Ian Wooldridge

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Ian Wooldridge, OBE (14 January 1932 – 4 March 2007) was a British sports journalist. He was best known for his association with the Daily Mail which spanned nearly fifty years.

His death drew many glowing tributes, not least from supposed "rivals" in what is supposed to be a cut-throat profession. Hugh McIlvanney, in the Sunday Times, wrote of the only man to have challenged him for the profession's honours:

It is an honour to have worked in the same era as Ian Wooldridge, a precious privilege to have known him as a friend for more than 40 years. Though he would have snorted at the suggestion, he repeatedly pulled off the minor miracle of making our way of getting a living seem like a proper job for a grown-up person.

Wooldridge, a royalist and a great friend of the Princess Royal, was awarded the OBE for his services to journalism. He died from cancer on Sunday, 4 March 2007. His memorial service was held at The Guards' Chapel, Wellington Barracks, London on Wednesday 27 June 2007^[1]

1 Biography
- 1.1 Early Fleet Street career
- 1.2 Opposition to apartheid
2 Awards
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Biography

Born in Hampshire, Wooldridge left Brockenhurst Grammar School with two school certificates, one for English and the other for art.^[2]

After National Service and an apprenticeship on newspapers in New Milton and Bournemouth, he became a reporter on the News Chronicle in 1956. After a bried spell with the Sunday Dispatch, he moved to the Daily Mail, which had absorbed the News Chronicle in 1960.

[edit] Early Fleet Street career

Initially a cricket correspondent at the Mail, from 1972 Wooldridge's writing graced a weekly column in which he spread his coverage to many other forms of sport. He covered ten Olympic Games, his last being Sydney in 2000, as well as numerous Wimbledon tennis championships, heavyweight world title bouts, football World Cups, Open and US Masters golf championships and America's Cups for the paper.

He also branched out into other areas, writing on a revolution in Portugal, flying with the RAF's Red Arrows, riding the Cresta Run, sparring with Ugandan dictator Idi Amin and running the bulls at Pamplona. He was newspaper columnist of the year twice, sportswriter of the year five times and sports feature writer of the year four times.

The young Wooldridge's first job was on the New Milton Advertiser, for which his debut was covering the funeral of a coal merchant; the conscientious cub reporter intercepted every mourner emerging from the church to write down his or her name - holding up the interment by more than half an hour.

According to his obituary in the Daily Telegraph, Wooldridge was once sent to Alaska to cover the 1,100-mile dog sled race from Anchorage to Nome, travelling with a photographer in a one-engine aircraft steered by an old bush pilot. "You slept where you could," Wooldridge later recalled. "In trappers' huts with bare wire bedsteads to sleep on, cooking up horsemeat over a fire... We stayed with Eskimo families, Indian families - there were no hotels."

Early in his career Wooldridge ghosted a syndicated column for the golfer, Max Faulkner, at that time the only post-war British winner of the Open Championship. Once, having failed to find a good anecdote about Faulkner's Open success, he invented a story about the golfer just before he had teed off in the final round: Faulkner, Wooldridge wrote, had scrawled "Open Champion 1949" on a ball which he handed to a young autograph hunter.

Years later Wooldridge met the American writer George Plimpton, who had come across the story. "Great tale," said Plimpton admiringly. "Total nonsense," Wooldridge replied.

[edit] Opposition to apartheid

Despite his career-long association with the right wing-leaning Mail, which opposed sporting boycotts of South Africa in the 1960s and 1970s, Wooldridge was a passionate anti-apartheid advocate, supporting fellow sportswriter John Arlott at the Cambridge Union in 1969 in speaking against playing sport with South Africa.

His opposition dated back to his first cricket tour to South Africa. During the Port Elizabeth Test match, some black South Africans who had attempted to watch the cricket were not only refused entry, but were beaten up by police for their pains. Because of problems with telephone lines, Wooldridge had to contact his London office from the committee room.

Frank Keating, in The Guardian, recalled the situation: "He had written his piece; now he had to read it at the top of his voice in the presence of about 30 hard-faced members of the republic's ruling broederband... as all 30 pairs of ears listened in the chilly, unwelcoming atmosphere, he took a deep breath and dictated: 'The wretchedly evil face of apartheid was displayed here today when...'"

[edit] Awards

Wooldridge was a serial award-winner for his work. In the British Press Awards he was Columnist of the Year in 1975 and 1976; and Sportswriter of the Year in 1972, 1974, 1981 and 1989. The Sports Journalists' Association made him Sportswriter of the Year for 1986, 1987 and 1995; and it chose him as Sports Feature Writer of the Year in 1990 and 1996.

In May 2006, he won the London Press Club's Edgar Wallace award for outstanding reporting. The Press Club's chairman, Donald Trelford, described Wooldridge as "more than just a sports writer, he is a journalist of the highest calibre and a master of the written word".