Sports Books Blog

I’ve never been able to properly appreciate tennis. When I was a sports reporter I had to cover it. I once reported on Rod Laver on an outside court at Bristol by standing on a roller and I once had to ask Sue Barker at the Northern Championships in Manchester if she’d come north to see Manchester United and England winger Steve Coppell. She was very gracious about such an intrusion into her private life. And I covered Wimbledon when Borg and McEnroe played their famous ‘tie-break’ match.
But generally I can take it or leave it. I don’t watch Wimbledon on TV until the last few days and I despair at the attitude of the Lawn Tennis Association spoon feeding so many nonentities just because Wimbledon guarantees them a fortune each year.
Last time I went – about ten years ago – I found the best way to watch the matches was from the champagne tent, checking up every now and then on the scoreboard on the outside of the centre court.
But today I happened to watch Miss Barker interveiwing Virginia Wade on BBC at lunchtime about the events of the 1977 Queen’s Jubilee tournament when Barker was defeated in the semis and Wade went on to beat Betty Stove in the final.
Great stuff. Two middle-aged women reminiscing and laughing about Wade’s greatest hour and Barker’s biggest disappointment plus clips of the 1977 tournament,  the first shown on colour TV.
Thankfully the BBC decided against sticking in the apparently de rigueur tabloid journalist (see the Gaby Logan show) and playing everything in slow motion to a musical background.
The result was amusing and full of interest. “Did you know what I did during your final?” asked Barker. “Went shopping.”
“Spend your prize money?” asked Wade.
“And more because we didn’t get much in those days. I must have gone in every jewellers in London. And each time I passed a shop with a TV on showing what was happening in your match.
“Did you know I played Betty in Denver a couple of weeks later and beat her?” asked Barker who has had a wonderful job done on her teeth since those just-out-of-teenage years. “Guess what the score was? Love and one. But I’ve got over it now!”
Well done the BBC – why can’t they employ the same thoughtful approach to their coverage of athletics?

There is no denying that athletics – track and field to any American reading this – is in a bit of a slump in Britain at the moment. Not even we at SportsBooks, which publishes the ATFS annual and therefore has a large stake in the health of the sport, would deny that.
There is a myriad of reasons for that. Bad appointments at the top; at the moment the top three people in the sport – the chairman of UK Athletics, his chief executive and the performance director – do not have a background within athletics, which is astonishing. I can see the logic that an outside chairman or chief executive might provide fresh thinking but all three?
They can hardly be to blame though because they have only just taken over, although the people that picked them ought to be examining their thought processes and wondering if it’s time for retirement.
And after watching the start of the European Cup – I say the start for reasons which will become clear – I’ve started to think that the BBC might be partly to blame for the regard within which the sport is held these days. They switched over from the athletics to the tennis at Eastbourne which was overrunning on BBC 2. The tennis switched to BBC I and Ascot came onto BBC2.
I can understand why any sports minded producer would want to keep following the tennis and that nice Hazel Irvine told us they would tape the athletics so we wouldn’t miss anything when they returned.
Now I like horse racing but I wondered why they couldn’t tape the races and let us watch the athletics especially when the first few minutes of Ascot was given up to wittering about fashion. Just shows what the BBC sports hierarchy thinks about athletics.
Mind you that’s been obvious for some time now. They’ve foisted on us athletes without any broadcasting talent as presenters and commentators for many years . Thankfully they’ve got rid of Sally Gunnell – lovely person but even her mother couldn’t claim she was a natural on the box – and replaced her by professional journalists in Phil Jones and Ms Irvine. But they still keep Colin Jackson who can’t put his words together in sentences – lovely man etc. but. Then there is Jonathan Edwards? Heaven forbid.
But even Ivrine and Jones suffer from the  BBC habit of patrionising their interviewees. Craig Pickering won the 100 metres and at the end of the interview Irvine said: “Go off and prepare for the relay tomorrow” as if she was some sort of broadcasting queen handing out favours. What’s wrong with “thank you for talking to us”?
Jackson’s comment on Pickering’s run was: “Once he hit the front there’s no going back for him.” I think I know what he meant.
I’d rather remember Jackson and Gunnell and Edwards (although I have issues here and anyone who wants to discuss them in private should get in touch) as the great athletes they were; not mediorce broadcasters. Some great athletes are good on TV. Steve Cram is an excellent commentator except when he starts trying to be funny with fellow north easterner Brendan Foster (and please don’t get me started on how bad he is, which shows that thinking great athletes make competent TV people is not an entirely new habit) while Michael Johnson, one of the truly great runners, is also a fine summariser. I can’t imagine him saying: “he’ll be disappointed.” Johnson tells it as it is.
Athletics suffers too because the BBC seem to think we the viewing public want to see a panting athlete answering anodyne questions as soon as they’ve finished. There must be a BBC question book. “You must be disappointed/elated…”
Poor Ben Carne made his debut in the 400 metres hurdles, finished sixth and was then grabbed by Irvine. We could hardly hear him because he was gulping for air and really had nothing to say after doing what was expected on his first run. And afterwards Irvine thought it was funny that he wasn’t used to be interviewed when he wanted to warm down. It can only be put down to BBC arrogance of the sort that made Raj Persaud, microphone in hand, tell the camera at Ascot on Friday:”There’s the trainer talking to the press.” Whereupon he pushed in and asked a question.
And do us racing fans get a good deal from the BBC? Here are two things from their website on Saturday’s Ascot.

“First prediction correct for the day – the Queen is wearing pink – pale pink with a tweed coat and dress. I think I will quit while I am ahead – like any punter should…”

BBC fashion expert James Sherwood: “I find Saturday’s fashion more frivolous than formal but I like it.”

And this is sport? I think I’ll go and lie down.

I was going to attack the new 2012 London Olympics logo, believing, as someone said that it looked like Lisa Simpson had replaced Monica Lewinsky in President Clinton’s affections, but it’s growing on me.
When I first saw it I thought “good Lord that spells ‘shit’” but then I realised I was looking at a spoof version someone had sent to the Daily Telegraph!
And when I saw the real one, like seemingly everyone else I didn’t think much of it. But then the BBC had a contest and another design agency came up with a winner that spelled London 2012 in curly writing, a logo that seemed tired and out of date before you’d realised what it meant.
Then style “guru” Stephen Bayley attacked the real logo in the papers and that helped me change my mind. After all if he doesn’t like it chances are most other people will.
It doesn’t look like we expect an Olympic logo to look but what Olympic logos were great works of art anyway? Mexico maybe, Barcelona probably, Tokyo definitely but none of the others surely?