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There are times when I think a seat on the sports administration gravy train might just be the very best place in the world: great food, first-class travel, the best seats for the big matches, and so on.

And then I remember they sometimes have to make tough decisions - 50/50 calls that will leave lots of people annoyed no matter which way you call it - and wonder if I really would like that responsibility.

World cycling's bosses are facing one of those lunch-spoiling dilemmas right now and the decision they appear to have made .

But before anybody accuses them of plotting to do us in now that we're good at something we should perhaps try to understand why preventing British cyclists from defending hard-won Olympic titles is not the open-and-shut case of incompetence/insensitivity/anti-British prejudice it might seem at first glance.

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When Boris Johnson "respectfully" told the Chinese that "", I actually felt guilty for not voting for him to be .

How could I not recognise the genius of a ping pong diplomat who could so succinctly sum up the national character with a reference to our desire to cancel the cheese course, clear the plates away and get the bats out?

But promising to bring a sport home and doing it are two different things. A bit like his "" plan, repatriating table tennis is a nice idea but it won't come cheap and Johnson isn't paying.

That obligation falls upon Britain's Olympic bosses and they need a better reason to invest than fine rhetoric or historical sentiment - they want medal potential, which is why they will be looking to Sheffield this week for signs of whiff-whaff life.

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"You must never run a football club based on what somebody might shout at you from the stands."

Given the nonsense I sometimes spout about the "size" of my club (and therefore what division we should be playing in) this advice was possibly the most important message to come out of last week's slightly subdued .

I say subdued because delegates from the 150+ supporters' trusts active in the UK assembled in Birmingham eager to trumpet how far the fan-ownership movement in football (and more recently rugby league) has come but mindful that the last year has witnessed a few bum notes.

If you'll allow me to run with the jazz metaphor a little longer, in the corner you have the phoenix clubs of and , the renaissance of and the shining example set by ; joining anything by Kenny G on the naughty step you've got the sheepish surrender at , the cash crunch at and .

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"I have no relationship with Lance. I don't speak to him. He is working on his future and I am working on mine."

Comprende? Loud and clear, Alberto, loud and clear.

But that isn't going to stop people like me asking because - team-mates, apparently - was this summer's sporting highlight.

Thrown together in the unlikeliest of partnerships, the two riders fought like cats in a bag for most of the race only for Contador to settle the argument where it really mattered, on the road.

Sometimes funny, often bitchy, their sparring, on and off the bike, was never anything but engrossing. And best of all they're going to do it all over again next July and this time they don't have to pretend to be on the same side.

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A decade or so ago I spent a year writing about cars for a motoring website. I enjoyed it for a bit - a new car to drive most weekends and foreign trips to warm countries with photogenic roads are reasonable perks - but realised it wasn't for me when I had to update my own reviews of cars that were only "new" in the sense that they had a different stereo and metallic paint was now standard.

This came back to me on Monday when I found myself reporting on a in two months - they've had as many owners as they have points this season - and like the car reviews there are plenty of similarities between the two.

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