Sally Jones (journalist)

Sally Jones is a British journalist, television news and sports presenter. She is a three-time world champion at real tennis; once in the singles and twice in the doubles.[1]

This article is about the British journalist. For the ISIS terrorist, see Sally-Anne Jones.

Education

Sally Jones was born in Coventry, Warwickshire, and educated at King Edward VI High School for Girls, Birmingham[2] and St Hugh's College, Oxford where she read English and won five blues and half blues for different sports including tennis, squash, netball, cricket and modern pentathlon. In 1976, she was Oxford University rock n'roll champion (Oxford Rock Soc) and began tap-dancing with the Oxcentrics jazz band as well as gaining notoriety via a student prank, successfully dressing up as a man to stand for membership of the all-male Gridiron Club.

Sport

She was Warwickshire county (Warwickshire LTA) and British schoolgirls tennis champion (Lawn Tennis Association)[3] and a finalist in the British Under 21 doubles championship (LTA). She played county tennis, squash (Warwickshire, Devon and South Wales squash associations), and netball (Birmingham Schools and Midlands First teams), captaining the Midlands junior netball side, the Oxford University netball (OUNC), squash (OUSRC) and tennis teams (OULTC) and the Warwickshire senior tennis team (WLTA) for ten years, leading them to the County Championship in July 1997. She played in the first British Open women's Rackets Championship at Queen's CLub in March 2010, reaching the semi-finals. and won the British Wonen's Rackets Doubles Challenge at Malvern College in 2012. She won the Sunday Telegraph Travel Writing Prize for an account of a tennis tour of Ireland and two Catherine Pakenham awards for women journalists and has since broadcast and written widely on sport.

Broadcasting and writing career

During her career, she has been a BBC news trainee, a TV reporter at Westward TV, and a TV presenter/reporter for HTV (Wales) where she also made several documentaries, and Central TV in Birmingham where she co-presented Central News and reported on the politics show Central Lobby during the 1980s.[4] She has also reported for ITN and Channel 4 News and has written newspaper columns for theDaily Telegraph, Daily Mirror and Today newspapers. In 1986, she became the BBC's first woman sports presenter on BBC Breakfast News and presented for BBC Sport during the Seoul summer Olympic Games in 1988 and for BBC World during the 1992 Summer Olympics.

She has presented many other TV and radio programmes, including several series of On the Line, the BBC TV sports politics show, the daytime show The Garden Party, real tennis documentaries for Channel 4, coverage of women's British Open golf, international tennis, women's rugby and NBA basketball (BBC TV), Transworld Sport (Channel 4) and international gymnastics (ITV). She regularly presented Woman's Hour from Birmingham (BBC Radio 4) and was a member of the Radio Five Live Wimbledon tennis commentary team during the 1990s. In 2010, she set up Sally Jones Features Ltd, a media consultancy.

Real tennis

In 1986, she took up real tennis and won the world championship at Bordeaux in 1993 (Ladies Real Tennis Association), beating Charlotte Cornwallis in the final, as well as two British Open and two US Open championships.[5] She won the world doubles championships[6] with Alex Garside in 1989 and 1991[3] and was British Open doubles finalist with Jo Iddles in 2008. She writes on Real Tennis and rackets and has worked as correspondent on both sports for The Times and the Daily Telegraph and as press officer for the Real Tennis and Rackets Association.

Personal life

She married civil engineer John Grant in 1989 and has two children, management consultant Roland Grant and Daily Telegraph columnist Madeline Grant. She has written four books on Westcountry legends and several on sport, including the Ladybird Book of Riding. In 2006, she co-wrote and edited a prize-winning local history book on Georgian Warwickshire (Georgian Coleshill). She works for several charities including Birmingham Children's Hospital and Twycross Zoo She is a board member of Modern Pentathlon GB and a trustee of the Oxford and Cambridge Rowing Foundation. She is a former Foundation governor of the King Edward's Schools' in Birmingham and a governor of King Edward VI Handsworth Grammar School for Girls.

A quiz enthusiast, she won Sale of the Century aged 18 and has since appeared on celebrity editions of Fifteen to One and The Krypton Factor. She has appeared five times on Mastermind and in September 2008, reached the semi-finals, despite (as a sports journalist), failing to remember who captained England during the 2007 Rugby World Cup Final. She redeemed herself with a near-perfect score on her specialist subject, the short story writer Saki (H,H.Munro) and won the round with a score of 25 points.

References
  1. "Integrating Real Tennis is unnatural". The Telegraph.
  2. Lockley, Mike (13 August 2014). "Former headmistress of King Edward's VI High for Girls dies aged 97". Business Live. Retrieved 6 January 2021.
  3. "Past Champions". Ladies Real Tennis Association. Retrieved 6 January 2021.
  4. Jason Cowley, The loss of good sports broadcasters, New Statesman, 19 August 2002.
  5. Sally Jones, Integrating Real Tennis is unnatural: Former world real tennis champion Sally Jones storms one of the last male bastions, The Daily Telegraph, 2 October 2008.
  6. Live, Coventry (27 July 2012). "Squash-Tennis: Warwickshire duo win inaugural national championships". CoventryLive. Retrieved 6 January 2021.
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