Harry Valérien

Harry Valérien was a German sports journalist, born in Munich on 4 November 1923 and died in Berg on 12 October 2012. Moved by the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, he decided on a career in sports reporting, and from 1949 he worked as a reporter on both radio and television. From 1963 to 1988 he was the first sports presenter of the ZDF programme das aktuelle sportstudio, and he left it in 1988 after 283 episodes. Through that programme he argued for honesty in sport and was a champion of the anti-doping movement. For forty years he covered the Olympic Games, with swimming, golf and winter sports among his subjects, and he wrote a long series of Olympic and football tournament books for the Munich publisher Südwest Verlag. His honours include the Goldene Kamera, the Goldener Bambi, the Goldener Gong, the Telestar and the Bayerischer Fernsehpreis.