Barry Davies

Barry George Davies (born 24 October 1937) is an English retired sports commentator and television presenter. He covered a wide range of sports in a long career, primarily for the BBC.

Although best known for his football commentary, Davies has commentated on numerous other sports, including tennis, badminton, ice skating, gymnastics, hockey, ice hockey, cycling, beach volleyball and athletics. He was prominent in the BBC's Olympics coverage, where he twice (Sydney 2000, Athens 2004) commentated on the opening and closing ceremonies of the Summer Games. He also covered both ceremonies for the Olympic Broadcasting Service coverage of the London 2012 games.

Davies was also the voice of the boat race between 1993 and 2004 and the presenter of Maestro in the 1980s (a series of interviews with retired sporting legends). His was the voice that welcomed tourists to London Heathrow in 2012 as they arrived for the Olympic Games. Davies has covered more Summer Olympics (12) than any other British sports broadcaster.

Davies was born in London and was educated at Cranbrook School in Cranbrook, Kent – which also numbers commentators Brian Moore and Peter West among its alumni – and King's College London, where he read Dentistry, although contrary to what has often been reported he never qualified or practised as a dentist. He says in his autobiography that his original aim was to become a doctor, but although he did well in his school exams, he didn't quite get the grades required to win a university place to read medicine. Dentistry was therefore a second choice that he "soon came to regret" and eventually he "flunked out" due to spending too much time playing and watching sport.

Davies started his broadcasting career with British Forces Broadcasting while doing his National Service in the British Army of the Rhine as a second-lieutenant in West Germany. Davies' boss at BFBS was Gerald Sinstadt, who, upon their return to Britain, helped Davies get into BBC Radio in 1963, working concurrently as a sports journalist for The Times. Perhaps his most iconic and famous commentary was during the Manchester City versus Derby County league encounter in 1974 when Derby's Francis Lee turned on the edge of the box and unleashed an unstoppable screamer into Manchester City's net. "Interesting – Very interesting – Look at his face, just look at his face!"

Ahead of the 1966 FIFA World Cup he took his first steps into television with ITV. He made his debut on a Fairs Cup tie between Chelsea and A.C. Milan, played on 16 February 1966, before covering England's pre-World Cup friendly with West Germany. During the World Cup in England, Davies covered all the matches in the North East, including North Korea's famous 1–0 win over Italy, although none of them were broadcast live, because in those days all the matches on the same day kicked off at the same time and in the days before multi-channel television only one game, invariably the one involving England would be shown live. Davies would not make his "live" network football debut until the 1970 World Cup, when he commentated on Italy vs Uruguay for the BBC, although in May 1969 he had commentated on the Wales vs Scotland game in the Home International Championship when still with ITV, but this game was only shown live in the LWT and HTV Wales regions.

His spell with ITV continued for another three years, providing commentaries for ABC and Granada Television. Davies also covered the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City, commentating on a number of sports. When LWT launched in 1968, he was the choice of the Deputy Head of Sport John Bromley to commentate on and present their new football show The Big Match. Bromley's boss Jimmy Hill won the argument though and installed his choice, Brian Moore, in the role that he would fill for the next thirty years (Moore had commentated on the 1966 World Cup Final for BBC radio), although Davies and Moore both claimed to have been unaware of this until many years later.

Davies joined the BBC in July 1969, making his first brief on-screen appearance as a touchline reporter at the Wales v Rest of the UK International football match held to celebrate the Investiture of the Prince of Wales, but for the next 35 years he was closely associated with the Match of the Day programme, making his debut in unusual circumstances on 9 August 1969. The programme was to take up a new format, providing each region with its own second match. Davies was signed primarily to cover matches in the North of England and was assigned League Champions Leeds United's match with Tottenham Hotspur on day one. However, on the day before the broadcast, main commentator and presenter David Coleman lost his voice, succumbing to the same flu illness that had already ruled Kenneth Wolstenholme out of covering that weekend's matches. Davies, who had stayed in the Queen's Hotel in Leeds on the Friday night, describes in his autobiography how he "barely had time to eat his cornflakes" on the Saturday morning before being put in a fast car and driven to London so he could commentate on the main match, Crystal Palace v Manchester United, and co-present the show with Frank Bough.