Harry Gordon CMG AM is the official historian of the Australian Olympic Committee. As a journalist, editor and author (of 15 books), he has won many awards, including the National Book Council first prize for Australian literature. As well as being editor-in-chief of two of Australia’s major newspaper groups, he was chairman of Australian Associated Press. He has served on the council of the Australian War Memorial, the Australia-China Council and the Australia-Japan Foundation. His introduction to the Olympics came in 1952, when he covered the Games in Helsinki, fresh from serving as a young war correspondent in Korea (1950-51). He has attended nine Olympics, including Beijing in 2008.

He helped plan media facilities for the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. He was a member of the organising committee for the 1982 Commonwealth Games in Brisbane, and chairman of the media division. He played a significant role in the planning of the 2000 Olympic torch relay, and had the task of naming streets and boulevards around the main Olympic areas, throughout the Olympic Village and at all venues used in the Sydney Games. He was awarded the Australian Olympic Committee’s highest award, the Order of Merit, in 1999 and the IOC’s Olympic Order in 2001. In 2006 the International Society of Olympic Historians awarded him its highest accolade, its Lifetime Achievement Award. He is a founding member of the selection committees of the Sport Australia Hall of Fame and the Australian Football Hall of Fame.