Who Has Presented Grandstand?

Granstand is one of the BBC's longest running television shows. It was dreamt up by Paul Fox and Bryan Cowgill and started on October 11 1958 as a Saturday afternoon programme to link together each Saturday afternoon's sporting events and action as well as the football and other sport news of the afternoon.

Despite being nearly 50 years old, it has only had four main presenters. Originally it was Peter Dimmock. David Coleman took over fairly soon into the programme, and for many years shared the main presenting role with Frank Bough.

Desmond Lynam took over in the 1980s and then Steve Rider who was the last main host for the programme.

In more recent years the show has moved out of its traditional studio based environment, with a different host each week depending on what the main event of the programme was. Clare Balding, Hazel Irvine, Bob Wilson, Dougie Donnolly, John Inverdale, Helen Rollason, Ray Stubbs and Sue Barker are some of those who have presented the show from different locations depending on the sport being covered.

In 2006, the BBC announced that the programme would be phased out over the next three years due to the increased use of interactive services and the new challenges of the digital and online technology that now plays a big part in sport coverage on TV. This decision has been hinted at over the last few years with the splitting up of long running features Football Focus and Final Score into separate programmes each Saturday during the football season, and the dropping of the Grandstand name from Olympic Games and Commonwealth Games coverage as well as FA Cup and other Saturday afternoon live football matches which were traditional a part of Grandstand.

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