The history of disruption to major events dates back to the dark days of Apartheid when Peter (now Lord) Hain led the charge across the cricket fields wherever all-white South Africans were playing in protest of the nation's wretchedly racist regime.

To most of us, those invasions were excusable, and we applauded the motive, courage and defiance of the young men and women who made the world increasingly aware of the iniquitous system of Government in South Africa.

There is no doubt that this particular protest movement was instrumental in helping to eventually abolish Apartheid.

Alas, so many of the escalating demos which have followed have not been as worthy and have served only to aggravate and endangers participants and the public.

Take last weekend. As insidethegames reported yesterday, the Grand National, one of the world’s most prestigious horse racing events, was subject to an attempt by animal rights protestors to prevent it from taking place.

In unseemly scenes st the famous Aintree Racecourse in Liverpool, some 118 arrests were made by police. 

The activists failed in their bid to stop the race but they did manage to delay it by 15 minutes.

According to the owner of one horse which died after falling at the first fence, it had been unsettled by the delay, which makes the fatality somewhat ironic as the aim of the invading mob was to highlight the claim that the race is too dangerous.

A couple of days later, the tree huggers and eco-zealots were at it again.

This time their target was, would you believe, the World Snooker Championships being held in Sheffield. 

What on earth snooker has to do with the ills of the world is impossible to determine.

But this did not stop members of yet another protest group, called Just Stop Oil, from storming into the venue known as the Crucible, one of them hurling orange powder on to a table where play was in progress, smothering the green baize surface.

At the same time, a 52-year-old woman was prevented from jumping onto another table by the match referee. Snookered, you might say.

Not that such boorish behaviour is confined to Britain. It happens in the largest of countries such as the USA, and the smallest. 

For instance, only this week insidethegames also reported from Armenia, a nation not normally associated with major sport, where a young man snatched the Azerbaijan flag from the bearer during the Opening Ceremony of the European Weightlifting Championships and burned it in what was described as "barbaric". 

There is no love lost between Armenia and Azerbaijan, who have been in military conflict for some time. 

The Azerbaijan Government subsequently ordered its team to withdraw from the Championships.

I fear there is much worse to come. 

The London Marathon is bracing itself for a mass invasion of multi-group protestors this weekend. 

Nicknamed the Big One, the demo is expected to attract 30,000 to the capital over four days of anarchy.

Police say they are worried that angry spectators may take the law into their own hands if the marathon is severely disrupted.

Similarly, the bold gendarmes of Paris are said to be deeply concerned about next year's Olympic Games.

There is no bigger sporting stage than the Olympics. 

There are reckoned to be around 200 militant groups worldwide, ranging from the coldest Greenpeace, to the newest Extinction Rebellion. The majority focus on climate change.

What sport has to do with it heaven only knows, except when rain stops play.

It seems inevitable in the present climate that the Paris Games will be subjected to the attention of the activists. 

And as we have seen from recent events in Paris, the French love a good demo.

However, the mind boggles at the prospect of members of Extinction Rebellion or whoever gluing themselves to the track at the Stade de France before the start of the men's 100metres final just as they did on the M25 motorway here in the UK.

Bonne chance!