Trans World Sport (TWS), the world's longest running weekly television sports program, this week celebrates its 25th anniversary.
The show, which was the brainchild of IMG founder Mark McCormack, was first broadcast in May 1987 when then F1 World Champion Alain Prost was the first sportsman to be featured. Produced by IMG Media, the program has continued as a weekly sports program ever since and is now watched in more than 50 territories with a household reach of nearly 200 million.
To commemorate the milestone, TWS has launched an app for iPhone and iPad. The Trans World Sport iQuiz (price £1.49) tests sporting knowledge with a series of questions, photos and videos from a wide sphere of the sporting spectrum, covering everything from golf to canal jumping and football to the fireball game. It can be downloaded here http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/trans-world-sport-iquiz/id510905441?mt=8
The highlight of the App is a once in a lifetime prize - two tickets, including travel and accommodation to the sporting event of choice, anywhere in the world in 2013. A new quiz will be added every two months and there are also monthly prizes of sporting memorabilia.
The Trans World Sport iQuiz has been developed by IMG Media in conjunction with multi-award winning interactive media producer Magic Lantern and digital agency weheartdigital.
Early scoops on TWS included features on a 14-year-old golfing prodigy by the name of Tiger Woods, and precocious tennis talents Venus and Serena Williams, just 12 and 11 at the time. Among the more obscure sports brought to the screens by TWS have been Chueca (Patagonian Hockey), Knur and Spell (Viking Golf) and Pato (Argentinean Horseback Basketball).
The list of sporting icons to appear on the show reads like a Who’s Who of sporting legends that includes, Muhammad Ali, Emil Zatopek, Ferenc Puskas, Rene Lacoste, Juan Manuel Fangio, Jean-Claude Killy, Ingemar Stenmark, Sergei Bubka , Florence Griffith Joyner. Viv Richards, Zico, David Campese, Wayne Gretzky, Sugar Ray Leonard, Donald Bradman, Bob Beamon, Joe Montana, John McEnroe, Steve Redgrave, Michael Jordan, Pete Sampras, Martina Navratilova, Franz Beckenbauer and Pele.
The program has been welcomed in sports arenas across the world, not to mention a few royal palaces. Fijian chiefs, Rwandan Presidents, Prince Albert of Monaco and members of the UK Royal family have all appeared on the show.
TWS has been to every continent and 183 out of 203 IOC nations, covering several hundred different sports. The first show was narrated by Gerald Sinstadt. In the early nineties, after a succession of different narrators, the show settled on its two current narrators, Bruce Hammal and Sue Carpenter.
Matthew O’Callaghan, TWS producer, said, “We have covered hundreds of different sports and filmed with a countless number of World and Olympic champions. Over the years, Trans World Sport has built up a huge and loyal fan base right across the world, not to mention one of the richest sports archives in the TV industry.
“We continue to go to places that other shows wouldn’t even consider going to. We’ve just returned from Somalia, where we were the first crew to film on the streets of Mogadishu using a tripod in over 20 years.
“We are one of the few TV shows to have been invited back to North Korea and we sparked a near riot when we turned up to film a local Rugby League game in the remote highlands of Papua New Guinea, such was the excitement of the crowd.
“TWS is granted exclusive access to some of the world’s biggest stars, partly due to the fact that we profiled them when they were in their early teens or largely unknown. The uniqueness of TWS is there to be seen in every show we produce.”