To generalise, the sport has been good news and the politics has not.

Because bad news sells, many readers might agree with Azerbaijan’s view that the nation has been the victim of a "barbaric" act and that Armenia should never again host an international sports event.

The specific aim for Azerbaijan is to damage Armenia’s chances of hosting the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) World Championships for the first time next year.

Having been in Armenia for all eight days since the dreadful flag-burning incident, I hope they fail for two reasons - the quality of these Championships on and off the platform, and Azerbaijan’s hypocrisy.

Azerbaijan’s Government told its team to fly home because they would not be safe, whereas on the evidence of Turkey’s stay here they would have been very safe indeed - three-car police escorts to and from training and competition, extra security in and outside the hotel.

It should be pointed out here, without going into a history lesson, that Armenia has no diplomatic relations with either Azerbaijan or Turkey, both neighbours but not friends for 100-plus years, and that as recently as seven months ago more than 100 troops died in a conflict on the Armenia-Azerbaijan border.

Since Azerbaijan’s team returned home to a heroes’ welcome in Baku (and I’d be amazed if they actually agreed with their Government’s decision not to stay) the local media has cried outrage and worse.

They were helped by Armenia’s dithering over what to say - the hosts took 48 hours too long to condemn the flag-burning, during which time the Azerbaijan media went to work by publishing a “fake news” story about torn flags hanging in the arena (there were none) and lining up every available person to say, effectively, that the IWF should drop Armenia from its list of bidders.

That list of critics included the Dean of the Turkic World Economics Faculty at the Azerbaijan State University of Economics (UNEC), the President of the Israel-Azerbaijan International Association, and the Azerbaijani Commissioner for Human Rights (Ombudsman), all of whom made the headlines.

There have been other incidents in the sporting world involving Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkey.

In 2007, when an Armenian wrestler won World Championship gold in Baku, TV broadcasts edited Armenia’s flag out of the broadcast.

At the 2011 World Boxing Championships in Baku, Azerbaijani fans attacked Armenian athletes with stones.

In 2015 at the first European Games the Armenia delegation was hit with "a tsunami of pens, lighters and coins" according to one of those in it, and then there were the comments of Nurlan Ibrahimov, former head of public relations at Azerbaijan’s leading football club FC Qarabag.

He lost his job and was banned from football for life because of a social media post in which he said: "We must kill all Armenians - children women and the elderly. We need to kill them without making a distinction. No regrets. No compassion."

If the Azerbaijanis think one fashion designer setting light to a flag at an Opening Ceremony deserves a ban from hosting big sporting events, surely the same should have applied to them after these misdemeanours - in which case Azerbaijan never would have hosted the European Games, the Baku Formula 1 Grand Prix since 2016, the Islamic Games in 2017, the UEFA Europa League Final in 2019, four matches at Euro 2020 and a host of other Championships.

So the Dean of the Turkic World Economics Faculty at UNEC and his fellow critics either don’t know or don’t care what they’re talking about.

There was also a notable incident involving Armenia and Turkey at last year’s European Junior Weightlifting Championships in Albania.

After Garik Karapetyan, one of Armenia’s best weightlifters, won gold his beaten Turkish rival Emre Ozturk tried to cover up the flag of Armenia with the Turkish flag, left the podium during the Armenian anthem and refused to shake hands with the winner.

That happened within the sporting competition rather than an Opening Ceremony.

So it was very heartening, after all this, to hear the comments of Talat Unlu, President of the Turkish Weightlifting Federation and overseer of next year’s European Championships in Antalya.

Unlu said: "From the first day till now there is only one disgusting thing that happened, and that is the burning of the Azerbaijan flag. Everything has been perfect since the Opening Ceremony.

"Nobody could expect that somebody from the crowd would do this. We can’t deny, because of one miserable thing, the good organisation that the Armenian Federation did.

"The Azerbaijan team went but we stayed. For a weightlifting championship this is the best I have seen.

"Sport is universal, it is a symbol of peace… in sport there should not be politics."