Inside The Games | Olympics | Olympic News, Events, People

Duncan Mackay is the founder, publisher and editor of insidethegames. He is one of Britain's best-connected journalists and during the 16 years he worked at The Guardian and The Observer he regularly broke a number of major exclusive stories, including the news that British sprinter Dwain Chambers had tested positive for banned performance enhancing drugs. 

 

He was also the first journalist to alert the world to the fact that Greek sprinters Kostas Kederis and Ekaterina were under suspicion of using drugs and deliberately avoiding doping tests. Mackay's ground-breaking stories were recognised when he was voted the British Sports Journalist of the Year in 2004 and won the Sports News Story of the Year.

 

His impeccable contacts within the Olympic Movement were also brilliantly demonstrated when in 2005 on the morning of the vote to decide which city would host the 2012 Olympics he was the only journalist to predict correctly that London would beat Paris.

 

Mackay was also the journalist to carry the Olympic Torch when it passed through London on its way to Beijing in April 2008.

 

Mackay regularly appears on Sky News, BBC News 24, BBC World, Sky Sports News, BBC Radio 5 and CNBC as well as several other radio and television stations around the world. He has written several books, including the highly critically-acclaimed Running Scared: How Athletics Lost its Innocence, Linford Christie, The History of the Olympics and China Gold: China's Quest for Global Power and Olympic Glory.

 

 

He also reported on the landmark 2001 and 2005 International Olympic Committee Sessions, the 1999 Rugby World Cup, the 2002 Ryder Cup, Euro 2004 and the spectacular 2005 Ashes Series that gripped Britain like no other sports event in a generation. Big-name interviews have included Cathy Freeman, Philippe Sella, Shane Warne, Nick Faldo and the Spanish footballer Raúl. He has written about 30 or more sports in all.

 

Much of his sportswriting has a business slant and he enjoys exceptional contacts with leading international sports administrators in the Olympic Movement and beyond. Under his sports editorship, Sepp Blatter, the FIFA President, became an occasional and much-read FT columnist.

 

Since starting to write for insidethegames.com last year, Owen has broken numerous stories. These include the move by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) to place a bulk order for human growth hormone testing kits ahead of last year’s Beijing Olympics and word that FIFA was considering staging the bidding contests for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups at the same time. He is also author of a book of cricket stories called Rain Starts Play.

 

 

After working for the short-lived Sunday Correspondent, Rowbottom joined The Independent in 1992. A recent assessment of him by the Sports Journalists' Association observed: "His well-balanced and gentle work is widely admired by colleagues and athletes alike. Indeed, for a long spell, Rowbottom had the dubious honour of being perhaps the only member of the British athletics press corps to whom Linford Christie would speak.

 

His work at the paper included a highly regarded weekly column that took a humorous look at sport. His co-authored biography with Olympic silver medallist, Roger Black, How Long's the Course?, was very well reviewed."

 

Rowbottom has also worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer and The Guardian. The subjects of his Olympic articles over the last 16 years have included Torvill and Dean, Linford Christie, Tonya Harding, Sally Gunnell, Steve Redgrave, Wayne Gretsky, Katerina Witt, Carl Lewis, Paula Radcliffe, Michelle Kwan, Kelly Holmes, Rhona Martin, Usain Bolt, Christine Ohuruogu, Amir Khan and Chris Hoy.

 

Paul Gains

Paul Gains is a full time Canadian freelance journalist who is highly respected around the world for his knowledge of athletics. He has interviewed and written features on dozens of Olympic champions including Usain Bolt, Carl Lewis, Linford Christie, Donovan Bailey, Yelena Isinbayeva, Haile Gebrselassie and Kenenisa Bekele as well as some of the IOC’s leaders such as Dick Pound and Heinz Verbruggen. His work has appeared in periodicals such as the New York Times, Toronto Star, GQ, the Globe and Mail and National Post.

 

His first Olympic Games coverage was Los Angeles in 1984 for CBC television. At the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens the Coventry-born writer was hired as athletics news editor for the Athens Olympics News Service spending a memorable three months in the city. Most recently he worked for CBC television and its website at the Beijing Olympic Games.

 

Gains served as press chief of the 2003 UCI World Road Cycling Championships in Hamilton, Canada. A former national class distance runner, Gains also directed the IAAF sanctioned Hamilton Spectator Indoor Games from 1986 until 1995 which gave him unprecedented insight into the lifestyle of Olympic athletes and their agents. Many relationships developed in those days have carried over until the present.

 

Over his 15 year career Gains has broken many news stories. During the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta Gains for instance he wrote for the Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper. One feature included interviews with athletes from Burundi whose country was making its first appearance in the Olympic Game while civil war raged at home.