David Miller left receives the Coubertin Medal from Sir Craig Reedie in 2023. [Photo: BOA]
“A Passion for Olympic History”
David Miller (1935-2026)
by Philip Barker
ISOH has learnt with sadness of the passing of the distinguished sports journalist David Miller at the age of 91.
He covered the Olympics from 1964 to 2012 and wrote extensively on the Olympic Movement in a career spanning more than 60 years in which he wrote for leading British newspapers at a time of seismic change in the world of sport. He authored 24 books including many significant works on the Olympic movement.
“The Olympic Games remain the most exhilarating and the most unforgiving public examination in sport. Therein lies its appeal and its charm, the challenge and the fear. Yet what every competitor should know is that there is no failure if they have done their best. They can do no more,” Miller once wrote.
A member of ISOH for many years, Miller received the Vikelas Plaque in 2015.
He had been a keen footballer at Cambridge University and later with the Corinthian Casuals. He carried the spirit of that famous club into his writing.
His earliest journalistic responsibility was for compiling the cricket scores, sacrosanct in a British newspaper at that time.
He joined the Sunday Telegraph and travelled to the 1958 World Cup where he witnessed the emergence of Pele as Brazil won the tournament for the first time.
His work with the Telegraph, the Daily Express and The Times, as Chief Sports Correspondent, took him to all the big events.
His first book was on Sir Matt Busby, best known as the manager of Manchester United in an historic era but also a man with an Olympic connection. Busby took charge of the British Olympic squad in 1948. Miller himself often lamented that he’d missed out on the chance to play for Great Britain at the 1956 Olympics.
He later co-authored books with Sebastian Coe, and was present to witness Coe’s two Olympic gold medals.
Later, Miller put his extensive knowledge of the Olympic Movement to good use with a biography of International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Juan Antonio Samaranch,
In 2004 he wrote the monumental “Athens to Athens,” an “Official History of the Olympic Games and the IOC” which was regularly updated.
His later work included Igniting the Games: The Evolution of the Olympics and Thomas Bach’s Legacy,” an assessment of the recent Olympic History.
Bach described him as “not only one of the most prolific sports writers over the past decades, but also one of the foremost experts on the Olympic Movement,” when Miller received the IOC’s Pierre de Coubertin medal in 2023.
A full tribute will appear in a future edition of the Journal of Olympic History.
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