Abraham Lincoln once said: "Public sentiment is everything. With it nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed."  That's a pretty good message for anyone thinking now about how to approach using the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games in order to raise the profile of issues or affect change.

It certainly came to mind for me and many of my colleagues last weekend, when the disability charity Scope published research into public attitudes to the London Paralympic Games. The claims made suggested there was genuine concern that the Games would not provide the right platform for disabled people either to be involved, engaged or inspired.  From that was extrapolated a view that scrapping a separate games in favour of combining with the Olympics was preferable – not a view I agree with at all.

What the survey did highlight was the fact that disability groups up and down the country will undoubtedly see 2012 as an opportunity to further their aims for equality and inclusion.  I should absolutely state that this is an ambition that the British Paralympic Association (BPA) completely shares.  The argument I have is about messaging and focus, not ambition.   To go back to Lincoln's dictum, we need to make sure that any arguments put forward can capture public sentiment.

My belief is that the London 2012 Paralympic Games are and will be the best vehicle for that.  The Games coming next year mean the largest event in the world for disabled people will happen right on our doorstep. It will be a momentous occasion for all disabled people and I'm confident that its effect will resonate throughout the UK. I also have no doubt that the country will be taken by surprise by the scale of the event and the quality of the sport on show.

The signs so far are very positive. In London 2012 we have an organising committee who have fully integrated all the key operational functions, thus ensuring parity of delivery for all athletes be they Olympians or Paralympians – but also had the foresight to recognise that the Paralympics need to be marketed differently. They are a unique event and are starting from a different place in the nation's consciousness. By adopting a separate marketing campaign, London 2012 has cleverly understood this.


This different approach is paying off, as evidenced by the 1.2 million tickets that the British public bought in the first round of sales, a record for any Paralympic Games. All of this has been helped by Channel 4's ambitious pre-Games programming that has introduced a whole new audience to the world of Paralympic sport. And the BBC who, although not host TV broadcaster for the 2012 Paralympics, have demonstrated a continuing commitment to covering news and events and will of course be there with us for every great British moment on 5 live and through their nations and regions programmes.

And last, but certainly not least, this breakthrough in awareness has been helped by the sponsors of the 2012 Games themselves who, through their activations, are demonstrating that they absolutely see Olympians and Paralympians as equal.

All of this activity has been a tangible expression of the BPA's core belief – that the Paralympics is first and foremost an elite sports event and that any messaging about disability is secondary. This matters, not just because our athletes train as hard and make the same sacrifices as Olympic athletes or because this is how they want to be seen. It matters because this goes to the heart of the purpose and power of the Paralympics.

This isn't – and mustn't be – an event that is celebrated only by and for disabled people. It is an event that demonstrates inclusivity at the highest level – where non-disabled people turn up in their hundreds of thousands to watch elite sport being played by disabled athletes.

It is the quality of the sport that ensures non-disabled people connect with disabled people though the common language of sporting endeavour. This language is one that everyone is familiar with – the highs and lows and drama of sport that plays out every weekend up and down the country.

Those uninitiated in Paralympic sport may expect that spectators feel sympathy for 'brave' athletes –which may lead to some disabled people who don't understand the nature of the Paralympics to feel that they are patronising. Nothing could be further from the truth – sympathy is the last emotion anyone at a Paralympic event feels – respect yes, admiration for athletic endeavour absolutely, but sympathy certainly not.

This is because spectators are engaged and enthralled by the quality of the sport itself, not by the fact that they are watching disabled athletes. The power of the Paralympic Games lies not in the gathering together of more than 4,000 disabled people, it lies in those people being elite athletes taking part in thrilling sport.

We recognised that here in the UK some time ago: it's why we have a proud track record of finishing high up on the medal table and why we've always expected the highest standard from any athlete who has the privilege to pull on a ParalympicsGB track suit (such as double Paralympic swimming champion Ellie Simmonds, pictured below). It also explains why we have delayed the decision to accept the 2012 host country slots for goalball and the women's sitting volleyball squad to give them time to reach the standards we expect.


Having the Games here in the UK will bring about a change in how people think, feel and behave towards disabled sport and in part disabled people. Every country that has hosted the Games has experienced this. But we should not expect the Paralympics to be a 'cure all' that addresses all the issues that disabled people face. It can help win the important battle for hearts and minds but there are some more intractable issues that will inevitably take much longer, and can't possibly be resolved through a single event.

That is why I was disappointed by the Scope survey.  It chose to highlight sensationalist headlines suggesting that the Games should be scrapped and that a small proportion of disabled people find the Games patronising. To use the Paralympics as some sort of stick with which to beat wider society to further the cause of disabled people strikes me as an own goal.   I did not think it was helpful, at the time that the second round of tickets came on sale, to have to defend the Paralympics and its right to be a standalone event, rather than being subsumed into the Olympic Games.

So whilst we ultimately share the same ambition with many disability organisations for a better world for disabled people, we are very clear in our view on the role the Paralympics can play within society to help make this happen. Through elite sport I believe we can get people to reappraise their attitudes towards disability, surely the start point for any societal change.

I would urge those groups to help us celebrate this positive message rather than take aim at the one event next year that will see disabled and non-disabled people unite on a scale that this country has never before witnessed. That is the way that we can, collectively, win over public sentiment.

Tim Hollingsworth is the chief executive of the British Paralympic Association (BPA)

So, another forty million quid is to be spent on ceremonials for next year's Olympics and Paralympics. That's show business for you.

Most of it, no doubt, will go on glamming-up the Opening Ceremony of the main Games on July 27. Welcome to Friday night at the Stratford Palladium.

It isn't often that I disagree with the personable and competent Sports Minister, Hugh Robertson, who insists the extra cash will be money well spent on promoting Britain. Or agree (well, almost) with my old journalistic sparring partner Simon Barnes, of The Times, who deems it a total waste on self-aggrandising codswallop.

For coming at a time when the nation is in such dire straits economically, another £41 million ($64 million/€48 million) does seem an awful lot to splurge out on what amounts to an unnecessarily extravagant piece of window dressing.

"There will be four billion people watching the Ceremonies around the world and given the unique opportunity, we wanted to help make sure that they will showcase the best of the UK," says Robertson.

Fine, but why does this have to be an exercise in lavishness?


After Beijing, where no expense was spared to present a way over-the-top political showpiece designed to invite London  to "Follow That" our Games organisers promised faithfully they would not attempt to do so. We were assured London's Ceremonies were to be different, and dignified. And at a reasonable cost to the taxpayer.

I have no doubt they will be different, but I have my doubts about the dignity and now we know the cost has doubled.

Still within budget, though, we're told.

If that's the case wouldn't it be better to preserve that £41 million ($64 million/€48 million) and put it into a kitty to provide a decent legacy for the Games, say in the area of school sport?

Alternatively, why not use some of it to do the decent thing and pay for the  controversial 'wrap' shroud for the stadium and hand Dow Chemical back their £7 million ($11 million/€8 million), thus appeasing those both here and in India angered by what is considered an insult to the victims of the Bhopal disaster.

Will a super-duper, gob-smacking Opening Ceremony really boost the economy? Or just the profits of the fireworks manufacturers?

The more-cash-for-Ceremonies news came at the tail end of the announcement that the security costs have also doubled, from the original estimate of £282 million ($441 million/€328 million) to £553 million ($866 million/€643 million).

I don't quibble with that. It's hardly surprising as it was substantially under-estimated when London won the bid and the very next day suicide bombers ravaged the city.

No sum is too small to make the Games safe for all who compete and watch in times when the threat of terrorism is ever-present in our daily lives, and heightened by an event of such magnitude.

It is less easy to justify splashing out more millions on what basically is a piece of elaborate curtain-raising followed at the end by an emotional bow from the cast of thousands.


So far we have no idea what the accomplished film producer Danny Boyle (pictured) has in mind for London's Opening Ceremony. He has a great track record in the celluloid industry and no doubt what we will see will have the accent more on millionaire than slumdog.

But I do hope that in striving to be different London does not forsake all its traditional values. No-one wants excessive displays of Pearly Kings and Queens doing the Lambeth Walk or Knees Up Mother Brown.

But I hope it won't be all rap, rock and politically correct symbolism from the cast of EastEnders. Or an elongated exercise in the esoteric.

But breath should not be held for, as I have said before, when you let the luvvies loose on sport the result can be hideously self-indulgent. Witness the 2012 Olympic posters and the inexplicable exploding bus in London's contribution to the Beijing Closing Ceremony.

At least there is the prospect of BoJo (if re-elected as Mayor) bringing a touch of levity to an occasion that otherwise threatens to take itself far too seriously.

I confess there are some Ceremonies I have enjoyed more than others. But with the exception of Tokyo's, which was memorably enchanting, all went on far too long. The only Games marathon London needs is the one which finishes at Buck House.

I loved the mariachi in Mexico City (though not the battalion of militia disguised a boy scouts); the beauty if Barcelona's and the simplicity of Sydney's.


I was moved by Misha the Bear's teardrop in Moscow and by Muhammad Ali's tear-jerker in Atlanta (pictured).

Los Angeles, as you would expect, was pure Hollywood, if tediously over-hyped, and Seoul's well, rather soulless.

The whip-cracking by lederhosen-clad men in Munich was an embarrassing no-no, and Beijing's, while breathtakingly brilliant, was tempered by knowing the Chinese Government was cynically burning money as a blatant piece of political PR.

So my plea to London is make it simple, and make it quick.

Leave the frenetic running and jumping to those who do it best, the true gladiators in the arena.

True, there's no business like show business, and no show bigger than the Olympics. But we seem to be in danger of losing sight of the raison d'être of the Games, which is to showcase sport and not the entertainment industry, which has ample opportunities for self-aggrandisement elsewhere in the global theatre.

If a 2012 showbiz extravaganza really is what is required draw the oohs and aaahs from the IOC bigwigs and visitors from overseas then there are plenty of sensational productions in London's West End which fit the bill. The only smash hit the East End needs to stage is one where sport itself is the star.

Alan Hubbard is an award-winning 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 Olympics, 10 Commonwealth Games, several football World Cups and world title fights from Atlanta to Zaire.

The weekend reports claiming that João Havelange had resigned as a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) brought to mind two images from recent IOC Sessions.

The first is from Copenhagen in 2009.

The Brazilian, who as FIFA President once shared with the late Juan Antonio Samaranch the billing of 'Most Powerful Man in World Sport', is inviting fellow members of the IOC club to Rio de Janeiro to celebrate his 100th birthday in 2016.

A short while later, the photogenic Brazilian city was unveiled as the 2016 Summer Olympic Games host, beating both a Madrid bid backed by Havelange's old chum Samaranch and a Chicago bid backed by the most powerful human being on the planet.

It was a moment of purest triumph for the old warhorse.

The second is from Durban in 2011.


Joseph Blatter (pictured left with IOC President Jacques Rogge), FIFA President de nos jours and IOC member, is confiding that he will depart from South Africa with a blueprint of the IOC ethics machinery in his briefcase.

Just as it seemed that the IOC was striving to differentiate itself from FIFA in its handling of corruption-related issues, probing three IOC members – including Havelange – over allegations made by BBC Panorama, so FIFA was apparently planning to rip pages out of the IOC's book.

If there is one thing that the latest reports (if confirmed) will do, however, it is to highlight the gaping credibility chasm between the world's two most prominent sports bodies in their ethics policing.

The IOC's reputation for this – having learnt the hard way via the Salt Lake City scandal – is now very good.

Havelange's resignation will have boosted this reputation still further – and at an opportune moment with a high-stakes battle between six cities – Baku, Doha, Istanbul, Madrid, Rome and Tokyo – for the 2020 Olympics in its early stages.

This is even though a resignation letter is reported to have cited health reasons.

By contrast, FIFA's credibility on ethics matters remains, in my judgement, very low, in spite of a recent flurry of activity.


Only last week the impact of the unveiling of its new reform chief, Mark Pieth (pictured), was partly undermined when the anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International said it had turned down an invitation to join Pieth's new independent Governance Committee.

Another key moment in FIFA's battle to restore its battered reputation is expected to come on December 16 and 17 at its Executive Committee meeting in Tokyo.

Blatter indicated in October that the meeting would see the reopening of a file on ISL, a company engaged by FIFA to sell World Cup broadcasting and marketing rights, which collapsed in 2001 with debts of $300 million (£192 million/€224 million).

It is from ISL that Havelange is alleged to have received $1 million (£639 million/€746 million), in the matter being looked at by the IOC Ethics Commission.

Havelange's resignation will probably end the IOC's role in the affair, since its Ethics Commission would be expected to then drop the case, as IOC rules stipulate.

According to reports, a two-year suspension at least for the Brazilian, who has denied the allegations, was expected to be considered at the IOC Executive Board meeting in Lausanne on Thursday.

This is even though the receipt of payments, such as those alleged by Panorama, would not at the time have been against Swiss law.


Blatter said in October that the ISL file would be given to "an independent organisation outside of FIFA" so they could extract its conclusions and "present them to us".

However, I understand that procedural matters laid down in Swiss law, and therefore beyond FIFA's control, are likely to slow things down, perhaps considerably.

In which case, the Tokyo meeting could turn out to be less significant than it initially appeared and scepticism about FIFA's reforms may be reinforced.

Havelange's (pictured left) resignation leaves one more, potentially delicate, issue for the IOC to navigate.

As things stand, the athletics stadium for the 2016 Olympics is to be named in Havelange's honour.

Had the Brazilian been sanctioned over the ISL affair, this would have been embarrassing for the Olympic Movement.

Now, were pressure to be applied to find a new name, it could be argued that any such move would constitute unnecessary cruelty to a sick old man who, when all is said and done, was one of the towering figures of 20th century sport.

But what if the FIFA process did eventually – ie over the next four to five years – produce unwelcome disclosures?

Sceptics and Havelange supporters will find this unlikely, but I would be surprised if those whose job it is to burnish the Olympic Movement's public image didn't continue to monitor the evolution of brand Havelange with some care.


It will not have escaped readers' attention that word of Havelange's resignation came on the same day that the former Brazil football captain, Sócrates – a figure universally associated with all that is best about his country's inimitable flair for the game – died.

It would be facile and cheap to suggest that one name might beneficially be substituted for the other: athletics wasn't Sócrates' thing and Havelange accomplished more than enough in his administrative life to warrant a Brazilian stadium being named after him.

But if Havelange deserves his stadium, then Sócrates, unquestionably, does too.

I hope those organising the world's two greatest sporting festivals in Brazil between now and 2016 will take note.

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 and 2010 World Cup. Owen's Twitter feed can be accessed here.

The French have a saying – reculer pour mieux sauter (take a step back, the better to jump forwards). Such an action, when translated into actual terms, requires a leap of faith, and it is just that which the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) is now requiring of the British Olympic Association (BOA). But faith is based on trust.

Like a resourceful householder, the BOA has constructed something which works as it is supposed to – a bylaw effectively preventing any Briton who has served a doping ban of more than six months from taking part in any future Olympics, and with the possibility of an appeal built in.

Like planning regulation officers, WADA – Jonny-come-latelys, given that the bylaw was introduced in 1992, seven years before they were – have now come along and objected. The BOA construction must come down; it doesn't conform to regulations.

It has already been pointed out that there is an inherent contradiction in a body posited on the idea of an anti-doping agency seeking to diminish an existing sanction against doping. But those in the WADA camp insist that it is all about harmonisation, without which an overall campaign against doping cannot be waged effectively.


There has been a line of enquiry this week questioning the BOA's claim that more than 90 per cent of athletes are in favour of the bylaw remaining. Siza Agha, the agent acting for Dwain Chambers (pictured) – who is one of three British competitors debarred from the Games along with shot putter Carl Myerscough and cyclist David Millar – has said of the "clear inference" of such claims is that the BOA has already surveyed athletes following the recent decision by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) against a similar ruling operated by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) whereby doping offenders were debarred from the next upcoming Games.

Why would anyone infer that? The BOA position stems from regularly held polls of its athletes through the Athletes' Commission after each of the last four Olympics. On each occasion, more than 90 per cent of those polled were in favour of retaining the bylaw. There is the mandate.

What has also happened in the last month is that several highly respected athletes or ex-athletes have been reported to be against the maintenance of the BOA bylaw. But are they really? Let's look again at what has been said.

Paula Radcliffe is not noticeably easygoing about doping abuse. She got herself into trouble at the 2001 World Championships in Edmonton by protesting about the presence of Russia's Olga Yegorova, who had escaped a positive test for EPO on a technicality. Radcliffe and colleagues stood during Yegorova's heat holding a poster with the words "EPO Cheats Out" written on it before track officials insisted it be removed.


What Radcliffe said to the Associated Press about the BOA bylaw was this: "I actually totally supported that rule that if you had a drugs ban you shouldn't be allowed to compete in the Olympics – it should be a life ban. But at the moment it's unfair because Dwain is the only one who is really being penalised for it. It has to be a rule that's fair across the board.

"He is one of the few who stuck his hands up and said 'I did that and I'm sorry', and admitted it. A lot of people have done their time and never admitted it and they are allowed to come back and compete, and that isn't fair.

"It has to be a proper rule. I would rather see every country take the BOA's rules on board. But if not, I think you have to have some sympathy for Dwain and the situation he's in."

That hardly classes as a savage indictment of the BOA bylaw.

What about Jessica Ennis? "It's difficult one. I do think it should be a standard rule and it should be the same for everyone. But it's out of our hands as athletes and it's for WADA and the BOA to come to some agreement." Same goes.


Christian Malcolm (pictured), the former 100 and 200-metre world junior champion and Olympic 200m finalist in 2008, referred back to the statements made by Radcliffe and Ennis and did clearly come out against the BOA position: "I believe everyone should have a second chance on this. That's my true belief on it."

Malcolm is one of those athletes about whom most writers on the sport would say "If he's doping, I quit", an admirable soul. As a loyal and longstanding friend of Chambers, he will have seen at close quarters the pain which exclusion from the Olympics can bring, and of course, one respects his point of view.

Yet Malcolm still believes it is fair for athletes who dope to miss at least the next upcoming Olympics, as the IOC ruling insisted until it was overturned by CAS.

What about Jonathan Edwards, whose triple jump world record still stands almost a decade after his retirement? He too makes a clear statement in one respect, maintaining: "I don't believe in lifetime bans."

So OK, Malcolm and Edwards believe the BOA ban is too draconian. But neither Radcliffe nor Ennis have actually gone so far as to say that – both would clearly prefer that, rather than the BOA levelling down, the rest of the world levelled up to them.

There is no shortage, either, of elite athletes making it very clear that they are indeed in favour of the BOA ruling. Rebecca Adlington's response to the suggestions that the BOA bylaw should be scrapped stands as a fair representation: "Can't actually believe this story. Whatever happened to drug-free sport?"

I was speaking to Darren Campbell today, and asked him what his views were. He was completely in favour of the BOA bylaw remaining in place. Why? "It's clarity, isn't it?" he responded. It certainly is a clear deterrent.


Edwards (pictured) offered a historical analysis of how the BOA bylaw came about. "The issue highlights that we need a constant standard across everybody," Edwards says. "I have always felt this issue could be solved in a stroke if they reintroduced four year bans.

"The BOA bylaw came into being because bans were reduced to two years. If it had stayed at four years we probably wouldn't be in this situation."

Edwards has got his chronology a bit skewed here – the IAAF did not reduce the standard doping ban from four to two years until their Congress on the eve of the 1997 World Championships in Athens.

The change in the rule, confirmed at the International Amateur Athletic Federation's Congress ahead of the World Championships, followed a series of costly legal battles in which athletes have invoked civil law to contest the length of their bans.

In countries such as Germany, Russia and Spain, restraint of trade legislation regards a ban of two years, rather than four, as an appropriate punishment. In March 1997, two German athletes – Martin Brehmer and Susan Tiedke-Greene – had successfully applied for reinstatement half-way through four-year suspensions.

Two years earlier, an emotional appeal by the British Athletic Federation's executive chairman, Peter Radford, had swayed the IAAF Congress from changing the four-year rule, which had been in place since 1991.

"The tail is being allowed to wag the dog," said Alan Warner, Britain's delegate at the 1997 Congress. "Only 10 or a dozen nations are affected and we have 200 IAAF members. It is a bad and a sad day for the sport."

Edwards has gone on record as saying that he doesn't believe a two-year doping ban is a sufficient sanction. He and no doubt many other athletes may wish for the four-year ban to be brought back – but realistically, how and when can this happen? Have the laws in Germany, Russia and Spain become more relaxed on the subject since 1997?

At the moment WADA has its hands full trying to get everyone singing from the same hymn sheet within the system currently operating. You hardly expect them to charge onwards towards a campaign to restore four year bans anytime soon.

It's a situation that is far from perfect. The BOA bylaw, rather like the unwritten British Constitution, has been created in response to a particular situation, but it is effective. And those who criticise if for having allowed the majority of athletes back into Olympic reckoning are barking up the wrong tree – that is not a weakness, but a strength. It is not an inflexible ruling.

If WADA, and CAS, eventually combine to tear this awkward British structure down, the landscape will remain levelled – harmonised – for many years to come. The step back will have been taken. But there will be no jumping forwards.

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, has covered the past five Summer and four Winter Olympics for The Independent. Previously he has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, the Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. He is now chief feature writer for insidethegames. Rowbottom's Twitter feed can be accessed here.

As if the British press weren't in enough trouble, they have this week contrived to come up with an all-male 10-strong shortlist for the 2011 BBC Sports Personality of the Year.

I say the press, even though it is the BBC's baby, because the list was collated from a series of top 10 selections contributed by "a range of sports experts from newspapers and magazines across the UK".

This boils down to the main daily and Sunday papers, plus regional titles, The Voice and Sport Magazine, Nuts and Zoo.

It is not as if there was an active conspiracy to exclude female athletes, although the make-up of the nominations panel has not gone uncriticised.

Swimmer Rebecca Adlington (pictured centre) - along with F1's Jenson Button - was just one vote away from the shortlist, polling six votes (out of a maximum 27), compared with seven for boxer Amir Khan, the 10th athlete.


Keri-Anne Payne (pictured right), another swimmer, was bracketed with cricketer Graeme Swann and triathlete Alistair Brownlee one vote further back.

There were also some male athletes entitled to feel miffed at missing out on the shortlist.

Brownlee would be one – and I am frankly baffled as to why backstroker Liam Tancock failed to garner a single vote.

That is to say, an athlete who successfully defended a world title in thrilling style in a hugely competitive event fared worse in the poll than Manchester United reserve striker Dimitar Berbatov.

But not one female athlete!

That raises some fairly uncomfortable questions about the way the mainstream media looks at sport and, however strong the individual claims for inclusion of the 10 names on the shortlist, amounts to a monumental own goal.


You can tell how bad it is because Harriet Harman (pictured), arguably Britain's best-known (but hardly its sportiest) female MP, took time out from Autumn Statement day at Westminster to Tweet: "Why no women on @bbcspoty top ten? Should be celebrating our great women athletes. BBC think again."

Those last three words indicate that, while the selections reflect the views of the press and not the BBC, it may be poor old aunty who reaps the whirlwind.

And with the winner not announced until December 22, it promises to be quite some time before this one blows itself out.

You might be tempted to feel sorry for the Corporation: it was good enough to try to make the selection process more inclusive and now this happens.

I must admit though my sympathies are strictly limited.

For me, the whole idea of a shortlist is dubious.

Why on earth do we need it?

There is only one winner; I have no doubt that those who care are capable of communicating one name to the national broadcaster without having their choice artificially restricted for them.

I notice this is a public phone vote, so perhaps the use of a shortlist mechanism has more to do with the number of digits available to our decimal numbering system than anything else.


But to me this cheapens the process: if the Sports Personality of the Year is to be awarded by public vote, as befits it, then the public should be able to vote for whomsoever it chooses – even Liam Tancock (pictured).

Analysis of votes cast by the "experts" tends to underline the pointlessness of the shortlist that has landed our sportswriting establishment in hot water.

Four athletes – Rory McIlroy (golf) 27, Darren Clarke (golf) 26, Mo Farah (athletics) 25 and Mark Cavendish (cycling) 23 – polled more than 20 of the 27 possible votes and were well clear of the field.

While the golfing vote on December 22 is clearly going to be split – especially as a third golfer, Luke Donald, has also been shortlisted – I'd be flabbergasted if the eventual winner is not among this quartet.

The remaining six names on the list will probably be as superfluous – in terms of the competition – as a 25th window on an advent calendar.

What they have, of course, done is energise the very live debate about the way sport is covered in Britain in an unexpected and positive way.

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 and 2010 World Cup. Owen's Twitter feed can be accessed here.

I have been following this story closely for the last few weeks, and as someone who was present at the inaugural congress to establish the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), I believe that their stance is wrong. I think that the justification for the selection policy comes from the fact that taking performance enhancing drugs or associated products is no less than cheating.

The British Olympic Association (BOA), I believe, feels that to select someone who has been found guilty of such an offence goes against what we believed WADA was set up to achieve i.e. to weed out cheats.

Having been present at that first congress I came away with the view that its purpose had been to set a new standard in the ethics of international sport. A public statement was made that the world of international sports administrators and their National Olympic Committees (NOCs) were all opposed to the taking of identified performance enhancing substances. Clearly there were and are still substances that have not yet been identified and the "war goes on".

The BOA is maintaining the higher standards, which is what WADA I thought stood for. The list of proscribed substances needs reviewing regularly and there does need to be a recognition of whether cold or flu remedies do enhance performance. That is a matter for specialists to determine.


I take note of the argument put forward by athletes like David Millar (pictured) that the bylaw punishes wrong-doers twice for the same offence, but respectfully disagree. I also appreciate that a universal ban would represent a saner, easier position.

Clearly it would be better if all countries took the same position as the UK. But, no, I don't feel the convicted cheats in this country are being punished twice. They are being punished for doing wrong and that means no Olympic team selection unless there is a successful appeal. It is a great pity that international federations do not all agree and some allow athletes back into competition. They fix their own rules and regulations and it can only be a lack of will that prevents them from operating a similar ban to our own.

The important thing is that our athletes, the majority, feel the same. Certainly the BOA Athletes' Commission back the stand taken by the BOA and I believe that most high performance athletes share that view. The alternative is to allow chemical games which make a farce of international sport. I firmly believe that no athlete on a performance programme can fail to be aware of the dangers and why they should not participate in performance enhancing substances. If they produce an adverse finding and it proves positive after the necessary safeguards they can have no argument about the punishment if found guilty, which is why out of competition testing is so effective.


This is about the integrity of sport but the whole issue has become tainted by the threat of legal action by some and particularly their lawyers. It may well be the case that in some countries the anti-doping machinery is not what it might be but the fact remains that it is up to the whole world to fight this pernicious aspect of international sport and to lend assistance to those countries where more help is needed. I had thought that was the acknowledged aim, among others, of WADA.

I don't think there is any doubt that a maximum two year ban would encourage potential drug cheats to play the system, serving their bans - if caught - between the Olympics and turning up every four years to tarnish the greatest sports event on earth.

Remember that if an athlete is not on an anti-doping programme because they are not competing then they could still benefit from the residual effects of performance enhancers if or when they do come into competition. Such an act is, to my mind, not only sad but a completely cynical way of abusing the system which was supposed to be put in place to protect the honest athlete.

Richard Callicott is President of the British Volleyball Federation (BVF) and a British Paralympic Board member, as well as being a former chief executive of UK Sport.

Boycott is probably the most feared word in the Olympic lexicon, pipping corruption and drugs to the tape.

Which is why I suspect there were more than few sharp intakes of breath in London and Lausanne when it was  reported by the BBC and subsequently as a front page "Games in crisis" splash by the Independent, that India might opt out of 2012 over Dow Chemical's funding of part of the new Olympic Stadium.

The scare story didn't last long, knocked on the head by the Indian Olympic Association (IOA). There was to be no Indian stay-away. It was all a storm in a cup of Darjeeling.

Phew! Sighs of relief all round. The last thing London needs is a walk-out that would spoil the Stratford parade, particularly by a Commonwealth nation. Though you can be sure it won't be the last "Games in crisis" headline to catch the eye in the coming months.

As the countdown to July 27 2012 quickens it becomes open season for scaremongering. It was ever thus.

Virtually every Olympics in recent history has been dogged by dire warnings of a pending disaster of one sort or another. I recall the late Chris Brasher hand-wringing over Mexico City's high altitude risks in 1968 and declaring: "Someone will die." No-one did.

And no-one will boycott London. Unless we have invaded Iran by then.

In any case, boycotts don't work. They didn't in Moscow in 1980 nor in Los Angeles four years later. Some athletes may miss out on the bandwagon driven by politicians, but the Games show rolls on regardless.


So what do we make of the so-called "threat" from the sub-continent.

Apparently it stemmed from some political agitation among some past and present athletes – mainly hockey players – who are angered that Dow now own Union Carbide, the company responsible for the Bhopal chemical disaster in the state of Madhya Pradesh which cost many thousands of lives in 1984.

However, the acting president of the IOA, Vijay Kumar Malhotra - former chief Suresh Kalmadi is otherwise engaged fighting corruption charges relating to 2010 Commonwealth Games contracts - has given assurances that there will be a boycott, although, he says, the protests have been noted and will be discussed at their meeting on Monday.


While a boycott was always unlikely to be endorsed by the IOA the issue was –and surely remains – embarrassing  for London 2012  chief Lord Coe who endorsed the £7 million ($11 million/€8 million) deal for subsidising the "wrap" around the stadium roof and has Indian ancestry through his maternal grandmother.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) have no choice but to back London as they have a highly lucrative sponsorship with Dow themselves. But here the Government are concerned that matter is resolved quickly to avert any diplomatic tiff with India.

As the Sport and Olympics Minister Hugh Robertson points out: "We understand the sensitivity but Dow acquired Union Carbide a decade after the disaster and their products are in daily use all over London."

And in the Olympics. fixtures and fittings courtesy of Dow's deep coffers include elements of the newly-opened Westfield Shopping complex in Stratford and the flooring of the ExCeL Centre, which will stage a fistful of Olympic events, including boxing, taekwondo and weightlifting, and several Paralympic sports.

Which makes it rather odd that hardly a peep has been raised about Dow's involvement until now.

The Dow endowment is certainly an emotive issue, and apparently one about which the Shadow Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell feels strongly enough to suggest that London 2012 – on whose board she sits – should now cancel the deal, arguing the controversy irreparably damages the standing of the Games.  "There is a point when you have to say you cannot take the reputational risk."

It is the first time that Jowell has come close to rocking the 2012 boat in her capacity as the Opposition representative on the London 2012 board. Hitherto she has been unequivocally supportive, both as Olympics Minister in the Labour administration and now in her shadow role.

Indeed, her contribution to London bidding for, and getting the Games, has been immense, and invaluable. Her acquired enthusiasm for the Olympics is contagious, and, unlike some others at Westminster, quite genuine.


Which is why I seriously doubt that her intervention is politically motivated by her party wanting to make its presence felt more strongly the Olympics scene, or a piece of timely personal muscle-flexing now that Harriet Harman has been installed by Ed Miliband as the governess at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport and thus nominally has voice on Olympics matters.

Yet all London 2012 board members must have known of, and surely, approved, the financial arrangements with Dow when it was made.

It would be no surprise if the outcome of the IOA meeting on Monday is a polite formal request from India for London 2012 to reconsider the situation.

In the circumstances, maybe they should, if only as the Dow's contentious adornment to the Stadium arguably is an unnecessary piece of cosmetics anyway. At least that would wrap the whole thing up.

Alan Hubbard is an award-winning 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 Olympics, 10 Commonwealth Games, several football World Cups and world title fights from Atlanta to Zaire.

Sepp Blatter may believe the furore he provoked by his comments on racism in football is behind him. He could not be more mistaken. He will have to live with the consequences of his absurd comment that if there is racism on the field of play it can be got rid of by a post-match hand shake. Worse still, the damage he has done to FIFA, when the organisation is already so beleaguered, cannot be overestimated.

If proof of this was needed it came in the most unlikely setting. Let me sketch the scene for you.

It is a gala dinner night in the ballroom of a smart central London hotel, a few hundred yards from the Houses of Parliament. Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister of Britain, is the chief guest, there are any number of high ranking British military personnel, all with their medals gleaming on their chests, and the drink is flowing. Everyone has gathered to honour the high achievers in the Asian community and this is not a night where sport is high on the agenda, let alone football.

But how does the evening start?

The compère, the BBC's Clive Myrie, makes a joke presentation to Sepp Blatter for his comments on racism and makes fun of his initials SB. Now, what makes this particularly striking is this is an evening meant to celebrate diversity in Britain, to demonstrate how well people from various ethnic and cultural backgrounds have overcome prejudice and made the most of what this country has to offer. Against such a background, Blatter is presented as leading an organisation that is, if not racist, certainly very out of touch with the modern world.


What makes all this worse is that Blatter does not seem to realise he has managed to make FIFA look bad in the one field where it can be proud of its record. Here, I am very much in agreement with Vinnie Jones. Jones, now a Hollywood movie star, may have been the bad boy of football when it came to violence on and off the field, but he knows all about how bad racism was in Britain in his playing days in the 80s and 90s. He has vivid memories of the banana throwing at black players and how he had to protect his fellow Wimbledon player and room-mate John Fashanu from racists.

The motto of Jones and his white team mates was to shield Fashanu. As he told me, if racists wanted to attack him, "the boys would get round him and shield him. To get to him, you have to go through us." Like most of the world, he feels Blatter's comments were "absolutely ridiculous", but he does add, "what I will say is he has made one stupid comment, but he has been pushing and pushing to stamp racism out of football. FIFA's record is not bad."

Indeed it is not. FIFA has yet to demonstrate that it can be a transparent, accountable organisation with good corporate governance, but before Blatter opened his mouth FIFA could argue with some conviction that when it comes to combating racism, it has often shown the way. Its record on this is certainly a lot better than most other international sports organisations.


This is worth emphasising as the cricket world celebrates the life and times of Basil D'Oliveira (pictured right), the Cape Coloured cricketer unable to play for his country because of its racist sporting edicts. He had to come to England to fulfil his potential. But when chosen for England's 1968 tour of South Africa, the then white South African Prime Minister, John Vorster, said an England team with D'Oliveira would not be allowed and the tour was cancelled.

This was not the first time white South Africans had assumed the role of super selectors for their opponents. This meant they not only insisted on playing white countries, but made it clear that these countries could not select their non-white citizens. So New Zealand's All Black rugby team had to leave its Māori players at home when they toured South Africa. Before going on the 1949 tour, the New Zealand rugby union even announced that "much as it regretted, players to be selected to tour South Africa cannot be other than wholly European". On that tour, the All Blacks also did not perform the feared Haka as they had no Māoris. And even before D'Oliveira, the South Africans had forced English cricket to drop Duleepsinhji, then the best batsman in England. He may have been a Prince, but he had the wrong colour, he was an Indian.

However, and this is the significant point, the cricket and rugby authorities happily accepted such diktats. Even after the D'Oliveira affair, English cricket was all ready to welcome the white South Africans to this country in 1970, and it required intervention by the Labour Government to stop the tour. And rugby, to its eternal shame, never gave up its links with white South Africa let alone ban it from international rugby.

Contrast this with football. FIFA was the first major sports organisation to suspend South Africa in 1963, even before the Olympic Movement. This followed an extraordinary suggestion by South Africa. As white and black could not mix on the sporting field, they had proposed that for one World Cup a wholly white team would play, and then four years later, a wholly black team.


The expulsion of South Africa was achieved despite the opposition to then FIFA President, Stanley Rous (pictured), who after a visit to South Africa was keen to bring South Africa back. Rous felt those working against apartheid sport were communists who had no feel for football. The white South Africans had told Rous during his visit that the non-Europeans were, "uneducated and not fit to assume positions of authority in any sphere of life". Rous was so impressed by this argument that he got the FIFA Executive to remove the ban, although in the end FIFA Congress overturned the decision. This led to complaints by Rous about too much democracy in FIFA and the baleful influence of the one country one vote principle, diluting the historic importance of countries like England.

FIFA's stance on South Africa became very much stronger when João Havelange took over as President from Rous. As his general secretary, Blatter not only made sure the policy did not stray, but racism in other countries was also addressed. And FIFA has continued this policy since he became President.

The tragedy is that no one will now care for this history of good work. Blatter, who loves being the showman and always delights in his quips, has indulged in his one sound bite too many means. The result is the world, like Clive Myrie, will concentrate on his moment of stupidity, and for all the regrets he has expressed, he will not able to undo the harm he has done.

Mihir Bose is one of the world's most astute observers on politics in sport and, particularly, football. He formerly wrote for The Sunday Times and The Daily Telegraph, and was the BBC's head sports editor. Follow Mihir on twitter.

www.mihirbose.com

David Beckham's American adventure had the fitting end it was meant to have, as LA Galaxy beat Houston Dynamo 1-0 in the MLS Cup final on Sunday – but then in showbiz, things always seem to go to plan.

So where next for Posh and Becks? So far Beckham's career has gone from Manchester to Madrid, to Los Angeles to Milan and back (twice), and so Paris would seem a logical next step. Paris St Germain, the Ligue 1 leaders, have been keen to show their interest in the former England captain, and the smart money is on him next taking to the field at the Parc des Princes. But what will be his impact on LA Galaxy and Major League Soccer (MLS)?

For LA Galaxy, Beckham's time can now be seen as a success. Having helped the club win the MLS Cup, they have now signed a $55 million (£32 million/€41 million) television deal over the next ten years with Time Warner.

That's before attendance figures are even touched upon. At 17,872, US football attendances are the 11th highest in the world, and have risen in recent years consistently despite the economic downturn. MLS commissioner Don Garber puts this down to Beckham, saying that away games for the Galaxy are some of the best attended in the league.

Beyond that, teams looking to join the MLS must pay $40 million (£26 million/€30 million), four times the fee required in 2000, and LA Galaxy themselves are now worth $100 million (£64 million/€74 million). So it is easy to make the case for Beckham after Sunday; he has delivered on the pitch, off the pitch and in the stands.


On the other hand, as US football commentator Sean Wheelock says, Beckham has not achieved nearly as much as it was thought he would when he moved to Los Angeles in 2007.

"Beckham was meant to be Pelé," he told BBC Radio last week.

"Pelé compelled millions to kick a ball for the first time.

"[Beckham] didn't play a lot, he didn't give his full effort, he missed training to attend the Royal wedding – Pelé's heart was in it with the New York Cosmos.

"He demanded the captain's armband, the number 23 shirt, and the LA Galaxy acquiesced.

"Beckham did good things but he was meant to double the attendance overnight and quadruple the TV ratings."

He has also proved a divisive figure in the States, having been booed in 2009 by his own fans after returning from a loan spell with AC Milan. In a friendly game against the Italian giants shortly afterwards, he was involved in a confrontation with one of the club's own fans at half time. And he had a much publicised spat with team mate Landon Donovan (pictured below right with Beckham), after the US international made comments in a book written by US sportswriter Grant Wahl, "The Beckham Experiment".


Though they made up, and certainly all seemed forgotten when the pair celebrated together after the MLS Cup final victory, some would say, perhaps rightly, that it is Donovan who has been the main driving force behind LA Galaxy's success this season. It would seem the only thing that is certain about Beckham's time in the States is that he has divided opinion.

But is he a success or not? The real measurement will be in what happens next, now that he has gone. Can American football continue to make progress, as it undoubtedly has in recent years? Galaxy's new television deal would indicate it can; they can now pay more in transfer fees for players such as Robbie Keane. And US soccer has been making progress in this area, attracting players with increasing regularity – Rafael Marquez and Thierry Henry both moved from Barcelona to New York Red Bulls, Juninho left Olympique Lyonnais for LA Galaxy, Keane (pictured below left) arrived from Tottenham and Michael Ballack has been linked with being the next big name in the States.


But the key now is to attract players who are at the peak of their careers, or even just beginning, to move and play in the MLS. Can the US become the Brazil of North America? Not in the sense that they can compete for the World Cup (though if, and it is a huge if, their potential was exploited and football became more popular, it is not inconceivable), but in that they possess the financial might to prise young talents from the smaller nations of the continent, and even perhaps from their rivals, Mexico. They have a long way to go, but it is possible, if the upward trend continues.

If Beckham really is to be a success, it will be because he spurred the MLS onto something bigger and greater. But maybe his success in the USA is yet to come. Rumours have abounded, and Beckham himself has indicated, that he could invest in an MLS franchise in the future.

A 19th club, Montreal, will join the league next year. Who better to invest in number 20 than Beckham?

David Gold is a reporter for insidethegames. You can follow him on twitter here.

If you read my last blog, you'll know I mentioned that British Gymnastics had added an extra competition to our diaries on the November 12-13 - the Stuttgart Grand Prix in Germany.

My training ahead of this competition was going really well and I had managed to get back to full fitness after a couple of days rest following the World Championships.

I had also done a couple of control competitions at Huntingdon and posted some very good all around scores - really promising for Stuttgart! I also had the opportunity to try out some new skills. This is the part of training I enjoy the most as it's a massive adrenaline rush when you try out a new skill for the very first time!

Qualification for the team competition was on Friday 11 when we were up against our fellow teams from Germany, Russia, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Ukraine and a mixed team. The pressure was on, as we knew that only four teams would be progressing to the final the next day.

Back at Huntingdon, during the final training session of the day, I was putting together the finishing touches to my routines before an early start in the morning to make it to Stuttgart for the Grand Prix. This is probably the hardest part of being a gymnast as it involves a lot of repetitions across all six apparatus. The pressure is really intense too during the run-up to a major competition like the GP. We do nothing but repetitions for about eight weeks, which can become very frustrating, especially if you're having a down day.

This particular day, however, was going really well and I was on my second routine on the bars when I slightly misjudged my exit from a somersault and stubbed my fingers on the bar. As you can imagine it was pretty painful, but more disappointingly it also ruled me out of the competition in Stuttgart, as I was unable to bend them due to the swelling. I should be ok in a couple of weeks, but I was really gutted to be missing out and not able to represent Team GB.

Luckily enough, Team GB has a very strong squad and Ruslan Panteleymonov took my place. Team GB had a much better competition than at the Worlds and breezed through qualifications, before finishing second to Russia in the team final.

In the all around competition on the Sunday, Daniel Purvis (pictured) continued his excellent form to take the bronze medal, with Sam Hunter finishing seventh.

Winning medals is what gets us, as competitive athletes, out of bed every day. My dream is to pick up an Olympic medal, and to win one in front of a home crowd would be the ultimate achievement. Well done to all of Team GB – a great result!

Daniel Keatings, who is powered by Opus Energy, made history in 2009 when he became the first British gymnast to win a medal in the all-round event at the World Championships. He was also the first British gymnast to win a European Championship gold when he won the pommel horse event in Berlin in 2010. To find out more about his sponsorship deal with Opus Energy click here. 

Britain and Europe have never been easy bedfellows and the turmoil of the eurozone may lead to a further, even permanent, alienation. Yet, ironically, in sport Britain is not on the periphery of Europe, but leading the way.

Nothing illustrates this better than the vote on Tuesday (November 15) in the European Parliament about match fixing. This, as UEFA President Michel Platini keeps repeating, is, "the biggest threat facing the future of sport in Europe".

The MEPs called for measures to protect the integrity of sport through cross-border cooperation between sports organisations and relevant public bodies. But, more significantly, they specifically recommended penalising betting fraud as a criminal offence throughout Europe. And in this Europe is six years behind Britain.

It was the 2005 UK Gambling Act that made cheating at sport a criminal offence. The man who did much to promote the measure through the House of Lords has always believed that is only way to deal with match fixing. That man is Paul Condon, the former Met Police Commissioner. For a decade he chaired international cricket's anti-corruption unit which he had set up following the unmasking of South African captain Hansie Cronje and the realisation that cricket was riddled with corruption.

Recalling his time at the International Cricket Council (ICC) he told me, "Malcolm Speed who I worked very closely with as ICC chief executive agreed that we should try and get equivalent offences in every test playing country. It's one thing to be fined, to be banned for two years, five years. It's a totally different scale if you're going to prison. My view was and is that the criminal law, where possible, would be the most effective. Countries must be persuaded to make it a criminal offence as in this country."

Before the 2005 Act, conspiracy to cheat was a common law offence as it still is in many countries particularly in the Commonwealth.

The importance of this Act in the trial that led to three Pakistani cricketers, Salman Butt (pictured below centre), Mohammed Asif (right) and Mohammed Amir (left), being jailed for spot fixing cannot be over-emphasised. They were charged with two things: conspiracy to corrupt and conspiracy to cheat at gambling. The reason they were charged with conspiracy to cheat at gambling is because no one actually placed a bet - they were caught by a News of the World sting. Had someone actually placed bets for real, then they could have been charged with cheating.

Condon (pictured) is well aware that to expect countries to make cheating at sport a criminal offence is a huge ask. Go around the world and ask people what changes they would like in their country's criminal law and match fixing in sport would come very low down the order. Safe guarding their property, their loved ones, being able to go about their business without fear of being mugged or robbed would be of greater concern than worrying about somebody fixing a sports event.

And this is not helped by sport, in particular football, having a schizophrenic relationship with gambling. Some sporting authorities will have nothing to do with lawful gambling, while others will have advertisements from gambling sponsors all around their pitches.

To an extent this schizophrenia is reflected in the European Parliament's resolution on online gambling. This also calls for the recognition of sports organisations' property rights to their competitions through a fair financial return from betting organisations. At the moment only racing gets an income from betting. France has enshrined this right into law, the first country in Europe to do so. Football authorities feel very hard done by as football generates more income for the betting industry than racing and gets nothing in return.

It must be said that football is a more difficult event to fix. As Condon put it to me, "Cricket is full of discrete events. You bowl and I'm the receiving batsman. You can do something to fix what you're doing. I can do something to fix what I'm doing. Football's harder to fix. You can bet on the scores or who wins but you can't guarantee that. You can bet on what time the first throw in will be, or the first free kick but you can't guarantee that."

Unlike the Pakistani cricket scandal which involved just three players, Condon believes that, for a football fix, "You probably need at least two or three players, a goalkeeper, maybe the referee involved. They're the classics, knobbling referees and goalkeepers."

What also made the cricket corruption case so unusual is that it was done in the glare of publicity in a test match against England at Lord's long the headquarters of the game. Many of the football corruption cases have taken place during little noticed, obscure matches in Eastern Europe with the fixers clearly hoping to go under the radar of the authorities.

This does provide some comfort for London 2012. Condon, who has briefed Jacques Rogge and the IOC's executive committee and is an unpaid integrity adviser to 2012, says, "I don't think there will be spot fixing at next year's Olympics. Part of my confidence is that there's an infrastructure in place linked to the operational control of the Games. The Gambling Commission will have a unit monitoring this."

His point is that, "The fixers are not fixing events for status. They don't want to come to you and say, 'Do you know what? I was able to fix an event at the Olympics.' They want to make money so why try and make money at an event where you know there's massive security as a focus? If you can do it in a football match between an eastern European side and an African side or between an English team, why put your head above the parapet and make yourself known? They are gamblers and fixers who work averages, so why go for a high profile event?"

And, while making cheating at gambling a criminal offence will help, it must not be assumed that, just because sportsmen allegedly involved in match fixing are tried in a court of law, a jury will convict. One aspect of the conviction of the three Pakistani cricketers was that they were in effect playing in an away court room. There have been similar sting operations on other sportsmen and those did not succeed. I wonder if they would have been found guilty had the trial been in Pakistan?

While Condon hopes that cultural and other differences played no part in the conviction, he does accept that, "Juries don't like convicting their heroes, whether they're sportsmen or not. Maybe you're right that any sportsman out of his own environment won't have the same fan base or the same loyalty base. It was interesting that the first reaction to the sting from the Pakistan Ambassador in the UK at the time was, 'My boys have been set up.' In all jurisdictions, I've found that every single board tends to be defensive of their players. Their first reaction is to back their players."

It is this sort of attitude that underlines how difficult it will be to get countries to make cheating at sport a criminal offence. There are European countries that are keen to tackle match fixing and, during the Polish Presidency of the EU, the aim is to include combating match fixing in the EU Council conclusions. So, while the European Parliament vote is important, sport organisations still have their work cut out. For a start, many of them need to recognise, as Condon puts it, "The interplay between gambling and sport is so dominant that most sports are vulnerable. Soccer has got challenges, tennis has and cricket will always have challenges."

It is a recognition the Americans came back in 1919, after baseball's infamous match fixing scandal. There, the four major sports cooperate so American football, baseball, basketball and ice hockey all share information. A lot of former FBI and Secret Service people are involved. It helps that there isn't the volume of gambling that there is, say, in cricket on the sub-continent or football in the Far East. The players are paid phenomenal salaries and the temptation isn't quite there nowadays.

For sports administrators to build on the European parliament resolution, they would do well to study what the Americans do. Only then can they hope to deal with the scourge of match fixing.

Mihir Bose is one of the world's most astute observers on politics in sport and, particularly, football. He formerly wrote for The Sunday Times and The Daily Telegraph, and was the BBC's head sports editor. Follow Mihir on twitter.

www.mihirbose.com

When Rhona Martin returned to these shores - well, all right, to Scotland - trailing clouds of glory after she had led her GB team to the curling gold at the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Games, there were sundry optimistic assertions that – following a final that had caught the imagination of a nation and attracted higher TV viewing figures than Wimbledon – Britain was about to become a nation of curlers.

And lo; it did not come to pass.

Almost a decade on from that heady day on the Ogden Ice Sheet the anticipated boom in the sport has yielded just one dedicated rink in England – situated, bizarrely enough, at Tunbridge Wells in Kent. The achievement of earning Britain's first Winter Olympic gold since Torvill and Dean triumphed in the ice dance at the 1984 Sarajevo Games was historic. And historic it remains.

As London 2012 starts to loom large on most people's horizons, there will soon be the possibility that other relatively obscure sports will gain their place in the Olympic limelight, shine gloriously, and that's probably all.

One Olympian who may well rise dramatically into the British public's awareness next summer is Kat Driscoll. Did you know she is currently world number one in her sport? No? Well she is. And the sport? Trampolining, of course.

Driscoll managed to qualify for London 2012 at the end of a draining and dramatic session in the National Indoor Arena where her qualifying routine on the first day of the World Trampoline Championships proved enough – just – to get her through to Sunday's final eight, and hence an automatic place at next year's Olympics.

Driscoll looked in good shape as she scored 98.290 points to go second overall. But there was just the small matter of staying ahead of the 66 other trampolinists waiting to follow her into action. An afternoon and evening of hardcore waiting lay ahead.

With three remaining, Driscoll stood seventh out of eight, having seen her British colleague Laura Gallagher slip out of the reckoning for what would have been a second automatic home place at London 2012.

Thankfully for the 25-year-old Geordie-ised native of Chatham, Kent, however, none of the remaining competitors could better her and so she will now be able to look forward to making a name for herself next summer – and to reflect upon the merit of a crucial decision she took last year to leave her full-time job at a bank in order to concentrate 100 per cent on reaching the treasured realm of a home Olympics.

As reported by BBC Sport's Ollie Williams, Driscoll reacted to her success, after nearly eight hours of agonising waiting, by collapsing in tears of joy in the arms of her husband, the former GB trampolinist Gary Short, who coaches at the Washington Leisure Centre where she trains in Tyne and Wear.

Speaking earlier this month, as she looked forward to the World Championships on home soil which she hoped would prefigure for her an Olympics on home soil, Driscoll recalled how her career had reached a decisive point in 2010.

"I gave up work in February last year," she said. "I was working full-time for HSBC in Durham city centre and to get from there to training meant I was losing about an hour and a half a day just by travelling. It became even worse in the winter, particularly how bad the winter was last year.

"I felt I was missing far too much and I wasn't able to access the strength and conditioning that I do now. That was the crucial point where I realised that if I was going to give everything up and go for the Olympics, it had to be then."

Her decision has been amply justified this year as a gold, silver and bronze medals in World Cup events have established her at the top of the world list. Thankfully she was able to turn that form into another crucial result in Birmingham in the face of strong Chinese and Russian opposition.

Driscoll's routine in the NIA was carefully orchestrated to conform with the new element recently introduced to competitive trampolining – which became part of the Olympic gymnastics programme at the 2000 Sydney Games.

This new consideration is named "time of flight", which means Driscoll and every other serious competitor on the planet has had to strive to rise even further into the air to complete their ever more intricate routines.

Even Driscoll admits it can be a little daunting. "The higher you are, the more time you have to complete your routines. But I don't like to think about how high I go," she said. "It gets scary when you look at it like that."

When I asked her what she was supposed to do if she felt herself getting out of control at high altitude, she responded brightly: "You just have to tuck and make yourself into a ball so you don't have any arms or legs sticking out." All relatively simple, then.

There was no fall to earth for Driscoll at Birmingham, however, and the world number one proceeds with relief and gathering ambition to the World Championship final. It's all on for London too. And whether we become a nation of trampolinists or not, it will be fascinating to watch her go for glory on home soil – or should I say, in home air.

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, has covered the past five Summer and four Winter Olympics for The Independent. Previously he has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, the Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. He is now chief feature writer for insidethegames. Rowbottom's Twitter feed can be accessed here.

It is not a phrase, I must admit, that has often tripped off my tongue, but I think Colin Moynihan has judged this one just about right.

It is hard to see the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) doing anything other than backing the World Anti-Doping Agency's (WADA's) position when it passes judgement on the British Olympic Association (BOA) bylaw preventing drug cheats from representing Britain at the Olympic Games, probably early next year.

But, if he plays his cards right, win or lose, the BOA chairman should emerge from the episode as a champion of the populist cause of taking a hard line on doping offenders.

WADA, by contrast, if it is not very careful may have a tricky time explaining why a body with the words "anti-doping" in its very title, appears to be pressing for a 20-year-old sanction to be diluted.

That is where the PR battle is likely to be waged.

Actually though, while you might very well sympathise with the principles behind Moynihan's hard-line stance, I think the correct approach would be to work hard at convincing WADA, in effect, to adopt the BOA bylaw worldwide.

Either a standardised global approach to doping is worth having, or it isn't.

I share the BOA's hope that the world of sport will use this issue as a pretext for "an open and honest debate about the status and future of the anti-doping movement".

But I fear that by making the severity of sanctions the focal-point, more fundamental matters will be glossed over.

Let's start with the effectiveness of the anti-doping apparatus.

An adverse analytical finding is catastrophic for an athlete.

It can transform someone from national hero to international pariah virtually overnight.

And that would be true however severe (or lenient) the potential sanction.

Yet do we have the slightest idea of the proportion of drug cheats who are actually caught?

Or whether this proportion is rising or falling?

It is a tough thing to ascertain, for sure.


But unless we have some idea, how do we know that it is not just the incompetent drug cheats getting caught and vilified, leaving more accomplished dopers to bask in continued adoration?

Introducing severer sanctions would also, to my mind, make it imperative to make sure we are a) 100 per cent confident in the science and b) 100 per cent certain that there is not the faintest smidgen of official favouritism or corruption from the moment the testers knock on the door to exhaustion of an athlete's last avenue of appeal.

I am afraid I disagree totally with the notion that a smattering of innocent victims is a price worth paying in the drive to stamp out abuse.

It is all very well in theory, until that innocent victim is you.

And the logic of arguing that a two-year ban for doping is "almost saying it is acceptable" quite escapes me.

Moynihan also said this week that over 60 per cent of countries in the Olympic Movement have anti-doping policies that are non-compliant with the WADA code.

If that is even remotely correct, then bringing that figure sharply down should, to my mind, be much more of a priority than bickering over sanctions.

I repeat: the consequences of an adverse finding are so devastating - whether or not you are forced to sit out an Olympics - that the least top-level athletes have a right to expect is that they and their international peers receive equal treatment.

Once that is sorted out, then the matter of whether penalties need to be more severe can move centre-stage.

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 and 2010 World Cup. Owen's Twitter feed can be accessed here.

Stand by your beds chaps! Labour has a new games mistress. Harriet Harman's appointment as sport's overlady on the Opposition front bench seems to have sneaked the radar. Perhaps with good reason.

Ed Miliband's selection of his daunting as shadow secretary for Culture, Media and Sport will raise eyebrows, and doubtless a few hackles in the sporting community.

"Harperson" has no track record of any previous interest in sporting issues but this did not deter her going into bat at Lord's last week, telling the Business in Sport and Leisure annual conference that while on holiday in India last year "it took me twice as long as any other nationality to get through passport control and baggage checks because all they wanted to talk to me about was the cricket. It was quickly evident that they knew more about English cricket than I did." And probably any other aspect of sport for that matter.

But that's politics for you, and politics is what she is about, as she has wasted no time in putting the boot into Government sports policies, claiming everything good that is now happening in sport is all down to the last administration.

Another Harman gem: "In Peckham, they walk tall when Rio Ferdinand reminds them that he came from Peckham." Not if they're a supporter of nearby Millwall, dear, as her newly-appointed sporting sidekick could inform her.

Clive Efford, MP for Eltham, is now Labour's Shadow Sports Minister. Not only is he a Millwall fan but a qualified referee. His whistle should come in handy.

It will be fascinating to see how Harman, now nominally overseeing Labour's Olympics policy at the DCMS, gets on with Tessa Jowell, who remains in the Cabinet as Shadow Olympics Minister.

All this must bring a wry smile to the face of Kate Hoey, the best Sports Minister we've had since Denis Howell, who was brutally booted into touch by Tony Blair after some calculated earblowing by his insidious henchman Alastair Campbell on behalf of the equally insidious football lobby, whom Hoey had the effrontery to challenge. She could be doing Harman's new job with far more credibility and background knowledge.

So could someone who was once Hoey's right hand man when she was Sports Minister. As her Parliamentary aide he shared the same passion for community and schools sport.

Andy Reed is one of the nice guys of politics. Which is probably why he lost his seat the last election. Ironically he represented Loughborough, whose electorate have much to thank sport for. They should have known better.

Had he still been at Westminster surely he would have been the ideal choice to head up the Opposition's sports team. He says, somewhat diplomatically that he finds Harman's appointment "quite interesting" while Efford is "a good guy."

For me, the jury's out on Harman (pictured), but the good news is that the loss of his seat meant that Andy was handy to become the new chair of the Sport and Recreation Alliance, (the Central Council for Physical Recreation that was) in succession to the doughty Brigid Simmonds.

With his 13 years Parliamentary experience and a genuine feel for sport at all levels has already begun to enhance its reputation. A former runner, volleyball and tennis player who still turns out for his Midlands rugby club, Birstall, at 50, he is popular with sports leaders and principled enough to have resigned from the Government over the Iraq war.

With chief executive Tim Lamb, the former head honcho at the England Cricket Board, and the ubiquitous Howard Wells, former UK and Northern Ireland FA chief executive as deputy chair the refurbished Alliance has been given a new lease of life .

The old CCPR had become increasingly anachronistic since the heady and purposeful days of the well-remembered and much lamented Nigel Hook. It is re-emerging as the potent ginger group it once was.

Reed tells me: "It's a cliché in these situations to say what a great honour it is to be asked to chair an organisation like the S&RA – but it genuinely is. Sport plays an incredibly important part in our society and, I am leading an organisation that brings together no fewer than 322 national governing and representative bodies, 150,000 clubs and millions of participants."

Literally representing everything from bowls to bridge, football to tchouckball, and activities like movement and dance and cheerleading which will play a role in the cultural aspects of 2012.  "Every sport you've heard of and a few you haven't," says Reed.

As the CCPR - so often confused with the letters on the vests of athletes in the days of the Soviet Union - and now the S&RA they have been an effective if relatively unsung body. As Lamb says: "It it frustrates me that we've been around for over 70 years and still so many people don't really know what we do, which is why we are  endeavouring to raise our profile.  We have put ourselves about a bit and back on the map."

The trouble is, much of what the Alliiance does as the "parliament of sport"  can be eye-glazing for the public prints, rather like that of the English Institute of Sport, another nuts and bolts operation that is worthy and essential but no-one really wants to read about.

And in terns of sports governance the S&RA  is overshadowed by the two Goverment quangos, UK Sport and Sport England, and the British Olympic Association.

"It is a tough sporting environment out there in terms of financing and funding," says Reed (pictured). "Much of what we do doesn't excite the public until the impact is apparent."

So what does the S&RA do? Well, they organise campaigns from their Victoria offices aimed at supporting the sporting community on varying issues like the work of volunteers, tax, VAT, betting in sport, playing fields, women's sport, planning permissions, the increase in police charges at sports events and licensing matters. Reed cites an example of his rugby club which even has to fork out for an annual music licence because some of the player bring in their Ipods to play in the dressing room. The S&RA fought a successful battle to get the proposed fee increase for all clubs halved.

MPs are actively lobbied to oppose things that might harm sport and encouraged to support schemed that are beneficial.

The body's raison d'etre is fighting sport's corner from, all angles and it is estimated that over the past two years clubs have been saved over £2 million in taxes and levies.

"One thing we keep banging on about is Olympic Legacy," says Reed. "We are immensely supportive of 2012 but critical of the amount of legacy that will be left for sport."

He adds: "If we didn't exist you would have to invent us because people in sport need an independent voice. We're not hamstrung by close ties with government and we are not dominated by the Big Five of sport. We can advise on the governance of sport and also be critical of the way some sports are run – and sometimes we are.

"Our meetings give sports leaders a chance to get together, compare experiences and have a moan if they like. Some of the less known sports have nowhere else to go. They see us as their as their representative in the big sporting world."

After three months in the role Reed admits: "I've found the politics of sport a lot harder than the politics of Westminster."

Something upon which Ms Harman, our new sports czarina, may care to ponder.

Alan Hubbard is an award-winning 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 Olympics, 10 Commonwealth Games, several football World Cups and world title fights from Atlanta to Zaire.