The TV personality Fred Sirieix, whose daughter is in the Great Britain Olympic diving squad, will be among the BBC presenters for the Paris Games next month.
Andrea Spendolini-Sirieix is a World, European and Commonwealth Games medallist in various 10m diving events and, at the age of just 19, will be going to her second Olympics in July, when she will be a realistic medal hope.
Her family were unable to travel to Tokyo due to the Covid-19 restrictions but her father, the Frenchman who is best known for his starring role in Channel 4’s First Dates series, will be in the French capital as part of the BBC’s team.
Sirieix is expected to be a studio guest for the diving competition, where he could be required to analyse his daughter’s performance, and is also expected to be involved in other short features relating to his home country.
He will join a more familiar roster of BBC Sport presenters in Paris, which will also include Hazel Irvine, Gabby Logan, Clare Balding, Mark Chapman, Isa Guha, Jeanette Kwakye and JJ Chalmers.
BBC pundits will include Britain’s two most decorated female Olympians, Dame Laura Kenny and Dame Katherine Grainger, cycling great Sir Chris Hoy, retired heptathletes Dame Denise Lewis and Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill, as well as the American four-time Olympic sprint gold medallist Michael Johnson.
Sharron Davies, who won an Olympic silver medal in 1980 behind an East German swimmer who later admitted to doping, will report on the swimming competition as part of a team that includes double Olympic champion Rebecca Adlington.
Chapman will also front the BBC’s radio coverage alongside Adrian Chiles, Eleanor Oldroyd, Kelly Cates, Naga Munchetty and Tony Livesey.
As in Tokyo, the BBC will have only two live broadcast streams after the International Olympic Committee awarded media rights in Europe to Warner Bros Discovery, which owns Eurosport and the streaming service Discovery+. It also co-owns TNT Sport, whose customers can access the Discovery+ platform.
The BBC will have one live channel as well as an ‘Olympics Extra’ live stream on BBC iPlayer.
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