45 Facts About Clare Balding

Clare Victoria Balding was born on 29 January 1971 and is an English broadcast journalist and author.

Clare Balding was born on 29 January 1971, the daughter of Ian Balding and his wife Emma Hastings-Bass.

Clare Balding was privately educated at the independent Downe House School in Berkshire, where she was head girl and a contemporary of comedian Miranda Hart.

Clare Balding applied to read law at Christ's College, Cambridge, but failed her interview and realised that law was not what she most wanted to do.

From 1988 to 1993, Clare Balding was a leading amateur flat jockey and Champion Lady Rider in 1990.

Clare Balding's well-documented aristocratic lineage on her mother's side can be seen in records that TheGenealogist has identified in research.

Clare Balding's paternal grandfather Gerald Barnard Clare Balding Sr, was a 10-goal polo player who immigrated to America to play polo in the 1920s when he was in his 20s.

Clare Balding became a trainee with BBC National Radio in 1994, working on 5 Live, Radio 1, Radio 2 and Radio 4.

Clare Balding has fronted coverage of the Grand National, infamously humiliating Liam Treadwell, Grand National winning jockey in 2009 on Mon Mome.

Clare Balding has reported from seven Olympic Games, for BBC Radio in Atlanta and for BBC Television in Sydney, Athens, Beijing, London, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo.

Clare Balding has presented five Paralympic Games, the Winter Olympics from Salt Lake City, Turin, Vancouver, Sochi Pyeongchang and Beijing as well as the Commonwealth Games from Melbourne, Delhi, Glasgow, Gold Coast and the most recent games held in Birmingham in 2022.

Clare Balding was the face of the BBC's rugby league coverage, having presented Grandstand from a Rugby League Challenge Cup semi-final, and having been so impressed by the vibrancy and physical challenge of the sport she asked to cover further rugby league events.

Clare Balding was the last person to present Sunday Grandstand.

Clare Balding has presented coverage of Crufts for the BBC from 2004 to 2009 and for Channel 4 since 2013.

Clare Balding worked on BBC Radio 5 Live's Wimbledon coverage from 1995 to 2014.

Clare Balding has presented coverage of The Boat Race for the BBC since 2010, including the first live coverage of the women's Boat Race on the Tideway in 2015.

In 2010, Clare Balding presented a BBC TV series called Britain By Bike that retraced some of Harold Briercliffe's British cycle tours.

Clare Balding was a lead presenter on Channel 4's 2012 Summer Paralympics TV coverage.

In 2013, to mark the centenary of Emily Wilding Davison's fatal intervention in the 1913 Derby, Clare Balding presented a documentary about Davison for Channel 4 called Secrets of the Suffragettes.

Clare Balding serves as one of the presenters on BBC Sports Personality of the Year.

Clare Balding was the presenter of Good Morning Sunday on BBC Radio 2 from January 2013 to November 2017; leaving the show due to schedule changes which would not allow her to continue to present the programme and do other work.

Clare Balding presented a Saturday night quiz show for BBC One called Britain's Brightest, which began in January 2013.

Clare Balding was a senior presenter on Channel 4 Racing, from 2013 to 2016, predominantly fronting coverage of major festivals such as Cheltenham and Royal Ascot.

In 2023, Clare Balding will be BBC's lead presenter for Wimbledon, replacing Sue Barker who retired in 2022.

Balding currently hosts her own sports chat show called The Clare Balding Show, which airs on BT Sport and BBC Two.

Clare Balding has written columns for The Sporting Life, Racing Post, Sunday Telegraph, The Evening Standard and Stylist and currently writes a regular weekly sports column for Waitrose Weekend.

Clare Balding signed a deal with Viking Press to write an autobiography entitled My Animals and Other Family, which was published in September 2012.

Clare Balding was involved in a copy-control controversy in 2017, when it was alleged that she or her agent rewrote part of an interview that she gave to Saga magazine, provoking the journalist Ginny Dougary to remove her byline from the interview.

Clare Balding was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2013 Birthday Honours for services to broadcasting and journalism.

Clare Balding won the Royal Television Society's "Sports Presenter of the Year" in 2003 and "Presenter" in 2012.

Clare Balding won an achievement award from the UK chapter of the Women in Film and Television in 2012 for her coverage of the Olympics and Paralympics.

Clare Balding was awarded the 2012 Sports Journalists' Association's annual British Sports Journalism Award for Sports Broadcaster of the Year.

Clare Balding was made an Honorary Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge in 2014.

Clare Balding was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2022 Queen's Birthday Honours for services to sport and charity.

Clare Balding formalised her relationship with Alice Arnold, then a BBC Radio 4 continuity announcer and newsreader, in September 2006 by entering into a civil partnership.

On 29 May 2009, Clare Balding announced that she had thyroid cancer.

Clare Balding promised to be back on television covering the Epsom Derby, by the following Saturday.

Clare Balding later clarified on BBC's Have I Got News For You quiz that she believed Treadwell, who suffered from microdontia and hypodontia, to have had his teeth "kicked out" by a horse, a common injury suffered by jockeys, apologising again for her error.

Clare Balding has been a presenter on Sport Relief since its inception in 2002.

Clare Balding participated in a celebrity edition of The Apprentice to raise money for charity.

In 2010, Clare Balding became a patron of the British Thyroid Foundation.

In 2015, Clare Balding became an ambassador for Southampton FC's official charity, the Saints Foundation.

Clare Balding is patron to a number of other charities including Riding for the Disabled, British Paralympic Association, Diversity Role Models, The Mintridge Foundation and the Jane Tomlinson Appeal.

The RFL Council appointed role undertakes a two-year term which Clare Balding served from July 2020 to December 2022.

Clare Balding stated that during her tenure she wanted to see the women's game become a professional sport.