Jacques Rogge should look traumatised. He should look exhausted. Even a nervous twitch or mild hysteria would not be out of place as the most chaotic, depressing and quietly terrifying build-up to an Olympic Games crawls to a close this week and the Athens Games are finally declared open on Friday.

On Saturday night in Las Vegas, one of the last great fighters will step into the ring again. Alongside a fake tropical oasis and a surreal 15-acre indoor beach at the Mandalay Bay hotel and casino, it will feel as if Roy Jones Jnr is also hustling boxing a little closer towards its chaotic endgame.

Even a short walk down the passage, to the loo in Sir Roger Bannister’s house in Oxford, offers a reminder. In a grainy photograph on the wall Winston Churchill, wearing a polka dot bow tie and clutching a cigar in his meaty hand, welcomes the 25-year-old runner and his two friends to Downing Street.

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.