The future's now, Clive

Try telling that to the 70,000 gathered at Twickenham, Stade de France, Murrayfield, the Millennium Stadium or Stadio Flaminio. Try telling that to the millions watching at home or in the pub. Being No1 on a list does not get them cheering till their throats are dry, or groaning in despair.

To be the best in the world you not only have to beat the best sides in the world but you have to beat them when the chips are down, when a trophy is at stake and when it really matters.

Under Woodward's leadership, England have won an enviable 21 of 25 matches and it is his job as a motivator to take comfort from the 21 wins and learn from the four defeats. Any management course will teach you to see the silver lining in the blackest of clouds but for Woodward, the clouds will continue to darken until his England team can face the crunch matches and win.

In a week in which various football managers have either attacked their own players in the press (David O'Leary), goaded rival managers by attacking their players (Alex Ferguson) or pretended that they don't listen to the criticisms of others (Arsene Wenger), Woodward has taken his own unique approach to dealing with the media.

He never ducks an interview, never refuses to answer a question, he is never dull and is commendably courteous in the face of an awkward interrogation, but he has a worryingly regular line in blame-shifting that always seems to get him off the hook.

If he can blame the defeat by France on the lack of decision making in the backs, then he must also accept that he has failed to identify who is actually leading that decision-making process. Martin Johnson can hardly influence the play-making of the backs from where he is on the pitch, so is there an argument for having two captains?

One to galvanise the forwards who looked so lost last September against Ireland and one to call for a change in plan for the backs, who looked so lost against France. That calls for a fairly major decision from Woodward himself - who should be leading the backs?

Even if he can prove that all he did was inhale a cold remedy, he has taken a banned substance and will be stripped of his medal. Baxter's investment in a legal team may well prove that he is not a cheat but it cannot save him from the rules. The IOC will judge him on the what was found in his system, not on the whys and wherefores of how it got there.

As the police are fond of reminding unwitting offenders, "ignorance is no excuse for breaking the law". The great sadness for Baxter and for the British Olympic movement is that to the general public, a positive drugs test and a medal removed means a headline of "guilty". They don't always bother to read the small print.

Without getting involved in a defence of his character, my inclination is to believe that Baxter is innocent, largely because technical sports don't benefit from stimulants. While it is easy enough to understand the use of drugs for stamina-based sports, such as cross-country skiing, or indeed speed-based sports, like downhill racing, it is technical ability, precision and controlled aggression that wins slalom races, none which can be artificially created.

The tumble from the euphoria of Britain's first Olympic success on snow all the way down to the dejection of the current embroilment in a drugs scandal is a big fall.

It is depressing, demoralising and disheartening but that's nothing compared to what Baxter must be going through. I only hope that he is made of stern stuff because he will soon be more famous than he ever wished to be, and it won't be for having won a bronze medal at the Winter Olympics.

Given their background, it is hardly surprising that both books are based on racing. Many of the personalities and incidents in Jenny's book are based on her own experience.

The arguments over the real-life equivalents of her characters have only just begun. It doesn't take a genius to work out that Jan, the female lead who is a forthright, outspoken single mother battling to upgrade from training point-to-pointers to securing a professional license, is Jenny herself. More interesting is the identity of Jan's husband who dies too early to establish himself. He has been described as "dullish, yet sexually satisfying" so naturally I was intrigued to know whether this was in any way accurate as a portrait of my BBC colleague, Richard.

"Doesn't ring any bells," he told me with a smile that suggested he was happy to live with the former part of the characterisation as long as he could be credited with the latter!