Lee, PR supremo, dies

MIKe Lee, the brilliant sport PR strategist who arguably did more than anyone apart from Lord Coe to win the London Olympics bid, has died after suffering a heart attack at the age of 61 at his Kent home at the weekend.

Lee, who formed the highly successful sports PR company Vero after the victorious London vote in Singapore in 2005, went on to secure numerous other bid triumphs, including the Rio Olympics 2016, Pyeongchang Winter Games 2018, Qatar World Cup 2022 and Paris Olympics 2024.

He also brought rugby sevens and surfing to the Olympics plus Britain’s Brian Cookson’s wholly unlikely presidency of world cycling’s UCI.

After a continuous run of such exhausting work, Lee had been off colour for much of the past year. He was married to Heather Rabbatts, the FA’s first female director and together they formed one of sport’s most influential couples.

Sport, who never seem to stint on the legions of personnel they send to major tournaments, are nevertheless cracking down on expenses to the extent that unamused staff can now only charge a maximum £6 for lunch away from the office.

THe mass RFU redundancies have seen a 10-strong competitions department reduced to just three staff, though another four will be joining who have no experience in the role. And all this at a time when the RFU are introducing an electronic match card system to record the result of every adult game through to the fifth XV.

An RFU spokeswoman said: ‘We are making changes to the competitions department that has sadly meant some people losing their jobs.’