It is - although he finds it hard to believe - 40 years since Brendan Foster christened the new track for which he had campaigned so tirelessly at his local Gateshead stadium by setting a world 3,000 metres record there.

Those who witnessed the efforts of the local hero as he drove himself on to cross the line in 7 minutes, 35.1 seconds, head rolling with the effort, will recall the spectacle. It was inspiring.

Forty years on, Foster - who ended 1974 as European 5,000m champion and BBC Sports Personality of the Year - is still attempting to generate inspiration within the sport which has shaped his own life.

By Zjan Shirinian

Luis Suárez and bowling have something in common, it turns out. Bear with me here.

Image might not be everything, but it counts for an awful lot. Suárez's Jaws-like shoulder-gnawing at the FIFA World Cup last week simply added to his bad-boy image, the perception he has a short fuse and he bites before he thinks.

I have no idea if the Uruguayan international has any skills on the bowling alley, but the pins might - if they could talk - express some sympathy for him.

By Philip Barker

Baron Pierre de Coubertin certainly hit on something special when he designed the Olympic rings. He had been looking for a symbol to reflect the Olympic idea  ever since he had persuaded the sporting leaders of the world to revive the Games back in 1894.

June 23 is Olympic Day so this is an appropriate time to celebrate the five famous linked circles which were revealed to the public 100 years ago. They are now one of the most instantly recognisable symbols in the world.

By Mike Rowbottom

Hockey was a wow at the London 2012 Games, selling the third most tickets - 630,000 - after athletics and football, with the matches taking place in an atmosphere of high excitement.

So imagine how those charged with its international destiny felt when, in February of the following year, the sport found itself on a shortlist of five sports under consideration to be voted off the Olympic programme, ending up in the final three with wrestling and modern pentathlon.

The International Olympic Committee's (IOC) executive board decision to vote wrestling off the list of core Olympic sports was reversed seven months later by the IOC, but shock waves reverberated throughout the Olympic sporting world - and hockey was well and truly shaken by the turn of events.

By Nick Butler

Walking around the National Sports Centre in the heart of the Kosovan capital city Pristina last week, I spent a few moments engrossed in the plight of two young wrestlers training.

In a facility where enthusiasm and camaraderie accounted for shortages in equipment and resources, one wrestler was clearly smaller and technically inferior to the other.

Time and time again he charged forward and was duly flipped, thrown or driven into the school gymnasium-style mat. But he refused to be disheartened and surged forward again only to suffer the same result.

By Mike Rowbottom

There are numerous compelling reasons why nearly 600 of the world's leading athletes from 43 nations will converge on Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas, next weekend (May 24-25) for the inaugural International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) World Relays event.

In terms of dollars, the IAAF has provided 1.4 million reasons for this trip to the Caribbean in its prize fund, with $50,000 (£30,000/€37,000) on offer to the winners of each of the 10 events, and an additional $50,000 (£30,000/€37,000) being due for any world record-breaking performances.

Entrants include 2013 World Championships individual gold medallists LaShawn Merritt of the United States, Kenya's Asbel Kiprop and Eunice Sum, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce of Jamaica and Christine Ohuruogu of Britain.

As baseball and softball's first official family get-together draws to a close in the sunny seaside resort of Hammamet, Tunisia, the newly ratified World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC) is gearing up to launch a two-pronged attack on the international sporting arena and the key message that has pervaded the two-day inaugural Congress is the possibilities that can be achieved as a unified force.

While those may ultimately include Olympic participation, the key to the success of both sports is growth and development at all levels, according to the infant organisation's maternal head, Low Beng Choo.

Before being elected as the WBSC's first full-time secretary general here at Congress, the Malaysian occupied the role on an interim basis as the two sporting cousins of baseball and softball began the process of, if not singing from the same hymn sheet, then sharing the same hymnbook. Now, less than 18 months on from when the merger of the International Softball Federation (ISF) and the International Baseball Federation (IBAF) was first agreed in December 2012, wedding rings have been swapped, the bells have rung and both have walked down the aisle glove-in-glove.

As the 60th anniversary of Sir Roger Bannister's achievement in running the first sub four-minute mile looms on Tuesday (May 6), the former neurological surgeon and Master of Pembroke College, Oxford has been facing some familiar questions.

In the weeks which preceded his breakthrough time of 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds on that damp and windy day at Oxford's Iffley Road track, his great Australian rival John Landy, who had already run 4:03 on five occasions, declared that the four-minute mark for the mile was "like a wall".

Even so, the Australian was reported to be running miles of 4:02 solo while training on rough tracks, and in the meantime United States runner Wes Santee was declaring his own intention of breaking the record in the spring.  So Bannister, and his coach Franz Stampfl, knew there was an urgent need to attack the mark.

By Mike Rowbottom

The ZEN-NOH 2014 World Team Table Tennis Championships, which get underway in Tokyo tomorrow and run until May 5, are likely to become "the most extensively viewed event" in the history of the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF), it is claimed.

It's good news, naturally, for the ITTF President, Adham Sharara. But, as he tells insidethegames, the future health of the sport is dependent not just upon its promotion, but a greater balance of competitiveness between European nations and those in Asia, most notably the country which has dominated the medals tables for the last 20 years - China.

By David Owen

There was more than one sports story in Manchester on Tuesday.

At the city's Aquatics Centre, a couple of miles down the Stretford Road from the Old Trafford stadium where David Moyes, the Manchester United football manager, had just finished clearing out his desk, Great Britain's women's water polo team recorded a noteworthy - and, who knows, possibly life-changing - victory.

Through 32 minutes of supreme collaborative effort, no little skill and bucket-loads of guts and bloody-mindedness, the 13 white-capped dervishes succeeded in upsetting world champions Spain by a 9-7 scoreline.

By Mike Rowbottom

With 100 days to go tomorrow until the start of Glasgow 2014, Adam Paker, chief executive of Commonwealth Games England, has described the impending Games in Scotland as the "acid test" for his organisation's wide-ranging regeneration in the wake of Delhi 2010.

And one of the key elements for Paker will be to ensure that new sponsors attracted via the joint marketing initiative between Commonwealth Games England and Glasgow 2014 will have a sufficiently positive experience at the Games to want to extend their contracts with the body.

Commonwealth Games England's Stepping Up strategy has sought to upgrade the organisation in four key areas - developing improved relations with other sports governing bodies, renewing the management structure, building their brand with new sponsors, and, critically, making a success of Glasgow 2014.

By Mike Rowbottom

As the 2014 World Triathlon Series (WTS) opens in Auckland, New Zealand this weekend the sport is clearly benefiting from changes targeted at broadening and strengthening its appeal worldwide - as International Triathlon Union (ITU) President Marisol Casado has explained to insidethegames.

This year's WTS, for example, will be contested more widely than ever before - in eight cities across five continents, with Cape Town and Chicago making their debut on the calendar ahead of the Edmonton Grand Final on August 26 to September 1 where the champions will claim their titles.

There is more prize money on offer this year too. This year, the ITU has increased the bonus pool by $177,000 (£106,000/€129,000), making it the biggest ever with a total of $755,000 (£455,000/€551,000) available to the top men and women.

By Mike Rowbottom

It is not fair and it is not just, but when people who are very well known, including famous sportsmen or women, face serious criminal charges, the focus of public attention upon them is the more intense.

This is particularly true in the ongoing case - due to resume on April 7 - involving Oscar Pistorius, South Africa's multiple Paralympic champion, who is charged with deliberately shooting dead his girlfriend, the fashion model Reeva Steenkamp, on Valentine's Day last year. Pistorius says he thought he was shooting at an intruder in his home.

As one of the many media representatives who have spoken to this double amputee on occasions over the last ten years, during which time he has established himself first as an outstanding Paralympic sprinter and then as a ground-breaking challenger taking on able-bodied runners at World Championship and Olympic level, I can attest that the shock of witnessing him in his current circumstances is all the more acute.

By Mike Rowbottom

Last week's decision by the International Rowing Federation (FISA) to introduce health screening to check for potentially fatal heart conditions among international competitors is a profoundly important step.

The system is based on the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) Pre-Competition Health Screening which follows on from the finding that the leading cause (more than 90 per cent) of non-traumatic sudden death in athletes is related to pre-existing heart problems.

The statistics relating to this subject are stark. More young athletes between 14 and 24 die of sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) than from any other cause.