Peter Corrigan: Why sport should call in the United Nations

When they are not as busy as they are at the moment, I suggest that the United Nations consider setting up a sports division. We don't have anyone quite as dangerous as Saddam Hussein troubling the sporting world, but there are one or two regimes capable of causing considerable grief and confusion.

Just because they are running organisations instead of countries it doesn't mean that they should allowed to run amok with policies and priorities totally unsuited to the wellbeing of the sports they control.

Not for one minute would I suggest that when George Bush has finished with Saddam he should send a couple of aircraft carriers to surround Sepp Blatter of Fifa, but it does irritate that there is no power on earth which can prevent our most important institutions being hijacked by despots or incompetents who can wreak untold damage.

Blatter is by no means the only high-profile sporting figure whose activities are highly questionable, but since he runs the world's most important game his excesses are the most worrying.

The International Olympic Committee are well along the road to repairing the damage to their image inflicted under the long reign of their former president Juan Antonio Samaranch. Even now we are not aware of the full extent of the corruption involved in the awarding of the Olympic Games to various host cities.

And who was to stop them? They make their own rules and the only law governing them is the one unto themselves. This lack of control does not apply only at global level. In this country we have seen many examples of governing bodies whose acts have been in sore need of cleaning up but who have been able to carry on regardless.

Often, more than one body claims to be in charge of a particular sport, and a mighty power battle ensues. We have seen this, ludicrously, at world level in boxing, but also here in games as diverse as snooker, darts and bowls.

One snooker body once enrolled Jeffrey Archer as president, presumably to improve their image. Still, the Conservative Party were still treating him as one of their little treasures in those days, so it was an understandable error.

Currently, the governing body attracting most attention are the Jockey Club who, for 250 years, have been laying down the law in horseracing; a task in which they are helped in some puzzling way or other by the British Horseracing Board. The subject of a controversial documentary on BBC's Panorama last Sunday, the Club were accused of failing in their duty to regulate the sport properly and have the courage to tackle its darker side. In a sport so concerned with thoroughbreds I suppose it is inevitable that the Jockey Club should be heavily manned by the upper classes. Unfortunately, it appears that breeding is a more reliable guide to horses than it is to human beings.

Although Panorama made some piercing allegations about the Club's stewardship of racing it didn't really have anything new to throw at them, and the presenter of their investigations had a manner that grated on the viewer as much as it did on those he tried to interview.

But, without question, the programme was worth doing. Who, if not the media, are going to expose the frailties of those who are supposed to be protecting us from the evil that invades sport with depressing regularity? Undoubtedly there is corruption in racing, and the Jockey Club have not been very successful in producing the iron fist that could control it, although the programme has spurred them into beefing up their security measures.

I hope Panorama continue their investigations and dig up the evidence that justifies another tilt on the subject. The BBC have the resources to do it and, I submit, the duty to do more for the sports fan than merely show him or her events.

At the moment, all that's come out of it is a drama called Goodbye Mr Phipps. I don't know Jeremy Phipps, the Jockey Club's former security chief, but he was well and truly shafted by his predecessor, Roger Buffham, who wore a hidden microphone when they met in the bar and recorded Phipps's unflattering comments on Club members.

They sounded pretty accurate to me, but Phipps did the honourable thing and resigned last week. I am sorry for him. I can't count the number of times I have stood at the bar and slagged off my employers – while they were with me, on a regrettable number of occasions – and the subterfuge did more to prove dishonesty in broadcasting than in racing.

But nothing the Jockey Club did or didn't do bears the slightest comparison to the chaos that Blatter is inflicting on the world of football, and only the media seem to have the persistence to break down the man's remarkable resilience in the face of overwhelming opposition. It is still a matter of wonder how he escaped being blasted out of office just before the World Cup in June. Fifa's then general secretary, Michel Zen-Ruffinen, had filed a dossier alleging criminal use of association funds to prosecutors in Switzerland, where Fifa have their headquarters.

Another embarrassing court case, concerning the collapse of their former marketing agents, ISL, is pending, as is an internal audit forced on Blatter earlier this year which he has suspended without obvious cause.

Not only did Blatter escape the ramifications of all that at the Fifa congress, he sacked Zen-Ruffinen and has ousted another 20 top administrators who could have been considered a danger to him.

He has emerged more powerful than ever, and the latest demonstrations of his autocracy – the new red-card laws and the transfer windows – are starting to cause utter confusion. The man must be stopped. The only swift way is to create another worldwide football organisation for all the national football associations to join and leave Blatter in control of nothing. With any luck it will be years before the next megalomaniac wriggles his way to the top.

The champion horse thief

It is surprising that any investigation into racing invariably overlooks the biggest crooks – the horses. When you think how mollycoddled racehorses are compared to their brothers and sisters who have to earn their keep pulling carts, carrying cavalrymen, sticking their arses into the faces of football hooligans and giving riding lessons to big lumps, many of them have an unforgivable lack of diligence on the course.

I half-owned a lovely bay once, and he flattered to deceive every time he went on the track. So he might have been miffed at being gelded, but he had a lovely life apart from that.

And on the gallops he ran like the wind, constantly fooling the trainer into making wild predictions about his chances. He would always move promisingly for the first half of a race and then pack it in. He was mostly ridden by the same young jockey, who kept making excuses for him. He didn't like the ground, he needs a longer distance...

Then, after the horse had trotted up an unconcerned 10th at Clonmel, the jockey jumped down and said disgustedly: "He's a thief, Peter."

The nag is now leading a life of Riley in Donegal and we're still counting the cost. Contrary horses have a bigger effect on race results than all the crooked trainers, bent jockeys and corrupt bookmakers put together. Anyone who bets on them deserves all they get or, to put it more accurately, all they don't get.