themselves for the GB Rowing team senior trials on the Olympic course at Eton Dorney the weekend after next (March 10-11) they face an even more testing predicament of competing in pairs against friends and rivals, knowing that even the friend with whom they are temporarily paired for the trials – the scullers simply have the prospect of racing alone against their mates – could turn out to be a rival once the team management begin their ruthlessly effective process of coordinating the best of British rowers into the most effective of British crews.

"Our rowers are very familiar with the venue," says David Tanner, the GB Rowing team's performance director. "The event is one of the toughest of the whole calendar, though, when they have to race against their teammates and friends."


Men's chief coach Jürgen Grobler, who has specifically overseen three successive Olympic victories in the men's coxless four starting with the famed quartet of Steve Redgrave, Matt Pinsent, James Cracknell and Tim Foster (pictured) at the Sydney 2000 Games, comments: "The trials are all about showing you can race under pressure when it counts."

As Grobler likes to say at this stage of a big competitive year:  "there are no names under seats". Everything is to play for, and if even the most successful rowers show signs of human fallibility, they can find themselves being dropped quicker than a morally questionable United States Presidential candidate.

When Pinsent and Cracknell could only finish fourth in defending their world pairs championship, they found themselves ruthlessly reassigned to the four for the Athens 2004 Olympics. Many observers of the sport envisage a similar move this year following the frustrating failure of Andy Triggs Hodge and Pete Reed, fours gold medallists in 2008, to dislodge the Kiwi pair who currently dominate their event, Eric Murray and Hamish Bond.

Triggs Hodge and Reed won last year's GB trials, but even if they repeat that to secure what will be Triggs Hodge's seventh successive trials win, they will not feel sure of their continuation as a pair in London 2012.

Official crew selection deadline is April 4, although the lay of the land – or rather, the drift of the tide – will be known before then by the relevant parties.


And as you might expect, the British four who currently hold the world title – Alex Gregory, Tom James, Ric Egington and Matthew Langridge (pictured) – will be awaiting Grobler's emerging strategy with interest.

Gregory admits the trials are draining. "It is the hardest time of the year for me," he said during a teleconference arranged by the British Olympic Association (BOA). "It is so easy to go out and race against the Australians or the Germans – that is what you are supposed to do.

"But when it comes to racing your friends and teammates, that's tough. One day you have to race against them, and the next you have to team up with them to take on the world.

"As a group of people we are all very sympathetic to each other. We all know what it's like for each other. When all the racing is done, some guys are going to get into the crew, and some aren't."

Gregory was a close second in the trials last year paired with James. This year his partner is Alex Partridge, a world eights silver medallist from 2011. James, an Olympic gold medallist along with Triggs Hodge, Reed and the now retired Steve Williams in 2008, is paired with Egington.


Meanwhile Greg Searle, Olympic coxed pairs champion with brother Jonny back in 1992 and a world silver medallist in the eights last year at the age of 39, is paired once again with Cameron Nicol, with whom he came third last time round, while the up and coming Constantine Louloudis and George Nash (pictured) will be seeking to improve upon last year's fourth place.

Gregory is not speculating directly on the way things will turn out in the four.

"I'm sure Jürgen has much more of an idea about it, but he doesn't tell us what his inner feelings are," he says. But he clearly expects changes.

"Last year we had a perfect year, really," he says. "We had a great crew and we won every race we did. It was probably my most enjoyable year of rowing.

"But once the World Championships are finished the slate is wiped clean. I won't be surprised if the crew is different this year. The main priority is to make it as fast as possible for London 2012. And I just want to be in the top boat, whatever the crew will be.

"At the moment it looks like the four will be the lead boat. There is no question about it – I want to be in the top boat, whatever boat is Jürgen's boat.

"He has got a huge history of success with his methods, he's proved his coaching ability over so many years now, and I want to be coached by him in an Olympic year.

"It is also a boat with a glorious history for Britain – the coxless four has taken three successive Olympic golds, so to be in the crew that earned a fourth gold would be really exciting, and to do that on a home course would be even more incredible."

Gregory narrowly missed out on Olympic selection four years ago but went to Beijing as a reserve and watched all the action from the stands.

He describes that experience as "a turning point" in his rowing career.


"In many ways it was a frustrating experience, and it came after a long run of injuries and disappointments for me," he says. "But sitting on the sidelines and watching the guys I had trained and raced with collecting their medals made me feel even more committed to the sport.

"When I used to be asked about my ambition, I always used to say it was to win an Olympic gold medal. That's what you say, isn't it? But I know now what the Games feel like, and I have experienced that atmosphere and emotion.

"When Mark Hunter won the lightweight double scull gold with Zac Purchase (pictured), I was sitting right behind his brother and his dad and I saw how much it meant to them. They had tears streaming down their faces and they were hugging each other – I can feel myself welling up right now just thinking about it.

"That made me realise what it would mean to my family and friends if I could win an Olympic gold."

First, though, Gregory has to get his head around the idea of killing off that ambition for a couple of his mates. Who will be trying to do the same to him.

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, has covered the past five Summer and four Winter Olympics for The Independent. Previously he has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, the Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. He is now chief feature writer for insidethegames. Rowbottom's Twitter feed can be accessed here.

As the London Olympics get ever nearer, if your inbox is anything like mine it is a rare day when you don't receive some form of promotion offering "Olympic expertise" or the chance to "do it like an Olympian".

But how many of these opportunities are from people with genuine knowledge and experience and how many from people seeing the chance to piggy back the greatest show on earth?

For those readers unaware of the term, "Caveat Emptor" is Latin for "let the buyer beware" and it is a term you would be well advised to keep at the forefront of your mind if considering employing advice and/or training from someone offering "Olympian" knowledge.

Typical offers sound like; "learn the secrets used by Olympic coaches (or athletes)" or "lessons from the podium for your business" and include claims that you will learn how top athletes plan or prepare and become a gold-medal winning company.

I took a look at some of the offers arriving in my inbox and found that, far from offering any expertise the vast majority of these promotions offer little other than carefully spun titles which take advantage of raised public perception of the elite sporting show which is about to hit town.

Most offer the same as they offered before under a different title. In short they apply the same standard business models they did previously but throw in some random Olympic, elite sport and high performance references to make them sound better informed than they really are.

Then there are the new(ish) offerings from people with some experience in business who might have read an article or two on how sports people prepare and then sell that as 'expert' knowledge your business can benefit from.

Also in my inbox are promotions from business people who have a reasonable grasp of sport at the grass-roots end of the spectrum and who assume that elite preparation is not dissimilar. In short, they invite you to mimic the preparation used by the mediocre masses in the mistaken belief that when applied to business it will have a higher value outcome.

There is a smaller group of former elite sports people and coaches who have little or no business experience but who, somehow, know which lessons from their background to apply to your business. Great for motivational speaking maybe; less so for business learning and development.

Of course, there is a minority who do know their stuff but they are only in a minority hence my "Caveat Emptor" warning. The trick is to know how to recognise those who do know the topics which are important to you and your business thus gaining value from working with them.

What they understand is that the nearer you get to the top whether in sport or in business, the more personalised your "programme" needs to become. They will not therefore be among those selling one-size fits all "Olympian" solutions; they know there is no such thing. They will however advise your business on the relevant lessons should you wish to benefit.

Knowing how to prepare for elite sport without understanding business is akin to a business owner believing he/she has the knowledge to advise an Olympic champion on his/her preparation. Whether this is delusional or arrogant depends on your standpoint.

Caveat Emptor; don't buy a great sounding product today which does not take you where you want to be tomorrow.

Jim Cowan is a former athlete, coach, event organiser and sports development specialist who is the founder of Cowan Global, a company specialising in consultancy, events and education and training. For more details click here. 

I made my first visit to the Westfield shopping-mall outside the Olympic Park this week, as well as the London 2012 shop at St Pancras station.

Six months or so before any Olympics tends to be when I feel most jaded about the whole affair: the trickle of mainly trivial announcements from those seeking to exploit their connection to the Games becomes a flood, yet the main event still seems a long way away.

So, from that perspective, the timing of my visit could perhaps have been better.

Nonetheless, I hope these comments will be seen as constructive rather than curmudgeonly.

First, the shop:

Well, I didn't buy anything.

But though prices for clothing seemed high (£60 for a lightweight dayglo yellow Adidas jacket with the London 2012 logo), I thought those for other items surprisingly reasonable: £7 for a London 1948 luggage tag; £13 for five "London 2012 Racers" (Matchbox cars if you're over 40).

Two things surprised me:

First, the quantity of Team GB merchandise, of which there seemed to be as much as items with the London 2012 brand.

There were, for example, two different Monopoly games, side by side.

"Own it all!" screamed the Team GB version. "Live the life of a high-flying trader in the fast-paced world of real estate."

The London 2012 version included "special edition commemorative movers", which put me in mind of Pickfords men in athletics vests.


(I couldn't see whether players were given the opportunity to buy the Olympic Stadium, but, if they are, I expect the West Ham Board will get one. And while we're on the subject, what better present for Barry Hearn than a 1,000-piece jigsaw of the Stadium with, as it says on the box, "75 per cent less steel than other venues", whatever that means.)

The second surprise was the sheer range of items in stock, for which organisers are to be commended.

I'm not sure all of it hits the spot, however.

The 20cl drinks tumblers (£10 for a set of four) were, to my eye, completely hideous.

And is it really advisable to include a model Concorde in a set of "Great British Classics" in a shop adjacent to the Eurostar ticket-hall with its constant stream of French visitors?

Strange, by the way, how St Pancras is the one place I know of in London where you feel instantly transported to Continental Europe, and this only in small part because of the people speaking European languages you tend to find there.


As for Westfield Stratford, well, I can confirm it is a large and no doubt highly efficient shopping-mall, but, after all the hype, I did find myself thinking, to quote Peggy Lee, "Is That All There Is?"

That said, I wish it well because if London 2012 is to work for London - really work – we need this temple of consumerism to help attract people to the underprivileged east of the city and to spend time and money there.

This makes it a very significant building – arguably more so than the actual Games-related edifices.

There was one thing that truly annoyed me.

This was the way big screens seemed to be broadcasting incessantly the same three or four news items – one-in-four unqualified teens are out of work (or somesuch) was one of them; the Middleton sisters and One Direction featured in the other two – with every single item separated by a long stream of ads

But I also found there an encapsulation of both the strength and weakness of the Olympic business model, with its partial dependence on sponsorship by internationally recognised brands.

The weakness?

The Apple store, teeming with customers and staff in their cool blue T-shirts, nearly everyone standing.

If there were a gold medal for the world's coolest brand right now, I think it is indisputable that Apple would win it by about the same margin as Usain Bolt used to win his races.


Apple is not an Olympic sponsor.

Why would they be? Why pay Olympic-land's high entry price when they have already achieved pretty much everything anyone could ever want from a brand?

No, Olympic sponsorship, except for companies with local ties to a particular Games, is for those brands that still have work to do.

In one sense, this is perfectly fine: there will always be plenty of those.

But it means the Games may always be associated with brands with issues of one kind or another that they need to address.

The strength?

No more than 50 metres away from the money machine that Steve Jobs made, a large notice announces that a brand called Custo will be opening there in spring/summer 2012.

To be exact, what it says is that Custo Barcelona will be opening there.

If any retailer had thought it worth emphasising prior to 1992 in a similarly international setting that it was spawned in the capital of Catalonia, I'm Cesc Fabregas.

Now, Barcelona is the Apple of cities.

That's what the Olympics can do for you.

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 and 2010 World Cup. Owen's Twitter feed can be accessed here.

"A proud boxing nation has been humiliated by what has gone on in Germany and both Dereck Chisora and David Haye should be ashamed of themselves. In an Olympic year our reputation for upholding the highest standards in sport must be protected more than ever before. These events have been a kick in the teeth for our reputation."

These are the words of Robert Smith, the general secretary of the British Boxing Board of Control, who are to hold an investigation into the moronic behaviour last weekend of a couple of brawling Brits abroad which besmirched Munich's Olympiahalle, where Olga Korbut so coquettishly strutted her stuff back in 1972.

Smith is a decent bloke, an ex-pro boxer himself and the son of Andy Smith, who trained another renowned British heavyweight, Joe Bugner. He was clearly shocked and angered by the repulsive behaviour of both Chisora and Haye which plunged the sport into the gutter at a time when it is regaining sufficient clout to be lauded for helping instil discipline among wayward youths and edging its way back into schools.

So the irony of the tawdry fracas will not be lost on him, especially coinciding as it did with the cycling's Track World Cup at the new Olympic Velodrome where we saw British sport at its best. The mayhem in Munich gave us a bitter taste of it at its worst.


The shameful occurrences before and after and Chisora's World Boxing Council heavyweight bout with Vitali Klitschko have been well chronicled, beamed in all their glory around the world.

What happens next is up to the board, whose inquisition panel on March 14 can draw on fistful of QCs, a feisty female Labour peer (Baroness Golding) and ex-heavyweight boxer Billy Walker, all stewards of a body which now must be seen to exert what its title demands: Control.

When Chisora appears before this August assembly in Cardiff he may well feel he is in a courtroom dock; to which, of course, he is no stranger. The guy has previous, both in and out of the ring.

There are so many aspects of this deeply unsavoury business  which included slapping, spitting and threats of shooting and burning, (all down to Chisora) and Haye's  provocative punch with a bottle-held fist (which, if proven as an assault carries a possible jail term if and when the German polizei catch up with him).

If only he had displayed such aggressive intent when abjectly releasing his toe-hold on the World Boxing Association title to Wladimir Klitschko last year rather than prancing passively around the Hamburg ring.

The board have always come down heavily on fighters who employ their fists outside the ring (fortunately few do) but they cannot punish Haye because he has relinquished his boxing licence. All they can, and must, do is refuse to hand it back – ever.

They should also be asking questions of those present at the media conference who did nothing to restrain Chisora from leaving his seat to move menacingly towards the taunting "Hatemaker".

I do not subscribe to the view that it was all a put-up job to promote interest in an eventual fight between them. It was far too realistically nasty for that.  In any case I doubt such an encounter will ever happen.


As for Chisora, he has already has had his own slap in the face from the WBC, who have withheld a third of his £200,000 purse for that weigh-in incident with Vitali and subsequently spewing water into Wladimir's face just before the bell. Now the Board, taking into account his earlier biting of an opponent, for which he was suspended for four months, will surely throw the book at him.

I expect to see them impose their own hefty fine and put him on gardening leave for at least a couple of years. Maybe they should also insist he sees a psychiatrist, because heaven knows what he might do if he ever climbs into a ring again.

Having said that let me emphasise that that two bad apples do not mean the sport is rotten to the core.

Far from it. In my experience most boxers truly are the noblest of sporting creatures, and boxing stands up well in terms of its integrity to several other sports, not least cricket, horse racing, even football, where results have been rigged and miscreants jailed. And it certainly can never be accused of racism.

It is just a shame that that such behaviour, which diminished the valiant challenge put up in the fight by Chisora, should have smeared boxing and insulted the classy Klitschkos, whose career-long trademark has been dignity and decency.

For me, the most tasteless aspect was not the post-fight violence of which there have been various similar incidents in the past both here and in the United States (witness Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier grappling with each other on the floor of a TV studio, and Mike Tyson gnawing Lennox Lewis's thigh while threatening to 'eat' his babies) but Chisora spraying the liquid contents of his foul mouth at Vitali's younger brother and cornerman Wladimir.


Luckily the erudite Ukrainian showed admirable restraint in not ending the fight before it started by decking "Del Boy" (what a pugilistic plonker!) there and then.

Imagine Wayne Rooney doing the same thing on the football field. They'd be bellowing in parliament for him to be banned, and Chisora deserves nothing less. Boxing can do without his spitting image for some time.

This brings me to the coverage of the fight by fledgling subscription channel BoxNation, which while largely excellent, curiously glossed over Chisora's misbehaviour. The team of pundits, which included experienced pros Jim Rosenthal, John Rawling and Steve Bunce, seemed particularly reluctant to condemn him for the spitting incident. Why?

We expected to hear words like "disgraceful" or "disgusting". Instead, we were told that underneath it all Chisora actually was quite a nice bloke. The impression given was that he was a simply a bit of a lad.

Really? Leaving aside the current episodes, tell that to the girlfriend he was convicted for slapping around, or the opponent whose neck he chewed. A bit of a lad?  More of a lout, surely.

One also must question the role of Robert Smith's boss, Charles Giles, the chairman of the BBBofC, who sat at ringside in a supervisory capacity yet appeared to do very little and has been somewhat silent since, leaving the capable Smith to take the flak and make the required pronouncements.

Boxing is the hardest game of all and needs strong leadership at the top.

So here's a thought. Lord Coe may be kicking his heels between the end of 2012 and 2015, when he hopes to be elected as President of the International Association of Athletics Federations.

Seb is an avid fight fan and like BOA chair Lord Moynihan, a former BBBofC steward. I doubt he would take much persuading to re-join it and would make a first-rate and internationally well-respected President of the Board.


Doubtless he too will have noted the contrast between what happened at the Velodrome, where there was genuine sporting rivalry between Sir Chris Hoy and Jason Kenny, and the unseemly brawl in the halle involving Chisora and Haye.

A golden weekend in London, a dirty weekend in Munich.

Which gives one clear message to the heavyweight hooligans.

On yer bikes.

Alan Hubbard is an award-winning sports columnist for The Independent on Sunday, and a former sports editor of The Observer. He has covered a total of 16 Summer and Winter Olympics, 10 Commonwealth Games, several football World Cups and world title from Atlanta to Zaire

Dave Brailsford, British Cycling's Performance Director, labelled it the "best Velodrome in the world". Quadruple Olympic champion Sir Chris Hoy agrees and Seb Coe calls it "jaw dropping". But that was all before the test event held at the Olympic Velodrome, the UCI Track Cycling World Cup.

Maybe it was just because of the success Britain had enjoyed in Beijing four years ago, but this event seems to have brought out the enthusiasm of the public, who created an atmosphere frenzied enough to inspire the most laid back of athletes.

Imagine what it will be like in just under six months, when it's the real thing. It felt quite like the real thing, in fact, particularly when Hoy pulled off a superb move to overtake Robert Förstemann in the first race of their men's sprint semi-final.

At the last test event I witnessed in the Olympic Park the atmosphere was superb, but that was largely thanks to the hordes of schoolchildren enjoying the novelty of a day off school, and who almost exclusively packed out the Handball Arena that day. This was very different, and felt much more like what it will probably be like during London 2012.

Certainly the atmosphere benefits from the very nature of the sport. Much like horse racing, the anticipation as competitors jostle for position before the late burst to the end can get the most reserved of characters out of their seats, cheering the athletes to the finish line. And unlike horse racing, disappointment at the final result isn't compounded by most of the crowd counting their losses.


For its success, the event did not go off without its hiccups. The 40 minute break scheduled between the morning and afternoon session was scrapped as events fell behind the strict timings set out, though they had caught up by the end. And the crowd did have to be reminded that there were two teams competing in the third place race between New Zealand and Belgium in the men's team pursuit, such was their muted acknowledgment that there was a medal at stake. Then again, maybe they were just having a well-earned rest. All that cheering for Hoy must take it out of you.

Indeed, even during the team pursuit final, when Britain and Australia, reigning Olympic and World champions respectively, were going pedal to pedal for the gold medal, the crowd quietened as our 'friends' from down under took charge (as usual).

"The atmosphere has been electric," Britain's Ed Clancy, one of the final's quartet, said afterwards, before adding: "The crowd were definitely a bit quieter. We could almost sense we were down a bit out there on the track, which was a bit strange."

And so those are the perils of having a home crowd behind you. It's great when they're roaring you on but, when they're quiet, you know something is going wrong. In this case, Australia were breaking a national record, and almost a world record. Their sensational 3min 54.615sec was just over a second slower than Britain's world record breaking performance in winning the Olympic crown in Beijing four years ago, and the quartet of Jack Bobridge, Rohan Dennis, Alexander Edmondson and Michael Hepburn were among the stars of the day at the Velodrome.


Another who lit up the arena, almost predictably, was Hoy. Even when Germany's ever-impressive Maximilian Levy seemed to have the edge over Hoy in the second race of their men's sprint final, there was an inevitability to the Brit's comeback and, in the end, decisive victory.

The 35-year-old will be the man to beat in London, that is if he is even selected ahead of Jason Kenny for the individual sprint slot, such is the strength in depth of the British team that must have Brailsford sleeping very comfortably at night, even if Kenny finished a disappointing fifth on the day. Hoy always seems almost too confident, though never cocky. Maybe if Kenny reminds him that he's competing for a place at the world's greatest sporting event in front of a home crowd it might give him the slightest of jitters.

Or to put it another, more accurate way, it won't. Nothing will, probably, with Hoy. One British athlete who could be forgiven for being nervous though is Laura Trott, who capped a superb showing this week by taking bronze in the women's omnium in some style. She claimed the fastest time in the event's final discipline – the time trial. It was quite a performance, coming 24 hours after her stunning victory in the elimination race, where she pulled off a series of scarcely believable houdini acts at the back of the field. It was like watching Manchester United in cyclist form. The overall winner of the omnium, though, was Sophie Hammer, and the American was another whose performance was fitting for an arena such as this, as her consistency helped her to edge Annette Edmondson of Australia into second overall.


It all made the women's keirin seem like quite an anti-climax by the end of the day's action, as Simona Krupeckaite (pictured centre) claimed gold in a closely fought race. But there was still one final piece of drama and a bizarre finish to the men's sprint for the crowd, who deserved the encore provided by Germany's Förstemann. With both he and French rival Kevin Sireau having taken one race each in their bronze medal battle, the Frenchman stopped paying attention for a split second as they both set off and Förstemann ruthlessly punished him, racing off from the line as though pedalling for the final straight. Almost as soon as Sireau realised what had happened to him and started to chase his opponent, he gave up, leaving the German to enjoy the novelty of celebrating with the best part of a lap to go.

Though perhaps not the most technically skilful display of the day, but Förstemann's wit was a fitting end to the action. And what some have called the most impressive Olympic venue showed that it will have some of the most spectacular sport this summer. And on top of that, a better atmosphere will be hard to find at London 2012.

David Gold is a reporter for insidethegames. You can follow him on twitter here.

Sitting writing on the sixth floor of Millbank Tower this week, gazing out across a distinctly murky River Thames, I found my important work being interrupted by a man roaring.

It was not the first time this man had done it. He was standing alongside a colleague with a video camera and this startling vocal exercise was repeated at intervals as a succession of taken-aback athletes and ex-athletes, all of whom had gathered to promote a series of motivational films produced by their part-sponsors, BMW, were invited to mimic the uninhibited noise.

Most managed respectable roars of their own – even the prodigious 400m hurdler Perri Shakes-Drayton, although she required a little prompting. Steve Cram was deemed to have produced the finest roar in the jungle.

After the ice-breaking intros, there followed a series of quick-fire questions. John Wayne or Clint Eastwood? (Nobody went for Wayne.) Favourite Telly Tubby? (Mark Lewis-Francis went for La La, although when I asked him why he muttered something about it being his son Romeo's favourite, which I tend to think is cheating).

There were a few curved balls thrown. Shakes-Drayton, so far as I could tell, produced no answer to the following chirpy question: "Olympic gold medal or your mother?" I may have misheard, of course. I hope so.

I was musing on how far this format might go. "George Clooney or God?" "Would you kill to win?" "Hammer or tablets?" "What's the most disgusting and shameful thing you have ever done?"

But what I heard next was a question addressed to Cram of, thankfully a more conventional nature, asking merely what had been the highlight of his athletic career.

There was only a moment's hesitation before the athlete who won the first ever world 1500m title in 1983 and was the first to run 1500m in under 3min 30sec, the athlete who won three Commonwealth titles, two Europeans and an Olympic silver medal announced: "Breaking the world record in the mile".

Cram's highlight came in his annus mirabilis of 1985, in the Oslo Dream Mile, an event that carries its own fabled associations in just the same manner as the Wimbledon or FA Cup final.

A year earlier he had taken silver behind Sebastian Coe in the Olympic 1500 metre final. Three years later, hampered by a calf injury after resurgent form in the Olympic trials, he failed to earn a medal at the Seoul Olympics.

Had there been a major championship in 1985, however – up to and including the Alfa Centauri Games – Cram would have won it. And as he looks back on his career, it is that night in the Bislett Stadium (pictured with Cram posing next to the clock) that resounds with the greatest satisfaction.

Why? Partly because it was a world record, of course – 3min 46.32sec (rounded up from the initial digital display on the night) – and one which was to last for another eight years. Partly because the runners left in his high-stepping wake included New Zealand's John Walker, who in 1975 had become the first man to run the mile in under 3:50, and the man who had started the race in possession of the record – Coe, with his own four-year-old mark of 3:47.33.

But also, simply, because it was the mile.

"It was something I felt I had to do," he told me as we spoke after his rapid fire interview was in the can.

"When I was young my coach Jimmy Hedley used to go on to me about all the great milers. And when I was 17, Derek Ibbotson [the Yorkshireman who had set a world mile record in 1957] came to my house to talk to me about athletics, and that made a big impression on me."

Equally memorable for Cram was his attendance, as a runner who had broken the world mile record, at the event celebrating the 50th anniversary of the landmark achievement which transcended athletics to become part of England's cultural heritage – the breaking of the four-minute mile by Roger Bannister (pictured), who registered, perhaps, the most iconic time ever recorded for a sporting event: 3min 59.4sec.

"Being invited to that celebration made me feel like a member of a really exclusive club, and that's even more exciting than the record itself," Cram added.

"Sport always has an element that's about tradition and history. I think the mile still has that special feeling to it. To run a four-minute mile is still a benchmark for athletes."

The mile is part of our common parlance. We go the extra mile. We win by a country mile. We join the mile-high club (not all of us, but I've read about such things). We are miles better. When Sport Relief sets up a running event, it is the mile.

It is one of those sporting distances which has shaped contests through generations, in the same way as the four miles, 374 yards stretch between Putney and Mortlake, the Boat Race course, or indeed the 26 miles 385 yards established as the marathon distance since the 1908 London Olympics.

And Cram is far from being alone in his feelings about the unique appeal of the distance that has a history going all the way back to the ancient Romans – the word "mile" derives from the Latin word for a thousand – "mille" – and describes a distance of a thousand strides.

In the last month, a new campaign has been launched in the United States dedicated to restoring this most cherished of sporting measures to its nation's young athletes. Founded by Ryan Lamppa, a man who once ran the distance in 4:11 and has never forgotten it, bringbackthemile.com is seeking to mobilise support for altering the current marker of 1600m which was introduced within high school athletics during the 1980s in order to conform with metric measures as the old 440 yards tracks were being replaced by 400 metres tracks.

The initial launch on January 19 not only created "buzz" on the web and beyond, but generated almost 14,000 YouTube views of the "Bring Back the Mile" trailer and extended video as well as 1,000-plus Facebook fans and a Sports Illustrated "Faces in the Crowd" feature.


"We are heartened by the response that we have received since our launch," said Lamppa.

"People have a love and a passion for the Mile, and our website  bringbackthemile.com will be the Mile home on-line. Our front page feature is the high school state federation petition drive to replace the 1500 metres, or in many cases the 1600 metres, with the Mile at State Championships."

Lamppa told AP: "It's a distance people get. We can tell from the people who sign up with us. People are passionate about the mile. It really does have some prominence in our culture. Not only on signs and odometers, but there's something about the mile that's very different from any other track event."

Among those who have added their support is an American who not only "gets" the mile, but was for several years the pre-eminent miler in the world – Jim Ryun. In 1964 he became the first high school runner to break four minutes for the distance (pictured). And he believes it is a distance which resonates with spectators more than the "metric mile" of 1500 metres.


"You have to be an astute track fan to really understand that's about 110 yards short and you're gong to add anywhere from 15 to 17 seconds," Ryun says. "By the time you do all of that, you've lost a large share of the general public. Bring back the mile – that's the goal of the whole programme."

Ultimately, Lamppa and his fellow campaigners would like to see the mile in the Olympics, although he admits: "That would be beyond our wildest dreams."

The Olympics, as we have seen, is an infinitely adaptable organism. Sports come and go. Bye bye tug-of-war. Hello tennis.

And events within sports switch and change regularly – ask the aggrieved British cyclists who are now obliged to enter only one per event after their Bejing medal-fest. Ask Rebecca Romero, the Beijing gold medallist in the individual time trial whose event is no longer in the Games.

So the Olympic mile. Two traditions nurturing each other. Why on earth not?

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, has covered the past five Summer and four Winter Olympics for The Independent. Previously he has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, the Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. He is now chief feature writer for insidethegames. Rowbottom's Twitter feed can be accessed here.

Regular readers of this blog will know that in the past I have been particularly critical of the lack of good strategy coming from politicians in general and the lack of strategy for sport coming from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) in particular.

Earlier this month, the DCMS announced "Creating a sporting habit for life – a new youth sport strategy" – a positive step that I applaud. But, as strategies go, is it any good?

The new strategy is not the much-needed, long-awaited national strategy for the development of sport nor does it pretend to be. The purpose of this strategy is to target young people, in its own words, "creating a sporting habit for life". Whether it will succeed or fail will be difficult to judge because from the outset, a vital component of strategy has not been defined.

While flawed and poorly researched, the previous Government was clear and concise about what success looked like: one million more people taking part in sport. The success of any strategies (or the initiatives employed in strategy's place) could be judged. When the current Government removed this target without installing a new one, they deleted that clear picture of success.

And while the talk is still of more people taking part in sport, judging success is impossible. Ten more people playing sport is "more people" but is it success? Of course not, but what is the measure? 1,000? 10,000? 100,000? We don't know. Thus from the outset any new "'strategy" faces an uphill struggle in that what it sets out to achieve has not been clearly defined. It is a basic Strategy 101 lesson, the more specifically you can describe success, the more specifically you can plan for its achievement.


"Creating a sporting habit for life" is in reality a crafty rebadging of the previous methodology employed by this and the previous Government, a policy of initiativeitis. What this document does is pull a few initiatives together in a document with the word strategy on its cover.

Is it really strategy? Yes, it is. In its purest definition strategy means "a plan or design for achieving one's aims". The Government has set out its aim, woolly though it is, and this document forms a part of their design for achieving it. However, the difference between strategy and good strategy is important and this document falls short on a number of counts.

Strategists will know the term "Insanity Planning". It refers to the practice of doing the same thing today and tomorrow that you did yesterday and expecting different results. Insanity planning plays a role in the new DCMS strategy.

Not only is the policy of initiativeitis continued (albeit thinly disguised), the strategy relies on the same experts who have informed previous Government initiatives and, according to the DCMS own statistics, failed to deliver. The strategy talks of working with a range of groups, 'the people who know sport and young people best, the very same groups and people within those groups who have been employed/funded by Government to deliver the development of sport previously.

While there are many who do know sport and young people well, the assumption that all do is naïve. Indeed, there should be no place for assumption in good strategy. A further assumption being that knowledge of sport and young people brings with it knowledge of sports development and of strategy.


Insanity planning; using the same processes, the same people and initiatives designed by the same people who designed what went before (some of which look remarkably similar despite the new names).

Developing sport properly requires an understanding of the sports development continuum, a continuum which takes the participant on a journey from foundation to participation and, assuming talent, interest and support onto performance and excellence. Laying the right foundations is of vital importance to what will come later and this area has largely been ignored by the new 'strategy' – it jumps straight in at participation without considering some basics:

1.    People are more likely to pursue a lifetime of involvement in sport if they enjoy it.

2.    They are more likely to enjoy it if they have been given the basic skills that facilitate enjoyment.

Thus largely overlooking primary schools (although they are mentioned as afterthought in a couple of places) is to undermine that pathway at the outset. Consider a child entering secondary school who has not learned to catch – what is the likelihood of that child enjoying any sport in which catching is a requirement? It matters not how many opportunities the child has to try those sports, the foundations were never laid to facilitate the enjoyment.

Yet, if the teaching of Physical Literacy was made a compulsory part of the primary school curriculum in the same way PE is (and will remain) in secondary schools, no child should move on to secondary school unable to catch (Physical Literacy is best taught between the ages of eight and 11). Physical Literacy covers a range of movement skills (of which catching is just one) vital to the future enjoyment of and success in sport and yet our past, present and now future systems continue to overlook them. 

Would it be a difficult new policy to introduce? No, it could be easily added to the woefully small amount of time primary teaching degrees give to PE with workshops for those already teaching. Would this be expensive? No, certainly nowhere near as expensive as spending £millions on initiatives which assume skills not taught, which assume the laying of a foundation not planned for anywhere else. Given the focus of the new 'strategy' is on providing young people with a habit for life, it is surprising this effective and economical way of laying a sound foundation has been overlooked.


And yet, this "strategy" is a step in the right direction. It acknowledges the need for strategy even if only by putting the word strategy on its cover. It tries hard to pull together various initiatives to create a strategy of sorts. But it is not, nor is it a part of, a functional, well designed national strategy for the development of sport and it is this that is required, it is this that would offer the best chance of our delivering on promises of increased participation made in Singapore seven years ago (and of sustaining that increase).

What we have instead is a continuation of the silo mentality I had hoped the proposed merger between UK Sport, Sport England and the Youth Sport Trust would consign to history. There is certainly little sign of the vertical integration so key to properly effective, efficient, economical strategy.

The new "strategy" is divided into five sections, the aspirations of each section is laudable but I am looking at this from a quality analysis perspective, not one of how warm the documents' wish-list makes me feel.

The first aspiration is to build a lasting legacy of competitive sport in schools, something I am a supporter of. The focus, indeed the only offering is of the School Games. The document suggests that all children will be offered competitive opportunities through the School Games but I wonder, what of those with poorly developed physical literacy and how many life-long (or at least long-term) participants such an initiative will bring?

Aspiration number two is on improving links between schools and community sports clubs something that sounds like a rehash of New Labour's 'School-Club Links' initiative only with fewer resources (same experts, same solutions = insanity planning). Credit where it is due though, at least this section lays out some clear targets by which to measure success. For example football has pledged that 2,000 of their clubs will be linked to schools by 2017. Whether that includes those already linked is not made clear however while 2000 sounds a large number if you break it down it is eight clubs linking to schools per county per year. The "all-sport" target is 6,000, the equivalent of 24 clubs from all sports linking to schools per county per year. This is not what I call ambitious, representing only around half a club linking per county per year from the 46 sports Sport England currently fund.


Working with those sports governing bodies is aspiration number three. What is described in this section is not even an initiative; it is an outline structure that will require strategy from the individual sports to enable delivery of Government policy via Whole Sport Plans. Whole Sport Plans is a grand sounding name for something started under the last government and which, far from being 'whole sport' are judged solely on government policy and funding targets.

There is no additional requirement for each sport to provide evidence – or even have – any plans for the sport that provide development outside that decreed by government policy. In other words sport's governing bodies are now positioned so as to be solely answerable to government rather than the sports in their care.

Under New Labour many even restructured to ensure this. Government trusts governing bodies to deliver calling them "the experts". These are the same experts deemed incapable of delivering previous policy, when they were also referred to as 'the experts'. I repeat what I said above – being an expert in sport is not the same thing as being an expert in sports development which is not the same thing as being an expert in strategy.

The fourth aspiration is on investing in facilities, an aspiration which must be welcomed by all involved in sport. That said, the "strategy" announces nothing new instead repeating the funding promises made in the 'Places, People, Play' initiative announcement. It is worth remembering Seb Coe's warnings in Singapore in 2005 that no building has ever inspired anyone to take up sport; buildings must be a delivery tool for properly planned development.

The fifth and final aspiration reported in the "strategy" is that of opening up provision and investing in communities. Again, this is something all involved in sport will welcome. However, the document gives no clues as to the level of investment or how it will be targeted. The case study provided in this section offers no clarification, describing a badminton club which has "no joining fee, no membership fee a no need for a partner – creating a club that could sustain itself for the long-term". How is not made clear and, as with all things strategy, "how" is a vital question overlooked at the author's peril.

So, we have a strategy of sorts, which despite my comments above, is a positive but small step in the right direction. Many of the aspirations are laudable but the absence of any meaningful description of what success looks like, sound sports development philosophy, vertically integrated thinking or, indeed, expertise suggests that at last the government are trying but must raise their game if they are to improve further.

Jim Cowan is a former athlete, coach, event organiser and sports development specialist who is the founder of Cowan Global, a company specialising in consultancy, events and education and training. For more details click here.

Coaches have been thrust into the spotlight in recent weeks. Stuart Lancaster made his competitive debut as caretaker England coach at the Rugby Football Union (RFU) in the wake of England's disappointing World Cup, while the dramatic resignation of Fabio Capello following the removal of John Terry as England captain has led to another Stuart [Pearce] being appointed caretaker coach within England football.

Following these two very different scenarios, there has been a lot of talk of who is the "right man" for these jobs, with an emphasis on the ability to communicate effectively with players and an understanding and appreciation of creating the right culture within the team.

In many ways this has served to highlight the complexity of the role of the coach. It's not good enough just to be an expert in the sport technically; tenacity, an ability to inspire, make tough decisions, plan meticulously, innovate and engage the expertise of others are also crucial, but so often these other skills required to coach at the highest level are overlooked.

People admire the journey of an Olympian or Paralympian and the personal sacrifices they make in order to translate years of dedicated training into success at the highest level. For many British athletes, the euphoria of winning a medal at a home games will be without question the pinnacle of their athletic careers.

Regardless of whether athletes succeed or fail, there will be one real constant in the athlete's journey: the coach. Choosing to coach any world-class athlete comes with extensive sacrifice and dedication on the coach's part that rivals some of the most high-pressure roles within many other professions.


When the start gun is fired or the whistle is blown the athlete is ultimately on their own with responsibility for their performance resting firmly in their hands, but there is no question that they would never have made it to the start line had it not been for their coach.

London 2012 will raise awareness of the importance of quality British led coaching in the UK. If we are to maintain our position on the world's stage of sporting prowess then we must ensure there is a significant depth of expert coaches working hand in hand with athletes to support their ambitions.

UK Sport has provided a range of development opportunities across a spectrum of Olympic and Paralympic sports over the past 10 years, to help our own homegrown talent excel in the field of coaching. If you don't know the names of the individuals we have worked with now, you probably will do by the summer: Toni Minichiello coached heptathlete Jessica Ennis back from injury to win the World Championships in 2009; Danny Kerry has taken the GB women's hockey team from 11th to fourth in the world rankings and to a Champions Trophy silver medal; Paul Manning (below) turned to a career in coaching after his gold medal winning performance on the cycling track in Beijing and is now imparting his wisdom in working with the GB women's team pursuit (current World Champions); Greg Baker is leading the coaching of the disability table tennis team recently selected to ParalympicsGB for 2012, who won six medals at last summer's European Championships.


With London 2012 fast approaching, as any coach knows, preparation is key. We, the Coaching team at UK Sport, have our own preparation to do over the coming months to ensure coach development is delivered to the highest possible standard; our ambition is to take British coach development to a whole new level in 2013, and ultimately for it to be recognised as world leading.

Graham Taylor is Head of Coaching at UK Sport, the nation's high performance sports agency.

Whoever said sport and politics don't mix obviously had never met Vitali Klitschko or his fellow Ukrainian Sergey Bubka and the Lords Coe and Moynihan among a host of others who have straddled both the playing field and the political arena.

The long list begins in Britain back in 1832 when bare knuckle boxer John Gully, once imprisoned as a debtor, was elected MP for Pontefract. Subsequently came C B Fry, the legendary polymath of the early 20th century who was capped at cricket and football for England, represented Southampton in the FA Cup, played rugby for Oxford and the Barbarians and was a renowned long-jumper and sprinter.  He was described as 'the most variably gifted Englishman of any age'.

Fry was less successful in politics though, twice failing narrowly to gain a parliamentary seat as a Liberal.  More recently of course, we have had Colin Moynihan, an Olympic silver medallist rowing cox, Oxford boxing Blue and now British Olympic Association (BOA) chairman, who was both Minister for Energy then Sport, and repeatedly hand-bagged over soccer hooliganism by his leader Margaret Thatcher.


Fellow Tory Sebastian Coe (although he never convinced me he was further to the right than Tony Blair) would be the first to admit that being the MP for Falmouth was not his finest five years.  Now both he and Moynihan sit in the House of Lords whenever they have a spare moment from Olympic business.  There too is Paralympian par-excellence, Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, left-leaning, but who sits as a cross-bencher and is rapidly making an impact in debates on social issues.  Other British parliamentarians of note include Menzies "Ming" Campbell, the former Lib  Dem leader, record-breaking former sprinter  GB team captain who ran in the Tokyo Olympics; Derek Wyatt, an England rugby international was, until deposed at the last election, Labour MP for Sittingbourne and another Labourite, Lord Tom Pendry was a prominent Army amateur boxer, and Kate Hoey (pictured left), in my view the best Sports Minister since football ref Denis Howell, was Northern Ireland junior high jump champion.

Overseas, sports stars have also made their mark in politics, not least Imran Khan, the former Pakistan cricket captain now vociferously active in Opposition in his homeland, and supporters believe, a putative President.

Remember Antonio Rattin, the bête noir from Buenos Aires who was sent off when captaining Argentina against England in the semi-final of the 1966 World Cup, a scene which caused Sir Alf Ramsey to label the Argies 'animals'?  He subsequently became a member of his country's parliament.  His compatriot, Hugo Porter, the Argentinian rugby legend was also politically inclined.  In 1991 he was appointed Argentine Ambassador to South Africa, and in 1994 became Argentina's Minister for Sport.

Another rugby playing diplomat was the South African Dawie de Villiers, also an MP in his homeland and then ambassador in London during the latter part of the apartheid years. West Indies cricket idol Sir (later Lord) Learie Constantine was also High Commissioner here.


In the United States there have been several sporting politicos, perhaps the most notable Bill Bradley (pictured), NBA Hall of Fame basketball star with New York Nicks, Rhodes Scholar and former three-term Democratic senator from New Jersey who ran unsuccessfully for the party's presidential nomination in 2000.

The French have had a succession of ex-sports personalities as Sports Ministers including Guy Drut, Olympic hurdling silver medallist, Jean-François Lamour, double Olympic fencing gold medallist, Chantal Jouanno, 12 times national karate champion and currently David Douillet, Olympic judo gold medallist in 1996 and 2000.  In Sri Lanka, cricketer Sanath Jayasuriya represents the Freedom Party in parliament, while in Japan Ryoko Tani, who is likely to be competing at 37 in London 2012, won judo gold in Sydney and Athens and is now a member of the Japanese parliament.

The former Russian ice hockey captain Viacheslav Fetisov was their Sports Minister from 2002 to 2008, while two of Cuba's most esteemed Olympic champions, that phenomenal athlete Alberto Juantorena and big-hitting heavyweight boxer Teófilo Stevenson (who I dubbed Castro's right hand man) both later served in parliament.


Manny Pacquiao (pictured left), boxing's most prolific world champion, is now a congressman in his native Philippines, while Bubka, Olympic and six times world pole vault champion and now rather more ambitious in sports politics as an IOC member and rival to Coe for the IAAF presidency, has been a parliamentarian in Ukraine.  But neither he, nor any of the others carry as much clout as Klitschko.

Every evening Vitali retires to his third floor suite at the five-star spa resort in the Austrian Alps where he is preparing assiduously for his fight with Londoner Dereck Chisora this Saturday, and dials a number in Kyiv, capital of his native Ukraine. The conversation is of strategy and tactics for a pending battle though boxing is not on the agenda.

Instead Klitschko spends an hour or so on a regular conference call with activists in the Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform, the political party he leads in opposition to the Government, against whom the gloves are definitely off.

Last week, in the Tyrolean mountain village of Stanglwirt, I found myself in the company of one of the most extraordinary sportsmen of the age, not only a long-standing world heavyweight boxing champion but a genuine political heavyweight with a PhD, as fluent a four languages as he is with his fists, now battling aggressively for democracy in his homeland where he is vehemently pro-European and anti-Putin, and, like Imran Khan and Pacquiao, tipped his as a future President.


The 6ft 8in son of a former Soviet air force colonel is the elder brother of former Olympic champion Wladimir, who, like him, is that rarity in sport, both a gentleman and a scholar. Between them they have dignified and dominated the heavyweight division for more than a decade.

"These days I spend 90 per cent of my time on politics," he admitted to me. "Sometimes I don't sleep too well because the brain is burning with what I have to do. The training camp for me is like a vacation. Whenever I come from it my wife tells me 'Wow, you look so fresh'.

"After training I have this conference call with my party colleagues in Ukraine.  In boxing, I am alone in the ring but in politics it is team work.  I have some good people around me.  Alone I can do nothing.  Immediately after the fight, I will be going back to Ukraine to do my work there.  Ukraine needs to be a European country, we are European with our history and mentality.  Geographically we are in the middle of Europe but we are very far away from Europe with our life standards.

"We need to make many changes.  In 1991, I was 20 years old.  I voted for the independence of our country.  Everyone had a dream to build a new modern Ukraine.  Last summer we celebrated 20 years independence.  My last fight was in Poland and I saw the big steps that they had taken during their independence, especially for democracy.  This is not so in Ukraine. It is a corrupt country.  Now I want to stop my homeland sliding into tyranny.

"I believe we can but you just can't sit in a chair and do it.  We have seen Ukraine slide down from democracy.  It is still my dream that we can be a modern democratic country and that is what I am fighting for."

K1, as he is known, who has represented Ukraine at the Council of Europe, first made his first mark in politics in the ring in December 2004, when he wore an orange flag on his shorts in support of the revolution that ousted President Viktor Yanukovych after he was accused of election fraud. Since then he has gained a seat on Kyiv council – which he describes as "run like a banana republic" – and formed UDAR, whose initials aptly form the Russian word for Punch. The party now has some 400 councillors and 10,000 members.

"We have big support and right now we are the fourth biggest party in Ukraine and we have the best dynamic. By the next election we hope to be the second or third."

Klitschko, who likens Ukrainian politics to bare knuckle fighting, has once run unsuccessfully for Mayor of Kyiv and it looks likely that he will stand again in November's elections as his popularity escalates.
 

Meantime, there is a more immediate contest against Chisora at Munich's Olympiahalle on Saturday, a tenth defence of heavyweight boxing's most prestigious title, the WBC belt (brother Wlad now holds the four others after relieving David Haye of his toe-hold on the WBA version).

Vitali is 40 now, greying at the temples and clearly more concerned with political in-fighting in Ukraine than bludgeoning opponents in the ring. He also acknowledges that 27-year-old Chisora is younger, hungrier and aggressive. "It will be an interesting fight," he muses. "He has a big heart and the motivation."

That may be so, but the polls suggest this should be a landslide victory for 'Dr Ironfist' – unless sport's supreme political champion really has taken his eye off the punchball.

Either way the gloves will be off, and it's back to the bare knuckle stuff of real politics. Pity John Gully's not still around.

Alan Hubbard is an award-winning sports columnist for The Independent on Sunday, and a former sports editor of The Observer. He has covered a total of 16 Summer and Winter Olympics, 10 Commonwealth Games, several football World Cups and world title from Atlanta to Zaire.

Salt Lake City wants to do it again in 2022.

Denver has a team in place to explore its exciting options.

Reno-Tahoe is chomping at the bit.

You don't need an MRI to figure out that the Olympic Spirit is alive and well in the United States right now with the 2022 Olympic Winter Games just ten years away.

There was a time when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) was gasping for air after consecutive boycotts in Montreal, Moscow and Los Angeles. There were few cities willing to take the financial risk of hosting the Games, winter or summer. Sponsors or potential sponsors were leery of their involvement, television rights were chump change by comparison with the billions being garnered now, and there was doubt about what the future held.

That was then, and this is really now.

With Salt Lake City forming an Exploratory Committee led by Utah Governor Gary Herbert and Mayor Ralph Becker to determine whether to move ahead with a 2022 Olympic Winter Games bid on the ten-year anniversary of the tremendously successful 2002 Winter Games, the hats are in the ring.


Denver announced its Exploratory Committee on December 16 with the leadership of Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper (pictured) and Mayor Michael Hancock. Metro Denver Sports Commission President Kie Ann Brownell was in Lausanne for an IOC workshop for potential bidders.

"We've asked this exploratory committee to explore all issues relevant to Denver potentially submitting a bid to the USOC," Hickenlooper said. "Those issues include making certain any bid would be financially sound and will help economic growth in the state.

"We would also want to find ways to showcase Colorado as the healthiest state in the nation for work and play no matter of a bid's outcome."

In Salt Lake this morning, the Governor's spokeswoman told reporters: "We need to look at what the real costs would be of upgrading facilities, putting a bid together and what other competitors are out there. This is meant to be a small group to advise the governor on whether we should pursue a bid."

Reno-Tahoe kicked off its aggressive push last June, and Reno Tahoe Winter Games Coalition Board vice-chairman Hawley MacLean and membership coordinator Keri Cassinelli, along with chief executive Jon Killoran, attended the Olympic Games Organisation seminar in Lausanne.

But all this marvellous enthusiasm and excitement depends totally on the careful, deliberate and critical negotiations going on between the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) and the IOC related to the USOC's share of American television rights fees and share of worldwide sponsorship fees.

Under an agreement forged by USOC leaders including President Robert J Helmick, executive director George Miller and marketing chief John Krimsky in the mid-1980s, the USOC receives a 20 per cent share of global sponsorship revenue and a 12.75 per cent share of US broadcast rights deals.

The USOC's share of these revenues was agreed upon for simple reasons.

The television deal was forged to protect the organisation's ability to raise funds in the United States, the lifeblood of the USOC, which has existed almost from its inception without any Government funding, unlike the majority of the nations that compete in the Games.

Before the deal, the USOC watched from the sidelines as the American television network that carried the Games sold the Olympic-ringed logo and terminology to broadcast partners. Some of those were in direct conflict with the USOC's smallish family of sponsors. And, the USOC got nothing.


At the Los Angeles Games in 1984, the USOC and the Los Angeles Olympic Organising Committee had competing sponsors in some categories, even though the Olympic marks and terminology were supposedly protected by the Amateur Sports Act of 1978 to support the struggling, growing USOC.

At the time the sponsorship agreement was forged, almost all of the IOC's worldwide sponsors were American corporations, the backbone of the Olympic Movement and the foundation of the Games.

Without American corporations and American television network money, the IOC was going to face tough sledding.

It was never about greed or leverage by the USOC, which was fighting for its very existence after the Moscow boycott forced on it by the Carter Administration. The USOC of the early 1980s had almost been bankrupted, its sponsors and donors muscled into inaction, and we almost went out of business until the success of the Los Angeles Games opened the door to a glowing future.

So, here we are today, with three gorgeous American cities and areas excited about the chance to bring the Olympic Winter Games to the United States again.

But USOC chairman Larry Probst and chief executive Scott Blackmun are engaged in one of the most critical moments for the organisation's future since the USOC was cobbled together in 1894 by a group of bewhiskered, cigar smoking men in a New York City club. Nothing is going to happen about bringing the Games to the United States until Probst and Blackmun, who have carefully nurtured the relationship with the IOC for over two years, reach an agreement that pleases the IOC but protects the future for America's athletes.

They have worked long and hard on resolving the issue, and there are clear signs that progress is being made steadily. But this is one where you don't fold or roll over in frustration.

The IOC is rich now from television and sponsorship revenues. NBC will pay $4.4 billion (£2.8 billion/€3.3 billion) for the USA rights to Games through 2020 alone. Japan TV will pay $472 million (£300 million/€358 million) to the IOC for the 2014 Games in Sochi and the 2016 Games in Rio. The IOC has assets now that it never could have dreamed of without the United States.

The IOC and the USOC are well aware of what a positive relationship will bring.

The IOC needs American television revenues and the huge audience that goes with it. It needs Coca-Cola, McDonald's, GE, Proctor & Gamble and VISA. The IOC will reap some $1 billion from the global sponsors through London this summer.

And both need the Games in the United States, soon.


Games in Lake Placid, Atlanta, Los Angeles and Salt Lake City brought success and growth, along with being the magnet that attracted millions of American kids into gymnastics, ice hockey, women's soccer and softball and other sports.

America's Games increased the values of the marketing properties and entities for the USOC and IOC dramatically, solidifying a golden future.

Whether the new USOC-IOC vows are spoken soon enough to present an American bid for the 2022 Olympic Winter Games remains unclear.

But a bid will come sooner than later, rest assured. And it will be successful.

Intelligent, careful and bright men and women are working on it around the clock in Colorado Springs and Lausanne.

Mike Moran was the chief spokesman for the United States Olympic Committee for a quarter century, through thirteen Games, from Lake Placid to Salt Lake City. He joined the USOC in 1978 as it left New York City for Colorado Springs. He was the Senior Communications Counselor for NYC2012, New York City's Olympic bid group from 2003-2005 and is now a media consultant

Having been involved in the genesis of International Inspiration in 2007, it was a great moment when the announcement came that the programme has now reached 20 countries. 

International Inspiration, London 2012's international legacy programme, has had an impact on the lives of 12 million children and young people, many of them from some of the world's most disadvantaged communities, and to know we achieved our goal by June last year.  It is a proud achievement to have pulled off the "2012" double well before the Olympic Games Opening Ceremony.

Over the past five years, with the London 2012 team focused on organising the greatest Olympic and Paralympic Games the world has ever seen, UK Sport, UNICEF and the British Council, with the support and backing of the II Foundation, have been set on achieving our vision of enriching the lives of 12 million children and young people in 20 countries worldwide through the power of high quality and inclusive sport, physical education and play. It has been a challenging but always fascinating journey, taking us from the arid cattle region of Karamoja in Uganda, to the mega-cities of Mumbai and Jakarta via the island paradise of Palau, the jungles of Sabah, the adventure of the Great Ethiopian run and, most recently, post-revolutionary Egypt.


I led a delegation of International Inspiration partners on a planning visit to Cairo two weeks ago. The first three days were spent participating in the Take Part conference, brilliantly organised by the British Council in Egypt. The conference was built around the "three Ps" of International Inspiration. Day one was for groups of Participants – young people in schools, universities, youth groups such as the scouts and some of Egypt's young sporting champions, including inspirational young high-jump athlete, Sara Helmy. On day two some of those young people joined a group of Practitioners, teachers, lecturers, sports coaches, National Youth Council and NGO employees. They heard the views of the Participants from the previous day and framed their own recommendations for day three which was the platform for the Policy-makers.

It was a genuinely impressive gathering at which the Minister for Education and the Chairs of the National Sports Council and the Egypt Paralympic Committee all spoke. I was lucky enough to share a platform with Tanni Grey-Thompson – who is also an ambassador for International Inspiration – and in our double act I covered some of the global history and context of International Inspiration, while Tanni brought the meaning of what we are doing alive with her personal memories and reflections as one of the world's great champions in and of sport.


We were followed on stage by a senior figure from the Ministry of Education in Jordan who told the Egyptian audience, in Arabic, of the real difference that International Inspiration has made in his country. As he revealed to us that International Inspiration Young Sports Leader training has now been integrated into the King Abdullah Award scheme in over 500 Jordanian schools, it was clear to the whole audience that International Inspiration really is making a difference.

There is no doubt about the passion for sport in Egypt which chimes with people's keen sense of national pride and the new spirit emerging from last year's revolution. The Young Sports Leadership initiative that has been so successful in Jordan is something all stakeholders we met asked us to help them develop, and make sustainable and it will certainly be a core element in our International Inspiration Egypt plan.

The next day we continued our schedule of meetings with senior stakeholders. I was very honoured to be presented with a goatskin decorated with an image of the revolution by a Community Youth Centre in Cairo where a highlight was meeting the local hero, a 90-year-old gentleman known as the Father of Wrestling, who has coached all his life, and enabled generations of boys from humble homes to become world class wrestlers. His 70-year-old son also coaches there. To round off the visit, some of the delegation also joined locals in a fiercely contested seated volleyball match.


Then later that evening the terrible events unfolded at the football stadium in Port Said. As Cairo embarked on three days of mourning, and protests and skirmishes erupted across the city, our journey and positive work continued. A Young Sports Leader Training event in a school adjacent to the Al-Ahly stadium, home ground of most of the victims of the Port Said incident, has gone ahead at the express request of the National Sports Council.

As we left, the words and shining face of another inspirational Egyptian, Olympic swimmer and IOC member, Dr Rania Amr Elwani, were still vivid. She devotes much of her life to widening access to sport in general and to her national swimming school for thousands of young children across Egypt. "I will carry on doing what I do because this work is so important".

Debbie Lye is the international development director and International Inspiration programme director at UK Sport

About five months ago, we held International Paralympic Day where over 100 athletes demonstrated their sport to the public. The atmosphere in Trafalgar Square that day was incredible and you could really see how the public wanted to learn more about Paralympic sports and its athletes.

So I can only imagine what it will be like in 200 days time, when the Opening Ceremony for the Paralympic Games will be held on 29 August.

Then, we'll have 4,200 athletes from over 140 countries gathered here in London for what I know will be a fantastic Games.

This will be the largest Paralympic Games ever and I know the atmosphere in our venues will be just electric, filled with enthusiastic and inspired fans. With the first Paralympic-only Partner in Sainsbury's, and Channel 4 providing more coverage than any previous Games, this summer will be a spectacular showcase for Paralympic sport.

However with 200 days to go, we know that there is still a lot of work to be done - the Paralympic Games is equivalent to hosting 20 simultaneous World Championships across 11 days of competition. Here at London 2012 we're all working to one aim - hosting the best Paralympic Games possible for athletes and spectators and the clock counting down both reminds us of what we've achieved while focusing the mind on what we've got left to do.


But we've got an exciting 200 days ahead of us - amongst many things happening, we'll be hosting some Paralympic test events in the Olympic Park, we'll be selecting our Paralympic Torchbearers and the ParalympicsGB team will be announced.

Hugely exciting times ahead of us and we can't wait to welcome athletes and spectators from around the world to come and compete here.

We've sold an unprecedented one million Paralympic tickets so far and for the first time in Paralympic history ticket sessions across several sports were oversubscribed one year out.

So I think we can guarantee an amazing atmosphere in our venues. See you in London in 200 days!

Sebastian Coe is the chairman of London 2012