Vikki Orvice
Pioneer in the male-dominated world of tabloid sports writing
VIKKI ORVICE, who has died aged 56, was a sports journalist who as a woman was a rarity in her field. While there were one or two pioneers, such as Julie Welch, who in 1973 became Fleet Street’s first female sports reporter, few, if any, had plied their trade in the rough-and-tumble world of the tabloids. Vikki Orvice had written on football for The Sun since 1995, and had been the paper’s athletics correspondent since 2002.
The paper’s then sports editor, Paul Ridley, took a chance on her, but the rest of his desk were sceptical.
“I discovered some of my colleagues predicted I would not last a week,” she recalled. “There was a lot of pressure to make it work because the appointment was so unusual. I remember Paul yelling down the phone after yet another request to interview me on radio or TV: ‘It’s not a freak show, she’s here on merit.’”
Vikki Orvice was born in Sheffield on November 8 1962. At the age of 10 she entered a Daily Express competition writing about her football team, Sheffield United. She wanted to be a sportswriter, she told the paper. Her father had taken her to her first Blades match when she was three, and the maverick artiste, Tony Currie, was a particular favourite of hers.
She studied English at Leicester University, where she was arts editor for the student newspaper, The Ripple. After postgraduate study back in her home town she was given a two-year apprenticeship by the Wakefield Express.
She then had a spell on the Western Daily Press in Bristol, often driving to London at the weekends to freelance for the Daily Mail and The Observer.
After a year of freelancing she was given six weeks of shifts on the Mail, and after she had pestered the desk to give her match-reporting duties, in 1992 she was sent to Arsenal v Norwich on the opening day of the season.
“The North Bank at Arsenal had a mural on it and I was basically sent along to write about that because, you know, it was a bit girly and stuff,” she recalled. “But it actually turned into a good story because Norwich won. I remember somebody on the Monday morning saying: ‘Why did you give that match to her? I should have been there.’
“I would later have lunch with the sports editor, who said a woman could never do the job full-time. In those days, you didn’t even question it.” None the less, in 1995 she joined The Sun as a football writer: “That first week I reported from Cardiff and Millwall. Surviving matches there meant you could survive anything.”
With her professionalism and her easy manner, she rapidly gained acceptance.
“Some managers were inappropriate in post-match interviews,” she said, “but my colleagues – once I had convinced them I knew my stuff and was there for the long-haul – slowly began to support me. The players were fine. In fact, they would often open up to me.”
In 2002 she was appointed the paper’s athletics correspondent, becoming such a respected figure that the sport’s governing body, the IAAF, often used her as a sounding-board. She was a principal force behind the foundation of the Women in Football organisation, and served as vice-chairwoman of the Football Writers’ Association, as well as becoming the first woman to chair the British Athletics Writers’ Association.
In 2007 she had received a diagnosis of breast cancer, and in 2014 the cancer returned. The Olympic gold medallists, Mo Farah and Greg Rutherford, filmed a get-well message. She became a charity campaigner, fundraiser and patient governor at the Royal Marsden Hospital.
She continued working until the end of 2018 although she knew her illness was incurable. Following her death, The Sun announced the launch of a sports journalism scholarship in her name.
Vikki Orvice was married to the football writer Ian Ridley. He survives her.
Vikki Orvice, born November 8 1962, died February 6 2019