People thought Alice and I had split
Clare Balding is a national treasure, but that comes at a price. Not that she’s complaining, she tells Eleanor Steafel
Clare Balding is marching around the top of the BT Tower at a pace. Her Apple Watch has told her to stand up and walk, and she has obediently leapt to attention and begun a brisk trot around the room, calling over her shoulder for me to come with her. As we march, she points out London’s landmarks which are peeking through the fog, and takes it upon herself to offer me a potted history of what was once known as the Post Office Tower.
“I’ve realised why I love Ramblings [her Radio 4 walking show] so much,” she tells me. “It’s because it’s like my own geography field trip.” And she is, it has to be said, somewhat like an enthusiastic geography teacher, only with an encyclopedic knowledge of sporting events rather than oxbow lakes. As her wife, the former newsreader Alice Arnold, once said: “It is a bit like living with Tigger.”
Balding, 45, was adored for years by racing enthusiasts for her coverage of Royal Ascot and the Grand National, but was catapulted to household name and national treasure status after her stellar performance at London 2012, for which she was awarded a Bafta. Book deals and presenting roles flooded in, and at one point it seemed you couldn’t turn on the radio or television without hearing Balding’s warm, “jolly hockey sticks” timbre. Cue cynical cries of: “That Clare Balding – she’s everywhere!”
“It was never true though,” she says, indignantly. “But it was a myth that started to get bigger, so I thought, ‘Right, the only way of stopping this is to actually stop and see if anyone notices’. I didn’t do any live sport for about six months and people were still saying it, so I thought, OK, now I just need to get over it and get on.”
In any case, she says, with typical pragmatism, it is more important to her whether or not she’s done a good job.
You would need to have a heart of stone to watch Balding’s Olympic and Paralympic coverage over the past four years and come away feeling anything other than joyful. Who could forget her interview with the world’s proudest father – the exuberant South African Bert le Clos – in 2012; or fail to delight in the badinage between Balding and Sir Chris Hoy in Rio this summer? “I did nothing other than hold the microphone! You get those moments, and you have to learn to back off and let them take the spotlight. It’s taken me a long time to work that out.” An admirable ambition, but not always possible. Not, at least, when a majority of the 45 million UK viewers are more interested in whether or not that nice Clare Balding on the telly is wearing her wedding ring. “People got so exercised about that!” she says, clearly still baffled by the hoo-hah that occurred in the summer. “I was really disciplined during the Olympics and didn’t look at my mentions on Twitter once, but I knew there was an issue about the wedding ring, because Alice told me. The advice had been not to take anything to Brazil that you can’t replace. “Rather sweetly, when I was back between the Olympics and the Paralympics, we were walking the dog in Chiswick and this lady stopped us and said: ‘Oh, I’m so glad to see you together, is everything all right? I was really worried’.” You know you’re officially a national treasure when fans are “thoughtfully” keeping tabs on your relationship while you’re half way across the world. “People generally are incredibly nice and that’s a relief,” says Balding. “I never anticipated any of this and it still surprises me.”
Of course, when millions of people are watching you interview a gold medal-winning cyclist, it does help, she says, to have someone back at home looking out for you. Arnold, whom Balding married in April last year, nine years after the couple’s civil partnership, often intercepts messages criticising or praising her wife. She’s also always the first to let Balding know if she has a hair out of place on screen. “She’ll text me when I’m on air just saying: ‘helmet hair’. Oh, okay, thanks for that.”
References to Arnold pepper her conversation, and the couple are looking forward to Christmas at home at the Baldings’ stables at Kingsclere, where her brother Andrew now holds the training licence.
“I work on Christmas morning and it’s not entirely because that way I don’t have to cook, but it slightly is,” she jokes, admitting she and Arnold are both terrible cooks. “Our housesitter said the other day: ‘How can you not have a sieve?’ I said, ‘We do!’ And then I realised, that wasn’t a sieve, that was a colander. We don’t have a rolling pin, either.”
The couple live in west London alone – when it comes to having children, Balding says she “never had that urge” – but both are close to her young nephews and niece and spend as much time with them as possible.
After a packed summer, you could forgive Balding for wanting to take some time off, but save for a recent “glorious” holiday with Arnold and Christmas, she is looking ahead. There is a second children’s book to write and her BT Sport chat show to get back to, and on December 12 she’ll host the Action Woman of the Year Awards, with women’s hockey captain Maddie Hinch, cycling star Laura Kenny and gold medal-winning boxer Nicola Adams among the nominees.
Balding says women’s sport has come a long way since London 2012. “There have been times in the past where I’ve thought, God, when will they listen? When will companies realise that this is where the options are for sponsorship?
“But actually, I think it is starting to happen. You could, as a 14-yearold girl, now say, ‘I want to be a professional sportswoman’ and actually get paid for doing it.”
Balding is clearly more than content with her lot. And if all the telly and the fame were to disappear overnight? No matter, she’d keep doing her Sunday morning Radio 2 show, she’d write, walk the dog, Archie, with Alice, and spend more time with her family. “I’m very happy, so I just think everything is a bonus. Oh, and Will Young’s just said he wants to come on Ramblings! So I think we should probably do that.”