Ruling the Waves – both sea & radio…
By Michael Weadock, Oct 2023
If the delay to the Tokyo Olympics meant the build-up to those Games felt like a marathon, the shortened three-year cycle to Paris means the build-up to these Games feels like a sprint.
With ten months until the Opening Ceremony, Team GB are now in the process of formally announcing their selected athletes. The first ten names on the list are all from British Sailing and this week they gathered for a media call at St Pancras Station in London, next to the Eurostar, which will be taking them on their journey to Paris before an onward trip to Marseilles where the sailing events are being held.
Anything but Footy worked closely with British Sailing for the announcement to record a special edition of our podcast which featured Mark Robinson – the Team Leader – along with each of those named athletes who will be going to the Olympics in 2024. We included extended chats with John Gimson and Anna Burnet, who together won silver in Tokyo, windsurfer Emma Wilson, a bronze medallist from Tokyo who will be competing in the new iQFoil class and Sam Sills who is making his Olympic debut. The podcast was recorded and all put together and was available to listen on the same day. Our background in broadcast news and current affairs means we are very experienced in quick turnaround production – an important skill when events are time sensitive, like a team announcement.
Along with the podcast, John also joined Lunchtime Live on BBC Radio Scotland broadcasting from the event at St. Pancras to talk more about the two Scottish sailors named in the team – Anna Burnet and Fynn Sterritt. The interviews we recorded on the day were also broadcast on a number of UK commercial radio stations. Windsurfer Sam Sills, who was born in Plymouth and lives in Launceston, was heard by listeners to Heart in Devon and Cornwall, Goudhurst resident Freya Black was included in news bulletins on Heart in Kent as well as Heart Devon as she’s an Exeter Uni student while Dorchester-born Ellie Aldridge’s interview went out across the south of England on Bauer’s Wave 105.2.
UK commercial radio continues to draw huge audiences and with changes in BBC Local Radio meaning more sharing of services, there is a huge opportunity for non-BBC local radio stations to place an emphasis on their localness. And, against this backdrop, it also underlines the importance of radio and audio to organisations like British Sailing and Team GB. Their athletes are superstars, who have been working for most of their lives towards selection for the Olympic Games, and they deserve to be able to tell their stories to the widest possible audience and we’re very proud of our role in being given continued opportunities to help that storytelling.
