Tributes for O’Sullevan, 97
LEGENDARY jockey Lester Piggott last night paid tribute to horseracing commentator Sir Peter O’Sullevan, who died peacefully at his London home yesterday aged 97. Piggott was a close friend of the man still known as The Voice of Racing even though he retired from the BBC in 1997 after 50 years. Piggott said: ‘It is very sad, he was a great commentator. He had a distinctive style and that marked him out on his own. He was the best — what more can you say? It’s the saddest of days.’ Others paying tribute to O’Sullevan (right) included Clare Balding, who said: ‘He was not just the voice of a sport but the voice of an era... and a very long era.’
CLARE BALDING last night led the tributes to Sir Peter O’Sullevan after the undisputed Voice of Racing died at his London home at the age of 97.
In the history of sport, arguably no other commentator was more inextricably linked with the action he was describing than O’Sullevan, who led the BBC’s coverage of horse racing for 50 years.
Balding, whose early broadcasting career in racing overlapped with O’Sullevan’s before his retirement in 1997, said: ‘It was not just his descriptive powers but his rhythm of commentary.
‘If you think about the greats you think of Brian Johnston, Richie Benaud or Peter, from an age when there were fewer channels and it was a very different world. With a sport which moves as fast as racing, to still be on top of it in your 70s and still interested into his 90s shows his professionalism and real passion.
‘You watched him at work and saw how much study went into him making things look easy. It was a complete honour to work with him.
‘He was very supportive to me and I still rang him — I did it after Cheltenham this year — and would seek his opinion on racing matters. He was not just the voice of a sport but the voice of an era and a very long era.’
AP McCoy, 20-times champion jump jockey, described O’Sullevan as ‘the epitome of class; the most distinguished and eloquent voice of racing’.
McCoy’s fellow jockeys Willie Carson and Jimmy Lindley, who both worked with O’Sullevan for the BBC, also paid tribute.
Carson said he had a ‘voice like velvet’, while Lindley said ‘no-one else could give you the same feeling watching a race’.
Former England striker turned racehorse owner Michael Owen said: ‘He is one of the voices you associate the game with, and as soon as you hear that voice you think of him. It is a great loss and poignant to lose him during a meeting like Goodwood.’
O’Sullevan’s successor as racing commentator at the BBC, Jim McGrath, said: ‘His passion was horse racing and he was able to convey everything he felt about the game to millions of people.’
A measure of the massive impact O’Sullevan had on racing is reflected by the fact that almost two decades after he hung up his microphone, his race-calling is still the sport’s most familiar backing track.
No other commentator has been mimicked more by impersonators or been known better outside the confines of a narrow sporting world.
Largely relying on his giant binoculars, rescued from a German U-Boat, he rarely missed a vital incident. That he lived such a long and packed life is all the more amazing considering illhealth blighted his youth.
Born in County Kerry in March 1918, he endured a childhood scarred by asthma. Fascinated by the thrill of
racing and the Turf, he was denied the chance to ride by an incorrect diagnosis that he was allergic to horses.
His career as a racing journalist began before the second World War, when he took over from a friend who had been called up to the Army — O’Sullevan having failed his medical — to become correspondent for the Reading Gazette.
That paper folded on the eve of the war and it wasn’t until December 1944 that O’Sullevan, who had spent the war years as an air-raid warden in Chelsea where he lived for most of his life, was accepted as a racing subeditor, and later reporter, for the Press Association.
His first TV stint was on January 31, 1948, with three races broadcast from Kempton. His fee was 15 guineas.
Few could match his contacts. He numbered Scobie Breasley, Dr Vincent O’Brien, JP McManus, Francois Doumen, the Marquesa de Moratalla, Lester Piggott and the late Queen Mother among his close friends.
He was 79 when he retired after calling Suny Bay’s Hennessy Gold Cup at Newbury in November 1997. He leaves a legacy of memories — Red Rum’s third Grand National win in 1977 and Dawn Run’s emotional Cheltenham Gold Cup victory in 1986 are inseparable from O’Sullevan’s commentaries. He also demonstrated his objectivity when two top horses that he owned, the sprinter Be Friendly and hurdler Attivo, were running.
After retirement he devoted much of his time to charity. His own trust, now in its 19th year, has raised £4.2million for equine causes.