Athletics in the UK: The Rise and Fall of the BAF

108 The end of a beautiful friendship? course was to accept the ITV deal and then to try to repair relationships while, at the same time, building a new relationship with the BBC with an eye to the longer term. There was no time to lose as the ITV stay of execution would rapidly come to an end and the BAF needed urgently to secure its future as, without the vital income from TV and sponsorship, the whole organisation would be in peril. This was a very tense time for the BAF and, at the very time that some stability was needed, potential disaster had struck. As we have seen, Malcolm Jones had resigned as chief executive in April 1993 and Peter Radford, who had been appointed executive chairman in November 1993, had terminated Andy Norman’s employment on 29 April 1994. Ian Stewart, one of Britain’s most successful middle distance runners and who had been Norman’s assistant, took over as Director of Promotions but was an unknown entity to ITV. What to do? It seemed that it was still too soon to interest the BBC in taking on the full athletics contract and that the likelihood of securing an acceptable financial deal from the BBC would be even remoter if it was known that the ITV relationship was at an end. In such inauspicious circumstances, it was decided to go for broke and to make a new pitch to ITV at Andrew Quinn and Marcus Plantin levels. A sophisticated formal presentation of athletics was devised and presented by Peter Radford, Ian Stewart and me on 12 May 1994. When we had arrived at the ITV Centre in Grays Inn Road to make our pitch we were greeted with the news that Labour Party Leader John Smith had died and all the news programmes were focusing on this national event. It meant that our presentation would be delayed and that Marcus Plantin (who we had felt was, to say the least, cool towards athletics and needed to be convinced) would not be available. However, Andrew Quinn, the chief executive, and Bob Burrows did listen to us and the presentation seemed to have been well received; but, were they merely being polite or had the door been reopened? Further meetings were held and deadlines came and went. The prospects of a successful outcome looked gloomy and, after a further