Uh-oh. If it's about underwear, David Beckham must be involved.

Polo, the ski-shop manager at Les Barmes de l'Ours, Val d'Isère's swankiest hotel, is the kind of fellow one finds only in winter-sports resorts and Bond movies: charming, cooler than cool, with an impressive air of worldliness for a man whose horizons are all jagged and snow capped.

Pyeongchang won the right to host the 2018 Winter Olympics yesterday with a crushing victory in the vote by the International Olympic Committee over Munich and Annecy.

Riot police fired tear gas to control a mob that burned cars and looted shops in downtown Vancouver on Wednesday after the Canucks lost the Stanley Cup final to the Boston Bruins.

Investment in the $7.8bn construction programme for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, will come mostly from the private sector, says the games' chief organiser.

A British firm today said it had signed a deal with the operator of the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan to supply emergency power.

Life isn't always glamorous for the chief executives of our biggest companies.

Three Russian tourists were shot dead in an apparent terrorist attack near a ski resort in the south of the country at the weekend. The killings further dented Moscow's ambitious plan to turn the troubled North Caucasus region into a world-class ski destination and promote the sport ahead of the 2014 Winter Olympics, which will be held at the nearby resort of Sochi.

British skiing has been in the deep freeze for some years now. Not that it was ever really hot stuff, most of the nation's wintry successes coming via the ice age of daredevil bobbers, sequinned skaters or the inimitable dancing feet of T and D. So it is heartening to learn that there is a teenage skier whose burgeoning talent is warming the cockles for the future.

Austria's Elisabeth Goergl upstaged favourites Maria Riesch and Lindsey Vonn yesterday to snatch the women's Super-G gold in the opening event of the Alpine skiing world championships in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.

About 100 sled dogs were killed inhumanely and dumped in a mass grave when a tour operator's bookings dropped sharply after the 2010 Winter Olympics.