These are hard times for softball. Women's sport rightly complains of lack of recognition, and further evidence of this comes from one of the nation's most successful teams, the GB women's fast-pitch softball squad, who look likely to miss the World Championships in Canada this summer because they can't afford to go. Among the top three teams in Europe, they have to decide by the end of this month whether to take up the place for which they qualified, but many are students who don't have the cash for air fares and accommodation, estimated at a total of £60,000 ($92,600/€71,900).

They have existed on donations but the money has since run out and UK Sport, who are now focusing entirely on sports that can win Olympic medals – softball has been dropped for London 2012 – feel unable to help despite chief executive Liz Nicholl acknowledging that the girls have achieved more than some sports which receive funding. Says the GB Softball manager, Bob Fromer: "Sadly it is beginning to look like they won't get the chance."

Women's fastpitch softball may not register with most people in the UK, but it was an Olympic medal sport from the 1996 Games in Atlanta through 2008 in Beijing. The decision to drop softball and baseball from the London 2012 Games was particularly cruel to those sports in Britain, for whom a host country place in London could have transformed their public profile.


Although a serious national team programme in women's fastpitch softball only began in 1999, the GB team moved steadily up the European rankings over the next few years and in 2004, UK Sport decided that the team had demonstrated the potential for Olympic qualification.

However, shortly after the agency awarded softball £528,000 ($815,020/€632,632) for the 2005-2008 Olympic cycle, the sport was dropped from the programme for London 2012. And when the GB team failed to qualify for the single place available to Europe at the Beijing Olympics, all UK Sport's money was withdrawn in 2007.

Despite that, the programme has gone from strength to strength, with players and staff paying most of the costs.

In 2009, the team achieved a best-ever second place finish at the European Championships and qualified for the first time by right for the 2010 World Championships in Venezuela.

The money that got the team to Venezuela, along with player contributions, came through winning free flights in a British Airways contest plus significant donations from a British businessman based in Coventry and an American multi-millionaire based in Detroit, both of whom had personal connections with team members.


At the 2010 World Championships in Venezuela, the team finished as the 11th best in the world – an amazing achievement for a country where the sport and the player pool are very small and the programme has no public funding.

In 2011, with money left over from those 2010 donations, the GB Team played very competitively against the top four teams in the world at the annual World Cup of Softball in the United States, then qualified for the 2012 World Championships by finishing in the top three at European Championships in Italy.

But now the money has run out. The cost of preparing for and competing at the 2012 World Championships is estimated at £60,000, well beyond what the players and volunteer coaches can afford. Predictably, all attempts to find commercial sponsorship for a women's minority sport with little public profile have come to nought in the current economic climate.

Says Fromer, who has overseen the GB women's softball team programme as general manager since 2000: "A wonderful and dedicated group of players has made GB into one of the world's elite softball programmes over the past few years against all the odds and some will retire after this summer. Surely they deserve to play one more time on the World Championship stage."

So now the team has been reduced to hoping for some kind of miracle. Otherwise, the players' World Championship dreams will be over and the programme, with no prospect of future funding except in the unlikely event that softball regains an Olympic place, will struggle to reach such heights again.

If anyone wants to help, please contact Fromer or call 01886 884204.

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 fights from Atlanta to Zaire.

For the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and its President Jacques Rogge, who is now serving his penultimate year leading the organisation, 2012 has started particularly well.

This is almost exclusively because between the dates of January 13 to 22, the Austrian city of Innsbruck staged a near perfect first edition of the Winter Youth Olympic Games.

Expectations for the event were high following the monumental success of the inaugural Summer Youth Olympics in Singapore in 2010 and despite the summer edition of the event looking increasingly like it will become a sought after competition, there have been concerns over whether the winter edition of the Games will take off.

These fears were heightened last year when Lillehammer in Norway were announced as the only bidder for the 2016 Winter Youth Olympics, and they were unsurprisingly awarded the event last month in probably the least exciting bid race in the history of the IOC.

So the pressure was on Innsbruck, and despite heavy snow leading up to the event causing much angst among the Organising Committee, they truly delivered.


The event worked so well simply because everything ran so smoothly against the unbelievably picturesque backdrop of Innsbruck's snow-topped mountains.

The performances were fantastic, the venues were superb, the internet was fast (and free), the buses ran like clockwork and the city is so small that every venue was only a 15 minute ride away from the centre.

An additional nice touch was to see the IOC members riding the same bus as the athletes, officials and media.

Such was the relaxed atmosphere as the Games, I would often find myself engaged in conversation with one of them which is a situation one won't encounter when the London 2012 Olympics get under in just over six months' time.

Access to the IOC hotel, which was the relatively modest Hilton, also came with ease and you wouldn't have realised you were in exulted company such was the vibe in Innsbruck.

In fact, the only individual to which access wasn't instantly available in Innsbruck was the IOC President himself.

But even he appeared unusually relaxed at all of his engagements and it is he who left Innsbruck with a bigger smile than most.

As the story goes, it was Rogge himself who came up with the idea of staging a Youth Olympic Games and despite some opposition for the concept from within the IOC, he finally saw his dream become reality in Singapore two years ago.


Singapore 2010 was undeniably a success but there were small criticisms about the costs for the event, which eventually escalated to $284 million (£183 million/€219 million), largely due to the spectacular Opening and Closing Ceremonies I witnessed first-hand on the Float@Marina Bay, the world's largest floating stage located on the waters of Marina Bay.

But it is hard to hold too much against the beautiful city because Singapore is too small to host the traditional Olympics.

The Youth Olympics was their pinnacle and they made the most of it.

But back in Innsbruck, the costs were nowhere near as astronomical.

The budget for the event stood at around $22.5 million (£14.5 million/€17.35 million) with a separate pot of $121 million (£77.9 million/€93.2 million) spent to construct the Athletes' Village, which will now be sold on as a residential plot.

Innsbruck already had a lot of existing infrastructure in place from hosting the traditional Winter Olympics twice back in 1964 and 1976 (when Games were much smaller) and the winter sport city used them to great effect.

Rogge stated his pleasure at the move, saying that using "existing infrastructure" is the key for the Youth Olympics, where costs should not be high and there should be no white elephants in sight.

Such words will be music to the ears of those at the British Olympic Association (BOA) who are contemplating putting forward a bid for the 2018 Youth Olympics, probably from Glasgow, who will have a lot of venues already in place from the 2014 Commonwealth Games, such as the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome (pictured below).


Glasgow could face tough competition for the event from Buenos Aires in Argentina, whose bid will be overseen by the formidable strategist Mike Lee, the former London 2012 communications director who masterminded the victorious campaigns for Rio 2016 and Pyeongchang 2018 following his win with the London bid team.

Medellín in Colombia are another confirmed bidder for 2018 with others likely to follow including Monterrey, Mexico and Dagestan, Russia.

Such a strong bid race would be a major boost to the IOC, even though Rogge himself admitted that the event makes no money for his organisation.

"The model of the Youth Olympic Games is not for the IOC to make a profit," he said.

"While there is interest for the Games from television and sponsors, it is nowhere near the interest there is for the traditional Olympics.

"But that is not the point of this event.

"The point is for the IOC to invest in the youth of the world."

Peter Bayer, the popular chief executive of Innsbruck 2012, told me as much when we spoke during the competition, though he suggested there would be long term economic benefits.

"Our financial model is not really focused on making profit because we know that these Games are something that will help us going forward as a region, as a city and as a nation," he explained.

"This competition is about proving that we are able to host big events and to show that we are a sporting country.

"It is also about helping tourism which is a very important source of income for us.

"So we want to use these Games to show everybody in the world that we have wonderful mountains and a lot of snow so that they come here and enjoy it."


Innsbruck have certainly done that, and now that they have successfully hosted the first edition of the Winter Youth Olympics, many more countries are likely to follow their lead in bidding for the event now that they won't be stepping into unknown territory.

"Innsbruck has been truly excellent and we have now had two fantastic inaugural competitions with the first Summer Youth Olympics in 2010 and the first Winter Youth Olympics here," Rogge said.

"These events now provide a template for future hosts."

It would obviously take a lot for Rogge to criticise his "baby" but for now, he can be proud of his achievement and certain that he has created something that will enhance his place in history.

At a press conference, I somewhat cheekily asked Rogge if he considered the event to be his greatest personal legacy to the Olympic Movement.

"This is not about my own personal legacy, but about creating a competition that will inspire the youth of the world," he said in a fashion you would expect of the IOC President, before he joked: "Besides, a legacy is for when you are dead, and I don't plan on that happening any time soon."

Fair enough, but Rogge can now rest assured that he has done something to match the achievements of his seven predecessors as IOC President by creating a phenomenon that he will be remembered for long after he steps down from the role in the summer of next year.

For that, he owes a huge thanks to Singapore and now Innsbruck.

Tom Degun is a reporter for insidethegames covering the 2012 Youth Winter Olympic Games in Innsbruck

The flame flickered and died and that famous five ringed flag was lowered in a simple ceremony at the end of these first Winter Youth Olympic Games in  Innsbruck. For many they  represented the true significance of the Olympic spirit and values.

"We want the Youth Olympic Games and the traditional Olympic Games to be fun, not too serious." said International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Jacques Rogge.

"We will continue to invest in the Olympic Village because we want to bring a very good atmosphere for the athletes."

The great Jesse Owens won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin and memorably forged a friendship with Luz Long, his German rival in the long jump.

"You're breaking records and you are not breaking heads and this is why I say that it is going to endure." said Owens of the Olympics much later in his life.

"Whether you qualified for the finals or not, you were there and you broke bread with the rest of the world."


As the focus now switches to  London 2012 where the competition will undoubtedly be more intense, it is worth remembering that the British capital was the birthplace of the Olympic creed :

"The important thing in the Olympic Games is not so much the winning as the taking part."

Baron Pierre de Coubertin was IOC President in 1908 at the time of the first Olympics to be staged in London. He sat in the pews at St Pauls Cathedral as Bishop Ethelbert Talbot of Pennsylvania told the congregation of Olympic competitors and officials: "The only safety lies in the lesson of the true Olympia, that the Games are more important than the prize."

It was a lesson the Olympic founder took to heart. Within a few days, he made a speech to a gathering of the great and good. He outlined the Olympic creed for the first time and went on to add: "The essential thing in life is not to have conquered but to have fought well."

This message was often displayed on the scoreboard in the Olympic stadium and 104 years later, the idea  remains a powerful one for Coubertin's  latest successor.

"We tell the athletes that there is something else, not just sport in their lives," said President Rogge (pictured).


"We are working very hard in the reintegration of athletes after their sports career. Once they stop, we put a lot of emphasis on their reintegration into professional and social life. We are also very diligent in protecting the physical and psychological health of the athletes."

For Coubertin, the idea of a sound mind in a healthy body was paramount, but he surely wouldn't have approved of the present day  obsession with medal tables.

They were refreshingly absent here in Innsbruck for the Youth Olympics, where teams of mixed nationality even competed in some events, but they are certain to dominate conversation in London. The fact is they're even discouraged by the rules of the Olympic Movement. These emphasise that most competition is between individuals not countries.

Clause 57 of Olympic Charter  makes it very clear: "The IOC and organising committee shall not draw up any global ranking."

"The IOC will not play that game, but we are absolutely powerless in front of the media who want to have a medal count." said Rogge.

Philip Barker, a freelance journalist, has been on the editorial team of the Journal of Olympic History and is credited with having transformed the publication into one of the most respected historical publications on the history of the Olympic Games. He is also an expert on Olympic Music, a field which is not generally well known.

Not so fast........

It was sometime in 2000, in some place like New York, Los Angeles or Boston, when I thought I would be seeing Janet Evans for the last time.

Over a dozen years and three Olympics, I had become accustomed to seeing the Olympic Hall of Fame swimming star on a regular basis, and I hated the idea that she and I would not get another chance to say hello and make small talk, pose for a picture, and recall the huge moments in her career.

She was making another appearance, as she had done countless times, at a Xerox-sponsored fund-raising event for the United States Olympic Committee, like Olympians Bob Beamon, Donna de Varona, Jeff Blatnick, Al Oerter, Bonnie Blair, Bart Conner, Teresa Edwards, Mike Eruzione, Billy Mills, John Naber, and Bill Toomey did all the time. I had introduced them all, in cities here and there, and watched as audiences reacted with delight in seeing these legends and hearing their stories.

Evans got the attention of the world in 1988 as a 17-year-old swimming sensation in Seoul. The California teenager, with her quirky windmill stroke, won three gold medals at Olympic Park, set a world record and an Olympic record, and whipped the shadowy East German stars Heike Friedrich, Anke Mohring and Astrid Straub, at the time the ultimate Good versus Evil story line.

By the time Barcelona rolled around in 1992, she had become the world's greatest female distance swimmer, with two more golds in steamy Perth at the 1991 World Championships. She did not disappoint in Spain, capturing a gold and silver.

But when the world came to Atlanta in 1996 for the Centennial Olympic Games, it was a different story for Evans.

I still have a trio of memories of her during the Atlanta Games.

Sitting with NBC's Tom Brokaw and his wife at the Opening Ceremony, we both had a "wow" moment when she handed the Olympic Torch to Muhammad Ali and a stunned worldwide audience watched the boxing legend haltingly light the cauldron.


On July 26, she climbed out of the pool after finishing sixth in the 800 meter event behind a new teenage star, 16-year-old Brooke Bennett. It was supposed to be her final Olympic race and some described it as passing the torch to Bennett. But it really wasn't.

The next evening, television audiences watched in horror as she was being interviewed by a television crew at Olympic Park when an explosion rocked the venue, killing one and injuring 111 others.

That was supposed to be the final drama, retirement, and she walked through the portal of time that all Olympians do, and on to life.

It was full speed ahead to a new career as an in demand motivational speaker, author, spokesperson, businesswoman and mother. She's now the mom to kids Sydney (5) and Jake (2).

But something was missing, and she apparently has found it.

Last weekend in Austin, the 40-year-old Evans was rewarded for a year's work of pain, 4:30 a.m. wakeup calls, and hundreds of hours in assorted pools with the chlorine and caps, with Olympic Trials qualifying times in the 400 and 800 metre freestyle events. Though 24 years have passed since she set the world record in the 800, the standard remains, and no woman has eclipsed her time.


So in June in Omaha, Evans will likely get her husband and kids set in their seats at the Century Link Center, head to the dressing room to pull on her suit again, and face women half her age, some who won't even really understand who she is, and begin what some may say is a quixotic journey that could land her in London in July at the 2012 Olympic Games.

Ask Dara Torres about that.

The athletes of the Olympic family always seem to produce this kind of story, stories that lift people from the grind of their lives and the suffocating reality of trouble, illness and struggle.

Billy Mills down the stretch in Tokyo 1964, Eruzione's goal against the Soviets in 1980, Blair's five golds in speed skating in Calgary, Albertville and Lillehammer, de Varona's teenage success in Tokyo's Olympic pool in 1964, Beamon's historic leap in Mexico City, Toomey's decathlon in 1968, Blatnick's moment on the mat in 1984, and Oerter's four straight discus triumphs.

There was a time when it was common to say that great athletes, actors, politicians and artists should get out when the time is right. See Sandy Koufax, Bill Russell, Carl Lewis, Edwin Moses, Rocky Marciano, Jim Brown and Ted Williams.

Others, like Warren Spahn, Willie Mays, Sugar Ray Leonard, Pele, Steve Carlton, Gordie Howe and even Johnny Unitas stayed too long after their brilliance had dimmed.

One day in October, 1990, 40-year-old Mark Spitz, he of the seven gold medals in Munich two decades earlier, came to the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs to begin an attempt to make the 1992 Olympic Team. The greatest male swimmer of our time, like Evans, had hung up his suit to become a motivational speaker and celebrity, but he wanted another shot, touched again by the heat of the Olympic flame.

His dream died in time when he could not match the times of the teens and twenty somethings that he would compete against for a trip to Barcelona.

Not so now for Evans, and Torres, women who have become successes away from the pool – moms and authors, speakers and inspirations to girls and women across the landscape of America.

I don't pretend to know why Janet Evans has decided to chase an Olympic dream again, maybe she really has no easy answer.

But whatever it may be, who among us can't fall in love with it and want her to succeed?

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 

It is like a scene from a dream. Familiar figures – Hugh Robertson, Minister for Sport and the Olympics, Paul Deighton, London 2012's chief executive, are drifting about in white coats and safety glasses in a long succession of brightly lit laboratory rooms.

Through my own somewhat blurry safety glasses – I am, admittedly, deprived temporarily of my own glasses – I can make out a good deal of staged activity by the two men for the benefit of the white-coated TV cameramen who circumnavigate them.

We are in a space that will be vital to the effective running of the London 2012 Games – the newly unveiled, labyrinthine facility at GlaxoSmithKline in Harlow which will process up to 400 doping samples a day in the course of the Olympics and Paralympics.


Guiding our little group around the lab is Christiaan Bartlett, one of the senior scientists from the Drug Testing Centre at King's College, London who will be engaged in testing the tidal wave of urine that will make its way from the capital to Essex during the latest celebration of the modern Games.

Here is the very counter across which dark blue padded boxes containing either urine samples or refrigerated – but NOT frozen – blood samples will be passed from couriers, signed for and assigned a code number.

Here are what look like seven large boxes, each capable of testing for 200 banned substances or metabolites within a period of 10 minutes through what I like to call liquid chromatography mass spectrometry, and each costing quarter of a million pounds.

Just in case you were worrying, there are enough so that even if some break down, the process, the tide of urine, will still flow.  And just in case you were still worrying, yes, of course they have spare parts. And, just in case those most worrisome among you were still not totally at ease, yes there will be engineers present on 24/7 call. As to whether those engineers will be checked for faults such as mental instability or indigestion, however, I do not yet have information.

Still, quite a secure process. "We've tried to cover every base," says Bartlett.

"What about if there was a massive power cut?" asks one of my companions; brightly. Base covered. The lab has its own independent generator. But our questioner is not to be put off. "What if all the machines broke down, for whatever reason? Could you carry out the process using more basic methods?"


For a moment we entertain visions of Bunsen burners and school chemistry lessons. 400 tests a day? Surely not.

The scientist with particular responsibility for this section of the lab shakes his head. Beaten.

Still, let's not be gloomy. Let's assume that the mysterious "whatever reason" never occurs. It looks like a pretty well-organised operation.

"Let's show you how we crack open a bottle," our guide says. Given that the Games are still six months away, and indeed given that the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) is still in the process of confirming that this lab will be capable of handling everything asked of it during the Games, such celebrations seem oddly premature.

I need not have worried, as it happens. Bartlett is talking about urine bottles, which will arrive having been sealed in the presence of the donors themselves – I am usually very efficient at untwisting the tops off old brown sauce bottles and such like, but I can personally report these sample bottles do not yield to even the most ferocious pressure.

No. What's needed is for them to be stuck in a machine which cracks the plastic seal around the top of the bottle, allowing it to be unscrewed. I don't catch the name of this particular bit of hardware being temporarily supplied by GSK, but I imagine it is something like Bottle Opener.

A little earlier, we have all just heard the overall figures at the introductory press conference. This vast laboratory – someone has worked out it is the size of seven tennis courts, which is a good stat, but not what I call a great one as that has to involve London buses – is going to be testing more than 6,000 samples in the course of the Games, more than at any earlier Games, a figure which the people at King's College normally take a year to get through.

"It's not all about the numbers, though," Bartlett confides. "A few years back we were testing more than 8,000 samples a year, but since times have got hard the role of intelligence, and target testing, has come to the forefront. So there may be special attention for some groups of athletes, or for athletes who have recently come back from injury. Intelligence is a key factor."

We have moved on by now past the seven standing quarter-of-a-million machines. There are only four in this section, which will be where suspect samples are more closely inspected.

Here, in this very room, perhaps in the very mass spectrometer we are standing alongside, which from this angle looks like something capable of microwaving a cow, the career and life of an Olympic athlete may be determined.

What, you wonder, can possibly go wrong – other than the arrival of "whatever reason", of course.

Well, on the same day as the Olympic big-wigs are lauding this multi-million pound set-up just across the way from Harlow Town FC, the WADA-accredited lab in Rio de Janeiro is, calamitously, losing some of its accredited status after being found to have falsely accused a Brazilian beach volleyball player, Pedro Solberg, of testing positive for testosterone.


Before entering the dazzling labyrinth I have spoken to Kelly Sotherton (pictured right), the Olympic heptathlon bronze medallist of 2004 who is seeking to challenge for a place in London 2012 without the benefit of World Class Lottery funding.

"Athletes need to take supplements because of the amount of work they do, but you have to be so, so careful about what is in anything you take because there have been so many cases of contamination," she says.

"The other day I was about to buy some organic tomatoes, but then I thought 'could they have put something into it I don't know about?' Even if I just ate air, I would still worry.

"And as an athlete, you always worry about whether your test is going to be done properly," she says. "If you don't, there's something wrong with you."

Intelligence is welcome in this field of operation. But, for the sake of this athlete, and every other, certitude is vital.

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.

It was a pretty poignant turn of year in the Mills household as we toasted the start of the 2012 Olympic year at home in Cardiff with the rest of my family.

Silver at the ISAF World Championships in Perth proved to be a pleasing end to an amazing year, especially as we went into the regatta having had some time off beforehand and feeling a bit underprepared.

It definitely showed we had been out of the boat at times as our racing communication was a bit off sometimes, but we knew it was going to be a week we had to dig deep and we did just that. To have been able to grind out the results we needed to head into the medal race still in with a shout of a medal was awesome, so we were really pleased to win silver.

Straight from Perth a few of us including Team Volvo sailor Paul Goodison headed to Bali for what was meant to be a really chilled holiday. But Bali is a really stressful place.

You expect it to be this beautiful tranquil place and a lot of it is, but the traffic can be insane and we also had to be really careful about what we ate. We had a wicked time though, surfing, well attempting to surf, lots and lots. We also spent heaps of time in the markets and did a Secret Santa for each other for Christmas Day.

We got back to Britain on December 30 and I headed straight home to Wales to give my family all the Christmas presents I'd bought them in the Bali markets!

I was exhausted so it was lovely just to spend a low key New Year's Eve with my family at my cousin's chilling out and watching the fireworks. Given that this time last year Saskia [Clark] and I hadn't even started sailing together, talk inevitably turned to the Olympics and how exciting this year is going to be.

I was only at home for a few days before I left the country again, this time for St Moritz and our team cross-country ski camp. It was the first one I had ever done and I absolutely loved it, it was so much fun but really hard work.

I've skied quite a bit before so I got the hang of cross-country quite quickly but the skis were so slippy it was ridiculous. Especially downhill, everyone was falling over and how funny we all found it seeing each other go flying never wore off the whole time. I was actually a bit sad to come home.


After only four days at home we flew off to the States for training ahead of the Rolex Miami Olympic Classes Regatta. Sas and I are still a relatively new pair so we think it is really important that we get as much racing in as we can between now and the Games. The plan at the moment is to do Miami, the Princess Sofia Regatta in Palma, the 470 Worlds in Spain in May and maybe the Europeans in June.

We will have to be careful about getting the right balance in peaking for only a couple of events so that we go into the Olympics with the right amount of training and racing behind us. But we have an experienced coach in double Olympic silver medallist Joe Glanfield with us and are confident that our programme is equally rigorous and flexible enough to give us the best chance at the Games.

Hannah Mills is a British sailor who was selected, along with Olympian Saskia Clark, to sail in the 470 women's class for Team GB in the London 2012 Olympics.

In assisting Ben Ainslie to present his plans for post-London 2012 racing earlier this week, New Zealand's four-times America's Cup winner Russell Coutts made it clear that Britain are regarded as massively strong in international sailing terms.

The Kiwi veteran added that he expected a generation of British Olympic sailors to start reaching out beyond the Games to larger and wider ambitions such as America's Cup racing.

Sport is always about the next challenge. But as those within British sailing know only too well after the events of last month's World Championships in Perth, no matter how good you are, you can never master every circumstance.

Ainslie (pictured below), who was seeking a sixth Finn title, is still awaiting the possibility of further disciplinary action by the Royal Yachting Association (RYA) following the "gut-wrenching" disqualification which followed his spectacular objection to the way in which the television crew covering the event had plotted their course.


Another of Britain's Olympic champions, Iain Percy, contesting the Star class with Andrew Simpson, had to withdraw with victory virtually assured after he suffered a back injury. And Stevie Morrison and Ben Rhodes also saw their hopes in the 49er class prematurely ended when Rhodes suffered a rib injury.

Given that turn of fortune, Stephen Park, the British team's Olympic manager, professed himself well satisfied earlier this week with the ultimate total of six medals from those championships.

"The reality is that something is going to happen in competition to your top performers," he said, speaking at the RYA stand within the London Boat Show at the ExCeL centre. "If you put all your eggs in one basket and look to one or two of your top performers and something adverse happens then you are left exposed.

"World sailing is more competitive than it has ever been. Lots of medals are being won and lost on the final races. That's why it is so good to see such a high level of performance throughout the British team."


Among those who rose to the challenge in Perth were Luke Patience and Stuart Bithell (pictured), who got the nod this week as Britain's representatives in the 470 class ahead of two other massively experienced and accomplished crews.

They were selected ahead of a double Olympic silver medallist in Nick Rogers, who was sailing with Chris Grube, and double world champions Nic Asher and Elliot Willis.

As for the combo who came through to earn the coveted spot, who were now posing with requisite grins for photographers on the restored Flying Dutchman class boat in which Rodney Pattisson and Julian Houghton had won silver at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, Park reflected on those who had lost out in the race to get to the London 2012 starting line.

"For those who don't get selected, it is shattering," Park told insidethegames. "They have made all the sacrifices over the previous four years just to get to this stage, they have been physically and emotionally tested and drained, and now their Olympic dreams are over, at least for this time."

Park acknowledged that Patience and Bithell, who won a world silver in 2009 just weeks after being put together as a crew, had been very close to not getting selected when they lost in the trials for the Olympic test event earlier this year.


Defeat in the Sail for Gold event by their close rivals Rogers and Grube (pictured) meant that, two years after they had made such an inspired start to their international career together, they faced frustration.

"We thought we had blown it," Bithell admitted. "Once we failed to get to the test event, it was out of our control. It was horrible."

Shortly before that Olympic test event took place, Patience and Bithell competed in the Europeans, winning silver. It was a significant marker – but still no guarantee of selection.

In the event, Rogers and Grube could only manage fourth place in the test event, which left enough doubt for the internal competition to remain open. And the matter was effectively concluded in Perth, when Patience and Bithell beat the double Olympic medallists to take a second world silver.

Had they not risen to the challenge in Perth, however, it would have been another pair of smiling faces sitting on the laminated wood of Pattisson's craft for the snappers.

"We were so angry with ourselves after the Sail for Gold event," Patience recalled. "With all the little details which had let us down. But failure is when good things happen."

It was a failure of a different kind which led to the curious coincidence whereby Patience and Bithell, at that time close rivals in youth sailing, ended up watching television in the same room as London were awarded the 2012 Games in 2005.

Both had been due to compete in Europe, but Bithell had crashed the team van 10 miles short of the ferry crossing, and the competitive plans were scratched. Instead, several team members went up to stay up in Scotland with Patience in his home at Helensburgh, where they were able to keep up with their sailing.

Thus it was in the Patience family kitchen that these two young talents witnessed what would turn out to be the first important part of their mutual Olympic journey.

According to Park, the two young sailors – Patience will turn 26 on August 4, just two days before the men's 470 medal race, and Bithell, who is from Rochdale, will reach the same age on August 28 – have "wildly different skills" in the boat. Clearly the two skill-sets match to good advantage.

"These are our first Olympics, and the goal is to come away with the gold medal," Bithell said.


Asked how they planned to deal with the Australian pair who won gold in Perth, Mathew Belcher and Malcolm Page (pictured) – the latter having won in Beijing with partner Nathan Wilmot – Patience was, if not gung-ho, then certainly buoyantly confident.

"They are just one of the 29 contenders," he said. "They are just another bit of cannon fodder on the course to beat. Whether the sign on the sail says Australia, or Italy, or China, will be completely irrelevant to us."

Strong words – but then Patience and Bithell have already come through a stern test which is in itself a testament to the growing strength of British sailing.

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.

At the Youth Olympic Games, there is unsurprisingly an attempt from the organisers of the competition to try to replicate the feel of the full Olympic Games for the elite 15-to-18-year-old athletes in attendance.

However, there is also a very obvious move to make the event have a "down with the kids" feel and therefore while the whole thing is far smaller than the Olympics, it is also more colourful, vibrant and interactive than its adult counterpart while there is non-stop hip-hop, pop or R&B music at practically every turn.

Meanwhile on the field of play, there is usually one event that encapsulates the difference between the Olympics and the Youth Olympics.

At the inaugural Summer Youth Olympics in Singapore in 2010, that event was undoubtedly 3-on-3 basketball, and a major success it proved.

I remember that wherever I went in Singapore 2010, everyone was talking about the cleverly adapted, fast-paced version of the sport and when the 2010 Youth Olympics drew to a conclusion; there is no doubt who the real winner was.

There has since been a 3-on-3 Youth World Championships set up for the sport by the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) on the back of the Singaporean success story while there have even been calls to include the sport at the Olympics.

Such a move would come at the expense of the traditional 5-on-5 format of the game – meaning that it is unlikely it will happen anytime soon – but it is perhaps a good illustration of just how good the 3-on-3 Singapore competition was.

Following the example of 3-on-3 basketball, the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) has used the inaugural 2012 Winter Youth Olympics in Innsbruck to showcase the individual skills challenge.

To quickly explain, the event sees the best 15 male and best 15 female athletes from nations other than those which have qualified to compete in the main ice hockey tournament go up against each other.

Before being invited to the individual skills challenge, the athletes had to qualify through a global qualification programme based on a series of tests designed by the IIHF.

At the Winter Youth Olympics, there are six challenges which consist of: fastest lap, shooting accuracy, skating agility, hardest shot, passing precision and puck control.

All six challenges are rather self-explanatory and the top-8 female and top-8 male players from the qualification stage progress to the final, where they compete for final individual rankings and ultimately medals.

I wrote after the 3-on-3 basketball competition in Singapore that other disciplines should take note of basketball's brave approach to making their sport appeal to the young.

No risk, no reward; I concluded.

Therefore, it was tad disappointing that the individual skills challenge proved a bit boring.

It all started well enough, with the fastest lap proving very watchable.

However, by the time it got to hardest shot well over an hour later, and a capacity crowd was watching each player hitting a puck into the net and left waiting for the speed gun to tell them how fast the shot was, things had become quite tedious.

It was a far cry from my experience in the very same arena the evening before when a superb Canada beat rivals United States 5-1 in a superb men's ice hockey group match in the team tournament that very much excited the noisy and passionate crowd in attendance.

Maybe I found it dull because the event took so much time to move from one challenge to another, or maybe it was because knowing that the best ice hockey players at the Youth Olympics, who appear to come from Canada, are ineligible for the competition because they are fighting it out in the real ice hockey event in Innsbruck.

It actually turns out that Britain has a strong medal hope in the event in the form of young Katherine Gale (pictured).

She recorded the second highest score of 31 in the women's ice hockey skills challenge event to qualify for the knockout finals.

But one cannot help but feel that any medal won in the competition would be a tad diluted and not quite worth the same value as the precious metals won in the ice hockey team tournament or the alpine skiing races.

The skills challenge also strikes me a bit contradictory.

In 3-on-3 basketball, you are still playing the sport that is played around the world whereas in the individual skills challenge, you are taking isolated elements of a sport which means that you could potentially be very good at the skills challenge and not necessarily any good at ice hockey, or vice-versa.

It is like Rory Delap beating Lionel Messi in a throw-in challenge.

He definitely would, but it doesn't mean he is better than the Argentinian three-time Ballon d'Or winner at football.

But perhaps the biggest own goal came not from the action on the ice, but from the person who decided to start blasting through the speakers: "I'm the Leader of the Gang (I Am)" by Gary Glitter.

Playing the music of a convicted paedophile at the Youth Olympics was one thing, but for the announcer shouting, "Come on kids, let's get dancing to this song!" was a bit much.

To be fair, that wasn't the fault of the IIHF, rather the fault of someone who must be a bit naive to the antics of Gary Glitter.

Although it is not the first occasion that Glitter has been promoted by the Olympics. At Beijing in 2008 the same song was played during the beach volleyball, leading to the BBC receiving several complaints.

But anyway, back to the skills challenge and to sum up.

Overall, it wasn't that bad and fair play IIHF who did the right thing in trying to adapt their sport and take a bit of risk to make it appeal more to youngsters.

But I am left with the opinion that they are fortunate to have the team tournament here and that is the only ice hockey I really want to be watching at Innsbruck 2012.

So although some in attendance may have really enjoyed it, there is no way that even when the dust has settled, the ice hockey skills challenge will appear in the same success bracket as 3-on-3 basketball.

Tom Degun is a reporter for insidethegames covering the Youth Winter Olympic Games in Innsbruck 

Muhammad Ali was not someone to argue with, in the ring or out, so when he told the world he was The Greatest, we believed him, because he surely was. Perhaps not the greatest boxer – Ali himself always acknowledged that Sugar Ray Robinson held that title – but certainly the greatest world heavyweight champion, and, as every opinion poll has ever indicated, the greatest sports figure in history. To debate that is no contest.

Three Olympic flames burned brightly above the Bergisel Ski jump centre as Innsbruck wrote its latest chapter of Olympic history by welcoming the first Winter Olympic Youth Games.

The city's Olympic heritage bears comparison with any. They hosted the Olympic Winter Games   in 1964. Then, 12 years later, they stepped into the breach when Denver,originally chosen for the 1976 Games, pulled out after a revolt by local taxpayers.

For 1964 Innsbruck skiing medallist Karl Schranz, a member of the party which bore the Olympic flag, this Opening Ceremony must have been bitter sweet. Schranz had been disqualified from the 1972 Games in Sapporo by International Olympic Committee President Avery Brundage. He was found guilty for infringing the strict amateur regulations in force at the time. Many felt he had unfairly been made a scapegoat and when he returned home thousands thronged the airport in Vienna where effigies of Brundage were burned. Now, 40 years on,  Schranz was back in the international Olympic fold at last.

Here he was joined as Olympic flag bearer by 1976 ski jump champion Karl Schnabl and Josef Feistmantl, luge gold medallist at the 1964 Innsbruck Games and one of two cauldron lighters in 1976.


It was a challenge, but  Innsbruck struck precisely the right balance between the past and the future, even mixing traditional dances of the Tyrol with hip hop.

Two years ago Singapore pulled out all the stops in their waterfront spectacular to open the first Youth Olympic Games. Organisers of the first such ceremony for a Winter Games had nothing like their production budget and promised a more modest celebration.

Athens 2004 had used DJ Tiesto to mix a soundtrack for the entry of the athletes, here the Ceremony guides were German DJ  Bass T and a girl appropriately named " Olympia", who sat in front of computers on either side of the stage and through a giant social networking site, uploaded scenes from the  1964 Games. As the pictures flickered into life, a little grainy now,   scooters arrived carrying youngsters who danced and sang to the sounds of '64.

For Bass T this "cool" footage was the cue to upload sights and sounds linking 1964 with 1976. Back then, the Austrian crowd had roared when Franz Klammer won downhill gold in typically thrilling style. A new generation gave the same reaction when his legendary race was replayed on the giant screen. The haunting soundtrack composed by Rick Wakeman  for "White Rock," the official film of those Games filled the arena, sufficiently modern to lead seamlessly into the arrival of the teams for 2012.


The 15-year-old  skier Christina Ager had been chosen to take the traditional athletes oath and tried to commit it to memory. Halfway through her mind went blank , shades of Ed Moses at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Opening Ceremony. Ager et slip a swear word in her frustration, though like Moses, she hadn't realised that the words were displayed on the scoreboard behind her.

She wasn't the only one to forget her lines, Angelika Neuner an Olympic luge medallist who took the  oath on behalf of the coaches, also faltered, creating another unwanted moment of Olympic history.

For the climax of the ceremony however,they didn't put a foot  or for that matter, a ski wrong. The 1980 dowhill champion Leonhard Stock, an Alpine skier in one of the cathedrals of the Nordic sport, cut a dramatic figure as he delivered the flame .Another innovation saw the runners carry the flame through the ranks of spectators, before it was finally delivered to the three cauldrons.

The 1964 downhill Champion Egon Zimmerman and Klammer lit the cauldrons of their respective Games before Paul Gerstgraser, a competitor in Ski jumping at these Games, ignited the third and final bowl.

Philip Barker, a freelance journalist, has been on the editorial team of the Journal of Olympic History and is credited with having transformed the publication into one of the most respected historical publications on the history of the Olympic Games. He is also an expert on Olympic Music, a field which is not generally well known.

Winston Churchill, speaking to the nation during the dreadful autumn of 1939, memorably described Russia's action as "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma."

On Thursday evening, in the very room of the Russian Ambassador's official Kensington residence where the wartime Prime Minister was wont to sit and discuss events after the Soviet Union had joined the Allies in 1941, another action of Russia's became, as my old headmaster would have said, absolutely crystal clear.

And just as Churchill had suggested in his radio speech, the key to it was Russian national interest – although in this case, thankfully, within a sporting context.

Standing beneath a chandelier after the official launch of Team Russia Park – the Olympic venue for athletes and officials which will be sited within a discus throw of the Ambassador's UK base - Ahmed Bilalov, vice-president of the Russian Olympic Committee offered some compelling reasons for raised levels of national confidence at the London 2012 Games.

One million compelling reasons, in fact.

Pressed by the press on how Russia - which finished only four golds ahead of Britain at the 2008 Games and only 11th in the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games table, just four years before it was due to host the Sochi Games - was planning to smarten up its act, he made it clear that gold medallists could count on an additional tangible reward of around $1 million (£652,000/€788,000) each.

Bilalov, a former national champion wrestler, said victorious Olympians would be due $500,000 (£326,000/€394,000) each from the Russian Olympic Committee.

And he added that that amount was likely to be at least matched by the president of the All-Russian Association of Summer Sports, steel magnate Vladimir Lisin.

"He is the richest person in Russia," said Bilalov with a grin. "He has $30 billion (£20 billion/€24 billion), so maybe he can spare a few million..."

Bilalov went on to say how the excuses of Russia's winter Olympians in Vancouver had paled to a whiter shade than snow following the subsequent performance of Russia's winter Paralympians, who topped the medal table.

As a consequence, Russia – keenly aware of the forthcoming challenges of London and Sochi – set in motion a revised plan, focussing more on individual athletes, employing some of the same advisors who had worked on Canada's fruitful Own The Podium programme in Vancouver. And backing it all up with serious money.

Colin Moynihan, chairman of the British Olympic Association, was among the invited guests on Thursday night, and - after a momentary glance towards the waiting photographers - accepted to offer of a Russian scarf being draped around his shoulders with the word "Solidarity".

Russia has historic reasons to be grateful to Moynihan, who was one of the most eloquent and persuasive voices heard in the run-up to the Moscow 1980 Games as he spoke up against the boycott proposed by Margaret Thatcher in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Moynihan subsequently earned a rowing silver as cox to the British eight.

On this occasion Moynihan was eloquent and persuasive in his assessment of Russia's financial power play as London 2012 and Sochi 2014 press upon the national consciousness.

"Russia had a big wake-up call in Beijing, and again in Vancouver, and that was compounded by the challenge of being hosts of a forthcoming Winter Games," Moynihan said.

"They have been putting a lot of emphasis on developing their winter sports, particularly in the Alpine events where they haven't got a history of achievement. And they are benefiting from Vladimir Putin's absolute commitment to sport.

"Funding has gone up significantly over the last two years. I think they will definitely be stronger in London than they were in Beijing.  But you need at least a four-year cycle to have a medal effect and then you must sustain that. You have got to be able to attract the best coaches, who will be looking for four-year contracts.

Two years of increased funding will give Russia a big uplift, but it will have less of an impact upon London than Rio 2016. Even so, I don't think we will be ahead of them by the Friday before the last weekend. There is little doubt that they will have greater consistency than they did in Beijing."

Alexander Yakovenko (pictured), the Russian Ambassador, told the assembled throng – some of whom had paid respectful attention to the free vodka on offer outside the main room at the foot of a magnificent, roped-off wooden staircase – that he had been present two days earlier at the preview of the latest Foreign and Commonwealth Office film about the forthcoming Olympics.

"Mr Hague, the Foreign Secretary, invited me to the preview of his film about the preparations of the British team," Yakovenko said. "I would like to say that this is a really good preparation, and I hope that all the people who come to this event will feel comfortable. We will definitely support it."

That support will be evident in Kensington during the time of the Games as the general public are invited to enjoy what one spokesman described as "a little bit of Russia right in the heart of London."

But the sporting support will be strenuous, and almost certainly at a higher level of intensity than in recent years.

Meanwhile, as Mr Hague announced in the ornate Italianate magnificence of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on Tuesday night, the film in question – Game Changer – Britain Prepares – will be made available to broadcasters around the globe, and will be screened by Britain's diplomatic missions at Embassy events.

He went on to express the hope that the short film – which follows an opening effort that has already been viewed by 400 million people – would inspire all who saw it with the "incredible energy, talent and skill shown by all those involved in the Games."

That message is carried by a sequence of figures including Lord Coe, David Beckham, Paralympian Shelly Woods and the Bolton steel workers preparing sections for the Olympic Park tower designed by Anish Kapoor and funded by the man living just a few doors down from the Russian Ambassador – Indian steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal.

Russia's Olympic ambitions, however, tower at least as high as the structure which London Mayor Boris Johnson described as the Hubble Bubble at the time of the design's launch. And they will go on beyond 2014.

Let the last word go to their own steel magnate, Lisin: "For two years, every complex programme is nothing. It is necessary to prepare for the Olympics in Rio."

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, and 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. 

The tickets sold for the Visa International Gymnastics, the first London 2012 test event to take place at the North Greenwich Arena, are testament to the burgeoning excitement surrounding this summer's Olympic Games.

Increasing with each brick laid and every bag of cement used before July 27, the public's gaze continues to focus upon London 2012 as the finishing touches are put on a project over seven years in the making like an artist finalising a career-best masterpiece.

It is estimated some 40,000 people will attend the test event over its eight day course and it's inevitable this will be greater still come July. Among the empty seats – not selling out for an event of this calibre is no failure – there are spectators present to witness a sport packed with those capable of incredible feats of athleticism but bereft of true household names.

Those present emit a warm appreciation for the competitors, displaying an admiration developed over years spent watching local gymnastics sessions in tired, worn-out facilities on a Sunday morning or driving to and from a club competition as demanded by their unwavering commitment.

For those, the occasion brings great gratification. It's a date that has long been marked on the calendar, kept free at all reasonable expense, and that's there to be savoured on a stage they feel is long overdue.

It therefore comes as no great surprise, even to one so unaccustomed with gymnastics, to witness a respectful etiquette throughout the test. Judges first enter the arena and are given their own reception before the gymnasts then experience theirs. A brief warm-up is then allowed before the competitive action begins.

In the background plays a relaxed yet upbeat soundtrack that's entirely incidental. Shouts of encouragement from fellow gymnasts can drown out the music while silence from the audience is punctuated only by brief applause upon the completion of a successful move. Such silence can heighten the senses, raise awareness of a delicate tension that will unquestionably be present throughout London 2012.

That, however, would be the case regardless of the location. In admiring the suitability of the O2 to stage gymnastics, it's difficult to avoid the conclusion that the sport is being done a great justice.


Though there exists corporate boxes that feel unfamiliar with the audience and decorum of the sport, there – results aside – appears very little else with which spectators can be truly disappointed. If gymnastics is to be a genuine success, the arena will have to be attended in greater numbers still but one need not ask those present if they approve; that much is clear from the off.

Given participation in an Olympic Games is widely thought to be the highlight of an athlete's career, their positive feedback can provide the greatest of satisfaction. There need not be an overwhelming success or a fairytale ending – merely participating in the Olympics can justify the hours of practice, the years of sacrifice and the desire to persevere after a serious injury and so it felt here, even if it was premature.

"When entering, my vision is very – 'wow'," said the Brazilian Francisco Carlos Barretto Junior who, despite being eliminated from London 2012, appeared to speak for several others sharing his sentiments without necessarily expressing them with such charm.

It therefore then seemed appropriate when, on the Tuesday evening, Britain's men's team qualified a full team for the Olympics for the first time since Barcelona 1992.


Louis Smith, Kristian Thomas, Daniel Purvis, Daniel Keatings (pictured), Ruslan Panteleymonov and Max Whitlock all ensured their participation, making it increasingly likely gymnastics will gain greater focus and create optimism about what could be. In reality, their success serves as a microcosm for the results now seriously hoped for for Team GB on a grander scale, medals are now a serious possibility beyond those considered routine. 

Ultimately, the momentum being created and experienced by Team GB throughout the tests and from now up until the games commence can inspire success in even the most unexpected of events. It's almost alarmingly 'un-british' for everything to be appear to be making such smooth progress, to pass without complaint or hint of debacle, and for that reason the success of the tests should not be overlooked.

In the final build-up to the Olympic Games, London 2012 will always be at the mercy of their harshest critics.

The greatest Games ever? A smooth build-up will more than suffice.   

Declan Warrington is a freelance sports journalist for the Guardian and the Observer, insidethegames, ESPN and Boxing Monthly. Follow him on Twitter

Last April, Antalya held the very first edition of the AIBA Women's Junior and Youth World Boxing Championships.

Just before women's boxing makes its debut at the London 2012 Olympic Games, the event underlined the considerable rise in popularity of women's boxing.

On this occasion, AIBA's 'Road to Dream' programme earned its first three medals, including a gold one.

The biggest ever AIBA Junior World Boxing Championships held in Astana in July was the perfect illustration of the growth of our beloved sport in every part of the globe.


Out of 360 boxers from 52 nations, athletes from Iraq and French Polynesia conquered their way to historical silver and bronze medals.

The landmark of the year was yet to come however.

On August 1, 2011, I had the honour of announcing the launch of the AIBA Professional Boxing (APB) programme.

This revolutionary project will install AIBA as the ultimate responsible body for boxers' entire careers.

Confirming the inspiring unity of our organisation, I received the full support of AIBA's National Federations at the Extraordinary Congress held in Baku, Azerbaijan a few weeks after this announcement.


Baku was also the stage of one of the most impressive AIBA World Boxing Championships of all time.

With 570 boxers from 113 countries fighting not only for medals but also qualification places for the London 2012 Olympic Games, the spectacular show took place over twelve days of competition.

I sincerely believe that 2011 will remain a watershed year in the history of AIBA.

I am hoping for the very best for 2012 with the AIBA Women's World Boxing Championships in Qinhuangdao, China and also the Continental Olympic Qualifying tournaments.

These events will be the highlights of the next six months as we build up towards the London 2012 Olympic Games.

C K Wu is the President of International Boxing Association (AIBA) and a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC)

Sir Clive Woodward takes charge of his first team this week since he left rugby eight years ago. Not that he is exactly coming in from the cold – more like going into it.

It is some distance from the unseemly scrum Twickenham to the smooth slopes of the Austrian Alps, where he is looking forward to a winter of content, breathing some clean mountain air as Chef de Mission of a squad of 24 young GB hopefuls at the inaugural Youth Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, which start this weekend.

The architect of a World Cup victory in 2003 that England lamentably failed to emulate last year, he has steadfastly declined to resume that role amid intense pressure about a return of the messiah. Instead he has been frostbitten, so to speak, by the Olympic bug in his new capacity as the British Olympic Association's (BOA) director of elite performance.

While admitting his regret that rugby ("a sport that is in my bones") is currently held in such opprobrium, the off-field cavorting in New Zealand compounded by Danny Care's recent peccadillo, Woodward seems happy to have settled into a new comfort zone.

The slopes are not an unfamiliar terrain.  He is an experienced skier and his eldest son, Joe is a qualified ski instructor. "I am passionate about winter sports and that's why I have been chosen to be in charge of the team," he tells me. "It's very challenging because traditionally we are not a winter sports nation, although we have won gold medals in indoor events like skating and curling, but we have some talented young athletes now who have based themselves abroad. This is why the Youth Games are important. I have spoken to these kids and the excitement is huge. It could be the trigger to get winter sports going a bit here."


The squad includes 16-year-old freestyle skier Katie Summerhayes (pictured) in the ski halfpipe, a new event which will make its debut in the full 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, and Thomas Muirhead, younger brother of Eve, the four-time junior world and current senior European champion, in the mixed curling team. Bobsleigher Jazmin Sawyers has previously represented Britain at athletics while cross country skier Scott Dixon is the son of six-time Olympic biathlete Mike Dixon.

Two ice-hockey players, Lewis Hook and Katharine Gale, will participate in a unique individual event to test skills at the game.

Says Woodward: "By winning Olympic gold in Vancouver, Amy Williams demonstrated what can be achieved with dedication, determination and a great support system. Our priority at the British Olympic Association has been to ensure we have left no stone unturned in our preparations to allow every Team GB athlete to fulfil their potential and produce their personal best in Innsbruck.

"Critically, the experience the young athletes will gain in Innsbruck goes well beyond the sporting competition. They will have a very special opportunity to experience the Olympic atmosphere of living in an athletes' village, competing in a multisport environment and participating in the culture and education."

Intriguingly, at a time when indiscipline is rife in sport, from the boorishness of the oval-ball oiks to the waywardness of Wayne Rooney and a host of football's finest, he is determined that Britain's Olympians, new and old, will be setting examples in what is the nation's most momentous sporting year.


Like their counterparts in the forthcoming Summer Games in London, where Woodward will then be deputy Chef de Mission, as he was in Beijing, the youngsters in Innsbruck, all aged 14-17, will be subject to a 15-point code of behaviour that includes refraining from swearing in public, obeying Team GB dress regulations, keeping noise to a minimum in the Games Village at night and keeping bedrooms neat and tidy.

The disciplinary framework has been drawn up by Woodward in consultation with Olympic team leaders and includes stipulations about hygiene, timekeeping, and politeness to other competitors. Any partying after their event must be well away from the village and mobile phones have to be switched off at night.

Had Martin Johnson imposed such strictures they probably would have been ignored anyway, though one suspects not so under the Woodward regime, when surely the miscreants would have been on dispatch to the nearest airport for the flight home.

So I ask him if he would have done things differently had he been the boss in New Zealand. "Yes, I like to think I would," he replies. "But it's easy to view things from the stands.  I have never had to experience the sort of things that went on there in my years in charge.  We were very big on discipline, how we operated both on and off the field. It's not just the obvious areas of drinking and partying, it's all sorts of things.

"I would have sat down with them as individuals and then as a team, looked them straight in the eye and said 'How do you want to be remembered?' Because I know how I want to be remembered and that's for being on the back pages rather than the front pages.

"I can think of nothing worse than being remembered for doing something inappropriate that would affect the performance of a teammate or another athlete.  It will be with you for the rest of your life.  If you want to be remembered as a great athlete, it's not because of what you do yourself but for what you do that affects others.

"With the Olympic sports now, we are going to make sure that nothing like this happens. We want to be known for what occurs in the arena, not out of it."

"I can honestly say that in my time with the England team, we had a few moments – the Dallaglio situation (when he was exposed for taking social drugs), these things can happen in a team environment when you are working with a bunch of guys for seven or eight years.  But you are with them all the time and can deal with it. The Olympics are not like that, you have 26 team leaders and they have to bring their athletes into it.  You have 550 athletes, 450 coaches and one person could cause so many issues."


He says he had no contact with Johnson (pictured), whom he had said would be "mad" to take charge of England without top level coaching experience, before or during the campaign, other than a couple of good luck messages.  "Jonno did it his own way, as every coach does.  I am not saying the way I did it was right or wrong, but it would have been different.  Ok, I was successful but it would be wrong to say that was the blueprint. But you are judged on results off the pitch as well as on and you have to get that right. Sadly Martin didn't, and clearly became badly unstuck".

While he maintains "I am a rugby man and always will be" he has clearly committed to the cause of 2012. "One of the reasons I enjoy doing this job is that I was extremely lucky in coaching England's rugby team for seven years and worked with what I call gold medal league players like Lawrence Dallaglio, Jonny Wilkinson and Martin Johnson. Had they been Olympians, they would have won gold medals.  And then when you meet their equivalent, the Chris Hoys, the Rebecca Adlingtons and the Vicky Pendletons, they are no different.  That's what I find so fascinating.  These are guys who sacrifice everything, put everything into it.  With people who become champions in sport, whether its football, rugby or the Olympics, there is a common theme, they are incredibly driven.  They have the same DNA. There is nothing that surprises me about why they are winners.  Not only have they got great talent, they take it to a whole new level with the way they operate."

When we met on his 56th birthday I wondered what he might be doing on his 57th. Will he still be in the Olympic rings four years hence in Rio, when rugby makes its debut in a sevens event?


Or will the tug-of-war with Twickers prove irresistible?

His response is enigmatic. "I am absolutely delighted that rugby will now be an Olympic sport in Rio. It will be such a big thing and take the game to a whole new level.  The way the Olympics work, you get funding and all sorts of back up and you will see nations like China, Russia and the United States taking a whole new direction in their approach to the game. It is a great day for rugby.

"But the things that have been coming up now and again (about a return to rugby) have not been led by me. I am enjoying this job and looking forward to the next Olympics, both in Sochi for the Winter Games and then in Rio once London is done and dusted. But nothing is set in stone. 2012 will be a time to re-evaluate.

"I am just thrilled to be involved in something which is going to be colossal. The nation hasn't really realised yet what is going to hit it, just how big this is all going to be. Sport will go off the wall. If it all works out successfully as we believe, I am sure there will be an immense benefit in terms of legacy and I'll be proud to have been part of it.

"We have our pace-making sports, cycling, swimming, rowing and sailing, and track and field have come really good too. We have four genuine chances of gold medals which we didn't have four years ago.  But I hope there will be some sports which surprise us like women's football and hockey and sports like taekwondo. Some of these sports, and I would include women's boxing, can really captivate the nation. Other sports like handball, volleyball and basketball, well, the British public know they are not going to win medals but they will get behind them because they know they will compete.

In the meantime there are fresh mountains to climb, kids to be motivated. "I have been very lucky in that I have never planned my career, things have just happened. As I say, I enjoy working for the BOA and I am totally committed to 2012. These Winter Games and the Summer Olympics are something I am really keen to do. After 2012, well, my career will go whichever way it wants to go."

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 fights from Atlanta to Zaire.