Less than a month after he was named as the Sportswriter of the Year for a third time at the SJA British Sports Journalism Awards, Martin Samuel’s status was confirmed with The Times‘s chief football correspondent (pictured left, holding the John Bromley Trophy) winning a similar award at the British Press Awards.
Staged at the Grosvenor House Hotel, organised by the Press Gazette, the BPA awards were hosted by C4 News frontman Jon Snow and featured commendations and nominations for a number of SJA members.
Highly commended in the sportswriter category at the BPA awards were Donald McRae, of The Guardian, and Paul Kimmage, of the Sunday Times, who last month was named the SJA’s Sports Interviewer of the Year for a fourth time.
Other nominees included James Lawton (The Independent), David Conn (The Guardian) and Henry Winter (Daily Telegraph).
The Daily Mail‘s Andy Hooper won the BPA’s sports photographer of the year, with PA’s John Giles and Marc Aspland (The Times) both high commended from a field that included Bradley Ormesher (Daily Mirror), David Ashdown (The Independent) and Dylan Martinez (Reuters).
Hooper, 44, who had been nominated for the award on six previous occasions and was highly commended in the Sports Journalists’ Association British Sports Photography Awards. The BPA judges saluted Hooper for “outstanding vision, creativity and anticipation”.
They described his underwater picture of 13-year-old diver Tom Daley as “the sporting image of the year” and praised “an all-round portfolio which made him the overwhelming choice”. Click here to view a selection of Hooper’s award-winning pictures.
The newspaper of the year award went to the Financial Times, ahead of the Mail and Sun, with former BBC man Andrew Gilligan, perhaps uniquely the bete noire of Ken Livingston and Alistair Campbell, winning the journalist of the year award for his work in London’s Evening Standard.
Click here for links to Samuel’s award-winning articles
Read the Press Gazette’s coverage of the wards by clicking here (links to home page: after April 9, you may need to search the site for its Awards section).
For the full list of awards winners, visit Guardian Unlimited by clicking here
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