Sir Craig Reedie, President of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), hopes to have a $1 million-plus (£690,000/€891,000) investigations fund at his disposal within a matter of months, as pressure to take a harder line on drug cheats continues to mount in the build-up to the Rio 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The Moscow Laboratory has been partly reaccredited by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) to enable it to resume analysis of blood samples.

Athletics powerhouse Kenya looks finally to be en route to putting its anti-doping house in order, a week after being declared non-compliant by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

Contaminated meat is continuing to pose a challenge for FIFA dope testers.

New analysis by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), has revealed that anti-doping authorities caught 13 per cent fewer drug cheats in 2014, in spite of analysing around 10,000 more samples than the previous year.

Working papers for next month’s SportAccord General Assembly seen by insidethegames show the sheer scale of the downsizing forced on the umbrella body for Olympic and non-Olympic sports, as a consequence of the devastating fall-out from the bombshell speech delivered last year in Sochi by Marius Vizer, the then SportAccord President.

Victoria Pendleton, the Olympic gold medal-winning track cyclist, has treated a 70,000-strong Cheltenham crowd to a display of courage and rare sporting versatility by partnering a chaser called Pacha Du Polder to a fifth-place finish at British jumps racing’s blue riband festival.

The scale of the financial damage wreaked by FIFA’s year of turmoil is starting to  become apparent, with revenue from marketing rights to the World Cup, the governing body’s flagship tournament, down over $100 million (£69 million/€89 million) - or 29 per cent - in 2015 from the equivalent figure in 2011, the corresponding point in the previous four-year commercial cycle.

The British government is cutting its direct spending on anti-doping at a time when much attention is focused on how to channel more money into the fight against drugs cheats.

Rio 2016 President Carlos Nuzman says he has not yet decided whether to run for the Presidency of the Pan American Sports Organization (PASO).

Rio 2016 remains hopeful that João Havelange, the veteran former FIFA President who was born in the city and celebrates his 100th birthday in two months’ time, will attend the Olympics and Paralympic Games later this year.

Russia is reported to have shaved a further six billion rubles (£56 million/$78 million/€71 million) from its spending on the 2018 FIFA World Cup.

FIFA’s 2015 deficit may weigh in at $108 million (£77 million/€98 million), $78 million more than the budgeted figure of $30 million, as the football body’s crisis continues to take its toll on the bottom-line.

"The Confederation of African Football (CAF) will vote as a bloc. Whether it is 53 or 50, that is the question; not whether it is 53 or 26.”