By Mike Rowbottom

Britain's athletics and rowing teams, two of the highest profile achievers at the London 2012 Games, will feature sister acts next weekend which promise further Olympic glories.

UK Athletics has selected 20-year-old Victoria Ohuruogu for the European Team Championships at Gateshead in the 400 metres relay squad, where she will join her big sister Christine, who at 29 has a medal collection which includes Olympic gold and silver, world gold and Commonwealth gold.

And in the Rowing World Cup at Eton Dorney – the first international action on the Olympic course since the Games – 25-year-old Monica Relph and her younger sister Pam, who won Paralympic gold last summer, are named together in an international team for the first time.

Kate Giles' dad owns a bakery. This may explain certain things, as the founder of the award-winning British sports brand Crewroom acknowledged while assessing her company's involvement in the fabric of some of this country's top sporting events.

"I have always understood about getting ingredients right," she told insidethegames. "And never throwing anything away." It's a working definition of sustainability, which is central to the success of her burgeoning business.

By David Owen

Few sports are as deeply rooted in Olympic history as fencing.

Not only is it one of only a handful to have featured at every Summer Games of the modern era. It provided Greece, home of the Ancient Olympics, with its very first modern-era gold medal. The fencing programme at the inaugural modern Olympics in Athens in 1896 - staged in the marble rotunda of the Zappeion - even included the first Olympic event to be contested by professional athletes.

By David Owen

The Boston bombings, which killed three people and injured over 260 near the finish-line of the world's oldest annual marathon on April 15, provided a sobering reminder of the vulnerability of big sports events to terror attacks.

One of the most unsettling aspects as details of the atrocity emerged was its apparent lack of sophistication, with the carnage understood to have been caused by two improvised explosive devices or pressure-cooker bombs.

A month on from the attack, what can be said about the likely repercussions for organisers of similar mass participation and sporting events? And, with sluggish economic growth putting public finances under severe strain in many countries, can anything be done to mitigate the cost and uncertainties associated with trying to maintain security at high-profile sporting occasions?

By James Crook

Badminton is a sport which uniquely has its roots in two continents. Its beginnings can be traced to mid-18th century in India, where it was created by British military officers stationed there.

The sport owes its name to Badminton House in Gloucestershire, owned by the Duke of Beaufort - although it is unclear why - and for most of its early existence it was a sport with its centre firmly in Europe.

When the International Badminton Federation - the forerunner to the current World Badminton Federation (BWF) - was formed in 1934 seven of the founding nations were from Europe. But the introduction of the sport onto the Olympic programme at Barcelona in 1992 has seen the sport's popularity in Asia explode.

Among the stalls in the booming main hall of the ExCeL Centre during Virgin London Marathon week was one espousing a rapidly growing variant of the increasingly popular sport of Making Life Brutally Difficult For Yourself – that is, obstacle racing.

You could imagine the banner over the Reebok Spartan Race stall reading: "Introduce yourself to a world of pain." Or perhaps: "Be bad to yourself. It will be worth it."

Obstacle racing is all about doing things no sane person would want to do – it is effectively a commando assault course, with all the accompanying mud, sweat and tears, with sadistic add-ons.

By Mike Rowbottom

As wrestling, singled out for potential exclusion in 2020 by the International Olympic Committee, seeks to retain its grip on the Games of which it has been a part since the ancient days, speculation is now rising within Olympic circles – or should we say rings? – over which newcomer might manage to capitalise on the chance of joining the biggest sporting show on earth when it is hosted  by Istanbul, Tokyo or Madrid.

Will karate get the gig? Tokyo would certainly be delighted at that turn of events if it was successful in its Games bid. Or will squash, now ticking more boxes than a market researcher, manage to court success at the third time of asking?

By Mike Rowbottom

There is a familiar sense of routine to the year for Craig Pickering right now as he prepares for another summer as a top class sprinter. Beyond it, however, there now lies a sense of rising excitement as this 26-year-old looks forward to resuming his other sporting life - as a member of the British Bobsleigh squad aspiring to Olympic medals at the 2014 Sochi Winter Games.

Pickering, from Crawley in Sussex but now based with the Marshall Milton Keynes Athletics Club, has already achieved more than most athletes would hope for in their career.

By Duncan Mackay

If Marius Vizer was looking to pick the brains of a couple of political heavyweights to get some tips for his campaign to become the new President of SportAccord then he had the perfect opportunity during London 2012.

In what was a stunning picture opportunity for the head of the International Judo Federation (IJF), Russian President Vladimir Putin showed up at ExCeL to spend his only day at the Olympics  in London watching judo, and was accompanied by British Prime Minister David Cameron.

By Duncan Mackay

Certain days will always reverberate through history and for Nenad Lalovic he will forever remember where he was when he received news of the day that wrestling was dropped from the core programme of Olympic sports, a decision which, in the short-term at least, has dramatically changed the direction of his life.

"I can remember all of it," the Serbian recounts to insidethegames. "The 12th of February. I was in my office in Belgrade. I was working my affairs and was not looking at the internet or anything. Then one friend from Switzerland sent me an SMS, 'Did you see what happened?' Then the whole world went down for me."

By Mike Rowbottom

Mike Hay knows what it takes to perform supremely well at Olympic level. After a competitive curling career in which he helped Scotland win five European titles and two world silver medals, he turned to a coaching career in which, most gloriously, he guided Rhona Martin and her team of Scotswomen to their never-to-be-forgotten performance at 2002 Salt Lake City, where they came from the brink of an early exit to win the first British Winter Games since Torvill and Dean's 1984 ice dancing triumph, making the front and well as the back pages in the UK and attracting a home television audience of more than five million.

By Mike Rowbottom

If it is indeed true that you are what you eat, then all those who gathered for the Virgin London Marathon's media lunch at La Gavroche last week would have stepped back out into the late afternoon chill of Upper Brook Street better and more cultivated individuals. Who knows, for a few minutes it might even have been the case.

The annual conjunction of running and food at the establishment of Michel Roux Jr, who is preparing to run London for an 18th time this year, always brings into consideration the important question of how marathons are best fuelled.

By Tom Degun

Depending on whether you believe rumours or not, which can always be a dangerous thing at even at the best of times, modern pentathlon is whispered to be one of the sports currently in real danger of being kicked off the Olympic Games sports programme.

At this stage, they are one of a number of sports which appear to be in a similarly precarious position as the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Executive Board prepares to meet to discuss the situation next month.

That vital meeting in Lausanne on February 12 and 13 will see the Executive Board discuss which of the 26 sports that were part of London 2012 should be removed from the core programme and added to the seven who are currently bidding to be part of 2020.

By David Owen

It has been an exciting week. The Candidature files of the three cities vying to host the 2020 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games have landed. This means that, for the first time, it is possible to compare the detail of the three rival projects. If, that is, you are prepared to sift through nine dense, if showy, volumes.

Don't worry: I've done it so you don't have to, and the first thing I would say, if my red-rimmed eyes do not deceive me, is that, though it is a short shortlist, it is a very varied one.

By Philip Barker

The man who changed the face of world sport forever was born 150 years ago on New Year's day.

His name was Pierre de Coubertin  and he was the driving force behind the revival of the Olympic Games. Last summer, London 2012 paid their own tribute by asking his great grand nephew Antoine de Navacelle to carry the Olympic Torch, at the very spot where the 1908 Olympic marathon had finished.

"It is a fantastic opportunity that I have been given to carry the torch on his behalf " said De Navacelle. "London and Paris are very much concerned with the same story because Pierre de Coubertin came to England in his youth."