Hazel Irvine

Hazel Irvine is one Britain’s leading and most respected broadcasters. A sports journalist, writer and anchor for over 35 years, she won the prestigious Royal Television Society's Sports Presenter of the Year award in 2007 and has led presentation teams on a huge variety of events on BBC television, ITV and Channel 4.

To date, Hazel has presented and reported from 15 Winter and Summer Olympics, fronted golf coverage for 25 years, snooker for 18 years and also anchored coverage of athletics and ski racing programme, Ski Sunday, for over a decade.

Her many varied credits also include 4 World Cup Finals, the London Marathon, Grandstand, the Boat Race, Wimbledon, Final Score and Channel 4's pioneering women's football programming in the late 1980s.

Also a well-regarded commentator, Hazel Irvine has guided viewers through Opening and Closing ceremonies at the Olympics and Commonwealth Games from Turin in 2006, Beijing, Vancouver, London, Sochi, Melbourne, Glasgow, Rio de Janeiro in 2016 and Gold Coast 2018. An estimated 28 million people watched London's Opening ceremony.

She has worked extensively on News and Events, New Year LIVE, the 60th anniversary of the D-Day landings, VE Day celebrations, the Edinburgh Military Tattoo, anchored Millennium Night TV coverage in Scotland and fronted BBC Scotland's Children In Need appeal for 10 years.

Hazel led the presentation of the BBC's BAFTA-award-winning athletics coverage in 2009, and was described by the Royal Television Society in 2007 as, 'The consummate all-rounder. Whichever sports she is covering, she demonstrates enthusiasm and exemplary professionalism. She knows her sport, she puts in the homework and she is a formidable asset....."

She also won the RTS Regional Sports Presenter award in 1999.

In addition, Hazel was an Executive Producer of IMG's BAFTA Scotland and RTS award-winning documentary, "Glasgow '67; The Lisbon Lions".

As one of the very first female sports presenters in the country, Hazel has been at the heart of a story that has seen a transformation in the role and profile of women in broadcasting.

An in-demand Awards host and Conference facilitator, she is also a popular keynote and after dinner speaker.

An experienced conference facilitator, awards host and after dinner speaker, Hazel has worked for organisations including KPMG, Cisco, Diageo, Audi, RBS, Financial Times, UK Sport, London 2012, Glasgow2014, plus the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

During her long and distinguished career, Hazel Irvine has presented, reported and commentated on a huge number of sporting events. Becoming the first woman on British television to anchor football programmes in the late 1980’s, she talks about her experiences in a male-dominated sporting arena and the serious, but often hilarious, challenges it presented.

Her after dinner speech anecdotes and observations of anchoring men’s and women’s golf coverage include some of the most dramatic and memorable occasions in sporting history, such as the “Miracle at Medinah” Ryder Cup.

Hazel’s work has taken her to 15 Olympic games and she has a fund of anecdotes and on-location stories from the games of Seoul, Barcelona, Lillehammer, Atlanta, Nagano, Sydney, Salt Lake City, Athens, Turin and Beijing, London, Sochi and Rio.

She has met and interviewed countless fascinating people, from Archbishop Desmond Tutu to Robert Redford, Dame Kelly Holmes to Tiger Woods, Lord Coe to Lizzie Yarnold.

Regaling audiences with her after dinner speech, she talks about the motivation, the homework, and the effort required to reach the top of her profession, the challenge for production teams of pulling off 130 hours of live television from the Olympic games. And, of course, the leadership skills she uses to steer a high profile broadcast on and off the air, and all points in between.

Hazel Irvine entertains audiences of all sizes and from varied backgrounds with tales from her broadcasting career, including the all too frequent use of double entendres by her snooker colleagues, and what it's really like to broadcast live to an estimated 27 million viewers!

And for more keynote or serious presentations, she covering themes incorporating motivation, teamwork, leadership skills and the changing role of women and female broadcasters in sport.