Clare Balding: On using your profile for social change
SA: Hello and welcome to The Gamechangers podcast where you’ll hear from trailblazing, fearless women in sport. I’m Sue Anstiss, a Founding Trustee of The Women’s Sport Trust Charity and the Founder and CEO of Promote PR, one of Britain’s leading sports PR agencies. In this episode you’ll hear from the broadcasting legend, Clare Balding OBE. Clare has worked on many of the highest profile sporting events, including 6 Olympic and 5 Paralympic Games, 5 Winter Olympics, the Boat Race, Wimbledon and The Grand National. She’s also an ardent campaigner for better coverage of women’s sport.
As you can imagine I found it pretty daunting to interviewthe queen of the sports interview herself but Clare was incredibly kind, sharing lots about her life, her work and all she’s doing to help increase the profile of women’s sport in the media. Clare and I met for breakfast at Bill’s and began the interview outside in the sunshine. I started by asking Clare about her earliest memories of sport.
CB: My dad was absolutely sport obsessed, so I grew up watching a lot of cricket, a lot of rugby union, a lot of racing, ‘cos my dad was a racehorse trainer but he just, he’s obsessed with sport. I tried to make him watch some of the Netball World Cup but he wouldn’t really have it and I got so annoyed with him saying stupid things that I let him turn over and I just went to watch it somewhere else. But that’s why, so I grew up riding and I wanted to, in my dream I’d have gone to the Olympics as an event rider, as part of the British team but I was never good enough! And so equestrian sport is a major love of mine.
SA: When did you first sit on a horse?
CB: Oh it would be before I could walk. So yeah that was, riding was absolutely what I was doing from probably pre-toddler. I know I broke my collarbone at two, two-and-a-half, falling off but your bones are soft!
SA: You mentioned eventing and flat racing as well, you were the champion lady rider in 1990. For those of us that have only ever sat on a horse on holiday, how does it feel to ride at speed at pace on a horse?
CB: It’s an amazing thrill actually and I was down at home this morning watching the horses on the gallops. They are so refined and thoroughbred racehorses are the Ferraris of the horse world. They move very fast but also when you’re in a race, you’ve got to react quickly. You’ve got to see gaps, and anybody who has driven cars in races will absolutely understand this, you are anticipating movements ahead of you and you’re conscious of what’s going on behind you.
But yeah all those things. You’re constantly seeing gaps or if you’ve been jumping, and I rode in point to point as well as riding cross-country for eventing, you are seeing a stride - so at the end of an escalator, this sounds so ridiculous, but you know those tramalator things at airports, I’ll be looking for the stride from about 100 yards out, trying to get the stride right to get off it, at speed!
SA: Like a long jumper.
CB: Not very transferable skills but it makes me laugh.
SA: Today there are still so few women out riding, we see the occasional rider. Why do you think that is now? Why has that not changed?
CB: The numbers are definitely growing and interestingly in the yards, at least 50% if not more of the workforce are female. It’s when they’re given the chances and I find it’s still quite depressing. If you look at the numbers of female jockeys who ride in group 1 races, which is the very top level, it’s tiny. In France they have a system where the female jockeys get a weight allowance and that’s really dramatically changed the uptake. It’s not to do with lack of ability, and it’s certainly nothing to do with weight, ‘cos the girls are lighter. It’s a huge benefit and as we know it is all about the horse that you’re on. It’s 80% horse and 20% jockey and women still aren’t getting the chance at the top level.
And I don’t know whether that’s a reluctance of some of the owners to pick a female rider. I think there’s, with the punters, who would be very alpha male, I think there’s always that – they can be quite ignorant about the use of the whip for example and think the more you hit a horse the faster it goes – that’s definitely not true. But it’s really interesting for me. If you look at sports where men compete against women and sailing and equestrian sports are the two, I think having financial independence is more to do with it than gender. So women who could fund themselves or run their businesses successfully so they could sell horses or in sailing terms get sponsors or be able to just afford to do it, they gave themselves their own opportunities.
They were their own bosses. They weren’t relying on somebody else to make that decision. And it seeps right through racing that women are fine as secretaries, fine as half your workforce, fine – there are very few trainers who are women but essentially the wives of trainers do a hell of a lot of work, a hell of a lot with the owners – but as soon as you get to ride, and all jockeys are paid the same by the way for their rides – as soon as you’ve got to pay a jockey £110 and the agents are ringing up and pushing on behalf of the ones they represent, there is something that happens in the trainer’s head or the owners’ heads that say, oh we’d be better off with … and I’m not talking about Frankie Dettori over Hayley Turner, I’m talking about Paul Mulrenin over Hayley Turner, who you’ve probably never heard of and he’s a perfectly good jockey. But it’s not, he’s not Frankie. It’s not like you’re getting really vastly the best there’s ever been and great entertainment and great with the owners and all of that. When they are given equal chances – at the Shergar Cup, there’s always a women’s team and the rides are allotted so nobody’s got a choice over it – Hayley Turner’s been leading jockey at that meeting the last two years.
SA: And how will it change if it’s about, is it change of attitude over time?
CB: Well, as I say in France, they tried to change it by allowing the 3lb weight allowance and that really has made a difference because obviously everybody will look for an advantage for their horse. And if you can carry 3lb less in weight, for a jockey that is essentially is as good…
SA: So why are they giving them a 3lb …?
CB: Because they’re trying to promote women in racing, as a way of showing that if you give women the opportunity they can ride at the top level.
SA: Because the danger is then that 3 sets, 5 sets, women have got an unfair advantage.
CB: Until it’s equal and I mean, by equal I mean equal opportunities, until that happens I think you’ve got to create a situation in which you are increasing the chances of women getting those rides. There have only been 3 women in the history of the Derby who have ridden in it and all of them were on outsiders. The first woman who rode in it was Alex Greaves on 150-1 shot. Of course she was going to finish last, it was a rubbish horse.
SA: It all got a bit too noisy with lorries passing us as we sat outside at Bill’s, so we moved indoors for the rest of the interview. I asked Clare if she was inspired by any female sporting role models when she was growing up.
CB: So my absolute heroine growing up was Lucinda Green, Lucinda Prior-Palmer as she was. She won badminton for the first time I think when she was still 19. She might have been just 20, fearless cross-country. She won badminton 6 times on 6 different horses. Everybody recognised her as the leading, certainly cross-country rider in the world and obviously she was a woman. So it didn’t even occur to me that women couldn’t ride on a level if not better than men and that’s why in many ways equestrian sport is really, I still love watching it, I still love the fact that gender doesn’t come into it at all. If you are good enough and you can get the better horses, you will win gold medals.
SA: Fantastic that there is that quality. You mentioned earlier your career, off to university to Cambridge to read English. Germaine Greer was one of your supervisors there, do you think her attitude to the place of women in society influenced your views?
CB: Germaine is interesting because she’s academic about it and she was looking at different fields and she had a difference experience. I grew up in a household where without a shadow of a doubt my father did not think that a. women could train racehorses and b. he thought there were a lot of jobs that women couldn’t do. Probably presenting Grandstand which was the flagship sports programme at the time would have been on his list of things that women couldn’t do, and certainly not his own daughter.
[0:10:27]
But his attitude changed because it had to, because I was going to go and do that. And I’m just terribly aware that there’s a lot of self-conscious bias that we inflict on ourselves that we count ourselves out of situations and I think partly out of naivety, partly out of stupidity. I put myself in situations that some people would have deselected themselves from and just thought, yeah I can do this, in a way that men do all the time, with a massive amount of hoot spa, they go, yeah I can do this! And I just think a better-balanced society would allow more talented people opportunities, that’s all. And I want to try and create some kind of shift change where women’s sport is almost a flagbearer for other parts of society where actually female athletes across the board have respect and reward.
Male footballers and their pay and, as we know, it’s a business that is pretty hard to sustain outside of the Premier League – and even in the Premier League there are businesses that are really only just staying afloat because male footballers are paid way beyond the scope of reality. And that distances them from their fans which I think is really sad who are then still having to pay 45 quid for a shirt that’s changed one corner that’s different this season to last season so you’ve got to buy a new one. I think that that’s not women’s sport and certainly women’s football should aspire to. Women’s football has a chance of becoming what we wish men’s football was, it really does have that chance.
It will be fascinating to see what happens as it becomes commercially more successful. Will the Premier League try and take it over and I suspect that might be the case? Can the FA maintain some form of control and put things in place where actually girls and young women are really nurtured through a system that can chew people up and spit it out and it happens to a lot of boys that they are kicked out at 14,15 - where they’ve missed crucial bits of school and it kind of damages them for the rest of their lives. And I’d love to think that that doesn’t have to be the case in women’s football. I would love the reward structure to be better. I’d love the FA Cup to have a real vibe around it and Wembley to be packed in the semi-finals to matter as well and people to be aware of clubs and follow players and know what they’re like, and how they play obviously but this was always going to be a big year. 2019 was always going to be a massive year ‘cos it’s not an Olympic year, there wasn’t a men’s World Cup to compete with – football World Cup that is - the combination of the Women’s Football World Cup and the Netball World Cup happening so close together and actually virtually overlapping and Wimbledon being right there as well.
That meant women’s sport was going to be at a level of exposure it had never been at before but do you know what? As soon as the Premier League season started again, you’d open a newspaper and go, well the women clearly aren’t doing anything today and again not on the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. Oh there’s a tiny little two-lines there about Charlotte Dujardin being eliminated at the European Championships. And just think, come on guys. There’s so much written that’s not really news but just creates a noise around male sport.
SA: Broadcasting. You mentioned your dad saying you wouldn’t be presenting Grandstand …
CB: I don’t think he said it out loud …
SA: In his head, fine, but when did the idea of you wanting to broadcast present itself to you?
[0:14:16]
CB: To be brutally honest, it didn’t really. I wish I could pretend I drove this whole thing and had a vison and thought, oh I want to go and present the Olympics. I really didn’t. The one thing I think I have done, and I’d say this to much younger people who want to come into the industry, the one thing I’ve always done is said yes to things that scared me a bit and that took me to different places or took me totally out of my comfort zone. So when I left university, I had the opportunity to do some racing bulletins on Radio 5 as it was before it became 5Live and I said, yes. And they were very early starts and I wasn’t living in London at the time, I was living at home with my parents, so I’d hammer up the motorway in the Mini that I won riding in races, and do those early morning bulletins and then I was looking for a job that could actually pay me enough to live in London and then I got offered a job as a trainee in BBC Sport, which was to be honest nowhere near the level all my university mates were on, ’cos they’d gone off with their … oh everyone going , oh there’s a fancy degree.
They’d gone off into different industries, a lot of them into the City but some of them into accountancy or advertising - is probably where I would have gone and got offered a job in advertising - but suddenly here was this amazingly exciting world and I always loved radio, I think it’s a very intimate media. I think people really focus on what you’re saying and how you’re saying it, because they’re not distracted by the fact that you’re wearing a stripy shirt that’s a bit crumpled and clearly you’ve never ironed in your life or your hair’s all floppy ‘cos you’ve just washed it that morning. Do you know what I mean? They’re not distracted by anything the way you look, and I thought, this is different and no one in my family had worked in the media and I thought, okay, let’s give this a go.
SA: Was it fairly equal male/female in training?
CB: No and in the sports room Eleanor Oldroyd and Charlotte Nicol would have been the only other female voices on air. But I was part of, we had a really good bunch of people, Marcus Buckland, Mark Poutgatch, Ian Payne was there at the time, Peter Drury, John Champion – some really, really good nice people.
SA: And supportive of young women coming through?
CB: I don’t know that! Bit strong. No, some were very supportive. I mean Ellie was brilliant because she wanted to help and still we’re very, very good friends now and I’m very conscious that the right things are said to you at the right time are massively influential. Alice, my partner, always says I’m offering career advice without, unsolicited career advice, and I do probably, and I’m conscious now I’ll stop and say, do you want me to give you feedback?
SA: A sentence or two can send someone in a stratospheric difference direction.
CB: I would hope so and I think you know particularly when you’re young you probably are more sensitive to people not being helpful and my God you remember it when they’re not. So I always try and make sure that I am!
SA: And did you face sexism do you feel as a woman working in sport at that time on the radio?
CB: Not that I noticed in most sports that I covered. Now obviously in racing I had the huge advantage that people knew my surname and Frankie Dettori is about the same age as me and we kind of grew up and I knew him really well because he rode for my dad.
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He was then the biggest star so when he rode his Magnificent Seven I was there as the reporter and - hey Clare, how you doing? -and that really helps and it sets a tone amongst the other jockeys as well and trainers and I could get to people because I knew them or I knew how to find their number and actually you become very clever at contacts in the sense that I knew there was this publication called, the directory called The Turf that had every single trainer and jockey’s number, and owner in it. Now most people in the sports room wouldn’t know that but I knew I could get a number for Jenny Pitman or I could get a number for Henry Cecil.
Not just ‘cos I’d ring my mum, because I knew where to look so I’ve always been very aware of that, that a lot of what you do and it doesn’t matter what part of the industry you’re in, a lot of it is about being smart, working smart. With the Olympics, the first Olympics I went to cover was ‘96 in Atlanta. We didn’t really have - I mean the internet was there but it wasn’t really working – you couldn’t get it on your phone but you work out ways in which you can get information that will add to your broadcast. So essential storytelling is going to be richer if you’ve got more information to put into it and that’s how I always looked at it.
SA: And that’s masses of research you do isn’t it? That was going to be one of my later questions. Covering so many sports events, how do you gain that knowledge, retain that knowledge across sports where you haven’t been immersed as horseracing?
CB: I find it, I love that, so I’ve got the sort of brain that needs the equivalent of a breakfast buffet. I need lots of different things from lots of different areas just to keep me interested. I love variety, I like being part of a team but I work on my own. I’m a self-employed freelance so I like jumping in and suddenly being, Olympics, 16-days work in a row, really long hours in a team. My job there is keep myself fit and mentally fit is what I mean and keep myself positive. Because there’s nothing worse than feeling you’re dragging someone along with you so when the research is almost part of feeding my brain to keep me up. And I really enjoy it and it’s like a teacher teaching different subjects or a lawyer picking up different cases or a politician doing … loads of people do this all the time. It’s just I do it in sport.
So when I go to do equestrian sport, it’s slightly easier because frankly I would know more of it anyway. But let’s say something like rugby league, which I love, you can learn an awful lot by listening and by asking the right questions. And when you realise that the viewer doesn’t mind if you ask the question that they would have asked, and you don’t need to know the answer, you need to listen to the answer, you don’t have to be the know-all and sometimes I try and resist the urge to show all my homework. I need to know it but I don’t need to tell you the viewer that I know it.
I need my experts, so whether that’s Mark Foster in the swimming or Becky Adlington or Chris Hoy in the cycling, you want to hear them. You don’t want to hear me and it’s asking the right question to them to get them to tell them the really interesting thing that I know you’re going to love. And interviewing has always been my real, I love asking people questions. I’m really nosy.
SA: As a female presenter, I think they get more criticism sometimes from other media and with social media now, fans and from viewers as well. Do you think that’s changing?
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CB: I am really really disciplined about social media and actually I was talking to Charlotte Dujardin about this and about how you can protect yourself but also control the narrative. When I started, and I’m really glad I didn’t start in a world when social media was there because it would have definitely thrown me off course, without a shadow of a doubt and in certain instances could have ended my career. So I use Twitter and Instagram. I don’t use Facebook, somebody does it but I don’t, I just don’t really get Facebook. I don’t know why but I don’t.
And I will have instances where I know last year there was a bit of a Facebook campaign over something that was written in a paper that was really poorly presented. It was so far off the truth of the situation but I didn’t know this thing was happening on Facebook where everyone was having a go, led by the journalist who had written the piece. And a friend of mine who’s a producer rang me and she said, you ought to be aware of this. So I talked to my agents and said, look there’s something going on here that I think is a. is not right and b. could be very damaging. And their attitude is just let it happen, and my attitude was slightly, no I think we kind of need to correct this actually and get a statement from the editor of the magazine to say what happened and me distance myself from it ‘cos it’s now actually a row to do with me – it’s between the editor and the journalist.
And I’m just the subject but it’s not a row to do with me. Anyway, you suddenly get a taste of what that’s like and I’d gone off racing that day, I’m on the committee at Epsom, so I’d gone racing at Epsom but Alice was following it and rang me and said, look this has become a major issue and it can feel very much like you’re in the middle of the storm. But I wasn’t in the middle of the storm ‘cos I wasn’t looking so suddenly you realised the power of not being in the middle of the storm. So I was telling Charlotte – Charlotte Dujardin – and said, look when I do a major event, let’s say a million viewers or more, so a big audience, I do not look at mentions.
I post stuff on Twitter and I’ll post photos of let’s say Wimbledon, who I’ve got with me for the highlights show or photos of players or whatever, things that people might find interesting but I do not look at mentions because I don’t want to know if somebody doesn’t like my hair or my shoes or my jacket or what I said about somebody or why didn’t I talk more about so-and-so? I want a relationship with the editor and the producer of that programme where we trust each other and we are making decisions based on our professional instinct not based on what a load of people are saying and what’s trending on Twitter. Now that’s not to say we don’t use it for the strengths that it has which in terms of breaking news is really important so I’ll follow my feed but I won’t follow my mentions. Does that make sense? So it gives me a sense of real power as well.
It’s like stopping drinking coffee for a month which I wouldn’t do by the way, that actually you get a strength from it ‘cos you have the discipline. I don’t seek approval on social media and equally therefore I understand that the approval that you might get one week can turn into heavy disapproval the next. And neither extreme is real. Somewhere in between is real and navigating that, I think is going to have to become part of every broadcaster and every athlete’s thinking process. It’s got to become part of being a professional, of knowing how to use it and knowing how to control yourself and being really careful what you say, who you respond to. Don’t engage in some massive row.
[0:24:27]
Something came up the other day, ‘cos I don’t Google myself and I don’t search myself on Twitter but Alice will occasionally just out of interest go, okay, what are they saying? Some guy had said, tell us something about an encounter you’ve had with a celebrity. And this chap puts up, ‘Claire Balding shouted at me once for bringing her the wrong coffee’. Now, I was like, what? Really? I don’t shout. I am not a shouter. I mean I might shout at Archie if he doesn’t … like, come here! That is the extent of my shouting and it would be very unlike me to complain about coffee to anyone. So, Alice double-checked with him when this happened and where, just to check it wasn’t a complete mistaken identity and he named an event that I had done, swimming event.
So I went back to him direct and I said, I am really upset to read this and I am so sorry because I do not remember it. I can’t deny that it happened, because that’s then me saying he’s not telling the truth and that’s not fair and the circumstances just didn’t … anyway so I just apologised to him because I thought, that’s the one thing that I should do is say I’m so sorry and I didn’t even put ‘if this occurred’, I just said, I’m really upset to read this and God I must have been having a terrible day because I don’t even like, it wasn’t Nescafe, I don’t even like Nescafe. So it was a really weird thing.
Anyway, I thought, okay that’ll do and then Alice said, right, don’t engage anymore because suddenly you’re then in a conversation situation where something that’s tiny and wouldn’t have been seen by anybody could blow up into something that’s much bigger. So you then have to just … it was silly because to be honest neither of us would have seen it if in a normal run of things, you just wouldn’t have seen it and therefore not have ... but you kind of think little things like that … but I’m not like that. So I was saying to Charlotte Dujardin because she was really upset about the elimination and some people had not been very nice on social media and it was …
SA: It is distressing, isn’t it?
CB: Yeah, and also everything about her is about excellence and horse welfare. She’s a really sympathetic rider. She works really hard to make sure her horses are trained properly. She doesn’t use shortcuts. She doesn’t lose her temper with horses. I really felt for her because everything felt awful about it and the team hadn’t won a medal because she got eliminated. That was a major factor and that she couldn’t go through to the individual competitions because she’d been eliminated. But I just kept saying to her, I know this won’t help you now, because you won’t feel like this now, but when you distance yourself from this and put this into perspective remember how sick you feel and how much therefore it matters to you, this sport matters to you, and on the rainy days when it doesn’t feel worth it, use that.
And I was telling her this thing about the power that you can get from just saying, no I’m not engaging with that. It really can’t hurt you if you don’t see it and we are all inclined, if you see 100 comments and 99 of them are lovely and one is horrible, which is the one you remember? So knowing that your brain works like that and actually ‘The Chimp Paradox’ is an interesting book to read to understand that quite often the way you react is just part of our human make-up, it’s not you being different actually, we are all of a pattern and of a mould and learning the things that help us perform better I think is pretty important.
SA: And have you had any support or advice from the broadcasters that you’re working with in term of how to deal with that?
[0:28:01]
CB: Really interesting question because no is the answer and I think there should be and as I say, if I was 20 and coming in, I would not have the same attitude that I have now. I’m 48, I’ve been through a lot.
SA: You’ve had success haven’t you? If you’re coming in from the beginning…
CB: Yeah but I’ve had a lot of criticism too and you learn, you just learn to deal with things and you learn resilience and sometimes it’s just about survival, it can’t all be about glory and award winning you know, it’s not always going to be like that, not every year is going to be like that. And not everyone’s going to think you’re fantastic ‘cos they don’t, and you just get on with it. Keep that going and work hard at it and suddenly another 10 years on and you’re still doing it!
SA: You’ve been a really powerful champion for increased coverage of all women’s sport, what do you think is the impact of women and girls’ seeing other women play sport?
CB: Huge and I see that just through my niece and she’s nine and the things – she wants to be a professional cricketer - but she’s up for anything because she’s a little girl with two older brothers and she wants to do what they’re doing. And ‘cos I keep telling her she can so if she wants to be professional cricketer or a professional footballer or if she wants to ride, the riding bit is going to cost a lot more money and she’s going to need to run a business really effectively and she’s going to need to sell horses at a profit to keep it going. But the other things, once she’s bought her cricket bat she should be away!
SA: And you touched earlier on the impact of sport – girls seeing those successful sportswomen and then giving them the confidence to do whatever else they might want to do in life, beyond sport as well.
CB: I think there are really strong transferable skills and I think being able to work in a team is the strongest of them. But also picking yourself up when you’ve fallen over and getting on with it. Having to work out solutions to quite difficult problems, having to think quickly and take risks, all these things I think are massively important in life. So for kids to have more exposure and better teaching of sport in schools I think is absolutely crucial. And that’s one of those things that one’s almost got to be putting the pressure on at political level to change the school curriculum or encourage. I have this dream and actually the latest book that I wrote I did this whole scene at the end about a supermarket providing sports facilities ’cos it’s an idea that I’ve always thought should work.
Supermarkets have huge areas, they have good parking, they want to create an atmosphere of a club so that their customers stay loyal so I’m thinking, well why not make that your sports club? So actually you go and do your shop, your big shop, your kids are playing netball or playing football or doing something on quite tight pitches. Here in Chiswick they’ve got some fantastic mini-football pitches and netball pitches all the way down the railway line at the back of Turnham Green. And it’s brilliant going down there on a weekday evening and just watching all these kids just watching different sports. But of course it’s organised and the parents are paying for it because it’s clubs that are being set up and teachers or coaches are being paid outside of school hours and just think that’s a real shame, because that puts a lot of emphasis on the parents making it happen, and indeed paying for it.
[0:31:14]
Whereas I think there are different solutions and I just think if enough pressure if being created from the kids and families themselves to say, we want more sport, we want more options and we know, research shows that it makes kids concentrate better as well. It actually aids academic performance and for those kids that go to independent schools, their parents are breaking themselves to pay for it and what are they paying for? They’re not paying for improved education actually, ‘cos the teaching won’t be phenomenally better than they would get in a local state school – they’re paying for sport and drama and music and art and all the things that have been sort of stripped out of the state system.
And I just think that’s creating such a gap. Makes me very upset ‘cos you just think, why should the rich middle-class kids get all of the sport when actually it’s criminal, it’s really annoying and then it creates this sport apartheid where suddenly you can’t get it early so you’re never going to get it and you’re not going to get it late either.
SA: I’m going to bring you back to women’s sport profile. Since 2012, are you pleased with the change in the profiling coverage of women’s sport overall?
CB: Yeah, I am, I am. I still think there’s a way to go but credit where it’s due actually. In some cases to media organisations, whether that’s the BBC or BT or Sky or whoever. Or indeed The Telegraph for doing their women’s sport section which is fantastic. I think the on-line world has created more opportunity for us all to become journalists so actually there can be far more writing about women’s sport just by anyone. You don’t have to be employed by a newspaper to write about it, you can create your own channel if you want to. But I think also the way the top level of certain core brands has changed and their appreciation of women’s sport.
So Boots coming in as a major supporter of women’s football, that really matters and I go back – the Boat Race – rowing at university is something I did a bit of and consequently I presented the Boat Race and have done for a long time now. When Helen Morrissey made the, not just request but basically made it a point of the contract that we would come in and sponsor both your men’s and women’s race – BNY Mellon and Newton Investments - but here is the number one clause. The women’s race has to, within 5 years be on the tideway on the same day with the same coverage as the men’s race, she made that happen. The sponsorship made it happen and I think in lots of instances money talks and the businesses can change things really quickly.
SA: Do you think that is the biggest challenge that we see right now is the funding coming into sport ‘cos that then drives the coverage, drives spectators …?
CB: Yes it’s companies understanding the commercial value of women’s sports but also then creating a framework that is, that has a wider sort of responsibility you know? That it’s not just about making money. And that might be being very idealistic but funnily enough I was doing a thing with Diageo, you know the big drinks company recently and they do this non-alcoholic drink called Seedlip and I’m saying, why don’t you get - Seedlip would be a brilliant sponsor of women’s sport - because I don’t like the proliferation of alcohol, and gambling in particular, as sponsors and I really wish in some instances that wasn’t beginning to affect women’s sport but it is?
[0:34:53]
But what’s the option? Now some of the options are car companies have traditionally been quite big sponsors, certainly in equestrian sport they are. Mitsubishi for many years did badminton, Range Rover have been huge supporters and actually their sports programme of ambassadors and they went through a stage of bringing through young talent as well.
SA: And Kia with the Women’s Cricket …
CB: And Kia with the Women’s Cricket, they’ve been pretty good actually. There’s a really interesting challenge as well and I do think female athletes are really aware of this. The glamorisation of women’s sport, some people really object to it. I don’t mind at all because I want - athletes are by nature fit and they understand nutrition and they understand the benefit of sleep and of being mentally strong - there are so many good positive things and they can look very different from their competing days to let’s say glammed up for an awards do.
I love it when athletes are on front covers of magazines because I think that has - for most kids they want to do something because it looks sexy, looks glamorous - and I don’t think we should fight that. I think we should embrace it and if girls at school could have ambitions that are based on not having to have surgery on your face or your bottom before you’re 24, I think it would be really good!
SA: You say that ambition to be sexy and attractive etc but that’s for the girls isn’t it? You wouldn’t say the boys necessarily …
CB: No I absolutely think the boys, what did David Beckham do? He made football sexy, look at him for God’s sake! And not just, it’s not, I’m not just talking just about a physical attraction thing, he was in all the right places. He was driving the cool car. It’s to do with the lifestyle that kids find aspirational. Now you can’t fight human nature so work it out and advertisers do this all the time. They will find the thing that they know people want and they will create the advert that says that their product can give it to you.
So it’s that, it’s understanding what women’s sports can give people that that they want. And if you want the top athletes and indeed a whole raft of kids who could be really good – and sometimes it’s not always the most talented person - Johnny Wilkinson will say this, Kevin Sinfield will always say this – I wasn’t the most talented, I worked the hardest. So it’s not all about pure talent but it’s about making hard work. Andy Murray works harder than anyone and it’s about making hard work actually not be the thing where people go, oh that’s really boring. Making the thing people go, God isn’t that impressive?
SA: I could do that if I put my mind to it.
CB: Yes, so that’s what I mean by sexy – I don’t mean sex appeal, I just mean attractive and desirable and the thing that people will aspire to. And that’s where I think women’s sport can really shift that dial still. I think there’s …
SA: We had that fabulous front cover with Elle magazine recently with the amazing athletes. You’ve taken action yourself to support women’s sports coverage by sometimes not attending or attending. You mentioned the Boat Race, I think that was the day of the Grand National and you chose to be there, at that first women’s Boat Race and not attending the Open when it was at Muirfield too? So do you feel it’s important to use your profile to create some social change?
[0:38:18]
CB: It’s a tricky one because I don’t want anyone to feel that they have to make decisions based on what it says, because lots of people can’t afford to make those decisions. You’ve got to go where you’re going to get paid to do the job. And sometimes people will put pressure on you to not do an event so, for example, when I did the Winter Olympics in Sochi, there was quite a lot of pressure from LGBT groups saying well why are you going? And I said, because if I don’t go – to be there as the lead presenter and be gay, is that not everything that Putin hates – so let’s do it? So you can take the argument either way. My feeling was with the women’s Boat Race I really wanted to support it and that I believe me was not a financial decision that was sensible but I believed it very strongly and I felt that sometimes you’ve just got to put your money where your mouth is and do it.
I don’t regret that for a second and I don’t know if it was the right thing to do. My parents didn’t understand it. A lot of people in racing didn’t understand it, that’s what I thought I wanted to do. And it’s interesting, in reshaping what I have, the messages that I want to put out there, you realise that sometimes, and Billie Jean King has taught me this, you do have to keep saying the same thing in a slightly different way because every time you say it you will hear a different audience or their ears are listening in a different way and until the time comes when it’s not necessary I feel like I will keep doing it.
So when I stopped presenting racing, you have a little mini-crisis of confidence and anyone who’s changing jobs will feel this, or making a massive decision about a shift in their lives – personal or professional – you think, right, God who am I? If I’m not the one who does the racing, what’s my purpose? What do I do? And that’s really, and it had probably coming for a while because that decision over the Boat Race or the Grand National happened obviously before I stopped presenting racing. But I thought, okay, I know what I want to do and my attitude is never ever regret what you can’t do. It’s always find a new purpose, look forward and what are you doing? I was, right I am really going to put my effort into this. Constantly having conversations with potential sponsors, saying to them have you looked at women’s sport? With people who are entertaining clients, have you looked at women’s sport, do you know what good value is? And constantly making a noise to the media and indeed my bosses so either publicly or privately saying, what are you doing about coverage in this space?
What’s your plan? Where’s your long-term investment? How are you creating more noise around this? So, for example, this year the Sports Relief Netball. That’s taken six years to make that happen and I know it’s only a small thing and I know it’s only one night and it was really thanks to Jennifer Saunders who was on board right from the beginning. And ultimately a lot of sports in the end from Comic Relief and for the BBC but you’ve got to be bloody persistent. You do slightly feel like you’re banging your head against the wall and sometimes you just can’t understand why everyone can’t see what you can see.
So I had a meeting with a quite senior guy in television recently and I was trying to persuade them to do some live coverage of their sport on a weekend, regularly. And he said to me, I don’t want to have an argument with you about this. And I looked at him and I said, this is not an argument, this is me telling you that in five years-time, if you don’t do this now, in five years-time you will look back and think, dammit, why didn’t we do it when we could afford to? This is not an argument! I could see him sort of sit back and, oh my God! ‘Cos I thought, how can you not see what I’m seeing? How do you not understand that this is changing?
[0:42:20]
SA: Does it cause a conflict with you to, I guess, call out some of those people that are paying your wages?
CB: Without a shadow of a doubt, of course it does.
SA: Are you being brave because you know it’s the right thing to do or you pick your fights as and …?
CB: It’s just not in my nature to sit there and say, yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir, I’m afraid. I am always going to be honest – it doesn’t mean I’m always right but I will always say what I believe to be true or what I think - or what my instinct … is strong. I’m quite often, more often right than wrong and I just have learned to trust it because if it meant ultimately, let’s say that certain bosses thought, right, that’s too difficult ‘cos she’ll constantly keep wanting more coverage – I don’t want to present it all, that’s not the point. I’m not making these suggestions to create work for myself. I’ve got enough work. I’m really fine. I don’t need to be on television, do you know what I mean? I really don’t need to be.
I love doing it and I love being at the heart of the action at really big events and complicated events and it absolutely make my heart sing, but there are other avenues and I would love to create opportunities for women’s sports and indeed for more female broadcasters and I think I’m in a position where you can help. But it might mean I have to go and try and run an independent production company or get myself into a position of actually being the one who does make those decisions on behalf of the network! Again you’ve got to be bold enough to think, well, why not? Why wouldn’t I be able to do that? I’d never really thought about it before but now I am!
SA: In October 2012 you appeared in front of the all-party Parliamentary Group for Women in Sport and said, I believe, with Tani and Dame Katherine Grainger, sorry Baroness Grey-Thomson, women having freedom to play sports directly leads to women having political freedom, can you explain?
CB: Well I was thinking in particular of the Middle East and countries like Saudi Arabia where I think they have finally allowed women to drive actually. But back then, certainly couldn’t vote, couldn’t really be seen in public, couldn’t drive. I think Saudi Arabia had their first Olympic competitor in London in 2012. I do think that men and women seeing women being competitive and being allowed to succeed and indeed fail ‘cos that’s going to happen in sport. I think that does change … it’s a very visual representation of ambition and competitive spirit sport is, so to see women in that space is important, yeah I do think so.
And funnily enough when I was doing the documentary on women’s football and the FA banning women’s football, that was really closely linked to women campaigning for the vote. And there was one historian I spoke to who honestly thought that it was based on the establishment down here in London, worrying about what northern working-class women might do with their vote. So actually it was quite a long way off working, ‘cos the first time women were allowed the vote they had to, in the house or be married or whatever. And the Bolshevik Party was quite active in the north west and they were at this football match so it’s really interesting. There’s a drama that I’ve been trying to get off the ground for ages about women’s football and about specifically the movement in the north west and what was happening there with ? ladies but also the other clubs that were around and what life was really like. I think it’s fascinating. So that’s why I say, you know from history it’s true so look at Megan Rapinoe and the impact that she’s had in the States.
[0:46:31]
I just love her confidence and I love seeing that expression of whether it’s fury or passion – you know that belief and yeah sure people are going to have a go but so what, doesn’t mean she shouldn’t be true to who she is. And Lucy Bronze I’ve talked to a lot and interviewed over the years, but we just did a thing recently for a book where we were kind of interviewing each other. Lucy’s got a lot that I think she’ll say more and more as she gets more senior and less beholden
SA: And that’s a challenge isn’t it for athletes within that system to speak out against selectors or sponsors?
CB: Okay, going back to the racing thing. If you talk to a female jockey, they will all say, oh the opportunities are just the same. They’re so frightened of being the one that is labelled ‘feminist’. They’re so scared of that. You think yes, Bryony Frost is getting lots of opportunities and so is Rachael Blackmore but my God they’ve had to fight for that right.
SA: And not being their true selves to articulate …
CB: Well they may think what they’re saying is true, but I still think there is a fear amongst female jockeys that they don’t want to make this a gender war. Now I don’t want to make it a gender war, but I still think there are not the same opportunities and you can look at the data, it shows it. And going back to what I said I’m talking about top class races. Not just rides at Carlisle or Windsor on a Monday night …
SA: Nothing wrong with Windsor on a Monday night …
CB: No Windsor on a Monday night’s very nice but it’s not the highest quality racing!
SA: If you had your childhood again, and horses weren’t in it, are there sports that you feel you would love to have played?
CB: I’d loved to have played netball and I was not tall enough or, I’d be tall enough for centre, I’d be okay at centre. I’m really taken by the team spirit in the netball squad as a whole and I love the whole Back to Netball campaign. I’ve seen a lot of ?, become a good friend, I’ve been to London Pulse a few times and actually that’s going to be pretty critical in terms of making netball a bigger success, to have a really strong London side and to get good attendance at the Copper Box, week in, week out, I think would be huge and I’d love to see that happen.
And I go down there occasionally and take my niece and try and help promote it a bit on social media. But yeah, the Sports Relief netball match as well is about showing it can be for everybody and creating something that’s fun and entertaining around sport, similar to what The Last Leg has done for Paralympic sport. When you can just make more surround-sound, it makes a sport much higher profile so I think that’s an area that women’s sport, again can look at and try and work on. And how do we make the noise more consistent?
[0:49:30]
And different sounds to that noise and so it’s not just all about a build-up to a match and the reports after it, what else is going on? And some clubs are really good and some sports are really good at the behind-the-scenes stuff and putting things on You Tube and following stories through, people like that. They like to feel invested and I think London pulse – I’d love to try and help them get a documentary on all the stuff, behind-the-scenes, really, the struggle. The struggle of getting sponsors, the struggle ‘cos as a business it would be borderline. I mean I can’t think for one second that they’re even breaking even yet but that is interesting in itself. How do you build something from scratch in an area that is associated with netball because they have their Super League final there?
SA: The quad series …
CB: The quad series is there and the Olympics obviously has made the Copper Box a very known venue but how do you make it THE home of London Pulse, that everyone goes, oh the Copper Box, ah yeah that’s the London Pulse Club.
SA: How do you switch off yourself when you’re not doing all that you’re doing? Is sport part of your leisure time?
CB: Yeah, I play golf.
SA: Are you good?
CB: Not as good as I’d like to be! Alice is very good, she plays off nine – actually she might be about to come down to eight - yeah I’m playing in the Wentworth PGA in a couple of weeks now, Alice is going to caddy for me, so tell me what to do and I really enjoy that. And I also, I never quite understand the question about how do you switch off? It’s like I don’t understand the work-life balance question, I don’t understand it because I just spent two days down in the country, kind of looking out for my dad, ‘cos mum’s away. It’s exhausting! Like, real life is exhausting! That is not a switch-off! It really isn’t, so I reckon I spend all my life switched-off but switched-on. I’m not stressed. I love what I do. I’m much better at travelling, I don’t resent the time travelling anymore, I just read a book and I’m fine.
SA: I did hear someone talk recently about the whole work-life balance is about merging the two so that all of your life is enjoyable and relatively stress-free.
CB: Yeah exactly I’m not desperate to go on holiday – I love my holidays when I go – but I just really enjoy what I do, I love life. Yeah, and I look in the diary and I go okay, this is interesting. I’m pretty booked up all through September, yeah ‘cos I’ve got World Road Race Championships in Yorkshire so I’m really busy then. Then I get to October and there’s a few gaps – I’m thinking oh what am I going to do?
SA: You could write another book?
CB: I could, and I will start writing another book at some point I will. Next year is a big year and if I have a slightly easier Autumn that’s fine.
SA: In closing, what do you say drives you today? How do you measure your success?
[0:52:33]
CB: Oh gosh. I think, I don’t know, and I’m not one who sits going, oh it’s been a successful year because … I think because I am always looking at the next thing, I’d love to get that drama commissioned, I’d love to get a slightly different spin on the chat-show and be able to do that. I’d love to work on more factual documentaries on subjects that interest me.
SA: We’re going to start the production company!
CB: Yeah or run the channel! I just think success for me is knowing that I’m giving my all to everything I’m doing and that I’m really enjoying it and feeling satisfied by it and that is success.
SA: I was so grateful to Clare for taking the time to meet with me and share her thoughts on all things sport. I can’t wait to see what exciting projects she takes on next.