At home before the Olympics
Chris Lewis outside Millbridge Care Home
“IT’S good to be home”, the TV man reflected after sharing a joke with the village sports club’s groundsman.
His working life may have taken him all over the world, but Heacham is still very much where the heart is for former BBC television sport producer Chris Lewis.
I met him during one of his regular visits back to the village where he grew up and only a couple of days after he had been on The Mall at a meeting for the London Marathon, for which he has been television consultant for the past six years.
And it was clear from the way he was greeted by so many just how well he is regarded in the village he first left almost half a century ago.
“I’ve got so many friends up here still,” he said. “I just love coming back.”
Now 66, “going on 30” as he puts it, one might have been forgiven for thinking that he might be starting to slow down a little bit after a career in television sport production which has so far spanned five decades.
But with his own production company, Chris Lewis Media, plus his work on the London Marathon and a role as executive producer of the coverage of the Badminton Horse Trials, he has a packed diary of events and meetings in what promises to be a particularly special sporting year.
This summer, he will work at his 11th Olympic Games as producer of the equestrian events in London for the Olympic Broadcasting Service.
And he is confident the city will put on a great show in July and August, despite initial uncertainties.
“If you ask anybody from broadcasting, we enjoy working abroad. I was, along with a lot of people, fairly cynical about London,” he said.
“There was a pride there but, at the same time, there was a worry ‘Can we really handle it’, having observed Olympic Games all round the world.”
But he insists the organisers have done an excellent job to prepare the capital for the games, adding: “It’s something that all this country should be proud of and I think everybody will go home having enjoyed great sport and great friendships.”
And he also revealed he had his eye on the future beyond those two weeks in the capital.
“I have a target – to get it right and, as a result, finish my career in four years’ time. If I do the equestrian in Rio in 2016, then I will hang up my headphones”, he said.
It’s now 40 years since Chris worked at his first Olympics where, as a young floor manager, he found himself at the centre of the BBC’s coverage of the hostage crisis in which 11 Israeli athletes were killed during the Munich games.
He recalled how, while every other national television network had closed down their coverage, he worked for 36 hours alongside David Coleman, the man he said “taught me my business” as the situation unfolded.
A wide-ranging career, which also included 10 football World Cups and the biggest occasions in sports ranging from boxing to snooker and athletics to motor racing, followed.
But a career in television has also reaped the rewards for Chris’s home village, most notably through the host of famous faces who have come to the area to speak at sporting dinners hosted by the Heacham Minors football club, with whom he is long associated.
His contribution is most clearly recognised in the sports complex which bears his name, was unveiled by former BBC colleague John Motson in 2006 and is still a source of great pride because of his family’s connections to the village.
“He opened it and I wasn’t even looking at the sign. It was a complete shock.
“When he pulled it off and it said the Chris Lewis training area, I just cried my heart out.
“Heacham means a lot.”
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Weather for King's Lynn
Sunday 27 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 9 C to 26 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
Wind direction: East
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 10 C to 24 C
Wind Speed: 10 mph
Wind direction: North
