Two years out from the London Olympics, and signs that muck and bullets could be about to fly are there in the BBC appointment of a former war correspondent to its sports news team.
Tim Franks, who has been BBC News’s Middle East correspondent since 2007, having previously reported from Iraq during the 2003 invasion, has transferred to the team under sports editor David Bond.
Franks replaces Olly Foster, who is off to become the sports presenter on the BBC News Channel.
Franks’s journalistic career began in 1990, when he joined World Service from Oxford University, where he graduated in Chinese.
He has not previously worked in sport, though he has wide-ranging foreign and political news experience, having been based in Brussels as Europe Correspondent for five years and six years based at Westminster.
He has also presented Radio 4’s The World At One and The World This Weekend.