Consisting of precisely 50 airplane flights, it ranged from the high of covering a first Olympic and Commonwealth Games, to the low of three broken laptops and the realisation - during a mountain-top funicular ride to end a two hour journey to the Sochi Cross Country and Biathlon Centre - that I was wearing my boss's identical company jacket and had thus commandeered his wallet, credit card and any means of him eating, drinking or travelling for the rest of the day...

Here are some of the other highlights in the topsy-turvy world of sport politics.

Running theme of 2014:

• A year which began so promisingly with a six-strong 2022 Olympic race soon began to falter with the withdrawal of Stockholm followed by the rapidly escalating crisis in Ukraine. But that was only the beginning, as over spring and summer we had the farce of Krakow's referendum-fuelled nightmare followed by the ever-escalating aggression of the anti-Oslo 2022 lobby, with all records for comments on insidethegames stories broken. By October we had something of a damp squib, with the two bids remaining from Almaty and Beijing low on drama and energy. Yet, you certainly couldn't have predicted how it played out this time last year, so maybe there are many more twists and turns left over coming months.

• Agenda 2020 must be the most uttered phrase in our stories this year, as the year-long reform process seems to have impacted virtually every topic. At the centre it all was International Olympic Committee boss Thomas Bach, speaking again and again about "pieces on a jigsaw" and "getting couch potatoes off the couch". The culminating Session in Monte Carlo, where all 20+20 recommendations were passed, was slightly farcical, and after spending all year writing about how Bach must be judged after it, we are now saying he must be judged again in another 12 months when the impact of some of the changes is felt. But it has certainly shaken things up, within international governing bodies and bidding cities alike.

• Although I have not covered it quite as closely as the other two, 2014 has, in a sports politics sense, been all about the drama, and sheer ridiculousness of FIFA. We had luxury watch-gifts, Presidential contest "will-he-won't-he's", and then the Russia 2018 and Qatar 2022 corruption allegations, and last week's resignation of chief investigator Michael Garcia. In Britain, Blatter and FIFA's reputation is now roughly on a par with Kim Jong-un. Elsewhere it remains slightly better, but some gaping unanswered questions remain. We don't expect much more to come to light in 2015, but we can certainly expect more in the way of allegations, excuses, fun and games.

Love him or hate him, Sepp Blatter has been an omnipresent figure in 2014 ©Getty Images





Best stories of 2014

• Problems with Rio 2016 preparations was something of a theme as far back as April and May, but I will always associate it with a meeting during the SportAccord Convention in Belek, where, after being initially disappointed I was stuck indoors rather than involved in a journalists versus PR consultants beach volleyball match, I witnessed the excitement of International Federation after International Federation standing up and registering their complaints. Then IOC vice-president John Coates claimed preparations were "the worst he had experienced", before virtually every day brought with it a new gripe, with pollution, security, anti-doping problems all under the microscope as well as construction delays.

• The case of British-Iranian student Goncheh Ghavami, arrested for attending a World League volleyball match in Tehran in June, before being belatedly released on bail 154 days later, became something of a hobby-horse for us at insidethegames. It certainly provoked strong opinions, in defence of Iran as well as of Ghavami, but after a shaky start, the International Volleyball Federation and its under fire President Ary S Graça - now accused of corruption during his time at the Brazilian Volleyball Confederation - gradually improved their response, and surely helped speed up her release.

British-Iranian student Ghoncheh Ghavami was another often-mentioned figure in our stories this year after being arrested for attending an FIVB World League match ©Change.org



• The question of Kosovo's Olympic inclusion has been an unofficial insidethegames campaign since well before my time, but after visiting in May for only the country's second-ever international football match, it was a crusade I like to think I took up with panache. And to our surprise, the IOC Executive Board took it up as well, and then the membership-at-large. It wasn't a decision without criticism, but for the sake of athletes and Olympic opportunities, it was the right call, and perhaps the IOC's best achievement in 2014.

Best sport of 2014

• While most people remember the Winter Olympics for the ice hockey, or maybe the downhill skiing or halfpipe snowboard, for me it was all about the tension, tactics and sheer absurdity of curling. My favourite moment was watching in a press room with most of the British press corps, as Britain skip David Murdock hit what turned out to be a brilliant winning shot, only for all the journalists to be silent for about 10 seconds before the first person realised the consequences of what had happened. 

• The best sporting atmosphere, however, came in Incheon at the Asian Games baseball final, as hosts South Korea played Taiwan. This was a notable exception to a Games that generally failed to capture the imagination of the locals, and, although I barely had the faintest idea what was going on, and never got to see a home run throughout the match, I loved my first experience a sport now set to return to the Olympic programme at Tokyo 2020. 

South Korea's home baseball gold at the Asian Games was one sporting highlight of the year ©Getty Images



• There were a number of great moments at the Commonwealth Games, including some stunning finals in athletics, hockey and cycling. But - and to pick something different - a third highlight was September's Archery World Cup Final in Lausanne, a sport which, compared with curling and baseball, was blissfully easy to understand and with a scoring format guaranteeing close and tense matches. The boiling hot weather certainly helped as well.

Best places of 2014:

• It's not the safest city in the world, but there are few more beautiful, iconic, or packed full of character than Rio de Janeiro, the next Olympic host city. I doubt everything will be perfectly ready on time, and there are bound to be delays, disorganisation and general chaos, but I still think Rio 2016 could be a unique and memorable Games nonetheless.

• As the location for my first overseas trip last year, I will always have fond memories of Nanjing, but despite the blandness of the city in memory ways, the Summer Youth Olympic Games was a good combination of impeccable organisation and genuinely passionate and excited volunteers. It was different from an adult Olympics, but all rather good fun.

• It might seem a surprising choice, but during a whistlestop two-day visit to see Doha's preparations for its World Athletics Championship bid, I have to say I was wowed by the Qatari capital, and its unparalleled sports facilities. Questions still hang over many of the bids it has won, but I have no doubt Qatar will continue to stage impressive sporting events, including a certain football one in 2022.

Best press conferences of 2014:

• I wasn't actually at Tokyo 2020 press event in Sochi, but I was receiving live updates as new bid leader Yoshirō Mori was first asked why a bid supposedly showcasing a "new Japan" was headed a bunch of old men, and then why he did not speak in English. After he replied: "I don't because it's still thought of as the enemy's language", Tokyo's PR man called a premature halt on further questions. It was probably a wise move.

• But for sheer tension between the speakers, a joint-event attended by International Ice Hockey Federation President René Fasel and National Hockey League Commissioner Gary Bettman topped the bill. The best moment was when Fasel's claimed "there is nothing like an Olympic gold medal", only for Bettman to interrupt and add: "Except, perhaps, winning the Stanley Cup." If looks could have killed.

René Fasel (left) speaking alongside Gary Bettman during the Winter Olympics in Sochi was a broadly harmonious, but slightly tense, affair ©Getty Images



•  And there was the farce of Usain Bolt's press conference appearance at Glasgow 2014, as many of the Commonwealth's battle-scarred hacks turned into whimpering celebrity stalkers. "Can I have a selfie?" asked one. "Usain, will you wear a kilt?" asked another. And then we returned to business. "What are your views on Israel and Palestine," the great sprinter was asked, "and on Scottish Independence?" A journalistic low, but it certainly bemused Usain, if nothing else.

So, after all of this, what can we expect in 2015?

This included the rebranding of the World Tenpin Bowling Association (WTBA), the trial of a simplified scoring system and an increase in bowling's social media presence.

The establishment of World Bowling - an amalgamation of the WTBA, the two ninepin federations, and the umbrella organisation, the International Federation of Bowlers - encompassed the launch of a new logo inspired by the Olympic colours, and although Dornberger insisted this was the idea of a professional designer, he agrees that it made sense in line with the sport's ambition. 

Further evidence of this ambition was seen at the World Bowling Tour men's and women's finals in Las Vegas last month, when a new match-play style scoring system was trialled with an emphasis on winning frames and reducing the length of time and complexity of scoring required to complete a two-player match.

In keeping with Dornberger's golf analogy, the system mirrors that of the Ryder Cup in a best-of-12-frames format with the intention of making the sport more attractive and easier to understand for casual bowling fans, the news media and the competitors.

Bowling is undergoing a radical makeover as the sport tries to make itself more attractive internationally and to younger audiences ©World Bowling

The 2014 WBMC at the Khalifa International Bowling Centre in Zayed Sports City, can certainly be counted as a great success in terms of its organisation and execution but having been there to witness the concluding weekend, I came to understand the issues facing the sport more clearly.

While the final of the team competition between eventual winners South Korea and the US generated a commendable atmosphere and sense of occasion on Saturday night (December 13), the fact that the tournament started at 9am the previous day spoke volumes about the time-related concerns.   

It also seemed rather odd that the masters competition, which to my surprise is considered much less prestigious than the team competition despite its glamorous title, was held on the final day of the Championships.

A sense of climax was lacking after South Korea's Kang Hee Won beat the US' Mike Fagan in the final, which begged the question why the competition was scheduled to bring down the curtain on the Championships and also whether it was even necessary in the first place.

With singles, doubles and trios competitions also featuring at the Championships, it's evident why World Bowling is keen to look at the format of events and presumably trim them down to get rid of any dead wood.

This is just a small part of the ongoing process of assessing the positive and negative aspects of the sport and condensing it into an attractive package that will appeal to the masses.

Kevin Dornberger, the President of World Bowling, at the Opening Ceremony of the 2014 World Bowling Men's Championships ©World Bowling





When speaking to Dornberger, it didn't strike me that he's infatuated by the idea of achieving Olympic inclusion for tenpin bowling, but he's unquestionably set on making the sport as attractive and entertaining as it can be in the hope that that will prove to be enough to put it on the biggest stage of them all.

Joining the 50-plus international sports organisations based in Lausanne can surely do nothing but good for World Bowling and providing the organisations sticks to its philosophy of being open to change, regardless of the impact on tradition.

There's no reason why bowling can't make the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) shortlist of sports for the 2024 Olympic Games, which is expected to be drawn up in the latter half of next year.

The outcome of the Olympic Agenda 2020 reform process has further boosted the likelihood of success as proposals to consider a more flexible sports programme were passed unanimously by the IOC at its Session in Monte Carlo last week.

The opportunity is there for all sports with Olympic aspirations and we'll have to wait and see if bowling can seize the initiative and take one of the most coveted steps that the world of sport has to offer.

If it manages to do so, Dornberger may well have to devise a new analogy.  

Daniel Etchells is a reporter for insidethegames. To follow him on Twitter click here.

Indeed, the stories about the IOC wanting sliding sports at Pyeonchang 2018 to be shifted outside South Korea, which emerged during the Session but have since been swiftly dismissed by patriotic Korean officials, can be taken a mischievous red herring more than a realistic proposal.

The same ambiguity is present when we turn our attention to sports on the programme. When the head of the relevant Working Group, Italy's Franco Carraro, fielded questions on the changes, he answered in such a way that everyone was left even more confused and in the dark than beforehand,

It even brought a rather wonderful line of "I may be being a bit thick here..." from Princess Anne, something you don't hear from a Royal Family member very often.

But there were murmurings afterwards that Carraro was being deliberately vague, and not giving much away to keep everyone on their toes so any future changes, ironed out behind closed doors in private meetings no doubt, remain possible.

Yet sport after sport has since circulated press releases expressing their happiness and joy with the proposals, and outlining potential room for manoeuvre as a consequence. Just today, there have been calls for mixed team archery at Tokyo 2020, along with the possible pioneering of relay and head-to-head races in flatwater canoeing.

Another ice-hockey player, Hayley Wickenheiser of Canada, who became an IOC member this year, is the highest new entry in our chart, coming in at Number 5 with just under 41,000 followers.

Richard Peterkin's wit and humour during the IOC Session in Monte Carlo this week helped him break into the IOC's list of 20 top Tweeters ©Twitter

The Saint Lucian IOC member Peterkin's wit and humour during the Monaco Session have helped him edge into the chart at Number 20 with 258 followers.

This puts him just 15 in front of Nicole Hoevertsz, a former synchronised swimmer from Aruba, another Caribbean island.

"Thus Murmansk will see competitors fencing on horseback while wading through the shallow end of a swimming pool before attempting to shoot each other with laser pistols – three 'hits' received will spell an exit from the competition - as they race en masse towards the podium over a 400-metres long course on which they run the risk of being randomly battered to the ground by 'Ancient Olympians' wielding giant clubs based on those recovered from the site of the original Games. Including advertising breaks, the whole event will start and finish in less than half an hour."

Ridiculous, eh?

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, covered the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics as chief feature writer for insidethegames, having covered the previous five summer Games, and four winter Games, for The Independent. He has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, The Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. His latest book Foul Play – the Dark Arts of Cheating in Sport (Bloomsbury £8.99) is available at the insidethegames.biz shop. To follow him on Twitter click here.

As I was cataloguing my work this past year I noticed there are a significant number of pieces in my collection on athletes that were later caught for taking drugs. These artworks are a reminder to me of the impact that these people had on me and many others before they were caught. These artworks document my interests, influences and inspirations throughout my life. These people inspired me at the time I created the pieces - that's why I choose them as the subject matter. When I look at them, even now, I can remember how I felt and what I was thinking when I made them.

Similarly, regarding the sporting programme - an issue on which the Movement has shown a remarkable aptitude for tying itself up in the most inextricable knots in recent years - there remains a large amount of confusion.

And I mean in the minds of Olympic decision-makers, let alone the rest of us poor wretches.

The basic idea - of assessing the strengths and weaknesses of each individual event when determining the Olympic programme, and of setting limits that prevent the size of the Summer Games from escalating out of control while making it easier for new sports to be included - appears sound enough.

What remains, for now, as clear as mud - and I have tested this on a number of diligent, well plugged-in IOC members - is the ejection mechanism for events deemed no longer able to cut the Olympic mustard.

This might be by design: a clear explanation of the process via which events are expelled into the Olympic wilderness might have provoked a blizzard of queries that would, in turn, have bogged down the entire Agenda 2020 process.

It suggests, though, that what has been accomplished today may just be the easy part.

The IOC has a reputation for being a conservative organisation and usually only proposes change if it is certain it will be successful ©IOC

What will be the reaction once established Olympic sports start to be hit with proposals for real reductions in their respective programmes, be they of events, or of the number of athletes accepted for participation in events?

The contrast with the clarity and detail of information provided after lunch on the proposed new Olympic Channel - much the most adventurous innovation approved by the Session - was quite striking.

More than one hundred new staff required (106 to be precise), a Madrid base, projected costs over the first seven years, including contingency, of €490 million.

Here was a real sense of a well-thought-through project, and of course the membership approved it unanimously.

None of this was particularly surprising; as I have written before, politics is the art of the possible and the IOC has prospered over a long period by being conservative.

It does not tend to shake things up unless it is pretty darn sure the result will constitute an improvement.

Former IOC marketing director Michael Payne claims he spoke to Thomas Bach about an Olympic TV Channel 15 years ago ©Twitter

The idea of something akin to an Olympic Channel was first raised, I understand, as long ago as the early 1990s, but was not deemed a viable concept in those far off pre-digital days.

Bach and his colleagues have done remarkably well, all things considered, to bring this raft of proposals to a conclusion little more than a year after he assumed office.

But, the channel apart, it still leaves me wondering how much, fundamentally, is going to change in Agenda 2020's wake.

Will these reforms help to engender a rush of bidders, and bidders prepared to stay the course, for the 2026 Winter Games?

How different will the 2024 Summer Games sporting programme really be from Rio 2016 – and, critically, will any changes have a meaningful impact in boosting the number of young viewers and grass-roots participants?

We shall have to wait and see, but it seems to me that the 40 measures do relatively little to address one of the big structural problems affecting the Movement: that the cost-benefit equation for hosting the Winter Games is not attractive enough for bidders because large areas of the globe are not much interested in them.

"Today is decision day," said Bach at the outset of Monday's proceedings.

"This is a great, great step forward," he added more than six hours later, at 3.45pm, as the Olympic Channel recommendation sailed through.

He is right on both counts.

I persist in thinking, however, that with the exception of recommendation 19 (to launch the channel), revolution day this was not.

It has been mentioned in virtually every press conference, bubbling in the background at every major sporting event and in the mind of every bidding and potentially bidding city, not to mention every consultant seeking a new contract...

I remember its unveiling last December in a rather bitter-sweet sense. IOC President Bach first introduced the Agenda in a Saturday afternoon teleconference following an Executive Board meeting in Montreux. For me it had been a late night the evening before and I rolled out of bed lazily contemplating a relaxed day before being greeted by a flurry of emails telling me I was covering the conference and that I was going to find out about this, this and this.

After managing to survive this, the next major step came in Sochi, where the IOC membership discussed and debated all of the proposals in an impressively robust manner. Then came an Olympic Summit in Lausanne and two further Executive Board meetings, before the 40, sorry, 20+20, recommendations were made public last month.

Thomas Bach and his IOC Executive Board colleagues in Montreux in December 2013, during the meeting in which Olympic Agenda 2020 was first proposed
©IOC/Christophe Moratal



The context of the disastrous 2022 Olympic race, where city after city has withdrawn due to a coalition of Governmental and public opposition, has made the process seem all the more important, while the success of new sports and disciplines in events like the Summer Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing has also widened the appetite for change.

Yet while these proposals could be seminal for those who make their livelihood from this world, for everyone else outside the Olympic bubble, it has all been notably less significant.

As colleagues have pointed out, in the mainstream press the coverage can only have been described as limited, and, at time of writing as Bach delivers his lengthy Opening Ceremony address to begin proceedings, the journalistic "wires" are not exactly bubbling with excitement.

On the plane here, after telling the British passenger next to me the reason for my visit, there was a five second pause as she clearly thought hard for a potential response. Eventually, her eyes lit up and she replied: "Oh, will Sebastian Coe be there?"

Hatricks by football superstars Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi have drawn the global sporting headlines this weekend, rather than any pre-Agenda 2020 excitement
©AFP/Getty Images



So why is this interest so slight? And what could the IOC have done to make it greater?

The obvious answer to both of these questions is that they could have made their reforms more wide-reaching and profound.

Yes, there are some interesting and potentially important changes being proposed, but most are limited and open to interpretation, with the implications too subtle and conditional for headlines to be generated. In fact, you could argue the only concrete change resulting from the whole process is the introduction of an Olympic Television Channel, something exciting and much-desired but which has also raised eyebrows as to how successful it will prove in practice.

Of the various other proposals, changes to the Olympic bidding process and to the sports programme are the most interesting.

With regard to the former, the possibility for more events to be held in different locations in order to cut costs could change the bidding landscape. But in practice, the movement of a few sports further away from the host city, as Tokyo 2020 is proposing, is far more likely than the coming into fruition of audacious rumours emerging in recent hours that sliding sports at the Pyeongchang 2018 Games will be held in either Japan, North America or Europe.

This could come back to bite me, but these reports seem more a way to give the South Korean organisers a proverbial kick up the backside and to draw attention to the potential of the Agenda 2020 changes rather than a realistic proposal. At this stage at least, anyway.

While most reports on possible changes to the sports programme have focused on the strong likelihood of baseball and softball reappearing in Tokyo, and other sports, from squash to skateboarding and sport climbing, possibly featuring at some point, the changes within existing disciplines is most interesting.

Less popular events in sports like athletics, swimming and gymnastics could be under threat and international federations are already tripping over themselves to introduce innovative formats, such as mixed gender events in triathlon, bobsleigh and synchronised swimming, in a bid to demonstrate modernising tendencies.

Baseball and softball's Olympic return is one much-talked about possible consequence of Agenda 2020, but other new disciplines, like mixed synchronised swimming, could also emerge ©FINA



This represents the speeding up of a process which began a few years ago but it does mean that, more than ever, sports cannot afford to rest on their laurels and be complacent.

Among other interesting areas is a register for Olympic bidding consultants, and a change to the Host City Contract regarding non-discrimination and environmental and working standards. But most of the rest concerns opinions already expressed, like a commitment to "protect clean athletes" and to "forge relationships with professional leagues", or to "support autonomy" and "further blend sport and culture".

And it is typical that one area rumoured to provoke the fiercest debate over the next two days concerns internal politics, in the form of age limits for IOC members.

In fact, one of the more striking reforms featuring at the Session is not even part of the Agenda 2020 proposals at all, namely the fact that all votes will be public via show of hand rather than privately via electronic means. This is a sign of increased openness and transparency, the IOC has claimed, although a cynic would speculate it is more a "three-line whip" for IOC members, to implicitly warn them their decisions will not go unnoticed.

But this brings me onto an idea, proposed by World Badminton Federation President and Danish IOC member, Poul-Erik Høyer, for the host city election votes of IOC members to also be conducted publicly. Although this idea got much approval on social media and with the general public, it does not seem to have been seriously considered as part of the reforms.

And this is why, in my opinion, Agenda 2020 is limited and will not gain the public attention the IOC so desire.

Public votes by IOC members in host city contests would be a radical reform, which has not been proposed ©AFP/Getty Images





A proposal which seems to make perfect sense to most of the world, and would immediately increase openness and transparency to a far greater and more obvious way than anything proposed, is predictably brushed aside.

Too great a threat to the established status quo, I presume.

So while in a decade's time we may look back at December 8 and 9 and mark it as a profound, watershed moment in the history of the Olympic Movement, I doubt that will actually be the case, and the changes will be more subtle and incremental than the sweeping reforms promised.

Yet on the other hand, while gradual, it is still progress, and as shown by the decision to accept Kosovo as a provisional IOC member in October, the IOC has shown itself capable of making controversial but important decisions. And the best point of comparison for the Olympics is FIFA, where reform measures like these still appear light years away.

So as the Session begins, Bach and the IOC should be praised for the "bold step" of Olympic Agenda 2020, but they should not be praised too much.

For it marks a small shuffle rather than a giant leap.

Nick Butler is a reporter for insidethegames. To follow him on Twitter click here.

In 2008, the WTF introduced the World Taekwondo Peace Corps, an initiative which aims to help the youth of developing countries "to build a dream and provide hope that poverty can be overcome", as well as promote taekwondo as a sport.

Choue has recently applied to become a member of the IOC, as one of the 15 representatives of the International Federations (IFs), and if selected, he would like to see a Peace Corp created for each Olympic sport, with the IOC and the United Nations working alongside each other.

"There are 28 Summer Olympic sports and seven Winter Olympic sports and if they're doing what we're doing now, young kids could achieve their dreams through other Olympic sports," he said.

"I'll keep in contact with the secretary general [of the United Nations] Ban Ki-moon, and also IOC President Thomas Bach, to discuss this matter in the very near future."

In this sense, taekwondo is showing other sports the way forward by setting an example to follow and this perhaps is one of the main reasons why the sport has grown so considerably under Choue's Presidency from 2004 onwards.

Innovative thinking and an incessant desire for continuous development has got taekwondo to where it is today and it certainly doesn't show any signs of letting up.

It seems almost inevitable that the sport will continue to grow. Who knows how far it can go.

Daniel Etchells is a reporter for insidethegames. To follow him on Twitter click here.