It’s always the same when it comes to the really big events, whether it’s football’s World Cup or the Olympic Games – the closer these tournaments get, the more you want to be sure that you are in the best of form and shape. Yet, in a second, fate or an opponent can intervene and suddenly, dreams of glory are in tatters.

It won’t be any consolation to Malaysia’s badminton star Lee Chong Wei that he’s in good company. The athlete hobbled out of the Thomas Cup on Tuesday not knowing whether he will be fit to represent his country in London in August.

Lee picked up a serious ankle injury in a game against Denmark’s Peter Gade. He must now wish that the flu that had cast doubt on his participation just before the meet had hung around a little longer.

He left the court in tears, and now a nation is left on tenterhooks. Lee won the silver medal at the Beijing Games in 2008, ending his country’s podium absence of 12 years.

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The Chinese football revolution is showing little sign of stopping as champions Guangzhou Evergrande signed 2006 World Cup winning coach Marcello Lippi.

Lippi is one of the biggest names in the world of football, and is now the second highest paid coach anywhere with an annual salary of 10 million euros – only Jose Mourinho at Real Madrid earns more.

Whether this is good news for Chinese football remains to be seen, but it certainly wasn’t good for Lee Jang-soo. Lippi’s predecessor was fired on Thursday.

This was despite the fact that the South Korean took the team from the second tier to the Chinese Super League in 2010. 

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Noor Al Malki isn’t likely to win any medals at the 2012 London Olympics, but her appearance is going to be one of the most memorable events of the summer.

This summer, there are going to be three female Qatari athletes representing their nation and competing against the best in the world. It will be the first time that the country has sent women to the summer games since 1984.

The tiny country is aiming to become a world class sporting nation and is also hoping to stage the 2020 Olympic Games in Doha and knows that its traditional practice, along with Saudi Arabia and Brunei, in only sending men to the games was damaging those chances.

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There have been some big name soccer stars heading to Asia recently. And none of them are bigger than Raul.

The striker may be 34, but he’s still capable of playing at the highest level. He has just come off two seasons in Germany with FC Schalke and helped the club to the semi-final of last season’s UEFA Champions League. He’s scored a very creditable 36 goals in 86 appearances for the club since arriving in the summer of 2010.

He made his name though, of course, with Real Madrid. The word legend is thrown around too lightly in sport, but there’s no other way to describe him in connection to the Spanish giants. Nobody has played more than him and scored more than him for the nine-time European champion.

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South Korea’s mistake was defeating Hong Kong 21-19 in its opening match of the HSBC Asian 5 Nations rugby tournament. That caught Japan’s attention.

Long the number one team in Asia, Japan decided against resting a few of its main players for the short trip west and took a strong team to beat the Koreans 52-8 and virtually guarantee another title, though all knew it was probably coming anyway.

“I had hoped to take a few more fringe players,” Japan coach Eddie Jones, the man who took Australia to the 2003 World Cup title, said prior to the game. “But we changed that idea when we heard the result from Hong Kong.”

It was a typically impressive performance from the Japanese, although the score line did flatter the visitors a little with three tries coming late in the game with Korea tiring and a man down.

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All in Good Time is based on the 1963 play of the same name by Bill Naughton, and was originally adapted as Rafta Rafta by writer Ayub Khan-Din. Watching it this weekend, I kept wondering whether it might have been best left alone, as what was a decent script that worked well on the stage somehow didn’t quite manage to win me over on the screen. Is this a social drama about sexual tension, family woes, comedy, black humor, or all of these mixed together?

Atul Dutt (the handsome Reece Ritchie) marries Veena Patel (the lovable girl next door type Amara Karan), and they move in with Atul’s parents Eeshwar (Harish Patel) and Lopa Dutt (Meera Syal), and younger brother Jay (Neet Mohan).  They are an everyday working class British Asian family based in the north of England. The film can be placed among a tradition of charming and funny British – and particularly English – social melodramas, kitchen sink dramas, and everyday working class experiences. With the focus of the family being Indian, we get a genuine attempt at a British Asian ensemble through the audio and visual arrangements in the film. However, the script and editing appeared better executed, perhaps, in the second half than the first.  This left for an uncomfortable viewing experience as the first part of the film seemed somehow to lack conviction.

Our lovely young couple, quite innocent and both virgins, try to consummate their marriage amidst a family that’s always in their way (often literally), and with friends and neighbors always prying and watching their every move.  There’s emotional tension, too, between father Harish and son Atul, and Lopa hides a dark and intimate secret that’s revealed later in the film, as things start to go from bad to worse for our newlyweds (doesn’t every family try and hide at least one secret?)

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In England on Sunday, all eyes will be on Manchester. If high flying football club Manchester City defeat Queen’s Park Rangers on the final day of the English Premier League season, then the team will be champions of the country’s top league for the first time since 1968.

It’s all thanks to Sheikh Mansour. The Abu Dhabi billionaire bought the club in 2008, and has since invested not far short of half a billion dollars in taking a reasonably good team into the realms of the best in the land.

If City do win, and take the crown from neighbor and rival Manchester United, it could be the start of a period of domination for perhaps the world’s richest club.

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Sometimes when you see the number of gold medals that the likes of the United States and China rack up at the summer Olympics, you can’t help wondering if it all doesn’t get a little boring winning gold medal after gold medal.

And then you wonder what those athletes who win silver and especially bronze are feeling. China won 51 gold medals in 2008. The 28 bronze medals must have been overshadowed to some extent. After all, the reality is that when you have so many first places, those who finish third don’t get much of a look-in.

But then there are some bronze medals that mean a great deal. Take Afghanistan’s solitary place on the podium in Beijing. It certainly hasn't been forgotten. Rohullah Nikpai won the bronze in the men’s 58 kg category of Tae Kwon Do. It was a momentous win, and if he didn’t know that when he was in Beijing, he realized as soon as he arrived home.

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The visit to Burma last week by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, and his meeting with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, made headlines around the world. Ban hailed the encounter as an opportunity to relax sanctions against the country in the name of a greater cause: the people. This comes against the backdrop of a range of reforms after forty years of oppressive military rule.

Suu Kyi’s resilience, and the plight of the people she has fought to represent, have impressed and touched the world. But while celebrating what appears to be a victory for democracy, and recognizing the political efforts that have gone into achieving this, it’s worth remembering some of the more subtle influences in shaping awareness and change.

In June 2010, Human Rights Watch launched an exciting exhibition called “Burma Installation” at New York’s Grand Central Station as part of a campaign for the release of all political prisoners in Burma. The installation, accompanied by the chanting of mantras by Buddhist monks, wasn’t only a visual project, but called on passengers crisscrossing the station to stop, listen, look and participate in the interactive exhibition.

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As an Iranian-American who has lived and worked all over the world, Afshin Ghotbi’s life is never boring. But 2012 could be his most exciting year yet.

Ghotbi, who left Tehran in 1977 at the age of 13 for southern California, is the head coach of Japanese football club Shimizu S-Pulse, and about a third of the way through the 2012 season, the team is putting together a challenge for the title. The 48 year-old is into his second season in what is widely regarded as Asia’s top league, and it will rank as his greatest achievement to date if he can actually take the club to the title.

After stints on the coaching staff with South Korea at the 2002 World Cup (a magical summer when the team reached the semi-finals) and then the 2006 World Cup and the 2007 Asian Cup, Ghotbi was finally invited back to his original home.

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