The voice of raing for much of the modern era: it’s Julian Ryder
Starting off in print, Jules lucked-out with a job in TV during a golden era of racing
‘It was the first time bike racing got proper TV’
As a TV commentator for almost 30 years, first in the heyday of World Superbikes then through the golden Valentino Rossi era of MotoGP, Julian Ryder is one of the most familiar voices in British motorcycling. So the fact the first 10 years of his media career were in magazines, most notably Bike, may come as something of a surprise. As a teenager ‘Jules’ got hooked on scrambles, with Dave Bickers an early hero. Then, at university in the early 1970s, he became a devotee of the magazine.
“I remember smashing myself to pieces on a Honda CB72, and when I got out of hospital going straight to buy a copy of Bike,” Ryder remembers today. “It was the copy with the Z1 on the front, and there was an article on racing. I must have sat in sick bay and read that magazine about a dozen times.” After graduating, the media beckoned, albeit with unlikely origins… “By pure accident I got a job with the Institute of Electrical Engineers and was taught to subedit – it was bloody good training…” Then, after two magazine jobs with the likes of The Design Council, bike mags finally came calling: first with The Biker, then Bike, and Motorcycle International before becoming owner/editor of Road Racer which not only confirmed his passion for racing but also opened the door to TV with Eurosport. “The station manager had gone through the press, seen Road Racer and asked me: ‘Would you like to come and see a programme being made?’ And in those days, how else would you see a grand prix? So, I toddled in…”
After assisting the regular commentators, he was asked back. “The second time, the regular commentator got stranded at the Le Mans 24hr car race and couldn’t get back so they gave me the microphone,” Ryder recalls. “I didn’t have time to think, which was probably a good thing, but they must have liked it because I got invited back to do more. “I enjoyed it. I got to work with proper racers, which was nice, but it still didn’t feel like proper television – even Road Racer probably had a bigger audience…”
Instead the big time came in 1993 when Sky took on WSB, gave it a big budget and, alongside Keith Heuwen, Ryder commented on Foggy, 100,000-strong crowds at Brands and the golden era of World Superbike racing.
“It was the first time that bike racing got ‘proper’ television, presenters, a studio show, stars… and I remember standing by our bacon buttie van on the Sunday
‘The regular guy got stranded so they gave me the mic’
morning at Brands watching the place filling up and my boss Martin Turner saying to me ‘I like to think we’re a part of this’. And I genuinely think we were…”
Seven years later, after WSB went to the BBC, fortune shone again when Ryder was asked by Toby Moody to join him at Eurosport covering GPs. “It looks like a brilliant career move, because Valentino joined 500s for 2000. In fact, as usual, it was complete and utter luck,” he admits.
So, while WSB began to decline and GPs were on the rise, Ryder had the good fortune to commentate on both in their pomp. From 2009 the pair continued under the British Eurosport banner before, in 2014, he followed MotoGP to BT Sport, reuniting with Heuwen before semiretiring at the end of 2017. “I definitely had the golden era of superbikes, no question, and then to have basically worked on most of Valentino’s career in 500s and MotoGP plus Max Biaggi, Casey Stoney, Jorge Lorenzo!
“As Kenny Roberts Jnr used to say about Valentino: his greatest talent is luck, being in the right place at the right time – and I have to admit that applies to me as well!”