Olympic relay medallist and senior television executive
ADRIAN METCALFE, who has died aged 79, was an outstanding athlete and an influential figure in sports broadcasting.
He won silver medals at the Olympic, Commonwealth and European Games, was known as “the voice of athletics” as a commentator on ITV, then became sports editor of Channel 4 when it launched and a founder of the Eurosport television channel. A former Channel 4 colleague described him as “a brave and experimental sports editor”, and American football and sumo wrestling were introduced on his watch.
At the Tokyo Olympics in 1964 he ran a fast second leg of the 400 metres relay final, helping his team of Tim Graham, John Cooper and Robbie Brightwell to second place behind the United States. The Great Britain team beat the old world record and set up a new European record with a time of 3min 01.6sec.
The year before he had won the 400m in the US athletics championship, beating two of the winning US Olympic relay team. After that he suffered an injury, and may not have been at peak fitness in Tokyo. He had run his fastest race three years earlier, when he was 19, breaking the British 400m record in 45.7 sec.
He had burst on to the athletics scene aged 15 by winning the 100m, 200m and 400m on the same afternoon at the English schools championship.
In 1962 he was part of the GB 400m relay team that won silver medals at the Commonwealth Games in Perth, Australia, and in the European championships in Belgrade.
Adrian Peter Metcalfe was born in Bradford on March 2 1942, the elder of two children of Hylton Hasker Metcalfe and his wife Cora; his father worked for Yorkshire Bank. Adrian was educated at Brunts School (now Academy) in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, and at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he read English.
He won a blue and became President of the Oxford University Athletics Club, where he formed a lifelong friendship with Jeffrey Archer, who was to support him in his final years with Alzheimer’s disease. He was best man at the Archers’ wedding and had the favour returned later at one of his own.
His son, Daniel, who works in sports marketing in Malaysia, says that the memories his father hung on to longest in his illness were from his Oxford days. Archer, who represented Great Britain as a sprinter and ran the 100 yards in 9.6sec, recalled racing with Metcalfe 143 times at various distances and never winning once. He described Metcalfe on the track as “a beautiful figure, tall and graceful”. He said he had to get used to rounding a bend with him and hearing his friend say: “Sorry, I have to leave you now.”
In 1967 Metcalfe married Anne Summerton and had Daniel and an adopted daughter, Hannah, before divorcing in 1992. Two years later he married Catherine Delvig, a French national of Russian descent who had three children from a previous marriage. They parted in 2007 when he left Paris to work again in London. They never divorced.
In 1998 Metcalfe became a director of worldsport.com, a web-based rights project for the General Assembly of the International Association of Sports Federations. It was a badly timed venture and suffered in the dot.com crash, closing in 2000. Metcalfe lost his financial investment.
He became an adviser and producer for the International Olympic Committee and the International Association of Sports Federations, serving on their broadcasting commissions. As chairman of UK Sport’s major events group he advised on British bids for the world track and field championship and the London Olympics of 2012, though Alzheimer’s had taken hold by the time the Games took place.
His wife, children and stepchildren survive him.