Former Reuters sports editor Steve Parry dies at 64

LONDON (Reuters) - Steve Parry, Reuters Sports Editor for nearly two decades, died on Thursday at the age of 64.

Parry, who was Sports Editor from 1982 to 2000 and a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) press commission during that time, had suffered from a respiratory illness.

He died in hospital in Hemel Hempstead, near his home north of London, on the day before the Beijing Olympics, having attended the previous 10 Summer Games.

IOC President Jacques Rogge passed on the condolences of the Olympic movement to Parry's family. "We were saddened by the death of Steve Parry," he said in a statement to Reuters.

Parry joined Reuters Sports Desk in London in 1966 and covered his first Olympics in Mexico City in 1968.

An incisive and knowledgeable reporter, calm under pressure, Parry took on the athletics beat at the 1972 Munich Games and made the number one Olympic sport his own for a decade.

He covered track and field at the next two Games, never wasting a word in fluent and speedy copy, and remained close to the sport after he moved up in Reuters.

Appointed Sports News Editor in 1977, Parry was promoted to the job of Sports Editor at Reuters in 1982 and ran the operation with imagination, assurance and great expertise.

He expanded its role, appointing the first Reuters sports correspondents based abroad, one in Paris and one in Bonn, in 1984.