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Yet that foray into sport was an isolated one in Beijing this week as the Olympic movement gathered, the last such gathering before they return here for the start of the Games in four months time.

Most of the talk was about human rights - it dominated both of Rogge's press conferences, on Thursday and Friday, and also his interview with me.

There was just no getting away from the wider issues that surround these most controversial and unique of Games.

There are many in the Olympic movement who would argue that this move away from sports to politics has come about because of the way protestors have seized on this issue. Some of them would also blame the media.

They feel it is unfair to press the Olympic movement on issues such as human rights as these are issues for politicians, not sports administrators, the UN rather than the .

Why ask the IOC about issues over which it has no control?

There is some merit in that argument.

While the week has seen calls for a boycott of the opening ceremony of the Games, in Beijing we have seen the visits by the Prime Ministers of New Zealand and Australia.

The Australian Prime Minister charmed Chinese by speaking in Mandarin, but at the same time, his police chief was making it clear that the Chinese security police who guard the torch would not be welcome in Canberra when the torch gets there.

But contradictory as this sounds, the fact is - as this week has again shown in many ways - that the Olympics and Olympic administrators invite such questions because they make claims about the way the movement reaches far beyond sport.

One of my most abiding memories is of the Opening Ceremony of the Lillehammer Winter Olympics of 1994.

The war in Bosnia was at its height, and in his opening speech, the then IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch made a theatrical appeal asking the warring sides to lay down their arms as a gesture to honour the Olympics.

That appeal did not solve the crisis, but he and many in the Olympic movement felt it was worth making that request.

Samaranch's appeal also chimed in with the feeling among many Olympic administrators that the Games go into areas which politics cannot. They can unite nations in the way politicians do not, and they can promote sports and harmony.

For many of them, the Olympics is not just 17 days of great sporting action but a festival that, through sport, unites mankind.

And the way the Olympic movement has grown, it does present itself as more than just a sports body.

Take for example, applying for Olympic accreditation.

Under the agreement that host cities sign with the IOC, it is required to accept that an Olympic accreditation will act as a visa for the country in which the Games are being held.

So for instance the accreditation means that when athletes, officials, media come to China, they will not require any further visa - all they have to do is carry their Olympic accreditation.

It will be interesting to see come the Games whether this Olympic accreditation will also mean the person with accreditation can go to Tibet. That is by no means clear.

But while in this regard it may have extra powers, when it comes to really weighty issues like human rights and getting a country to live up to their moral bargains, Olympic chiefs have to accept there are limitations.

Rogge put this very plainly when we spoke.

"We are not a sovereign organisation" he told me.

"We have no legislative powers, we speak with our ethical values and we can only hope governments will listen to us."

The problem is that because the IOC is such a unique sports organisation, and it does have powers (such as the accreditation process) that no other sports organisation has, when it makes a genuine plea of helplessness on issues such as human rights, many find it difficult to believe.

This dilemma will continue to dog the Olympic movement as we move nearer the Beijing Games, and the questions about China's human rights continue to grow.