Anybody who follows the world of weightlifting closely must be in need of an uplift, judging by recent headlines on insidethegames and elsewhere.

Nasser Majali, the secretary general of the Jordan Olympic Committee (JOC), was at home on a Friday in January when the phone rang.

The uncertainty over coronavirus has cast a cloud over the build-up to Tokyo 2020, and there is even a sense of precariousness over the lighting of the Olympic Flame, which is scheduled for Olympia on Thursday morning (March 12).

Exactly 107 years ago, as the Belle Epoque sashayed towards its cataclysmic conclusion, the International Lawn Tennis Association was founded in Paris.

Forty years ago yesterday, a 21-year-old American sat in the stands at the Field House International Ice Rink in Lake Placid watching the United States ice hockey team achieve what would forever after be known as the 'Miracle on Ice' by defeating the Soviet favourites at the 1980 Winter Olympics.

The digital clock is into the final seconds and the countdown has begun. Al Michaels, commentating for ABC on the Lake Placid 1980 Winter Olympics ice hockey medal-round game between a Soviet Union team stacked with experienced, bemedalled and effectively professional talent and a home team of aspiring college boys, joins in.

In June last year, Forbes magazine published its list of the 100 highest earners in sport.

For most of the players involved in the 54th Super Bowl today the annual challenge for the Lombardi Trophy will represent a high point of their career. But for one player - Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Tyreek Hill - a further peak looms beyond Mount Lombardi, namely Mount Olympus.

There is a time and a place for small talk and, usually, passport control is not it.

Australia has been traumatised in recent months by the bushfires raging throughout the country. Meanwhile the resulting damage to the atmosphere has been impacting in a very obvious and difficult way for the organisers of the Australian Open tennis tournament that begins in Melbourne tomorrow.

Yiannis Exarchos gets straight to the point. "In the digital world, the need for volumes of content is practically insatiable," the chief executive of Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS) says.

A collection of 20 official Tokyo 2020 posters are set to go on public display for the first time at the Museum of Contemporary Art in the Olympic city this week.

Ten years ago, at the end of the Noughties, I was given the perfect laptop bag. It is sturdy, compact and sensibly compartmentalised. I still take it on every overseas trip. 

In 1958, while on a golfing holiday in Cuba, Johnny Weissmuller ran into a serious problem. A group of rebel soldiers involved in the Cuban Revolution who were threatening to kidnap him and his US companions.