It’s the day before the Opening Ceremony of the 2004 Athens Summer Olympics, and I’ve just turned ten.

Just over two weeks later, and my head is full of my very first Olympic memories¹.

Athens was where my love of the Olympics started. Los Angeles is where my Olympic dream will come true.

About Me

My name is Will Shillibier. I’m the Founder and Lead Editor of The 1461.

I started university one month after the London 2012 Olympics. I graduated with a degree in German, writing my final dissertation on the Olympics.

I spent most of my time at university either playing poker or presenting sports on student radio. Both poker and journalism developed into passions. And that passion has morphed into a career, with over a decade spent as a poker journalist.

Poker is a bit like sports journalism, with big-name winners, massive storylines, interview opportunities and more. But no sports journalism is like the Olympics.

That’s because the Olympics aren’t like regular sports.

The storylines are so unconventionally linear. Medal records leap from Games to Games, and although a handful of household names may permeate the public consciousness², the gap between Games remains.

That 1,461-day gap.

What Does The 1461 Mean?

That’s where the name comes from, if your maths isn’t up to par. Four years is 1,461 days, or the exact length of an Olympic cycle. For athletes, the time it takes for an Olympic dream to truly become a reality.

That’s the focus of The 1461.

Often, the public first learns about an Olympic athlete in the week leading up to their event. They read an article or watch a feature just as the ranking round of archery, the group stage of hockey, or the heats in athletics are about to begin.

Or you might first be greeted by them atop the podium, shiny medal in one hand (the shinier the better) and a plushie of the Olympic mascot in the other.

Four years of effort often reduced to a 40-second feature on the evening news.

The 1461 is about bridging the gap.

I’ve already spoken to the GB Baseball Performance Director, and have plenty of interviews with athletes, coaches and media prepared. I can’t wait to get started.

In February, just before the 2026 Winter Olympics got underway in Milan Cortina, the chair of UK Sport, Nick Webborn (pictured), called for the BBC to boost coverage of Olympic sports between Games.

According to Webborn, a UK Sport survey found that 70% of the British public would like more Olympic and parasport events on free-to-air between Games.

There are sports and athletes out there, the first mention of which I would hate to be in July 2028.

There are new sports that haven’t had an Olympic presence before, which deserve a spotlight even more so.

I have three aims with The 1461:

• Write about all 36 Summer Olympic sports, and as many Summer Paralympic sports as possible, with interviews, features and explainers
• Help to cover less high-profile Olympic sports, including those new to LA28
• Work as a journalist at the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles

The last has been a goal of mine ever since I first thought of studying Sports Journalism. I’ve reported on the World Series of Poker, the world’s largest poker tournament, in Las Vegas, on seven occasions.

Poker requires both luck and skill³. To report on the Olympics, even just once, is going to take a lot more of both. And time. I don’t have the 1,461 days like Olympians have.

So I suppose 834 will have to do…

Notes

1. In no particular order: Kelly Holmes side-by-side with Maria Mutola down the home straight, and then wide-eyed in disbelief at her victory. Gary Herbert’s spine-tingling commentary on Matthew Pinsent and the coxless four. Great Britain winning the Men’s 4x100m relay by one hundredth of a second. Olive wreaths everywhere you looked.
2. Picking one from each Summer Olympic Games:
   • 2004 – Kelly Holmes
   • 2008 – Chris Hoy
   • 2012 Mo Farah
   • 2016 – Jason Kenny
   • 2020 – Adam Peaty
   • 2024 – Josh Kerr
3. Before you ask, it’s a bit of both. The best poker players use their skill to minimise the impact luck has on their play. If they know, for every decision, that 99 times out of 100 it’s a mathematically correct decision, and they play my mum at poker and she wins. Does that make my mum better than them? Or were they just unlucky? Extrapolate that sort of decision-making across every bet/raise/call/fold in the game of Texas Hold’em, and they know their decisions should be profitable in the long run.