Janet Evans will return to Atlanta tomorrow as part of the city's celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the 1996 Olympic and Paralympic Games and to take part in a meeting to find out from athletes ideas to help Los Angeles win its bid for 2024.

You get the feeling that Cristiano Ronaldo would have been Vince Lombardi’s kind of a guy.

It was significant that the five-ringed Olympic flag was hoisted alongside the Stars and Stripes at Muhammad Ali's magnificent memorial service in his home town of Louisville, Kentucky, on Friday. The perfect requiem for a heavyweight.

What, I wonder, would the sadly departed Muhammad Ali have had to say about the very idea of professional boxers mixing it in the Olympic ring with those, who, despite the attempts of the International Boxing Association (AIBA) to persuade us otherwise, are still essentially amateurs.

International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach has led the tributes to boxing legend Muhammad Ali, who has died at the age of 74.

Muhammad Ali was not someone to argue with, in the ring or out, so when he told the world he was "The Greatest", we believed him, because he surely was. Perhaps not the greatest boxer - Ali himself always acknowledged that Sugar Ray Robinson held that title - but certainly the greatest world heavyweight champion, and, as every opinion poll has ever indicated, the greatest sports figure in history.

Boxing legend Muhammad Ali has died at the age of 74, a family spokesman has said.

Exactly 50 years ago last weekend 41,000 people streamed into Arsenal’s old ground at Highbury to witness Muhammad Ali thwart a revenge bid by Henry Cooper, keeping his world heavyweight title by opening a deep, jagged cut in the sixth round on the Londoner’s left eyebrow.

Great Britain claimed three men’s titles on the first day of finals at the International Boxing Association (AIBA) European Olympic Qualification Event at the Mustafa Dağıstanlı Spor Salonu in Samsun.

How’s this for a spot of name-dropping? Forty-five years ago last week I was in the gents at Madison Square Garden having a pee when a man in a trilby standing next to me turned his head and nodded: ”Howya doing pal?”

It seems pleasingly appropriate that as an absorbing exhibition of the life and times of Muhammad Ali opens in London, the wordsmith who immortalised so many of the exploits in and out of the ring for British fans should himself be in the limelight and subject to tributes from within the game.

Rome 2024's #WeWantRoma Twitter campaign has been described as misleading by Bart Conner, the manager and husband of Nadia Comăneci, after the five-time Olympic gold medal-winning gymnast was used in a promotional tweet.

The Sports Journalists Association, of which I am a member, have withdrawn their invitation to the new world heavyweight champion Tyson Fury to attend their annual awards and one presumes any votes already cast for him to be their Sportsman of the Year will be discounted.

I was watching a TV re-run of the Thrilla in Manila in the compelling "A Fight to Remember" series on BoxNation this week and as the 14th round, three minutes of unremitting savagery, reached its bloody, bone-juddering conclusion, with a half-blinded Joe Frazier led back to his corner by referee Carlos Padilla, a friend asked: ”Was it because of this that they cut World Championship fights to 12 rounds?”