Winter Olympics 2018

BBC Radio Five Live's lead horse racing commentator..
BBC Radio Five Live's lead swimming commentator..
Presenter - At The Races..
Horse racecourse commentator..

And all round nice bloke. Had a chat to him at Warwick races once. Knows his stuff when it comes to matters equine. He was the track commentator for a evening fixture, the night before he called the next five days of Royal Ascot for Five Live.

Here's a quick tour of the UK studio used for presenting the Winter Olympics, as shown on BBC Breakfast this morning.

No surprise then he's not familar to BBC TV viewers but he did a decent enough job - just surprised he got the nod for the ceremonies over more established commentators. Steve Cram is probably the more obvious choice.

Talking of commentators is Sue Barker out there for the Ice Skating?

Winter Olympics have often been presented from the UK - throughout the 90s and early 00s they were. Turin had a studio in Italy because it was in a sensible timezone, Vancouver and Sochi were single camera on location, but both were better timezones for a UK audience. Anchoring highlights from Korea in the middle of the night makes no sense, particularly when the BBC is having to save money. The BBC have location/studio presentation in Korea during the times of day it makes sense to be live there (which is overnight here)

Think some of the UK brains behind Peter Snow (and possibly Jeremy Vine) election graphics of yesteryear may have had a hand in that?

The Daily Mail will probably sulk that they're in a studio in Salford when they should be in Korea... but if they were in Korea they'd scream about the waste of licence payer's money. So they'll never win.

Impressive they've managed to keep reflections to a minimum when it's dark.

Lots of flagging combined with careful (and sensible) light positioning. Windows do only make sense in darkness if you have a properly lit background though.

Also - the close-ups appear to have bits of building in the back of their shots - which may well help if they are lit enough.

Will Perry is there as part of Eurosport’s coverage and not the BBC. Last time in 2014 he was a big part of the 5 Live coverage.

One winter olympics memory that's always stuck in my head is from 1998 when it was on Points Of View that people were complaining that "all these events going on, and all we ever seem to see is blooming curling".