The Sport Thread

It gives ITV some flexibility. They can go over to live coverage with commentary at their leisure, rather than having to rely upon the US networks being ready. By using their own commentators, ITV can also get Ned to plug other events that may be on ITVs channels.

While we're on the topic of cycling, many years ago, about twenty, I was watching something on Grandstand, on BBC1, about cycling, either at the commonwealth games or the Olympics. They showed some footage of a mens road race, and I'm sure Barry Davies was the commentator. Can anyone confirm if he ever did do cycling commentary?

I'd imagine Barry Davies has pretty much commentated on every sport.

Your probably right brekkie, I certaintly remember his later football commentaries on Match of the Day, tennis, hockey, the boat race, gymnastics, ice skating/dancing and commentating on Olympic opening and closing ceremonies but that is probably only scratching the surface as this is from the 1990s onwards.

The only current commentator who can come close to Davies on the amount of sports he commentates on and is probably a modern day Barry Davies is Andrew Cotter who I think is excellent.

Agree with you on that - he is superb.

A decent commentator can do any sport well, sadly we no longer seem to be developing that talent, relying on ex-pros to commentate on their former sport only. The plethora of channels of course isn't helping either, enabling poorer 'talent' to get chosen reguarly.

There's also a lot more specialism these days. The BBC need a pool of commentators for "random" sports they only do a couple of times a year, who can also be deployed on big events where they need lots of commentators.

But once you look to the supports broadcasters, they have enough work to have dedicated commentators per sport. If you're a Sky football commentator, unless you go out to get the work, you're bit going to find yourself doing cycling one day, rowing the next and finding the week on some bowls. And if you're not doing that sort of thing regularly, you're not going to get that breadth of knowledge the flexible commentators have.

They have those people available, for example Look North's Harry Gration often goes to the Olympics to do some of the sports they don't usually cover.

Nick Mullins the only one who comes to mind who doesn't work for the BBC.

George Hamilton tends to be the catch all commentator for RTÉ.

Of course he was BBC for a long time before going to ESPN then BT Sport but he still does Wimbledon and Olympic Judo for the BBC but the main broadcasters he works for is BT Sport and ITV



They have a number of people that go across different sports such as Joanne Cantwell, Darragh Maloney, Peter Collins & the late great Bill O'Herlihy but not really commentators like George Hamilton who does a lot of varied sport for them.

Don't forget Ger Canning too, who alright chiefly associated with GAA (in the same way Hamilton is with football) often commentates on football too.

In fact GAA is the one (or two!) sport(s) you'll never hear George Hamilton commentate on. He's done nearly everything else.

Ronald McIntosh, commentates on boxing primarily but also does tennis (his debut match was that long long Isner v Mahut at Wimbledon) and believe also commentated on basketball at the Olympics.