Vikki Orvice (8 November 1962 – 6 February 2019) was a British sports journalist who was the first female football reporter on the staff of a British tabloid newspaper.

Early life and education

Orvice studied English at the

University of Leicester , mottoeng = So that they may have life , established = , type = public research university , endowment = £20.0 million , budget = £326 million , chancellor = David Willetts , vice_chancellor = Nishan Canagarajah , head_labe ...

, graduating in 1984, before returning to her home city of

Sheffield Sheffield is a city status in the United Kingdom, city in South Yorkshire, England, whose name derives from the River Sheaf which runs through it. The city serves as the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is Historic counties o ...

for postgraduate study.

Journalism career

Orvice started her career as an apprentice at the '' Wakefield Express''. After two years, she moved to the ''

Western Daily Press The ''Western Daily Press'' is a regional newspaper covering parts of South West England, mainly Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Somerset as well as the metropolitan areas of Bath and North East Somerset and the Bristol area. It is published Mon ...

'', where she worked alongside doing freelance shifts for the ''

Daily Mail The ''Daily Mail'' is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper and news websitePeter Wilb"Paul Dacre of the Daily Mail: The man who hates liberal Britain", ''New Statesman'', 19 December 2013 (online version: 2 January 2014) publish ...

'' and ''

The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the w ...

''. She eventually moved to the ''Daily Mail'' full-time, working as a general news reporter, covering sport in her spare time. In 1995, she was appointed as a football reporter for '' The Sun'' and subsequently became the newspaper's athletics correspondent. Orvice was a founding board member of Women in Football, a network of women working in football. She was also vice-chair of the

Football Writers' Association The Football Writers' Association (FWA) is an association of football journalists and correspondents writing for English newspapers and agencies. It presents the Footballer of the Year Award, the oldest and most distinguished award given in the d ...

and the first female chair of the

British Athletics Writers' Association The British Athletics Writers' Association (BAWA) is an organisation of British journalists who cover athletics. BAWA was founded in 1963 to represent the press covering the sport. It organises the BAWA Awards and is recognised by the Internatio ...

Personal life

Orvice was married to fellow sports journalist Ian Ridley, who announced her death from breast cancer on 6 February 2019. She had first been diagnosed with the disease in 2007, and it returned in 2014. Knowing that her condition was terminal, Orvice continued working until the end of 2018.

Legacy

After Orvice's death, ''The Sun'' announced the establishment of a sport journalism scholarship in her name. A spokesperson for the newspaper said the scholarship would be awarded to a "young woman who has all the qualities Vikki held so dearly". In November 2019, Orvice was posthumously awarded the President's Award by

World Athletics World Athletics, formerly known as the International Amateur Athletic Federation (from 1912 to 2001) and International Association of Athletics Federations (from 2001 to 2019, both abbreviated as the IAAF) is the international governing body for ...

. The British Athletics Writers' Association has renamed its annual Inspiration Award the Vikki Orvice Inspiration Award.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Orvice, Vikki Women sports journalists 1962 births 2019 deaths Deaths from breast cancer British women journalists 20th-century British journalists 20th-century British women writers 21st-century British journalists 21st-century British women writers Alumni of the University of Leicester Daily Mail journalists The Sun (United Kingdom) people