By Torin Douglas BBC Media Correspondent

What is the future for BBC Sport, now it has lost its two main champions in the corporation?

Peter Salmon won back the broadcasting rights of many sports

One was Peter Salmon, who has led the sports division for almost five years, the other the sports-mad former director general Greg Dyke.

Mr Salmon, who is leaving to run an independent production company, will be a hard act to follow.

He oversaw nothing less than the revival of BBC Sport, after a period in which many were seriously questioning its future.

Before he took over in autumn 2000, the BBC had lost TV coverage of Test cricket, the FA Cup, Formula One motor racing, the Derby, top golf and rugby and finally, the Premiership football highlights - the bedrock of Match of the Day.

Though it swiftly regained the TV rights to the FA Cup and England home internationals - and still had the Olympics, Wimbledon and Euro 2000, and most radio contracts - the conventional wisdom was that BBC Sport was on the skids.

New media age

Commercial broadcasters were carrying all before them. TV revenue from subscriptions, advertising and sponsorship meant they could almost always outbid the BBC.

Sky Sports had the live Premiership football, ITV the European club games.

Even Channel 5 was picking up important overseas matches. Channel 4 had won top racing and cricket contracts and was introducing pioneering methods of coverage.

Yet under Salmon, the BBC regained the Derby, the Six Nations rugby and Match of the Day.

Wimbledon remains one of BBC Sport's crown jewels

With the live rights to the FA Cup and England internationals, it now had a respectable football portfolio - and the Olympics and World Cup showed it could still handle the big events with aplomb.

He also brought sport into the new media age. Ten million viewers pressed the red button during the Olympics, to get a greater choice of events, and millions now use the BBC Sport website.

A priority

How did Salmon do it? He would be the first to admit he owed much to BBC Sport's second big champion - his boss, the former BBC director-general Greg Dyke.

Dyke is sports-mad, a former head of ITV Sport and director of Manchester United, and when he joined the BBC he saw sport as one of his biggest problems.

"The BBC had taken the decision not to compete for many contracts" he wrote in his book Inside Story.

Our research showed the British public liked sport on the BBC, without advertisements, and were very resentful that it was no longer available Greg Dyke

His predecessor John Birt believed the BBC's limited funds could be better used in areas like drama and news, where the BBC added more value.

Dyke wrote: "It was a perfectly rational strategy but it ignored one factor: what the audience wanted. Our research showed the British public liked sport on the BBC, without advertisements, and were very resentful that it was no longer available."

Dyke made BBC Sport a priority in his campaign to win back viewers and he had the money to do it, thanks to a generous licence-fee settlement.

By winning back contracts, and giving sport prime slots on BBC One, he restored the confidence that BBC Sport had lost under his predecessor.

It was not just about money. The BBC is still seen as the home of national events, which was one reason the FA wanted to award it the FA Cup and England internationals. For all its millions of pounds, Sky could not deliver the audiences the terrestrial channels could - and still cannot.

Dyke writes: "All sports organisations today face a dilemma. How much of their sport to put on pay television and how much traditional terrestrial television. The former pays more, the latter gets much bigger audiences and helps build the sport."

So how will BBC Sport fare now without both Dyke and Salmon?

Minority sports

In its manifesto, Building Public Value, the BBC says it will "continue to invest in the major sporting and public events - from Euro 2004 to D-Day - which bring large sections of UK society together".

It sets out the arguments for the BBC continuing to devote airtime and money to sport in a digital world in which commercial companies will pay top dollar for top sports events:

"The BBC plays a central role in the sporting life of the UK. It acts as a public space for a range of sporting events that many people feel are national assets - from European Championship football matches to Wimbledon and Six Nations rugby.

"It is able to take minority sports and stay with them to turn them into national events such as the World and UK Snooker Championships and the London Marathon.

"It covers more minority sports than any other terrestrial broadcaster, investing in grass roots initiatives through Sport Relief and Sport Action, and showcases disabled sport through the Disability Sport website and coverage of the Paralympics."

Even so, without real commitment from the top, some doubt that sport will continue to enjoy the status in the BBC that it has in the past five years.

In the current round of BBC cost-cutting, all departments face uncertainty, but BBC Sport faces more than most - not least because it is scheduled to move to Manchester, with all the upheaval that entails.

Whoever takes over from Salmon will not have a quiet life.