Since it officially began in the autumn of 2013, the race for the 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympics has produced twists and turns galore, demonstrating once again just how many factors are at play when bidding for a major event.

Following the mass withdrawals of Stockholm, Kraków, Lviv and Oslo last year, the only opposition to a second Games in Beijing in a generation comes from Almaty, the largest city and former capital of Kazakhstan which is being inspected this week by the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) Evaluation Commission.

Midway through a visit to the city to cover the event, I have to say that Almaty's plan appears much how a Winter Olympics should be, a picturesque city in the shadow of mountains and a pleasing blend of old and historical facilities with state-of-the-art new ones.

But, as we all know, having sound technical proposals are only one part of a strong bid, and it is for other reasons that Beijing remains the strong favourite in the two-horse race.

Having never attended an IOC Evaluation Commission before and boasting only one Olympic Games on my résumé, in Sochi this time last year, I am perhaps not in the best position to fully analyse the merits of the bid. Yet it comes across as well-balanced and fully in line with the reforming air of Agenda 2020, the series of 40 reforms passed by the IOC at its Session in Monte Carlo in December.

First and foremost, Almaty is an attractive city, which blends its Soviet past with its Kazakh present, with archaic monuments, mosques and Orthodox Christian churches placed alongside skyscrapers and sweeping shopping malls. More than any other previous Winter Olympic bid of recent years, the city is at the heart of Almaty 2022, with venues for ice hockey, ice skating, curling, ski jumping, sliding sports and Nordic combined all within the city centre itself.

Almaty's bid blends old venues, such as the Shymbulak Resort, with modern ones, with all in compact locations close to the city ©ITG



The Sanki Jumping Hills, developed ahead of the 2011 Asian Winter Games, is considered among the best facilities in the world, and will provide stunning backdrops of the city centre that should conjure memories of the similarly iconic diving venue at Barcelona 1992.

Further up into the mountains we have Medeu Skating Rink, the old Soviet venue 1,600 metres about sea level where around 120 world records have been set, with a new roof to be installed in order to deem it suitable for speed skating during the Games. A 15 minute cable-car journey away, we have another iconic Soviet remnant, the Shymbulak resort where downhill and super G action would take place, while further around we have new facilities for biathlon, snowboarding and cross country and freestyle skiing, all of which should have a strong legacy benefit for local communities after the Games.

Compactness and sustainability - encapsulated by bid slogan "Keeping it Real" - are the key themes of the bid, and with no venue more than 30 kilometres from the Olympic Village, this really does seem to have been achieved.

After many recent Winter Olympics consisting of long journeys between mountain and city clusters, this would be a return to an older format, in a new but really quite traditional winter city, much more so than a Sochi or, dare I say it, a Beijing. It would also help open up a new country, which, in some parts of the world, is still known more for the film Borat starring Sacha Baron Cohen than anything else...

For point of comparison, the Chinese capital would be 190km away from the mountain sport venue at Zhangjiakou and, although a new high speed rail line would reduce travel time to under an hour, it is claimed surely not everyone could journey this way and the massive spending required is far less in line with the message of Agenda 2020.

Different gender but the same old story. My first experience of watching England's women's football team play live in their 1-0 defeat to the United States at Milton Keynes Dons' Stadium MK last night was largely a reflection of supporting their male counterparts for as long as I can remember - uninspiring, dull and ultimately frustrating.

With the BBC cameras on them and the nation ranked second in the world in town, you'd probably be within your rights to expect that the Lionesses would be up for putting on a strong performance for the 14,369 spectators who turned out to see them continue their preparations for this year's FIFA World Cup in Canada. 

Arriving at the Stadium, I paid £5.00 ($7.70/€6.80) for my ticket having paid an extra couple of quid to park my car. I questioned at the time how that was logical, but after putting myself through an hour-and-a-half of what can be described at best as a "flat" England display, I came away thinking that a handy parking space and quick getaway home had given me much better value for money.

I must make it clear that this is by no means a criticism of the US team who demonstrated why they're one of the powerhouses of the women's game. Although they didn't lay siege to England's goal by any stretch of the imagination, they never really looked as though they needed to with forward Alex Morgan's first-half header proving enough to settle the contest. Their only real moment of panic came when goalkeeper Ashlyn Harris was forced to tip Fran Kirby's shot onto the crossbar, after which Jodie Taylor's rebound was controversially ruled out for offside.

Although television replays showed the goal should have stood, anything but a US win would have been unjust on the night. England flattered to deceive and my overriding feeling was that they'd missed a fantastic opportunity. Yes, it has to be taken into account that they're currently in pre-season ahead of the fifth edition of the Women's Super League, which starts next month, but with media coverage of the women's game in this country so scarce, the chance to promote it in front of a national television audience passed them by as far as I'm concerned. 

The United States' Alex Morgan headed home the decisive goal in the first half
©Getty Images




Women's football has a long way to go to earn the respect of your "typical" male football fan, many of whom I could hear to be subversively mocking the action at Stadium MK with audacious cries of "shoot" as either one of the two teams held possession in their own half. At times, it seemed like certain sections of the male audience had come down to have a bit of a laugh and a few cheap beers as a preamble to their Friday night out on the town.

This sort of mockery of the women's game can't be condoned but in order for it to be taken more seriously in England, the quality of football on show has to be better than that displayed last night. The US provided enough evidence that it's achievable with a composed and accomplished passing game which seemed to be beyond England's capabilities for the most part.

Perhaps the fact it's pre-season made it the wrong time to put them under the spotlight, and maybe in a few months' time we will see a much more vibrant and energetic team grace our screens as the World Cup comes into sharper focus. Having lost their previous international 3-0 at home to Germany, FIFA's top-ranked team, improvement is definitely required if they're to have an impact on the latter stages of the tournament in Canada.

The US, two-time World Cup winners, arrived at Stadium MK on the back of Sunday's (February 8) 2-0 defeat to France, who England face in their opening World Cup match on June 9. If France, ranked third in the world, are two goals better than the US, it's a good job England have a few more months to prepare for that encounter.

England's Jodie Taylor found the back of the net in the second half but it was wrongly ruled out for offside, ensuring victory for the United States ©Getty Images







After playing the French, England go onto meet Mexico on June 13, followed by Colombia on June 17. With Mexico currently ranked 25th in the world and Colombia 28th, a place in the round of 16 should be well within sixth-ranked England's grasp. If indeed they do advance to the knock-out stages, and dependent on whether they finish first or second in the group, they will face either the runners-up in Group E, which contains Brazil, South Korea, Spain and Costa Rica, or the second-placed team in Group B, which features two-time champions Germany, Ivory Coast, Norway and Thailand.

Prior to a final friendly on home soil in April, England will take part in the Cyprus Women's Cup between March 2 and 12. The tournament, which has been held annually since 2008, is made up of 12 teams divided into three groups of four. Australia, Finland and The Netherlands await England, winners of the competition in 2009 and 2013, and will all be vying for top spot in Group B and a place in the final.

The 18 days between now and their first match against Finland on March 4 will allow time for reflection on the defeat to the US and give head coach Mark Sampson the opportunity to pick the bones out of a below-par performance. He remained upbeat after the match claiming that his team had learned they can be a threat on the counter attack, but it's now up to England to get back on the front foot and show they have what it takes to challenge for the game's ultimate prize.

Daniel Etchells is a reporter for insidethegames. To follow him on Twitter click here.

Faster, higher, stronger: progress is hard-wired in to the Olympic ideal. So it follows that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has unanimously agreed a new "'strategic roadmap" to carry the Olympic Games forward through the 21st century.

The Agenda 2020 initiative put forward by IOC President Thomas Bach in December 2014 included forty (20+20) "recommendations". Their aim being better promoting the Games and Olympism, particularly to youth, strengthening the role of athletes, good governance, ethics, and reform of the IOC.

These recommendations have garnered considerable column inches. The media had generally focused on a handful of the recommendations including: the addition of protection against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation to the Olympic Charter (Recommendation 14); the potential for multi-city or even multi-country bids to host the Games (Recommendation 1); and a change in emphasis in the sports programme with the removal of the 28 sport cap for the Summer Games but instead limiting the number of events and participants (Recommendations 9 and 10).

However, very little has been written about the impact that implementation of some of the recommendations will have on commercial rights and use of the Olympic brand. Some of these recommendations are relatively subtle and simply follow what Organising Committees of the Olympic Games (OCOGs) have already been doing. 

Others, like the proposal for an "Olympic Channel" could, however, have as profound an impact as the introduction of the IOC "TOP" global sponsorship programme did in 1985. The latter is now a $1billion per quadrennial programme which supports the Olympic Movement and provides a worldwide marketing platform for the 10 TOP sponsors.

Thomas Bach's Agenda 2020 has grabbed plenty of headlines ©IOC

An observation before looking more closely at these commercially-focused recommendations: while the focus of the media reports may be elsewhere, the identity of the individuals chosen to lead the relevant IOC Working Groups suggests that these issues were far from peripheral in the eyes of the IOC. The Working Group dedicated to the Olympic Channel was chaired by President Bach himself.

This week's news that Edmonton has aborted its bid to host the 2022 Commonwealth Games because of economic pressures called to mind - well, mine at any rate - a previous false start in the capital of Canada's Alberta region.

Had the plummeting price of oil not had such an effect on the economy of a city known as the "Oil Capital of Canada" then the Commonwealths might have returned 44 years after they were first staged there. And 21 years after Edmonton hosted the World Athletics Championships.

Now, however, the recall gun has fired on the Edmonton bid team, which has reluctantly announced it is "re-focussing" on 2026 - leaving the field open for the only other bidder, Durban.

Reg Millley, President of Edmonton's Bid for the 2022 Commonwealth Games, has conceded economic pressures have forced the city to postpone its efforts until 2026 ©Getty Images

It was in Edmonton, on the eve of those World Championships, that the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) decided at its Congress to introduce a controversial new ruling on false starts.

For most of track history, runners have received a warning after making one false start, and have been disqualified if they made a second. Since the Seventies, that has meant reacting to the gun inside a tenth of a second, deemed to be the limit of human capability.

What the IAAF - which had arrived in Edmonton as the International Amateur Athletic Federation, confirming the change to its current name during that same Congress – did in August 2001 was simple and unsatisfactory.
The new rule - which came into effect in 2003 - meant that in events up to and including the 400 metres there could be one false-start, from anyone in the field, which did not incur disqualification. But if any runner, whether the one who had incurred the first false start or not, jumped the gun again, they were disqualified.

The thinking behind this was clearly to avoid lengthy hold-ups before races got underway. Live athletics audiences, for obscure reasons, are turned swiftly surly by false-starts, particularly if there is more than one. And above all, of course, such delays adversely affect the paramount operation of the TV schedulers.

In 2001 the world and Olympic 400m champion Michael Johnson, in Edmonton to work for NBC Television, commented: "I know a lot of the athletes are against it, but again, you have to understand that this is a business."

The men's marathon field gets underway at the 2001 IAAF World Championships in Edmonton. But there were false starts elsewhere... ©AFP/Getty Images

Be that as it may or may not be, over the next few years it became clear that some sprinters, perhaps those not best known for their own blistering starts, were working the system by deliberately using up the allowable false-start to put extra pressure on their rivals.

In 2009, this false-start rule was acknowledged as being a false-start in itself as the IAAF Congress agreed for a simpler ruling: all false starts incur instant disqualification (it has become known as the "one-and-done" false start rule).

Two years later the re-modified rule produced the highest profile victim you ever did see when Usain Bolt, Olympic and world 100m champion, was disqualified before the 100m final at the IAAF World Championships in Daegu.

That rule persists however, although it was significantly modified ahead of the London 2012 Olympics when the IAAF permitted athletes to move in the blocks without being disqualified so long as their hands do not leave the ground or their feet the blocks.

Previously, twitching or flinching in the blocks has resulted in disqualification - most controversially when US athlete Jon Drummond, recently banned for eight years for doping offences as a coach, was ejected from the 100m quarter-finals at the 2003 World Championships in Paris after equipment registered movement in the blocks.

Drummond insisted, repeatedly, "I did not move", and staged a lay-down protest on the track, eventually holding up proceedings for almost an hour before leaving the track in tears.

So much for the Edmonton false-start false start. It was not the only one of those Championships, however.

The change to the starting rules was opposed by all the countries which have, historically, provided the fastest runners, namely France, Germany, Russia, the United States and Britain, for whom UK Athletics President David Hemery made an impassioned speech.

But the alterations were constitutional, whether ultimately effective or not.

Usain Bolt is disqualified from defending his world 100m title in Daegu in 2011 as a result of changes to the false-start rule ©Getty Images

Such could not be said of the false start made in the women's 5,000m by Russia's Olga Yegorova.

A month before the Championships got underway news leaked out that Yegorova had tested positive for the banned blood-booster, erythropoietin (EPO), but that the result had been invalidated on a technicality.

The general consensus was that Yegorova should not have started at the Championships. But she did, in extraordinary circumstances.
She ran against numerous athletes who wore red ribbons on their shirts as symbols of their desire for an effective testing system to eradicate EPO misuse.

When she ran her heat, a group of British athletes in the stands, including Paula Radcliffe, held a banner with the words "EPO cheats go home". During the final she heard the chant go up "EPO, go-go-go".

When she won, people booed. She took no lap of honour. Olympic champion Gabriela Szabo called her "a robot".

At the medal ceremony she stood inert, hands by her sides, like someone facing a firing squad. One of the other medallists had boycotted the ceremony in protest at her inclusion. When she received her medal, there were more boos.

Olga Yegorova pictured after winning the world 5,000m title in Edmonton in 2001, a month after her positive test for banned blood-doper EPO was annulled on a technicality
©Getty Images

At an excruciating post-race press conference, she concluded: "Ah, it's just a piece of metal. If you want I can give it to you...it's just sports. But life goes on...should I have finished second or third to please the crowd?"

The temptation at the time was to respond to this rhetorical question with an answer along the lines of "Yes. Second or third would have been better than first. And fourth or five would have been better than second or third. And not at all would have been best of all."

But looking back now, in the light of the disturbing recent signs in Russia which appear to evidence a systematised doping regime, Yegorova appears less of a she-devil and more of a victim.

It would be good to think, if the Commonwealth Games do eventually return to Edmonton in 2026, that there will be no such besmirching events for either track and field or any of the other sports involved. Please God the Athlete Biological Passport does not prove to be another false start...

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, covered the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics as chief feature writer for insidethegames, having covered the previous five summer Games, and four winter Games, for The Independent. He has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, The Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. To follow him on Twitter click here.

He was one of the most formidable Olympic leaders of recent times, but like many formidable leaders, he seems to have lacked the succession planning gene.

Being knocked unconscious is an unpleasant experience in any sport, whether it is in the ring, on the playing field, or, as that incredibly brave National Hunt champion jockey AP McCoy will testify, on the racetrack.

Here is a man whose body has suffered more bangs and bumps than an old dodgem car in a fairground.

By coincidence McCoy's announcement that he plans to quit at the end of another record-breaking season came on the weekend when rugby again became embroiled in a row over an international player who was ko'd on the pitch - twice in this case - but allowed to continue despite new rules being introduced to emphasise the sport's duty of care to prevent such potentially dangerous occurrences.

Understandably there has been an outcry after Wales permitted their star wing, 22-year-old George North, to carry on after TV pictures showed him slump motionless to the ground, suffering a 61st minute head injury in the Six Nations clash with England at Cardiff's Millennium Stadium.

North had already passed a now statutory Head Injury Assessment (HIA) after being accidentally kicked in the face in the first half.

Yet World Rugby guidelines say that any player even suspected of losing consciousness should be taken off to avoid risking potentially fatal "Second Impact Syndrome". The game's global governing body rightly has demanded a full report and said that North should not have stayed on the pitch, but they accepted the Welsh Rugby Union's explanation that neither the team medical staff nor the independent doctor had sight of the incident.

Their concern is justified. Concussion has become an increasingly vexed issue for rugby, which since the advent of full-scale professionalism is very much a game of muscle and macho.

The concussion debate reared its head once again after George North was knocked out twice during Wales' Six Nations defeat to England ©Getty Images



A series of incidents involving concussion in British rugby union has been followed by a disturbing report which revealed that American footballers exposed to repeated head injuries showed significant levels of early onset dementia and were almost 20 times more likely to suffer long-term neurological problems than the wider population.

The decision to allow North to play on - which Wales coach Warren Gatland defended saying the "correct medical procedures" were followed - has drawn widespread criticism from outside and within the game.

The former England captain Lewis Moody tweeted: "Why was George North not taken off? A terrible decsion by the medics. Out cold."

And former Scotland international Rory Lamont asked: "Knocked out twice in one game and still on the pitch. How is this happening?"

How indeed. Or more pertinently, why?

Guidelines say players who have suffered a suspected concussion should be taken from the field for up to five minutes for an evaluation by a doctor before they are allowed to return. There have been calls for the period to be extended to 15 minutes but, if World Rugby makes a change, it is likely to be 10 minutes.

Instead doctors will be given a video of the incident which led to the injury to help them determine whether a player may have suffered concussion, and a review panel will be created to investigate if a player is allowed to return to play when it is later revealed that he was concussed. There used to be a minimum three-week rule but that was relaxed with each case being treated individually.

This is far too risky a scenario. Perhaps it is time rugby - and other contact sports – sought a meeting with the British Boxing Board of Control (BBBoC). They might learn something.

We have been hearing a lot recently about the effects of concussion on rugby players and I believe there is much to be gleaned from the way boxing deals with severe head injuries and the possible after-effects.

Rugby can take lessons from boxing where any boxer who is stopped in a fight is not free to return to action for 28 days ©Getty Images



It may not be generally known that in this country any boxer who is stopped in a bout is suspended for at least 28 days, regardless of the circumstances. Should he actually be knocked out or has suffered excessive punishment to head or body, he would receive a minimum suspension of 45 days, which would include sparring, and in either case no boxer would be allowed to fight on until receiving medical clearance from a BBBoC doctor.

In extreme circumstances this would include a further brain scan, in addition to the scan and MRI that boxers must take annually.

Compare this to rugby - and football too - where there are growing worries about the alarming brevity of head-injured players returning to action, as North did, often only after a few minutes.

Over the years there has been an apparent lack of concern for this type of life-threatening injury and neither rugby nor football - as well as most other contact sports - have reached the levels of protection and after-care that have existed in British boxing for some time.

I bet there are more brain-damaged rugby players around these days than punchy ex-pugilists.

Curiously, too, you never see boxer now with cauliflower ears but in rugby they seem a badge of honour, an accepted occupational hazard for those in the scrum.

Of course in any sport there can always be a freak accident, as sadly there was with the death of Australian cricketer Phillip Hughes, and the tragic skiing incident that has left the seven-time formula one champion Michael Schumacher paralysed.

Equestrian sports, especially McCoy's National Hunt racing, see many more serious mishaps -and deaths - than you get in boxing.

AP McCoy's sport of horse racing often sees more accidents and injuries than boxing
©Getty Images



Of course, boxing will always be an inherently dangerous sport because of its very nature. Everyone in it accepts that. It has had its share of tragedies. But the BBBoC and licence holders have worked hard to make it safer than it has ever been.

Safety regulations have been upgraded since the unfortunate 1991 Michael Watson incident and advice from leading neuro-surgeons like Peter Hamlyn has been taken on board. The promoter Frank Warren also helped finance and set up a system whereby boxers get regular brain scans.

Now there are always two or three doctors at the ringside with paramedics and an ambulance on standby at the arena.

Warren tells insidethegames: "I am not knocking rugby. Like boxing, it is a game of hard knocks. I love the sport and was involved in the Nineties as owner and chairman of Bedford RFC.

"Three of my sons, Francis, George and Henry, played rugby, one for his university and the others for their school. I watched them often and was more concerned about them getting seriously hurt on the rugby pitch than had they been in the ring. One of them was knocked out cold and it worried me stiff.

"I have seen rugby players obviously badly concussed get a splash from a cold sponge, a whiff of smelling salts and be sent back into the fray. Very macho. But with what consequences?"

New concussion measures were brought into football after Hugo Lloris sustained a nasty head injury in Tottenham's match with Everton last season ©Getty Images



Football is not immune to the hazards of head injuries either. The family of the late England striker Jeff Astle fought a successful battle to prove that his death was caused by degenerative brain disease brought about by regular heading of the ball. Other footballers have been similarly affected.

Much has happened already in the first five-and-a-half weeks of 2015 in the fledgling race to host the 2024 Olympics and Paralympics, although, when you think about it, little progress has actually been made.

To the surprise of many, Boston has been confirmed as the United States' contender while Rome will launch a somewhat implausible Italian bid. A maelstrom of other cities are supposedly considering bids, with feasibility studies and working groups galore having been convened, but nothing has been confirmed.

While with seven months to go until applications are due, this ambiguity is not unusual, the elephant in the room this time around is the impact of the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) Agenda 2020 reform process.

As I see it, Agenda 2020 is having exactly the impact the IOC wished it to when they unanimously passed the 40 recommendations at their Session in Monte Carlo.

It is being hailed as a radical step marking a paradigm change in Olympic bidding, encouraging cities to launch attempts when before they would have been reluctant to do so. Yes, the vagueness of the measures means that no one quite knows where these changes will be felt, or how strongly they will hit, but that is almost beside the point. Such is the potential appeal of this new era of reform that the sort of anti-bid movements seen so spectacularly in the 2022 race have not yet taken shape. They are still waiting to see how things play out. 

Thus the IOC have so far manufactured greater interest in the process but while committing only to changes that are general and vague rather than concrete and specific.

Agenda 2020 signified great change but how much occurs in practice remains to be seen ©Twitter



Take Hungary for instance. When the bid was first muted by sporting authorities last September, Budapest Mayor Istvan Tarlós dismissed speculation as "unrealistic" and "unviable" in what was taken as an apparent death knell to an effort not yet off the ground.

But the post-Agenda 2020 era brought new optimism, as Hungarian Olympic Committee President Zsolt Borkai argued how the reform measures created a "historic opportunity" for Budapest to succeed at last after five failed bids, with the nation, incidentally, having won more Olympic medals than any other that has never hosted the Games.

What exactly were these "historic changes"? Most of the extra financial support to be offered by the IOC had been introduced anyway for the 2022 bidders, even if it is now more widely known and better communicated, while commitments to "sustainability", "human rights" and "flexibility" and all the rest of it are too vague to really mean anything.

It is the commitment to hold more events outside the host city in order to capitalise on pre-existing venues which has generated the most headlines, but it will be interesting to see to what extent this actually happens in practice.

South Korean organisers gave a resounding no to plans to move events overseas, although considering holding them in North Korea, a country it is still technically at war with, never seemed feasible. Yet given the logistical constraints of dealing with different countries, not to mention the impact of international politics and diplomacy, I can never really envisage a joint bid getting off the ground. A bid co-held across different cities in a single nation seems slightly more plausible but still unlikely, with calls for a South African attempt for 2024 taking in Pretoria, Durban, Cape Town and Johannesburg similarly impractical.

IOC vice-president John Coates has encouraged Tokyo 2020 to move events for reasons of sustainability ©Getty Images



More likely is a bid holding a few events outside the main host city for reasons of practicality, as is beginning to happen with Tokyo 2020. Yet is this really that different to previous Games, like London 2012, where sailing and football were held outside the host city and various other sports were held in the suburbs and far-reaches?

Whatever their rhetoric, the IOC must be reluctant for venues to decentralise to too great a degree, lest they dilute the atmosphere generated by having a central focal point for the Games, as was seen so memorably in Stratford in London 2012, as well as legacy benefits brought in by this redevelopment.

It is hard to predict at the moment whether the opposition will continue to simmer rather than boil, as seen with the various anti-Boston 2024 groups so far, or reach the feverish levels that scuppered Winter Olympic bids of Oslo and others last year.

For Boston it depends largely on how the campaign is conducted, both in gaining the trust and support of the public, as well as of the IOC members, whose love of America appears to be slowly rising but cannot be taken for granted.

IOC President Thomas Bach summed it up well on his United States visit last week, complementing progress but warning how they have to "undertake all efforts" and "get their team together" and then have to "run with the absolute determination to win, but also to know that in the right moment, everything has to come together".

Boston is in many people's eyes the early favourite in the race for the 2024 Olympics and Paralympics, but a lot of work lies ahead ©Getty Images



For Rome surely - and, possibly, also Budapest and Paris if green lights are given following the completion of feasibility studies - economic uncertainty is likely to prove too much. Current Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi appears far more positive than the more austerity-minded Mario Monti was in 2012, but with Rome being bailed out yet again by the Central Government last year and with concerns remaining over the running of the city, it is a long-shot.

In the wonderful words of one opposition politician, it is "like painting an old Fiat 500 red and hoping people will believe it's a Ferrari".

Much of the same could be said about Berlin, with memories lingering of the violent protests which accompanies its ill-fated bid for the 2000 Games in the early 1990s, particularly as a referendum has already been confirmed if the bid goes ahead.

This suggests Western Europe's largest non-capital city Hamburg could be the best bet when the German Olympic Sports Confederation selects its choice on March 21.

As it was to a large extent in the 2020 race, an Istanbul bid would likely be scuppered more by geopolitics than anything else, with ISIS forces ever closer over the Syrian border and increasing instability between secular and Islamist forces at home. And if the Bosphorus city is to bid for a major event, surely the 2019 European Games would be a better and more achievable bet?

Of other possibilities, economic problems in Russia have surely put paid to the likes of St Petersburg or Kazan launching bids, while Azerbaijani authorities would have to move quickly after June's inaugural European Games to get an attempt from Baku up and running.

That leaves the Gulf, with Dubai and more probably Doha likely to launch an attempt. The fact the Qatari capital is hosting the 2019 World Athletics Championships and a certain football extravaganza three years later is unlikely to put it off, and if anywhere could pull off all three it would be Qatar.

The 2012 Olympic Games might be a distant memory, but equestrian's legacy lives on as the focus shifts to Rio 2016. Five key British players from the Greenwich-based team are sharing the experience they gained in 2012 with those involved in the 2016 Games.

Tim Hadaway, Equestrian Competition Manager in 2012, joined the International Equestrian Federation (FEI) staff in 2013 as director of a newly created Games and Championships Department. Not only is he involved with Rio, but he is starting to work with the Canadian Organising Committee for the FEI World Equestrian Games 2018, and Tokyo 2020 is already featuring on his horizon.

"Mine is an ongoing role," he explains. "I make sure that the relevant requirements are followed, and provide advice and guidance as necessary to the various Organising Committees.

"It's a pleasure to be working alongside my core London colleagues, and rewarding to know that we patently put together an unparalleled team. We are lucky to have such a depth of experience in Great Britain, and to see its continued involvement at the highest level is a real legacy of the last Games."

Many of the equestrian officials involved at London 2012 will be present again at Rio 2016 ©Getty Images



The FEI has appointed London Eventing Manager Alec Lochore, as Eventing Technical Delegate and 2012 Para-equestrian dressage manager Amanda Bond, who now runs all things equestrian for the Hong Kong Jockey Club, is back as technical delegate of the Para-Equestrian Dressage.

"Great Britain has such a long tradition of equestrian sport; it is a very supportive environment where knowledge is passed on," Bond said. "For me, Rio will be a new experience; as technical delegate I sit on the other side of the table from the Organising Committee and that will be a challenge, given I was with the Committee for both London and Beijing [2008]. It's a great honour that the FEI put their trust in you to help deliver the Games, but at the same time, a bit nerve-wracking."

"At the highest level, the FEI make these key appointments, and it is a reflection of both Alec and Amanda's experience in their relevant disciplines," adds Hadaway. "Add Stephen Renouard and Jenny Hall into the mix and you have something of a dream team."

London 2012 Jumping and Dressage Manager Stephen Renouard has been brought in as Equestrian Consultant for Rio 2016, and Jenny Hall, Veterinary Services Manager in 2012, is engaged as Veterinary Consultant. These appointments underline the success of the Olympic equestrian events in 2012, and the esteem in which its key players are held worldwide.

Alec Lochore not only has the experience he gained in London, along with 16 years of running Horse Trials in Great Britain, he is also a 3*/4* course designer and previously competed at the highest levels. "I'm sure the experience I gained in London will be an invaluable asset. An understanding of how both Olympic Organising Committees and the International Federation interact and work is a key requirement," he says.

Replicating the success of the London 2012 three day eventing cross country course will be a major challenge in Rio de Janeiro ©Getty Images

Free-to-air or pay-TV? This debate on the most beneficial form of broadcast coverage for sport got another airing in the UK this week, after Sky wrested live rights for golf's Open Championship away from the BBC, starting in 2017.

The smart answer to the question is probably, "Both"; this, after all, is what the most popular sporting attractions seem to manage.

Take football: live Premier League coverage has taken the pay-TV route in the competition's domestic market, with the outcome of a new auction, yielding more colossal sums, expected imminently as I write.

But World Cup matches remain free-to-air for UK viewers; and the BBC's Match of the Day top-flight highlights programme is a broadcasting institution.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC), which sets great store in Olympic coverage being made available to as many people as possible on a free-to-air basis, has meanwhile reacted to the fast-developing digital media landscape by agreeing gatekeeper deals across all platforms while insisting that free-to-air coverage remains an important part of the mix.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, it is worth underlining that most sport played in the world has next to no value as content for mainstream broadcasters.

This is one of the reasons why the IOC is now investing heavily in a media channel which should help to increase exposure for many sports beyond the narrow confines of their quadrennial Olympic Games programmes, when the magic dust sprinkled by the five rings logo multiplies their appeal for an all too limited period.

An Olympic Television Channel is to be launched after delegates at December's IOC Session in Monte Carlo unanimously backed plans ©IOC



This week's golf deal reminded me of comments made to me last July by an expert who has studied golf markets for three decades.

Alluding specifically to the UK, Stephen Proctor of Sports Marketing Surveys Inc opined that free-to-air coverage of golf was now "very, very low".

While pay-TV programming offered excellent coverage, it was, he said, "preaching to the converted".

Given that participation rates in Great Britain, the sport's most mature market, have been falling in recent times, you might be forgiven for questioning the wisdom of the Open deal on the grounds that, while it produces jam today, it could trigger an acceleration in this participation decline.

Bear in mind that a Sports Marketing Surveys Inc study I looked at last summer put the average age of "avid" golfers, defined as adults playing at least once a week on a full-length course in Britain, at 63.

I suppose there are three answers to that:

First, the availability of the Open Championship live on free-to-air television has not stopped the decline from setting in.

Second, it will still be possible to follow the event free-to-air via a two-hour daily highlights programme, as well as the BBC's excellent live radio coverage.

From 2017 British viewers will no longer be able to watch The Open, won by world number one Rory McIlroy in 2014, on free-to-air television ©Getty Images



One should also point out that the meagre menu of live golf action available to free-to-air viewers in the UK is soon to be augmented by the revival of Olympic golf.

This might happen only once every four years from Rio 2016, but it is an innovation whose impact is well worth monitoring, not least because the women's competition will probably get as much coverage as the men's in countries with live medal prospects.

Third, and I think most importantly, it seems logical to surmise that the net effect of this week's deal on participation in the sport is likely to depend on how much extra money the Royal and Ancient (R&A), golf's governing body, is getting and what that money will be used for.

Unconfirmed figures I have seen reported suggest that the new five-year deal was priced at £75 million ($114 million/€101 million), equivalent to £15 million ($22 million/€20 million) a year, up from £7 million ($11 million/€9 million) a year under current arrangements.

If that is anywhere near correct, the R&A will have doubled its money from this property, although it is possible, I suppose, that sponsorship income might edge down if corporate backers conclude that new broadcasting arrangements may result in their logos being exposed to fewer eyeballs.

If a substantial chunk of that extra cash is earmarked for a concerted drive to identify the factors behind falling participation and to devise effective ways of reversing the phenomenon, then the ultimate verdict on this week's deal might be positive in the long term as well as the short term.

The comments of R&A chief executive Peter Dawson, as reported by the BBC, suggest that this is the plan.

Dawson spoke of "increasing our financial support to initiatives in Britain and Ireland in getting to grips with participation in golf.

He went on: "We need to have a real go at it, and have a good analysis of what the participation issues are, and I think that is one of the great things to come out of this arrangement."

Interestingly, cricket - another sport with plenty of well-heeled fans but which can also take a long time to play, presenting similar challenges in how to accommodate it on a mainstream, general interest channel - went the pay-TV route in the UK nearly a decade ago.

Cricket in England does not seem to have been particularly affected by no longer being shown live on free-to-air television ©Getty Images



Since then, while it is undoubtedly true that no contest has lodged in the popular consciousness as indelibly as the epic 2005 Ashes series between England and Australia, nothing dramatic has happened to participation levels: Sport England data indicate that 0.44 per cent of the adult population played once a week between April 2012 and 2013, compared with 0.48 per cent between October 2005 and 2006.

The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) informs me, meanwhile, that more than £150 ($228 million/€202 million) million has been invested since 2006 "to help strengthen the game", including the recruitment of over 45,000 more grass-roots coaches.

I have to say that it does strike me as odd that no Twenty20 matches can, as far as I know, be seen live on free-to-air TV in the UK, when this relatively new, quickfire format seems an obvious route into the game for kids.

But, nearly a decade on, there doesn't yet seem to be much in the way of hard evidence suggesting that the switch of live Test Match coverage to pay-TV has damaged the game.

It will probably be prudent to wait at least this long before attempting to draw definitive conclusions about what this week's deal means for golf.

As part of their preparations for tomorrow night's opening 2015 Six Nations match in Wales, England's rugby union players have been training in front of loudspeakers to mimic the effects of playing within a stadium - the Millennium Stadium in this case - where the crowd noise is so loud you can't hear yourself think.

Will it work? Time - eighty minutes plus added-on - will tell.

I've covered a few football games in the Millennium Stadium, including the 2005 Football League Championship play-off final in which West Ham gained a place in the Premier League at the expense of Preston North End thanks to a goal from Bobby Zamora.

There's a hell of an atmosphere in that stadium. And when Zamora struck 12 minutes into the second half - it was buzzing. That was with the roof open.

Bobby Zamora - and a few others - celebrate what turned out to be the only goal of the 2005 Championship Play-off final at Cardiff's Millennium Stadium. 
©Getty Images

Two years ago, England's Grand Slam ambitions went west as they were smashed 30-3 by Wales under the closed roof of the Millennium Stadium. The match was played in a furnace of Celtic fire.

Wales's wily Kiwi coach, Warren Gatland, challenged his opposite number Stuart Lancaster last month to play their upcoming match under another closed roof.

Lancaster, particularly light right now of regular first teamers following a glut of injuries, very sensibly elected not to take up Mr Gatland's kind invitation to play in another Welsh bearpit. The agreement was that both teams had to want the roof to be closed, or it would remain open to the elements.

But the habitual volume of Welsh support which reverberates around this superbly designed stadium, roof closed or open, has persuaded Lancaster to send his men out training this week at their Pennyhill Park base with loudspeakers replaying the kind of crowd noise they will be expecting tomorrow evening. They have even been playing hymns.

England's rugby union players in training this week at Pennyhill Park ahead of tomorrow's night's opening Six Nations game against Wales in the Millennium Stadium
©Getty Images

"It is to try to replicate for the players who have not been there how sound reverberates," said Lancaster.

It's a weird thing with stadiums - stadia, if you insist. When it comes to atmosphere, capacity is almost an irrelevance.

For years Arsenal's home until 2006, Highbury, had the nickname - among visiting rather than home supporters - of "The Library", a reference to the hush which would sometimes descend upon the stadium in despite of its post-Taylor report capacity of 38,419.

Okay - Arsenal now have a 60,000 capacity stadium just down the road from what is now a customised, high-end housing development in which the listed Art Deco East Stand and West Stands are preserved and incorporated.

I've covered a fair few matches at both the Arsenal grounds - and the Emirates also has its becalmed moments, although once roused, the home faithful still generate a fair old din within.

But, to quote one of The Beatles most beautiful tunes, There are Places I Remember, all my life, though some have changed...

Roker Park.  I was there one rain-drenched Saturday in 1990 and heard the thing I'd previously only heard about: the Roker Roar. It was engulfing.

Danny Blanchflower, fabled captain of the Tottenham Hotspur 1961 Double-winning team, once said that having travelled the world the Roker Roar was the most awesome display of support he had ever experienced. Praise indeed from a man who was never afraid to voice an unpopular or dissenting opinion.

I also remember Plough Lane - home to Wimbledon's self-styled Crazy Gang - soon after they had earned their upstart 1-0 FA Cup final win over Liverpool in 1988. The capacity was below 20,000 - the record attendance was the 18,080 which turned up to watch a 1935 FA Amateur Cup tie - and when I visited the figure was well below that.

But the din, under a tin roof - unbelievable! That atmosphere, allied to the fear factor of players such as John Fashanu and Vinnie Jones, was enough to unhinge the competitive intent of visiting teams.

Last summer I was happy to report on a hugely eventful European Athletics Championship in the reconstructed Letzigrund Stadium at Zurich. The atmosphere was grand, assisted in no small part by the hyperactive efforts of the mascot, Cooly, who was an undercover athlete - decathlete in fact - of high talent.

But the new stadium lacks the ear-buzzing potentialities offered by the old version, which I first visited in 1989, when Roger Kingdom produced the highlight of the evening with a world 110m hurdles record of 12.92sec.

Scotland's Liz McColgan running at the Weltklasse meeting in Zurich's old Letzigrund Stadium in 1991 ©Getty Images

I recall being astonished at the noise levels generated by those in the stand away to my right, beyond the finish line, as they saluted successive athletic efforts, their roars reverberating within the low roof, while those at the front thumped the advertising hoardings into tribute.

In more than a quarter of a century reporting on athletics (OH MY GOD) I have never heard anything to match the old Letzigrund, although Oslo ran it close at times. It was like a being in a football crowd.

The England rugby preparation is an intriguing, but by no means original approach to match preparation. It put me in mind of the work done by the British archery team in the run-up to the London 2012 Olympics.

Wales beat England 30-3 in 2013 under a closed roof in the Millennium Stadium. Tomorrow night the roof will be open - but the din will still be enormous ©Getty Images

Two years after the Delhi Commonwealth Games, where well-meaning but partisan crowd noise had a clear effect on archers at a number of key points within competition, Alison Williamson and her fellow archers spent hours practising at Lilleshall to a background of recorded crowd noise.

For the Olympic trials the noise levels rose still further as more than 1,000 local schoolchildren were invited in to bang drums, blow whistles and raise their voices.

"The letters of invitation said 'Please make as much noise as possible'," recalled Williamson.

"It might even have asked for the noise when the archers were shooting. I had an eight-year-old a few feet away from me screaming at the top of her lungs - you have to ignore it."

Sometimes it's not the noise of opposing fans that provides the potential distraction - it's that of your own supporters.

Last year, for instance, Australian Rules Football Club Port Adelaide had to prepare for matches in their own revamped stadium, the Adelaide Oval, to recordings of their own crowd.

Such was the noise level in an arena whose curved roof structure retained and redistributed sound from spectators that the Port Adelaide boys were having trouble hearing each other's instructions on match day above the roar provided by their fans.

A similar approach was taken by British Paralympian cyclist Mark Colbourne as he prepared for the 2012 Games by downloading crowd noise off YouTube and playing it to himself as he trained for the coming cacophone of the Olympic Park Velodrome.

In the arena where Sir Chris Hoy, Jason Kenny, Victoria Pendleton and Laura Trott had wheeled to glory earlier in the month, Colbourne - who had suffered a life-changing Para-gliding accident three years earlier - picked up a silver medal in the C1-3 kilo time trial.

Chris Hoy wins keirin gold at the London 2012 velodrome amidst a crescendo of noise ©AFP/Getty Images

"I downloaded clips from YouTube of the Olympics and the World Cup meeting here to replicate the noise. But nothing can prepare you for the volume this place generates. By the third lap, I could feel the crowd's noise vibrating my helmet, and that's when they give you the extra pedal revolution."

What hymns, I wonder, might have given England's rugby team extra pedal revolution tomorrow night? Fight the Good Fight, or perhaps We Plough The Fields and Scatter might have suited the forwards. As for the backs - Amazing Grace? I'll Fly Away?

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, covered the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics as chief feature writer for insidethegames, having covered the previous five summer Games, and four winter Games, for The Independent. He has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, The Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. His latest book Foul Play – the Dark Arts of Cheating in Sport (Bloomsbury £12.99) is available at the insidethegames.biz shop. To follow him on Twitter click here.

I am often asked why sport, and in particular clean sport, matters. In 2015, with sport as commercial, as lucrative, and as big an industry as it is, why - some ask - should we work so hard to preserve the spirit of sport? A spirit that the more cynical members of our society might argue has all but evaporated.

I, and I believe the vast majority of people that work in, and have come to love, sport - would disagree with this viewpoint. Sport is a microcosm of society, and playing or competing in sport makes people better characters, and fosters the right values. It is this philosophical, purist viewpoint that constantly provides the backdrop to my work in leading the anti-doping community.

When the British Lionhearts take on the Algeria Desert Hawks at London's York Hall this Thursday (February 5) night it will provide some indication as to whether the boxing brainchild of the International Boxing Association (AIBA) President Dr C K Wu is actually beginning to grab fans by the punchballs in this country.

So far the World Boxing series (WSB) tournament has yet to take off as a major player on the British fight scene, with barely any publicity in the written media despite the Lionhearts' fixtures being screened live by BT.

The crowd at York Hall for the winning opening match against the China Dragons last month was measured in hundreds rather than thousands - but then the capacity of what is arguably boxing's most atmospheric arena is only 1,200.

By its very nature WSB will attract just a niche audience in countries such as Britain and the United States where professional boxing proliferates and dominates.

And the jury is still out on whether GB boxers can adapt to a pro-am mix-and-match format which allows overseas boxers to be included as part of the five-man squad.

For instance, a hand injury has forced the Welsh Commonwealth Games lightweight bronze medallist Joe Cordina, to withdraw from Thursday's encounter. His replacement will be 31-year-old Detelin Dalakliev from Bulgaria, who competed at the Olympic Games in 2004 and 2012.

He has had an intense rivalry with Britain's 2012 gold medallist Luke Campbell, who narrowly beat him in London as he did at  the 2011 World Championships in Baku and the final of the 2008 European Championships.

Bulgarian Detelin Dalakliev will compete for the British team despite usually being among Luke Campbell's biggest rivals. They are pictured competing against each other at London 2012 ©AFP/Getty Images





Dalakliev joins flyweight Jack Bateson, welterweight Ekow Essuman, light-heavyweight John Newell super-heavyweight Joe Joyce in the Lionhearts team as they look to bounce back from consecutive 3-2 away defeats against the Ukraine Otamans and Morocco Atlas Lions.

For those yet to be initiated, WSB, now in its fifth season, is the only global team boxing competition where national teams go head to head in a league format. In total,16 teams compete in two groups of eight with the top three qualifying for play-offs.

The boxers compete without vests or headguards in five three-minute rounds. There are five bouts per match and scoring is through the 10-point-must-system. It is pro-boxing in all but name.

The absence of headguards is probably the most contentious aspect. It has already cost middleweight Anthony Fowler - cousin of ex-England and Liverpool footballer Robbie - tipped as Britain's best hope for boxing gold in the Rio Olympics, two nasty head wounds in successive bouts. Fortunately he won both.

Anthony Fowler has suffered several head cuts in his World Series of Boxing bouts
©Getty Images



As I have said before, I am all for young boxers earning a crust and welcome the fact that they can pick up purse money for their pains in WSB without any prospective Olympic status being affected..

The Lionhearts currently sit fourth in Group A of WSB and their most intriguing fixture is yet to come - an away match in Havana on February 20 against the Cuba Domadores, the defending champions.

Now here is an interesting development. Diplomatic exchanges are not normally associated with boxing but those that have been taking place between the long-estranged Governments of the United States and Cuba may have a dramatic effect on the sport's future.

The indications are that the apparent thawing of relationships between the two countries following talks between Barack Obama and Raul Castro may result in the lifting of travel and work restrictions which have prohibited many great stars of Cuban sport from turning professional, most notably in boxing.

Cuba has always produced great fighter's since Fidel Castro's Communist Government took power in the early 1960s. But it has been impossible for boxers from the Caribbean island nation to punch for pay as professionals without fleeing into exile, and many did. That may be about to end.

Historic talks between US President Barack Obama and Cuban counterpart Raul Castro could pave the way towards greater sporting collaboration ©Getty Images

For two sets totalling almost two-and-a-half hours, Andy Murray matched the great Serb Novak Djokovic in yesterday's Australian Open men's singles tennis final. Given how brilliantly the world number one was playing throughout, that was no mean feat.

As ever, Djokovic was sliding and scampering and scurrying around the baseline, returning balls he simply had no right to over and over again before launching a stupendous winner from some ridiculous angle. But Murray was doing exactly the same, taking the faintest whiff of every chance and refusing to be downhearted whenever an opportunity slipped away.

They were two of the very best sets of tennis I have ever seen, and, if anything, Djokovic appeared the more vulnerable of the two, clutching first his hand and then his ankle with injuries seemingly apparent only after he lost a point, and showing rare tactical naivety by charging to the net behind several timid approach shots.

With two sets on the board, I got up to have breakfast, confident I would be back in time for the business end of another spellbinding set.

Alas, by the time I returned, Djokovic had sealed the crucial break and momentum had swung once and for all. Murray, like a marathon runner who had kept up with his opponent for so long, finally faced one surge too many, and hit the wall of mental and physical exhaustion. The two lingering weaknesses in his game - his second serve and his mental fragility - were suddenly exposed and Djokovic was in no mood to take pity.

Over four sets at the Australian Open Novak Djokovic (left) was too strong for Andy Murray ©Getty Images





The third and fourth sets passed in a blaze of Djokovic winners and Murray errors and the match was wrapped up little more than an hour after the end of the second set. An eighth Grand Slam title for Djokovic, and a fifth Australian Open triumph, in comparison with six losses in eight Grand Slam finals for Murray, with four of them coming in the early-year heat of Melbourne.

If he was not from the same era as Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, Djokovic would surely already be considered among the best players of all time. His movement, agility, returning, fitness, mental strength, resilience and tactical nous is among the best in the game's history, and his lack of obvious weakness, particularly over five sets, is startling.

For Murray - lest we forget, a two time Grand Slam winner and reigning Olympic singles champion himself - it was another reminder that he remains a few steps behind the very best, at their best. While his timid second serve is a weakness which rarely proves fatal, his mental lapses are something he cannot afford. Indeed, his racquet-smashing histrionics in the third set yesterday were reminiscent of an earlier and less successful period of his career,

But, despite the disappointment, the match got me thinking about how much there is to admire in both men, just as there seems to be with Nadal and Federer and most of the other top players. As both finalists showed in their post-match comments, they are rivals on the court but respectful and, if not close friends then at least amenable, off it. There was no trash talking beforehand and no gloating afterwards, but mutual respect as they swapped compliments on the birth of Djokovic's first son and Murray's engagement to long-term girlfriend Kim Sears.

And so, with "due time" plainly elapsed, Sergey Bubka on Wednesday put an end to the waiting and declared his candidacy to succeed Lamine Diack as President of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF).

His announcement brings the mouth-watering prospect of two out-and-out heavyweights of the sport - Bubka and Britain's Sebastian Coe - slugging it out in the run-up to the IAAF Congress in August in Beijing for the right to lead athletics into a new era.

The thing is, the two rivals are not just former athletics superstars; they have taken time to absorb the many and varied arts of effective administration.

For Coe, the prime testing ground was, of course, London 2012, and he graduated summa cum laude.

Bubka, meanwhile, has been steadily building a reputation in the Olympic Movement as a committed and energetic advocate of sport's power to make the world a better place.

If he has so far been denied a moment of such transcendent triumph as Coe's appearance at the 2012 Olympic Closing Ceremony, his work on the IOC Athletes' Commission and as chair of both the Evaluation and Coordination Commissions for the inaugural Youth Olympic Games in Singapore in 2010 should not be underestimated.

All things considered, the six-month-plus campaign represents a golden opportunity for athletics to shrug off recent negative publicity and bask in the glow of what should be a genuinely stimulating contest between the two individuals who are probably best equipped for the job of taking this bedrock Olympic sport boldly and vigorously into what remains of the 21st century.

What a contrast with another sporting election currently unfolding before our astonished gaze.

Athletics legends Seb Coe (left) and Sergey Bubka (right) are going head to head to replace Lamine Diack (centre) as IAAF President ©AFP/Getty Images



In this one, a wider assortment of characters have declared their intention to run.

But, unlike the IAAF, where an ageing President, in place since 1999, has accepted that it is time to make way for new blood, at FIFA, the incumbent, first elected in 1998, fights on, notwithstanding the dreadfully tarnished image of the body he heads in certain parts of the world.

What is more, such is FIFA President Sepp Blatter's enduring grasp on the levers of power that hardly anyone expects a remotely close contest, in spite of the growing list of alternatives.

In the list of prices Tweeted this week by Graham Sharpe, bookmaker William Hill's media relations director, Blatter, 79 in March, was white-hot favourite at an almost unbackable 1/16.

If there is an opposition strategy, it seems to be to weaken the incumbent over time so as to leave him in no doubt that he should not even think about presenting himself yet again in 2019.

So, full marks to athletics for the way the succession is being managed, and C-minus (at best) to football.

And yet: let's pause for a moment to reflect on the two sports' respective positions in the world.

One is almost certainly the biggest such pursuit the planet has ever known, both in terms of the income it generates and its grip on popular imagination.

Sepp Blatter (left) replaced Joao Havelange (right) as FIFA President in 1998 and is odds on favourite to be re-elected ©Bongarts/Getty Images



The other, 26 years on from Seoul, is still mired in doping allegations and afflicted by public scepticism.

One can stop the world for a minute, once every four years, when the Olympic men's 100 metres final is on; the other does so for weeks on end when its flagship tournament, also a quadrennial affair, is in full swing.

But it also, I am confident, animates more water cooler conversations, day in day out, than any other sport and most other topics.

Indeed, with the advent of digital media, even its best-known national club game - the so-called clásico between Barcelona and Real Madrid - shows signs of going global.

Or look at the London 2012 Olympic Stadium, theatre for the exploits of local heroes such as Jess Ennis, Mo Farah and Greg Rutherford, but now being made fit for Premier League football, at great expense, to give it a shot at a viable future.

Look, for that matter, at the sports pages of my daily newspaper, just over 50 per cent of whose acreage today, Thursday, is devoted to a single sport: football.

This newspaper finds room for a solid 500 or so words, maybe more, on Luis Figo, a big-name candidate in the FIFA election who, for all that, stands a vanishingly small chance of winning.

As for Bubka confirming his challenge: 113 words of wire copy – and that includes the headline.

So, conclusion - in spite of its many problems football has got the most important bit right: the product.

Yes, there are still lacunae; yes, it remains hard, even after last year's World Cup, to imagine soccer amounting to more than the third- or fourth-biggest team sport in the United States, the world's economic powerhouse.

Athletics requires more globabl stars like Usain Bolt and street racing could become more common ©AFP/Getty Images



But there are fewer and fewer places where a winning national football team won't get a substantial proportion of the country's population glued to their TV sets when they play.

The sport's three or four biggest stars, meanwhile, are global icons on a par with anything Hollywood can offer.

In short, when you consider what football has achieved in spite of the sport's well-publicised governance issues, you realise that athletics needs to change- and preferably before the retirement of its one global megastar, Usain Bolt - or risk a future outside the cultural mainstream, except for that minute every four years when the earth's fastest human being is crowned.

Incidentally, one other area where FIFA scores over the IAAF, and this may surprise you, is financial transparency.

You can actually get a reasonable picture of FIFA's finances from its annual accounts, especially if you look at all four sets published over a World Cup cycle in conjunction with one another.

I was stunned to be told this week that the IAAF has not published its audited accounts beyond its national members since moving from London to Monte Carlo in 1984, three decades ago.

Athletics - and many other sports - could then, it is reasonable to suppose, draw valuable lessons from the global success story that is football.

But some of these lessons in how to expand your public, and how to keep them enthralled, seem at first glance rather surprising.

For one thing, football is remarkably low scoring - indeed, in a small percentage of matches, nobody scores.

This means though that in the majority of games, the outcome is in doubt almost to the end; it also means that anyone can beat anyone else on a given day, even if quality will tell over time.

At 90 minutes plus stoppage time, football matches are also rather long, albeit not by the standard of other professional team sports such as baseball, cricket (in traditional format) or American football (if you count all the intervals when the game is on hold for one reason or another).

Given that one of the most noteworthy sports phenomena of my lifetime has been the spread of mass participation marathons and half-marathons, you wouldn't think that athletics would need lessons in how short is not always best.

And maybe it doesn't; I think it is fair to say though that football's demonstrable ability to keep thousands of people regularly enthralled in events that last about as long as a regulation feature film runs somewhat counter to what appears to be the preferred approach to perking up flagging sports within the Olympic Movement.

While it is not a wholly positive development, one thing that football has done better than any other sport is to transform itself into soap opera.

Hence all those football-themed water cooler conversations: 'What happens next?' is a hugely compelling question when people care about the protagonists.

The Coe vs Ovett rivalry was one of the big draws of athletics for many fans ©Getty Images



It sustains interest, keeping society talking about you in the intervals between periodic doses of sporting action.

If people care about the competitors, they will sit just as raptly through a 10,000m race, or even I daresay a 50km walk, as a once-around-the-track 400m.

One of the most pernicious consequences once a sport develops a reputation, rightly or wrongly, for being drug-addled is that people, unless motivated by blind patriotism, cease to care.

It will be one of the most important tasks of athletics's new top man to rekindle somewhere the sort of passions that animated Coe's track rivalry with Steve Ovett back in the day.

In Britain, and I'm pretty sure well beyond, we were all rooting for one or the other as we went about our everyday business.

The inimitable Bolt has performed wonders to keep his sport on the map since his outrageous accomplishments in Beijing in 2008; he might have done even more had there been a convincing rival to play Ovett to his Coe.

Athletics, more than sports such as football and cycling, is also a prisoner of the stopwatch and the measuring tape.

A big ingredient in the excitement it promised while I was growing up was the possibility of a new world record.

While Bolt, David Rudisha of Kenya and, more recently, the French pole vaulter Renaud Lavillenie have demonstrated that excitement can most certainly still be generated via this route, and while I have not been keeping tally, I have the sense that world records have become rather too scarce in recent times.

Though when they do occur, their rarity makes them even more special, it might be a sensible juncture to look at other ways of injecting a bit of what footballer Thierry Henry would doubtless term va va voom into the sport.

An increased role for street racing using portable tracks laid temporarily in scenic city centres might be one way of achieving this.

With times hard to compare from venue to venue, it might help to throw the spotlight back onto the athletes themselves and their mano a mano racing amid well-known landmarks.

Hey, if the concept took off, you might even eventually spare Olympic organisers the headache of what to do with an 80,000-seat athletics stadium you need for about a month and a subsequent world championship if you are lucky.

No, not even I could see that happening within the time-span of a Coe or Bubka Presidency.

But it gives a flavour of the sort of fresh thinking that this ancient sport could use.