Biography
Winner of the BAFTA Special Award and RTS Presenter of the Year Award for her expert coverage of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, Clare Balding is one of Britain’s leading broadcasters. She is also a best-selling and award-winning author of five books and an ardent campaigner for better coverage of women’s sport.
Clare has worked in radio since she left university in 1994, and has been presenting major events on television and radio since becoming the face of the BBC’s horse racing output in 1998. Since then, she has worked on various sporting fixtures including six Olympic Games, five Paralympic Games and five Winter Olympic Games as well as major Royal events including Trooping the Colour, the Queen’s Royal Pageant and the Royal Wedding between Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. She has worked on Wimbledon as a reporter, commentator and presenter for BBC radio and television since 1995.
Clare has hosted walking series Ramblings on Radio 4 since 1999 and has presented Crufts for the BBC and Channel 4 since 2004. Clare was the main presenter for Channel 4’s coverage of the European Women’s Football Championships and fronted the documentary ‘When Football Banned Women’. She has also presented factual documentaries on Icons in sport, the Suffragettes, the Queen and Horses and a series about veterinary work on wild animals called Operation Wild. From 2013-2018, she hosted The Clare Balding Show on BT Sport, interviewing some of the most famous names in sport. Clare presented the 2017 America’s Cup in Bermuda, the WTA Tour Finals from Singapore, Fed Cup tennis and women’s football, all for BT.
As well as winning a personal BAFTA, Clare has been part of many BAFTA Award-winning programmes, has twice been named RTS Sports Presenter of the Year, as well as Sports Presenter of the Year at the TRIC Awards, Racing Journalist of the Year, awarded the special achievement award at the Women in Film and Television Awards and been praised for “perfect presentation” by the judges of the Broadcast Awards.
A bestselling author, Clare’s first book, ‘My Animals and Other Family‘ was published by Penguin in 2012. Based on her childhood growing up in an unusual household, it was published to critical acclaim and went on to win biography of the year at the National Book Awards. Her second book, ‘Walking Home’ was published in 2014.
Clare has released four children’s books ‘The Racehorse Who Wouldn’t Gallop’, The Racehorse Who Disappeared’, and wrote a short novel ‘The Girl Who Thought She Was a Dog’ for World Book Day in 2018. Her most recent book ‘The Racehorse Who Learned to Dance’ is published in June 2019.
Clare lives in London with her wife, Alice who is a Radio presenter on Mellow Magic and their disobedient dog, Archie. They have recently been joined by Button the beautiful and very well behaved kitten, whom Archie tolerates with relatively good grace.
Related Events
Andrew Lloyd Webber / Clare Balding
The genius of the theatre world, Andrew Lloyd Webber, will be talking to the legendary BBC Sport, Channel 4 and BT Sport Presenter, Clare Balding, about his life, success and all things theatre.