John Samuel, the former sports editor of the Guardian and Observer who launched the careers of some of Britain’s best-loved sportswriters, has died aged 86.
Samuel, sports editor of the Observer from 1960-61 and the Guardian from 1968‑86, had a 50-year career on Fleet Street and also worked for Reuters and the now-defunct Daily Herald, having started on the Brighton Evening Argus.
At the Guardian he nurtured the careers of journalists such as John Rodda, John Arlott, Frank Keating, David Lacey and Mike Selvey, preserving the paper’s reputation for fine writing while simultaneously transforming sports coverage into a credible daily offering through sharper news and analysis. “Strictly, it had no sports department, certainly not in a Fleet Street sense,” Samuel wrote of the time he took charge. “There were fine writers but in a limited number of activities. There was no horse racing, equestrianism, Formula One, sailing, rowing, winter sports and snooker, sports for the most part with a rising TV presence.”
Samuel introduced daily racecards, against considerable opposition from a traditionalist section of the readership opposed to gambling.
Under his guidance, the paper was a strident voice in controversies such as the shooting of unarmed student protesters before the 1968 Mexico City Olympics and rebel tours in cricket and rugby to apartheid South Africa.
The Guardian cricket correspondent, Mike Selvey, said: “I like to think it was John’s intuition that led him to give me my first opportunity in journalism in the winter of 1984-5. It was very much toe-in-the-water for him at first but he saw something, gradually gave me more rein and I know he was chuffed I’m still here 30 years on. I owe my journalistic career to him.”
Samuel lived in Sussex most of his life and died in the Princess Royal hospital at Haywards Heath. He leaves a wife, Mary, two children, Carah and David, and three grandchildren.
