Testing time for Sky

With 2004’s multinational motley done, dusted and delivered, other activities can bloom. The jingo-jangle palaver and babel of the Olympics, European soccer, and the Ryder Cup are now consigned to musty files, and a happy new year is herald to less hyperbole and ballyhoo. The world athletics gala at Helsinki in August will work up a passing tizz as to who’s on drugs or not, and whether Kelly Holmes will be fit or bothered enough to make the starting line or, indeed, if Paula Radcliffe is ditto enough to make the Finnish finishing line.