Often when I meet those who have scrambled to the top of international sport's greasy pole, I conclude that they are politicians first and administrators second.
Today marks 100 years since "the war to end all wars" came to an end. The guns fell silent at the 11th hour of the 11th day in the 11th month in 1918.
Starting this Friday (November 9), Norway's 27-year-old chess player Magnus Carlsen, the world champion since 2013, will defend his title against Fabiano Caruana, who is a year his junior.
The decision to award Russia the 2020 European Weightlifting Championships on the same day its one-year suspension from the sport expired on October 17 was certainly a bold one.
La Liga President Javier Tebas certainly did not mince his words at last week's SPORTELMonaco convention, describing opposition to plans to play a match in the near future in the United States as "sporting puritanism".
For some - no, for many cities, the experience of having an Olympic bid aborted would deflate ambitions for major sporting expansion. Not so for Budapest, which today stages the official opening of the World Wrestling Championships, the latest in a dizzying succession of top international events taking place in the Hungarian capital.
Politics has been intermingled with sport in every one of the modern Olympics. That mixture was at its most violent and shocking at the 1972 Munich Games, when the Palestinian Black September group took 11 Israeli Olympic team members hostage, seeking a release of prisoners, and ended up killing them along with a West German police officer.
Thomas Bach has been forced to deal with several considerable challenges during his tenure as President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
The Olympic flame reaches a low point in its history today - but only in the literal sense.
It was 4.30am when the phone rang in my room at the media village in Seoul on September 27, 1988. "Get your backside down to the press centre, there’s a massive story breaking," urged my good friend John Goodbody, of The Times. "Ben Johnson’s been done for doping!”
On Friday (September 21), David Lappartient will have been International Cycling Union (UCI) President for a year, having succeeded Britain's Brian Cookson.
As the 48th World Rowing Championships get underway in Bulgaria today, one might imagine a small wreath bobbing about on the Plovdiv Rowing Venue course in memory of the late and lamented lightweight men's coxless four (LM4-) event that had its last outing at last year's World Championships at Sarasota-Bradenton in Florida.
Russia was reduced to the status of a provisional, non-voting member of the International Biathlon Union (IBU) on December 10 of last year. Yet it remains central to the prospects and fortunes of this beleaguered international sports federation which has, in the space of the last three years, plumbed depths unmatched - as yet - by any other.
The phrase "end of an era" is much overused, particularly in sport. Yet one has little hesitation in applying it to the change at the top that is about to take place in shooting.
The Asian Games have returned to Jakarta this summer and opened yesterday in the very Gelora Bung Karno Main Stadium built to hold that event back in 1962.
At the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Iranian judoka Arash Miresmaeili was disqualified for weighing in at nearly four pounds above the limit for his weight class of his under-66 kilograms match against an Israeli opponent Ehud Vaks in the first round. It was claimed Miresmaeili had gone on an eating binge to protest the International Olympic Committee's recognition of the state of Israel. Iran does not recognise the state of Israel, and Miresmaeili's actions won praise from high-ranking Iranian officials. Mohammad Khatami, the country's President at the time, was quoted as saying Miresmaili's actions would be "recorded in the history of Iranian glories". He was later awarded $125,000 by the Government - the same amount given to Olympic gold medallists.
Formula E Operations - Event Technology Manager - London, UK
The ABB FIA Formula E Championship is the electric street racing series and the world’s first fully-electric international single-seater category in motorsport. Your role is to plan, co-design, coordinate and partly implement track technology infrastructure with our providers during all of Formula E ePrix. This includes Timing, CCTV, Event Security CCTV, Track Backhaul, WiFi for Media Centre, Offices, Hospitality and Activations, Track internal communication.
The 55-year-old International Equestrian Federation President Ingmar De Vos is becoming an increasingly prominent figure in sports circles as he prepares to embark on a second term. David Owen meets him at the body's imposing headquarters in Lausanne.
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