As one of the BBC’s leading presenters for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, Clare Balding has been responsible for keeping viewers up to date with the biggest news coming out of the sporting event.
Over the years the veteran sports broadcaster has made her name updating sporting fans with the results of many disciplines.
She currently presents for BBC Sport, Channel 4 and BT Sport and formerly presented the programme Good Morning Sunday on BBC Radio 2.
This year marks the eighth time she is forming part of the national broadcaster’s Olympics coverage.
She was also previously the face of the BBC’s rugby league coverage and Crufts, whilst this year became the lead broadcaster for Wimbledon.
However, Clare, 53, who hails from ‘racing royalty’, once had a successful sporting career herself too.
Clare Balding was born in 1971, the daughter of Ian Balding and Emma Balding, who was the daughter of racehorse trainer Peter Hastings-Bass, of the Earls of Huntingdon.
After attending the independent Downe House School in Berkshire, Clare attended Cambridge, where she read English.
Her first job in the media industry came in 1994, where she was a trainee with BBC National Radio, working on 5 Live, Radio 1 (presenting the sport on the Chris Evans Breakfast Show), Radio 2 and Radio 4.
The following year she made her debut as a television presenter, introducing highlights of Royal Ascot and then in 1997 became the BBC’s lead horse racing presenter.
Throughout her career, Clare has also reported from eight Olympic Games, for BBC Radio in Atlanta and for BBC Television in Sydney, Athens, Beijing, London, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo.
She has also presented five Paralympic Games, five Winter Olympics and five Commonwealth Games.
Clare was also the face of the BBC’s rugby league coverage, presented Crufts from 2004 to 2009 before doing so for Channel 4 since 2013.
She’s also presented on Countryfile and factual documentaries for the BBC including Britain By Bike, Operation Wild, and Britain’s Hidden Heritage.
For three years from 2013 she was a senior presenter for Channel 4 racing, predominantly fronting coverage of major festivals such as Cheltenham and Royal Ascot.
She also currently hosts her own sports chat show called The Clare Balding Show, which airs on BT Sport and BBC Two.
Throughout her childhood and teenage years, Clare rode and competed at a number of equestrian sports including eventing, show jumping and dressage.
From 1988 to 1993, she was a leading amateur flat jockey and Champion Lady Rider in 1990.
In a 2021 interview she recalled her childhood ambitions: ‘When I was a kid, all I wanted to be was an eventer and represent Great Britain at the Olympics.’
However, her desire to pursue a career as a jockey wasn’t to be.
‘I was fighting really hard to do something that I wasn’t physically suitable for. I wish I could have been naturally eight stone, but I wasn’t and I had to work really hard, so I had a very short career as an amateur jockey,’ she said.
Her family has close links to the industry, with her father training Mill Reef, the 1971 winner of The Derby, Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe and King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes.
Her younger brother, Andrew Balding, trained Casual Look, the winner of the 2003 Epsom Oaks.
Meanwhile her uncle Toby Balding trained winners in the Grand National, Cheltenham Gold Cup and Champion Hurdle, while maternal grandfather, trainer Peter Hastings-Bass, and her maternal uncle William Hastings-Bass, 17th Earl of Huntingdon was once trainer to Queen Elizabeth II.
Her maternal grandmother, Priscilla Hastings, was descended from the Earls of Derby and was one of the first women elected to membership of the Jockey Club too.
On her lifelong love of riding, Clare previously told Sheer Luxe: ‘I loved the feeling that there was something on this planet I could do well. Riding also had that sense of freedom and the adrenaline rush of doing something that was slightly dangerous, like jumping things that were a bit bigger than you might consider normally. It was just fun, really fun.’
Clare first met her wife, Alice Arnold, in 1999 when the latter was working as a BBC Radio 4 announcer and newsreader.
Alice, who had a decade-long career as a magistrate before working in the media industry worked for the BBC for more than 20 years until 2012.
They were friends for a few years before getting together in 2002.
The couple entered into a civil partnership in 2006 and nine years later married in 2015 after gay marriage was legalised in the U.K.
Speaking to Gyles Brandreth on his Rosebud podcast, the couple, who live in Chiswick in London, spoke about the early days of their relationship.
‘She came to my place. I don’t really drink, so I didn’t have any alcohol in the flat. Clare came in and I said, “I haven’t got any drink, so why don’t I go and get some, I’ll go to the off-licence, and you stay here”,’ Alice shared.
‘But Clare took that as “you stay here forever”. She never left.
‘So basically, I went out to get a bottle of wine and when I got back her toothbrush was unpacked, she had basically moved into my flat.’
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Speaking about their secret to a happy marriage, Clare once told The Mirror: ‘We are very easy together. We don’t row. I don’t know how we achieve that but I don’t think there is a secret. You’re on this wonderful adventure together.’