Clare Balding interview: I clumsily said the wrong thing about mixed-gender sport
“I’m happy to clarify,” says Clare Balding, responding to a recent interview she gave that prompted the headline: ‘Mixed sex is the future for many sports’.
“I genuinely believe that people doing stuff together in mixed environments is better for everyone,” Balding had said, citing the success of mixed relays in Olympic sport before suggesting that golf, or even football, could follow suit in some form.
At a moment of heightened concern over protecting the female category in sport, raised eyebrows were soon followed by fears that this could marginalise rather than elevate women. Above all, it sparked confusion and conjecture about what Balding actually meant. Sharron Davies, who was Balding’s BBC colleague for the Olympic swimming coverage in Paris, replied by saying that “mixed physical games” like football “won’t work…women will just sustain career ending injuries”. However, she also added, “in Clare’s defence I think she’s talking about what we have now,” in respect of events like mixed doubles in tennis and the various mixed sex Olympic relays. Davies, whose view of contact sports was backed by Dr Emma Hilton, a developmental biologist, also did support more mixed formats if it still ensured single-sex spots for females.
So what was Balding trying to say?
First up, Balding feels that the headline on the interview was “rather misleading” but concedes that she was clumsy in how she tried to advocate for more of the shared platforms that we have seen in Olympic triathlon, athletics and swimming; and which have yielded four British medals since 2021.
“I think they have been a real positive benefit, so that is the point I was trying rather clumsily to make – shared platforms is what I should have said,” says Balding, while widening her point to coaching, where she thinks a “melting pot” of ideas can be beneficial, and also the joint staging of major men’s and women’s sporting occasions.
“I have presented the Boat Race for a long time now and did the first one in which women were included on the Tideway,” says Balding. “I don’t think they would have secured the sponsorship of Chanel [from 2025] if it was a men’s only event.
“I think shared platforms are really powerful. For example, in [cricket’s] The Hundred, putting on the women’s and men’s matches on the same day – and both finals happened at Lord’s together – it elevates the women’s game but also I think it is really good for the men’s game and the crowd.
“Para-rowing [which includes designated positions for men and women in the boat] is an interesting model. I think shared platforms are really beneficial. I think you get a different sort of a sponsor and financial support.”
So, she is not then talking about men competing directly against women, and thus potentially taking their places? “No,” she says. “I mentioned Soccer Aid [the charity football game which has included mixed teams since 2020] because it seems to me that Soccer Aid was an example [of a shared platform].”
Balding herself was a leading amateur jockey in one of the few sports where men and women do compete directly against each other and has been a lifelong advocate for women’s sport. She has also been a trailblazing broadcaster now for some 30 years in a career that spans the crown jewels of BBC sport to programmes ranging from Countryfile, Crufts and the Lord Mayor’s Show and major national occasions like the Trooping of the Colour and the late Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.
Few summers, however, have been busier than 2024. After again fronting the BBC’s Wimbledon coverage, she was a presenter for her eighth Olympics before switching to Channel 4 for what was her seventh Paralympics.
Balding is now also championing a campaign that, as part of the National Lottery’s 30th birthday, is celebrating seven sporting Game Changers who have done extraordinary things with lottery funding over the past three decades. They are Dame Sarah Storey, a 19-times Paralympic gold medallist since 1992, Alice Dearing, the first black British Olympic swimmer, Parkrun founder Paul Sinton-Hewitt, the coaches Stephen Jones, Damian Kennedy and Steven Tigg, and the FA’s outgoing women’s football director Baroness Sue Campbell.
Balding is effusive about each and every “Game Changer” but, following Campbell’s retirement last week, it is especially timely to hear her talk about the 76-year-old’s pioneering influence on British sport. “She reminds me a lot of Billie Jean King; when you sit next to Sue, you feel like you have plugged into a charger – you come away thinking, ‘my god’,” says Balding.
Sports Personality of the Year – another of Balding’s regular jobs – is also now looming and, following a streak of 14 straight men’s winners, there are short odds on the Olympic 800m champion Keely Hodgkinson making it four women in a row. Storey will surely also contend strongly. It is a trend which suggests that the dial is moving. “I love that programme as an event – and the point about profile is really important,” says Balding, recalling how Zara Phillips in 2006 was the last woman before Emma Raducanu to win the big prize. “Zara Phillips had a profile that was bigger than just her sport; she was world champion, a fantastic winner to have had and utterly worthy – but unless people have the profile they can’t be up there in people’s thinking for a public vote,” says Balding. “So it’s really interesting that change and 2012 was when women’s sport staked its claim.”
For Balding, London 2012 was also a professional and emotional coming together that she had thought unique. That was until this summer’s Olympics when she would routinely join fans to watch various live sport in the morning (the climbing was a particular revelation) before making her way to La Defense Arena to anchor the BBC’s evening coverage from the side of the Olympic pool. “I never thought I would get the same emotional connection to a Games as I did to London – [but] Paris was like that,” she says. “There are some events … there’s that deeper connection when you are really immersed in it and you have an emotional response.”
She also particularly cites learning from the 29-year-old Rose Ayling-Ellis during the Paralympics who, using a sign language team, became the first ever deaf presenter of live sport. “Talk about pushing the boundaries,” says Balding.
We of course also now know that Sir Chris Hoy was delivering his typically measured insights in Paris while still processing his own terminal cancer diagnosis. Balding has known Hoy for the best part of two decades and, as she tries to convey her awe for the six-times Olympic champion, there are some understandable pauses to gather both her thoughts and emotions.
“Chris is a remarkable human being; one of the loveliest men you are ever going to meet in your life,” she says. “Everything that he is saying … his sporting psychology is really powerful. You live in the moment. You live for right now. So he was determined to make the most of the Olympics.
“For the opening ceremony, he was with me at the beginning and then went off to join Sarra [his wife] and the kids. What Chris has never wanted is to be treated any differently. He was messaging the other day and I sent something stupid back, that I knew would make him laugh. You have to carry on, not as normal ... better than normal. Medicine is making breakthroughs all the time. We can only be positive in the hope that that continues to improve at a rate that’s fast enough.”
Balding then pauses before recalling a gesture that sums up Hoy’s authenticity. “When Jason Kenny equalled Chris’s gold medal record [in Rio 2016],” she says. “We were working together – and I remember Chris leaning over the balcony to point at Jason and say, ‘well done’. The generosity of spirit is not always as strong among athletes who hold records. He felt immense joy. He really did. He’s so proud of Jason. And Laura [Kenny] working with Chris [in Paris]. She was terrific, so good, so natural; wonderfully unfiltered. Her and Chris together were just so great.
“I was speaking to Laura about this the other day because I saw her at the Pride of Britain Awards. If you were creating a sort of super hero it would be Chris Hoy. A real life super hero. That’s Chris Hoy.”
Clare Balding interview: I clumsily said the wrong thing about mixed-gender sport
“I’m happy to clarify,” says Clare Balding, responding to a recent interview she gave that prompted the headline: ‘Mixed sex is the future for many sports’.
“I genuinely believe that people doing stuff together in mixed environments is better for everyone,” Balding had said, citing the success of mixed relays in Olympic sport before suggesting that golf, or even football, could follow suit in some form.
At a moment of heightened concern over protecting the female category in sport, raised eyebrows were soon followed by fears that this could marginalise rather than elevate women. Above all, it sparked confusion and conjecture about what Balding actually meant. Sharron Davies, who was Balding’s BBC colleague for the Olympic swimming coverage in Paris, replied by saying that “mixed physical games” like football “won’t work…women will just sustain career ending injuries”. However, she also added, “in Clare’s defence I think she’s talking about what we have now,” in respect of events like mixed doubles in tennis and the various mixed sex Olympic relays. Davies, whose view of contact sports was backed by Dr Emma Hilton, a developmental biologist, also did support more mixed formats if it still ensured single-sex spots for females.
So what was Balding trying to say?
First up, Balding feels that the headline on the interview was “rather misleading” but concedes that she was clumsy in how she tried to advocate for more of the shared platforms that we have seen in Olympic triathlon, athletics and swimming; and which have yielded four British medals since 2021.
“I think they have been a real positive benefit, so that is the point I was trying rather clumsily to make – shared platforms is what I should have said,” says Balding, while widening her point to coaching, where she thinks a “melting pot” of ideas can be beneficial, and also the joint staging of major men’s and women’s sporting occasions.
“I have presented the Boat Race for a long time now and did the first one in which women were included on the Tideway,” says Balding. “I don’t think they would have secured the sponsorship of Chanel [from 2025] if it was a men’s only event.
“I think shared platforms are really powerful. For example, in [cricket’s] The Hundred, putting on the women’s and men’s matches on the same day – and both finals happened at Lord’s together – it elevates the women’s game but also I think it is really good for the men’s game and the crowd.
“Para-rowing [which includes designated positions for men and women in the boat] is an interesting model. I think shared platforms are really beneficial. I think you get a different sort of a sponsor and financial support.”
So, she is not then talking about men competing directly against women, and thus potentially taking their places? “No,” she says. “I mentioned Soccer Aid [the charity football game which has included mixed teams since 2020] because it seems to me that Soccer Aid was an example [of a shared platform].”
Balding herself was a leading amateur jockey in one of the few sports where men and women do compete directly against each other and has been a lifelong advocate for women’s sport. She has also been a trailblazing broadcaster now for some 30 years in a career that spans the crown jewels of BBC sport to programmes ranging from Countryfile, Crufts and the Lord Mayor’s Show and major national occasions like the Trooping of the Colour and the late Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.
Few summers, however, have been busier than 2024. After again fronting the BBC’s Wimbledon coverage, she was a presenter for her eighth Olympics before switching to Channel 4 for what was her seventh Paralympics.
Balding is now also championing a campaign that, as part of the National Lottery’s 30th birthday, is celebrating seven sporting Game Changers who have done extraordinary things with lottery funding over the past three decades. They are Dame Sarah Storey, a 19-times Paralympic gold medallist since 1992, Alice Dearing, the first black British Olympic swimmer, Parkrun founder Paul Sinton-Hewitt, the coaches Stephen Jones, Damian Kennedy and Steven Tigg, and the FA’s outgoing women’s football director Baroness Sue Campbell.
Balding is effusive about each and every “Game Changer” but, following Campbell’s retirement last week, it is especially timely to hear her talk about the 76-year-old’s pioneering influence on British sport. “She reminds me a lot of Billie Jean King; when you sit next to Sue, you feel like you have plugged into a charger – you come away thinking, ‘my god’,” says Balding.
Sports Personality of the Year – another of Balding’s regular jobs – is also now looming and, following a streak of 14 straight men’s winners, there are short odds on the Olympic 800m champion Keely Hodgkinson making it four women in a row. Storey will surely also contend strongly. It is a trend which suggests that the dial is moving. “I love that programme as an event – and the point about profile is really important,” says Balding, recalling how Zara Phillips in 2006 was the last woman before Emma Raducanu to win the big prize. “Zara Phillips had a profile that was bigger than just her sport; she was world champion, a fantastic winner to have had and utterly worthy – but unless people have the profile they can’t be up there in people’s thinking for a public vote,” says Balding. “So it’s really interesting that change and 2012 was when women’s sport staked its claim.”
For Balding, London 2012 was also a professional and emotional coming together that she had thought unique. That was until this summer’s Olympics when she would routinely join fans to watch various live sport in the morning (the climbing was a particular revelation) before making her way to La Defense Arena to anchor the BBC’s evening coverage from the side of the Olympic pool. “I never thought I would get the same emotional connection to a Games as I did to London – [but] Paris was like that,” she says. “There are some events … there’s that deeper connection when you are really immersed in it and you have an emotional response.”
She also particularly cites learning from the 29-year-old Rose Ayling-Ellis during the Paralympics who, using a sign language team, became the first ever deaf presenter of live sport. “Talk about pushing the boundaries,” says Balding.
We of course also now know that Sir Chris Hoy was delivering his typically measured insights in Paris while still processing his own terminal cancer diagnosis. Balding has known Hoy for the best part of two decades and, as she tries to convey her awe for the six-times Olympic champion, there are some understandable pauses to gather both her thoughts and emotions.
“Chris is a remarkable human being; one of the loveliest men you are ever going to meet in your life,” she says. “Everything that he is saying … his sporting psychology is really powerful. You live in the moment. You live for right now. So he was determined to make the most of the Olympics.
“For the opening ceremony, he was with me at the beginning and then went off to join Sarra [his wife] and the kids. What Chris has never wanted is to be treated any differently. He was messaging the other day and I sent something stupid back, that I knew would make him laugh. You have to carry on, not as normal ... better than normal. Medicine is making breakthroughs all the time. We can only be positive in the hope that that continues to improve at a rate that’s fast enough.”
Balding then pauses before recalling a gesture that sums up Hoy’s authenticity. “When Jason Kenny equalled Chris’s gold medal record [in Rio 2016],” she says. “We were working together – and I remember Chris leaning over the balcony to point at Jason and say, ‘well done’. The generosity of spirit is not always as strong among athletes who hold records. He felt immense joy. He really did. He’s so proud of Jason. And Laura [Kenny] working with Chris [in Paris]. She was terrific, so good, so natural; wonderfully unfiltered. Her and Chris together were just so great.
“I was speaking to Laura about this the other day because I saw her at the Pride of Britain Awards. If you were creating a sort of super hero it would be Chris Hoy. A real life super hero. That’s Chris Hoy.”
