By Mike Rowbottom

Eddy Merckx, five-times winner of the Tour de France and acknowledged by many of cycling's cognoscenti as the most accomplished rider the world has ever known, described it as "the hardest ride I have ever done."

A fortnight ago Australia's professional rider and double gold medallist at the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games, Jack Bobridge, described it as "a bit like dying."

What are these two champions talking about? Challenging for the world hour cycling record, that's what.

By Mike Rowbottom

As competitors and spectators gather in Colorado for the Alpine World Ski Championships which are due get underway tomorrow, Gian-Franco Kasper - President of the International Ski Federation (FIS) is looking forward to the Vonn Effect.

The presence in Vail/Beaver Creek of Lindsey Vonn, who last month equalled and then broke Annemarie Moser-Proll's 35-year-old record of 62 World Cup victories, will intensify the focus on a sporting event which is second only to the winter Olympics in terms of prestige.

Not least because the outgoing American has come back this year from a serious knee injury which prevented her competing at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.

By Mike Rowbottom

The programme for the 2015 Winter European Youth Olympic Festival (EYOF), which gets underway today comprises eight events. But there is one other - unofficial, but overarching. The making of Olympic history.

For the first time since this biennial competition began 22 years ago in Aosta, Italy, it is being hosted by two countries - Liechtenstein and its neighbouring Austrian state, Vorarlberg.

This will be new territory for an event taking place under the Olympic flame, and as such the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which has endorsed the idea of the sharing of future Games through its recent Agenda 2020 deliberations, is taking a particular interest.

By Brian Oliver

The first significant moments in modern African football had far less global impact than the sight of a middle-aged man dancing with a corner flag in Italy in 1990.

In the late 1950s there was the creation of the continent's governing body, the expulsion of apartheid South Africa (long before the Olympic Movement and other sports took action), and the start of the Africa Cup of Nations.

The first World Cup win by an African side in the finals - Tunisia against Mexico - was in 1978, and four years later Algeria famously beat West Germany 2-1. When FIFA staged what has now become the Under 17 World Cup for the first time in China in 1985, Nigeria won it: the first African triumph in a FIFA competition.

By Mike Rowbottom

As Sheikh Saoud Bin Abdulrahman Al Thani rose, suited and jubilant, to acclaim the success of Doha's bid for the 2019 International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) World Championships in Monaco two months ago, he may have experienced a sense of déjà vu.

Just under four years earlier the secretary general of the Qatar Olympic Committee had celebrated in similar style as his country secured the vote to host the International Handball Federation's (IHF) 2015 World Championship, having campaigned under the slogan: New Times - New Start.

That victory was the first of a dizzying series of sporting successes for this oil-rich Gulf state, which followed up its handball coup by securing the 2022 FIFA World Cup finals.

It has never staged the Olympic Games, but Lausanne in Switzerland is about to celebrate a century as the "Olympic Capital." Even the city railway station is adorned with the five Olympic rings.

It was in 1915 that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) first established their headquarters on the shores of  Lake Geneva -known locally as Lake Leman - for the first time.

Frenchman Baron Pierre de Coubertin was IOC President at the time. He had been planning the move to the Swiss city since 1907.

By Mike Rowbottom

The film critics have not been universally kind to Unbroken, Angelina Jolie's World War Two epic, which has recently opened in the United States and United Kingdom. It will not matter. Millions will watch this largely faithful, entirely well-meaning take on the extraordinary life of 1936 Olympian Louis Silvie "Louie" Zamperini, who died on July 2 this year aged 97.

It is a measure of Zamperini's life that being an Olympian was one of the lesser parts of it. The main features, so far as Unbroken is concerned, are his subsequent War exploits, which include ditching into the Pacific in a stricken plane, surviving 47 days in shark-infested waters before being taken prisoner by the Japanese and brutally mistreated in a series of camps.

Jolie's second film as a director, which stars British actor Jack O'Connell, shares its tagline - Survival. Resilience. Redemption - with the book of the same name from which it was adapted, written in 2010 by Laura Hillenbrand, whose earlier book Seabiscuit, about the thoroughbred American race horse which flourished in the Depression years, was also made into a film.

By Mike Rowbottom

Christmas Day 2014 will mark the anniversary of extraordinary events along parts of the line between British and German forces in Northern France during the First World War as soldiers from both sides created their own brief truce, during which they exchanged gifts and engaged in impromptu games of football before resuming their business of mutual slaughter on Boxing Day.

It was one of the most memorable examples in history of sport's transcending power to unite.

Meanwhile, Manchester's National Football Museum has just opened a new exhibition, taking place from December 19 to September 15, looking at the role of football during the war. The Greater Game - Football and The First World War details Christmas truce matches and commemorates the sacrifices made by players during the conflict.

By Philip Barker

The International Olympic Committee's (IOC) 127th Session will be the third time the Olympic family has gathered in Monaco, the smallest member of the Olympic Movement to host a full meeting of the IOC.

This "Extraordinary" session at the Grimaldi Forum is for members to vote on President Thomas Bach's blueprint for the Olympic Movement  "Agenda 2020". Now, though, the troubled trail towards the Winter Olympics of 2022 seems certain to cast a long shadow. Stockholm were the first to withdraw followed by the Polish city of Krakow and Lviv in Ukraine.

Oslo went through to the Candidate City phase of the contest but pulled out after losing domestic support. Only the Kazak city of Almaty and Beijing now remain, the smallest field to contest any Olympic host city vote since 1981.

By Nick Butler

Barbara Kendall turns and swivels around on her chair during our interview in Bangkok following an Association of National Olympic Committees (ANOC) Athletes' Commission meeting.

"We've sent a questionnaire to every National Olympic Committee about the issues facing athletes today, but less than half have replied," she outlines, pausing for dramatic effect.

"But in Oceania, every single one has."

By Brian Oliver

When the sport finished it was party time in Almaty, host city for the 2014 International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) World Championships that concluded on November 16. The grand ballroom at the Royal Tulip hotel was the venue for the end-of-event banquet, a lavish affair that featured singing, dancing, traditional music, awards presentations and a feast of Kazakh food.

The expensive wine flowed freely, nowhere more than on the Chinese delegation's tables. Athletes, coaches and officials, most of them dressed in the team's vivid western-style leisurewear, repeatedly toasted each other and were clearly there to enjoy themselves.

When the compere asked for six male volunteers from the audience to enter a dancing competition, China sent forward one of their team. He had all the moves and did himself and his country proud.

By Mike Rowbottom

This week in Monaco, Qatar is seeking two major coups in the world of athletics. On Tuesday, the Qatari capital of Doha will learn if it has been successful at the second time of asking for the right to host the International Association of Athletics Federations' (IAAF) World Championships.

By Paul Osborne

Tegla Loroupe is a real life role model. From her exploits on the road to her incredible humanitarian work off it, the Kenyan is a true ambassador to her country, her sport and mankind as a whole.

Born in Kapsait village, the Lelan division of West Pokot District, Kenya, Loroupe grew up with 24 siblings. She spent her childhood working fields, tending cattle and looking after younger brothers and sisters.

It was at the age of seven, when Loroupe began attending school, that her running prowess became immediately apparent. Attending school meant a 10 kilometres run for the young Kenyan, both there and back - a run she would complete barefoot.

The Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games was, undoubtedly, the best edition in the event's history stretching back to 1930, when Hamilton, Canada, welcomed just 400 athletes to its shores for the inaugural British Empire Games.

The event has come a long way since these early days, from surviving the Second World War to eventually settling on the name "Commonwealth Games" in 1978, again in Canada, although this time Edmonton, a candidate city for the 2022 edition of the Games.

The 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, saw the sporting programme grow from 10 to 15 sports as team sports were allowed for the first time. Participation also reached new levels as over 3,500 athletes represented 70 teams at the event.

By David Owen

The most penetrating insights do not always come from the mouths of specialists.

It doesn't take long once Stephen Frears has settled into his seat and ordered a citron pressé before the well-known British film director says something that has me looking at the sports business in a slightly new light.

"The William Morris agency earlier this year bought IMG," he says, deploying a resonant, actorly voice to make himself heard above the hubbub of a crowded Monte Carlo café.

"So William Morris know that sportsmen are now bigger than film stars."