A happy and prosperous New Year? Well, let's hope so but COVID continues to wage war relentlessly on our fun and games.

The end of another year means it is time to crown the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) Top Tweeter of 2021 - and for the first time since 2018, there is a new champion.

All elite athletes will have their own story about key moments in their careers. It is just that some can express this more clearly than others. Some such as Britain's former pole vaulter and decathlete Mike Bull, for instance.

Familiar calls for unity, solidarity and words of a similar effect have featured prominently in sports leaders' end-of-year messages.

Incredible as it may seem, the concept of fair play has been around for centuries. Even British playwright William Shakespeare described it several times, for example in The Tempest, he wrote "Yes, for a score of kingdoms you should wrangle, And I would call it, fair play."

The new year arrives across the Commonwealth today.

The sea of long tables scattered with pint glasses, someone's dad dressed up like Geri Halliwell in her Spice Girls days, a bunch of boys looking like they have taken a wrong turn at Aintree, all dressed up as jockeys for a stag do.

Sport is a five letter word that flourishes despite the predominance these days of the four letter variety. Alas, there is another of six letters which forces us to look back in anguish on the year of 2021. 

Beijing 2022 is shaping up to be a strange Winter Olympics for a number of groups, for athletes, for reporters - and for sponsors.

A fine thing happened today. A former colleague of mine was marvelling on Twitter over the memory of what he described as "the greatest solo goal I ever saw". And, unexpectedly, he got to see it again - other than in his mind's eye.

For the last six months, the International Swimming Federation (FINA) has mixed ambitious efforts in enhancing athlete opportunities with the work of modernising our organisation. During this time, we have already seen the benefits of this approach. FINA is set to continue working this way long into the future.

At the start of 2021, I identified seven non-Tokyo 2020 areas to keep an eye on throughout the duration of the year: Thomas Bach, Protests and activism, Athlete representation, athlete welfare, the European Olympic Committees, the Commonwealth Games and increased female representation.

By this time next year, the 2022 FIFA World Cup will be over, the first to be held in the Northern hemisphere winter. 

There was a time when boxing was a no-no among certain factions of the medical profession, not least the British Medical Association (BMA). Some British politicians, too, spearheaded by the late abolitionist Labour MP Dr Edith Summerskill. She tried relentlessly, and unsuccessfully, in the 1960s, to get a Bill through Parliament banning the noble art, which she considered notoriously ignoble.