15 June 2024 , 09:00
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Clare Balding has revealed how she once “nearly killed” Princess Anne during a horse race.
The 53-year-old broadcaster, who is from a horse racing family who mixed with the royals when she grew up, recalled how she had the unfortunate encounter with the Princess Royal, 73, when she was a young amateur jockey in the Eighties.
Before joining the BBC as a trainee sports reporter in 1994, Clare was a jockey and Champion Lady Rider for five years and back then it was expected she would compete professionally for a living, rather than becoming a huge TV star.
During this time she is thought to have raced against Princess Anne and her famous horse-riding daughter Zara Tindall. But in a recent interview, Clare shared how she once almost knocked the senior royal off her horse, but luckily she lived to tell the tale – and joked Anne, who handed her a CBE for services to broadcasting and sport in 2022, had since forgiven her.
Princess Anne was a keen rider when she was younger, seen here riding her horse Stevie B in 1981 (Popperfoto via Getty Images)She told The Telegraph: “Well, it was in a race when I’d only been competing a couple of years. I got in her [Princess Anne’s] path, we collided and she was nearly unseated. I think she’s forgiven me. She knows I didn’t do it on purpose. Funnily enough, when she gave me my CBE, having previously presented me with an OBE, she leaned over and said ‘Mmm, I think we’ve been through this before.’”
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Elsewhere in the April interview, Clare revealed she got her big break in broadcasting thanks to an encounter with her TV hero, the late Terry Wogan. She revealed: “I wrote to him when I was 13 and asked for a signed photo, which he sent me. I actually got to meet him at a charity cricket match and he was so charming and lovely, so nice to everyone around him. Then I was asked to do an interview on his show, Auntie’s Sporting Bloomers, and I told the story of nearly killing Princess Anne.”
After the interview, Clare was approached by a producer from Channel 4 who said she’d seen her on Wogan and wanted them to present a walking show. “Twenty-five years later and I’m still presenting ramblings. So I have Terry to thank for that. Such a beautiful human being,” she added.
The Crufts host revealed in another recent interview with comedian Jack Dee that she thought she was a dog when she was little – and even scoffed dog food. “I thought she was my mother,” Clare said of her friendly pet pooch. “She was always next to me and she was at my height. That was my mum as far as I was aware, until I started speaking. Then I went through quite a long stage of believing I was a dog.
“Dog food can be quite dry, actually, and the wet food isn’t so nice, so I went off the food element. Essentially I’d learnt to wag my tail and roll around and be like a dog.” Defending her antics, she went on: “It’s not a bad thing to think you are. Dogs have got it quite sussed. As long as you don’t go around sniffing each other’s bottoms, it’s fine.”
A version of this story was first published on April 22.