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Channel 4 Racing Pundits, Commentators & Presenters

For a few decades, Channel 4 Racing was the main broadcaster of horse racing in the United Kingdom, winning the rights from ITV in 1984. It continued coverage through programmes such as World of Sport, utilising some of the biggest and best names in horse racing. Given the fact that Channel 4’s horse racing coverage didn’t end until the January of 2017, it is not surprising that it made use of numerous different people over the years. Some of the ones we’re looking at here are no longer with us, but they were such a big part of Channel 4 Racing that it’s impossible not to mention them.

John Francome

When John Francome was six-years-old, he rode a pony called Black Beauty. That gave him the bug to become a rider, enjoying initial success as a showjumper before becoming an apprentice jockey to trainer Fred Winter. He rode his first race at Worcester in the December of 1970, going on to win the British Champion Jump Jockey title six years later. He won the Cheltenham Gold Cup on Midnight Court, as well as numerous other major events during a jump racing career that lasted until his decision to retire in 1985, having won 1,138 races and seven Champion Jump Jockey Titles.

Little wonder, therefore, that numerous broadcasters were keen to get his input once he had left racing. He joined the Channel 4 Racing team in 1986, appearing on the show The Morning Line most weeks as well as on raceday broadcasts. He remained with the broadcaster until they moved from working with production company Highflyer to being produced by IMG, which was in 2012, at which point he left his role on the station. In 2004, proof of the reason Channel 4 Racing hired him was there for all to see when he was named RTS’ Best Sports Pundit.

John Oaskey

The son of Geoffrey Lawrence, the 1st Baron Oaksey, John Oaksey was born into a life of privilege on the 21st of March 1929. His actual name was John Geoffrey Tristram Lawrence, 4th Baron Trevethin and 2nd Baron Oaksey, and he was known as John Lawrence until he succeeded to the baronies and so adopted the name we best know him by. Educated at Eton College, he learned to ride horses on an old pony named Mince Pie, beginning riding in competitive races in point-to-points in the April of 1950. His first win came the following year on a horse called Next of Kin.

Having spent nearly two decades as a rider, including 11 rides in the Grand National, he took on some minor broadcasting roles whilst still in the saddle. It was in 1969 that he joined ITV’s World of Sport, then moved across to join the Channel 4 Racing coverage when the broadcaster won the rights. Because he was only an amateur jockey, he needed to have another job and worked as a journalist for more than 30 years. In fact, in 1968 he was named the Racing Journalist of the Year, which is part of the reason why he appeared on so many broadcasters to cover the sport.

John McCririck

John McCririck
Will Palmer via flickr

Arguably one of the best-known faces of British horse racing in his time, largely thanks to the fact that he would often wear outrageous clothing. Born in Surbiton in Surrey in 1940, he left school with three O-Levels and failed to get into the diplomatic service, instead working briefly as a waiter at the Dorchester hotel. He worked for an illegal bookmaker prior to the legalisation of betting in the United Kingdom, attempting to set up as a bookmaker himself but didn’t succeed and so became a tic-tac man. He began a career in journalism through The Sporting Life, being sacked in 1984.

Having worked as a sub-editor on Grandstand, McCririck joined the ITV Sport horse racing team and moved over to Channel 4 Racing when coverage switched over in the middle of the 1980s. He remained with the broadcaster for several decades, eventually leaving against his will in 2013. Channel 4 had announced that he would not be part of the racing ream moving forward, which led McCririck to accuse ageism. He took them to an employment tribunal, which ruled against him, citing the fact that his ‘self-described bigoted and male chauvinist views were clearly unpalatable to a wider audience’.

Brough Scott

Born on the 12th of December 1942 in London, John Brough Scott might well have thought that he had a lot to live up to when he was younger, given the fact that he was the grandson of noted Great War soldier ‘Galloper’ Jack Seely. Educated at Radley College and then Corpus Christi College, Oxford, reading History, he rode 100 winners during a riding career that saw him enjoy success in the likes of the Madarin Handicap Chase and the Imperial Cup. In 1971, Brough Scott joined the team at ITV and was often seen on The ITV Seven, later moving to become part of the coverage of horse racing on Channel 4 Racing.

He became the racing correspondent for The Sunday Times, taking over from Roger Mortimer, and co-founded the Racing Post with Sheikh Mohammed. Having also written for papers such as The Independent on Sunday and The Sunday Telegraph, it was unquestionably his work as a racing pundit that helped him become best known to most. When ITV Racing won the right to coverage of sport back to Channel 4 in 2017, he appeared on the channel 46 years after his first appearance on it.

Nick Luck

Nicholas Edward Francis Luck was born on the 28th of June 1978. Nick Luck is someone who will be known to racing enthusiasts on both sides of the Atlantic. For those in the United Kingdom, he was the main presenter of Channel 4 Racing for several years, remaining the face of British racing until ITV took back the contract in 2017. In 2003, he covered a Breeders’ Cup for The Players Show in the United States of America, becoming the British correspondent for ESPN when they won the broadcasting rights to races in 2006 before later moving to NBC for their coverage.

A multiple-time winner of the Horserace Writers’ and Photographers’ Association Broadcaster of the Year award, he has also worked for the BBC and been a paid promoter for a well known bookmaker. Such is his esteem within the industry that he was part of the Whip Consultation Steering Group that produced 20 recommendations to improve the use of the whip in British horse racing in 2022. When ITV Racing took back the broadcasting rights from Channel 4, Luck decided not to move over with most of his colleagues and instead found work in numerous other areas.

Emma Spencer

Born Emma Ramsden, Emma Spencer took on the name when she married the Irish jockey Jamie Spencer in the February of 2005. They had three children together, Charlie, Chloe and Ella, before divorcing in 2010. She lives in Newmarket, which she knows well thanks to her career as a jockey. She was twice named the Champion Amateur Flat Jockey during her time in the saddle and in 2001, she was made part of the Channel 4 Racing team. It didn’t take long before Spencer was made one of the lead presenters when the channel was covering flat racing, her area of expertise.

During her time working with the broadcaster, Spencer was asked to cover numerous different flat racing meetings, including the biggest in the United Kingdom. She offered her presenting duties for the Derby Festival, for example, as well as Royal Ascot and Glorious Goodwood. She was also often sent to cover international competition, with the Dubai World Cup and the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, as well as the Melbourne Cup, all having been presented by her on Channel 4. In 2014, Spencer joined an online bookmaker as their resident authority on horse racing as a sport.

Rishi Persad

Rishi Persad was born in Trinidad and Tobago on the 25th of May 1973, growing up on the island of Trinidad and becoming a keen cricketer. He was also a lover of horse racing, in part thanks to the fact that his father, a bank manager, bred and raced horses. He would take his son to the stables as well as away on race weekends, giving him a taste of the thrill and excitement of the sport. Aged 12, Persad moved to England in order to attend boarding schools and later read law at King’s College London. It was in 2002 that he began his move into broadcasting, joining At the Races in the PR department.

Eight months after his arrival at At the Races, Persad made his terrestrial television debut thanks to Channel 4 Racing. He then joined the BBC, working for both the national broadcaster and ITV in order to cover events such as The Open Championship, Wimbledon, the Masters Tournament and the World Snooker Championship. Having covered global events like the Ryder Cup and the Summer Olympics, he returned to Channel 4 Racing in 2012 and made headlines when AP McCoy told him he was going to retire after riding 200 winners for the tenth year of his career.

Simon Holt

If you are going to offer horse racing coverage as a broadcaster, then you need to ensure that you’ve got a talented commentator to talk the viewers through what is happening on their screens. That is where Simon Holt comes in, becoming the channel’s main race commentator at the turn of the millennium and remaining in the role until ITV Racing took over the rights in 2016. His first experience in the role came in 1988 when he became a racecourse commentator, quickly rising through the commentary ranks and calling the Grand National alongside Graham Goode for SIS in 1990.

His TV debut for Channel 4 came on the 30th of September 1994 when he commented on races at Newmarket. He was soon given the role of racecourse commentator at Newmarket during the Guineas meeting and became the Grandstand commentator at Royal Ascot in the mid-1990s. Starting in 1995, Holt was often heard as the race commentator for Channel 4 Racing, later replacing Raleigh Gilbert as the channel’s second commentator before eventually becoming the main one of the channel. He was lead commentator for Channel 4 Racing’s coverage of Royal Ascot between 2013 and 2016.

Ian Bartlett

Between 1998 and 2001, Ian Bartlett was the commentator for SIS’s coverage of the Grand National, apart from in 2000 when the company used the BBC coverage instead. In 2004, Bartlett moved over to become part of the commentary team on the BBC for their televised coverage of the ‘World’s Greatest Steeplechase’, commentating on four sections of the race at Aintree. In 2013, Bartlett became one of the few commentators to move from the BBC to Channel 4 Racing, joining names such as Clare Balding, Mick Fitzgerald and Rishi Persad in making the move.

Whilst working for Channel 4 Racing, Bartlett was staged out in the countryside part of the racecourse, offering commentary on the horses as they jumped over many of the racecourse’s signature jumps. He talked viewers through the riders making it over Becher’s Brook and the Canal Turn, for example, continuing the role that he was best known for when Channel 4 Racing lost the rights and race coverage moved to ITV Racing in 2017. He stopped commentating on the race after the 2022 running, having spent more than two decades being associated with the event.

Raleigh Gilbert

If you tuned into Channel 4 Racing’s coverage at certain points, you will have known the voice of Raleigh Gilbert instantly. Born in Devon on the 28th of February 1936, he was educated at Sherborne School and rode as an amateur jockey when living in Kenya during the middle of the 1950s. He became the racing correspondent for the East African Field and Farm in 1956, which was the start of his journalistic career, returning to the United Kingdom in order to write for the Sunday Post in Scotland. His work as a commentator began in 1958.

That was when he commentated on races for the course, going on to become the first person to commentate on a race at every single course in the UK. Having worked briefly for the BBC, Gilbert became part of the racing team at ITV in the January of 1972 when he found that his path was blocked to commentating more regularly at the ‘Beeb’. When Channel 4 Racing took over coverage, Gilbert moved to the channel and would often be heard commentating on the earlier stages of the major races at the likes of Newmarket, enjoying his final broadcast as commentator in the January of 1996.

An Historical Broadcaster of Racing

The first time that racing was broadcast on Channel 4 was on the 22nd of March 1984. The coverage came from Doncaster, taking over from the midweek coverage that had previously been shown on ITV. From the beginning of 1986, the number of races covered by Channel 4 began to drop, with only big ones such as Newmarket, Epsom, York and Kempton covered, in addition to big races like the Scottish Grand National. It wasn’t until the late 1980s and into the 1990s that Channel 4 Racing began to up the coverage offered, adding Chester in 1989 and Cheltenham in 1995.

In 2002, Newbury was added to the roster of locations covered by Channel 4 Racing, then Goodwood was covered full-time, having previously been shared with the BBC, in 2007. Haydock Park also joined Channel 4’s coverage full-time in 2008, whilst Aintree became a fully covered course five years after that. The channel signed a three-year deal with Racing UK in 2007 that allowed it to cover events taking place at their courses, guaranteeing 80 days of racing on Channel 4 every year. In 2013, the channel became the exclusive home of free-to-air racing in the UK.

Having been covering the major events such as the Grand National, Royal Ascot and the Cheltenham Festival for a couple of years, it was announced at the start of 2016 that the rights to cover racing that had been with Channel 4 for 32 years had been lost to ITV. The reasoning behind the move was that ratings had dropped since the big meetings had moved from the BBC, meaning that from the first of January 2017, ITV would show 40 days of racing a year, whilst a further 60 days would be shown on ITV4. The final day of racing on Channel 4 actually came on the 27th of December 2016.