A sporting life is just the job for this all-rounder

As a child, Clare Balding ‘assaulted’ the queen with a sausage, but this year she was the TV queen of the Olympics, writes Sue Leonard

WHEN I was a teenager, my father came home one day with Mill Reef’s horseshoe. A doctor, his practice served many of the racehorse trainers around Kingsclere in Hampshire, including that of Ian Balding. That shoe had pride of place for years, but I lost it during a house move. I tell all this to Clare Balding, when we meet in Dublin.

“But that’s terrible!” she says. “The woman who lost Mill Reef’s horseshoe!”