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Alan Hubbard: Will Britain's lack of home-grown coaching talent limit the sustainability of London 2012's legacy?

When Charles van Commenee meets Britain's sports journalists over a Fleet Street lunch this week doubtless he will be grilled about his apparent eagerness to promote athletes from overseas who conveniently are able to switch nationalities and compete for Team GB at the expense of some home-grown talent.

It is not something confined to athletics. Half the England cricket team sound as if they have stepped off a plane from Jo'burg. Actually most of them have.

However van Commenee could turn tables and ask whether British sport could actually survive without a little help from abroad, not just on the track and field but in preparing for the Olympics.

For he is just one of over 50 imports whose expertise has become an integral part of the games we play, and how we play them.

When Fabio Capello took charge of English football almost four years ago as a generale surrounded by Italian lieutenants, he succeeded earlier mercenary Sven-Göran Eriksson as numero uno of a foreign legion that has undertaken the biggest invasion of these shores since the Romans.

British sport is now commanded by a platoon of coaches hired overseas, all recruited in the frantic quest for Olympic glory.

My research for the Independent on Sunday has revealed that in all, at least 21 of the 26 sports in which Team GB will compete in London will have performance directors or senior coaches who have been expensively head-hunted from Australia to the Ukraine via China, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Hungary, Holland, Switzerland and the United States, spanning four continents and 28 nations.

Jurgen_Grobler_12-07-11

They range from Jurgen Grobler (pictured), the East German émigré who for many years has been behind the phenomenal success of British rowing, to Biz Price, the Canadian synchronised swimming Svengali now putting a smile on the face of Britain's water babes, and a Korean professor, Won Jae Moon, whose expertise has enabled British Olympic hopefuls in taekwondo to start beating his own nation's stars in the homeland which invented the sport.

Only three Olympic sports - boxing, hockey and shooting - will definitely embark on 2012 with all-British coaching set-ups. Tennis and football have yet to formulate their plans. It is likely both will have Britons in overall charge, though tennis will permit foreign coaches to work with individual players such as Andy Murray.

For the rest, Exchequer and Lottery funding distributed by UK Sport has facilitated the hiring of top quality coaches from overseas.

In all there are 52 foreigners working as coaches at various coaching levels in 21 Olympic sports (see coaches below).

Several are on six-figure salaries. Van Commenee, the Dutch disciplinarian brought in to succeed axed Briton Dave Collins as performance director is probably most handsomely rewarded, believed to earn approaching £200,000 ($319,000) a year, although his the total wage bill probably is only around half the £6 million ($9.6 million) trousered annually by Capello.

There is no doubt that most British sports have been enhanced by foreign stewardship. So while the Union Jack may be flying high over the Olympic Park just over a year from now perhaps fluttering alongside should be that of the United Nations.

Some sports are totally dominated by foreign coaches. Gymnastics has five, two from Russia and others from Ukraine, Romania and Canada working under Dutch-born technical director Eddie Van Hoof.

Jan_Bartu_12-07-11

Britain's modern pentathletes went into last weekend's World Cup at Greenwich with Jan Bartu (pictured), an ex-Olympian who competed for Czechoslovakia, heading a coaching unit of a Hungarian, Slovakian and Swiss, while Dave Brailsford's high achieving cycling squad have coaches from Australia, Germany, Belgium and South Africa.

No other nation has such an international collection of coaches, and the man largely responsible for this is 2012 chief Sebastian Coe who declared after London won the bid six years ago: "It is very simple. If quality coaches aren't available here, you go for the best available elsewhere." His advice has been followed implicitly.

But why are good British coaches in such a minority? Why have there been no British successors to men like Coe's own father, Peter, who coached him to two Olympic gold medals? Steve Cram, a Coe contemporary, who also had a home-grown coach, Jimmy Hedley, has said: "Jimmy was the sort of bloke who'd be there every night. He gave up 50 years of his life and never received a penny. These people are not being replaced and there is a massive shortfall of professional coaches that is threatening to undermine the legacy of 2012. We need a career path for British coaches because we are not keeping pace with other countries."

So why isn't there one?

It is 16 years since Frank Dick stepped out of the athletics arena, quitting as Britain's national coaching guru after the most illustrious spell the sport has known. He overlorded an inspired era when all that glittered on the track really did turn to gold - from Coe, Cram, Ovett and Thompson through to Christie, Jackson and Gunnell.

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Dick (pictured),70, president of the European Coaches Association and chair of Scottish Athletics, believes Britain does not take coaching seriously enough as a profession and that his own sport failed to prepare thoroughly enough for the future. And he fears some sports could go into decline when the Olympic cash runs out after 2012 and they are unable to continue paying for overseas aid.

He says: "There has been an extraordinary negligence in developing our own coaches stretching back 20 years and it has now become that little bit sexier to bring in someone with a foreign accent. But if you do that you need a strategy to support it. You must make sure that when they move on you have people to replace them from within our own ranks.

"I was very lucky because I had some exceptional coaches around me, but they were not young, and that's the nub of the problem. There is a dearth of good young coaches. It seems to me we have lost a generation somewhere and if you want to fill in that gap by bringing in foreign coaches you must be able to ensure that they are able to influence and develop home coaching talent. You need coaching apprentices like the American system."

But are British coaches willing to look, listen and learn? Dick recalls: "As a young coach myself I remember travelling from Edinburgh, crossing the Channel, then taking a train all the way to Budapest, simply to stand outside the warm-up areas to watch what was happening. How many are prepared to do that today?"

He adds: "We also seem to have a growing confusion about who is running the show these days. We have people out there called performance directors and managers, we have coaches and all sorts of specialists and it does seem to me that they disconnect. We must join up the dots and not just be looking for short term success."

"To be fair to UK Sport they've run a World Class Coaching scheme trying to give an elite coaching experience to home grown coaches. That will certainly be necessary because I cannot see the majority of sports being able to maintain so many foreign coaches when the caravan moves on after 2012 because of the economic downturn. Unfortunately many sports do not have a Plan B.

"Basically we have said to our coaches, you are not good enough so, we are bringing in coaches from abroad. But when the money is not there are we going to turn to those same coaches we have rejected and expect them to work for less money?"

Decathlon champion Daley Thompson was among the top athletes coached by Dick. "With his charisma and knowledge he would be a great coach, but they didn't' seem to want him," he said.

Thompson, part of the team that helped secure the 2012 Olympics for London, is one of many former Olympic and world gold medallists who have been shunned or put off coaching by the increasing bureaucracy.

"There's so much red tape and paper work," he says. "The second biggest resource to talent in athletics is experience. Yet over the last 15 years that experience has simply been wasted. Just look at the world-class athletes Britain has produced over the years, guys like Seb Coe, Steve Cram and Steve Ovett, yet none are involved in coaching. I would be more than happy to help the national cause. I've never been asked."

"Coaches have always had problems with the blazerati who don't like their noses put out of joint," argues Tom McNab, one of Dick's predecessors. "Consequently we have not created that core of tough, hard-bitten professional coaches which is why we have had to import them. Men like Bill Sweetenham who came from Australia to give swimming the kick up the arse it needed and changed its culture.

"There have been many good British coaches in the past, people like Wilf Paish and Denis Watts up in the north, but where are their successors? Sadly in so many sports there is a vacuum."

British Swimming's chief executive David Sparkes is more sanguine about the future of coaching here: "I believe in swimming we have some potentially world class young coaches coming through who are being helped by our foreign coaches. We train around 12,000 instructors and coaches a year and need 20,000 to meet the demand. But Britain does need more coherent financial investment in coaching at all levels."

Dick adds: "Coaching has been badly neglected and must be made a much more attractive career. The biggest single legacy we can pass on to the world through the London Olympics is how we lead, how we coach and how we can change the sporting world to make it a better place. We have this influx of foreign expertise, so for goodness sake make sure that when that flame goes down in 2012 we have a very serious legacy to pass on to the future of sport."

But by then how many British coaches will have missed the bus?

Britain's Foreign Legion

Aquatics
Swimming
Performance dir: Michael Scott (Australia)
Head coach: Dennis Pursey (USA)

Diving: Alexie Evangulov (Russia)

Synch swimming: Biz Price (Canada)

Water polo
Men: Cristian Lordache (Romania)
Women: Szilveszter Fekete (Hungary)

Athletics: Charles Van Commenee (Holland)

Archery: Lloyd Brown (USA)

Badminton
Performance dir: Jens Grill (Denmark)
Head Coach: Kenneth Jonassen (Denmark)

Basketball: Chris Spice (Australia)

Canoeing
Head coach: Brendan Purcell (Australia)
Men: Alex Nikonorov (Ukraine)
Women: Miklos Simon (Hungary)
Slalom: Jurg Gotz (Switzerland)

Cycling
Performance mgr:Shane Sutton (Australian)
Sprint: Jan van Eijden (German)
BMX: Grant White (Australian)
Carer: Luc de Wilde (Belgian)
Carer: Hanlie Perry (South Africa)

Equestrian
Eventing: Yogi Breisner (Sweden)
Show jumping mgr: Rob Hoekstra (Holland)

Fencing: Ziemiek Wojciechowski (Poland)

Gymnastics: Andrei Popov (Russia)
Assisted by: Sergei Sizhanov (Russia) and Alex Shyraev (Ukraine)
Women: Adrian Stan (Romania) and Carol Orchard (Canada)
Technical dir: Eddie Van Hoof (Holland)

Handball: Dragan Djukic (Serbia)
Assisted by: Jure Sterbucl (Slovenia) and Rolf Dobler (Switzerland)
Women head: Jesper Holmris (Denmark)
Assisted by: Vigdis Holmeset (Norway)

Judo: Patrick Roux (France)
Assisted by: Aurelien Brussal (France), Tsuyoshi Tsunoda (Japan) and Yuko Nakano (Japan)

Modern Pentathlon
Performance dir: Jan Bartu (Czech Rep)
Women head: Istvan Nemeth (Hungary)
Men head: Philipp Waeffler (Switzerland)

Fencing: Frici Foldes (Slovakia)

Rowing
Men: Jurgen Grobler (Germany)
Women: Paul Thompson (Australia)

Sailing
Men 470 perf coach: Morgan Reeser (USA)
Women match racing: Maurice Parden-Kooper (Holland)

Table Tennis
Mens: Jia-Yi-Liu (China)

Taekwondo: Prof Won Jae Moon (Korea)

Triathlon: Ben Bright (New Zealand)

Weightlifting: Tamas Feher (Hungary)

Volleyball: Harry Brokking (Holland)

Wrestling: Nikolai Kornyeyev (Ukraine)

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.

Andrew Warshaw: Beware the phantom mobile phone hacker

Football politics is a murky world at the best of times but the experience I have just encountered has made me question whether there are dark and evil forces at play.

The other day I received an email from my mobile phone supplier asking me whether I wanted to reset my password. What password? I've never had a password for my mobile phone. My gut instinct - and thank goodness I acted on it - was to call the company concerned and ask them what was going on.

In a nutshell, it transpired that someone, somewhere was trying to open an online account, purporting to be me, in order to gain access to my phone records and find out, among other things, who I had been calling and who had been calling me. Whoever it was knew so many details about me they easily managed to pass strict data protection criteria. Big Brother, it seemed, was watching over me. Pretty scary, eh?

There is considerable information I am not at liberty to divulge for fear of compromising the case which is now in the hands of the fraud department of the mobile company concerned. But suffice to say that if this kind of thing can happen to me, it can surely happen to others too.

In fact it has. I know of one other journalist also covering football politics who has had a similar - and in some ways even more serious - experience. He, too, is wracking his brains as to who the phantom hacker might be and how the person concerned managed to glean so much personal information in an effort to acquire his mobile phone records.

Without pointing the finger at anyone in particular, what these episodes show is that there are some desperate people who will resort to desperate measures. I recently read a report which pointed out that a number of FIFA personalities caught up in the various corruption scandals that have plagued world football's governing body had been hiring private investigators. Am I the victim of one of these private eyes? Sounds fanciful doesn't it, but in these kinds of situations, all rational thought goes out of the window and the mind starts playing tricks on you.

Maybe I am being paranoid. Maybe the would-be hacker has nothing to do with the job I perform and has randomly selected me as an easy target. After all, you hear these kinds of stories all the time. But given that my friend has suffered the same intrusion at roughly the same time, I have my doubts. The bottom line is that we are in a sensitive business where the reputations and credibility of some of the most influential and powerful figures count for everything.

Andrew Warshaw is a former sports editor of The European, the newspaper that broke the Bosman story in the 1990s, the most significant issue to shape professional football as we know it today. Before that, he worked for the Associated Press for 13 years in Geneva and London. He is now the chief football reporter for insideworldfootball. To follow him on Twitter click here.

Mike Rowbottom: It's survival of the fittest for Britain's modern pentathletes

Britain's modern pentathletes have been offering the ultimate evidence of their dedication to the cause of fitness for the last fortnight. They've been following in Paula Radcliffe's footsteps.

The British team preparing for this weekend's World Cup final in London - the 2012 test event will host the fencing and swimming at the Crystal Palace National Sports Centre before moving operations to Greenwich Park for the riding and run/shoot elements - have been working hard at altitude in the training venue where Britain's world marathon record holder has spent so much of her time in the past decade.

Did I say "very hard"? Make that "very, very hard". The second version is the verdict delivered by the man who has overseen more than a dozen years of medal-winning success as the GB Performance Director - Jan Bartu.

"We have been training at between 1,800 and 2,100 metres altitude," he reports. "It's not bone-breaking, but the effect of training for two weeks at this altitude is significant."

You get the feeling that if actual bone-breaking training was seen to be efficacious in the grand scheme of things, it might well be considered.

Five Britons have qualified to compete at Crystal Palace and Greenwich Park - Jamie Cooke and Nick Weybridge go in the men's competition tomorrow, and the women's team for the following day comprises Heather Fell, Freyja Prentice and Mhairi Spence.

It is the first of three big modern pentathlon events this year along with the European Championships, which will be held in Medway three weeks afterwards, and the World Championships, which will take place in Moscow from September 8-14. All three events will contribute towards automatic qualification places for London 2012.

But no matter how well Britain's competitors do this year, there is a stark bottom line. A maximum of two men and two women can qualify for London 2012. For the women, who have five of six competitors with a potential chance, the maths is particularly cruel.

Heather_Fell_running_Beijing_2008

Fell (pictured) has already survived the process once, going on to win silver at the Beijing Games. But those Games reverberate with a different meaning for Spence, who missed the cut by one place in 2008 and had the bittersweet experience of watching it as part of a scheme being run for talented fringe members by the British Olympic Association.

"The last Olympic cycle was a bit difficult for me, and I am aware now that this is my last chance to achieve my dream," she said. "The fact that the Olympic Games is on home soil is a massive motivation for me. But the level of competition within the squad is so great that there is a long way to go before I can say I am going to be there on the day competing.

"In a way it was a really good idea to take us to Beijing in order to experience the Games. We went to the holding camp in Macau, and then on to Beijing. We saw the Olympic Village. It was something I could use in the future. But it was a little bit of a teaser in one sense. I said to myself: 'I want to be there for real rather than watching on the sidelines.'

"It was a really tough time for me mentally. I had qualified in third place, but only two women could compete in Beijing. My confidence took a knock, and it took me a while to find the inner strength to try again. But there were two girls who were better than me, so they deserved to compete at the Games. For me it was a situation of sheer desperation and despair. I want to do everything humanly possible to make sure I'm not in that situation next year.

"But the fact that there are several of us fighting for those two places benefits us all in one way, because it means whoever qualifies will need to be in the best shape possible to challenge for medals, and we need medals to maintain our funding for the next four years. So while I will be giving 100 per cent to be one of the two who go to the Games, if it is not me I will support whoever it is because we all want to make sure of the future of our sport."

Prentice also spoke to me earlier this year about the mix of pressure and support on offer at the team's base in the University of Bath.

"We have great facilities here," she said. "We have amazing nutritional support, conditioning, we have sports masseurs, physios, everyone at our beck and call. If we have any problems the medics are on it straight away, specialist sports doctors, psychologists. We have everything.

"But then it puts on the pressure. Everything is building you up to this competition. It does have extra pressure. And there is a cut, and only selected athletes can make that."

So what does the man who makes the final decisions have to say about all this angst?

"Let's make one thing absolutely clear," Bartu told me. "The athletes who will in the end be in the Olympic team - they earned it. It's not going to be political decision.

"This group will fight for the selection. It's going to be decided in competition - their performance will determine. So in that respect it is a self-managing process.

"Now we know there will be disappointments, there will be heartbreaking situations for athletes and coaches coming up. We need to prepare for this as a team. Because we go through this together and there is a future after the Games. It's not the end of the world.

"Everybody must understand. It's life, isn't it? Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. That philosophical approach I would suggest to all athletes on the starting grid. You have your life, this is fantastic, sport, Olympics medals, but there are more important things in life than that. So let's get perspective.

"After the Games we have the World Championships, another Games coming up in four years – see the bigger picture of what's going on. I hope that this approach should help us to keep the dynamics positive so we will be focussing on how to beat the opposition and not to compete inside the team. That could be detrimental to our hopes. It has to be that that aggression goes outwards.

"The selection is made at the last minute. You stay on your toes. And that's how it's supposed to be because we did the same thing for Beijing and Athens. The purpose of it is you need to continue working hard. There's no room for complacency. And that gives you confidence to go out and compete as best you can."

A harsh philosophy perhaps. But count the Olympic medals: Gold and bronze in Sydney, bronze in Athens, silver in Beijing. You strongly feel there is another on its way in London 2012...

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, has covered the last 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.

Alan Hubbard: Scandals prove Brits not a cut above the rest

Hush. Listen a moment. Is that the sound of a snigger we hear emanating from FIFA's corridors of power?

Highly likely because buried beneath the mound of Murray mania and Haye hysteria that has swamped the public prints these past couple of weeks was a news item that surely brought a smirk to the face of Sepp Blatter - not to mention his erstwhile shady sidekick Jack Warner and other assorted cohorts in his FIFA fiefdom.

John Scott, the Englishman running the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, resigned after admitting accepting "gifts and hospitality" from a potential supplier to the next biggest event to be held in here outside the London Olympics.

While this may seem a relatively less significant aberration compared to all that has been going on in FIFA, nonetheless it is deeply embarrassing for British sport as Scott is one of its senior administrative figures, having been International Director of government agency UK Sport and heavily involved in the nation's anti-drugs programme before joining Glasgow 2014 as its £179,000 ($286,000) a year chief executive in 2008.

Scott has been a senior sports adviser to the Government and his son, Giles, is one of GB's gold medal sailing prospects for 2012

So when further revelations came about some allegedly nefarious goings-on in the Premier League and the acquisition of the Olympic Stadium by West Ham you can bet the snigger and smirk became a deep belly laugh.

Pots and kettles probably were words not far from slippery Sepp's lips as the UK Parliament castigated FIFA, saying how "appalled" they were for not playing the game over England's World Cup bid, for suddenly, British sport doesn't appear as quite as squeaky clean as we would have the world believe.

Although well reported by insidethegames, and being headline news in Scotland, the Scott "scandal" has barely had a mention in the rest of the media - and I include radio and TV - which was far too preoccupied with creating false hopes of glory at Wimbledon and in Hamburg last weekend.

Commonwealth Games organisers have declined to give details of the "gift" in question but it is believed to be free tax advice worth thousands of pounds from a specialist company.

Rumours have been rife for some time about "sweeteners" being offered to Games officials and some politicians have accused organisers of the £524 million ($838 million) Games - two thirds of which is funded by the Scottish Government - of a cover-up. Shades of Delhi 2010?

Scott, 59, whom I have known for many years as a genuine sports enthusiast and accomplished administrator, acknowledges "an error of judgement" and unlike those involved in the FIFA corruption has immediately fallen on his sword.

But this won't stop Blatter and co from savouring a juicy slice of British sleaze, especially at a time when yet another Premiership club's foreign owner - Birmingham City's Carson Yeung - has been arrested in his Hong Kong homeland on suspicion of serious financial wrongdoing. Not the first Premiership club owner-magnate from overseas to make a joke of the "Fit and Proper Person" yardstick and probably not the last.

And what are we to make of this latest murky affair, allegations that Dionne Knight, a director of the Olympic Park Legacy Company, was paid more than £20,000 ($32,000) while moonlighting as a consultant for West Ham United, who subsequently were named as future tenants of the Olympic Stadium much to the ire of rival bidders Tottenham Hotspur.

Knight who is paid a salary of £84,000 ($135,000) by the taxpayer-funded OPLC is the girlfriend of West Ham director Ian Tomkins, who was said to be responsible for shaping the club's bid for the stadium and its conversion plans.

Knight and Tomkins (pictured) have been suspended by their respective employers pending an investigation of the claims, while West Ham vehemently insisting there has been no impropriety. They accuse Spurs of behaving "illegally" by using investigators to obtain what they say is "private information".

Ian_Tompkins_in_front_of_support_board_for_West_Ham_07-07-11

Ian_Tompkins_in_front_of_support_board_for_West_Ham_07-07-11

The matter is now in the hands of m'learned friends, with writs issued by West Ham against Spurs and The Sunday Times, who broke the story.

They maintain that any work done by Ms Knight was "transparent" and that the bidding process, in which she had no vote, was never compromised.

The OPLC have now announced an independent inquiry by a specialist forensic unit into the process by which West Ham became the preferred bidder and the nature of the consultancy work undertaken by Ms Knight.

All of which has led to a threat to London's attempt to host the 2017 World Athletics Championships at the venue as UK Athletics must lodge a formal bid by 1 September. Obviously any adverse publicity could count against them.

Oh dear, oh dear. Hubble, bubble, toil and trouble. What a witches' brew this is becoming.

The Government is said to be "alarmed" by the revelations, as well it should be, for even the merest hints of bungs and bribes in British sport will be music to FIFA's ears.

All this will only add to the long-held belief abroad that we are too smug for our own good. Not only smug, but blinkered in a belief that we have a divine right to win everything, on and off the playing field.

There was no better example of this than the hysteria surrounding Andy Murray and David Haye.

Never mind that he was only ranked fourth in the world, this was Murray's year to conquer Wimbledon, we were assured before his inevitable semi-final capitulation to Rafa Nadal.

Similarly, Haye, a pumped-up cruiserweight, would cut the erudite Ukrainian giant Wladimir Klitschko down to size.

But there was no harvest for the Hayemaker. He promised a blitzkrieg in Germany but meekly surrendered as one of the walking wounded, blaming a fractured little piggy.

What was going to be a great British double became a Lost Weekend.

haye_v_kitschko_07-07-11

The mood surrounding both futile attempts may not have been exactly xenophobic, but by jingo, it was certainly jingoistic.

Why do we Brits always seem to think we are a cut above the rest of the world?

Take the footy World Cup. England has been going to win it since 1966 and we haven't been good enough. And whenever we bid for it, we've lost. It's those dodgy foreigners up to their dirty tricks conspiring against us, you see.

The point is, we won't win anything while this aura of sniffy superiority, most of it, I have to admit, engendered by the media, continues to proliferate.

Mind you, I may sound a bit like that myself when I say I was the only British journalist to predict that Klitschko would beat Haye on points.

But I was astounded how many of my colleagues allowed logic to desert them and instead were swayed by Haye's tediously cocky verbosity.

Not only the pundits but the pros: Barry McGuigan, Duke McKenzie, Carl Froch, Amir Khan - all said Haye was a certainty.

McGuigan categorically assured me: "David will knock him out. No argument. I'd stake my house on it."

So, if his charming farmhouse residence in Kent has suddenly appeared on the market, we know why.

As it happens, boxers, like jockeys are notoriously bad judges of form (at ringside the former heavyweight champ George Foreman even scored the ludicrously lop-sided fight a draw).

Unfortunately, we have got carried away by what we perceived was the high and mighty state of many aspects of British sport.

But what has happened from Glasgow to Hamburg via Wimbledon, Hong Kong and Stratford should be a timely reality check.

On top of all this we now have the escalating phone hacking and police bungs scandal involving Britain's biggest-selling newspaper, the News of the World, a flagship of Rupert Murdoch's News International empire.

It was the 'Screws'' sister paper The Sunday Times which launched the UK media campaign alleging corruption within FIFA.

The biters bit? No wonder Blatter is beaming.

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.

Andrew Warshaw: IOC provide perfect blueprint of how broken FIFA can fix itself

"Please stay in the room. There is plenty of ice cream left and snacks and beverages."

This was the anything-but-grandiose public statement made by International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Jacques Rogge straight after announcing a few days ago that the race to win the 2018 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games had been achieved in the first round of balloting.

It was hardly a remark to send shockwaves through the Olympic Movement and prompt calls for an immediate inquiry into corruption. More, perhaps, akin to a dinner party host pleading with guests to stay a while longer; or a thoughtful parent giving gentle advice to an innocent child as to how to pass the time.

But that is exactly the point. With over an hour to go before the official announcement of Pyeongchang's victory and with no second ballot needed, Rogge had to find the right words to keep his IOC colleagues in the cavernous Durban conference room.

He could have shut off the sound system from inquisitive reporters and told delegates behind closed doors not to leak the name of whoever had won. He could have been far more formal.

Instead he asked them to simply be patient and wait for the outcome. Rogge was not talking down to IOC members. Far from it. He was treating them with the kind of relaxed and respectful informality that has become the hallmark of IOC proceedings in recent years.

Jacques_Rogge_announces_Pyeongchang_as_host_city_for_2018_Durban_July_6_2011

Jacques_Rogge_announces_Pyeongchang_as_host_city_for_2018_Durban_July_6_2011

Tellingly, sitting a few feet away from Rogge was Sepp Blatter, not for once wearing his FIFA President's hat as such, attending instead as an IOC member. Was he listening?

Blatter, as everyone knows, has become embroiled in the biggest bribery scandal in FIFA history, preceded by the most contentious World Cup vote in living memory.

It was that vote, which controversially selected Russia and Qatar as World Cup hosts, that prompted Blatter to announce new reforms for future World Cup elections, to open up the voting to the entire FIFA membership – big countries and small - instead of giving carte blanche to an elite cartel of self-important and self-interested Executive Committee members.

As someone who has covered World Cup votes for years, it was so refreshing to witness the transparency and lack of covert skullduggery with which the IOC now operates.

Some things of course remain sacrosanct. The IOC, like FIFA, votes by secret ballot and Franz Beckenbauer, as reported by insidethegames, was distinctly unhappy with the way some of the IOC members ignored Munich's case.

Sepp_Blatter_announces_Qatar_as_host_of_2018_World_Cup_December_2_2010

Sepp_Blatter_announces_Qatar_as_host_of_2018_World_Cup_December_2_2010

But listening to the three 2018 Winter Olympic bid teams being quizzed from the floor in open forum straight after their final presentations, with IOC members needing to have certain i's dotted and t's crossed before deciding which way to vote, was in stark contrast to the flawed, behind-closed-doors system used hitherto by FIFA.

Revealing the numbers of votes each candidate received within minutes of the outcome was another element that has become de rigueur for the Olympic Movement yet which caused such a rumpus in Zurich last December.

Dick Pound, one of the most respected IOC members, pulled no punches as to why his organisation had to act when it did.

"We got ourselves into deep trouble," Pound told insidethegames. "In our case we either got the solution right or the Olympic Movement was in danger. The process seems to be working now. FIFA clearly have a problem. Maybe here is a model for them."

One can only hope Blatter took note of the entire process in Durban, coming as it did six months after FIFA's wretched performance over 2018 and 2022.

Andrew Warshaw is a former sports editor of The European, the newspaper that broke the Bosman story in the 1990s, the most significant issue to shape professional football as we know it today. Before that, he worked for the Associated Press for 13 years in Geneva and London. He is now the chief football reporter for insideworldfootball, our sister site. You can follow him on Twitter by clicking here.

David Owen: Mission accomplished for Pyeongchang 2018 after Operation Durban

It was clear to many of us in the build-up to this week's International Olympic Committee Session that Pyeongchang was leading the race to host the 2018 Winter Olympics.

So Operation Durban meant, above all, making sure that they kept their noses in front.

Accordingly, the South Korean bid team took few risks in their time on South African soil, either in the last few days of sparring or in the final presentation itself.

When Annecy belatedly hit on a theme that had some traction – the risk of sport becoming overcommercialised – Pyeongchang reacted not in a confrontational manner, but by appearing to quietly downplay ties with Samsung, the longstanding Korean IOC sponsor.

This was in contrast to its unsuccessful bids for the 2010 and 2014 Games and illustrated the sort of confidence and good judgement that comes only with prolonged exposure to the Olympic Movement and its idiosyncratic ways.

"We are competitive enough just with Pyeongchang," said Byoung-Gug Choung, South Korea's Sports Minister, when asked if downplaying Samsung was a deliberate tactic.

Pyeongchang's media conference two days before the vote was all slick formality, in contrast to their European rivals who went for a more relaxed approach – something notoriously difficult to get right, particularly when operating primarily in a language that is not your native tongue.

As it was, this relaxed tone too often tipped over into amateurishness.

Pyeongchang was relentlessly professional, even if it was professionalism with a human touch.

Like its rivals, the Korean bid adopted the modernday lingua franca of the Olympic Movement, English, ensuring that those with the greatest fluency did most of the talking.

Even so, it was a surprise when Lee Myung-Bak (picutred), the South Korean President, delivered almost all his lengthy contribution to the closing presentation in English.

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Lee_Myung-Bak_celebrates_Pyeongchang_2018_winning_Durban_July_6_2011

He had already underlined his dedication to the cause by touching down in Durban last Saturday (July 2), before most IOC members, bringing with him an extensive entourage and a giant heap of boxes of Korean produce.

This insistence on a meaningful commitment to a bid from the national leader has become a hallmark of campaigns worked on by Mike Lee, the communications guru, who helped Rio de Janeiro to land the 2016 Summer Games with very considerable contributions from then Brazilian President Lula.

The winning Pyeongchang presentation was shot through with trademark Lee touches.

These included the use of flags in background images to catch the eye of targeted voters; the inclusion of a very personal athlete's story – in this case that of Korean-American Toby Dawson – to tug the heartstrings; and, above all, the use of a map showing how the Winter Olympics has been a virtual monopoly for established winter sports markets over the years.

While its rivals sought to portray old bids as ancient history, Pyeongchang placed its faith in the values of patience and perseverance.

This was hardly a surprise, given its history of failed bids.

Madrid may do the same if it bids again for the Summer Games in the approaching race for 2020.

What, frankly, was a surprise was that the Koreans cracked the best joke in the three presentations.

This came when YS Park, the avuncular President of the Korean Olympic Committee, apologised to the newly-married Prince Albert of Monaco, an IOC member, for having to spend his honeymoon watching Pyeongchang's presentation - for a third time.

"It was even better the third time. Don't worry," the loquacious Prince, traditionally the most persistent inquisitor of anyone in the IOC, replied.

Pyeongchang can now embark on its own extended honeymoon, prior to preparing itself to welcome the world in six-and-a-half years' time.

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 at www.twitter.com/dodo938

David Owen: Does Zuma's presence mean South Africa will bid for 2020 Olympics?

They were jammed in shoulder to shoulder in the foyer of Durban's idiosyncratic Playhouse last night, as the 123rd International Olympic Committee Session got underway, with the best Opening Ceremony I have witnessed.

The pomp and ceremony that saw IOC President Jacques Rogge invested with the Order of the Companions of O R Tambo, South Africa's highest national honour, was followed by a spectacular display of vibrant African rhythms and colours.

This somehow married Ravel's Bolero with traditional Zulu dance, and the Indian-inspired Tribhangi Dance Theatre with the international rock anthem The Final Countdown.

"It was a national display of 'We Can Do'," was the verdict of one very senior and inveterately hard-to-impress IOC member.

The question on many minds was whether this 123rd Session will prompt a change of heart from the South African Government and act as a prelude to a Durban bid for the 2020 Summer Games.

Well, the evening was attended, in the front row of the stalls, by South African President Jacob Zuma.

And the formalities were laced with hints that the authorities - many of them at least - are itching to throw South Africa's and, by extension, Durban's hat into the ring.

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Most of these hints were placed in the mouth of SASCOC President Gideon Sam, who told dignitaries including the newly-married Prince Albert of Monaco that "hosting events like this gives us the courage to carry on bidding for more prestigious events".

"South Africa is well aware of the need to continue hosting big events," Sam went on. "Many key decisions that will have an impact on sport in the years ahead of us will be taken at this Session."

But, given the national and international debate that has gone on since the country hosted the first African FIFA World Cup a year ago, over whether the tournament produced anything of enduring value for ordinary South Africans, it was interesting too to note the comments of President Zuma on that subject.

Reflecting on the "extraordinary four weeks", Zuma described the World Cup as "an event that brought lasting benefits to our country and continent".

But the evening also underlined the huge challenge that will face the city if it is to stand the slightest chance of piecing together a competitive Summer Olympic bid.

The crowded state of the foyer was hardly conducive to effective lobbying on what would have been the last chance for the three 2018 Winter Games Candidate Cities to bend the ear of IOC members before today's vote.

And the décor of the auditorium, with its kitsch fake starlit sky and fake Tudor-style house-fronts, reeked, to me at least, of first-half-of-the-20th-century colonialism.

It was hard to imagine anything less in keeping with the new South Africa.

Suffice to say that, while the city's sporting infrastructure and natural amenities are already extremely impressive, its general infrastructure is patchy and will need considerable investment if Durban is to become the first African host of an Olympic Games.

Since I was last here last year, I have, moreover, detected some disconcerting cracks opening up in what previously appeared to be solid relationships between local leaders.

Lesson number one for Olympic bidders in this competitive age is that a united political front is indispensable.

And this political commitment needs to be enduring, since, while first-time success is a tall order, even a failed bid can put significant credit in the bank for future bids.

rogge_zuma_06-07-11

On the other hand, with the world economic crisis taking its toll on national economies, 2020 is shaping up to be a less daunting contest than recent Summer Olympics races.

With powerful cards in its hand such as the IOC's failure to award a single Olympic Games to Africa in more than a century of existence, some will feel it a shame - and potentially a wasted opportunity - if South Africa decides against entering the fray.

The country has, after all, staged just about every other major sporting event in the course of the past 20 years.

Just before the lights went down for last night's show, a leading city figure assessed the chances of a bid being launched privately to me at around 60 per cent.

As things look today, I would say that's not too wide of the mark.

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 at www.twitter.com/dodo938

James Tindall: The international season, slimming, Chelsea FC, taking our clothes off and the build up to London 2012

Winning a bronze medal at a prestigious international tournament in Malaysia last month was great. However, we felt that we should have pushed for a higher finish.

Getting in to the final was an objective for us. We were disappointed that we did not achieve this as in the build-up to London we want to be experiencing finals and getting used to the pressure. But at least it was good to push on and prove that we are strong enough to play in these pressured medal games.

Personally, these last few months have been a massive learning curve for me.

I have had conversations with our nutritionist, Dan Kings, and we investigated the idea of trying to trim down some of the fat on my body. We created a strict diet that was designed to strip the body fat away. The diet was only for a maximum of two weeks but I had reached my goal in 10 days. A total of 6.5 kilograms were lost and that was all fat. I then had discussions with our head coach and strength/conditioning coach and we looked at a new bespoke conditioning programme to enable me to be in the best shape come London.

I would love London to be slightly less eventful than Beijing where I scored a goal (that was the top of the rollercoaster) but then became embroiled in controversy after a deemed bad tackle. I need to use what happened there to produce in London. I had some amazing highs in Beijing, especially when I scored in two minutes against Pakistan. But my enthusiasm and will to win meant I went a little too far.

After making a clean tackle against Canada I then went to attack and found myself "removing" a Canadian player that had got balanced on my shoulder. It seemed that moving him by dropping him was not the best way to handle the situation. I was sin-binned and we ended up drawing the game. That result meant we struggled to progress from the group stages.

My enthusiasm and mental control have vastly improved from the guy that was in Beijing. This calmer mind state will enable me to be a stronger and more influential player come London.

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In the meantime, we have a busy year. We play in the London Cup later this month - a four-nation tournament against Belgium, New Zealand and Korea - to start whipping up local support for 2012 and are looking to retain our European Championship in Germany in August, as this will be a good way of measuring our progress. We were fortunate to win the gold in Amsterdam two years ago, but we are a stronger, more experienced team now and so we feel we can start to be successful without luck playing such an important role. It would be great to think that Chelsea FC - I'm a season ticket holder - might follow in our footsteps with European success next season too.

Hockey is now such a fast, competitive, skill-heavy game that we train harder, I would guess, than most footballers I know. But we do need to occasionally let our hair down. Lucky for us then, that Richard "Ratman" Alexander is in the squad. If you search "Ratman Dance for Sultan" on YouTube then you will understand why. Ratman also has done a video for Wrappz Hockey. Check it out for use of the word "OK" - close to 30 times in two minutes.

Personally, I think it's crucial to have a distraction that resets the mind after all the stress of training and competition. Along with Rat and another of our players Matt Daly, I've become involved with Wrappz Hockey, a fun product that enables people to personalise their hockey equipment.

It has not gone unnoticed either that 11 members of the team took part in a topless photoshoot for a glossy men's magazine's search to find a cover model. We don't know the results yet, but it had better not be Rat.

To follow James Tindall on Twitter click here.

See James Tindall in action at The London Cup from July 12-16. Book now to see England take on New Zealand, Korea and Belgium on home turf a year before London 2012. Please click here or call 08444 99 32 22 to secure your tickets.

James Tindall, who plays for Surbiton, has won 35 caps for Great Britain and was named as the Hockey Writers Club Player of the Year in 2005

British Hockey is represented by www.davidwelchmanagement.com

David Owen: Slicker Pyeongchang still look likely winners

About halfway through today's slick – and gobsmackingly brightly-lit – presentation by the Pyeongchang bid team, I found my mind drifting back 10 years.

Something about the extreme formality of the occasion – which contrasted sharply with the relaxed demeanour of the Korean bid's two European rivals - and the assured air of those taking part reminded me of Beijing's performances at the International Olympic Committee Session in Moscow in 2001.

That campaign ended with the Chinese capital comfortably winning the right to stage the 2008 Summer Games in what was a landmark moment for the Olympic Movement.

Will the race for the 2018 Winter Olympics be a similar success story for an Asian candidate?

We shall have to wait and see – but having witnessed presentations on Monday by each of the three candidates, that still appears to me the most likely outcome.

Announcement of the day came from Munich, with confirmation that former German football captain Franz Beckenbauer – almost certainly the world's best-known Bavarian – was on his way to Durban to lobby for the bid.

I shall be genuinely interested to see how this pans out.

Such is the Kaiser's stature that the German team had little option but to ask him: it would have been interpreted as a sign of weakness if he hadn't come, just as French President Nicolas Sarkozy's absence is being seen as a signal that not even the French truly believe Annecy can win.

On the other hand, football is not a sport that features in the Winter Olympics.

Would, say, a Canadian city use ice hockey legend Wayne Gretzky to help out on a Summer Olympic bid?

I don't know the answer to that question, it is possible that they would, but I think it would be a pretty close judgement call.

If the Germans have summoned another global sporting superstar to supplement the efforts of bid leader Katarina Witt, Annecy's big achievement since arriving in South Africa has been to unearth a compelling message.

In their beach-front marquee, opposite the local casino, a venue housing more white furniture than the average Premiership footballer's living-room, Annecy Mayor Jean-Luc Rigaut built fluently on bid President Charles Beigbeder's plea from the day before to keep the Games "authentic".

Charles_Beigbeder_interviewed_Durban_July_4_2011

Charles_Beigbeder_interviewed_Durban_July_4_2011

"We are not there to get a trophy for a company or a country," Beigbeder (pictured) said, in one of the more aggressive soundbites of noticeably good natured campaign.

As a former white-water canoeing champion, Rigaut's warning that Big Sport was in danger of becoming overcommercialised, of losing its soul, will strike a chord with some of the 100 or so IOC members who will decide the outcome of this contest.

Mieux vaut tard que jamais (Better late than never) is an aphorism as common in French as in English.

And the hard-hitting tactic has certainly set tongues wagging in Durban.

But it is hard to envisage it doing enough to get the French candidate seriously back into the race.

'Relaxed' can be good in the sometimes pompous and overformalised parallel universe of Olympism.

But there is a fine line between appearing relaxed and appearing amateurish and, based on yesterday's events, I have to say the European bids at times came across as amateurish compared with their well-resourced Korean rivals.

It was amateurish of Annecy to confer among themselves at considerable length before answering one of the questions posed by journalists.

Katarina_Witt_Durban_July_4_2011

And while it may have been intended as a joke, it appeared amateurish to me for Witt (pictured) to ask her media conference mediator, "Am I allowed?" after he invited her to announce that a certain German footballer was on his way to Durban to add his weight to Munich's cause.

A further small symptom: Pyeongchang's table in the main media room is groaning under the weight of brochures and Olympic pins.

Annecy's and Munich's? Empty.

Now it might be that they have been stripped bare by voracious journalists.

But I somehow doubt it.

Who wants this most? I am sure all three bid teams are working – and praying - for victory with identical intensity.

Who appears to want it most? Based on the past couple of days, there can only be one answer to this question.

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 at www.twitter.com/dodo938

David Owen: Olympic campaign in Durban yet to shine as brightly as African sun

It has become one of the International Olympic Committee's more endearing habits to choose its Winter Olympic hosts in the most incongruous places imaginable.

Thus, four years ago, the choice of Sochi to stage the 2014 Winter Games was made in tropical Guatemala.

And this week's selection of the 2018 Host City has brought us to Durban.

With its flat urban thoroughfares, palm-fringed beach-front and climate mild enough for South African surfers to be out frolicking in the Indian Ocean breakers even in midwinter, this long-overlooked city has about as much in common with a classical Winter Olympic setting as, well, Munich has in common with Pyeongchang.

Perhaps it is just me, but I find it hard to focus on the finer points of the three competing speed-skating venues when they're playing beach volleyball outside.

On the other hand, perhaps the California-esque backdrop – along with a certain wedding that has taken many heavy hitters to Monaco – helps to account for the rather flat atmosphere which, as I write this on Sunday afternoon, still overhangs the three-cornered contest pitting the aforementioned Munich and Pyeongchang against France's Annecy, seen almost universally as the long-odds outsider.

My most exciting moment to date came at about 8.30pm last night, witnessing the arrival of Lee Myung-bak (pictured below right), the South Korean President, and extensive entourage, at the beach-front hotel housing the bidding cities.

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My most surprising came immediately afterwards when I saw that the sleek dark car parked outside the door, with South Korean flag fluttering, appeared to be of Bavarian manufacture.

That plus today, when I thought I saw a couple of bid team members hurry across the foyer loaded up with electric blankets.

Then again, it does turn chilly at night here.

I wrote in February that I would be surprised if Pyeongchang did not win.

Now within hours of the July 6 vote, I still see them as the most likely victors.

But Munich is putting up a good fight.

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Munich_2018_Press_Conference_Durban_July_3_2011

The German city has a strong ecological card to play, is impeccably connected, via Thomas Bach, whom many observers see as the next IOC President and is, perhaps, the IOC's best chance of putting on a truly blockbuster event to revive what many of us still see as a distinctly second-division sporting property.

Then again, there is no escaping the fact that the Winter Games has yet to visit Asia – fast-becoming the key business-zone in the world for multinational companies in search of growth – in the 21st century.

And while few non-Asians would have heard of Pyeongchang if it weren't for its efforts to win the Olympics, the Korean candidate should know the drill, having lost out consecutively to Vancouver and Sochi.

If they do not win here, it can safely be said it will not be for lack of manpower, with the main Olympic gathering-points at times taking on the appearance of Seoul-by-the-Sea.

The IOC had better hope that the flat atmosphere is a by-product of the South African sun.

The other theme starting to emerge here is the surprising paucity of candidates for the 2020 race to follow Rio de Janeiro in hosting the main event, the Summer Games.

Rome is in; Tokyo, Istanbul and at least one Middle East candidate look likely to follow, though there remains doubts.

And, for the moment, although more bidders, most notably from Europe, may emerge in coming days, that looks to be about it.

Many of us were thrown when the South African Government announced in May that it would not be bidding, hence apparently thwarting any prospect that Durban may have had of following a successful staging of this IOC Session with a strong Olympic bid.

There have since been suggestions that it could yet change its mind - but it has only until September 1 to do so.

Unusually, there seems next to no chance of a US bid.

If the 2020 race-card does not fill out, I am starting to wonder if we won't come to regard Durban as the beginning of the end of a golden age of Olympic bidding, brought to a close, in large part, by the crisis still affecting big chunks of the global economy.

For now, this is only a tentative conclusion.

There is still time for both these races – one on its final lap, the other not yet officially under way - to liven up.

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 at www.twitter.com/dodo938

Mike Rowbottom: Henley Royal Regatta - New course, but same age old traditions

The Henley Royal Regatta course, give or take a few adjustments, hosted London's Olympic regattas in 1908 and 1948.

And while London's 2012 Olympic racing will take place on Eton's man-made Dorney Lake rather than the River Thames, there is still a distinctly Olympic buzz about this year's Henley, already underway and heading towards Sunday's finals, as crews from all over the world have converged on an event which Sir Steve Redgrave once described as "the nearest rowers every get to racing in a football stadium."

Olympic rowing tickets may have sold out, but the Henley Royal Regatta, an annual event since 1839 other than in times of war, offers the chance of seeing some of the world's top rowers - including all the GB men's Olympic boats - in action on British waters before 2012.

Extra importance has been added to the Regatta this year with many overseas and British crews seeing it as part of their build-up to the World Championships, starting in Slovenia in late August, which doubles as the Olympic qualifying regatta.

Britain's Olympic gold medallists Tom James, racing in the Stewards' Challenge Cup for men's fours, and Andrew Triggs-Hodge and Pete Reed (pictured), competing in the men's pair event, are joining top-flight boats from the United States, Australia and Germany amongst others on the stretch of water that hosted the last home Olympics in 1948.

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Those post-war Games saw the host nation finish 12th in the medals table with just three golds. Imagine the outcry if that were to happen next year. The shame. The ignominy. I'm already looking into the possibility of switching nationality in the event of such a catastrophe.

Back in 1948, however, many of Britain's Olympians were content to epitomise the maxim uttered by the founder of the modern Games, Baron Pierre de Coubertin: "The important thing in life is not the victory, but the contest; the essential thing is not to have won but to have fought well."

One of those three rare British golds was secured on this tradition-steeped borderland of Oxfordshire and Berkshire through Bert Bushnell, whose family ran a local boat hire firm, and Richard Burnell (pictured), Oxford Blue and future president of the Leander Club, home to rowing's great and good, not to mention a long stint as The Times rowing correspondent.

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This unlikely combination set to in the weeks preceding the Games to secure the double sculls title.

As another generation of Olympians sets to in anticipation of London 2012, Henley will offer the 1,600 rowers involved its own unlikely combination of ancient and modern - a watery Wimbledon, in fact.

The Regatta chairman, Mike Sweeney, has this week described the peculiar fascination that this historic occasion offers.

"Henley is very special and the great thing is the atmosphere on race days", he said.

"The crowds are almost on the end of the rowers' blades along the river bank. It's side-by-side and quite gladiatorial. It's just a tunnel of noise and quite amazing".

It is an atmosphere that the Australian team have not experienced for five years, but they have brought their largest-ever Henley Royal Regatta contingent this year - 43-strong, with most of its Olympic contenders in that number, including include double Olympic champion Drew Ginn, a member of the fabled Oarsome Foursome.

"It's worked out perfectly for us to be able to row here at Henley and then the world cup finals in Lucerne next weekend", said Ray Ebert, the team manager. "It's the first time since 2006 that we've been here and we're really looking forward to it."

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Like Wimbledon, which persists, for instance, in running the Gentlemen's Doubles, Henley reveres and cherishes its traditions.

Dress code within the Steward's Enclosure at Henley is famously strict. Only twice has the temperature been deemed sufficiently high to permit the removal of jackets – once in the hot summer of 1976, and again in 2009, although another upward spike of heat might yet see a hat-trick completed this year.

Race commentator John Friend recently tried to explain the Henley position to me, and ended up using the example of the draw. This is conducted in Henley Town Hall and involves small bits of paper which are fished out of the giant silver edifice that is the Grand Challenge Cup – something the GB eight, which races this year as Molesey and Leander and includes the 39-year-old comeback kid Greg Searle, is anxious to get its hands on ahead of Hansa Dortmund, the German crew which narrowly beat them at last year's World Championships.

Yes, the Henley Stewards could certainly conduct the draw electronically. But they prefer a more old fashioned version of digital.

"It's part of our tradition," Friend explained. "It's one of those things you could do differently if you so wished, but it would not be so much fun."

And there you have the Henley Royal Regatta philosophy which, perennially, attracts the finest of Olympians.

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, has covered the last 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.

Tom Degun: Hambantota show we have a real contest for the 2018 Commonwealth Games

I'll be honest, I headed to Sri Lanka and Hambantota with a rather preconceived idea of what I would find. I had just spent a spectacular week in the sun-drenched Gold Coast as I followed the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) Evaluation Commission in their four-day inspection of the Australian city where I could not find a single, tangible fault in their bid for the 2018 Commonwealth Games.

I boarded my plane to the Sri Lankan capital Colombo - which is where the Commission were based for the majority of their inspection - armed with what I assumed were some key facts around the Hambantota 2018 bid.

Only one potential 2018 venue, the Mahinda Rajapaksa International Cricket Stadium - which is down to host the 2018 Opening and Closing Ceremonies -has been built, the area had been devastated by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and the coastal city is one of the most rural parts of Sri Lanka.

In fact, I had been informed that the reason that the Commission would be based in Colombo rather than Hambantota - with only a one day helicopter visit to the latter - was because there are virtually no hotels within 10 miles of the city.

Having arrived at the Delhi 2010 Commonwealth Games last October shortly before the event began, I remember only too well the manic chaos in the final few days before the competition when the Indian capital, which had fallen a mile behind schedule, had to summon every last resource to get the Games ready in the nick of time.

In Sri Lanka, I thought I would find another India and a 2018 bid concept that would provide far too much of a risk to the CGF just eight years after the Delhi debacle.

However, I will leave with quite another view: Sri Lanka is not India and Hambantota is not Delhi - not even close.

They are very real contenders in this two-way fight for the 2018 Commonwealth Games and they have far more than a punchers' chance against the Gold Coast.

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Through a very fortunate set of circumstances that saw me call in a few favours - nothing underhanded I assure you - I was invited to join the Commission on their helicopter visit of Hambantota.

I was actually relegated to the "smaller" helicopter that followed the Commission's gargantuan flying machine but one can't complain too much when the alternative would have been a six-hour bus ride from Colombo to Hambantota through the wilderness!

It was not long after taking to the air that we quickly left the metropolitan Colombo behind and flew over the most picturesque and colourful landscape I have ever seen.

The beautiful, largely untouched land below was pierced only by the $600 million (£375 million) highway - The Southern Expressway - which is currently under construction and will open later this year where it will help reduce the drive-time between Colombo and Hambantota to less than two hours.

Some 50 minutes later, we arrived in Hambantota at our first stop which was the piece of land that will be Hambantota International Airport. Even as a building site, it is a highly impressive scene. Construction on the $209 million (£131 million) project is set to be completed by the end of 2012 and it would be by far the most important facility in taking athletes to and from the 2018 Commonwealth Games.

But another way to Hambantota is through the $360 million (£225 million) seaport in Hambantota, which is already in use to service ships travelling along one of world's busiest shipping lines. But the real reason for taking the Commission there was to show that Hambantota is well on the way to becoming an economic powerhouse.

When it came to the discussion of the venues, things were largely made up of presentations - as understandably they had to be.

The plan is to build and complete all the venues, aside from the existing International Cricket Stadium, between 2014 and 2016, ahead of the 2016 South Asian Games.

This includes a 40,000 capacity athletics stadium, a 7,500 capacity international aquatics centre, a 7,000 capacity hockey stadium, a 2,500 capacity exhibition centre, a 5,000 capacity main arena, a multi-sport complex and a velodrome.

The interesting fact is that all of them, except the velodrome, will be developed regardless of the outcome of the Hambantota 2018 bid for the South Asian Games.

The compact nature of the concept is also a huge plus as 90 percent of competition venues are within one kilometre of the Games Village and training venues are either in the Games Village or 0.2 kilometres away in the adjacent training village meaning that athletes will have both training and competition venues on their doorstep.

You may be getting the impression that Hambantota is a city under construction with the 2018 plan currently a virtual bid.

Well you would be right.

But the key fact is that Hambantota correctly see that as a positive.

Due to the amount of work needed, the 2018 Commonwealth Games is set to generate $8 billion (£5 billion) for the economy and create up to 100,000 jobs in the region.

And with the venues set to be complete by 2016, it doesn't appear there will be the same problems seen in Delhi as two years gives a rather large margin of error.

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Mahinda_Rajapaksa_International_Stadium_01-07-11

The presentations that followed during our stay in Hambantota were largely of a technical nature but the bid team had intelligently saved their trump card and secret weapon until last as our helicopters landed in the middle the perfect pitch at the Mahinda Rajapaksa International Stadium (pictured).

This awe-inspiring stadium is not only the crown jewel of Hambantota but the very symbol of the 2018 Commonwealth Games bid.

Not because it will potentially host the 2018 Opening and Closing Ceremonies, not because it has a 35,000 capacity which will be expanded to 60,000 when the Twenty20 Cricket World Cup comes here next, but because it is stands gleaming brightly in the sun as proof of what can be done.

In order to host matches at the 2011 Cricket World Cup, it was built from scratch in just 11 months and it was fascinating when no less than Namal Rajapaksa, the son of the Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa and also the MP for the Hambantota District, explained this to me.

"I remember well when people said that Hambantota couldn't host matches in the 2011 Cricket World Cup," he explained.

"But we built this fantastic stadium which was praised by everyone and hosted one of the most memorable games of the whole competition when Sri Lanka beat Canada. I think that this shows what we can do in Sri Lanka and why we can stage a magnificent 2018 Commonwealth Games here."

Tom_Degun_with_Sri_Lanka_Presidents_son

What I found particularly interesting is that the President's son (pictured above) was happy to call Hambantota a "jungle" when I thought it was a negative connotation. He actually embraced the term and saw it as a huge benefit.

He explained that "Hambantota is a simple, clean area" which means there is no problem with planning permission, no problem with existing housing to manoeuvre around and quite simply, as Namal puts it, no "red tape", which was the Achilles heel of Delhi in their attempt to renovate old stadiums.

Delhi 2010 is clearly a tag that infuriates the Hambantota 2018 bid team and for good reason.

During my stay here, I have continually heard Mahindananda Aluthgamage, Sri Lanka's Sports Minister and co-chairman of the Hambantota 2018 bid, passionately state that: "We are not like other countries. We are Sri Lanka and we always deliver."

The words are said with such conviction and force that they are hard not to believe.

Aluthgamage himself, and his fellow co-chairman Ajith Nivard Cabraal, the Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, have actually been the shining stars of the Commission's inspection.

Despite their high-ranking positions and hectic schedules, they have been with the Commission for every step of the four day inspection, with the charming President's son also spending a large chunk of his time with them.

It shows tremendous political support right from the very top for the Hambantota 2018 bid and it is an advantage over the Gold Coast who could never be in a position to have their country's highest ranking political figures follow the Commission round and have police and armed escorts clearing their every step.

Quite simply, the backing of the Sri Lankan Government for the bid couldn't be higher.

The closing press conference saw Scotland's Louise Martin, the chair of the five-person Commission, praise the Hambantota 2018 bid as she stated: "We have been impressed with the vision for Sri Lanka and Hambantota and now have a clear view of where the hosting of the Commonwealth Games could fit within that vision."

She finished by stating that the Commission "have no doubt about the resolve to deliver the necessary infrastructure by 2016".

The Commission didn't say it publically, as clearly they are not in a position to, but I get the strong impression that they were, like me, far more impressed with the Hambantota 2018 bid than they thought they would be.

The Commission now tasked with producing a report on the two bids which will be published before October 11 this year. I assure you that neither city will fail it that but it will be interesting to see how they articulate their views in the report.

However, the real crunch time comes when the CGF meets at its annual meeting in St Kitts and Nevis on November 11 to vote on the host city.

So where would my vote go?

Last week, it was with the Gold Coast without hesitation. Now, I might just toss a coin as I genially find the two complete contrasting concepts so hard to separate.

The Gold Coast offers a tried and trusted safe option; Hambantota offers the option of the Commonwealth Games in a brand new country with a brand new style.

Do I see the Gold Coast as favourites?

Probably.

But this is no walkover - this is a contest between two heavyweights with very different styles.

And with the voting delegates themselves set to visit the two cities between now and the November 11 vote, the opening bell has only just rung.

Tom Degun is a reporter for insidethegames

Mihir Bose: Blatter is famous for short-term tactical victories but will lack of long-term vision be his undoing?

Is there anybody at FIFA minding the shop? Sepp Blatter, the President, clearly does not give the impression he is.

He may strut about as if he is the head of a unique Vatican-style sporting state, no territory or army, but through football, as the Vatican does through religion, reaching out to places no politician can. But the FIFA corruption crisis has exposed the fact that while Blatter is a master tactician who can turn almost every short term situation to his advantage, he is not a strategist.

Blatter desperately needs to have a strategy to cope with the FIFA corruption crisis, the worst in the organisation's history. But not only is there no evidence Blatter has a strategy, he does not even seem to appreciate the need to develop one. At every step he has given the impression of reacting to events, rather than being in charge.

This has marked everything Blatter has done since the FIFA crisis broke last October when the Sunday Times investigation started the corruption story rolling. That had led to two Executive members, Amos Adamu and Reynald Temarii being suspended, but in the sort of short term gesture that Blatter loves, the paper was criticised for its journalism, to the fury of the journalists concerned. They felt they had gone out of their way to help FIFA and instead of being thanked, were kicked for their efforts.

The result was, despite the action FIFA took, it still gave the impression it had much to hide and did not like outsiders telling it what it should do. This was further reinforced when the Sunday Times produced a whistle blower who claimed to have further evidence of corruption. His allegations were not even examined.

Perhaps the most damaging evidence of Blatter's short-termism came in relation to the evidence Lord Triesman gave to the House of Commons Select Committee about the alleged favours he was asked by four members of the FIFA Executive Committee- Jack Warner, Nicolás Leoz, Worawi Makudi and Ricardo Teixeira. The Committee wrote to FIFA and this was followed by the Football Association sending FIFA the report James Dingemans QC had produced on the Triesman allegations.

Dingemans made it clear he was not conducting an inquiry. To quote his words: "It should be noted that it was no part of the terms of reference to determine whether the allegations made by Lord Triesman were well founded or not. Indeed, it would have been wrong and unfair to do so because it is fundamental to any system of justice that a person against whom an allegation has been made is given an opportunity to answer the allegations before adverse findings are made. The FA does not have jurisdiction to require answers from the Four Executive Committee Members who were the subject of Lord Triesman's evidence to the Select Committee. As between FIFA and the FA, FIFA is the relevant body for those purposes."

His inquiry, conducted in little over a week, was limited to people in Britain involved in the bid who could throw some light on what Triesman said. He could not get quite to the bottom of everything Triesman told the MPs, but found some of what he had said stacked up. What he was doing was making sure that before the FA passed Triesman's ball to FIFA, it was filled with more than just one man's word. But the intention was clearly for FIFA to carry on running with the ball and conduct a proper inquiry.

And to help FIFA, Dingemans concluded FIFA's World Cup bidding rules needed to be more transparent to help generate more confidence in the bidding system. Also, "There is a need for an updated and detailed Code of Ethics which deals with both lawful and unlawful approaches to and from members of the FIFA executive committee. There is need for a system where by the relevant rules can be seen to be imposed in a transparently independent manner".

However, Blatter immediately dropped the ball, making the extraordinary claim that Dingemans had cleared all four Executive members, when the QC had not even inquired into their alleged actions. In Blatter's words: "We were happy that there are no elements in this report which would prompt any proceedings." The impression created was this stance was necessary as this report had come just days before the Presidential election and the FA were arguing the election should be postponed. It was hard to argue with the conclusion, this was a whitewash, one that suited Blatter as he was seeking re-election.

sepp_blatter_jack_warner_30-06-11

Blatter and his supporters could argue that FIFA did act when members of the beloved FIFA family, in this case the Caribbean Football Union (CFU), presented evidence of wrongdoing. True, the Ethics Committee was on to it like a flash as soon as these family insiders, turned whistleblowers, claimed they had been offered bribes by Mohammed Bin Hammam at a special CFU meeting in Trinidad organised by Jack Warner. And since then its mills have been rolling slowly but relentlessly. The result is Warner has resigned and Bin Hammam, who is suspended, is reported to be facing a possible ban when the Ethics Committee report is published in July.

But observe how this process has been going on. Warner resigns and the FIFA website puts up a message of thanks to him, as if a great man of football has reluctantly had to step down with no stain on his character. Then within days, the Ethics Committee report is leaked and this says, "The FIFA Ethics Committee is of the primary opinion that the accused [Warner] had knowledge of the respective payments and condoned them. It seems quite likely that the accused [Warner] contributed himself to the relevant actions, thereby acting as an accessory to corruption."

All this does is increase cynicism about FIFA. It does nothing to stop the drip, drip, drip corrosive effect of the never ending story of corruption. And as FIFA is a body with world events always being held, like the Women's World Cup in Germany now and the 2014 World Cup Draw next month in Brazil, there are always opportunities for the further drip, drip, drip of corruption allegations and stories to surface. Indeed, next week when the Commons Select publish their special report on World Cup bids, there will be another turn of the FIFA corruption story, this time the British MPs take on it.

What must worry Blatter is the way the Ethics Committee has begun to leak. This gives the impression that there are FIFA insiders not at all happy with the way the corruption story is being handled. FIFA has not leaked like this since back in 2001-2002. Back then, UEFA and Michel Zen-Ruffinen, Blatter's own general secretary, were against him. Those leaks, following the crash of FIFA's marketing company ISL, were part of an intense civil war. Blatter won that war with magnificent short term strategy. But that does not work now and the leakers seem to be telling him that.

So also are the new lot who control UEFA, not best pleased to be associated with an organisation which the world sees as filled with people who are always on the take. Indeed, Blatter is on what amounts to a warning by UEFA that he needs to show he has a strategy to deal with corruption and clean FIFA up. That runs out in September.

Theo_Zwanziger_with_Angela_Merkel_opening_of_Womens_World_Cup_Berlin_June_26_2011

Theo_Zwanziger_with_Angela_Merkel_opening_of_Womens_World_Cup_Berlin_June_26_2011

The new FIFA executive member from Germany, Theo Zwanziger (pictured above with German Chancellor Angela Merkel), who even asked for Qatar winning the 2022 World Cup to be reopened, gives every impression of being the sort of man Dingemans may have had in mind when he spoke of the good men of FIFA. In a little noticed para in his report he said, "It is apparent from the materials I have read that there are members of the FIFA Executive Committee who enjoy worldwide respect and against whom no allegations have ever been made. These realities are obscured because of the persistence of rumours and lack of transparency."

If Blatter did not read this part of the report, he would do well to do so. Now that he has been re-elected and this is his last term, he does not have to worry about seeking allies, however dubious, to remain in power. But for the short term tactician to develop a long term strategy is like asking a defender to become a centre forward. It is not very likely.

More likely is Blatter remaining football's version of Harold Wilson, the former British Prime Minister. Wilson was famous for short term tactical victories but never developed any long term vision and in the end it proved Wilson's undoing. Blatter has a long way to go before he can prove he is not another Wilson.

Mihir Bose is one of the world's most astute observers on politics in sport and, particularly, football. He formerly wrote for The Sunday Times and The Daily Telegraph and was formerly the BBC's head sports editor

www.mihirbose.com

http://twitter.com/mihirbose

Alan Hubbard: Boxing for The Big Society

Any Parliamentarian strolling past the open door of the Attlee Suite in Westminster on Monday evening would have been startled to see one of the Hon Members engaged in a punch-up in front of a cheering crowd. What's more, it was a woman throwing the meanest of right hooks that was doing most of the biffing and banging.

No worries chaps. The lady in question happened to be the new political champion of the fight game, and it was all quite legit. Charlotte Leslie MP was merely demonstrating that she is pretty nifty herself with her fists, donning the gloves and sparring with the captain of the GB men's boxing team Tom Stalker, as well as anyone else who fancied a round or two with the blonde bomber from Bristol.

A remarkable sight. A Tory she may be, but the slim and feisty Ms Leslie, whose appointment as chair of the All Parliamentary Boxing Group was exclusively reported by insidethegames, is actually a leftie. A southpaw who enjoys having a brawl.

The bash, if you'll pardon the phrase, was certainly a novel way to launch the re-born body, attracting a standing room only crowd of well over 100 boxing and political bigwigs, which included two world champions and 54 MPs who have signed on as members of the group.

Boxing may have had its nose bloodied in the past by the PC brigade but Charlotte (pictured) is on a mission to show that it has now become politically very correct indeed, an ideal vehicle for keeping wayward youngsters of the streets and teaching the discipline and sportsmanship.

charlotte_leslie__tom_stalker_30-06-11

Moreover, at both amateur and professional levels it has re-established itself as one of Britain's most popular and successful sports, with five current pro world champions, a record-breaking Olympics in Beijing and a best-ever European Championships in Turkey.

The cauliflower ears were sponged and pressed for a stylish occasion supported by the British Amateur Boxing Association (BABA), which saw MPs joined by a host of people from all walks of boxing, celebrating the achievements of a sport which consistently delivers medal success and increased participation and is widely regarded as a valuable tool in combating a host of social problems.

Barry McGuigan was there, as eloquent as ever in promoting the virtues of the sport, so was Duke McKenzie, another former world champion newly honoured with an MBE for his work in teaching boxing skills to wayward kids.

Rob McCracken, Team GB's head coach came fresh from Ankara where two of his Welsh charges, Andrew Selby and Fred Evans, won Euro golds, while Scouser silver medallist Stalker, a self-confessed ex-scally who used to go "on the rob in Liverpool" before boxing straightened him out, came with the latest rising star, fresh-faced 17-year-old Charlie Edwards, who won a bronze in his first major tournament and according to MC Jim Rosenthal, could be 2012's new poster boy.

The Sports Minister Hugh Robertson lent support together with two of his Labour precessors, Richard Caborn (now Amateur Boxing Association of England (ABAE) President) and Gerry Sutcliife - all are ardent fight fans.

But the bill-topper unquestionably was Charlotte Leslie, who says she watched boxing "in awe" on the telly as a kid, fell in love with it when she saw Lennox Lewis work out in Bristol and took it up seriously herself "when my mother took me to a gym as an angry 13-year-old and it saw me through to my GCSE's. I owe boxing awful lot".

Subsequently she has taught girls how to box and has sparred with Britain's premier professional female fighter Jane Couch.

The critical eyes watching her jab and move on Monday were approving.

I'd certainly back her to beat John Prescott over three rounds.

"Boxing is a pulsatingly tangible example of The Big Society," argues the MP who is undoubtedly one the Conservative's answers to the Blair Babes, a veritable "Cameron Cutie".

"I say to anyone who asks what the Big Society is, go to your local amateur boxing club and if you are standing in the wrong place it will literally hit you in the face."

The 32-year-old Oxford graduate, a freshman MP for Bristol North West, is also a national standard swimmer and qualified lifeguard. Future Sports Minister material?

In the meantime, the present incumbent calls boxing "a fantastic sport". Robertson adds: "In recent years it has emerged as one of Britain's most successful sports through its ability to increase grassroots participation, nurture talent and provide pathways for its most outstanding athletes.

"I know from visiting boxing clubs and seeing the pivotal role they play in their communities that in raising participation and developing talent, the sport is delivering across a range of social agendas and addressing issues such as knife crime, educational attainment and bullying."

The launch included contributions from the Charter Academy in Portsmouth, a secondary school for 11-16-year-olds, which introduced boxing, initially the non-contact version, into the school curriculum, for both boys and girls, with the result being that bullying has significantly declined.

It is now one of the first schools in the UK to include boxing in the curriculum as part of the GCSE-equivalent ASDAN CoPE (Certificate of Personal Effectiveness) qualification.

As McGuigan (pictured) told the audience: "I know from my own experiences, and the work I do now with young people through my academies, that boxing delivers an enormous amount of good to society. It creates opportunities, provides people with a purpose and teaches them about life and the things they need to do to get on and succeed."

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Jim_Rosenthal_Charlie_Edwards_Barry_Mcguigan_30-06-11

Of course he was preaching to the converted, but a sport which has always needed to fight for survival, now has some powerful allies in parliament.

It is also a timely show of feminine muscle with the advent of women's boxing in the Olympics and politically when the blinked dinosaurs of International Amateur Boxing Association (AIBA) refuse to bow to pressure from BABA, the British Olympic Association and the IOC's Craig Reedie to revoke the seemingly vindictive ruling which will bar pro-coach McCracken from assisting British boxers in his customary corner position in the world championships and Olympics.

The case now looks certain to go to the Court for Arbitration in Sport (CAS).

Unless, of course, larruping Leslie can sweet-talk them into submission. If not, there's always the right hook.

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

Tom Degun: Gold Coast 2018 set the standard for Hambantota to match

It is slightly difficult to be objective when writing about the Gold Coast.

The place is the very definition of sun, sea and sand and despite the fact that it is supposedly winter here, the beach is full every day, the majority of people walk around in bathing costumes and I have not yet seen a cloud in the sky.

But perhaps most importantly of all, the city does not appear to have put a foot wrong in their critical four-day inspection from the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) Evaluation Commission as they step up their bid to host the 2018 Commonwealth Games.

And with the vote for the event on November 11 this year in St Kitts and Nevis moving ever closer, the Gold Coast has certainly thrown down the gauntlet to their only rivals, Hambantota of Sri Lanka.

Hambantota are soon set for their own four-day inspection of their credentials to host the 2018 Commonwealth Games, with formal evaluation proceedings in Sri Lanka set to get underway next Monday (June 27).

But they will undoubtedly have had at least half-an-eye on the inspection of the Gold Coast and must now be slightly unnerved after Scotland's Louise Martin, the chair of the five-person Commission made a rather telling closing statement at the press conference, which marked the conclusion of the official inspection of the Australian city.

"Having been here and experienced four glorious days, we understand why the Gold Coast is one of Australia's tourist capitals," said Martin.

"Overall, we can tell you that the proposition of staging the Commonwealth Games in the Gold Coast is an exciting one and appears, based on our initial analysis, to be sound.

"Not only does it appear that the basic infrastructure requirements can be met, it also seems that in meeting these Games requirements important legacies can be generated for the city and region."

Gold_Coast_2018_Commonwealth_Games_with_Mark_Stockwell_and_Ron_Clarke

Gold_Coast_2018_Commonwealth_Games_with_Mark_Stockwell_and_Ron_Clarke

The theme of the closing press conference continued in this manner with Martin, who was joined on the top table by fellow 2018 Commission member and CGF chief executive Mike Hooper, failing to pick any notable flaw in the Gold Coast 2018 bid.

For what it is worth, I too fail to see any obvious problems.

After the well-documented problems with the Delhi 2010 Commonwealth Games, with high-profile athlete boycotts, major delays in the construction of venues and fears over health and safety at venues, the Gold Coast looks to offer the CGF a much needed safe option in 2018.

When it comes to the Gold Coast, a lot of the venues are already in place or need only minor overlay before 2018 to reach competition.

A lot of the infrastructure is also in place - there is a hotel on pretty much every street corner - and, as far athlete boycotts go, very few competitors would be foolish enough to turn down a trip to the Gold Coast.

The weather is almost always perfect, the never-ending beach is a two-minute walk from anywhere, the people are ridiculously friendly and it doesn't appear that filling up stadiums will be a major problem.

"We are a little sport crazy in Australia," Mark Peters, the chief executive of the Gold Coast 2018 bid, explained to me.

"If there was a game of marbles going on, over 10,000 people would go to watch it as long as two countries were playing against each other.

"Australians are sport mad, the Commonwealth Games is a major event for Australians and you can be sure that whatever event, they will turn up in their droves."

The only problem with the Gold Coast is that I fail to see how people get any work done.

I write this on the balcony of my hotel room overlooking the most stunning of beaches and I admit I am finding it difficult to maintain concentration, while watching a game of beach volleyball going ahead!

The surfer-look is the accepted dress-code in the Gold Coast and the times that I walked in to press conferences dressed in a suit were the times I have never felt so out of place in my life.

What made up for that small embarrassment though was an amazing helicopter ride over the city.

I still haven't quite got over it and from the air there is no vocabulary to do the view of the Gold Coast any real justice.

tom_Helicopter_24-06-11

I feel I am having far too much fun here and this is the one time I was disappointed to hear that the recent ash-cloud from a Chilean volcano, which has been halting flights across the region, has now cleared.

There are far worse places to be stranded than the Gold Coast.

The next stop for me, as I follow the Commission in their work, is Sri Lanka and I feel that will be the most intriguing of trips.

Unlike the Gold Coast, Hambantota does not really exist at present.

Their plan is almost to construct an entire city, with a central theme of sport, from scratch for the 2018 Commonwealth Games.

They have well-advanced plans to do this and it is something that will be done regardless of whether they win the bid for the 2018 Commonwealth Games as they will host the prestigious South Asian Games in 2016.

In fact, on paper, Hambantota will be ready to host the Games a year before the Gold Coast with the Australian city aiming to complete final preparations for a potential 2018 Games in 2017.

But it is still a tough task for them, even with a number of high profile big-hitters, not least Hambantota 2018 co-chairman and Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka Ajith Nivard Cabraal, fully behind the plans.

The Mahinda Rajapaksa International Cricket Stadium, which opened in February 2011 and staged two matches during the ICC 2011 World Cup, is the only proposed 2018 Commonwealth Games venue to have been built so far in Hambantota where it is scheduled to host the Opening and Closing Ceremonies and the archery if the bid is successful.

The lack of existing facilities in Hambantota is actually the reason why the Commission will be based in Colombo, Sri Lanka's largest city, for the majority of their stay in the country with only a one-day visit to Hambantota.

A lot of the visit in the Gold Coast was made up of boardroom presentations, which hypothetically could have been done in Sydney, Melbourne or in fact any other city with electricity on the globe.

But this is a fact that has not gone unnoticed in Australia with the term "virtual bid" being levelled at Hambantota in the Gold Coast press as they look to highlight the fact that their Sri Lankan rivals have very few tangible 2018 Commonwealth Games venues to show the Commission.

But it would be very foolish to write Hambantota off.

It is 71 Commonwealth countries who will determine the winner of the 2018 bid and you can be certain that, if nothing else, Sri Lanka will put on one hell of a show for the Commission.

The Commission themselves face an interesting task of writing a report on two such contrasting cities. They will release that crucial report on the two bid cities in September this year and their take on two bids will be fascinating.

Will Hambantota 2018 be too big a risk after Delhi 2010?

Will the Commonwealth countries want to take the Games to a new country rather than Australia for the fifth time?

So we head to Sri Lanka with perhaps more questions than answers but very much in the knowledge that the Gold Coast has set an intimidatingly high bar for Hambantota to match.

Tom Degun is a reporter for insidethegames

Alan Hubbard: Will Britain's lack of home-grown coaching talent limit the sustainability of London 2012's legacy?

Andrew Warshaw: Beware the phantom mobile phone hacker

Mike Rowbottom: It's survival of the fittest for Britain's modern pentathletes

Alan Hubbard: Scandals prove Brits not a cut above the rest

Andrew Warshaw: IOC provide perfect blueprint of how broken FIFA can fix itself

David Owen: Mission accomplished for Pyeongchang 2018 after Operation Durban

David Owen: Does Zuma's presence mean South Africa will bid for 2020 Olympics?

James Tindall: The international season, slimming, Chelsea FC, taking our clothes off and the build up to London 2012

David Owen: Slicker Pyeongchang still look likely winners

David Owen: Olympic campaign in Durban yet to shine as brightly as African sun

Mike Rowbottom: Henley Royal Regatta - New course, but same age old traditions

Tom Degun: Hambantota show we have a real contest for the 2018 Commonwealth Games

Mihir Bose: Blatter is famous for short-term tactical victories but will lack of long-term vision be his undoing?

Alan Hubbard: Boxing for The Big Society

Tom Degun: Gold Coast 2018 set the standard for Hambantota to match

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