Olympics Storytelling
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Olympics Storytelling Decoded: Lizzie Powell explains how sporting moments are brought to global audiences
Monday, 16 February, 2026Bath Spa University is home to over 1,000 fantastic professional services staff and academics, many of whom are experts in their field. As part of a new expert series, we’re spotlighting our
Lizzie Powell, Course Leader for Sports Media Production, has been at BSU for ten years and has seen many changes in that time. Alongside her work as a pioneering Academician, Lizzie has continued to work on a freelance basis covering live sports.
In that world, there is arguably no event bigger than the Olympics, with the current Milan/Cortina Winter Olympics lighting up our screens and showcasing some of the biggest sporting stories.
Lizzie herself has worked on these mammoth games, covering the 2022 Beijing Winter games and the 2024 Paris Summer games for the Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS).
Speaking about her experiences covering the games, Lizzie said:
“Working in live sport, the hardest thing you have to handle is pressure. Some of the events are very quick and you’ve literally only get seconds before one finishes and the other starts
It’s sport, anything can happen, everything can change. You may have the assemblance of what you feel like is going to happen in that quarter-final, semi-final or even that final, and then suddenly it totally changes. You have to be so reactive and be really quick at being able to make sure you’ve got the information right and then broadcast it really quickly.”
Providing a broadcast feed for the rest of the world, Lizzie’s work is key in ensuring impactful and memorable moments are captured throughout the games. Key moments can be found in the winning of medals or dramatic final dashes, but the fundamental nature of storytelling stands paramount above all else.
As Lizzie describes:
“I think when you’re telling any Olympic story, they’re always extraordinary people. What you need to do is harness that sense of person about them. What is it that makes them feel, to us, more human.
We’re always looking for ways that us, the viewer, sitting at home, will be able to find something to engage or enthuse about. And that is often the most human side of the person. Yes, it’s about the extraordinary result, but it’s more than that; it’s about the people achieving these extraordinary things.”
Lizzie is the first Academic to feature as part of a brand new social media series titled ‘Decoded’. You can watch the video here and keep up to date with everything BSU on our social media channels.