Martina Navratilova flew back to the East this week. If it was less a homecoming than a continuation of her extraordinary return to tennis, Navratilova's journey to Russia was still freighted with some dark and sombre memories. Her Czech past is the key source of her legacy as a great athlete.

Having felled the ruling that his 'legs' give him an unfair advantage, Oscar Pistorius is going for gold.

“Memories!” Claudio Ranieri exclaims on his first day back in the city where he was loved so intensely and betrayed so pitilessly. “This is my first lunch in London since I leave Chelsea,” he laughs, “and they send us to a place called Memories! They start playing this sad but beautiful music when I walk through the door. What are they telling me?”

After a year in which Yelena Isinbayeva dominated her rivals more convincingly than any other world champion in sport, becoming the first woman in history to clear the once-mythical 5m barrier in pole vaulting, her eyes glitter at the prospect of still greater glories and riches in 2006.

Having felled the ruling that his 'legs' give him an unfair advantage, Oscar Pistorius is going for gold.

The reigning queen of Wimbledon describes the emotions of her long journey to a place in history.

Martina Navratilova flew back to the East this week. If it was less a homecoming than a continuation of her extraordinary return to tennis, Navratilova's journey to Russia was still freighted with some dark and sombre memories. Her Czech past is the key source of her legacy as a great athlete.

“Memories!” Claudio Ranieri exclaims on his first day back in the city where he was loved so intensely and betrayed so pitilessly. “This is my first lunch in London since I leave Chelsea,” he laughs, “and they send us to a place called Memories! They start playing this sad but beautiful music when I walk through the door. What are they telling me?”