The IOC made the decision to hold the annual party in January 1948, a few months before London hosted the first post-World War TwoI Games, and this year that party will be spread over six continents, involving more than 160 participating National Olympic Committees.

The festivities are taking place with particular fervour in those cities vying to host the next available summer Olympics of 2024 - namely Budapest, Paris, Rome and Los Angeles.

The Hungarian capital planned a mass evening torch run on the eve of Olympic Day, with spectators and fleeting runners able to take a peek at the Euro 2016 match between Hungary and Portugal - which ended in a 3-3 draw that confirmed Hungary as winners of their qualifying group - on a giant screen on the Pest side of the Margaret Bridge. A good omen, perhaps.

Today, at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum which hosted the 1932 and 1984 Olympics, a group of 500 young people will take part in a series of sport clinics in Olympic sports of archery, badminton, fencing, gymnastics, rowing, rugby, football, volleyball and Paralympic sitting volleyball.

This event, set up by those bidding for the 2024 Games to come to Los Angeles, is the flagship in a fleet of others in the United States - a record number of 2,120 scheduled events in 1,503 communities, engaging nearly 900,000 Americans in celebration of the Olympic Movement.

Meanwhile in Paris, the Marville Sports Complex will play host to another host of sporting children who will celebrate Olympic Day in company with the Paris 2024 bid’s co-chairmen Tony Estanguet and Bernard Lapasset, along with Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo.

The mission of Olympic Day is to promote fitness, well-being, culture and education, while promoting the three Olympic Day pillars – move, learn and discover – and the Olympic Values of excellence, friendship and respect.

As we have heard this week, that last value is of particular importance to the IOC right now.

The swiftly convened Olympic Stakeholders Summit in Lausanne on Tuesday (June 21) decided to “fully respect” the ruling last Friday (June 17) by the International Association of Athletics Federations to extend its suspension of Russian athletes from participating in international competition, including this summer’s Rio Games, because of insufficient evidence that widespread doping abuses have been properly addressed and rectified.

Although it would have been more truthful had the IOC members announced their intention to “fully reject” the IAAF initiative.

“Of course, of course, only those Russian athletes who can prove they have been operating within an effective testing system will be deemed eligible, and they will compete under a neutral flag.

“But, oh dear, as it’s the National Olympic Committees which select and send athletes to the Olympic Games, and there is no current suspension of the Russian NOC – as opposed to the Russian athletics federation – then it will be in charge of any athletes selected for Rio, and those athletes will perform under the Russian, rather than a neutral banner…”

In short, and as widely predicted, the IOC has come on like Little Britain’s Vicky Pollard: “Yeah but no but yeah but no…”

The process resembles the old “scissors, paper, stone” game. Russian athletics abuses and intransigence is stone – wrapped up by IAAF paper. But IAAF paper is scissored by IOC. And next? Well next, IOC scissors are blunted by stone, as Sir Craig Reedie, President of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), weighs in on the side of the IAAF.

Sir Craig, a vice-president of the IOC, was forthright: “WADA reiterates its support for the IAAF’s proposed rule amendment enabling Russian athletes to apply for eligibility, on an exceptional basis and subject to meeting strict criteria - in particular having been subjected to credible doping programmes outside Russia - to compete in international competitions, including the Olympic Games, in an individual capacity as neutral athletes.”

In other words, he fully respects the IAAF ruling.

Meanwhile the All-Russia Athletic Federation has appealed against the IAAF ruling to the Cpurt of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, and world pole vault record holder Yelena Isinbayeva has also threatened to pursue her individual right to appear at Rio 2016  through the same channel.

So will CAS paper cover WADA stone? Not if its President, Australia’s John Coates, has a lot to do with it, having described the Russian sporting system as “rotten to the core” last week…

And as the Rio Games grow ever closer, the crazy stone-scissors-paper game goes on.

If all those energetic youngsters value and pillar-honouring around the world want to engage in appropriate activity to mark the emergence of the modern Olympics, they would be best advised to start running around in Olympic rings. Wheels within wheels within wheels…