The sights and sounds of London 2012 are getting closer and closer. Soon – very soon – the BBC Big Screens already set up in 22 cities around the British Isles will fill with live Olympic and Paralympic action, and the squares and streets and parks around those screens will teem with activity and music.

In the last few weeks, some vivid details have begun to emerge as to how the Games will connect with the wider, non ticket-bearing public.

For BT London Live, ironically, it is Blur who have given one of their iconic projects a hard edge.

By Tom Degun

When John Steele was officially unveiled as chief executive of the Youth Sport Trust on January 23, it is fair to say that more than a few eyebrows were raised.

There was certainly no doubting his credentials for the position, given that Steele boasts a hugely impressive career in sports administration, but it is no secret that he departed his last role as Rugby Football Union (RFU) chief executive on a rather sour note.

That particular ending appeared a great shame to a man that took the RFU top job in September 2010 following an extremely successful five years as chief executive of UK Sport.

By Mike Rowbottom

No doubt the young hurdlers at Notts Athletics Club give their all on every training night. But as they go through their paces at the indoor venue of the Harvey Haddon sports complex tonight there seems to be a special spring in their step. This is hardly surprising given that they are going through their paces under the gaze of one of the club's most distinguished former members, Andy Turner, and the man who coached him at Notts from the ages of 11-19, Alan Bower.

Since he established himself as one of the most promising young athletes in the country under Bower's guidance, Turner has enjoyed a career which has had as many ups and downs as any hurdler could expect.

He made it to the Athens 2004 Olympics in the nick of time after recovering from injury. Further injuries followed, but by 2006 he had recovered to the point where he won the bronze medals in the European Championships and Commonwealth Games 110 metre hurdles.

By Mike Rowbottom

Antoine de Navacelle, direct descendant of Baron Pierre de Coubertin, is a man on a mission. More than one, in fact. But the most pressing concern of this cultured, recently retired international banker is to stimulate the minds of the younger generation in much the same manner as his illustrious forebear in promoting the Coubertin Awards student essay competition ahead of the London 2012 Games.

More broadly, as a board member of the International Pierre de Coubertin Committee (CIPC), which was founded in Lausanne in 1975, de Navacelle has sought to ensure that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) retains the values espoused by the man who was father to the modern Olympics – and great uncle to him.

But first question to the genial financier, as a matter of courtesy, concerns his recently broken leg. Due perhaps to the vagaries of the phone line, or more likely the interviewee's sense of fun, the enquiry prompts some uncertainty. Are we talking about his ankle – or his uncle?

By Mike Rowbottom

Footfall – which in these parlous days means the sound of shoppers checking out goods before going home to order on the internet – is brisk in the Westfield Stratford City shopping centre, as you might expect on a Saturday morning.

But then this is the dead month of January, and it is possible to chart a course through the vast and multi-tiered concourses without having to halt or take the kind of evasive action that was required on the packed day of opening last September, when the siren song of former Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger was amplified throughout the vast, thronged mall.

Around 25-30 pairs of marching feet have made their way directly to the London 2012 shop in John Lewis on this particular Saturday for a spectacular event.

By David Owen in Innsbruck

Entering the final phase of what will be a 12-year stint as head of the world's most powerful sports body, Jacques Rogge's workload does not appear to be getting any lighter.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) President will celebrate his 70th birthday on May 2; yet he was a man on a schedule in the outrageously scenic Austrian city of Innsbruck this weekend, when insidethegames was granted an exclusive interview.

Temporarily installed on the 14th floor of a city-centre hotel ringed by magnificent snow-covered mountains, Rogge certainly had a room with a view.

By David Owen

Electricity, like ballet and ancient Greek, has always been a bit of a mystery to me.

I had fondly imagined that if you wanted to stage a sports event in an unconventional location you simply shipped in the infrastructure, attached a standard 13-amp plug (you know, the brown wire is live; the blue one is neutral – the stuff even I know) and trained an extension lead to the nearest electrical socket.

Apparently it is a bit more complicated than that.

Timing is a vital part of Olympic success and when it comes to track cycling, even the smallest increments either up or down can have giant effects – as Sarah Storey found out after helping GB win team pursuit gold at the World Cup in Cali, Colombia, when she returned to discover she had been cut from the squad.

"I collected my bags in Manchester and before heading home was told my performance in Cali was not as good as they [the selectors] were looking for and so this is the end of the journey for me with the Great Britain pursuit team," wrote the 34-year-old former Paralympic swimming champion who was seeking to ride in both the Olympics and Paralympics next summer.

Storey's departure from the team pursuit followed that of other stellar performers such as Olympic road race champion Nicole Cooke, Olympic individual pursuit champion Rebecca Romero, whose challenge was undermined by injury in October, and Lizzie Armitstead, a member of the 2009 world champion team pursuit, who chose to pursue her ambitions on the road.

By Mike Rowbottom

The result of the BBC Sports Personality of the Year, to be announced on December 22, is already known. The winner is a man.

The controversy – some might call it the brouhaha – which followed the announcement earlier this month that the shortlist of 10 contenders contained no female sporting figures continues to generate heat. But the gathering which took place this week in the most ancient part of the Palace of Westminster aimed to produce light rather than heat – specifically, guiding light, given that it was composed of some of the most admirable of our female sporting role models.

The photoshoots that took place in Westminster Hall – originally built in 1067 with a "new" roof added during the reign of Richard II – and also on the green outside the Houses of Parliament were organised for a twofold purpose.

By Mike Rowbottom

Over the years, the SPAR European Cross Country Championships have proved to be of key importance to a succession of British and Irish athletes. It would be nice to think that the latest version, to be run in the Slovenian city of Velenje on Sunday (December 11), will prove similarly relevant to 22-year-old Steph Twell, who will be making her return to international colours just short of 10 months after the traumatic injury which threatened to ruin not just her year but her keen ambition to make a mark in the London 2012 Games.

Until February 13 this year, Twell – then 21 – had experienced a steeply rising curve of achievement. In 2006 she had won the first of three successive junior titles at the European Cross Country Championships, and in 2008 she earned success on the track with a world junior 1500 metres title, also competing at the Beijing Games, where she narrowly failed to reach the 1500m final. She finished the year as the European Athletics Rising Star of the Year.

Her star continued to rise as she won bronze for Scotland at the 2010 Commonwealth Games 1500m in Delhi. But then came a trip to Belgium, where, leading a cross country race in Hannut, she slipped on a muddy descent and fractured her right ankle in three places.

By Mike Rowbottom

As Britain's male hockey players prepare for the Champions Trophy – a major step en route to London 2012 which gets underway in New Zealand on December 3 – the approach to the task being adopted by their coach Jason Lee involves more lines than Clapham Junction.

Lee, a former GB player himself who has guided the team to ninth and fifth places at the last two Olympics, knows a squad which he describes as "probably the strongest ever" is within touching distance of a place on the podium at next year's Olympics. But he also knows that factors such as the pressure of home expectation, which have weighed heavily on some of his players in the past, could prevent them ascending one of those three steps.

"The difference between fourth place and gold will be very tight, and small things could end up making a big difference to us," he said. "That's why we will beg, borrow and steal to get every small advantage we can."

By Alan Hubbard

I am not sure if Tanni Grey-Thompson has ever met Sepp Blatter – or  even desires to do so – but I would like to be the proverbial fly on the wall should they ever have a conversation which embraces the FIFA poobah's growing list of apparent prejudices.

Slippery Sepp – hard to say whether he or the Houdini of Twickenham, Rob Andrew, has the thicker coating of Teflon – is not unfamiliar with isms.

His current misadventure with racism was famously preceded by a chauvinistic flirtation with sexism when he suggested that women's football would be more aesthetically appealing if players wore kit that revealed rather more flesh ("tighter shorts and low cut shirts"). As befits a bloke who once rejoiced in the role of President of the Society for the Preservation of the Suspender.

By David Owen

I don't know if they played a part in Athens's winning submission for the 1896 Games, but moving images have long been fundamental to the business of bidding to host the Olympics and other major sports events.

It's easy to see why: with their matchless capacity to open a window on reality – or more usually hyper-reality – motion pictures have an unrivalled ability to transport decision-makers away from the stuffy conference centre they happen to be cooped up in and tap into whatever residue of Olympic emotion they still harbour.

"I think the films have a visceral, vivid and emotional impact on the voters," says Rupert Wainwright, who as founder and executive creative director of Los Angeles-based Adore Creative, is one of the foremost contemporary exponents of this highly specialised niche genre.

By Mike Rowbottom

Watching Kelly Holmes conduct proceedings at a press conference in London last week to highlight a new study into the benefits of her On Camp With Kelly project - the top line being that of the 45 athletes she is currently mentoring, 80 per cent are achieving at a higher level than peers outside the group - I was reminded of watching her do the same kind of thing in a similarly sized, but much hotter room in Potchefstroom a couple of months after she had earned her remarkable Olympic double at the 2004 Athens Games.

That first On Camp press conference in South Africa in November had attracted enormous media interest, given Holmes's astonishing exploits.

The side-room in the Potchefstroom physiotherapy block was jam-packed, a single electric fan striving in futility against temperatures, which, even by local estimation, constituted a heat wave. Camera crews sweltered at the back, journalists and coaches filled the central seats and eight young female athletes sat in orderly rows at the front, directly under Holmes's gaze.

By Tom Degun in Guadalajara

On November 11, 2011, in St Kitts and Nevis, at precisely 6pm local time, Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) President Mike Fennell will open an envelope to reveal whether Australia's Gold Coast or Hambantota in Sri Lanka will host the 2018 Commonwealth Games.

The announcement, which will come at the end of the CGF General Assembly on the two-island nation, will undoubtedly bring joy for one candidate city and despair for the other but for Fennell himself the eagerly anticipated moment at the St Kitts Marriott Resort will be bittersweet regardless of the outcome.

This is because the announcement will be the 76-year-old Jamaican's last official act as CGF President and following the conclusion of the gathering in Caribbean, he will immediately stand down from the role and hand over the reins to current CGF vice-president Prince Tunku Imran of Malaysia - the only candidate standing for the prestigious position of President.