Geoffrey Boycott may be a curmudgeonly ex-cricketer of the old school but no-one could have put it better after the current England team led by that terribly nice Alistair Cook emerged from the whitewash shambles of the Ashes series with more than just their tail-end between their legs.

He reckons England psyched themselves out of it by relying on a posse of back-slappers and mind-benders - a view I heartily endorse. In the final inning of the last Test they performed like a bunch who had spent more time being analysed on the psychologist's couch than practising in the nets.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph Boycs declared: "Over recent years England have employed more backroom staff believing it makes them more professional. In fact, they have over-complicated professionalism. We have coaches for everything. Psychologists, team analysts and an 82-page diet book that made us a laughing stock.

"It is time they got into the real world and stopped wasting money on frivolous luxuries that do not make any difference when Mitchell Johnson is whistling it around your ear hole. The players have stopped thinking for themselves.

"In my day when we had a problem, either with batting or bowling, we used to talk it over with our colleagues in the team and worked things out together. It built team morale. It engaged everyone in the dressing room. Now we have robots waiting for a coach and an analyst with a laptop to tell them what they are doing wrong.

"Well, I can tell our batsmen what they did wrong. They forgot the principles of Test match batting. They batted like one-day clowns."

Geoffrey Boycott reckons England psyched themselves out of the Ashes by relying on a posse of back-slappers and mind-benders ©Getty Images


And he had this to say about the disappointing performances of the bowlers, notably lanky paceman Steve Finn: "Somebody on the coaching staff has to put their hand up and say we have messed him up. I would stop concentrating on the technical tinkering and filling his head with rubbish, and tell him to go out and bowl quick."

I gather that on several occasions during the 5-0 drubbing England's bemused players were comforted and counselled by a "stress physiologist". Whatever advice they were given, it clearly didn't work.

Neither did such counselling prevent batsman Jonathan Trott electing to return home early, apparently unable to cope with the tour's mental pressures.

You can bet Tasmanian devil to a case of Fosters that the Aussies did not let a psychologist anywhere near their locker room.

Indeed, cricket legends from Bradman to Botham, via Boycott himself, would have scoffed at the idea of a brainwashing session to help revive or improve their game.

Nor would other sporting giants of the past and, I suspect, the vast majority of the present.

Great Olympians - among them Seb Coe, Daley Thompson, Carl Lewis, Mark Spitz, Ian Thorpe and Steve Redgrave - never mentioned the need for one and has anyone heard Mo Farah or even Usain Bolt pay homage to sports psychology, which hadn't even been invented when the likes of Jesse Owens struck gold.

I don't recall Muhammad Ali resorting to a shrink before winning either his Olympic or world titles (he was his own inimitable Svengali), though I know of one of his British opponents, Richard Dunn, who did. He was KO'd in five rounds.

I don't recall Muhammad Ali resorting to a shrink before winning either his Olympic or world titles ©Getty Images


Frank Bruno also sought a similar mental prop before his second fight with Mike Tyson by being hypnotised. He ended up being mesmerised - then pulverised.

Golfing heroes Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Gary Player managed to win a multitude of majors without revealing their innermost fears to sport's Samaritans yet can it be coincidence that Tiger Woods hasn't got near one since having been forced to undergo endless sessions of psychological rehab.

The sadly late, great Eusébio, with Pelé and George Best one of the three most enthralling footballers I have been privileged to watch, never needed anyone other than his team manager blowing in his ear.

Neither did Bobby Moore and the England team of World Cup winners in 1966. Throughout that tournament, unlike the self-serving barmy army of support staff apparently needed to fortify England's cricketers, Sir Alf Ramsey had only two aides; his assistant coaches Harold Shepherdson and Les Cocker, plus a part-time team doctor.

Had the FA offered the use of a "stress physiologist" his response would have been of two words, the second of which is "off!"

John McEnroe, to anyone's knowledge, was not a recipient of psychology though some tennis umpires may have wanted to recommended psychiatric treatment.

I lost faith in sports psychology back in 1992 at the Albertville Winter Olympics. Team GB's four-man bob, led by Mark Tout, were sensationally in pole position overnight. A terrific story.

Yet British Olympic Association (BOA) officials declined all requests for an interview with them, saying that the team psychologist insisted they were locked in a session with him to mentally attune them for the next day's final run. They finished sixth.

I can't imagine that, like Sir Alf Ramsey, Sir Alex Ferguson had much time for other than his own brand of hair-dryer psychology.

But among modern football bosses, West Ham's Sam Allardyce is said to be a devotee of intense psychological preparation and performance analysis.

Sam Allardyce is said to be a devotee of intense psychological preparation and performance analysis ©Getty Images


So where are the Hammers now? Second from bottom of the Premier League and in danger of bringing lower-division football to the Olympic Stadium when their new home is ready in 2016.

As someone brought up in an era when the stopwatch and sponge were the only accoutrements necessary to assist the development of natural talent, I never cease to be mind-boggled at the excessive appliance of science in sport today.

Agreed, some of it is beneficial. But I fear we are witnessing the beautiful simplicity of sport being drowned in a tsunami of hi-technology and psycho-analysis.

It seems to have become a matter of shrink or swim.

Recently I attended a session conducted by Lottery-funders UK Sport and the English Institute of Sport both, worthy bodies which unquestionably have benefitted elite sport through cash infusion and technical expertise.

But I left concerned that sport is in serious danger of being enveloped by in techno-jargon and confused by the zeal of well-intentioned boffins.

Phrases like "Mission Strategy Analysis Function" to assist "research and motivation" and "the establishment of project para impact groups and performance solutions teams", are now lodged in the lexicon of essential requirements for mining more gold at Rio 2016 than was unearthed in London.

Such sports-speak has become a language that is foreign to the icons of yesteryear.

Now we are the age of charts, graphs, and mumbo-jumbo with the liberal employment of a burgeoning breed of mind jockeys who seem to have created a profession out of the bleedin' obvious.

Greats sporting figures know they do not need help to play mind games when they are good enough at real games.

Surely what is needed to bring out the best in talented sportsmen and women is commonsense technical and motivational coaching plus efficient medical back-up; not an overdose of psychological claptrap.

Ask Geoffrey Boycott. Or better still, Alastair Cook.

Alan Hubbard is a 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 Games, 10 Commonwealth Games, several football World Cups and world title fights from Atlanta to Zaire.

I had cause to contemplate exactly why we do sport last week as I struggled through what can only be described as a horrific training run.

Terribly out of shape and feeling weaker still due to an unrelenting diet of Christmas leftovers, not to mention the challenges of wind, rain and the type of merciless inclines that relocating to Milton Keynes leaves you woefully underprepared for, I failed miserably at keeping pace with my infinitely more talented, motivated and deserving club-mates.

And that was just on the warm-up jog.

As the session continued I deteriorated further still and the aim swiftly became simply completing the course rather than doing it with any semblance of speed, style or dignity.

But in a paradoxical way, the worse I felt the more satisfaction I was gaining.

Why do so many of us relish putting ourselves through this sort of unpleasantness? Not just occasionally, like I now do, but day after day regardless of weather, enthusiasm or other distractions?

For me it is about trying to improve my own mediocre standard, justifying the other excesses of life, keeping up with the friends I have made through athletics, and to distract myself from other stresses and strains.

I am currently in New Zealand, a country anticipating the restoration of rugby to the Olympic programme at Rio 2016 like few others.

It is a nation with sport in its soul, as illustrated by two old photographs stumbled upon in unexpected places.

The first at a wharf at Okarito, a wetland where a blue whale was once washed up, depicted a rudimentary local pole-vault competition from long ago; the second in a bar at Milford Sound showed workers on the Homer Tunnel, in a spot so exposed that snow-patches linger in the Southern Hemisphere summer, playing cricket in the 1930s.

It is a stunning place, and the visit has prompted a couple of Olympics-related thoughts, the first very simple: it is high time the Winter Olympics and Paralympics were staged south of the equator and New Zealand would make a fabulous location.

The trip - which included a few days in Queenstown, "Adventure Capital of the World", according to our travel itinerary - has also helped me to work out why, besides advanced age, I am instinctively rather suspicious of adventure sports.

New Zealand would make a fabulous location for the Winter Olympics and Paralympics
©Getty Images


This is quite a topical area for the Olympic Movement, which will, I think, find itself increasingly drawn to this exciting, adrenalin-fuelled new province of Planet Sport in its endeavours to remain fresh and relevant to young people.

The thing is this: the sports I and the Olympic Movement are most familiar with have been harnessed as means to a certain end.

In the Modern Olympic age, as initiated by Baron de Coubertin, the end, in essence, was inculcation of various qualities regarded as virtues by 19th-century British public schools.

The Ancient Games were designed even more clearly with a greater purpose in mind, this purpose being the formation of effective soldiers.

With adventure pursuits, it is sometimes hard, at least for me, to discern any more profound purpose than self-gratification: the desire to experience the most thrilling ride, or fall, money can buy.

The Ancient Olympic Games were designed to identify effective soldiers ©Getty Images

I don't want to appear judgemental - most visitors to Queenstown and similar centres are merely seeking, no doubt, to enjoy their holidays, and who would begrudge them that?

Many adventure sports, moreover, draw on reserves of skill and courage that any athlete would be proud of.

I suppose too that playing any game, from bridge to American football, as a hobby is a form of self-gratification.

The brazen, wholly unapologetic focus on pleasure-seeking that I associate with adventure pursuits is nonetheless simply not something I am used to in the sporting field; it therefore leaves me feeling fogeyish and uncomfortable.

It would probably serve the Olympic Movement well to have a bigger presence in the adventure sports space ©Getty Images


It also leads me to think that the Olympic Movement may need to reflect on the philosophical underpinnings of adventure sports and how compatible they are with those of Olympism before it steams too far along the path of incorporating more of them into the Games and Youth Games.

Yes, the Olympic world does need to do more to engage young people.

It would probably serve it well to have a bigger presence in the adventure sports space than its embrace of events such as BMX and snowboard cross have so far allowed it.

But it would be well-advised, I feel, to think penetratingly about its aspirations in the sector and to select its vehicles with great care.

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, the 2010 World Cup and London 2012. Owen's Twitter feed can be accessed here.

Dave Bedford, who has been awarded the Order of the British Empire in the New Year's Honours List, is one of those people who add warmth and humour to life. He is also one of those people who will swiftly apply boot to backside if something seriously displeases him.

The latter characteristic animated his angry repudiation of the 118 118 phone directory business which used, and continues to use, athletics characters who, with their long dark hair and moustaches, (and initially at any rate their scruffy red socks around the ankles) look awfully like he did himself when he was the enfant terrible - and also enfant merveilleux - of British athletics in the early 1970s.

When Bedford failed to get what he deemed satisfaction, despite Ofcom ruling in January 2004 that the company had breached the Advertising Standards Code by caricaturing him without permission, he made his point very publicly by crashing the 118 118 TV ad campaign. Pictures of Bedford being removed from the location made the front page of two national newspapers.

Dave Bedford, enfant terrible - and merveilleux - of British athletics in the early 1970s, all the way down to his red socks ©Getty Images

I don't claim to know Bedford well, but I am always glad to see him - especially if we are anywhere near a bar. Over the years I have enjoyed a few beers with the man who was one of my childhood heroes. I will always regret that the first athletics meeting I ever attended, as part of a school trip, was the main day of action in the 1973 AAA Championships at Crystal Palace.

When the Olympic flag flies at the Winter Games in Sochi, it will be a 100 years since the most famous Olympic symbol of all was created.

The five interlocked rings were the brainchild of Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the Frenchman who had led the efforts to revive the Olympic Games.

"These five rings represent the five parts of the world now won over to Olympism and ready to accept its fruitful rivalries," he said.

At least one colour could be found in every flag in the world.

"This truly is an international emblem. It was made to be turned into a flag and the look of the flag would be perfect, a delight to see fluttering in the wind," he wrote.

Coubertin used the design as a letterhead in 1913 but it was not until the following year that it was seen in public.

The flag flew for the first time in 1914 at Alexandria in Egypt.

Even so, Coubertin sensed the worsening international situation as the world hovered on the brink of war.

"Are these rings solidly riveted together? Will war someday shatter the Olympic framework?" he asked.

How safe is Sochi? Or more to the point, how dangerous will Russia's Black Sea citadel be for competitors and spectators in the Winter Olympic Games now less than six weeks away?

Pre-Games scaremongering has been customary since Munich 1972 but events of the past few days in Volgograd, where terror attacks by suicide bombers have killed more than 30 people and left scores horrifically injured, have a brought a disturbing sense of reality that the danger will be clear and present when Europe's most prestigious sporting event of 2014 begins on February 7.

These tragic incidents, and a string of others which have preceded them, understandably raise fears of further violence before and during the Games, which President Vladimir Putin has vowed, will be the most memorable in history.

Hopefully this will not be for the wrong reason.

An international security expert of our acquaintance once privately volunteered the notion that after Munich there would be little likelihood of future terrorist attacks on major sports events such as the Olympics again as they would be too obvious and well-protected.

Last year's Boston Marathon and the Centennial Olympic Park pipe bombing at Atlanta 1996 scuppered this theory.

Volgograd is a transport hub for many travellers en route to Sochi ©AFP/Getty Images


Now Islamic separatist movements have sworn to disrupt Sochi 2014, presenting a direct challenge to Putin's authority.

Putin was first elected after winning popularity for a war against Chechnyan rebels, but attacks by Islamist militants whose insurgency is rooted in the war have clouded his time in power and now confront him with his mightiest political challenge.

You can be certain he will do everything in his power - which is considerable - to prevent Sochi from becoming another Munich. Or worse.

Worryingly for him is that Volgograd is a transport hub for many travellers en route to Sochi, and equally ominously, is a venue for another of the autocratic President's influentially acquired sporting showpieces - the 2018 FIFA World Cup.

Some 425 miles (690km) north of Sochi, Volgograd was known as Stalingrad in the Soviet era and was a symbol of Russian resistance during the Second World War.

In October, it was targeted by a female suicide bomber with links to Islamists fighting federal forces in Russia's volatile North Caucasus.

Such female "martyrs" are often referred to in Russia as "Black Widows" - women who seek to avenge the deaths of their family members in North Caucasus fighting by targeting civilians.

Volgograd was also the target of a female suicide bomber in October ©AFP/Getty Images


Militants are seeking to impose an Islamist state throughout Russia's North Caucasus. Their leader, Doku Umarov, has ordered his foot soldiers to target civilians outside the region and disrupt the Games. In a video, posted online in July he urged followers to use "maximum force" to prevent the staging of the Olympics and Paralympics.

Even Russian security chiefs believe it is virtually impossible that Sochi will escape without some sort of incident.

Though they insist it is more probable that this will be focused elsewhere in southern Russia where there are easier targets than a fortified venue that will feature the most intimidating security cordon of any previous sports event. More intense than either Beijing 2008 or London 2012.

A veritable Iron Curtain will be draped around the pleasant resort that lies in uncomfortably close proximity to the violence ravaging North Caucasus regions such as Dagestan and Chechnya on a daily basis.

The Government is already preparing to restrict non-essential access to Sochi from next week with rigid security checks on all traffic and a ban all non-resident cars from a wide area around the city.

However, so far there have been few indications of foreign teams or fans thinking of cancelling their attendance out of safety concerns, inevitably apart from the Australians, whose Government always seems first in the queue when it comes to expressing security worries.

Sochi 2014 is said to be Vladimir Putin's pet project ©AFP/Getty Images


The Sochi Games' success carries heavy political overtones for the Kremlin amid its efforts to use patriotism to mobilise support for Putin's regime.

Yet in a perverse way the Volgograd atrocities have taken the heat off Putin's human rights record which was seen as an impediment to a globally-acclaimed Olympics.

The canny President, conscious that his country is risking opprobrium at a time when its economy needs investment, apparently effected a pre-Games amnesty with a series of gestures transparently made to appease an anxious International Olympic Committee (IOC) and allay concerns of boycotts and demonstrations disfiguring the event.

These have included the release from jail of the Pussy Riot feminist punk protest group, dropping charges against Greenpeace activists and the unexpected pardoning of his long-time imprisoned political opponent Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

One of the freed members of Pussy Riot, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, said on her return to Moscow that their release was blatantly designed to improve Russia's image before February's Games, which she called Putin's pet project.

Their success is a matter of "masculine pride" for him, she said, crediting the threat of a boycott for her group's early release from a Siberian labour camp. "The thaw has nothing to do with humanism. The authorities only did this under pressure from Russian and Western society."

It was a shrewdly timed exercise in damage limitation by Putin. Few world leaders are more aware of the power of sport in global politics than the former KGB officer and judo black belt.

But the political controversy is not likely to go away. The Presidents of the United States, France, Germany, Canada and Belgium say they will not attend the Games, though no one specifies that this is in protest at Russia's new anti-gay laws.

Pointedly, however, Barack Obama has nominated three openly gay sports personalities, Billie Jean King, Caitlin Cahow and Brian Boitano, to the official White House delegation.

At 1,661 billion roubles Sochi 2014 will be the most expensive Olympics
in history ©Sochi 2014


It has now been confirmed that British Prime Minister David Cameron will not go to Sochi, though the Culture Secretary, Maria Miller, and Sports Minister, Helen Grant, who both have responsibilities for equality, will be there to support Team GB.

Downing Street insists that Cameron's absence is not a statement about Russia's stance on gay rights. "He doesn't think that boycotts and grand gestures achieve much," said an aide.

The new Russian law signed this year banning the distribution of so-called propaganda about non-traditional sexual relationships to minors raised concerns about whether gay athletes and spectators would face discrimination at the Olympics.

However, it is believed Putin has intervened to backtrack on his Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko's statement that the law could be used during the Games to prosecute anyone voicing support for homosexuality.

Putin said last week that Russia's main responsibility as host was to ensure equality for all: "The main thing for us is the good organisation of these competitions, the creation of equal terms for all athletes."

These Olympics are clearly part of Putin's desire to highlight the international strength of Russia and his own status as the world's most powerful leader. To ensure the success of the event in the Caucasus mountain-fringed resort that is Putin's favourite summer retreat, as it once was Stalin's, his cabinet last week approved an extra 1.6 billion roubles (£30 million/$50 million/€362 million) in subsidies for the Games, whose overall cost of 1,661 billion roubles (£31 billion/$51 billion/€37 billion) makes them the most expensive Olympics - winter or summer - in history.

But preventing Russia's 2014 snow show from becoming a cold war that could prove a damning prelude to their hosting of the 2018 World Cup is obviously a price Putin believes is worth paying, financially and politically.

Will the Black Widows of Chechnya make it an even higher one?

Alan Hubbard is a 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 Games, 10 Commonwealth Games.

If the reason we like sport is because it is a snapshot of life, with all the emotion and stories of humanity but without the negativity of the real world, then the most important lesson therein is a refusal to quit and back down in the face of adversity.

This is best encapsulated by the legendary American football coach Vince Lombardi, whose remark that "it's not whether you get knocked down, it's whether you get up" is relevant to all fields of life.

Last week's sudden retirement of England cricketer Graeme Swann midway through an Ashes Series in Australia has revived this debate.

For those who have not been following the Ashes, it is fair to say that they have not gone well for England so far. Despite having won the last three series and being comfortable favourites beforehand, they were blown away in the first four matches and now face the humiliation of a 5-0 defeat.

A bubbly character on and off the field of play, spin bowler Swann has been a key part of England's success in recent years but, like all his colleagues, he has endured a wretched series in the face of a rejuvenated Aussie backlash. Not only has he failed to take wickets but his uncanny knack of tying down batsmen and stemming the flow of runs for long periods has also eluded him.

His response, from an outsider's perspective at least, was to throw in the towel and announce his immediate retirement with two matches still remaining. He then rather ambiguously criticised "certain players as being up their own backsides" - comments he has since denied were aimed at England teammates.

Graeme Swann waves goodbye to his cricketing career after announcing his shock retirement last week ©Getty Images

Swann's retirement has been supported in many quarters. He was possibly going to be dropped anyway so why not jump before you are pushed, some say. Others question the point of carrying on when your ability has gone, and you no longer have the motivation to do anything about it.

Others have taken a less sympathetic view. To furtive nods of approval from family members, who were no doubt influenced by a hefty dose of Christmas-time war films, my uncle announced that in his opinion Swann should be subjected to "public execution for dereliction of duty in the face of the enemy".

A little harsh maybe, but not an altogether isolated opinion among the English cricketing fraternity.

It is not his retirement that has caused the contention, but the fact that he has done so midway through such an important series and that he has left his team in such dire straits as a result.

He has therefore broken two of the sport's most fundamental rules.

This attitude reminds me of my days as a goalkeeper for our rather talentless under 11 school football team. As a general rule losing by less than 10 goals was considered a good result but the key lesson was that we learnt how to lose and we never gave up when doing so. I still unsuccessfully argue to this day, for example, that a man-of-the-match award I received in one 14-1 defeat was not actually given out of sympathy but for the 14 additional goals I prevented.

Just about any film about sport encapsulates these dual themes - Cool Runnings or Chariots of Fire to take two Olympic themed ones - as do many of sport's greatest moments in years gone by.

Japan will be one of the Olympic Movement's most important partners for the next seven years; so the appearance in paperback of a book outlining the stories of the country's greatest female Olympic athletes is timely.

Robin Kietlinski's earnest but digestible volume* puts the attainments of these athletes in the context of the development of Japanese society over the past 150 or so years, explaining how attitudes to sport, and women's proper place in it, were gradually transformed.

But it was the stories of the women themselves, trailblazers nearly all, that most held my attention.

Well-known as they may be in Japan, they deserve a wider international circulation, and may very well get it in the run-up to the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

One athlete whose story may be particularly widely disseminated in coming weeks and months is Seiko Hashimoto, a speed skater-cum-cyclist, who performed at a remarkable seven Olympic Games - Summer and Winter - in the 1980s and 1990s.

Hashimoto subsequently went into politics and is now one of a number of individuals being touted as potential candidates to be the next Governor of Tokyo, following the resignation of Naoki Inose.

Should she get that job, then some of the biographical details relayed by Kietlinski would quickly be broadcast far and wide - starting with her date of birth, October 5, 1964, "just as the [first] Tokyo Olympics were getting underway".

Kietlinski goes on to quote from a 1996 essay of Hashimoto's that explains how the Olympics has marked her life from her earliest days.

"My name," she wrote, "was given to me by my father, who was so moved by the beauty of the seika, the Olympic flame, that he gave me the name 'Seiko' (using the same Chinese character for 'sei').

"Being given this name, it was always my dream to become an Olympic athlete."

In spite of her many appearances, Hashimoto's sole Olympic medal came at Albertville in 1992, where she won bronze in the 1500 metres speed skating.

Seiko Hashimoto competed in seven Olympics, representing Japan in speed skating and cycling ©Allsport/Getty Images

Perhaps my favourite passage of the book deals with the first Olympic gold medal won by a Japanese woman: this was claimed at the notorious Berlin Games of 1936 by swimmer Hideko Maehata in the 200m breaststroke.

As Kietlinski explains, the race was almost as significant in the history of Japanese broadcasting as of Japanese sport, as it was among the first major events to be covered live via radio satellite.

It was a close race, and the translation she provides of the commentary delivered by a journalist called Sansei Kasai gives a wonderfully understated impression of the nationalistic fervour that must have gripped Japan as Maehata drove her aching limbs desperately through the water.

"Maehata's lead is small, it's very small!" the commentary runs.

"Maehata! Go for it Maehata! [Repeated eleven times]

"Maehata is in the lead! [Repeated six times]

"Five metres left to go! Four metres left! Three metres, two metres.

"Maehata is ahead!

"Maehata has won! [Repeated eighteen times]"

Japanese Women and Sport - Beyond Baseball and Sumo by Robin Kietlinski is a fascinating insight into some of the country's most successful female Olympians ©Bloomsbury

The book also covers the heroines of the 1964 Games, the Japanese women's volleyball gold medallists, who became known as the "witches of the Orient", but whose triumph was reward in part for subjecting themselves to the regime of a merciless coach.

There is sadness too.

I knew something of the achievement of Kinue Hitomi, who won the first Olympic medal awarded to a Japanese woman, a silver, at the Amsterdam Games of 1928 in the 800m race that was deemed so gruelling the event did not reappear on the Olympic schedule until 1960.

But I did not know that she died in 1931, after contracting pneumonia, aged just 24, or that she had to put up with much fascination over her supposedly unfeminine appearance as a result of her robust physique.

Kinue Hitomi won an Olympic silver medal in the 800m at Amsterdam 1928 but died only three years later ©Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Equally sad is the story of hurdler Ikuko Yoda, whose eye-catching pre-race ritual involved a broom, headstands, a white headband and white mentholated cream applied to both temples.

In spite of this preamble, Yoda could manage only fifth place in her Olympic final, and "had an incredibly difficult time handling the fact that she had trained so hard and did not come away with a medal".

Kietlinski goes on: "Tragically, Yoda never seemed to recover mentally from the devastation she felt after falling to her competitors at the Olympic Games."

In 1983, she took her own life.

She was 45.

*Japanese Women and Sport – Beyond Baseball and Sumo by Robin Kietlinski, published by Bloomsbury Academic, price £16.99 ($28.01/€20.30)

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, the 2010 World Cup and London 2012. To follow him on Twitter click here. 

Is it really better to give than to receive? If you have just unwrapped an all-too familiar selection of lurid socks, lary aftershave and CDs you would not play even if they were the only thing in your car from Land's End to John O'Groats, you may feel disinclined to agree.

But in seriousness, at this festive time the idea of doing things for others takes on a particular resonance.

Dame Kelly Holmes reflects in her latest newsletter on the workings of the charity she set up in 2009 - the Dame Kelly Holmes Legacy Trust (DKHLT)- that 2013 has involved reaching nearly 25,000 vulnerable young people.

"We're running more programmes and in more regions than ever before," writes Britain's double Olympic champion of 2004, "with the help of our 200-strong 'GiveBack' team of world class athletes."

There is an additional report featuring one of the young people who has benefited from the DKHLT experience this year, 24-year-old Jess, from Thanet, whose life had fallen into an ebb following the death of her partner from cancer in 2012. Having been a full-time carer she had to re-assess her strengths and possibilities, and her local jobcentre told her about the imminent arrival of in her area of Get On Track - one of the models developed with the DKHLT to improve personal development of 16-25 year-olds through a sport-based programme delivered "with mentoring support elite athlete role models."

Jess, "although sceptical", went along, and the programme worked for her, ultimately helping to get her in touch with Mears construction company, which took her on as a receptionist.

Now there is a Christmas gift, even if it did come a little earlier in 2013. And of course the beauty of the DKHLT model is that everybody wins - not just Jess, in this case, but the mentors who helped her towards fresh confidence and fields of endeavour.

Dame Kelly Holmes has created a means for athletes to return and give back to the sport through her Legacy Trust ©Getty Images

For, as Holmes knows so well herself, no matter how good a sportsman or woman you may be, there will always come a day when you have to contemplate being something else. And that can be very scary, as Holmes told me while she was in the process of putting together her idea for the new charity.

By the time she had been six months retired, and her daily elation at not having to go through the rigour of training had abated, she found herself asking a question: "Who am I now?"

"I feel passionately that sports people are role models for young people," Holmes added. "And the more that young people can work with sports people the better. When people can collaborate more it will be better for everyone involved.

"Making a decision to retire after being an elite performer is something that many competitors are scared to do - because they have to address what to do next.

"A lot of competitors are lacking in confidence at that point in their lives. I know how I felt at that point - I felt lost.

"Many sports people have put 10 or 20 years into achieving excellence during their careers. Do we care about them?

"What we are saying to them now through the Trust is, 'Hey, come over here, we will help you make the transition into a new career where you can give back some of the skills and discipline you have built up.'"

Sandrine Thiebaud Kangni is engaged in a film project entitled Footprint Athlete's Legacy on the subject of returning to coach in the sport ©Getty Images

A conversation I had in Monte Carlo last month put me in mind of Kelly. This time I found myself talking at the International Associations of Athletics Federations (IAAF) Gala gathering to another former Olympic athlete, Sandrine Thiebaud Kangni, the French-born sprinter and heptathlete who competed at the 2004 and 2008 Games for Togo, following in the footsteps of her father Roger Kangni, who ran in the 800 metres at the 1972 Olympics.

If the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games mean sending gay and lesbian athletes into the lion's den of homophobia, the Commonwealth Games are about inviting the homophobic lion's over for a spot of tea.

Nick Butler's excellent article in insidethegames noted the adoption of a new particularly homophobic law in Commonwealth member Uganda.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) may not realise it, but they owe an immense debt to David Coleman.

For it was the BBC's master of the microphone who brought the Games to life for millions through three decades, humanising the athletes, interpreting the intricacies of the sports and vividly conveying the true joys of Olympism.

Coleman, who died at the weekend aged 87, cut his teeth on the Olympics, covering 11, vividly capturing the essence of them all from Rome 1960 to Sydney 2000.

Great is the most overworked word in the sporting lexicon, but Coleman was truly that, a colossus of the commentary box who bestrode his profession with a consummate expertise unlikely ever to be replicated.

As a commentator and presenter, he cut his teeth on the Olympics, whose disciplines - notably athletics as a former keen middle distance runner for Stockport Harriers - he appreciated far more than football, which he had also played at a decent amateur level.

Of the Games he covered, Munich 1972 was his finest hour - though actually it was several hours, a marathon stint from dawn to dusk at the microphone during which he so professionally reported the tragic events of that Black September day as they unfolded from a shocking dawn in the Athletes' Village to a dramatic dusk and the massacre at Fürstenfeldbruck airfield.

"The Olympic Games stand still," he intoned. "The flags in the stadium at half-mast, the citizens of Munich, the thousands of competitors and officials bewildered and appalled."

No-one said it better.

Working from scant information and a closed circuit television monitor, he held together the coverage of those unfolding horrors as Palestinian terrorists held hostage, and then killed a group of Israeli athletes.

It was a supreme example of broadcasting at its best, illustrating that here was no mere sports hack but an experienced journalist of the highest calibre.

David Coleman's commentary of David Hemery's victory in the 400 metres hurdles at the Mexico City Olympics in 1968 has entered in folklore ©Allsport

But even Homer occasionally nodded. In 1968, at the Mexico Olympics, Coleman was recorded at 200 words per minute while commentating on Davbid Hemery's win in the 400 metres hurdles. After the finish he could only identify the first two and famously exclaimed: "Who cares who's third?" The bronze medal winner turned out to be another Briton, John Sherwood.

Regrettably, thanks to the latter-day policies of the BBC, ITV, Sky and now BT in turning from the pros to the pundits, preferring to employ current or former sports personalities as front men and women, we have no longer see or hear the likes of David Coleman.

Some, like Gary Lineker, Gary Neville, Michael Atherton, John McEnroe, Steve Cram, Sue Barker and Gabby Logan are good, as was Cliff Morgan; the majority range from the mediocre to the downright embarrassing.

Not least the legion of blonde bimbos who mouth words off the Sky autocue while giving the impression they haven't a clue what they actually mean.

They may have a passion for something, but it certainly isn't sport.

John Motson, Barry Davies, Des Lynam, Sir Peter O'Sullevan, Frank Bough, and Harry Carpenter were DC's accomplished contemporaries; Jim Rosental, John Rawling, Mike Costello and a handful of other well-trained journos among his respected disciples, but alas these are a dying breed.

This is the age of pseudo-intellectual celebrtity in the commentary box; of tyros on the touchline and in the studio.

What chance a young journalist like David Coleman being given the opportunity to become a top athletics commentator by the BBC today? ©BBC

These days the BBC probably would hire a David James rather than a David Coleman. Come to think of it, BT actually have.

It is true that Coleman was something of a martinet. Many perfectionists are. Some colleagues found him rude, abusive and difficult to work with. But, as the former BBC head of sport Jonathan Martin, himself more than once the object of a loud and fruity Coleman tirade said, that was because his standards were so high.

Yet the father-of-six could also be generously supportive of young talent and was always a marvellous and amusing travelling companion. Especially if those sitting alongside him on long haul flights liked a drink as much he did.

His vowels have best been described as classless, framed as they were in his native Cheshire, where he was a grammar school boy who learned his journalistic craft on local newspapers, rising to become a young editor.

It was this incomparable newspaper background which taught him the value of research and fact-checking.

He joined the BBC in Birmingham in 1954 as a news assistant and made his TV debut on Sportsview on May 6, 1954, the day Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile.

During more than 40 years in broadcasting, he presented a range of top-rated shows, including Match of the Day and Grandstand, as well as fronting coverage of events such as the Grand National and BBC Sports Personality of the Year, and was awarded an OBE in 1992.

Colemanballs - the gaffes and one-liners importalised by the magazine Private Eye became part of his inimitable psyche. Many were legion. These are just a few:

"There you can see her parents- her father died some time ago."

"Don't tell those coming in the final result of that fantastic match, but let's just have another look at Italy's winning goal."

"For those of you watching who do not have television sets, live commentary is on Radio 2."

"That's the fastest time ever run, but it's not as fast as the world record."

"The Republic of China: back in the Olympic Games for the first time."

Colemanballs remains a popular feature in satirical magazine Private Eye to this day ©Amazon

But he is always erroneously credited with one of the best-known. When the Cuban runner Alberto Juantorena "opened his legs and showed his class" it wasn't another Colemanballs but the words of his great friend the late, and also great, Ron Pickering.

Coleman covered six World Cups, his perceptive football commentaries and interviews conducted with a frankness sadly absent from those pundits who worship at its altar today, afraid of upsetting managers, sponsors or TV's own financial interests.

This was how he introduced highlights of the notorious "Battle of Santiago" between Chile and Italy in the 1962 World Cup:

"The most stupid, appalling disgusting and disgraceful exhibition of football possibly in the history of the game.

This the first time the two, countries have met .We hope it will be the last. "

He never shirked the difficult question. What a change from the cap-doffing microphone-thrusters of today timidly enquiring: "How pleased are you with that, Sir Alex?"

"One-nil!" and "Quite remarkable!" are two succinct sporting summaries with which we will always associate him.

David Coleman loved Question of Sport, which he appeared alongside the likes of England cricket and rugby captains Ian Botham and Bill Beaumont ©BBC

For all the historic occasions he covered, Coleman once told me that the most enjoyable phase of hs career was as the chuckling host of A Question of Sport, a role in which could relax and have fun.

This came after his final Olympics in Sydney, when he was clearly past his best. "But he was still better than anyone else," recalled one of his colleagues.

We have not heard His Master's Voice of sport for some years because a crippling illness confined much of his retirement to a wheelchair.

Towards the end, he was something of a recluse.

Despite his demanding demeanour he was not a vain man and made it clear he never wanted any fuss. He surely would have hated all the plaudits that have been penned or spoken about him these past few days,including this tribute from Lord Coe: "He was so incomparably better than anyone else. He brought cutting-edge journalism and gave some of the top administrators in sport a right going over, being brave in the way he did it."

If the IOC, like boxing, had a Hall of Fame with a media section, David Coleman certainly would be right up there on the rostrum, gold medal around his neck.

Simply the best.

And quite remarkable.

Alan Hubbard is a sports columnist for the The Independent on Sunday, and a former sports editor of The Observer. He has covered a total of 16 Summer and Winter Games, 10 Commonwealth Games

One of the first essays I wrote at school was rather bravely entitled "What is the relationship between politics and the Olympic Games?"

At the tender age of 16 I considered it something of a masterpiece: 2,000 words on subjects as diverse as "Hitler's Olympics" at Berlin 1936, the boycotted Games of the Cold War era, and the human rights issues engulfing the most recent extravaganza in Beijing.

I was blissfully ignorant of the fact that I had barely rippled the surface of a subject worthy of several PhD theses. Not to mention, of course, the livelihood of journalists at insidethegames.

But I was reminded of this embryonic attempt at understanding the Olympic Movement after a week in which all the political forces at play ahead of Sochi 2014 have been demonstrated - both by Russia and the rest of the world.

When Thomas Bach was elected President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in September the first congratulatory call he received, via the phone of Sochi 2014 chief Dmitry Chernyshenko, was from a man in Moscow called Mr Putin.

This goes some way to revealing the significance with which Russia's President regards the Olympics, as well as the 2018 FIFA World Cup and other events in his "decade of sport". The 61-year-old judo black belt could remain in power for another ten years, but sporting triumphalism has been picked as the means by which he can best demonstrate to the world that he has made his country great again.

This has been seen in lavish spending reportedly totalling around 1,620 billion roubles ($50 billion/£31billion/€36.5 billion) in creating an Olympics essentially from scratch in Sochi, along with the most ambitious ever Torch Relay, taking in the North Pole and Outer Space.

President Vladimir Putin personally welcomed the Olympic Torch to Russian soil in Moscow in October ©AFP/Getty Images


But, as I argued in my essay six years ago, hosting the Olympics can be a doubled-edged sword because the international spotlight can expose negative, as well as positive, elements.

Quite apart from the questionable nature of an economic system in which the most lucrative construction contracts have allegedly been awarded to Putin's closest personal allies, it is attitudes towards gay rights which have been most exposed.

The law introduced into the Duma - the Lower House of Russia's Parliament - in June outlawed the "propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations". In practical terms it essentially prevented a parent, teacher or anyone else from telling a child that being gay is acceptable.

With just one day to go until the Closing Ceremony of the 26th Winter Universiade in Trentino, bringing to an end 11 days of sporting action on the snow and ice, it appears the weather-Gods have finally given in to the inevitable as clear skies have been replaced by clouds and sleet showers.

Whilst still being bitterly cold, the athletes have gone about the task of accruing medals over the last week-and-a-half in near perfect conditions which in a way has summed up the general mood here in Trentino, which is one of brightness and optimism.

For myself, I came to Trentino 2013 with a completely blank sheet in terms of what to expect and I must say it has been an experience to say the least.

Having never been outside the country before on a solo-expedition, I arrived at the airport in Verona with a fairly hefty amount of trepidation, which was soon given traction by the sound of foreign accents and incomprehensible signs that greeted my passing through the arrivals lounge.

Ah yes, I know what you are thinking; "Well you are going to Italy, what did you expect?" (It was former Liverpool striker Ian Rush who described his one season in Serie A with Juventus more than 25 years ago as "like living in a foreign country"). 

Well, yes you are right, but as I said, I did not know what to expect but I soon realised that it was now time to step up and become versed in the art of pigeon-Italian and extravagant hand signals, or risk being literally left out in the cold.

If nothing else, I have improved my miming skills no end, so watch out back home the next time someone suggests a game of charades.

Preparations for the Closing Ceremony of Trentino 2013 will be swinging into gear as the 26th Winter Universiade draws to a close ©Gary Anderson/ITG

Jacques Rogge was not wrong.

To clarify. A year before the London 2012 Games, the then President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) warned the wide world: "Sport is in danger."