Pat Hickey finally got to the top of the world - and it blew up right in his face

Patrick Hickey, President of the Olympic Council of Ireland, leaves the Hospital Samaritano Barra in a wheelchair to a waiting police car in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Photo by Brendan Moran/Sportsfile

Kim Bielenberg

At the beginning of this year, Pat Hickey wrote an article for a sporting website and posed the question: "How do you follow a year like 2015?"

From his lofty position as President of the European Olympic Committees, he could hardly have expected that in 2016 he would be arrested at dawn, naked in a hotel room in Rio - and later kept in police custody facing allegations of ticket touting.