A long 12 years in the most powerful position in world sport has undoubtedly taken its toll on the rapidly aging International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Jacques Rogge.

But such a fact did not stop the 71-year-old Belgian being in jovial mood at the latest edition of SportAccord International Convention in St Petersburg today

With just over three months before he is due to officially step down as the eighth IOC President at the organisation's 125th Session in Buenos Aires on September 10 – Rogge was laughing and joking with both IOC members and the press.

On more than one occasion he declared that he would happily share his opinion on all matters, even though he claimed that in just three months what he thought would be "completely irrelevant".

It was a packed room that turned out for one of his final press conferences at the helm of the Olympic Movement. Despite a hugely busy and dramatic week on planet Olympics - in which the three bids of baseball-softball, squash and wrestling were shortlisted for inclusion on the 2020 Olympic programme - the key focus of Count Rogge's press conference was the battle to succeed him.


Six candidates - Germany's Thomas Bach, Singapore's Ng Ser Miang, Taiwan's C K Wu, Puerto Rica's Richard Carrión, Switzerland's Denis Oswald and Ukraine's Sergey Bubka - have so far come forward to replace Rogge.

The deadline for the declaration of candidacies is due on June 10 but it is unlikely any others will stand after the two most likely to join the battle - Morocco's Nawal El Moutawakel and Switzerland's René Fasel - both ruled out the prospect when I asked them.

El Moutawakel, the current IOC-vice-president, was rather humorous when I asked her, as she responded: "No I'm definitely not standing – don't you read the news?" Fasel - the President of International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) - was a little less jovial as he explained that he simply wouldn't stand against Swiss compatriot Oswald.

Rogge suggested the pair had told him as much.

"At present, there are six candidates and there could be more before the deadline," Rogge said. "But I don't expect there to be seven or eight candidates so I think it will be these six."

The IOC President revealed that "all six of them will present their manifestos in July to the Session in Lausanne" in what will be their best opportunity to lobby to their colleagues before Buenos Aires.

Predictably, however, Rogge refused to publically back any of the six horses in the race to succeed him. "All of the six candidates would be good IOC Presidents," he said, a faint smile pursing his lips. "They all have very different personalities and different ways of operating but they all love sport and all do good things for sport so they could all do the role well."

Such a statement will have been no surprise to any of the candidates.

Bach - an IOC vice-president and the man considered the front-runner to replace Rogge - told me he expects nothing less than the Belgian to remain firmly neutral throughout.


"I have worked with Jacques Rogge for over 20 years in the IOC - long before he became President," Bach told me on the side-lines in St Petersburg. "He has always been a neutral person and therefore I expect he will remain firmly neutral throughout this race. It is simply his personality."

This isn't really new information. Throughout his dozen years as IOC President - Rogge has been nothing if not a safe pair of hands. It was perhaps something the Olympic Movement knew they required following the hugely prosperous but not always controversy-free 21 year rule of Spain's flamboyant Juan Antonio Samaranch. Rogge - as Bach explains - has safely guided the IOC for the last 12 years with major incident and will hand "a strong Olympic Movement to his successor that is in very good shape."

Back to the Rogge press conference; and the IOC President revealed that his successor will not be given a salary because all six candidates said they wanted to take up the role "voluntarily".

It means that like Rogge - they will only be paid expenses - which still amount to a considerable sum. This principle though, could one-day be revised.


Rogge closed with some advice to the six – which should perhaps be heeded.

After all, the Belgian succeeded Samaranch in 2001 by seeing off four other candidates – who were Canada's Dick Pound, South Korea's Un Yong Kim, Hungary's Pal Schmitt and America's Anita DeFrantz.

So wrestling, flipped over onto its back and placed in a stranglehold by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) three months ago, has - officially - twisted free and now stands panting and ready to resume its battle for survival at the Games.

"The match is not finished," said Nenad Lalovic, the recently elected president of the international wrestling federation, FILA, after the IOC Executive Board's announcement in St Petersburg that the sport which had been earmarked to drop out of the schedule after the 2016 Rio Games had wriggled its way back into contention along with two others hoping to join the party in 2020, squash and the combined baseball/softball option.

Next, these three will go forward from St Petersburg to Buenos Aires, where the full IOC Assembly will decide on September 8 which will take the single available place at the Games in seven years' time.

Wrestling at this year's Youth Olympic Festival in Australia

"We have a second match to fight," Lalovic added. "But be careful, we are good fighters."

Wrestling's fight has certainly been backed by big battalions. When it was provisionally dropped from the core IOC sports in February, there was a mighty reaction of dismay and disapprobation from the unlikely trinity of the United States, Russia and Iran – all countries which hold wrestling, and its history of having been a key part of both the ancient and modern Olympics, dear.

No one will have been more glad to hear of the St Petersburg result than Donald Rumsfeld, the 80-year-old former US Defence Secretary who wrestled in his youth for Princeton University and the US Navy, and made an unsuccessful attempt to qualify for the 1956 Olympics.

When wrestling was voted the Olympics' Least Promising in February, the man who offered the world the unarguable opinion in 2002 that "there are known knowns" mounted a strong and closely argued defence of its position as one of the sacred sports of the Games.

Pointing out that wrestling had been involved in the first recorded Olympics of 776BC, and that it had missed only one of the modern Olympics - in 1900 - Rumsfeld characterised the sport as "universal", requiring only "an opponent and a flat surface", and adding that more than 170 nations have competed in it. "It doesn't require a golf course, a swimming pool or a horse," he went on - again, unarguably. "To exclude wrestling from the Olympics would be a tragedy for the sport, for the athletes and for the proud tradition of the Games...it has thrived through war, depression, social changes and globalisation. But the Olympic committee panel didn't see fit to include it in the 2020 Games. Something is wrong with that picture."

As a former wrestler, former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has a particular interest in defending the sport's Olympic status

The most cutting phrase in the former Defence Secretary's attack, however, was this: "Wrestling uniquely encapsulates the Olympic spirit, even though it harkens back to older and more martial virtues, rather than the arts festival and Kumbaya session that some may prefer the modern Games to be."

Rumsfeld has got himself rather tied up at this point, as arts festivals were an integral part of the ancient Games from the point when they started in 776BC, with sculptors and poets contributing to artistic competitions.

But it was the reference to "Kumbaya" which resonated most strongly. What did the combative former politician mean by this?

"Kumbaya" is a spiritual song from the 1930s, a standard campfire song which, indeed, I remember singing round a campfire as a Scout. It derives from Gullah, a creole language spoken by former slaves living on islands off South Carolina and Georgia, and the title of the song is a version of an appeal to "My Lord" to Come by Here.

Nowadays, however, the phrase Kumbaya is a shorthand used in a cynical way to denote a naively optimistic attitude or falsely moralising attitude - a fake unanimity.

An 18th century German print depicting wrestling taking place at the ancient Games in circa 600BC in front of a giant statue of Zeus

If Rumsfeld is implying that the IOC is some kind of a fake family, then it is a family in which he dearly wants wrestling to remain.

That said, the IOC spokesperson's comments at the time of the February "exclusion" have something of a falsely bright ring:

"We wanted to allow room for the renewal of the Olympic programme," they said. "This is not the end of the process, this is purely a recommendation. This is not about what's wrong with wrestling, but what is good for the Games."

Which prompts two questions.

The first: if the decision was not about what was wrong with wrestling, why has that sport felt moved to move on its old President, Raphaël Martinetti, within days of its announcement and pursued a major re-development of its competition structure to simplify it after conspicuous consultation with its athletes?

"Everybody understood what we have done," the new President announced in the relieved aftermath of the St Petersburg announcement. Indeed. They have got their act together after receiving an IOC bodyslam.

But the second question - is this actually good for the Games?

If, after Buenos Aires, it transpires that the net result of all this manoeuvring by eight international sports has been to give wrestling a boot up the backside before allowing it to doff its cap and re-enter the Olympic rings, there are going to be a lot of very unhappy and frustrated people.


The World Squash Federation President N Ramachandran, who led a presentation team which included world number one's Nicol David and Ramy Ashour, described the decision to shortlist his sport as "a huge milestone in our quest to join the Olympic Programme", and added: "I would like to thank the Executive Board for the faith it has placed in Squash."

But if squash should get the cold shoulder in September after a third consecutive campaign to join the Olympics, it is hard to believe all that cumulative hope and enthusiasm could remain intact. At some point, surely, the fixed grin which all those who knock on the IOC door are obliged to maintain will falter, to be replaced by an expression of dismay. Or even anger.

Sports, and cities, knock on that door for a variety of reasons. Many do not seriously expect to be allowed in, but calculate that their efforts will succeed in raising their profiles and reputations sufficiently to make the exercise worthwhile.

However, when the IOC asks sports, and cities, to make such enormous efforts, over and over again, only to find that rounds of secret voting maintain a barricade to their ambitions, then it treads a very fine line.

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.

With a packed sporting calendar of mega-events and other prestigious sporting competitions coming up in Qatar, Hazem Galal, a partner at world-leading professional services firm PwC, is sure to be kept busy facing the the challenges and opportunities that the huge sporting events coming to the booming oil-rich state during the next decade.

Galal has recently switched his base from Rio de Janeiro, where he was responsible for collaborating with State and Local Government to assist in attracting investment in relation to the mega sporting events in the Brazilian city - next year's FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games - to Qatar, where he will focus on the successful implementation of Qatar's ambitious Vision 2030 plan.

There are ambitious plans for the controversial 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, from the seemingly-ludicrous notion of remote-controlled artificial clouds to keep the scorching Arabian heat at bay to temporary floating hotels and man-made islands crammed with high-tech facilities.

AIBA requested – and were given – two tickets for last Saturday's (May 25) blockbuster world super-middleweight title fight between Carl Froch and Mikkel Kessler at London's O2 Arena. The obliging promoter, Eddie Hearn, smilingly suggested the representatives of what we used to call "amateur" boxing's international ruling body wanted to learn how the professionals went about putting on a great show.

Which it was. But was the presence of Dr C K Wu's emissaries also a further in indication of AIBA's serious intention to muscle in on the pro game?

Rightly or wrongly, Dr Wu seems determined to have a piece of the professional action, indeed ultimately to control the whole boxing match.

It can never happen the way he wants, of course; the professional promoters will see him off. But they are very much aware of the threat.

Hearn himself is dismissive, describing AIBA's World Series Boxing (WSB) and forthcoming ultra-ambitious pro series APB (AIBA Pro Boxing) as "an accident waiting to happen".

"These people do not have the knowledge or the wherewithal to organise professional boxing as the world understands it. Basically they are still amateurs," he says.


Britain's long-standing premier promoter, Frank Warren concurs, telling insidethegames: "The whole concept is ridiculous. Crazy. It is neither practical nor feasible. What we will end up with is just another label in an overcrowded alphabet soup. Or a monopoly.

"I see that Dr Wu also wants to run the Olympics [the Taiwanese billionaire boss of AIBA is a candidate to succeed President Jacques Rogge]. I'd like to know what the IOC [International Olympic Committee] think of his idea to be the emperor of world boxing too. How does that fit in with the Olympic concept?

"I gather he wants the Olympics open to all professional boxers as long as they are under his jurisdiction. But the Olympics are not the be-all and end-all. Think of the great fighters who have competed in the Games. In Britain alone we have Naseem Hamed, Ricky Hatton Nigel Benn, Chris Eubank and Frank Bruno. And what about the scores of top Mexicans who never took part?

"Dr Wu should concentrate on what he does best, running his own show and leaving the real professionals to concentrate on their business."


That is exactly the sentiment of the pro World Boxing Council (WBC) President Dr José Sulaimán, who has been forced to come out counter-punching AIBA's proposals by threatening legal action against both the boxing body and the IOC under international anti-trust monopoly laws if AIBA become the sole conduit for professionals to box in the Olympics.

He also says the Mexico City-based WBC, principal of the disparate fistful of pro governing bodies, plans to launch a professional World Cup, a 32-week tournament this summer similar in nature to WSB and by the end of the year and will start their "Diamond Gloves" programme for young amateurs thinking of turning pro.

The philosophy now seems to be: if you invade our territory, we'll pinch some of yours.

Seconds out! The gloves – Diamond and otherwise – are off as the war of the boxing worlds commences.

Ideally, of, course, all boxing should have one universal governing body but the nature of the sport and its finances – a fight between Froch and America's last Olympic boxing champion Andre Ward, for example, would be worth £30 million ($45 million/€35 million) – means it never will.

Can you really imagine AIBA staging that?

Attempts to bring it under the same umbrella are not new. In Britain there have been on-off discussions between the pro British Boxing Board of Control (BBBofC) and the home amateur associations for years. Nothing has materialised.

It is true that the sport's promotional hierarchy could be changing. Dr Sulaimán, like top US promoters Don King and Bob Arum, is an octogenarian (all are 81). Warren is 61.


But there are young kids on the block waiting to take over, like Warren's sons Francis and George, and Arum's son-in-law Todd DuBoef and of course Matchroom's Hearn, the 33-year-old son of global multi-sports impresario Barry has already made his name.

All are well versed in the pro game, and will want things to stay the way they are

As does Richard Schaefer, Swiss chief executive of Oscar de la Hoya's Golden Boy, who has been quick to vehemently deny suggestions emanating from AIBA's Lausanne headquarters that he was willing to strike a deal with Dr Wu.

Offering young boxers an alternative route to a few bob is fair enough, even commendable, but any party attempting to monopolise the situation clearly is not.

In any case surely AIBA has more immediate concerns, in particular the news that, predictably, the Blazers, particularly those adorned with the badges of the Scottish and English amateur boxing associations, have won the spiteful internecine battle for control of amateur boxing in Britain, ousting Derek Mapp after five constructive years as chair of the British Amateur Boxing Association (BABA).


It is a chaotic move which may well threaten the future, both financially and structurally, of the sport in Britain, and AIBA is right to express serious concern, especially as Amateur Boxing Scotland, main instigators of the coup, are themselves facing allegations of not being fit for purpose.

It creates a mess that will infuriate the Sports Minister, Hugh Robertson, and Government-backed UK Sport which, as insidethegames reports, could now withhold substantial Olympic funding until and unless the sport puts its house in order.

However, questions need to be asked of UK Sport as to why they stood back and allowed this situation to develop. It is an issue new chair Rod Carr promptly needs to address.

I believe Mapp did a first-rate job (count the British medals and look at the world-envied set-up in Sheffield) and that his departure is a retrograde step.

Ultimately, it might even lead to the loss of head coach Rob McCracken – who was so instrumental in his other role as Carl Froch's corner Svengali in Saturday night's great victory.

He will surely go if the Blazers insist on returning to the dinosaur days when they had selectors picking the squads and not the coach.

And what now of the future of BABA's prize asset, the Olympic super-heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua Dr Wu was hoping to tempt as a star attraction for WSB and APB?

This upheaval may well clinch a decision to join forces with the proper pros, following fellow London 2012 medallists Luke Campbell and Anthony Ogogo.

Much may now depend on who takes over from Mapp. In an earlier article here I suggested that, in the event of Mapp's demise Lord Colin Moynihan, the former British Olympic Association (BOA) chair, would be a suitable candidate. But he quickly informed me: "Thanks, but no thanks."

After the way Derek Mapp has been treated, you can understand why.

Alan Hubbard is a 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 Games, 10 Commonwealth Games, several football World Cups and world title fights from Atlanta to Zaire.

When an athlete who has just served a suspension for doping returns to the sport and immeidately does it again, you know you've got problems. It's a situation that strikes at the very heart of credibility in world sport and when it becomes clear that punishment has failed to rehabilitate, we really are on a rocky road to somewhere worse than nowhere.

It was announced last week that Italian cyclist Danilo Di Luca had failed an out-of-competition drugs test and was immediately removed from the Giro d'Italia by his team.

This is a guy with history. Back in 2009, Di Luca was given a two-year ban following a positive test at the Giro d'Italia. He did get it reduced by nine months after agreeing to collaborate with the authorities and on April 26 this year, signed for the Italian team Fantini-Selle. Three days later, he was randomly tested and last week was confirmed as having failed the test. 

Fantini-Selle immediately sacked him and distanced themselves from his activities. The team will seek compensation from Di Luca under the terms of his contract for damages caused. The team manager has stated that they never wanted Di Luca in the team and only signed the rider due to pressure from one of the team sponsors.

So who's to blame? Well clearly the rider himself is right up there, but it appears that Di Luca was forced upon the team by a generous sponsor. It appears then, that this is all about money - and to hell with the consequences. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, it's a conclusion that doesn't exactly make me Sherlock Holmes but this is scary stuff because it reflects the true depth of a massive problem.


Fantini-Selle say they were pretty much forced to take him by their main sponsor. You can imagine the scenario as the guy holding the purse strings demands "his man" is added and the team principal complies because he has no choice if he wants to keep his backer, his team and his job. There is no suggestion that the sponsors knew Di Luca was still doping but the point is that blind faith appears to have dug a deeper hole for the sport that they're all involved in.

Whatever might be said in hindsight about being sorry and making a mistake, it's time sponsors took on a greater level of corporate social responsibility when it comes to indulging the glamour world of professional sport. Should athletes who are offered redemption be subjected to rigorous testing by a governing body before they're handed their second chance?

Should sponsors insist - or be forced to confirm - they know their man is clean before allowing him (in this case) back on a bike again? For me the answers are obvious and there is one heck of a precedent that should serve as the ultimate case study.

Marco Pantani was a cyclist who excited the fans with his attacking style. He won the Giro and the Tour de France in the same year but he succumbed to performance-enhancing and recreational drugs. Although he never actually tested positive, the rumours were rife and he eventually went into a depression and died from acute cocaine poisoning.


Throughout all this, the sponsor told Pantini's team that without Pantini there was no sponsorship. He continued riding to fulfil his obligations - and it killed him.

Thankfully, Di Luca (who's self styled nickname is the "Killer" by the way) didn't kill himself but the point is, sponsors are as much a part of this issue as the riders. The International Cycling Union (UCI) themselves are alleged to have been complicit in Lance Armstrong's doping activities and while not completely proven, the suggestion is they turned a blind eye because he was the star of the show and worth millions to them.

Danilo Di Luca is the latest example of a problem that is far deeper than just the athlete and his doctor. So until there's a plan that involves everyone and one that everyone signs up to, people will wonder if the athlete holding the trophy is truly legit. And for those who actually are, it's a complete disgrace.

If a sponsor turns a blind eye or chooses results over basic ethical standards, they too have blood on their hands.

Jaimie Fuller is the chairman of Skins and the founder of pressure group Change Cycling Now, whose members include Greg LeMond, Paul Kimmage and David Walsh. To follow him on Twitter click here.

In a brief media release this week, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) shed a little more light on the announcement in St Petersburg next week of the final shortlist of sports bidding to make the 2020 Olympic Games.

Of course, the eight bids at present are baseball/softball, karate, roller sports, sports climbing, squash, wakeboard, wushu and now wrestling - who were put into the mix after being controversially recommended for exclusion from the list of core sports after Rio 2016 by the IOC Executive Board in February.

The IOC Executive Board will again take centre stage on Wednesday (May 29), when they decide which sports will make the final shortlist.

The release explained that from 1.30pm to 8pm Moscow Standard Time (MSK), all eight will present to the Executive Board at the Lenexpo Exhibition Complex to state their case before the Board votes to decide on the shortlist.

Then, at 8.30pm MSK, there will be a "press briefing with the IOC director of communications Mark Adams, including announcement of shortlist of sport(s) for 2020 Olympic programme."

What is far less clear is how many sports will be shortlisted for the 125th IOC Session in Buenos Aires in September, where the full IOC membership will vote on which one will be included in the 2020 Olympics.

If running can claim to be the most primitively important element of those which make up what we now describe as athletics - quick getaways on foot were more than desirable for our forbears in the days of rampaging woolly mammoths - then the javelin, the implement of hunting and war, takes the silver medal position. There is a deep and instinctive appeal to this latter-day Olympic sport.

Back in the days of the ancient Greece Olympics, javelin throwers had to deal with a technical element that is no longer a part of the event - a leather thong, in the form of a loop, attached to the implement at whatever point the thrower found most advantageous. This loop enabled a better grip and helped produce extra power in the launch. It could also impart a spin to the javelin which stabilised and lengthened its flight.

As well as the throw for distance, which closely resembles the competitions of today, the ancient Greeks also liked to stage a trickier variant - that is, throwing the javelin at a target. From the back of a horse. A galloping horse.

Javelin throwers at the ancient Olympics had leather thongs on the spear to help their throw. But then they sometimes had to throw from the back of a horse...

At this month's IAAF Diamond League meeting in Doha, Norway's double Olympic javelin champion Andreas Thorkildsen paid unwitting tribute to this tradition as he was pictured in pre-event publicity event in traditional Arab dress and brandishing his javelin on top of an Arab steed.

As he explained afterwards, there was an element of chance about this image, as he had originally been offered the opportunity to have his photograph taken on a camel, an assignment which would also have required travelling a distance of around 50 miles (not on the camel, but in the car taking him to the camel, just to be clear).

Anyway, the Norwegian had opted for the four-legged beasts without the hump, and he looked more than comfortable in the pictures displayed ahead of the main event. But then he didn't have to gallop, or aim his javelin at at anything other than the photographer in front of him.

Thorkildsen endured a horrible year in 2012 as nagging injuries undermined his effort to earn a third consecutive Olympic title in London - with gold going to the unheralded world junior champion from Trinidad and Tobago, Keshorn Walcott.


The Norwegian is clearly on a mission to return to the top of his event, and as part of his preparations for the Doha event - the first in this year's IAAF Diamond League series - he spent time - and indeed around $20,000 (£13,000/€15,500) of his own money - establishing a training camp for himself in Qatar, where he took full advantage of the dazingly-vast indoor facility of the Aspire Dome and what he described as perfect throwing conditions in the warmth of the early evening (as opposed to the oven-heat of midday).

It is a truism that the more one learns about anything, the more interesting it becomes. But it is also true that the more one learns about anything, the more complex it becomes.

Talking to Thorkildsen about his event - one which patently enthrals him - it was fascinating to hear him describe how the dynamic has changed since the international authorities fundamentally altered the balance of the javelin in order to check the ever-increasing distances being achieved, distances which were threatening to see spectators at the far end of the stadium at risk of impalement in the near future.

As he explained, the key shift brought about by the alterations made by the IAAF in 1986 and again in 1991 was that throwers were better favoured by a following wind rather than a headwind.

Double Olympic champion Andreas Thorkildsen throwing at this month's IAAF Doha Diamond League event

Thorkildsen held his hand over the table as he illustrated the point (as it were). His fingers tilted up as he showed how, pre-change, a headwind would help to hold up the tip of the javelin, lengthening its flight before it dipped down.

Now the Norwegian had his hand on the table to illustrate the thrower, with his other hand indicating the direction of following winds. But it is not just any old following wind which best speeds the spear these days. As his gestures make clear, throwers best benefit from a following wind that comes in on their throwing side.

Thus Germany's world champion, Matthias de Zordo, gets an extra boost as a left-handed thrower if the prevailing wind is streaming in from behind him but moving left to right. Such conditions tend to steer his throws into the vector, controlling his occasional tendency to throw wide on the left.

Conversely, Thorkildsen and most of his fellow throwers are happiest when a slight right to left tailwind comes in, correcting any tendency they might have to miss the vector on the right side, and assisting their attempts in flight.

There are so many elements to this hugely technical track-and-field event, but part of its fascination derives from this random, natural factor which can so profoundly alter the destiny of those who have sought to micro-manage their training and performance down to the last stretching exercise and nutritional supplement. You can train in the highest of high-tech environments, as Thorkildsen and many of his rivals do, but in the end, as a javelin thrower, you are subject to the winds of chance.

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.

It was a typically business-like declaration, made not in the hallowed chambers of the Sorbonne in Paris, but with a two-page media release at the start of the New York trading day.

Richard Carrión, Puerto Rican chairman of the International Olympic Committee (IOC)'s Finance Commission is to run for the IOC Presidency.

Neither the media release, nor an exclusive telephone interview with insidethegames left room for any doubt that this was a businessman or that we were talking about a multibillion dollar business, albeit a very special one.

We spoke the language of efficiency and effectiveness, of leveraging resources and spreading best practice.

Sentence two of the release included the information that: "Carrión has headed negotiations of Olympic TV broadcast rights for the Americas, Asia, Africa and Australia that aggregate to more than $8 billion (£5 billion/€6 billion) in funding revenues for the Olympic Movement."


But the 60-year-old banker also sounded a strong cautionary note, just in case anyone should be thinking that the Movement's staggering renaissance over recent decades might have made its continued success inevitable.

"I think the IOC/Olympic Movement is in great standing," he told me, in one of those statements you just know will be followed by a "but" or similar qualification.

However: "I think when things are going great is the moment to take a look.

"This great position we have is not guaranteed...

"We have to be aware the world is going to change.

"We have to make that change work for the IOC, for the betterment of the Olympic Movement.

"We have to be ahead of the curve here or we will become less relevant to the youth of today."

Having participated in so many negotiations, Carrión is acutely aware that one of the biggest uncertainties is the nature of future media innovation – something the IOC simply has to call right, given the huge slice of the Movement's income attributable to the sale of broadcasting rights.


"Clearly the world of media is changing very quickly," he said, describing the various devices his son has on the go when they watch a televised basketball match together.

As he acknowledges, the direction of the evolution might end up channelling even more millions in the direction of sports event owners, but – and it is a big "but": "The digital revenue model is unclear...

"If more and more people are consuming on a digital platform, it is unclear that the advertisers will continue to pay for the broadcast."

Carrión lists four further threats or challenges confronting the Movement.

● Deep economic and fiscal strains in many countries which could impact negatively on sport;

● the increasing complexity of staging the Games and the impact this might have on future bidders;

● the rise of illegal betting on sports; and

● the growing rate of inactivity and obesity among young people.

He puts forward a number of ideas for addressing some of these challenges.

The Movement's United Nations observer status could pave the way, along with new partnerships with non-governmental organisations, he argues, for the IOC to achieve a range of sports development objectives.

"Our projects should have long-term strategies and be result-oriented," he said.


He would also like to see a new special fund created, complementary to Olympic Solidarity, to be used for sports education and development programmes.

He is keen for the Movement to play a role in the sharing of best practice on ways of combating obesity and getting kids active.

"I think we have to use the talent we have both in-house and in our membership to try to produce templates that will serve for communities to activate their youth," he told me.

He would like to consider bringing more functions relating to the organisation of a Games in-house.

In particular, he feels, there could be an argument for keeping a small corps of key people on the ground with the host city as it goes through the seven-year process of preparing for a Games.

This would be in addition to the regular visits effected by the relevant Coordination Commission.

He emphasised, however, that he was not "advocating bloating the management structure.

"I am advocating looking at things where we spend a lot of money and asking, 'Can we do this more efficiently?'

He did not use the expression himself, but he also left me with the clear impression he would like to sweat the Movement's very considerable assets rather more.

"We need to be more efficient and leverage the resources we have," he told me.


Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS) has what he termed "a treasure trove of images" that could be put to more intensive use.

He would also like to see "an even more active participation" from IOC members themselves.

"If you look at the membership, we have some extraordinary people there," he told me.

"I don't know of any organisation in the world that has that level of people.

"They are important within their countries and many are well-known outside them.

"I think we need to get more counsel from these people.

"I think we have this enormous asset.

"I just have an aversion to having an asset and not using it...

"People who are IOC members have a passion for this.

"They are drawn to this because they have a passion for sport."

Carrión said he had an open mind on the question of whether member visits to bidding cities should be reinstated – "but it is definitely not at the top of my agenda".

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, the 2010 World Cup and London 2012. Owen's Twitter feed can be accessed here.

The Olympics and Paralympics may be done and dusted but together with the golden glow of the aftermath, the spirit of 2012 lingers on. Not least among sport's little people.

I have written here before about the merits of the Panathlon and make no apology for doing so again, for in times when we are satiated by big-time sport, its greed and its scandals, it is heartening how a worthy event brutally kicked in the whatsits by a political football keeps bouncing back.

Testimony of this is that last week 162 disabled schoolchildren from seven English counties competed at Stoke Mandeville Stadium, birthplace of the Paralympic Games, in a special double edition of the Panathlon Challenge.

Berkshire won gold for the second consecutive year, while a dramatic finish saw Oxfordshire clinch victory in their first ever Panathlon – a "mini Paralympics" for these kids.


Not that you will have seen this reported in the national media, or that the Panathlon people would have expected it to be.

They have been quietly soldiering on since the then six-year-old Panathlon – the Greek word for a group of sporting disciplines – virtually went to the wall in 2005 when the Labour Government pulled the plug on its funding fearing it might diminish Prime Minister Gordon Brown's "baby", the UK School Games.

The original highly popular Panathlon Challenge, for both able-bodied and disabled youngsters, had been born out of concern for the alarming decline in competitive sport in schools nationwide.

The schools had been selected for the event because of their lack of sports facilities or a comprehensive sports programme.

The entire venture looked a basket case. But thanks to the perseverance, hard work and the commercial endeavours of its former chairman John Hymers and current director Ashley Iceton it managed to struggle on, concentrating solely on its disability aspect, thanks to a couple of charities, providing such unrivalled opportunities in sport for disabled youngsters that it won a Sportsmatch Award.

Now Panathlon provides multisport competitions for over 3,000 disabled children each year. Over 200 schools are involved in 2013, with 15,000 active hours of sport provided to disabled children.


Initially focused across London and the southeast, the charity is now branching out to provide sport to hundreds more kids across the country through events like that at Stoke Mandeville, run in association with the English Federation of Disability Sport (EFDS), of which Panathlon is a member.

"Panathlon are doing a fabulous job and we are just delighted to be working with them and seeing the benefits that it brings," EFDS chairman Charles Reed says. "Their events are always very inspirational, great fun and they send a lot of people away with big smiles on their faces."

The ultimate aim is to get every child, regardless of their disability into a multitude of sports.

The Panathlon would like to expand to beyond its current areas of activities but as Iceton says: "We gets lots of requests to run the Challenge from all over the country but we are a relatively small charity and are having to turn people away because we don't have a pot of cash to do more."

He is one of two full-time organisers, with two part-timers and hundreds of volunteers. "We tend to concentrate on the most physically impaired kids and those with considerable learning difficulties," he told insidethegames.

The Challenge features a number of Paralympic sports though there is no actual pathway through to the Paralympics. However, the hope is that some might make it eventually.

"It is not really about talent ID," Iceton explained. "It is about kids who are missing out as they have no other access to any sport.

"We still find an attitude in some schools of 'well, these kids can't do this' but we come along and say 'actually, yes they can' and we arrange for them to be bussed to a sports centre or to play against another school."

One of the most admirable aspects of the Panathlon is that it encourages able-bodied schoolchildren to train as coaches or officials for their less able counterparts. "The response from youngsters wanting to do this has been fantastic," says Iceton. "Some now even run the events."

The past seven years have seen a relentless pursuit for funding via sponsorship or charitable donations and Iceton's team have managed to produce the goods for an average annual budget of under £300,000 ($455,000/€353,000).


This included a BoJo bonus – London Mayor Boris Johnson chipping in some £83,000 ($126,000/€98,000) before the Olympics from his Sports Legacy Plan which has gone towards helping disabled athletes aged between eight and 18 to compete in designer sports such as boccia, bean bag throwing, table cricket, new age kurling, polybat, football and athletics.

This windfall was engineered by the former Labour Sports Minister Kate Hoey, who is the Mayor's Commissioner for Sport. She has always been a great Panathlon supporter and with current Tory Sports Minister Hugh Robertson tabled a protest motion in Parliament when her Government stopped the funding. She says: "I try every year to come to a Panathlon event and it just seems to get bigger and better than ever. Without Panathlon, many of these children would not get a chance to take part in any sort of sporting activity, so I'm very keen. Investing in the Panathlon Challenge is something that has proved that it works and it is run very well. For a very small amount of money you can make a lot of young people and a lot of families very happy."

Among those helping to inspire disabled youngsters to get involved in sport themselves is Paralympian swimming star Liz Johnson, now Panathlon's official ambassador.


Johnson, 27, who has a gold, silver and bronze medal from the last three Paralympic Games, recently attended the central London final at the Westway Sports Centre, tucked underneath the A40 flyover, a world away from the Olympic Park's Aquatic Centre where she won her s SB6 100 metres breaststroke bronze last year. She said: "I always love to come down to Panathlon. There is so much going on and the kids get so much out of it.

"The best thing about Panathlon is that it gives kids then opportunity to try competitive sports they might not otherwise get in their school environment. It makes sport accessible for these children to obtain those kinds of skills.

"Sport did so much for me. It opened so many doors. It helped me realise so much potential and skills outside of swimming. Panathlon provides that opportunity for everybody to have that accessibility and hopefully gain something, which is why it's so important."

However, as Iceton points out: "Since the Paralympics though people have greater understanding of disability sport my phone hasn't been ringing from big sponsors wanting to come on board."

So is there any chance of renewed funding via Government agencies? It seems unlikely.

"Things are better under the Coalition with the money being put into primary schools but for us the problem is how to access that money," says Iceton. "To get any funding out of Sport England we have to create bids for certain age groups and there is a lot hassle involved. It is all rather blurred so we haven't gone down that route."


Had Paralympic icon Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson been given the Sport England chair doubtless she would have had a natural empathy with the Panathlon cause. Let's hope new incumbent Nick Bitel will take a fresh look at the situation, and favourably consider some of the Panathlon achievements worthy reward:

• 2,375 disabled competitors in 2013 so far – will be way over 3,000 by summer

• 301 schools involved to date – special, primary and secondary with mainstreamed children

• 53 competitions planned during academic year 2012-2013

• Will be 20,000 plus active hours of participation by end of summer

• 12 counties involved outside London, most "home" counties but now as far away as Wiltshire, Merseyside, and new this year, Middlesbrough

• 356 Young Leaders trained and qualified in a range of sports

• New sports included this year for the first time, swimming, VI football and wheelchair tennis

As Iceton adds: "There is no-one else out there doing what we are doing. For these kids it is their only opportunity to get involved in sport. However, we could do so much more if we had more investment."

Quite. If not Sport England, is there a philanthropic corporate sponsor with few bob to spare that hasn't already been spent on prawn sandwiches for the VIP punters in the hospitality boxes?

The All-London London Panathlon Final takes place on June 19 at Westway Sports Centre, 1 Crowthorne Road, London W10 6RP between 11am and 2.30pm.

Alan Hubbard is a 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 Games, 10 Commonwealth Games, several football World Cups and world title fights from Atlanta to Zaire.

After years of discussing the successor to International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Jacques Rogge in the shadows, the candidates have started to emerge into the light as the crucial vote for the most powerful position in world sport looms closer.

The vote is due to take place on September 10 at the 125th IOC Session in Buenos Aires during a gathering that will also see the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic host city announced and a sport voted onto the programme for those Games (or if it is wrestling, retained).

But if you ask any IOC member in private, electing the ninth President of the Olympic Movement is by far the most important vote they feel they will cast in the Argentinian capital.

The man everyone is discussing as the favourite to succeed Rogge, who was elected at the Session in Moscow in 2001 to succeed Juan Antonio Samaranch, is Germany's Thomas Bach.

One of the worst kept secrets in the Olympic Movement finally came out last week when the Montreal 1976 fencing champion became the first candidate to officially declare that he will stand to replace Rogge at a hastily organised press conference in Frankfurt.

Bach has been talked about as the most likely successor Rogge for several years but the status of early front-runner is not always a good thing in a race such as this and the German no longer appears overwhelming favourite he was just six months ago.

The favourite he probably remains though, largely because the IOC is a Eurocentric organisation with 43 of the current 101 IOC members hailing from the continent and seven of the eight Presidents so far having come from Europe; the exception being American Avery Brundage, who served from 1952 to 1972.

But even if some of the media are already proclaiming him the victor, Bach knows it will be the 100 other IOC members that will be of sole importance to his bid.

"It is very much about convincing the individual members rather than the worldwide public at large," Bach said upon unveiling his candidacy, clearly aware that the majority of those who have installed him a favourite, including several bookmakers, are completely irrelevant.

Next on the list is Singapore's Ng Ser Miang, yesterday became the second candidate to officially declare that he will stand to replace Rogge with a press conference in Paris.

This, though, wasn't any old press conference.

Ng's cleverly constructed gathering took place at Paris-Sorbonne University; the exact location where the founder of the Modern Olympics Baron Pierre de Coubertin held the first ever Olympic Congress in 1894 in a historic gathering that led to the revival of Games in Athens two years later.

Coubertin was the longest serving IOC President, holding the position for 29 years from 1896 to 1925, and in his bid to become the Frenchman's latest successor, Ng unveiled a vision that the founder of the Modern Olympics would be proud of.

Ng spoke most prominently on youth, saying: "We must harness the collective power of Olympism for the benefit of the world's youth - and we must refocus our efforts on the education of youth through the values of sport, for they are tomorrow's living Olympic legacies."

Already he is sending out his manifesto to the IOC members and that coupled with the symbolic location of the announcement, shows he was perhaps more prepared than Bach, whose Frankfurt press conference was rather rushed and who is still drafting up the final points of his own manifesto, which won't be made available to the members until next month.

Early in 2009 I rang Peter Eriksson when he was at his home in Ottawa - to which he is presumably returning once he has seen through his truncated duties as head coach for UK Athletics, a position he has just announced he will be leaving at some point this year despite having signed a five-year contract.

At that time the Swede was about to take up position as head coach for Britain's Paralympic track and field athletes, with the London 2012 Games looming, and his thoughts on the task ahead proved to be highly relevant to the results he went on to achieve.

As Eriksson was due to be working with the then head coach of the Olympic athletics team, Charles van Commenee, I mentioned to him the incident at the 2004 Athens Games which did much to define the Dutchman's "4-real" status as a coach when he reduced his heptathlete Kelly Sotherton to tears and called her "a wimp" after she had narrowly failed to win silver rather than bronze.

The Swede gave a chuckle that came all the way down the line - or whatever it is these days - from Canada, before announcing: "I don't think that's my style."

But as he explained his approach to what was due to become an increasingly high-profile task in the course of the following three years, it became clear that Eriksson was hardly likely to be a less exacting taskmaster than the Dutchman.


"I want to make sure the team performs better in 2012 and beyond. I think there's a lot of things we can do that are going to make a difference. We have to look at ourselves and say: 'What do we need to do to win more medals?'

"We have to ask if athletes have medal potential or whether they need to be replaced by up-and-coming talents. We need to make sure they have the right support, the right coach. Whatever we can do to help them we will do.

"But UK Sport is investing in medals, not subsidising athletes. Everybody has to be sure of what is expected of them. If athletes can't live up to the expectations that have been set then this is not the place to be."

Eriksson made it clear that two of the major factors which had persuaded him to take up his British task were the leadership within UK Athletics, and - frankly - the fact that Britain's performance at the next Paralympics could only get better.

"When I looked at Britain's medal count at the last two Paralympics I was surprised they were not higher up the rankings," Eriksson said.

"We will be optimising our performance by 2012, but what we doing 2016 could be the biggest definition. In the long term, Britain should be up in the top three medal positions. There is no doubt about that. To do that, if Beijing was anything to go by, we will need to be winning more than 25 medals.

"The medal history for the UK has gone backwards a little bit. In 2000 the count was 47 medals. In 2004 the total was 17, and it was the same in Beijing.

"Britain shouldn't be in that position, and that is something I have wondered about for a while. Why did it drop down so much? In the past there have been more medal events to contest, which may be a factor. But it doesn't mean Britain should go from 47 medals to 17. This is a challenge."

As we have seen, Eriksson rose to that challenge exceptionally well. The London 2012 Paralympic performance in athletics rose sharply as home athletes rose to the task of producing peak efforts in front of packed crowds.

David Weir wins his fourth gold of the London Paralympics, where the host athletes won 11 golds and 29 medals

Standing in the Mall after David Weir had won the wheelchair marathon, Eriksson was asked to reflect upon the British Paralympian's performance. He was clearly satisfied - but as he recalled the medals which had been won it had to be pointed out to him by those press gathered around him that he had forgotten a couple of golds. Such riches...

In the end Britain's Paralympic track and field athletes managed that task of finishing third overall in the table, with 29 medals, of which 11 were gold. Weir, who contributed four of those golds, had been the only athletics gold medallist for Britain at the previous Paralympics.

The measure of Eriksson's achievements is the measure of how greatly he will be missed by UK Athletics as they look ahead to the Rio 2016 Games. In his case, the usual politician's line about resigning in order to spend more time with their family is actually true.

"Words cannot describe how disappointed I am to take this step," Eriksson saidd. "There is no bigger job in athletics anywhere in the world. "At present I have no plans, but I accept that if I am to take any other job in sport it will be a step down.

"Athletics in Great Britain receives the best possible support through the National Lottery, and that, coupled with the performance structure here means it is every coach's dream to hold this position.

"However, no job is more important than family and children, and personal circumstances mean that mine need me to be back in Canada."

The total budget for the Canadian athletes at the 2008 Paralympics was £350,000 ($530,000/€415,000) - almost 20 times less than the £6.6 million ($10.1 million/€7.8 million) of UK Sport funding earmarked for athletics in the Paralympic cycle leading to London 2012.

So Eriksson will know very well the relative limitations he might face in taking up a similar job in his adopted home. It looks, nevertheless, as if Britain's loss is about to become Canada's gain as he returns to the country where he has guided Canada's wheelchair athletes to 119 medals in seven Paralympics, most notably Canadian Chantal Petitclerc, who took five golds at both the Athens and Beijing Games.

And don't bet against him being effective again in a Paralympic or Olympic arena. As he said in 2009: "I'm competitive in everything I do."

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.

What is it about boxing that causes so many black eyes and bloody noses? Out of the ring, that is.

The verbal punches now being thrown in the internecine scrap in what used to be known as amateur boxing may end up harming those the warring officials are supposed to protect: the boxers themselves.

This bitter "battle of the blazers" is seriously endangering the future of Britain's hugely-successful Olympic boxing set-up, particularly the distressing fact that the sport could, lose over £10 million ($15 million/€12 million) of its funding in the lead-up to Rio 2016.

It has certainly provoked a lively debate.

But the loss may not only be monetary. The former Labour Sports Minister Richard Caborn is threatening to resign as chairman of the Amateur Boxing Association of England (ABAE) following a move to depose his close friend and one-time political ally Derek Mapp as head of umbrella body the British Amateur Boxing Association (BABA).


In a nutshell, the in-fighting centres around a bid by the home boxing associations, notably the Scots and English, to have a greater say in the governance of the sport which Mapp, a former Sport England chair, helped revolutionise at elite level when founding BABA after the Beijing 2008 Olympics.

The domestic associations claim their role, and that of constituent clubs, has been diminished by the advent of BABA and want more control over the sport and its funding.

Led by Amateur Boxing Scotland, they have called for an Extraordinary General Meeting to be held before May 28 when it seems certain Mapp will be forced out.

His removal will surely have ramifications at GB Boxing's headquarters in Sheffield, where any major upheaval could lead to the departure of well-regarded professional head coach Rob McCracken, whom Mapp appointed.


I do not believe he will stay if Mapp is replaced by a "blazer", as now seems probable.

It could also affect GB's preparations for this year's European and World Championships and future participation in the World Series of Boxing (WSB) tournament, which rewards boxers with substantial prize money.

Of course, there is more to it than that, but basically it is about a pervading resentment towards Mapp from antagonists within the game because they say he is not "a boxing person".

Now I feel a personal involvement here because it was me who actually introduced him to the sport when he was chair of Sport England six years ago. He admitted he had no boxing background but wished to learn more about it.

So I arranged a meeting between him and the then ABAE chief executive Paul King, and we embarked on a tour of London amateur clubs.

Mapp, clearly impressed by the dedication of all those involved and the merits of boxing as an antidote to crime, instantly fell in love with it and the rest, as they say, is history.

Soon afterwards Mapp, very much his own man, felt forced to quit as Sport England chief following a showdown with James Purnell, then Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, over plans for the future direction of the body, saying at the time: "I was mandated to produce an agenda which I was delivering on but now that has been changed and I have been dumped on."


It appears he is about to be dumped on again, for he tells us: "They [the Home Associations] are hell bent on removing me as chairman and a break-up of the BABA structure, and it looks as if they are going to win. It is the old story of the blazers wanting more power. It is all very tiresome. If they don't want me then I am not going to fight them. There are more appreciative people I can work with."

But he warns: "There are a few more episodes of this story to come yet."

What used to be amateur boxing has long been among the most blazerati-dominated of Olympic sports but it needs to be careful what it wishes for.

The 62-year-old Mapp says his only concern is to sustain the stability of GB Boxing but he certainly has other fish to fry - literally, you could say as a successful a restaurateur; a ubiquitous multi-millionaire businessman he made his fortune in the brewery business and was recently appointed High Sheriff of Derbyshire.

But there can be no argument that his commercial expertise and commitment to the sport has helped make British Boxing the envy of the world.

And I can say that as one who has had differences with him both when he ran Sport England and in his early days with BABA when I considered the axing of head coach Terry Edwards after a terrific Olympic Games in Beijing an unnecessarily brutal act.

His critics may allege he is "too autocratic" but he gets results.


Amateur Boxing Scotland chair Richard Thomas says: "While I have a lot of respect for Derek Mapp this has always been about boxing people taking ownership of the sport. The sport has to modernise but you must not leave behind the people who have been running it.

"He is a fantastic businessman and very charismatic but at the end of the day BABA and UK Sport are not the only stakeholders. There is another contribution, and that is by the thousands of boxers and officials who have been working for boxing long before Mapp was introduced to it.

"They have been overlooked. All the Home Nations want is a genuine engagement with the performance pathway."

But Mapp is firmly backed by Caborn, despite ABAE being one of the "anti" associations. Caborn walked out of a formal meeting of the associations last week when denied a vote and admits to me: "I am considering my position. If the future is decided as one of modernisation I am part of it. If it means going back to the past, I am not."

The proof of the pudding is in the punching. Mapp can point to a record gold medal haul at the London 2012 Games and, under his stewardship the state-of-the-art training and accommodation facilities in Sheffield are now the envy of world boxing.

Stakeholders UK Sport and Sport England, who between them have invested a total of £20 million ($31 million/€24 million) in amateur boxing and have concerns about its administration, are keeping a watching brief on the situation and may well intervene before the extraordinary general meeting.

What form this intervention may take remains to be seen.


UK Sport, in particular, has expressed concerned over the governance of the sport, placing boxing on its "red light" warning system in the form of a one-year probation, guaranteeing only the first year of funding because of the disinclination of the national associations to accept a number of changes recommended by a BABA subcommittee, of which UK Sport approves.

It has the power to impose sanctions including the withdrawal of funding or putting in place alternative solutions, which if Mapp is ousted could even see them installing an interim chair.

One obvious candidate would be the former British Olympic Association (BOA) chair Lord Colin Moynihan, a former Varsity Boxing Blue and steward of the British Boxing Board of Control (BBBofC).

Moreover, there is the still to be resolved question of the British Lionhearts' participation in AIBA's WSB, over which the home associations complain they were not properly consulted.

In the past few days, a pretty hefty letter has been dropping on the desks of some pretty important people. They may not know it but they could hold the future well-being of the sport of cycling in their hands.

The letter is the latest action by SKINS as part of a global movement that wants to give professional and competitive cycling a chance for redemption.

Before it's too late.

It is part of our campaign to retain the true spirit of competition across ALL sports and in this instance, the letter has gone out to each of the nine Board members of the Swiss Cycling Federation urging them to reject any plea from UCI President Pat McQuaid for an endorsement to continue in his current role.

Pat McQuaid is struggling for a nomination. The world is quite rightly against him and even his staunch advocates are running scared, but he still refuses to wake up and smell the coffee. This is why we're determined to keep the pressure on and make sure the Swiss don't buckle under political influence.

To run for UCI President you need an endorsement from a National Federation to stand and Pat recently went back to his home nation to seek that support from Cycling Ireland. Cycling Ireland held their meeting in private and Pat made his presentation, along with having met with each member prior individually.


They refused to hear an alternative argument from any third party (yours truly included) and seven Board members, representing tens of thousands of members, voted on a majority basis to say "yes".

Then, amidst the weight of public pressure and criticism, the decision was reversed and an emergency general meeting has now been called to allow the Irish cycling members a proper vote. Pat has tried to pass this off as a "technicality" but those in the know know better.

Put simply, Cycling Ireland got the wind up 'em and now I fully expect the Irish members to say: "No". If they do, Pat's only other option is to seek support from the country of his residency and for the sake of cycling, we don't want to see the Swiss Cycling Federation opening what should be a locked door.

The UCI needs more transparency and much more accountability. It needs to focus on the duty of care to the riders and create a global strategy of responsibility that will impact positively on regional communities and society in general. It needs to finally get to grips with the anti-doping dilemma, admit the past and work in tandem with the good people at the World Anti-Doping Agency and their partners - not against them. Pat is not the man to deliver that and, for the last 22 years, he and Hein Verbruggen have continually proven it.

Hence the letter.

We wrote it because a request to meet with the Swiss Federation's President, Richard Chassot, has been ignored - just as my request was by Irish President, Rory Wyley before their meeting.

If the Swiss don't understand it already, this is a watershed moment. It's a moment when all personal considerations must be cast aside and if Mr. Chassot won't allow us to make that point to him in person, then we're going to make damned sure the message gets through to his Board members.

World cycling does not want Pat McQuaid as its leader and endorsing him would leave the Swiss out of sync with the rest of the world.


Throughout the last eight years, with cycling reeling from one crisis to another, Pat has led from the front, by doing nothing. In fact the Lance Armstrong affair showed how Pat worked against the anti-doping agencies to bring this awful situation to light.

The Swiss Federation represents his last lifeline and for the sake of cycling and for the sake of the anti-doping fight trying to clean up world sport in general, they cannot afford to facilitate his re-election.

Jaimie Fuller is the chairman of Skins and the founder of pressure group Change Cycling Now, whose members include Greg LeMond, Paul Kimmage and David Walsh. To follow him on Twitter click here.

It was just last month the World Boxing Council (WBC) launched their public attack on the International Boxing Association (AIBA).

The WBC has long been considered boxing's leading professional organisation but they expressed fears that AIBA, the body responsible for Olympic boxing, were looking to displace them in the pro game.

The attack came from the very top, with WBC President José Sulaimán of Mexico behind it.

Sulaimán claimed that AIBA's move towards professional boxing "clearly constitute an attempt to establish a monopoly and a restraint of trade" and he claimed that the organisation presents "danger to the sport of boxing" that the WBC will look to fight.

Perhaps the only surprise about the public attack from the WBC President is that it hadn't come earlier.

What has particularly irritated the WBC is AIBA's World Series of Boxing (WSB) tournament, currently the only boxing competition in the world that allows fighters to compete professionally and retain their Olympic eligibility.

The WSB actually was launched in the latter part of 2010 but has only really started to take off this season, its third edition.

Changing the format of the competition from city to country franchises has certainly played a big part in the growth, as has getting the UK on board in the form of the British Lionhearts was a must after Team GB topped the medal table at the London 2012 Olympics.

Another factor is the star-studded Ukraine Otamans team, spearheaded by double Olympic champion Vasyl Lomachenko, widely considered one of the best boxers ever to fight at the Games.

The 25-year-old lightweight from Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi, a gold medallist at Beijing 2008 and London 2012, is also a double AIBA World Championship champion and turned down numerous professional offers to be part of the Ukraine Otamans - a team which also includes the reigning Olympic and world heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk.

Next season, Cuba will join in a historic move that will see the country box professionally for the first time since 1962. Professional boxing was effectively banned in Cuba over 50 years ago due to former leader Fidel Castro's belief it was both corrupt and corrupting, while authorities there deemed it is too unsafe.

But what really riled Sulaimán into his public attack was the semi-final first-leg between Mexico Guerreros and Astana Arlans Kazakhstan.

It was not the match up itself, but the location.

For the first leg in Sulaimán's native Mexico, the Guerreros received permission to stage the bout on the iconic El Zócalo - the main square of Mexico City and its historic centre.

"The Mexico Guerreros are our representatives in WSB, so the city and the country are very interested in working with them," said the high-profile Mayor of Mexico City Ángel Mancera Espinosa as he announced that El Zócalo would be used. "We are looking forward to accomplish more of our goals together."

That Kazakhstan won the match and the overall semi-final was irrelevant to Sulaimán, who had seen enough to publically attack the WSB.

His letter to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) was rebuffed as they claimed that it was not an issue for them to get involved with before AIBA President C K Wu, himself an IOC Executive Board member, sent a letter to the Olympic boxing community to calm the situation.

"The IOC President confirmed in a letter to me that the IOC would recognise only AIBA as the International Federation representing the sport of boxing in the Olympic Games," Wu explained

"At the same time, the IOC sports director also replied to the WBC President that as a result of the IOC recognising AIBA as the only International Federation administering boxing at world level, AIBA is responsible for the technical control and direction of its sport at the Olympic Games.

"AIBA has also informed the global media and press in regard to IOC's full support and confirmation on AIBA's governing position at all levels for our sport."

Things are about to get worse for Sulaimán and co as AIBA prepare to launch AIBA Pro Boxing (APB) later this year.

APB will be a professional boxing tournament that links to the WSB while Olympic boxing itself is set to have a more professional look as headguards are removed and a professional-style scoring system introduced this year - well ahead of Rio 2016.

When it comes to Rio 2016, the new professional-style rules at the Olympics have intrigued some of the world's top fighters; not least heavyweight world champion Wladimir Klitschko.

The 37-year-old from Ukraine currently holds the WBA, IBF, WBO and IBO heavyweight titles but is set to discuss with AIBA the possibility of competing at Rio 2016 as he looks to get a second Olympic gold medal in Rio, having claimed victory in the super heavyweight category at Atlanta in 1996.

Such a move could be the real game-changer in AIBA's move towards professionalism.

In his letter, Wu writes: "It is AIBA's mission to govern the sport of boxing worldwide in all of its forms and I am very grateful to you for your constant support."

Maybe they are now closer than many believe.

He also adds that following Sulaimán's attack, "the current professional organisations might continue exploring any means to damage our programme in the future."

This is more than likely, and the gloves are now off.

But in secret, Wu and AIBA will be delighted.

The attack from the WBC is simply endorsement that AIBA's move towards professionalism is starting to make a real impact.

Tom Degun is a reporter for insidethegames. To follow him on Twitter click here.