A year that began with a history-making golden moment in the mountains of British Columbia has been crucial in setting the stage for continued success for British athletes in 2011, 2012 and beyond.

Skeleton athlete Amy Williams thrilled Great Britain with her gold medal performance at the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games, becoming the first British athlete in 30 years to win Olympic gold in an individual event.

That performance was just the first of many that saw British athletes, winter and summer, achieve personal-bests and podium finishes in major international events such as the Olympic Winter Games, the Commonwealth Games and the inaugural Youth Olympic Games.

For the British Olympic Association (BOA) and its member National Governing Bodies for Olympic sport, 2010 has been a year of growth and strong progress, both nationally and internationally.  British governing bodies are some of the most respected in the world and our influence on the international sporting landscape is ever increasing thanks to the commitment and expertise within our sports.

At the BOA we recognise the need to play our part for British sport internationally and have embraced involvement in the wide programme of work across the Olympic Movement.  In particular, we play a significant role in two European Olympic Committee Commissions and Sir Clive Woodward has been active on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Entourage Commission.

I will chair the newly formed Association of National Olympic Committees Commission, which covers relations between the 205 National Olympic Committees and Governments around the world.

The autonomy of the Olympic Movement is critical and with it the protection of the Olympic rights which has always been its lifeblood. In this context sports bodies need to be representative and 2010 will be remembered as the year in which the BOA regained its own Athletes' Commission – this time strengthened substantially. It is excellently chaired by Sarah Winckless (pictured) and in line with the recommendations of the 2009 Olympic Congress in Copenhagen, there is nothing we do at the BOA today which is not a matter of direct concern and has input from athletes. Yet the crowning achievement of the year was the election of Adam Pengilly as the first British winter-sport athlete to be elected to the IOC Athletes' Commission.

Jeremy Hunt, as the new Secretary of State, focused his attention in sport during 2010 on the England World Cup bid and the Government's central objective to introduce competitive school sport into every primary and secondary school in England.

The aim of the latter is that all schoolchildren, able-bodied and disabled, should compete within their schools with annual sports days to be proud of and the delivery of school leagues in a range of sports from this summer. If successful, this will transform school sport in England. Despite 13 years of lottery money we are still at the embarrassing and unacceptable position in which more than 50 per cent of our Olympic medallists come from just the seven per cent of our schoolchildren who attend private schools.

This welcome Central Government initiative must be about both participation and righting the wrong where tens of thousands of schoolchildren have neither their sporting talent identified in the state sector, nor are they provided with a performance pathway to take their talent through to local, regional and national representation.

There will be many lessons to learn from this new initiative. Regrettably, the new event will not have an Olympic association, as Government has designed it in a manner that fails to meet the IOC requirements to protect an Olympic association and the BOA will follow the advice of the IOC in protecting the Olympic Movement against ambush marketing.

The President of the IOC has emphasised that the use of the "Olympic brand" must not compromise neither the BOA's autonomy nor its ability to market the commercial rights for Team GB in the future, and we will work with the IOC to ensure their requests are met.

To demonstrate our enthusiasm for this initiative, the BOA will evaluate establishing its own Commission on Youth and Sport for All which could review progress on Britain's Competitive School Sport Policy, its organisation, governance and value for money and against this background consider whether to launch a British Olympic Association School Games in 2013 and beyond. We will continue to work both within and outside Parliament on this, which goes to the heart of our Olympic Charter mandate.

Our immediate priority this year will be the selection, management and leadership of the teams we will be taking to the European Youth Olympic Winter Festival in the Czech Winter Resort of Liberec and the European Youth Olympic Festival in Trabzon, Turkey for the summer sports. We have strong prospects in both events and are particularly keen to work with the winter National Governing Bodies of Olympic sport to establish the British Olympic Winter Institute of Sport, aimed at providing our winter sports and athletes with a support network and commercial financial stability to allow us as a nation to fulfill our potential on the winter Olympic stage.

2011 will also be the most important of the seven year build-up to the 2012 Olympic Games for British Olympic Athletes, for the funding security of tomorrow's British Olympic Movement, for our organisation at the BOA and for the design and delivery of a much needed Olympic Sports Legacy for the future of Olympic sport in the United Kingdom.

Looking back at 2010, the Coalition Government faced difficult decisions regarding sport and recreation. During the challenging months of negotiation leading up to the Comprehensive Spending Round, the work undertaken by Hugh Robertson, as Minister for Sport and the Olympics, provided strong support for Team GB hopefuls and ensured the continuity of funding so critical for the preparation of Team GB. His expertise, enthusiasm and passion for sport is a major asset for all of us in the Olympic Movement.

Now, with funding in place, the role of Government and UK Sport will diminish as the focus over the next seventeen months will be on the athletes, the Governing Bodies and the coaches and experts who support our athletes in all Olympic disciplines. We will continue to select the British Olympic team for 2012 on merit; expecting at the very least credible performances from everyone we select, personal bests and where expected, medal success from our leading athletes. The BOA will further step-up its role of building close working relations with the athletes and Governing Bodies to ensure a seamless transition to success as Team GB enters the Olympic Village.

The work in 2011 has to be transformational if we are to deliver a true sports legacy and ensure the London 2012 Olympic Games become a Great Olympic Games. We need to make certain the welcome measures announced by Hugh Robertson (pictured) are substantially built upon. We must continue to protect playing fields. In England we must encourage politicians to match Scottish and Welsh legislation to require local authorities to provide for sport and recreational investment as mandatory and not discretionary spend.

We need to encourage Government to deliver a step change in health department support for active lifestyles in tackling the growing problem of child obesity and we need to see through the restructuring of British sport to empower Governing Bodies, clubs, schools and volunteers and move away from the centralised, micro-managed Government bureaucracy which has too often cramped initiative.

In closing I want to thank the management and staff at the BOA for their remarkable, highly professional contribution to the Olympic movement. It is not only some of our finest athletes who have been punching above their weight.

The BOA has been transformed in recent years. For the first time we have instituted best practice governance. We have implemented a step change in the strength of our commercial and financial expertise.

That process of transformation started the day Seb Coe, Tessa Jowell and Tony Blair came together to lead a team which delivered the handful of votes which swung the Games to London. Today we recognise that our role is more than taking teams of the Best of British athletes to an increasing number of Olympic-accredited Games.

Now, we work on every facet of our wide-ranging responsibilities embedded in the IOC's Olympic Charter and in 2011 we intend to build on this full agenda of work.

Colin Moynihan is the chairman of the British Olympic Association

As an athlete one of the many things that I have had to endure throughout my athletic career is pain. It comes with the territory, whether it is the pain from pushing my body in the weight-room, the pain from injury or the pain of failure or defeat.

As I train hard, my sights set firmly on 2012, I am finding, surprisingly, an increase in challenges I am facing due to my age - 48 years 8 months and 4 days to be exact.

The pain and discomfort from training hard is something I am used to. I have done it for decades. But what I dealing with now is nothing like I have ever experienced. This is something very "new" and I am sure it is because I am very "old" - for an athlete at least.

Last year I trained without injury throughout the entire winter. This year, the opposite is true. I have had so many strange injuries that come out of nowhere, seemingly. They rear their ugly head, often without any warning. I feel like I am being attacked by my own body from my Achilles, my calves, my knees, lower back, ribs, to my neck. As soon as I recover from one injury another one pops ups, unannounced, unappreciated and definitely unwanted.

I knew the journey I have under taken to make the 2012 Olympic Trials - and maybe more - at age 50 was going to be an uphill battle. But the hill has become so steep now it now it feels like I am scaling a cliff.

Some mornings I wake up and I can hardly move. Just laying motionless in bed, not moving a muscle, my body is throbbing in pain. The best way I can describe the feeling is it is like I have been run over by a truck and beaten senseless with a baseball bat - Ouch!

I have been to the doctor's office and hospital so many times this past year. I am getting flashbacks to when I was six years old and first diagnosed with spina bifida and hydrocephalus.

As bad as the physical pain is, it is something I can handle and embrace. It is the physiological battle that is going to be the most challenging. My body knows its age and is screaming at me to slow down, to stop. The pain has become so bad some days it is scary. I am becoming afraid. I am training hard and being very carefully but there is always a risk of injury but now I am concerned about the type of injury that could happen: snapping a tendon, rupturing a disc, breaking a bone.

In addition to the physical age related issues of my training, I am finding myself facing a range of age related physical issues not linked to my training. In the last year I have completely changed my diet because of weight and cholesterol issues. I have had to stop drinking coffee, tea and I can't eat chocolate or anything with caffeine in it due to heart palpitations. And it looks like my last vice - alcohol - will soon be on the chopping block.

I feel like I am becoming a hypochondriac.

I am constantly asking myself questions:

Am I going to wake up one day and not be able to move? Am I am going to have a heart attack and drop dead at the track? Will I have a stroke at the gym and be crushed by some weight I am lifting? Will I pass out in the pool while swimming and drown?

Whether I am a hypochondriac or just being morbid, one thing is for certain: I am acutely aware, both physically and mentally, of my age. I know my limitations but that is not going to stop me pushing. And I know my ever growing list of restrictions but I am constantly finding ways to work around them.

As I embrace my pain I must also face my fear. Whether it is the fear of some life changing or ending injury that could happen, or whether it will be some illness that will end my career once and for all. They are indeed possibilities. Interestingly, the one thing I am not afraid of is if I "fail" and don't make it to 2012. I have come to terms with that being a possibility. But that is not going to stop me trying as long as I am able.

My journey towards 2012 has heightened what we all must face as we age: Our mortality.

As we grow older we often talk about what used to be and how things were. My journey is about actually doing it: Everything I do in my training is quantifiable. I can easily compare myself to where I was 10, 20, 30 years ago. Whether it was a weight I lifted, a distance I ran or a bounding test I did they are all measurable and therefore comparable. I can see where I am now and where I was in the past and see how fit and athletic I used to be compared to now. I can also compare myself to my much, much younger competitors now - Yikes!

So as I continue training towards 2012 I will be careful and listen to my body, and I will embrace the pain and I will face my fears. But I am also going to savour the journey I am on hoping I can make it all the way to the end.

But first I need to take a nap before my doctor's appointment.

Roald Bradstock represented Britain in the 1984 and 1988 Olympics and in 1996 was an alternate for United States Olympic team. Bradstock competed in the 2000, 2004 and 2008 United States Olympic Trials. He has now switched his allegiance back to Britain and hopes to compete in the trials for London 2012. In addition to being an Olympic athlete, Bradstock is also an Olympic artist dubbed "The Olympic Picasso"

I will always remember 2010 as the year that, after more than 11 years at UK Sport, I was made its chief executive.

The circumstances were unexpected - John Steele was a terrific leader and we were very settled, but it was not surprising to any of us that those qualities were recognised byhis old sport and first love, and he moved to become Rugby Union's CEO.

I was delighted to takethe helm at this crucial time in our history, and to work alongside our inspirational chair, Baroness Campbell.

Indeed John moving on was one of several things that could perhaps have threatened to destabilise UK Sport in the past year. As an organisation with a dependency on funding from the public purse, we were also at risk of significant reductions throughout the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR).

While the arguments for retaining investment in our core responsibilities - supporting athlete performance, staging major sporting events and improving our international relations and development opportunities - were many, and London 2012 presented an obvious reason to maintain our activity, there was no guarantee that we would emerge unscathed.

That we largely did was due first to the clear evidence of success to date, the progress of the performance system and the detailed case presented by UK Sport; and then some equally robust defence of our role by Minister and officials at the Department for Culture Media and Sport. We and our funded sports and athletes owe them sincere thanks for ensuring that our mission to 2012 and beyond can remain on track.

We also owe thanks to all those members of the public who buy National Lottery tickets as each purchase contributes to Olympic and Paralympic success. As we move into 2011 and 2012, the National Lottery will play a more vital part than ever in support of the high performance sporting landscape, alongside Exchequer funding and private sector funding such as that being generated by Team 2012.

The certainty we received through the CSR showed itself in the performance funding decisions we made in early December as a result of our Annual Review of investment. We could not only be clear about how we saw the remaining journey for sports through to London, but also start to focus more on the road to Rio in 2016 and also confirm our investment in Winter Olympic and Paralympic success in Sochi 2014. For the first time, UK Sport now invests in Winter Olympic and Paralympic success in exactly the same way as Summer and the aspirations there have also risen.

The Annual Review decisions were made against the backdrop of some highly promising performances from our athletes in 2010. Through the year, in World and European championships, our summer Olympic sports racked up 103 medals in total, including Mo Farah (pictured) winning the 5,000 and 10,000 metres at the European Athletics Championships in Barcelona, and the summer Paralympic medal haul was just as impressive, with 84 medals achieved despite their being reduced opportunity in some sports such as Para-Cycling with the cancellation of their World Championships.



Anyone involved in high performance sport will recognise that there is a good deal that you can plan for, measure and predict but there is also the element of the unknown, the moment of surprise, the sheer unpredictability of performance on the day. That is what makes it thrilling to be part of, and to follow. That's why we work with sports to agree their performance targets annually, using a range where the top end represents the very best performance possible, and the bottom end that below which the sport would judge themselves to have underperformed.

Even though it is impossible to be certain about outcomes, we should be confident about where we stand at this point in the London 2012 cycle. We are, in terms of the total medals won by an increased number of different sports, further ahead than we were before Beijing - indeed before any Olympic and Paralympic Games of the modern era. And while we are still inevitably reliant on the major medal winning sports of our top athletes, the rowers, cyclists, sailors and swimmers, we are also seeing the breakthrough performances that we will need to meet our London targets of top four for the Olympics and second in the Paralympics, winning more medals in more sports than ever before.

Olympic sports like boxing, canoeing, gymnastics, hockey and taekwondo were given increased funding earlier this month not just because of their performances this summer but because there are genuine prospects for further medal success from sports committed to doing what it takes to maximise the opportunity London 2012 presents.

So the signs are very promising, and everyone at UK Sport is therefore looking forward to the next year ahead. We have hard work to do, alongside our key partners in the high performance system,to make sure that we build on the great year we have just had.

Through our "no compromise" investment strategy and the performance monitoring of Mission 2012 we will target our support where it has most impact and will make sure the public and private funding entrusted to us continues to reach those athletes and sports with the most potential to medal and make the nation proud.

We will continue to support them with our world class athlete support services, not least the coaching, talent ID and research and innovation programmes that have been so influential on the performance system since before Beijing and indeed are now focused more and more on the period beyond 2012.

We also have a hugely busy and exciting year ahead in Major Events, with our programme of World and European level events enhanced by our close involvement in LOCOG's test event programme. And our international teams will continue to drive British engagement and influence overseas, notleast through our continued worldwide impact of London 2012's official international development programme, International Inspiration.

Alongside all of this we will continue to argue positively sport's role in society and the benefits it can bring, to develop Team 2012 and our commercial opportunities, and play our part in delivering a structure post-2012 that brings us together with Sport England in a way that benefits sport andmakes us more efficient, without compromising our high performance focus.

Lots to do then, a hugely busy year awaits. When I think about what might have been this past year, and what in fact came to pass, we have never had a better opportunity to make a real difference.

Liz Nicholl is the chief executive of UK Sport

It did not take long for the Board of the Football Association to choose David Bernstein as the new chairman. The whole thing, I am told, took a bare five minutes. He was nominated, all hands went up and on to the next business.

However, sometime after this decision, there was a report by Andy Anson on England's disastrous World Cup bid for 2018. Here something rather curious happened.

Before the meeting there had been much anticipation of what Anson, the 2018 chief executive, might say. In the event he said very little about a bid where the FA spent £18 million ($28 million) and got one non-Brit to vote for England. This suggests that as far as the FA is concerned this is now part of the dead and discredited past that is best left undisturbed.

I agree to dwell on the past can be morbid. But you can also learn from the past and the FA urgently needs to do that.

Defeats, as the ancient Romans always said, are best treated as orphans with no one wanting to claim parenthood. In contrast, everyone claims to have fathered a victory. However, while nobody may rush forward to say they fathered the 2018 disaster, it would do England, and the FA, good if they looked at how other organisations dealt with traumatic defeats in their bids to bring international competitions to this country. This is where football may have a lot to learn from the Olympics.

I have been talking to one man who knows how to convert defeats into victory and it has been very illuminating. That man is Simon Clegg. Often the Chef de Mission of the British Olympic teams, the long serving chief executive of the British Olympic Association (BOA) has since exchanged his Olympic hat for a football one, becoming chief executive of Ipswich Town.

Clegg has keenly followed the comments of the England 2018 bid team made after the defeat in Zurich. These were that FIFA Executive members lied to England about their voting intentions. These lies so outraged Roger Burden, the acting FA chairman that he decided he would not take up the job fulltime. Had he not withdrawn after the Zurich debacle he would have been crowned FA chairman in place of Bernstein last week. Burden's reason was as the FA chairman he would have to deal with FIFA  officials and could not do business with people whose words he could not trust.















Clegg told me:"Whilst I recognise that everyone in the bid was hugely disappointed the comments made after the defeat were not helpful. I spent 20 years at the highest level of international sport and one of the perceptions we had to always battle was that the British were arrogant. The comments after Zurich will not have been well received in the international sports community and will reinforce the perception of the superior British. When you decide to bid for events like the World Cup or the Olympic Games you have to also decide to accept and work with the electorate whose vote you are seeking. You have to know how the bidding process works and tackle it the best way you can."

One of the points much made by the England 2018 bid team was that England's bid was technically the best, rated much superior to Russia. So how could England get just two votes when Russia in the first round itself got nine before romping home in the second? In the eyes of the 2018 bid team this suggested that the whole bidding process was unfair.

Clegg recalls "The first bid I was involved in for the Olympics was the 1992 bid by Birmingham. It was fronted by Lord Dennis Howell [who at that the time held the record for having been the longest serving Sports Minister, a record since broken by Richard Caborn]. Everybody at the IOC said the Birmingham bid was the best technical bid the IOC (International Olympic Committee) had ever received. Yet the Games went to Barcelona. When bids are decided you have to accept that the technical qualities are not the only criteria for judging a bid. Otherwise why have a vote?"

Birmingham the best bid got eight votes, three ahead of Amsterdam but less than Belgrade, Brisbane, Paris and a long way behind Barcelona. The Spanish city with 47 votes beat Paris in the final.

After Birmingham Clegg was involved in two failed Manchester bids, the second one saw Sydney win the right to stage the 2000 Olympics, Manchester lost getting 11 votes, around 15 per cent of the total. That meant in a decade Britain had bid for three Olympics, 1992, 1996 and 2000, and got nowhere.

"We came back from Monte Carlo where the vote for 2000 Games was held," recalls Clegg, "and decided we must talk to the electorate and find out what we can do to construct a winning bid."

It was this talk to the IOC electorate that eventually shaped the winning London bid. "IOC members made it clear that if Britain wanted to be taken seriously as an Olympic candidate it had to come back with London and we listened. When you make such bids you must listen to the electorate, otherwise you might as well not bid."

But it was not enough to present London. The right team and political muscle was necessary and as Clegg said, "We worked on the then Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, to get his support." As is well known dear old Ken had no interest in sport. However he saw the Olympics as driving the regeneration of the East End. While the original BOA plan had talked about the Games being staged in West London with Wembley the hub, to get Ken's support  the location was switched to the East End.

Also, as Clegg reminded me, the BOA from the beginning decided that the bid team would be very distinct from the BOA. In contrast 2018 was very much part of the FA. This was to have dramatic consequences when the original 2012 bid leader Barbara Cassini decided lobbying IOC members was not really something she wanted to do. London had just made the short list but was a very poor third to Paris and Madrid. It could have been tricky. It was handed well with Seb Coe, Cassini's deputy, taking over and in the end proving a great leader.

Contrast this with 2018. When Lord Triesman, the FA chairman and bid leader, had to go because his remarks were leaked to a Sunday paper it meant not only finding a new bid leader but a new chairman of the FA. A new bid leader was found in Geoff Thompson but the FA did not find a new chairman. With the chief executive also having left it meant the FA went into the World Cup, a crucial lobbying opportunity for 2018, with both these top jobs in the hands of temporary officials. It was this that prompted that Michael Platini's famous comment in South Africa. "You have an acting chairman and an acting chief executive. What is the FA, a bunch of actors?"

Clegg admits that in Coe they had an ideal replacement and in Sir Keith Mills, a businessman who quickly worked out the IOC and how to cultivate its leadership.

However in addition to this there was also thought about what not to say. Early on in the campaign there was talk how both in 1908 and 1948 London had come to the rescue of the Games by staging them when other countries could not. But once the bid started little was made of this.

"When you bid for events like Olympics or World Cups," says Clegg, "you have to work out what the sport will do for your country and what your country will do for the sport. You also need to be careful about harking on about the past. This country has a great sporting past but constant stress on it can be seen as arrogance. We are no more entitled to the Games than any other country. We have to earn them."

If the FA were to learn, like the BOA did from its three failed bids before it succeeded with London, then with the right leadership the World Cup could come back to this country, even in our lifetimes. That is one of the major tasks facing David Bernstein. It is not going to be easy.

Mihir Bose is one of the world's most astute observers on politics in sport and, particularly, football. He formerly wrote for The Sunday Times and The Daily Telegraph and until recently was the BBC's head sports editor.

www.mihirbose.com

http://twitter.com/mihirbose

It was two days before Christmas, the so-called season of goodwill, when British Weight Lifting announced they had suspended the Olympic funding of teenage prodigy Zoë Smith. Some Christmas present for their sole potentially world class competitor.

Sometimes you despair of British sporting bureaucracy.

This arbitary decision, albeit tagged "temporary" would seem farcical if it wasn't so petty.

Zoe is the charismatic runner-up to Tom Daley as BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year who has heaved a seriously under-achieving sport (just two Olympic medalists in half a century) out of its mediocrity by the winning an historic Commonwealth Games bronze at 16 and breaking 317 records in her brief but prolific career.

But, primarily because she was deemed 'overweight' at a training camp they have questioned her commitment and stopped her £6,000 annual funding - as they did once before in a dispute over her coaching programme.

Soon after I highlighted this in my Independent on Sunday column it was restored-and backdated.

Now, once again the Leeds-based governing body have stopped the "naughty" London schoolgirl's pocket money because, according to their press release, "The BWL world class programme decided they could not continue to support and athlete who was not committed to following a structured training programme or ensuring they stabilised their body weight."

It is hard to conceive of any other sports body that would take such heavy-handed action against their only genuine 2012 medal prospect.

As he mum Niki says, Zoë he hasn't done anything to bring the sport into disrepute, nor anything distasteful or damaging. What she has done is give weightlifting, a sport dogged domestically by years of under-achievement and internationally by dope-taking, a much-needed better image.

A case of clean and knee-jerk?



"They seem to forget she's still just a kid, a young girl who needs to explore herself as a person and grow as an individual," she says." Surely she deserves encouragement and support, not punishment.

"Yes, she has missed a few training sessions but she has had a shoulder injury and some illness, and also three weeks of schoolwork too catch up with after being in India. This is a daft, inexplicable decision."

One that was possibly prompted by Zoe askinng to be withdrawn from the European Junior Championships in Cyprus for which she had been entered - despite her own personal coach, Andy Callard, earlier in the year saying to Fiona Lothian, the BWL performance manager, and Tamas Feher, the national coach, that he thought it would be too soon after the Commonwealths for Zoe to be in top shape and that he didn't think she should go.

Saysd Niki: "At the end of the day though, Zoe had to ask to withdraw because of a strain to her shoulder caused during her first lift in Delhi. As usual she dug deep, ignored the pain and still went on to win England's first ever women's Commonwealth weightlifting medal and become the youngest Commonwealth weightlifting medalist in history.

"I would have hoped that they [BWL] would have remembered that Zoe by far exceeded every performance target that had been set for her this year at the same time as very successfully sitting her GCSEs and dealing with an array of media requests which helped to put the spotlight on her sport as much as herself.

"For a 16 year old girl, I think you'll agree that's quite a lot to handle. It makes you wonder just what is behind all this."

Indeed. Most other countries would have rewarded her for winning a bronze in Delhi, not penalised her as seems to be the case.

Zoe says she struggled to make the 58kg weight in Delhi.

Athletes in several sports have weight problems - boxers fight the scales all the time. They either make it or move up a division. Was Zoe given this opportunity?

As Fiona Lothian is former athlete herself - in the triathlon and duathlon - one might have thought that BWL's performance manager would have had more empathy with young Zoë, who was already worth her weight in gold - the colour of the medal she won as a 14-year-old at the Commonwealth Youth Games in Puna, heaving three times her own body weight over her head to become a thrilling prospect in a sport which has not seen a British lifter anywhere near the Olympic podium for a quarter of a century. Dave Mercer was the last with a bronze in 1984.

A former gymnast with the physique of a Comaneci but the power of a pantechnicon in her arms, she won the first major competition she entered, the South East County Championships, and has, quite literally, gone from strength to strength, culminating in that Commonwealth Games bronze in Delhi less than three months ago as the youngest member of Team England. She lifted a total of 159kg – one of the multitude of junior and senior records she has broken this year – for the snatch, clean and jerk. Earlier, she was in Beijing as part of the British Olympic Association's Olympic Ambitions programme.

No dumb belle, either. She is an A-level student at Townley Grammar School in Bexleyheath and hopes to go to university to study languages.

Because she is, as Ms Lothian herself admits, "an amazing talent" and is winsome and photoghenic. Zoe has attracted more media attention than weightlifting has enjoyed sine the days of Louis Martin and Precious McKenzie.

She now has an agent - as has Tom Daley - to help her cope with this and it may be that BWL's action is an attempt to remind her that she is not bigger than the sport. Though the fact is that at the moment she probaby is.

She is also something of a free spirit and – like Britain's other foremost female lifter, the now retired Michelle Breeze - has largely done things successfully her way rather than the way the governing body have wanted her to.

OK, a firm kick up the backside may have been required to get her back on course after Delhi but not a vicious kick in the teeth.

If her appeal is not upheld at a meeting on January 7 and private funding is not forthcoming, Zoë, who says is "gutted" to have her vital financial support withdrawn, may well decide to quit the sport. How tragic.

In the meantime surely funding distributors UK Sport, who are known to have had concerns about weightlifting's lack of progress towards, 2012, should be questioning Ms Lothian and co whether throwing their own weight around really is the right way to treat this talented young lady.

Alan Hubbard is an award-winning 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 Olympics, 10 Commonwealth Games, several football World Cups and world title fights from Atlanta to Zaire.

In 2010 the England woman's hockey team made history by winning their first ever World Cup medal. I'm Helen Richardson and I'm very proud to have played my part in this record breaking year.

2010 was always going to be a busy year for the England woman's team with three major tournaments. Having ended it with three bronze medals, breaking two records along the way, I'm going to take you through the highs, the lows, personal highlights and my thoughts on the next 20 months leading up to London 2012.

Every sports person loves playing in front of a home crowd, and I'm no different. The Champions Trophy was our first challenge, a tournament for the top six teams in the world was not going to be easy but this year it was being held in my home town of Nottingham and the extra support helped us win our first medal of the summer.

The tournament itself proved to be tough with all of our games going to the wire. With pool match wins over China, Germany and Argentina, who were the eventual World Cup winners, we were left to fight over the bronze with Germany. Our team showed a massive amount of resolve and belief over the whole week and our determination in the end was stronger than the Germans, we won another close match 2-1.

England woman have never won a medal on the world stage and I've personally been trying for 12 years! Winning mine and England's first world medal was amazing and then standing on the podium in front of a home crowd made it even more special.

Just six weeks later we were enjoying more success in a highly supported World Cup in Rosario, Argentina. Las Leonas, the Argentinean woman's team were hot favourites to take the title and with arguably the world's best player ever to play the game, Luciana Aymar in her home town, the crowds were pulsating with excitement as 15,000 fans eagerly awaited the start of every match.

After the triumph at the Champions Trophy we first of all set our sights on reaching the semi-finals, a feat that has only ever been achieved once before by England but something of which we were confident.The close matches continued, once again proving that games at this level are won and lost by the smallest of margins. After four of our five pool matches with wins against Spain, China, South Africa and a draw against South Korea [Richardson on the far right is celebrating the equaliser] we had qualified for the semi-finals with a game to spare!



The Netherlands, at the time the world's best team awaited us in the semis. We took them all the way, dominating at times and certainly not allowing their superior experience of semi-final matches undermining us in any way. Sadly we lost on penalties and once again we were to face the Germans for that bronze medal.

Having previously sat in four stadiums with the disappointment of another failed tournament running through my mind whilst watching the World or Olympic medal ceremonies, wishing it was me up there, I was finally standing on that podium feeling extremely happy. It's hard to describe; determined, professional, gritty, relentless, robust are but some of the words to express what the England players were about and I was very proud to be stood beside every one of them.

After the two tournaments I was also very happy to have scored seven goals. Playing at centre half, goals are usually difficult to come by but with freedom in my new position higher up the pitch, more goal scoring opportunities were coming my way. Due to our success at the World Cup opportunities were also coming our way off the field, with an increase in media attention leading to an exciting and rare invite onto the "red sofa" on BBC Breakfast.

The Commonwealth Games were next, just two weeks later! A multisport event added to the excitement and provided different experiences for us all. Gold was what we wanted and so we were disappointed to not make the final. However after the year we had had and some of our matches being played in 45 degrees, we were relieved to go home with another medal around our necks.

I was recently awarded the GB Hockey Athlete of the Year. This was such an honour to receive, especially as there were many contenders. It really topped off a fantastic year. Along with the award I was also invited to attend the BBC Sports Personality of the Year. It was a bit surreal when I found myself sitting behind the whole Beckham family and it was a very enjoyable evening. I was a little disappointed however that hockey didn't even get a snippet after the success we'd had this year. I think the only way of getting a mention would be to win the Olympic gold medal – we'd better do that then.

Looking forward I can't wait to test myself against the best in the world once again. The squad is very ambitious and every day we are all working extremely hard, pushing ourselves to the limit to be the best. Keep your eye on our progress; in 2011 England will be striving to win more medals at the Champions Trophy and the European Cup.

Helen Richardson plays for Reading and has been capped more than 150 times at international level

By the time I leave Australia in January it will have effectively been my home for two months. Being down here allows me to spend a lot of time out on the water in the big breezes and really work on getting my sailing fitness back up to where it needs to be for the 2011 season and the 2012 selection process. By the sounds of the weather at home, Oz definitely seems like the best place to be at the moment!

Whilst out in Australia I have competed in two Finn events. First up was the Perth International Regatta last month, which acted as the Test Event for the 2011 ISAF Worlds. There is always a bit of fear when you step back into a class after a spell out that things have moved on while you have been away or that you are so far off the pace that to catch up with the rest of the guys is an impossibility.

But I felt good about how I was sailing, my results were strong and I was pleased to be mixing it at the top end of the fleet. We basically lost the last three days of the regatta due to the lack of breeze, which is unusual for the that part of the world, but to finish fifth, considering how far off my best I still feel, was really encouraging.

The week before the regatta we got some really good training in, in great breezes. I had my coach David Howlett with me and it was fantastic to be getting my body used to sailing in those sorts of conditions again.

It is amazing how the body adapts and the only way you can get anywhere near getting back to full sailing fitness is by getting out there and putting yourself through all things your body is not familiar with doing anymore. It takes time to get your body used to hiking out and all the other strains your body feels sailing a Finn again but I was definitely feeling less aches and pains at the end of racing than I was when we started training.

Although I have made some good gains both in terms of weight and strength in the past few months I had to temper it a bit so that I could still be the right weight for match racing with TEAMORIGIN. After the Perth Regatta I left Australia for a week to take part in the final World Match Racing Tour event of the season with TEAMORIGIN, the Monsoon Cup in Malaysia.

We went into the event third overall but knowing we had a good chance of winning the title. We needed to be at the top of our game and for a few things to fall into place to do it but fortunately all those things came together and we won the event and the World Championship. We knew our chance of winning the title had improved considerably when defending champion Adam Miniprio did not qualify for the top eight in Malaysia.

When we beat Mathieu Richard in the quarter-finals it really came down to us from there on in. Beating Bjorn Hansen in the semis made it job done in terms of the World title and it was fantastic to celebrate this by also winning the event, beating Torvar Mirsky in a very, very tight final. Being match racing World champions just feels like a really fitting way for this TEAMORIGIN campaign to end and I'm delighted for all the boys who sailed on the Tour during the season.



I then headed back to Australia as next up was Sail Melbourne which is an ISAF World Cup Event; it was an interesting event as we had different conditions each day. It was again really good to have more time in the Finn and the event ended up being a very close contest between myself, Giles Scott and Ed Wright.

One day that stood out was the second day of racing when I finished first in all three races, it was a light wind day and everything just seemed to click into place and these results set me up for the rest of the week and it was a real positive to sail well and come away with the event victory.

However, I'm still some way off the fitness levels I need and my boat speed is not where it should be so I know there is still a lot of hard work ahead. But, I'm now back on my full weight gain diet and will be doing a lot of weight training so that I can be back to full sailing fitness by next April; realistically that's how long I think it's going to take.

I'm now in Sydney spending time with some friends. I won't be in Britain for Christmas but I think spending as much time in Australia as I can when I have got the opportunity is the most sensible thing looking ahead to next year. I still plan to do the Miami Olympic Classes Regatta at the end of January and then really start looking more at where we are with the boat.

David has kept this side of things nicely ticking over while I have been involved with TEAMORGIN activity but when we are out in Palma next spring we will be able to get a real handle on what work we need to do to get the boat in perfect shape.

Whilst I'm out in Oz it would be great to celebrate a bit more English succe ss in the Ashes! You always take a bit of stick being a "Pommy" here, especially when there is cricket on, but it all good natured and it would be a fantastic achievement if the England boys could reclaim the Ashes down here. I'm hoping I might even be able to catch one of the Tests while I'm in Sydney. That would be a great way to start what I am hoping will be a really good 2011.

Enjoy a happy and safe Christmas and New Year.

Ben Ainslie is Britain's most successful Olympic sailor of all time, winning three gold medals and a silver

So, as first predicted in insidethegames, the nerdish Education Secretary Michael Gove, seasonally portraying himself somewhere between Scrooge and Santa, has stopped short of a complete U-turn but at least restored a portion of the ringfenced £162 million ($260 million), albeit temporarily, for the schools sports partnership coaching system.

Clearly Prime Minister David Cameron had a timely word in Gove's shell-like as the announcement coincided with his own photo opportunity with schoolkids at the Olympic Park.

It also came as the Sport and Recreation Alliance - the CCPR that was - announced that nine major sports bodies had committed to re-invest at least 30 per cent of TV revenues, around £250 million a year, into grassroots sport.

The thought occurs that if just half went into school sports the coaching programme could be fully funded and restored in its entirety without the Government (or rather we taxpayers) forking out and everyone would have a happier Christmas and certainly a more prosperous New Year.

Interestingly, the compromise resolution of the school sports issue is a moral victory for athlete power following the skilfully-orchestrated petitioning by past and present Olympians, among them Tom Daley, Denise Lewis and James DeGale.

We wonder if a similar result may be achieved by another galaxy of  big-name Olympic elite, spearheaded by Dame Kelly Holmes, Daley Thompson, Alan Pascoe and Sally Gunnell, who are pledged to stop Tottenham Hotspur from acquiring the Olympic Stadium after the 2012 Games, a move which would leave  athletics without its promised legacy. In an open letter they have made a passionate plea for the retention of an athletics facility in east London, saying to lose the track would be unacceptable.

Pascoe, the former Commonwealth Games hurdling gold medallist who  heads promotional organisation Fast Track calls the football-only scenario  'an absolute disgrace' and says the design of the £537 million ($826 million), 80,000-seater venue is "ill-conceived" but I fear this may be a losing battle. In the end it will come down to cash and clout, and Spurs, backed entertainment giant AEG, have more of both than bid rivals West Ham who would keep the track.

The best deal athletics is likely to get out of it is a substantial tarting up of Crystal Palace to make it a potential World Championships venue. Of course, dispensing with the athletics legacy at the Olympic Park would mean London reneging on the commitment made to both the IOC and the IAAF when the 2012 bid was won.

But hey, since when did breaking pledges matter? Ask the Lib Dems.

The future of the stadium is one major controversy with which sport will be confronted next year.

Looking into that New Year, I can see another seriously escalating. This also involves Spurs, or rather their star winger Gareth Bale (pictured) and the composition of the GB football team in 2012, which could well culminate in a fascinating legal battle.

The scintillating young Welsh international, regarded as the most exciting young talent British football, has indicated his strong desire to play in a GB team which is likely to be managed by his Spurs boss Harry Redknapp.

But he has been warned he faces suspension by the Welsh FA, who, with the football associations of Scotland and Northern Ireland, are peevishly refusing to allow their players – both male and female - to take part in the Games.

However, the British Olympic Association chairman Colin Moynihan is determined that selection for a Great Britain XI must not be restricted to English players, and if necessary will back Bale - or any other home countries player – to take the case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland. In this situation 22-year-old Bale could become as significant a figure in football law as the "soccer suffragettes" George Eastham and Jean Marc Bosman, who in 1963 and 1995 respectively, won landmark rulings over players' rights in the transfer system.

The three refusnik associations say they fear if their players participate in a GB Olympic team FIFA could the insist on a joint British World Cup team, despite the written assurance of President Sepp Blatter that this will not happen.

Conversely Moynihan argues that players from all four home nations  have to be considered for selection otherwise the BOA would be in breach of the Olympic Charter. "We would open ourselves up to legal challenges if the pool of players available for selection came from England only," he says.

Sports law experts I have spoke with believe the Court of Arbitration would rule in favour of the players, who could claim restraint of trade. And should Bale persist in his bid it is hard to see what action the Welsh FA could take. They can't stop their 27-times capped star from playing for Spurs, who come under the jurisdiction of the English FA; and would they dare risk the wrath of Welsh fans - and new manager Gary Speed  - by banning from the national team the best player Wales has had since Ryan Giggs and thereby lose what little chance they have of qualifying for the World Cup? Do leave orf boyos!

Alan Hubbard is an award-winning 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 Olympics, 10 Commonwealth Games, several football World Cups and world title fights from Atlanta to Zaire

What a year 2010 has been. Our motto here at the British Olympic Association is "Better Never Stops", however, the end of the year is a good opportunity to at least pause and look back at the landmarks achieved and to assess the many challenges still to come. The past 12 months have been an incredible journey and we have witnessed great progress on the road to London 2012.

First and foremost, British athletes have once again thrilled our sport-loving nation with their exploits on the field of play. Established high performing British Olympic sports such as rowing, sailing, swimming and cycling have continued to deliver multi-medal winning performances at world level. As a keen sailor myself, I was delighted to see GB claim a hat-trick of gold medals in the Melbourne World Cup event just last week, which included a clean sweep of the podium places in the Finn class led by triple Olympic Champion Ben Ainslie.

We have also seen very promising results from the likes of gymnastics, equestrian, athletics and hockey and real improvement in the performances of many of our less well-known Olympic sports, many of whom will experience the Olympics for the first time in 2012. There have been some fantastic breakthrough performances by young British athletes, including under-23 world triathlon champion Jonathan Brownlee (pictured) who is aiming to challenge his brother Alistair for a place on the London 2012 podium. The developing strength in depth across our Olympic sports is an encouraging indicator towards our ultimate ambition of Team GB achieving more medals from more sports than in over a century at the London 2012 Olympic Games.



Away from the playing arena, we have seen the dust and dirt of the Olympic Park be transformed into impressive stadium structures and it was inspiring to see the look of anticipation in the eyes of the GB slalom canoeists at the opening of their London 2012 venue in Broxbourne earlier this month. Importantly, the government should be commended for committing to continue the strong levels of funding for our elite athletes in these difficult economic times and the launch of the mass participation legacy plan "Places, People, Play" was another crucial landmark towards delivering the promises we made to the Olympic Movement during the bid in Singapore in 2005.

Here at the BOA the pace of change has been astronomical. It's strange to think that it's just 14 months since we entered our new offices in Charlotte Street and started a new – and perhaps the most important - chapter in our history. During 2010 we have prepared and led Team GB successfully to the Vancouver Olympic Winter Games and the inaugural Youth Olympic Games in Singapore. We have raised vital funds for British athletes via Team 2012 and hosted the Ball of the year, according to Hello! Magazine. While doing this, we have restructured and grown the organisation to get into shape to take on all the challenges and opportunities of being the Host National Olympic Committee.

On Christmas Day there will be 580 days until the Opening Ceremony in London and we at the BOA, just like the athletes, will be making the most of every day to ensure we are ready to perform to the best of our ability in 2012.

Andy Hunt is the chief executive of the British Olympic Association and Team GB Chef de Mission for London 2012

Michael Gove, the Government's Education Secretary earlier this week made the expected announcement that his department is to do a U-turn on Schools Sports Partnerships.

Or did he?

Looking behind the headlines, what Mr Gove has actually announced amounts to little more than a stay of execution, a temporary extension of funding while the fuss dies down or, in his words: "I''m pleased to be able to confirm some funding for school sports partnerships during this transition. But I'm looking to PE teachers to embed sport and put more emphasis on competitions for more pupils in their own schools and to continue to help the teachers in local primary schools do the same..."

The transition to which he refers is that from School Sports Partnerships to some, as yet undefined, new system in which schools will be funded to release one PE teacher for one day a week to promote pupils' participation in PE and sporting activities.

In my blog earlier this month I suggested that the likely u-turn would beg the bigger question of how to we then do things better? However, instead of returning us to that point, Mr Gove has returned to a temporary place half-way back, not so much how do we improve the model but more how far back can we take the model to dupe the public into believing the Government has listened while they decide what alternative we can come up with.

It owes more to Big State than to Big Society. Not only have they not listened, they are trying to pretend they have.

Of course, one thing that MUST happen if sports development is to again become a meaningful term in the UK is the creation of a fully, vertically integrated strategy for the development of sport. Trying to run school sport separately from main stream sport smacks only of horizontal integration at best and with little evidence of ANY strategy from either Department for Education (DfE) or Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) it is not even that.

Mr Gove (pictured) has yet to propose anything to address the lack of teaching of Physical Literacy in our primary (and secondary) schools, a fundamental component of the foundations of any long-term sports participation.

He has yet to propose anything that addresses the woeful lack of PE training undergone by those training to become primary school teachers.

So far his sole offering is the Minister for Sport's pet initiative, the Schools Olympics, he is offering nothing for those who are not competitive or even those who like competing but are only moderately talented.

Hugh Robertson, Minister for Sport and the Olympics, tells us the Government has a strategy for sport. Mr Gove tells us they are devising plans for school sport. Which is it? Does the Government have a strategy or is it still at the planning stage? Or do they see school sport as remote, separate from main stream sport?

Mr Gove and Mr Robertson need to get their heads together and start thinking about more than initiatives that look good and can be dressed as serving "legacy" (but please don't look too closely) and start thinking about how best to serve the long-term interests of sport in this country and thereby the people of this country.

That means a strategy for the development of sport which is vertically integrated. That means properly addressing every stage of the sports development continuum. It also means making the provision of sporting facilities, the support of clubs with community roots and backing for the development of sport a statutory requirement of local authorities (in line with most of Europe).

If the two Ministers do that then legacy would take care of itself but they need to act fast before we lose faith completely.

Jim Cowan is a former athlete, coach, event organiser and sports development specialist who is the founder of Cowan Global, a company specialising in consultancy, events and education and training. For more details click here

Judging by Tony McCoy's speech upon receiving the 2010 BBC Sports Personality of the Year award he was not seriously expecting to win it. For sure, he was the bookies' favourite - not for the first time in his career. But then Jensen Button was the bookies's favourite last year when the award went, for no particular reason, to Ryan Giggs.

McCoy's speech was all the more charming for its disorganised and humble tone as he described the experience of standing in front of so many sporting high achievers, many of whom he had followed for years on television, as "surreal", and rounded his address off with a heartfelt but puzzling reference to his three-year-old daughter who would be watching him on television at home.

The 36-year-old from County Antrim has had an annus mirabilis even by his own soaring standards, earning the title of Champion Jockey for the 15th successive year and, at the 15th time of asking, winning the Grand National.

Yet his reluctance to assume he would therefore become the first horse racer to earn this award since it was instituted in 1954 was doubtless influenced by his experience of the previous year, when, despite winning his customary Champion Jockey award and riding the 3,000th winner of his career, he did not even make the final short-list. Despite the fact that the Racing Post used its front page to plead his case to the panel.

"I was third in 2002, but if Frankie Dettori never won it for riding seven winners at Ascot, then no jockey's going to get involved in it," McCoy maintained last year.

"What McCoy excels in is his consistency and it's quite a hard thing for that to get recognition in an event such as Sports Personality of the Year because it's moments that tend to catapult those individuals," said John Maxse, the Jockey Club's PR manager, last year.

Fast forward to 2010, and McCoy, with his Grand National win, had the required catapault. But the catapault theory doesn't hold universally good. As the admirable Giggs demonstrated last year. No one would begrudge this model footballer the trophy - but why not give it to him in a year of particular glory.

At such points the Sports Personality Award begins to feel a bit like the Oscars, with certain figures being rewarded in a manner slightly out of sync with their best efforts, as if by way of compensation or apology.

Then again, part of the appeal of the Sports Personality award since Paul Fox dreamed it up as a nifty promotional tool for his BBC Sportsview programme in 1954 has been its ability to stir opinion. In the first year, for instance, the big old camera went to Chris Chataway, dashing victor over the supposedly unbeatable Soviet Vladimir Kuts in a 5,000 metres race at White City in which he broke the world record. And it was all live on BBC TV.



But that meant no big old camera for the athlete whom Chataway had helped pace to the arguably more profound achievement of the first sub-four minute mile earlier that year, Roger Bannister. Shock horror.

Over the years, this award to the sportsperson "whose actions have most captured the public's imagination" has gone to some unlikely recipients. In 1997, for instance, it went to our naturalised Canadian Greg Rusedski after he had got to the US Open final before losing to Pat Rafter. A fine achievement - but did he deserve to keep Steve Redgrave out the top spot?

At least the Oscar committee made it up to the rower three years later when he was named Golden Sports Personality of the Year to mark the programme's 50th anniversary.

Giggs needed just 151,000 votes to win the award last year, a relatively low total from an audience of 7.2 million. It was estimated that McCoy would have needed at least 200,000 votes this time around to secure the treasured tripod, and he raised a ripple of laughter in the all-star audience as he wryly acknowledged all the racing people who must have been voting for him from the moment lines opened. The recorded figure was 293,1532, which represented a landslide victory ahead of world darts champion Phil Taylor and world and European heptathlon champion Jessica Ennis.

Not that Ian Poulter was happy with the general opinion. The Ryder Cup golfer, as you might expect, was miffed that neither of his victorious colleagues from Celtic Manor, world number one Lee Westwood (fourth with 58,640) and US Open champion Graeme McDowell (fifth with 52,108) had won. And particularly miffed, according to his Twittering, with a darts player finishing ahead of the pair.

"Darts comes second in the BBC Spoty voting get a grip," tweeted the unhappy golfer.

However you argue it, the Spoty still has what it takes to stir up this sporting nation of ours.

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, has covered the last five Summer and four Winter Olympics for The Independent. Previously he has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, the Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. He is now chief feature writer for insidethegames

With the country being battered by arctic conditions it might seem a perverse time to reflect on the success being enjoyed in a sport most commonly enjoyed in the great outdoors. However, as the year comes to a close it is a good opportunity to look back at the achievements of 2010 and look ahead to what is arguably the most exciting period in the history of cycling in the UK.

Britain's Olympic and Paralympic cyclists returned from Beijing in 2008 with an unprecedented haul of medals which elevated the sport into the public conscience more than ever before. Around the same time, British Cycling embarked on a partnership with Sky under an "Inspiration to Participation" banner. Put simply, this aims to get more people cycling by providing quality opportunities to ride a bike in a safe and supportive environment in the shape of City and Local Sky Rides, underpinning existing talent and club programmes, and contributing to the continued success on the world stage through support of Team Sky and the Great Britain Cycling Team.

These two landmarks signified a step change in the approach and outlook of British Cycling. The organisation itself has more than doubled in size during this period and hugely ambitious targets have been set both in terms of participation and membership as we seek to establish a firm base on which we can continue to grow the sport for many years to come. Put simply, we want the success we enjoy at the elite end to make a positive impact across all levels of the sport.

In terms of how we are doing, the bare statistics paint a positive picture. Just last week, Sport England announced the latest data from their Active People programme which showed that 99,000 more people are cycling at least once a week - well on the way to our target of 125,000 more by April 2013. Our own research highlights the positive impact of Sky Ride on this, with the 2010 programme increasing once a week participation by over 40,000 - a fantastic advert for what have proved to be a hugely effective way of encouraging more people to embrace the joy of cycling.



Moving up the cycling ladder, over the past 18 months we have increased the number of competitive events delivered in the UK from 2,542 to 3,283 - a rise of 29 per cent. This not only provides competitive cyclists with more opportunities to ply their trade, but it also ensures more people in more parts of the country can enjoy the great spectacle of cycling in close quarters – be it road, track, BMX,  mountain biking. cyclo-cross or cycle-speedway. If this in turn encourages them to give it a try, then all the better.

At the elite end things are more competitive than ever as our main rivals have reacted strongly to the success we enjoyed in Beijing. That, combined with the changes made this year by the UCI to the Olympic programme, qualification criteria and team size, creates a new set of challenges for us, but the consistently high performances across the different disciplines this year show how we're maintaining our focus on the job in hand. Compared to the same stage of the Beijing cycle, we're in at least as good a position in terms of athlete preparations and performance so we can without doubt look forward to more iconic and inspirational performances at 2012 thanks to the significant public investment we receive via UK Sport, supplemented by the added benefit that Team Sky will undoubtedly bring to our Olympic preparations.

All this is underpinned by an upsurge in British Cycling membership which has risen almost 40 per cent in the past 18 months to stand at just over 35,000 now. In the current economic climate this is a staggering achievement but, once again, our targets for membership are ambitious - 100,000 by March 2013. No mean feat, but by continuing to widen the appeal of cycling and providing opportunities for people to get involved be it for the first time via a Sky Ride, through one of the accredited Clubs across the country, or at a sportive or competitive races, we are confident  we will reach our goal.

Indeed, when looking ahead, what is particularly exciting is that we're confident there's plenty more to come. Through 2011 we'll be launching more new initiatives to help get more people cycling more regularly. This, along with the continued success of Sky Ride and further growth of our existing programmes puts us in a strong position to maintain this progress in the run-up to 2012 and beyond.

Ian Drake is the chief executive of British Cycling

Regular readers of this blog will recall that back in May, when the Government was new, I applauded the Minister for Sport's announcement that he was to end what he termed "initiative-itis".

At last, I thought, a Government that will put strategy ahead of piecemeal initiatives, a Minister who will support the proper, planned development of sport.

Then, only a month later, Hugh Robertson - the Minister in question - announced a new initiative and I blogged that initiative-itis had returned before it had even left asking the Minister: "Please Mr Robertson, can we see a genuine sports development strategy in place of this cross your fingers planning?"

Through the pages of insidethegames Mr Robertson responded angrily that he did have a strategy with a clear direction. He cited a list of impressive sounding aims and objectives telling us: "This is a strategy with a clear direction."

Unfortunately, Mr Robertson had failed to advise us of one key component of this "strategy" – the "how"; he failed to indicate how we are going to achieve the listed aims and objectives. Why was this important? Because any strategy without the "how" is actually not a strategy at all, more a list of aspirations.

I pointed this out to the Minister asking if the strategy exists, as he assured us it does, could we please see said strategy. That was in July and Mr Robertson's response is still awaited. We still await sight of his much vaunted strategy.

Then, on November 15 the Minister for Sport unveiled Places People Play described as the Government's London 2012 Legacy plans.

"Hurray," I thought, "the promised strategy at last!"



But alas; no. Places People Play is much like Mr Robertson's (pictured) earlier reply to my blog, heavy on aspiration but very light on 'how' and without the "how" (I know, I'm repeating myself) it is not a strategy.

Now, I am not alone in stating this. The Centre for Sport, Physical Education and Activity Research (SPEAR) at Canterbury Christ Church University agrees with me. In an exceptional article about the London 2012 Mass Participation Legacy Plan, Professor Mike Weed states: "Now we know the WHAT and WHY, but no one is telling us HOW!"

In his personal blog, "Lies, Damned Lies and Sports Participation Statistics" Professor Weed goes further, pointing out fundamental flaws in the way statistics are being used to support the legacy bandwagon and giving valid reasons why the aims and objectives of Places People Play will fall short.

Much is made of the £135 million ($210 million) being invested in sport via Places People Play but will it provide a legacy? With Councils, traditionally the nation's largest funder of sport, up and down the country facing a struggle to maintain services and sport falling outside of the statutory requirements of local authorities will that £135 million ($210 million) - over three years - balance with the likely cuts to local sport provision? A quick calculation suggests it is the approximate equivalent of only £340,000 ($528,000) per authority or £113,000 ($176,000) per year of Places People Play.

Apologies if I repeat myself again, but in previous blogs I have suggested that if we want a genuine lasting legacy from hosting the 2012 Olympic Games then the Government could do worse than matching most of the rest of Europe and making the provision of sporting facilities, the support of clubs with community roots and backing for the development of sport a statutory requirement of local authorities.

The Government could further support a lasting sporting legacy by leading on the creation of a genuine, vertically integrated strategy for the development of sport in the UK which understands, supports and delivers on the principles behind the sports development continuum.

In short the Government could drop the "initiative-itis" - a term coined by its own Minister - which was so rampant under its predecessors, and which it has already acknowledged does not work, and begin planning properly.

Step One needs to be by thinking about "how".

Jim Cowan is a former athlete, coach, event organiser and sports development specialist who is the founder of Cowan Global, a company specialising in consultancy, events and education and training. For more details click here

Walter George, Peter Elliott, Ian Stewart, Derek Ibbotson, Liz McColgan. Now those are what I call great British runners.

And yet such has been the glory of British middle distance practitioners since the Second World War that these five outstanding performers have only made the second rank in a handsome new Athletics Weekly production entitled Great British Runners.

Selections like these, naturally, are open to argument, and some observers of the sport may feel moved to champion the natural right of one, if not more, of the aforementioned athletes to appear as one of the 12 leading lights in what is billed as Volume One of the AW Series (www.athletics-weekly.com £9.99).

Yet, when you look at the dashing dozen selected – who would you leave out from Roger Bannister, Dave Bedford, Chris Brasher, Chris Chataway, Seb Coe, Steve Cram, Brendan Foster, Kelly Holmes, Dave Moorcroft, Steve Ovett, Gordon Pirie and Sydney Wooderson?

In his introduction to the book, the UK Athletics chairman, Ed Warner, maintains: "Distance running is hard wired into the consciousness of British sports fans."

Few would argue that the picture on the front cover, that of Seb Coe in extremis at the 1980 Moscow Olympics as he makes up for losing in his specialist distance of the 800 metres by winning the 1500m title, is an iconic image in Britain's sporting history.

It's up there with Geoff Hurst powering home his third goal at Wembley to settle the 1966 World Cup final or Henry Cooper standing over the - temporarily - prone figure of Muhammad Ali, again at Wembley, three years earlier.

Many of the photos inside the front cover correspond exactly to the consciousness of British sports fans as well. Thus we have that emblem of running achievement, the picture of an exhausted Roger Bannister finishing the mile at Iffley Road, Oxford in 1954 which changed the mental landscape for all milers who were to follow him, an achievement he summed up succinctly in his running diary with a single entry: "3:59.4"

We have too the classic image of Dave Bedford, lean and powerful, out on his own with his Zapata moustache and red ankle socks. Inimitable, you might have thought, although Bedford's legal battle with a certain phone directory company have sadly proved otherwise.

And although the front cover shows Steve Ovett coming home a tired third in the Moscow 1500, the event he was supposed to win, Ovett's admirers can content themselves that the other required image, of him winning the event Coe was supposed to win, the 800m, is also there.

But part of the richness of this book is the extra photos, not so well known, which illustrate the stories with which we are so familiar.

There is a fascinating sequence showing Sydney Wooderson, the slight, bespectacled solicitor from Blackheath Harriers who set a world mile record of 4min 06.4sec at Motspur Park in 1937, stumbling towards the infield as American runner Blaine Rideout cuts in on him in a high-profile race at Princeton two years later. A crowd of 28,000 saw the British runner effectively knocked out of his stride in a race where he finished last, and argument raged across the Atlantic over who was to blame as the Americans claimed Wooderson had blocked their man while the British insisted Wooderson had been unfairly baulked.

It was a dispute that found an echo many years later in the transatlantic argument over the convergence of Britain's Zola Budd and home favourite Mary Decker-Slaney in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics 3000m final, an incident which resulted in the American falling – and then crying. And then, for a long time afterwards, complaining.

Another terrific image is that of Gordon Pirie, cheeks puffed out in the manner of the aforementioned Mr Hurst, creating an almighty, muddy splash as he makes his way down the flooded straight at the White City stadium.

As well as fresh images, the book contains many details with which this reader at any rate was unfamiliar. Like the fact that Wooderson chances in the 1500m at the 1936 Olympics, the only Games with which his career properly coincided, were effectively nullified when he twisted his ankle so badly while walking that he did not even make the final.

Or the quote from Chris Chataway, pacemaking assistant of Bannister along with Chris Brasher during the Four Minute mile (pictured) and a world record holder in his own right at 5,000m, after he had completed a recent half-marathon in Tyneside. "I run most days. I love it. I can't think why I spent so many years of my middle life doing silly things like smoking."



There are, too, a series of panels detailing the typical training weeks of some of the 12 featured runners, in which we learn, for instance, that while Gordon Pirie trained every day of the week, and would no doubt have trained for eight days out of seven had it been possible, our guilty smoker did nothing three days a week.

But exercises such as this are not primarily about the unfamiliar. Telling people's favourite sporting stories, as this book does, involves considerable responsibility. If any of the classic lines are missing, the reader is likely to react like a child disappointed by the omission of a familiar detail in a bedtime story.

So, here, we expect all the detail about Kelly Holmes's long and winding road to the double Olympic gold in Athens. We expect all the drama of Coe and Ovett's unexpected role reversal in Moscow. We expect the account of Dave Moorcroft's night of astonishing 5000m achievement at the 1982 Bislett Games, we expect to get the full mileage out of Steve Cram's 19 wondrous days in 1985, during which time he set three world records.

None of the expectations are disappointed; each story is expertly dealt with. Like favourite musical tracks, these memories can be played again and again.

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, has covered the last five Summer and four Winter Olympics for The Independent. Previously he has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, the Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. He is now chief feature writer for insidethegames