You can understand why we Brits - and the BBC in particular - get right up the noses of those who govern international sport.

First it was the revelations of bungs within FIFA and now we have Newsnight's allegations of boxing backhanders in Baku.

So what are the pros and cons, if you'll pardon the phrase, of this latest so-called scandal where we are asked to believe cash has been offered to ensure Olympic gold medals by way of a spot of ringside vote rigging?

Let's begin by saying that in 50 years of covering the sport I swear I have never seen a fixed fight - at least, not one where a contestant has taken a dive.  But there have been dozens where the judging obviously has been either crazy or crooked. The latter mostly in the amateur game.

It certainly happened at the Seoul Olympics when American Roy Jones was disgracefully robbed of gold after clearly beating Korean Park Si-Hun, who was openly embarrassed at the contrived result, following which three ringside judges were suspended.


It is scandalous that the IOC having been made aware the verdict was a swindle, still have not given Jones the gold medal.  If the Korean had tested positive for dope, that would have happened.  Same difference, surely.

I also agree, with Britain's current Olympic champion James DeGale, that there were dodgy decisions in Beijing.

"How come the Chinese who are novices in boxing ended up with two gold medals?" he asks. Good question, and one similar to that Dr C K Wu the president of the international governing body AIBA is having to answer following BBC Newsnight allegations that one of his henchmen, Ivan Khodabakhsh, arranged a $9 million payment from an Azerbaijan source, possibly the Government, to help bankroll their World Series Boxing tournament in return for a couple of guaranteed golds in London next year.

"Ludicrous" says Dr Wu the English-educated Taiwanese construction tycoon who now finds himself the Sepp Blatter of boxing, angrily having to instigate an inquiry into British-made allegations of wrongdoing on his watch.

Dr Wu came to power on a clean-up-the-sport ticket (and he appeared to have done so) so we must hope there will be no under-the-carpet sweeping.

Those allegations will be hard to prove.  But it is rather intriguing that Azerbaijan, an oil-rich chip off the old Soviet Bloc has, like Qatar in football suddenly emerged as a sporting power-base, principally boxing, AIBA, having held their convention there and switched the current World Championships to the capital Baku from Busan in South Korea where they were originally scheduled.

Baku, by the way, is also bidding for the 2020 Olympics, as is Qatar's Doha.  Welcome to the Olympic age of the nouveau riche.


However, from what we glean from the initial stages of the World Boxing Championships, it seems that the Azeris have some distance to go in terms of the proper organisation of prestigious international sports events.

Although how it was organised that five of the nine boxers representing Azerbaijan managed to be given seedings reflected by their world rankings in the draw for these championships seems another questionable matter for AIBA. It was the result of a rule change curiously introduced just in time for these world championships, which a British MP has asked the IOC to investigate.

Ah, Britain interfering again, AIBA will sigh.

While AIBA may appear to have done Azerbaijan a favour, they haven't done themselves any with such an iffy move.

So how bent is boxing? DeGale, from the safety of the pro side of the ropes claims that amateur boxing is contaminated by corrupt judging. Well, it certainly was under the shady stewardship of Dr Wu's predecessor, Anwar Chowdry, but I doubt that is the case now, though I was present at the press conference in Beijing when Romania's ABA president, Rudel Obreja, an AIBA technical delegate and former vice President, publicly alleged there had been some voting skulduggery. Suddenly his microphone was turned off, the lights went out and he was ushered away. Obreja remains suspended, as does Romania itself at the moment.

I have tried to discover whether Paul King, the former ABA of England chief executive, who tried to orchestrate a coup against Dr Wu before falling on his sword when it failed, now feels somewhat vindicated. But so far, he has been unavailable for comment.

Understandably, too, both the ABAE and GB Boxing, subsequently personas non grata with AIBA, have been circumspect in their reaction, hoping that despite the present rumpus, fresh attempts at bridge building will be successful.

It seems to me that AIBA are their own worst enemies. Certainly they have not won many friends abroad of late, in particular with their shamefully anachronistic ban on pro-associated coaches like GB's Rob McCracken and the US guru, Freddie Roach being banned from the corner at World and Olympic tournaments, an action condemned in the US as "despotic". They also disciplined, not only the ABAE but a dozen other nations following the attempt to unseat Dr Wu.


Now we hear that AIBA arbitrarily have decided to bar Amir Khan's younger brother Haroon from boxing for Pakistan in the Games because he once wore an England junior vest. This despite him having won a bronze medal for Pakistan in the last Commonwealth Games.

Now I admit to being a natural cynic. When I first saw the Newsnight programme, I thought there might be something in it. On reflection, I am not so sure. My guess is that AIBA have not been corrupt, just rather clumsy.

It is virtually - though not absolutely - impossible to arrange for a boxer from a particular nation to go all the way to an Olympic final and win a gold under the revamped judging system. To do that, it isn't the judges who would have to be fixed, but the computer, and I suppose that theoretically could be done, but it's a hell of a risk with such a forensic media these days. The real danger is that there are some strong elements within the IOC who would like to see boxing ko'd and it is hanging on to its Olympic berth by its gloved fingertips with a host of less traditional pursuits jostling to replace it. Fortunately it has a supporter in President Jacques Rogge, who, I am reliably informed once did a spot of ringside judging himself (woe betide anyone who tried to bribe him eh!).

Also, let's not forget judging can be at worst equally corrupt, or at best politically suspect in other Olympic sports, notably gymnastics and ice skating; less so in judo, wrestling and taekwondo.

We must emphasise that all the allegations of corruption are vehemently denied by AIBA and Dr Wu has promptly ordered an investigation.


It seems to me that much of the good work Dr Wu has done since coming to power is being undermined by some rather poor PR and Newsnight's naughtiness cannot have helped a man who is well respected within the IOC in any ambitions he may harbour to become a future President of that body.

Which is why, should there be any substance to these charges, he must keep his vow to be utterly ruthless in any punitive action.

I have no doubt that Dr Wu is an honourable man of the sporting world, but he seems to be guilty of some naivety if he did not perceive that such a mysterious, hitherto unpublicised transaction involving millions of dollars would not raise eyebrows when inevitably unearthed, and not just at the BBC.

There is one very simple solution to this mess; Newsnight should name their sources and AIBA reveal their anonymous benefactor. This surely would expose the truth.

It is all very well blowing whistles. Time somebody rang the bell.

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 lanes of rural Buckinghamshire have become crowded with cyclists.

Serious cyclists, I mean; you know, with all the gear.

Some of the men even have shaved legs.

Herne Hill Velodrome is ship-shape and Bristol fashion.

And the men's road cycling world champion is a Brit.

It is like climbing into a time-machine and being transported back to the 1960s.

Next thing you know, there will be a Pink Floyd revival.

(Oh. Apparently there already is one.)

The really good thing about all of this (apart from if Ummagumma gets to be recognised for the masterpiece it assuredly is) would be if obesity in Britain could also return to 1960s levels.

Encouragingly, a British Cycling press release - that is bound to have won the body brownie points with those battling to show that the London Olympics will leave a lasting legacy in terms of increased participation in grass-roots sport - suggests that cycling is doing its bit.

"British Cycling has signed up its 40,000th member, doubling its membership since 2007 in what has been a period of unprecedented growth for the national governing body," the release said.

"The milestone comes just one day after Mark Cavendish claimed a world title for Britain in the Men's Road Race in Copenhagen."


Membership expanded from 20,000 members in April 2007 to 30,000 by May 2010 and has since "catapulted" (British Cycling's verb, not mine) to 40,000 in just over a year.

The body said this growth had been boosted by the organisation's elite success since the 2008 Beijing Olympics "and a host of effective grassroots initiatives that are converting the inspirational power of its athletes into thousands of newcomers to cycling".

The cynic in me wonders whether the plaudits shouldn't also be extended to the "inspirational power" of soaring fuel prices and high unemployment.

Wasn't it Conservative hardman Norman Tebbit who observed that when his father was unemployed he got on his bike and looked for work?

Perhaps it is the 1980s - or, heaven forbid, the 1930s - we have headed back to, not the Sixties.

But let that pass – after all, if the drop in living standards encourages people to get back into the habit of cycling - and, hence, make themselves fitter and healthier, and the planet greener – it could be portrayed as one of the few positive consequences of the last few years of financial turbulence and economic torpor.

What I do really wonder, though, is whether our increased interest in cycling - triggered as I believe it has been in part by elite-level success – is sustainable.

Less than a year out, all the signs are that it will be hard for the GB cycling team to match the astonishing haul of eight gold medals, four silver and two bronze won in 2008 in the Chinese capital.

This is partly because the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), the world governing body, has moved the Olympic, um, goal-posts.

In the 10 track cycling events at London 2012, which together make up more than 50 per cent of the Olympic cycling programme, no country will be able to win more than one medal per event.

Hence, though 54 cycling medals are in theory available, the biggest stash that could be collected by any single country is, by my reckoning, 30 medals.

To match their medals total in Beijing, therefore, Britain's cyclists would have to achieve almost a 50 per cent strike-rate.

While it is one of those sports where a top-secret technological breakthrough could conceivably hand a big advantage to a single nation's cyclists, this seems like a tall order.

If early results disappoint and great expectations look like going unfulfilled, then the attention of the media – and, by extension, the vast Olympic television audience – could start dribbling away to events such as rowing, where British prospects appear outstandingly good, or football and swimming/diving, where developing story-lines look especially colourful.

The way things have worked out, an awful lot is likely to depend on the meaty thighs of that man Cavendish.

Ironically, the sprint legend was the only member of Britain's 2008 Olympic track cycling team to leave Beijing without a medal – this after he and Brad Wiggins flopped in a long-distance track event called the madison that was so complex it baffled even the watching Tony Blair.


For 2012, the madison has been dropped.

Instead, Cavendish is expected to spearhead a strong British challenge in the men's road race and, perhaps, to land the first host-country gold medal of the London Olympics.

Given that the race will finish outside the Queen's front-door in the Mall, if "Cav" can pull it off, Britain will be able to bask in a true "Cathy Freeman moment" and any subsequent disappointments in the velodrome would matter far, far less.

If not...well, present levels of interest and participation might prove to be a high-water mark – especially if we are back gossiping about rising house prices in our gas-guzzling Chelsea tractors by then.

(A big "if" that last one, admittedly.)

For me, much the most important sentence in that press release was attributed to British Cycling president Brian Cookson when he said: "We are on track to get one million more people cycling regularly and increase weekly participation to 125,000 by 2013".

Unless that target is hit - and sustained or increased year-by-year for the rest of this decade – we will have shown only that inspired (and inspiring) elite-level excellence has a tendency to rub off on grass-roots participation.

Whether that elite-level excellence is achieved in East London, East Asia or East Denmark might not make a shred of difference.

Only if London 2012 is followed by an enduring extension of the biking boom will those already pointing to the positive legacy of hosting the Games have an airtight case.

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 by clicking here

Former Sports Minister Richard Caborn has hit out at "disastrous" results in the drive to boost sports participation on the back of the London Olympics. In doing so, he once again highlights the myth of the promised Olympic legacy and the failure of successive Governments - his own included - to plan properly for its provision.

Caborn says that Sport England's aim of increasing participation by one million is facing "complete failure" before going on to  say: "The Olympics will be a spectacular success but we are not capitalising on that. We are in danger of failing completely on the long-term sporting legacy of the Games. There needs to be a major change of direction in the strategy on this if the disastrous decline experienced by many of the sports is to be reversed."

Sport England's Active People Survey supports Caborn's position showing that since  2007/2008 only nine sports have seen an increase in participation while 21 have seen a decline. The reality is likely far worse with athletics being reported by Active People to be one of the nine growth sports while independent analysis of participation in the sport suggests the opposite is true. Athletics is the only sport to have received independent analysis of its reported figures.

However, where Caborn calls for "a major change of  direction in the strategy" what is he actually asking for?

It was Richard Caborn who was the Minister for Sport when, in 2005, London won the right to host the Olympic and Paralympic Games in London in 2012. It was at this time that the target of one million more participants was set by him but no strategy worthy of the name was ever presented for public consumption by Caborn's department. Instead a series of initiatives were launched in the hope that they would support the stated aim.

Caborn said that in 2008 it was decided that Sport England should merely fund governing bodies instead of involving local authorities and regional Sports Councils in boosting participation. Sport England insist that is not the case.

Of course, it should be remembered that Sport England's primary role is to support Government policy via the distribution of Lottery cash and therefore the Government and Sport England are not that separate.

The fact is that both are right.  James Purnell, who followed Caborn at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), decided that the governing bodies (NGBs) should play a larger role in raising sports participation. Sport England were briefed to change "strategy" to reflect this and agencies like the County Sports Partnerships were, as a result briefed by Sport England to focus more closely on working with NGBs. This did not stop them also working with local authorities, education, health and others, it was the prioritisation of such partners which changed.

Purnell did not stay long at the DCMS but for the remainder of its life the last Government continued on a policy of "initiative-it is", a term coined by Tory Minister for Sport Hugh Robertson, in place of one involving proper strategy aimed at the integrated development of sport.

When the Conservatives won the election, Robertson lambasted initiative-itis and promised to deliver the missing strategy. That was in May of last year and yet we still await the strategy while initiative-itis continues unchecked.

But what of one million new participants in sport? Caborn is right when he says the aim will not be delivered but he has missed an important fact; no one is trying to deliver it anymore. In an earlier interview the Olympics Secretary Jeremy Hunt admitted that the previous Government's target  had been quietly dropped by the present Government shortly after the election.

What the revised target may be we don't know. What the strategy for achieving the revised target may be is also unknown. The sad fact is that despite promising to the world that a legacy from hosting the Games in London would be an increase in the participation in sport, no-one in Government has yet seen fit to produce a strategy worthy of the name to deliver on that promise.

When Caborn calls for "a major change of direction in the strategy" what he should be asking for is a strategy designed to deliver on our promise to the world however the evidence of the  past and of Governments of both hues does not suggest we should be getting too  optimistic.

Robertson has reminded us that no other host nation has ever managed to achieve the feat of raising participation through hosting the Games, something we knew already and something which the bid presentation in 2005 pointed out, telling the world that Britain would deliver.

Not  without a strategy we won't and time is fast running out.

Jim Cowan is a former athlete, coach, event organiser and sports development specialist who is the founder of Cowan Global, a company specialising in consultancy, events and education and training. For more details click here

There was unsurprisingly a rather tense atmosphere as I walked into the spectacular lobby of the Kempinski Hotel in Baku, Azerbaijan.

It had nothing to do with the surroundings of five-star luxury establishment nor the gloriously sunny weather in Baku but rather the fact that the Kempinski Hotel was about to host the International Boxing Association (AIBA) Extraordinary Congress.

This in itself was no big issue as the Extraordinary Congress had been planned for some months to coincide with the AIBA 2011 World Championships, which begin next week and act as the first major qualifier for the London 2012 Olympics.

The real issue was that just over 24 hours before the start of the Congress; BBC Newsnight had aired allegations of serious corruption against AIBA that have now gone global.

The programme alleged that Azerbaijan paid millions of dollars to AIBA in exchange for two gold medals at London 2012 with Ivan Khodabakhsh, the chief operating officer of the AIBA-owned Word Series of Boxing (WSB), facilitating the payment for $9 million (£6 million/€7.5 million) in exchange for them.

It was very clear that the allegations had very quickly filtered right through to all of the AIBA Member Federations as the lobby of the Kempinski Hotel was absolutely buzzing with the whispers of individuals discussing the topic.

The whispers continued as delegated moved into the hall where the Congress would take place and they only began to die down when AIBA President CK Wu, flanked by his formidable henchman in the form of AIBA Executive Director Ho Kim, walked into the room and took their seats at the top table.

Silence feel almost immediately as a sombre looking Wu picked up the microphone.

At this point, members were unclear as to what he would say about the allegations, if indeed anything at all. Some of the chatter I had overheard before the start of the Congress said Wu might bury his head in the sand and not even acknowledge the allegations; pretending as if nothing had happened.

But it became quickly apparent that backing away and throwing in the towel is was not Wu's style.

"My friends," he proclaimed, and for the first time in the years that I have known the AIBA President, he looked visibly emotional.

"We all know what has happened and we all know about the allegations that have been made against us.

"An allegation against one man in AIBA is an allegation against everyone in AIBA and I hear people ask, 'What should we do?'

"AIBA must stand together in this turbulent time and we will come back fighting. We are boxers and that is what we do."

Deafening applause echoed around the room.

Wu, who is also an International Olympic Committee (IOC) member carried on, stating that AIBA has now a zero tolerance policy for corruption and that he has set up a Special Investigation Committee to investigate matters.

But he did make a point to discuss the allegations themselves.

"I must say something about these allegations however," he said.

"In 2010 an agreement was signed between WSB SA, a Swiss incorporated company which runs the World Series of Boxing competition under the auspices of the AIBA, and a Swiss company for a loan in respect of the operation of WSB's American franchises.

"The Swiss company facilitated the making of the loan, which originated from an Azerbaijani private investor. The loan was not secret and nor was there anything improper about it. It was an arm's length transaction between two entities made on a commercial basis and with a view to a commercial return for the investor.

"While that investor prefers not to be named, as is their right under the terms of the agreement, AIBA can confirm that it is a private investor and is not the Azerbaijani Government or the Azerbaijani Boxing Federation and that none of the funds were derived from the Azerbaijani Government.

"Any suggestion that the loan was made in return for promises of gold medals at the 2012 Olympics is, we repeat, preposterous and utterly untrue. Such allegations have been made by individuals against AIBA who are totally discredited.

"As well as unjustifiably imputing corruption to AIBA, they demonstrate a complete misunderstanding of the procedures which now lead to the award of Olympic boxing medals and the impossibility of influencing these."

Wu finished by asking the floor if they had anything to add on the issue and it was somewhat of a surprise to see Hal Adonis, the President of USA Boxing, come marching to the top table to and take up the microphone.

As the top man at one of the most powerful National Boxing Federations on the planet, his comments would be immeasurably important and this was clearly evident by the fact that almost everyone in the room straightened up in their chairs.

"I'm embarrassed," the USA Boxing President began somewhat dramatically.

"I'm just so embarrassed by what has happened and that such accusations have been levelled at AIBA in such a cowardly way.

"Very serious allegations were made in this programme but they were made by people who refused to reveal their identity on camera, giving no opportunity to test their credibility.

"If such individuals are not prepared to publicly stand behind their allegations, such allegations cannot be regarded as either sound or credible.

"They are enemies of AIBA and enemies of boxing that seek to destroy our good name but I say that we don't let them and that we stand united."

It was clear that the USA Boxing President was not holding anything back and he was quickly joined by the President of Boxing Canada, Pat Fiacco.

Fiacco, who is also the current Mayor of Regina, went one step further than the USA Boxing President as he proposed and then passed a resolution in a matter of minutes stating the entire Congress was supportive of AIBA in denouncing the allegations.

"I want it to be clear that the whole of the boxing family from around the world supports AIBA on this matter," said Fiacco to widespread cheers.

The Congress was beginning to feel more like a rallying call to arms rather than a discussion to about AIBA Statutes.

Eventually, when enough national federations had put the boot into the BBC Newsnight programme, things settled down and the rest of Congress passed without any major event.

Ears did prick up when it was mentioned that there would be an amendment on the articles referring to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) but the change was so minor that it had no real bearing on the jurisdiction CAS over AIBA, which remains as strong as ever.

Shortly after the Congress, a press conference convened that saw the AIBA President surrounded by a throng of cameras and few questions.

As the microphone was passed around, I asked him what he thought of the timing of the BBC programme.

Wu pondered the issue for a second before he spoke.

"It is too convenient for this documentary to come out when it has one the eve of the 2011 World Championships here which are biggest competition outside the Olympics," he said.

"That is very suspicious.

"But we take this very seriously which is why we have already launched our investigation."

Shortly after, as I was sitting on a comfortable sofa in the lobby of the hotel, Wu spotted me and came over.

He once again told me of his zero tolerance policy, the impossibility of fixing boxing medals at an Olympic Games and of his surprise at the timing of the documentary – which I assume comes from his lack of knowledge of the British media.

He was also keen to discuss how much the organisation has change since he took over from Anwar Chowdhry of Pakistan who was AIBA President from 1986 to 2006 and plagued by allegations of corruption throughout his time in charge.

"I have appointed a strong Special Investigation Committee," Wu told me.

"Tom Virgets [the former USA Boxing President and chairman of AIBA Disciplinary Commission] is the right man to lead it and I told him to forget everything he has learnt in the past and just look at things objectively.

"If there is corruption here, then it will be dealt with in the harshest possible manner.

"Under Chowdhry, corruption was everywhere but I have spent the last four years cleaning the house.

"I have expelled four vice-presidents, a secretary general and six members of the executive committee because of wrongdoing.

"I promised that I would stop corruption here and I expect to be held to that promise."


He also pointed out that Khodabakhsh wouldn't even be able to deliver two gold medals at London 2012 even if he tried as the WSB chief executive officer has no role in Olympic boxing.

He added that if an Olympic boxing medal could be fixed, he would like to know how because he thinks it is "genuinely impossible."

The points were made in a rather humorous way but his tone hardened as we began to talk about the BBC again.

"We will see what the Commission's Report on the matter says," he explained.

"If there is corruption, it will be stamped out like I said.

"If the investigation shows that there is no corruption, then perhaps it would be time to ask serious questions of the BBC and to ask why they have made false allegations.

"We are a big enough organisation to defend ourselves and to fight for justice but I worry what might happen if they go after the smaller organisations.

"But we will not lie down until our name is cleared."

So the BBC appears that while AIBA may have landed the first body blow but a united AIBA have come back fighting in Baku.

And with the powerful Wu at the helm, the BBC may also need a strong guard before the final bell sounds.

Tom Degun is a reporter for insidethegames

If we do not act now, we will be left in the blocks, and a historic opportunity presented to the country six years ago by Sebastian Coe and his team will have gone to waste.

The London Olympics are now less than a year away.

The handling of this immense project has been exemplary in many respects and has already given the country much to be proud of.

It will be a great success as a sporting spectacular, of that there can be no doubt.

But we will miss the opportunity of a lifetime if we fall into the trap of treating the Games as an end in themselves.

They are not; they are a means to many ends.

And, as things stand, there is one vitally important goal on which we risk failing to deliver - increasing participation in grassroots sport.

If, come 2015 or 2020, we look back and find that hosting the world's greatest sports extravaganza has failed to trigger enduringly higher participation levels in grass-roots sport and other physical activities, it will amount to a failure of colossal proportions, with potentially severe consequences for the health and wellbeing of our increasingly couch-bound nation.

That is why it is so worrying that, just one year out from the igniting of the Olympic Cauldron, this is the direction in which we appear to be heading.

Figures recently released by Sport England indicate that of the 30 sports that they financially support, no fewer than 21 show a reduction in participation.

That is frankly a disastrous statistic which explains why I am calling for a change of strategy under which Sport England would stop just being a bank for sports governing bodies and instead lead an urgent drive to lift participation in sport and physical activity across the country.


Just as some of our more orthodox bankers have failed the country in recent years, so Sport England's strategy since 2008 has been fundamentally flawed and has failed to deliver on two out of three strategic outcomes.

Sport England must now as a matter of urgency seek to start to mend its ways by encouraging and assisting greater cooperation among the wide range of bodies which have an interest in driving up participation in sport and physical activities in the UK.

Sport England also needs to embrace and start delivering fully the objectives of the Active Peoples Survey on sport and physical activity.

Time is now short and leadership is needed if the London Olympics is to be used to drive up participation.

Sport England have a duty to bring together the public and private sectors, along with the voluntary sector and sports governing bodies to address the decline in participation.

More specifically, organisations such as sporta, Fitness Industry Association, Great North Run, London Marathon and Race for Life, as well as sports governing bodies, should be encouraged by Sport England to work together to drive up participation in Olympic year.

If we do not act now, we will be left in the blocks, and a historic opportunity presented to the country six years ago by Sebastian Coe and his team will have gone to waste.

Richard Caborn is a former UK Sports Minister

The London 2012 Olympic Truce programme was launched this week.

But with the countdown clock ticking towards 300 days, a truce is the last thing to expect in the marketing wars for which the London Games will be a prime theatre of operations.

"Ambush" marketing tactics - whereby organisations seek to associate their brands with the Olympic values, without going to the bothersome expense of actually becoming an official sponsor - are often the most titillating aspect of these wars for journalists such as me.

Mere words can scarcely convey to you my excitement three years ago at the Olympic Opening Ceremony in Beijing when Li Ning, the Chinese gym shoe magnate, started moonwalking his way around the roof of the Bird's Nest stadium, in perhaps the biggest ambush marketing coup of all time.


Of course, I recognise that getting excited - and, still worse, writing - about instances of ambush marketing constitutes deviant behaviour of the worst kind and may encourage activities that could ultimately undermine the whole Olympic edifice.

After all, if official sponsors start to notice their main competitors parking marketing tanks all over their Olympic lawn free of charge, they might start to conclude that the steep ticket prices they have paid are no longer worth it.

But - what can I say? - I can't help it.

In any case, to judge by the sponsorship dollars generated by Sochi 2014 and Rio 2016, as well as London, we are a long way from that situation yet.

So, I feel at liberty to disclose that my ambush marketing antennae were twitching away to their heart's content this week when I read about the new GREAT campaign launched in New York by David Cameron, the British Prime Minister.

This is billed as a drive to "maximise [the] economic potential of London 2012 and deliver long term growth as a key part of Britain's Olympic legacy".

Leave aside for now the matter of whether this will actually work; what intrigued me most of all was the list of quotes supportive of this Olympic-related initiative from various captains of commerce and industry that appeared on page 3 of the (strictly embargoed) press release.

Which retail executive was at the top of the list?

Would it have been, do you think, the boss of John Lewis, one of 28 London 2012 Tier Three Suppliers and Providers?


Actually, no, it was Marc Bolland, chief executive of Marks & Spencer.

And what about the banker in the number two slot? Surely some big cheese from Lloyds TSB, one of seven Tier One partners.

Er, nein. It's Colin Grassie, chief executive UK of Deutsche Bank.

The electricity man in fourth place on the list? Monsieur so-and-so of EDF, surely?

Mais non. Try Steve Holliday, chief executive of National Grid?

True, some Olympic and Paralympic sponsors do get a look in: Justin King, chief executive of Sainsbury's Supermarkets, is there; so is Rio Tinto's Tom Albanese.

And I am not suggesting for one moment that this is remotely comparable to that breathtaking Li Ning moment in 2008.

But I do think I might be a little cheesed off if I had spent millions securing an official sponsorship category only to see a competitor's name up in lights in an initiative such as this.

Anyway, marketing students had best fasten their seat belts: you are bound to hear much more of this type of debate in months to come.

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.

Perhaps Rob McCracken should take notes from Arsène Wenger, so to speak, when the World Amateur Boxing Championships begin in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Monday (September 26). For like the Arsenal boss in the Champions League of late, Britain's head coach has been banished to the stands - or in his case somewhere in the darkened arena - when his squad members enter in the ring.

The reason for is of course the refusal by international governing body AIBA to permit coaches associated with the professional side of the sport to work the corner at world and Olympic tournaments. My views on this newly exhumed rule have been well aired here. So I have no wish to acerbate then situation as I understand that Mark Abberley, the new chief executive of the ABA of England, who will be in Baku, is making some progress towards repairing the rift with AIBA caused by the kamikaze act of his predecessor Paul King in attempting to unseat President Dr C K Wu.

Let's hope for his part that Dr Wu, the ambitious Taiwanese billionaire who made his fortune in the construction business, is now in the market for another spot of bridge building.

McCracken himself remains phlegmatically unfazed by having to do a Wenger.

"Obviously I would like to have been in the corner," he tells me. "But we have good coaches on our team who are capable of carrying out the necessary instructions. There seems to be work in progress in sorting out this situation which we hope will be resolved in time for the Olympics."


There is no doubt that McCracken's own professional background, a gutsy former British middleweight champion, world title contender and now long-time training guru to Britain's world super-middleweight champion Carl Froch (himself a world amateur bronze medallist), has rubbed off a squad which seems to have real medal chances both in Baku next week and next year in London.

They have benefited not only from McCracken's expertise but also from working out and occasionally sparring with Froch, of whom McCracken says: "Carl is a fantastic role model. He travels up from his home in Nottingham to train with us in Sheffield and some of the speed work they do, the movement and skills, they've picked up from him. He has no airs and graces. He joins in. Looking at him they see what dedication and hard work can get you in life."

But more than that 43-year-old Brummie McCracken has reinvigorated them with the same team spirit and self-belief which was the hallmark of GB's best Olympics for over half a century, with a gold and two bronze medals in Beijing.

With a bit of luck they might emulate that in 2012, with the added prospect of at least one female fighter on the rostrum when the ladies who punch make their Olympic debut.

A world championship gold to follow the first-ever won by a Brit, lightweight Frankie Gavin, four years ago would be a welcome bonus for the Olympic run-in.

McCracken is hopeful. "Our squad a mixture of experience and talent and we are in a good place going into these championships."

GB will be looking for medals from the likes of Welshmen Andrew Selby (52g) and Fred Evans (69kg), who won Euro titles in Turkey; 2010 Commonwealth Games champion and two-time European silver medallist, Tom Stalker (64kg), the sparky Scouser team captain; 2010 European silver medallist and Beijing Olympian Khalid Yafai (52kg), and 18-year-old, Charlie Edwards (pictured below right) (49kg) who won a surprise bronze at the European Championships, and according to McCracken "is a breath of fresh air".


He says of the cheeky-chappie light-flyweight from Croydon. "He may have a baby face but he doesn't fight like a baby. He could well be one of the faces of 2012."

My personal fancy is for the former European champion Luke Campbell at 56kg, one of the likeliest lads for 2012 who underscored his aspirations by twice paying his own way to train in Freddie Roach's Wild Card gym in Los Angeles, workplace of Manny Pacquiao and Amir Khan.

Incidentally, Roach has just spent a fortnight honing the US team at their national training centre in Colorado Springs, bringing in seven professionals from his own stable to work with them.

He is not going to Baku because of his commitments with Pacquiao but wants to be in London next year, though as things stand he will be sitting with McCracken in the bowels of the ExCeL Centre because of the corner ban US boxing sources have described as "despotic".

It will be interesting to see if the US amateurs, with a little help from Roach, can fight their way out of the doldrums. Their recent record at world and Olympic level has been abysmal.

McCracken says these world championships, the first of two Olympic qualifying events, will be tough. "The stakes are high. The Germans and Russians did not field all their number ones in the Europeans. But we have shown in the last couple of years we can hold our own anywhere in the world."

This is true, notably this year with a shoal of international tournament medals, 33 in all including 13 golds.

"The Olympics will be even tougher because of the pressure and media spotlight, though home advantage will be a big boost. My take has always been to get as many medals as possible in London."

GB will have five automatic qualifying places for men and one for women. "But we are looking for more than that," said McCracken (Britain had eight in Beijing though Gavin did not compete because of weight problems).


The amiable McCracken has done a first rate job in his two years since taking over after a messy spell which followed the equally messy departure of hugely successful Olympic coach Terry Edwards (pictured), who is now involved in organising the 2012 boxing tournament.

"What we have now is a completely professional unit in every sense," says McCracken. "More professional than the professionals with our team of coaches and support staff.

"Things are so different now from my own amateur days. There were times when I went into tournaments not fully fit, which probably was the same for everybody then.

"There's only so much you can do in two or three training weekends.

"Now we have the squad together in Sheffield [at the English Institute of Sport] all the time. They live and work like pros. The boxers we have now are real athletes.

"Thanks to funding, every need is catered for and all our boxers are full time. They are able to benefit from overseas training camps like the one we had with the Russians up in the Caucus Mountains.

"Having this funding in place is wonderful. It gives us the chance to show the world what we can do."

That opportunity will certainly come in Azerbaijan, from where McCracken returns after the final day of the championships, arriving at Heathrow at 1pm then swapping hats - and planes - to fly five hours later to the US to be with WBC champion Froch in his final preparations for the title unifying Super Six showdown in Atlantic City on 29 October with unbeaten WBA champion Andre Ward, the last American to win Olympic gold in 2004.

What a pro!

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.

When visitors flying to Sochi in 2014 come to see the Winter Olympic Games, they will be greeted with a spectacular sight as they approach the airport, flying over the Black Sea and the coastal cluster which contains the main Olympic Stadium.

Though the coastal cluster (pictured below) is still very much a work in progress, one can imagine how spectacular it will look when it is completed. The figure skating venue already looks stunning, with its curved design reflecting that of the shapes figure skaters will be making in 2014 during competition, and the varying shades of blue tiles are perfect for the setting, just off the seafront. Not just that, the centre will be moved elsewhere in Russia after the Games, providing as the organisers pledge, a legacy for the whole country.

Speed skating will take place in the Olympic Oval, and along with the curling centre work is well on schedule and set for completion by the end of next year. And then there is the Bolshoi Ice Palace, where ice hockey will be taking place. It is designed so that the roof will look like a frozen ice drop, and the neighbouring Maly Ice Palace will give the appearance of a snow whirl. Oh, and there's the Olympic Stadium, which should look quite nice too.

Up in the mountain region, practically a new village, full of shops, hotels, houses and other amenities, is being built. This is where luge, bobsleigh and skeleton will take place, at the Russian National Sliding Centre, which will have a backdrop and scenery bound to impress any visitor. The Snowboard Park, Alpine Centre, and the biathlon and cross country skiing facility are also up in the mountains.

Already the ski centre is open, and all venues will be ready and commissioned by 2013, and the achievements to date received glowing praise from Jean-Claude Killy, the International Olympic Committee's Coordination Commission chairman, last week following the conclusion of their visit to Sochi. With such heady progress, not much can go wrong. Right? Wrong.


As I discovered on my way into Sochi on Friday morning, your journey into the centre can be dependent on the whims of the most powerful man in Russia, Vladimir Putin (sorry Mr Medvedev), whose visit to the International Business Forum meant that the road had to be partially closed, forcing the taxi on a lengthy detour. Which would not be a problem, were it not that this was the main, and most importantly, the only road connecting the whole of the city. This is an issue exacerbated by the fact that Sochi is very long (the second longest city in the world, the locals claim, behind Los Angeles), with a glorious seafront, but not particularly wide, making this main street even more crucial.

As you reach the road closure, a man with a whistle, waves you on a route elsewhere, causing the cab driver to launch into an anti-Putin polemic. I know this, as he was the one cab driver in Sochi, seemingly, to speak English, another issue which will come into the city's preparations for 2014 (though they have signed a deal with English First in order to train a workforce able to communicate in the language during the Games). Though even if the taxi drivers can't speak English in 2014, they are remarkably friendly given the language barrier. One pointed at me, said "Cameron" and then performed the sign language for "crazy" before firing an imaginary pistol. Either a joke, or a heavily disguised Vince Cable. Another taxi driver tried even teaching me Russian by pointing at things and saying words, though all I learned was his name (which has been since forgotten).

So infrastructure, as it so often is, will be the main concern, but there are plans and works in place to relieve the city of inevitable traffic jams. Two new roads are being built to connect the main parts of Sochi and enable drivers to avoid the current main route. And a third road will act as a bypass to further ease congestion. Will it be enough? Only time will tell. With dozens of new cars registered every day in Sochi, it will have to cope with thousands more motorists in the months and years ahead.


And then there is the new train line, which will take visitors from the coastal cluster to the mountains in 27 minutes. Along with the expanded capacity of the airport in nearby Adler, these developments will contribute to Sochi's battle against the perils of crowded streets.

And organisers this week demonstrated that they are keen not just to put on a superb Games in a city easy to pass through for visitors, but to make it sustainable. At Russia's International Business Forum on Friday, which was held in Sochi once more this year, Dmitry Chernyshenko, the Sochi 2014 President and chief executive, repeated several times during a panel discussion the importance of sustainable development, and earlier this week Sochi awarded a number of groups awards for their efforts to make the 2014 Games as green as possible. Legacy, for Sochi, is not just sporting, or even infrastructural, but environmental too.

All this, combined with its tropical climate and beach not far from its picturesque mountain region, means you start to understand why the Russian government brought the Winter Olympic Games to the black sea resort. And the International Business Forum. Oh, and a Formula One race which will begin in 2014 and initially run until 2019. The people of Sochi will be spoilt, that is if they aren't held up too long in traffic. It was the Soviet Union's most famous and autocratic dictator, Joseph Stalin, who tried to make the most of Sochi's potential as a tourist venue during his time in power, but now it falls to the Russian government to make the most of its natural delights.

Yet the question you are forced to ask as you travel around Sochi with its cab drivers grunting in anger, is whether this is a bit too much, too soon? For all the enthusiasm of the hosts and the superb execution of the construction of what exists of the venues so far, this appears to the foreign visitor a small, cramped city, which has little understanding of English (and even less of French or Spanish). And as Chernyshenko points out himself, only 20 per cent of the workforce required for the Games can be found in the city, meaning a huge recruitment drive from outside of Sochi is needed. With so much potential and ambition, comes a lengthy list of challenges, and as Chernyshenko told me as the International Business Forum came to its conclusion, this is something he is only too aware of.


"The Olympic Park is getting into shape, but we are not relaxing, we understand the challenges," he said.

"We need to bring in more than 150,000 employees, more than a quarter of the population of the city, so you can imagine the scale of the challenges. Our infrastructure needs to be operational with the highest standards, but we are optimistic and want to satisfy the level of expectation of our visitors because we want to organise the most innovative games.

"We are on the way to delivering, but we have to be patient, it is the biggest construction site in the world, so there is high pressure on the events now."

Yes, the pressure is well and truly on for Sochi, a city which gave Maria Sharapova and Yevgeny Kafelnikov the opportunity to make the most of their tennis skills, and that will be stretched at every turn as it prepares for its biggest party in 2014. Putin knows it, Chernyshenko knows it, and of course, the taxi drivers do too.

David Gold is a reporter for insidethegames

The press conference here in Brussels to launch the Doha bid for the 2017 IAAF World Athletics Championships took place in a medium-sized room at the Crowne Plaza hotel which was nevertheless large enough to accommodate the bid's chairman, executive director and head of strategic planning, a delegation from Doha itself, and an international selection of broadcasters, on-line and print journalists. Oh, and one elephant.

Anyway, the Arab coffee that was served beforehand tasted lovely – fragrant, with a touch of bitterness, and yet almost a hint of Earl Grey tea about it...

The brochure - proclaiming Doha as The Right Partner – was as glossy as you might have expected, and contained incontrovertible facts about the city's record of hosting major sporting events, and its growing ambitions to host more.

Microphones were of course provided to all the speakers, and they all worked. As did the one passed among those who wanted to ask questions at the appropriate time. It's always helpful to get the technology right on these occasions, as indeed it is when you are putting on a major sporting event.

Which is why the second generation air conditioning system being devised for the Khalifa International Stadium – solar powered, with magnificent irony – will be so important when it is perfected, something that is scheduled to happen more than a year before the Championships would begin.

As His Excellency Sheikh Saoud Bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, the bid chairman, pointed out, the development would have a major effect on the operating temperatures for athletes in the stadium, reducing the average midday temperature in mid -September – the proposed time frame of the Championships – from between 36-37 degrees to between 18-22 degrees.

But yes. This elephant.

In the end it was addressed by John Inverdale of the BBC, who asked if all the controversy over the successful Qatari bid for the 2022 World Cup, and the question marks about its integrity in the wake of the life ban subsequently imposed on the Asian football President Mohamed Bin Hamman (pictured with David Beckham) following a bribery scandal, would have any bearing on the success of Doha's 2017 bid.


"I don't think so," Al Thani responded. "The date of the 2022 has been set. With any event, always there will be some talk and all the other things, but now the reality of the 2022 World cup is there.

"We have a strategy, we are confident of the sport legacy that it will give for the country. We are looking to see what are the other major sporting events that can continue to add value to our country."

And Al Thani was able to point out that Doha was hoping to build on a link with athletics that had been relatively long-established.

"We have a long partnership with the IAAF," he said. "We held the first grand prix athletics event in the region. This was 1997. In the Samsung Diamond League, we were the first meeting.

"And we have hosted the World Indoor Championships, so we are not talking about something that we have thought about one or two years ago. This was a long strategy that we wanted Doha to be the capital of athletics."

The elephant may still have been there - but at least it had been fed and watered.

The other obvious concern to be addressed was how racing outside the climate-cooled main stadium and warm-up stadiums would be affected by the heat.

Doha's solution to this problem, in the case of the marathon, will be to hold it at night along the Corniche – the central promenade that runs along the waterfront. The average night-time temperatures, Al Thani added, were between 27-29 degrees.

Abdulla Al Zaini, the bid's executive director, explained how the lighting arrangements had already been sorted out to enable TV coverage.

Presumably these arrangements will not consist of soldiers lining the route with flaming firebrands, as it did in the 1960 Rome Olympics, where the marathon began just before sundown and finished in darkness in order to avoid stifling midday heat.

That marathon run more than half a century ago produced images of enduring drama as Ethiopia's Abebe Bikila padded barefoot down the ancient Appian Way and onwards to the Arch of Constantine  under the uneven spotlight of the TV vehicle following him as the wavering torches illuminated the general progress.

No doubt the Doha bidders envisage similarly unusual and dramatic action unfolding on their Corniche.

That said, running a marathon in 27-29 degrees of heat would hardly be a cakewalk.

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, has covered the last 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 I have written here before, I have never voted Tory in my life but I would happily do so next May if I lived in central London - simply to help ensure Boris Johnson is still in situ as Mayor when the 2012 Olympics come around.

If he loses out to Labour's former Mayor Ken Livingstone, the Games just won't be the same without him.

Eccentric, buffoon, clown. BoJo has been labelled all these things but don't be fooled. Under that well-cultivated court jester persona there's a shrewd and calculating political brain which could see him wearing the No 10 shirt one day.


London 2012 would be poorer - and certainly duller - without him.

I'll tell you why. These "diverse and inclusive" Games are set to be the most politically correct in history, emphasised this week in details of a guidebook to be issued to 200,000 volunteers, some of which the Daily Mail's acerbic columnist Richard Littlejohn has described as "drivel".

Apparently, Games staff are to be told they must avoid "patronising words" such as "dear" (a Cockney term of endearment visitors, notably from America and Australia, would want and expect to hear in London).

If an Aussie didn't call you "cobber" or "mate" at the Sydney Games you felt offended.

And no one must be addressed as "young man". Helpers must not make an assumption about gender in case the person happens to be a transvestite.

Dearie me.

So politically correct are these high-tech, "yoof"-oriented Games designed to be, they could be labelled the AC/DC/PC Olympics.

We desperately need BoJo putting his size nines in it occasionally to lighten things up.

We want to see Jacques Rogge's shoulders again heaving with laughter, as they were when Boris, a comical cross between Ken Dodd and Miranda Hart, was doing his stand-up act at London's year-to-go frolic in Trafalgar Square. As he was when flimflamming his way through the Beijing Games.

Sometimes I can't help feeling the shock-haired Boris would have made a much more marketable mascot than the androgynous Wenlock and Mandeville who sound more like a firm of old-fashioned tailors in Jermyn Street.

Last week he hosted a drinks do at his City Hall eyrie for a group of us who write about sports politics. As usual, he was in sparkling form, irreverent and achingly funny. Alas, it was an off-the record session but the ears of a few pompous bigwigs in sport - and politics - may well have been burning.

On a serious note, why I want to see Boris re-elected as London Mayor is because he genuinely cares more about sport than the other two candidates.


Livingstone (pictured above with London 2012 chairman Sebastian Coe and former Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell), on his own admission knows little about sport, or the Olympic Games per se.

"I'm not a sporty mayor," he confessed to me during the run-up to London's successful 2012 Olympics bid. "I really couldn't care less about it. The nearest I've been to it was a snooker table at college." While a lack of passion for sport was about the only thing he had in common with Lady Thatcher he apparently was converted to its political worth on the road to Damascus - or rather, Stratford - conning the Government (his phrase) into splashing the taxpayers' cash via the Olympics to facilitate his grand design for the regeneration of east London, admirable as that may be.

And what of the third candidate, the Lib Dem's ex-Met Police deputy commissioner Brian Paddick? From what I gather, his knowledge of it could be scribbled on the tip of the truncheon he once carried as a beat cop.

When London's sporting colours changed from red Ken to Boris blue, his successor became a key player in the Olympics game, clearly concerned that the inheritance of the Livingstone legacy is something he had to live with. But when I interviewed him soon after he took over he insisted he would be tackling the then soaring costs of the Games head-on, a not unfamiliar approach judging from his tactics on the football field. "We are looking at ways of saving," he says. "Obviously everybody is worried that we are going to waste squillions on projects that are going to have no lasting benefit for east London. That is why I want to make sure that there is a proper legacy. I'll be using my position on the Olympic Board to make sure that we deliver value for money not only for London, but the whole country. We don't want to sink billions into East London without having a long-term benefit, keeping a cap on the costs and making sure the tax payers get good value."

Significantly, they are now coming in under budget.


Johnson's first move as Mayor was the highly controversial appointment of feisty ex-Labour Sports Minister Kate Hoey (pictured above) as London's sports mistress - her official title is Commissioner for Sport - and she is now not only his sporting coach, but cardmarker. For while there was no doubting Johnson's genuine regard for sport, he barely knew anyone in the game. But, like Livingstone, he knew how to play it politically.

In the three and a bit years bike-mad Boris has been Mayor, he has left his footprint on sport without dipping a toe into the mainstream. His concentration has been on schools and youth sport, ring-fencing cash for it at grass roots level.

When I went with him to a schools swimming gala in Dulwich such was the ecstatic clamour on his arrival that you would have thought the 300 kids were greeting Becks, not Boris.

"Standing in a clammy, overheated swimming pool, watching a kids' competition and feeling the adrenalin takes you back to the terror you experienced yourself," he says. "You remember diving in and fearing your trunks might be coming off."

Earlier he had told the youngsters: "I once swam in a schools competition and I was so slow that my teacher told me never to do it again."

While clearly he's more at home on Have I Got News for You than A Question of Sport, he's been a bit of a player himself. "I once challenged Seb Coe to a race down Fifth Avenue in New York. I didn't win. He's rather fast, you know. But I love any kind of physical exertion; it's made me what I am."

At Oxford, he played rugby as a tighthead prop for his college, Balliol. He jogs and cycles regularly. Son Milo, 16, one of his four children, was captain of his school football team and a promising cricketer who had trials with Surrey.

Johnson says: "I love sport but the fact is I'm no bloody good at it. Anyone who's seen that video clip of me playing [for the Parliamentary team in a charity match] will know that I am not God's gift to football, but I think it's incredibly important for building self-confidence, team work, competitive spirit, ability to cope with failure, all that stuff, which is so hard for kids these days. When I was running for Mayor, I was always conscious of the part sport might play in my life for the next four years.

"One of the things that made me really excited about the job was going to see a couple of boxing academies. I suddenly had this blinding flash that maybe this was a sport that wasn't being sufficiently encouraged because it is a bit politically incorrect." Boris says, "I love watching them biff each other but I don't really know who they are." Johnson says he sees sport as an essential weapon in fighting the ASBO culture.

"I'm not suggesting it's the whole solution. This is not just some crazed playing fields of Eton type of thing but it is something that inspires me and makes me feel that there is real scope for expanding it into evening out the differentials and injustices in London.

"I am really sad that competitive sport in this country has not been encouraged as much as it should be. These school races where nobody was allowed to win, how ridiculous - a load of bollocks. At school, I wrote something for a posh essay society about the importance of sport as a way of getting people to feel better about themselves, that sort of stuff. I remember it was widely mocked but basically it is true."

The former Mayor of Athens once advised him that his main task for the Olympics must be to get London enthused about them. Did he agree? "Oh, deffo. Absolutely."


So, vote Boris, the man best for the Games. For one thing, as a Latin lover, so to speak, he is certainly at home with the Citius Altius Fortius stuff.

Next year my hope is that he will still be playing the joker in 2012. For with him around at least we might have some fun with a Games that are in danger of taking themselves far too seriously.

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

Rammed. Jammed. Packed. These were the words which best described the Westfield Stratford City shopping arcade as it conducted its grand opening.

It was as if one of those optimistic architect's sketches, showing the building as it might be, softened by trees and sauntering pedestrians, had been brought smartly to life.

The largest shopping centre in Europe, a tangible sign of the regeneration that the London 2012 Games has always promised east London - and the wider world - was about to become an officially operating entity. The self-styled gateway to the Olympic Park was about to open wide.

Shoppers had queued outside for four hours before the doors to the stores were opened at 10.00am, an hour before the official ceremony for the £1.45 billion facility, at which the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, and Newham Mayor Sir Robin Wales were due to share the honours along with Frank Lowy, chairman and co-founder of the Westfield Group.

Thus the main opening was preceded by lots of smaller ones - Kelly Brook was to be found doing the honours for New Look, while Next had called on synchronised swimmer Jenna Randall and Olympic fours rowing champion Andy Triggs Hodge. Meanwhile Colin Jackson, former world champion high hurdler and man who was robbed of the Strictly Come Dancing title, was posing with shoppers at Lloyds TSB.


So while the PR business, witnessed by an assembled crew of media and VIPs, took place on the top floor underneath skylights featuring swiftly travelling clouds, the serious business was getting underway below. In steerage.

Many had put their shopping on hold and gathered at the foot of the elevators, penned and observed by security operatives, staring up at the outward manifestations of the big show - coloured ribbons, changing lights, and the backs of more security operatives.

Most of them knew they were about to hear, if not see, the main attraction - sorry Boris - of former Pussy Cat Doll Nicole Scherzinger.

But first, of course, the speeches.

Lowy said that that many people had questioned the timing of the Stratford City project at a time of global economic downturn.

"People were saying 'How can you build Stratford City centre at a time like this?'" he recalled.

"One person who didn't ask this question was Boris Johnson."

Lowy went on the praise the way the Mayor of London had spoken with such confidence about the city and described it as "the capital of the world for goods and services."

He said that centre was providing 10,000 new jobs, of which 2,000 were being filled by local people, and added that more than 20 million people were expected to visit each year.

Then up stepped the tousle-haired champion himself to laud the fact that the centre would be providing 18,000 new jobs, of which 2,000 were being filled by local people.

So - 8,000 new jobs in the space of 10 seconds. If Westfield can continue to expand at this rate, the Coalition will have no fears once the new unemployment figures are released.

Inimitably, Johnson recalled the character of the Prioress, from Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Such an obvious reference. I was surprised he hadn't been beaten to the punch by the young hosts who had got the ceremony underway a little earlier, Pixie Geldof and Nick Grimshaw.


Anyway, Boris the teacher offered all those present, top deck and steerage, the benefit of a little Middle English, spoken, one assumed, in a manner which Chaucer himself might have recognised. It was a shame he couldn't have been present, really.

"And Frenssh she spak ful faire and fetishly, After the scole of Stratford-atte-Bowe," declaimed the city's Mayor. "For French of Parys was to hire unknowe...remember that?"

There was a small ripple of uncertain laughter. I don't personally think anyone in the building did remember, and suddenly Johnson, as he so often does, was teetering on the brink of an apocalypse of tension.

But then one more reference regained the dressing room.

"I've got news for Geoffrey Chaucer," he said. "After 625 years I can tell him, or I would if I could, that there will soon be a lot more French spoken here in Stratford, and it will be after the fashion of Paris."

How so? Well, already, according to the Mayor, regular exchange shopping trips are being planned between Stratford and that other noted emporium, the French capital.

Warming to his theme, Johnson proceeded to offer some bang-up-to-date price comparisons: Levi's jeans, £84 in Paris, £70 in Stratford; le Big Mac meal, £5.77 in Paris, £4.46 in Stratford. QED.

As the scissors, jointly held by Lowy and Johnson, incised the red ribbon to enthusiastically encouraged cheers from assembled media and VIPs, our MC's brightly enjoined everyone to get shopping. Thirty feet beneath them, everyone already was.

It only remained for Miss Scherzinger to strut her funky stuff - I believe that is the correct phrase - for the benefit of the gathering, and more especially, you sensed, for the male members.


"Don't cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me?" she sang. Perhaps that was why she had just removed her shiny red and white top.

"Ful weel she soonge the service dyvyne, Entuned in hir nose ful semely..." as Chaucer himself put it elsewhere in his tale of the Prioress.

Catholic as Johnson's musical tastes no doubt are, I suspect this was not his cup of tea.

Perched rather stiffly on a padded bench, he had to be given full credit nevertheless for resisting any temptation to tap either his feet or his fingers to the music. If only some of the other suited, middle-aged men around him could have resisted the temptation. It was a depressing sight on a generally uplifting day.

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, has covered the last 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.

You've got to hand it to London 2012: hitting their £700 million ($1.1 billion/€801 billion) sponsorship target, as the Games organiser this week announced it had, is truly no mean feat, given the background economic conditions it has had to contend with.

Never in their wildest nightmares – well, conceivably in their very worst nightmares but only the very worst - would Lord Coe and his team have foreseen when they won sport's biggest prize in Singapore in 2005 the sheer extent of the malaise that has overtaken the British economy.

They simply would not have made it had they not been fast out of the blocks, signing up Lloyds, their first top-level sponsor, as early as March 2007.

A sluggish start would have left them scrabbling around, right about now, for new sources of income – or swingeing cost cuts – to fill the hole in their budget.

Instead, they have been able to place £70 million ($111 million/€81 million) on deposit with their oldest partner and expect to be in a positive net cash position through to next September.

I well remember being struck in May 2006, while preparing to interview London 2012 chief executive Paul Deighton, by the scepticism of some sponsorship experts when asked about the likelihood of London 2012 hitting its target.

"[The market] probably has to double in size between now and 2012 to meet the various demands of the London Olympics, the national performance for the Olympics and the Government's other ambitions for attracting sponsorship money into sport," one told me.

"That doesn't mean it's impossible, but it does mean it's a very big ask.

"And it does require a healthy economy over the next few years.

"The sponsorship market can be quite susceptible to economic downturns."

Well, the Government's other ambitions for attracting sponsorship money have had to be reworked, but this has not, to put it mildly, been a healthy economy.

So well done them.

But – and it's quite a big "but" in the context of the race for the 2020 Games which has just got under way – London 2012's sterling efforts do rather underline why the BRICs and similar fast-developing economies such as South Korea – have become such tempting locations for the organisers of sports mega-events.

London has had to pull out all the stops to get to £700 million (($1.1 billion/€801 billion).

Westfield, the shopping-centre group, which tipped them over the edge, will be their 44th domestic sponsor.

Add on the International Olympic Committee's TOP sponsors and you have more than 50 companies seeking to make marketing mileage out of one event, albeit the ultimate mega-event.

That could end up being rather cacophonous.

And, remember, the Olympics has a "clean venue" policy.

Compare this situation with Rio, the next host of a Summer Games after London, and you see the Brazilian city has raised $648 million (£408 million/$475 million) of its $1.2 billion (£755 million/€878 million) domestic sponsorship target from just two deals.

The 2016 Organising Committee, in particular, signed a deal of more than $320 million (£202 million/€234 million) with Brazilian bank Bradesco which dwarfs the estimated £80 million (£127 million/€93 million) paid by Lloyds to London 2012.


Rio 2016 chief executive Leo Gryner, indeed, has sought to make a virtue of this "big deal" approach, suggesting that the city will strive to hit its target while striking the minimum amount of deals necessary.

As for Sochi, host of the 2014 Games, they have already distinguished themselves by securing over $1 billion in sponsorship (£629 million/€732 million) – and that was before they signed up Microsoft as an official supplier.

Such figures are simply unheard of for a Winter Olympics: Vancouver 2010, which also had to wrestle with the downturn, mustered a very creditable $688 million (£421 million/€489 million); Turin 2006 managed $348 million (£219 million/€255 million).

The moral of this tale: the world is changing.

London 2012, by dint of hard work and ingenuity, raised about as much from sponsorship as it is humanly possible for a west European capital with a mature, flat-lining economy to raise.

Go to a BRIC, the figures seem to be saying, and you will either raise more (bearing in mind, once again, that Sochi is hosting a Winter Olympics and that Beijing 2008 generated $1.22 billion (£768 million/€893 million) in domestic sponsorship three years ago), or you will raise a similar amount with less effort and better visibility for each individual sponsor.

In this context, it will be most intriguing to digest the various sponsorship strategies devised by Baku, Doha, Istanbul, Madrid, Rome and Tokyo, which collectively comprise a  diverse list of 2020 applicant-cities.

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 by clicking here

There is nothing quite like being at a live sporting event. Whether it is the anticipation of what you're about to see; the electric atmosphere that it creates; or simply the excitement of seeing sports stars competing at the top of their game; it really is something special and often makes the hair stand up on the back your neck.

These are the very emotions I was lucky enough to experience only recently as I attended the Sainsbury's UK School Games in Sheffield - a major multisport event which the Youth Sport Trust has been proud to deliver for the last six years.

More than 1,600 young people competed across 12 different sports in a range of top quality venues - it really was something to behold. With an athletes' village and opening and closing ceremonies the experience the competitors take from this event will hold them in good stead should they go on to future sporting glory in their careers.

There is no finer example of this, and no greater advocate of the Sainsbury's UK School Games, than the double Paralympic gold medallist Ellie Simmonds.·A competitor at the Games when they first got underway in Glasgow back in 2006, Ellie returned this year to officially open the event.·Ellie has made the full journey from starting out in a career with hopes and aspirations, to realising her goals on the world stage and is one of the many UK School Games success stories.·In Sheffield this year we saw Jessica Applegate (pictured) smash a world junior record in the disability swimming - I can't help wondering whether we are about to see another sporting career flourish off the back of the Games?


Whilst quite rightly the competitors often take centre stage at the UK School Games as they bid for the medals we must also pay immense credit to those who help make this event possible. As I toured the venues this year the enthusiasm and dedication of the hundreds of young volunteers and officials deserves special praise and recognition. This is an event about young people, for young people, and seeing the enjoyment of those supporting the games in these roles is as rewarding as watching those actually competing.

I must also pay tribute to the Youth Sport Trust (YST) staff who gave up so much of their time to take on a whole host of different support roles at the games. It is no secret that it has been a challenging year for the Youth Sport Trust, as it has been for many involved in school sport, but the professionalism of the YST staff and the friendly welcome they gave to all that attended shows what a great team we have.

Credit must also be given to those who have shown their continued support and funding for the UK School Games. Without the financial contributions of Legacy Trust UK, Sainsbury's and Sport England the games would simply not be the success story they have now become. All our UK School Games partners including the NGB's who work so hard and dedicate so much time and effort in preparing and managing the squads and UK Anti-Doping who run an education programme help make the games a top quality event - it really is a team effort.

As we now move towards the new School Games format and the prospect of a home Olympics and Paralympics in 2012 it is a truly momentous time for sport. I personally cannot wait for that feeling of anticipation and excitement to return - and for the hair on the back of my neck to be standing up once again.

Baroness Sue Campbell is acting chief executive of Youth Sport Trust and the chair of UK Sport

Seven years ago, a quietly engaging 17-year-old boy from Bolton was celebrating becoming Britain's youngest-ever Olympic boxing medallist. The lightweight silver Amir Khan won in the Athens ring against the cute and crafty Cuban legend Mario Kindelan was one of the highlights of those refreshingly traditional Games.

Now, at 24, Khan reigns as the world professional light-welterweight champion, holding both the WBA and IBF belts, and with a new mission in life.

He is helping his kid brother Harry go one better in London next year and win Olympic gold - but for Pakistan.

Harry, 20, aka Haroon Iqbal, won a Commonwealth bronze medal in Delhi last year, boxing under the green flag of Pakistan, where his parents were born, because he was overlooked by England despite an impressive amateur record

So when "Baby Khan" went on the win the bronze after defeating Welsh flyweight Andrew Selby (subsequently a European champion for GB) it was an immensely satisfying moment for him.

Haroon hasn't fought since because of an operation to repair a torn tendon in his shoulder, an injury incurred in Delhi. But big brother Amir believes his now bantamweight sibling can go one better than him and win gold in the next Olympics.

But first up is the World Championships in Baku, Azerbaijan this month, where again Haroon will be representing Pakistan.

Amir tells me: "Harry is now working with top professional trainer Joe Gallagher at my Gloves Community gym in Bolton and looking very sharp.

"I am working out a programme for him, giving him some ideas and tips that helped get me to Athens.

"He is a quick learner and we have really high hopes for him. Our dad Shah even thinks that one day he might be better than me if he dedicates himself as I did."

Ironically, Amir himself had come perilously close to boxing for Pakistan in the 2008 Olympics. The GB selectors initially declined to pick him because they considered him too young at 17. When it became known he had been tapped up by Pakistan there was a swift change of heart. The rest, happily, is history.


Haroon felt he had no choice to box for the country of his family's origins after being turned down by England as "not being good enough."

After his Commonwealth Games debut he said there was no way he would box at the Olympics for Pakistan as he would be turning professional before 2012.

However, if he puts in an Olympic-qualifying performance at the world championships that is exactly what he will be doing in London. After which he will almost certainly swop the five rings for the pro ring, as Amir did.

Haroon is refreshingly honest about why he enjoys boxing. "It's an excuse for throwing punches. I'm not a violent person, but it's a fun sport and it keeps me out of trouble," he says impishly.

Mick Jelley, Amir's esteemed amateur trainer who groomed them both at his celebrated Bury Boxing Club, reckons Haroon has every chance of bettering his brother's Olympic achievement, "providing he puts the work in."

He says: "Haroon says he's a fighter but he can box as well. That's one thing I hope he tries to do - not just think about fighting but think about boxing too.

"It's not just about going forward, it's about going backwards sometimes - he's a clever boxer when he wants to be.

"He's had a bad injury and getting through these Olympic qualifiers is going to be a really hard job and it's entirely up to himself. He's got the ability to get there, but he's got to get fit. Then he stands a chance against anybody."

Boxing has never been short on blood brothers, from the Coopers to the Klitschkos, and though Amir and Haroon are the latest famous names to forge a link with the fight game, there was a time when not everyone in the Khan household was happy about it."

Haroon tells how his mother, Falak, who was so distressed at ringside after witnessing Amir being sensationally stiffened by the Colombian Breidis Prescott three years ago that she had to be given oxygen, asked him to hand her his amateur boxing kit the following day. "Oh thanks mum," he said. "Are you going to wash it for me?"

"No," she replied. "I'm going to bin it. You're finished with boxing."

He told his father what she had said. "Dad had a word and reluctantly she agreed I could carry on - but only if I promised to stay amateur." He admits it is one promise he may be unable to keep if, like Amir, he wins an Olympic medal in 2012, which is his ambition, together with becoming a world champion.


Haroon trained with Amir in Freddie Roach's Wild Card gym in Los Angeles before "King Khan's" last fight, a superb four round demolition of the IBF champion Zab Judah in Las Vegas, arguably the most impressive performance of his career.

Amir has come a long way from that someone shy youngster who stood on the rostrum in Athens, emerging as one of the most personable talents in British, and now global, sport.

And this week, shortly after returning from his third pilgrimage to Mecca, he was accorded the honour of being the only Briton invited by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to a White House dinner with prominent Muslim sports personalities. All the others were from the US.

The occasion was ostensibly to celebrate the end of the religious fasting month of Ramadan but significantly it also coincided with the eve of the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 atrocity in New York.

I breakfasted with Amir at a Heathrow hotel before he flew out to Washington for what was clearly a bridge-building occasion. It was, he said, "a tremendous honour to be invited when you think of how many Muslims there are in the world and how many big sports stars there are. When we first got the email, I thought it was a bit of a joke, then when I realised it was genuine, I thought 'Wow!' For this 24-year-old from Bolton to be sitting there with someone like Hilary Clinton, well, it's fantastic.



"It's an opportunity to send out some good messages, for people to respect who we are.

"Obviously a lot of Muslims got a really bad name but a function like this shows that there are many good Muslims in the world, a lot more than there are bad.·In real terms, there are just a handful of bad Muslims. I was only a kid but I was as shocked and appalled as anyone by what happened on that day, as I was with the London bombings in 2005, which I condemned at the time.·I have never been shy of speaking about my religion, though I know there are a lot of Muslim sports personalities who are.·I speak the truth because I am what I am, I've got nothing to hide.

"It's the way I've been brought up.·I have never been afraid of saying I am a Muslim. I also speak out on controversial issues. People respect you more when you are honest."

Khan reads the Koran, attends a mosque on Fridays whenever he can and prays briefly in his corner before the bell. But does not preach or proselytise, and the Khan commitment to Britishness has always been evident from the days his dad supported him in Athens wearing a Union Jack waistcoat.

Over the years, he has hit a few headlines as well as his opponents, admitting he has made a few mistakes along the way "as you do when you are young". But he is adamant that fame, the considerable fortune he has already amassed and the A-list company he keeps in his new boxing base in Hollywood have not turned his head.

"I'm still the same person I always was. I may look arrogant in the ring but I've always been humble. I train a lot with Manny Pacquiao and he is the greatest boxer in the world. Manny is incredibly humble. He is an example to me, and I try to be an example to youngsters back home."

"Baby Khan" could not have a better role model.

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