The Olympic success of boxer Amir Khan has provided the Bolton Evening News with its own success story – with its coverage of the local boy’s rise to glory resulting in year on year sales increases of more than five per cent.

Amir’s silver medal success came as no surprise to the Newsquest title, which has been charting his rise to boxing glory since he was 11, but thanks to good contacts and a team effort the paper has also emerged a winner.

Editor Steve Hughes said: “This was a great opportunity for us and we grabbed it.

“Our excellent contacts helped us put the flesh on the bones of an international story which happened to be on our doorstep. It was a great team effort.”

“In the week when he had two of his biggest fights our sales were up year on year by more than five per cent. On the Saturday when we splashed on his silver medal victory, sales were up by 5.6 per cent.

“There has been a huge response from our readers and Amir’s success has given the whole town a real buzz.”

Deputy sports editor Dave Magilton, news reporter Leroy Holcroft and several of the paper’s photographers had excellent contacts with the family.

And once the bronze medal was secured and a place in the final guaranteed, the paper pulled out all the stops to give readers comprehensive coverage of his fight for the gold medal.

Steve and his team were also acutely aware that this was much more than a story about a local boy doing well, and cheered on by his father, Shah, ever present in his Union Flag waistcoat, Amir was soon being hailed as a multi-cultural role model.

Unwittingly, perhaps, father and son were doing wonders for race relations, and in a town with a big Asian population this was an important part of the story.

Amir made the front page of the Evening News almost every day during the second week of the Olympics, with four pages dedicated to him after he narrowly missed out on gold.

Deputy editor Ian Savage also co-ordinated an eight-page souvenir pull-out including exclusive interviews and pictures, charting the young boxer’s life and his rise to the top.

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