Team talkSPORT
By Michael Weadock, July 2024
This week has been an exciting one as we have had the opportunity to spend time with Team GB to hear more about their plans for Paris. They operate a very well drilled operation for the media with a real proactive approach to facilitating opportunities and time with athletes, their family and their friends and it is a key reason why Team GB – as a brand – is held in such high-esteem across the country.
We were also able to catch up with colleagues at UK Sport. UK Sport is the Government agency for high performance sport and they have been setting out their targets for medals at the Olympic and Paralympic Games. For the Olympic Games, there is a medal range of between 50-70 medals and for the Paralympic Games, the medal range is between 100 and 140 medals.
Both were great events to attend as part of our preparation before a trip over the river to meet up with the team who will be delivering 250 hours of Olympic Games coverage across talkSPORT and talkSPORT 2. We’ve been working really closely with the live sport team at talkSPORT on the planning and preparation of the coverage so it was a really uplifting moment to see how the plans for each day look as well as meet the people behind the scenes who will craft the overall sound. On the radio, the line-up of presenters, commentators, reporters and pundits has also been announced. We think talkSPORT have done an amazing job in pulling a brilliant group of people together. We sat together with Paralympic medallist Stef Reid, who will be one of our presentation team in Paris, to talk about what we hoped to achieve with our coverage. Stef is not the only big name signing.
In Sir Steve Redgrave and Dame Kelly Holmes, listeners will be hearing the insights and expert opinions from two absolute legends of British sport. Even casual sports fans won’t require an introduction to their achievements, but for the record Sir Steve won five gold medals at five consecutive games in rowing whilst Dame Kelly won two gold medals at one games in athletics.
We’ve mentioned many times how the 1984 Games in Los Angeles was our introduction to the Olympics and forty years on, we’ll have the chance to reminisce with Javelin gold medallist Tessa Sanderson as she will be a guest too.
And, it’s the freshness of our other roster of pundits that really excites us. When putting together a team of experts we aimed to secure athletes with very recent experiences of competing at the highest level as well as knowing about what it takes to achieve at a global level. Injuries have meant that Adam Gemili was unable to qualify as an athlete this time around. Instead, he will be with us each night for the athletics to bring the knowledge gathered from competing in London, Rio and Tokyo to our audience. The 2017 World Champion will also know better than most how his teammates who have been selected are feeling having been part of that squad alongside them this year.
At the swimming, World Champion Molly Renshaw and double Olympic silver medallist Jazz Carlin will be on talkSPORT to talk about predicted medal success in the pool for Team GB. Again, both will be able to impart their wisdom having been there and done it and having competed and trained alongside those aiming for gold, silver and bronze.
It is the same story for hockey, rugby sevens and rowing where we have 2016 Olympic Champion Alex Danson, World Cup winner Rocky Clarke and Olympic silver medallists Polly Swann and Jack Beaumont respectively.
We really do believe talkSPORT have put together a team of great communicators who will bring a new energy, freshness and enthusiasm to their punditry.
