But it's not fair, sir. It's an unfair world, Barnes, my headmaster would reply with immense complacency, deeply gratified that the power of organising petty injustices was always to hand. By the time we leave school, we all of us know that life is unfair. Most of us accept it. Very, very few people try to change it.

One of the most moving sights I have seen in a lifetime of covering sport was a chunk of plastic beside a small platform in Manchester. The platform was a starting block at a swimming pool, the occasion was the Commonwealth Games of 2002, and the chunk of plastic was a prosthetic leg. Its owner, Natalie Du Toit, was competing for South Africa.

You probably remember the story: an amputee, a swimmer short of half a leg, competing against able-bodied swimmers, and not looking outclassed at all. She just missed qualifying for the Olympic Games of 2000 when she was 16 and the possessor of two entire legs. A year later, she was knocked off her motor-scooter and so lost half the leg. It's unfair when anyone young and talented and vital has an accident; when the person is an athlete it seems quite crucifyingly unjust.

But Du Toit just carried on swimming. She missed qualification for the Olympics four years ago, but by now you will not exactly be surprised to learn that she didn't give up. Last weekend, she qualified for the Beijing Olympic Games. She finished fourth in the 10-kilometre open water World Championship in Seville and so races in August.

This is a new event for the Games and it presents swimming as something of a contact sport, in uncontrolled water, at the far end of endurance. It is not for the faint-hearted, but clearly that is not a factor to affect Du Toit.

Stories such as this always matter to us, but the reason such stories touch us so deeply is because of the matter of fairness. We warm to people who take arms against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune; we are lost in admiration of those who, by opposing, end them. Du Toit has done something to combat the hideous unfairness of her life. In Beijing she will be swimming for everyone who has ever suffered any kind of unfairness and that, as my headmaster told us, is every single one of us.

England failure maybe, but still much to cherish

Mark Ramprakash has scored another century, his 99th. His century of centuries will probably happen the next time he lifts a bat in the LV County Championship, or, should the unthinkable happen, the next but one. He has averaged more than a hundred for two seasons running, and what's more, his batting has as much grace and beauty as anyone, absolutely any, who ever played the game.

But I wish it was not compulsory that on every occasion when he plays a brilliant innings — and these occasions come thick and fast — to ask why he is not playing for England. It does him a disservice, it does us all a disservice. He doesn't play for England because, years ago, he was tested and found wanting.

The greater intensity of the game found out the flaws in his temperament, and that's that.

It's no good wondering if he's grown out of it. On the whole, competitive nerve is a wasting asset. At 38, Ramprakash is highly unlikely to turn into the England player he always should have been, and what's more, he's not going to be given the chance. So let us celebrate him as he is. Not only first class of the second class, but perhaps the greatest player of the second class the game has ever produced.

Talented Phillips a double diamond

I love those little sporting vignettes that reveal how much better - how many miles and light years better - the top athletes are than the rest of us. Zara Phillips rode her cross-country on Ardfield Magic Star in a double-bridle, something that has had all us horsey types a-prattling. She gained added stopping power, but required a second pair of reins.

Now, whenever I have ridden with a double, I have made a horrible cat's cradle of the reins every time I attempted to adjust my grip. To use a double in the hurlyburly and terror of cross-country is the most extraordinary virtuoso piece of skill, and Phillips rode a dashing round, to get a talented but slightly maniacal horse around the course. As Butch Cassidy said: “I couldn't do that, could you do that? How can they do that?”

Fame is the name of the game

Will someone tell me about the love for football of Roman Abramovich? The legend of his conversion to the beautiful game is accepted as an established fact. As Chelsea marched into the final of the Champions League, we are fed a line about Abramovich scarcely caring, wrapped up in business in Russia, distressed that his dreams of beauty are not made flesh by the football club that he owns.

We are told that Chelsea are a rich man's glorious folly, a businessman's longing for something perfect, for something lovely, for something gloriously human. The failure to produce this is why José Mourinho had to go and why Avram Grant will go as well. But I wonder if that's really true. I wonder if Chelsea have not already done everything that Abramovich wanted.

As a businessman, Abramovich had everything except fame. For less than a billion quid, he is a household name. That is not merely gratifying in itself; far more importantly, it enables him to use his fame, his vastly raised profile, to work on the one thing that he really does find beautiful. That is to say, the pursuit of pure power.

Dress for the occasion

I am writing these words in the press tent at the Badminton Horse Trials, and a year is never allowed to pass without a little sneering from urban smart-arses. Badminton is an annual gathering of the clans from the backwoods: on the Saturday, the cross-country day, 150,000 pile into the Duke of Beaufort's estate.

Just about everyone has a dog. So many people, that you think you are a character in Philip Pullman's Northern Lights, in which each person had an external soul that takes the form of an animal. And since just about everybody who comes here is country, you can laugh about the clothes they wear. Hats! Wax coats! Wellington boots! Corduroy trousers! Shall I tell you something utterly hilarious? People don't only live in the country, they actually wear clothes suitable for the purpose!