LockerRoom: If you're interested enough or amused enough the Olympics are the pantomime which never closes. On any given day you can cast your eye around OlympicWorld and find something to entertain yourself with, writes Tom Humphries

Remember the rum old Olympics for Dublin mullarkey which kept several beaten dockets in front of the camera for long after their expiry dates? I thought of them this week when the organisers of the doomed New York bid to host the Olympic Games of 2012 were forced to disclose how much it cost them to entertain the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) evaluation committee when they came to town to close their eyes and imagine where the Olympics would be and then to catch a few shows in the evening.

It cost $3 million. As Business Weekly wryly observed, it only cost Salt Lake City $1.2 million in bribes to get the Winter Games. That was in the good old days though.

The current race is being run under very strict protocols and everyone involved must engage, very expensively, in the pretence that the word of the evaluation committee will be sacrosanct in deciding where the Games go.

Of course it ain't. It's about politics, and Paris has the 2012 gig in the bag unless they screw up between now and July. It's about politics and prestige and a bit of experience and understanding the complex nature of the IOC.

London, for instance, doesn't get it. And therefore won't get it. Installing Seb Coe to lead the bid was a dumb move. He comes across as too pleased with himself by half. No man whose CV boasts about being special adviser to William Hague should be that pleased with himself.

And Coe is the last person in the world who will shut Ken Livingston up. It doesn't matter a damn really whether you agree with Livingstone's views on the Jewish state or not, you just have to realise that there are many IOC members and many people at NBC who will passionately disagree.

Ken was a no-show recently at a Euro Olympics shindig in Dubrovnik. No doubt he had his excuses, but mayor Bloomberg of New York went and glad-handed the 40 or so IOC members who were there, and he finished a sparkling display of congeniality by standing on a chair and singing New York, New York. If Moscow (and its bid) wasn't crumbling, London would be looking at finishing last.

Paris will win because Paris hasn't put a foot wrong and because the city has the infrastructure and the experience. A World Cup, a World Athletics Championships. More 50-metre pools than they have in the whole of Britain. And Chirac is a smooth IOC fondler. And, of course, the French never engaged in Iraq.

Best hope for the two English-speaking bids is to somehow latch on to an Anyone But Paris movement, which seems unlikely to materialise, but you never know with the voting. Juan Antonio Samaranch, a man with a Haugheyesque appetite for political machination, has reluctantly stepped on to the floor again in favour of Madrid's bid. You might as well have Marlon Brando staring down the table at you, his cheeks puffed with balls of cotton wool, when Samaranch gets to calling in the favours.

So maybe Juan might get all the ducks in a row for Madrid, allowing some of Paris's vote to seep in the early rounds and letting New York or London mop up a little of the Moscow vote and each others numbers too. Maybe, but unlikely. Lord Coe is too much establishment and too little hustle. New York's bid is too virtual. Watch this space.

Then, too, there is the travelling rep version of the Olympic Pantomime, a production which brings a little bit of the feel of the big production right to our own homes and villages.

Whatever happened to Pat Hickey? How old do you have to be to remember when Hickey was the cloven-footed devil incarnate of Irish sport? When his evil was banished, well, then we'd be forced to stay indoors for long periods every four years as the gold medals rained down on us.

Here we are with the Athens Review in our sweaty little palms and Hickey isn't even given a jab with a cattle prod. The Olympic Council of Ireland (OCI) just tick over and watch, wryly one would imagine, as the scandals pile up in inverse proportion to the medals.

And the blame. Hard to know and hard to discover until the dust settles on the legal feud between the Irish Sports Council and the NCTC in Limerick. The Athens Review has a little bit for everyone, but not a lot for anyone in particular except those crazy sailing dudes who got their own report and a bottle of Tippex.

One thing is for sure, though: John O'Donoghue seems to be on to a winner with his Institute of Sport for Abbotstown idea. A low-key usage of a facility which has cost the taxpayer plenty already, the idea promises a fresh start and the way forward in terms of importing the best of coaching expertise in various disciplines with a medium to long-term view of coaching the athletes and coaching the coaches.

The Athens Review in itself is, in the words of that early morning guy, a good report but not a great report. Wharton Consulting, who gathered the information, didn't seem the obvious choice from their background (judging by their website, a root-and-branch examination of rugby league appears to be their major claim to fame), and what lies between the pages is long on buzzwords but short on coalface testimony.

Oddly, given John Treacy's genuine and decent passion for the anti-doping lobby and the work he has done in that regard, the Athens Review makes no mention of drugs.

We might know the way forward for better results and more medals, but where is the way forward for better sport and cleaner sport? We had two major doping scandals last year, but, as with the Michelle Smith case a few years ago, the details and the anecdotes surrounding Cathal Lombard and Cian O'Connor were such that we never really got on to the serious debate.

Perhaps the obsession with medals is the problem. Perhaps the narrowness of our sporting view and the sports menu we offer to kids is the problem. Perhaps the absence of a serious sports curriculum for young people is hurting us.

How can we test kids for something as subjective as art (and hey, we may not know much about art in this column but we know what we like: we like kids studying it) but not offer them sport as a school subject?

So these two worlds keep spinning. The IOC grandees on whatever planet they live on and the Sports Council, the OCI and the rest of us here on the little satellite. They spin the way they do and we never pause to stop and ask why. If all our efforts are worth it, if there is any ethical or moral value underpinning what goes on.

Still, the show is good and on a clear day you can connect the dots from Basra to Abbotstown. That's why it will run and run. There's no business like sports business.