ITV Racing Commentators, Presenters & Pundits

Coverage of the horse racing has bounced around between the UK’s major broadcasters, with Channel 4 and ITV being the main two that cover the sport for terrestrial television. You can read about the commentators, presenters and pundits that work for Channel 4 elsewhere, given that the focus is on ITV here, but it is worth noting that the world of horse racing is one in which there is a fair bit of crossover. Certainly when it comes to domestic coverage, the same people that worked for Channel 4 will work for ITV and so on, but there are also some voices specific to each channel.

Ed Chamberlin

If you have ever watched coverage of the horse racing on ITV then you will know exactly who Ed Chamberlin is, given the fact that it is his face that is front and centre guiding us through proceedings. You might also know him if you’re a football fan, thanks to Chamberlain being the main presenter for Sky Sports’ Premier League coverage on its Super Sunday and Monday Night Football shows for a number of years. Born in Shepton Mallet in Somerset on the sixth of February 1974, Edward Alan Chamberlain went to Ludgrove School as a boy.

The captain of the school’s cricket first eleven, he worked as a bookmaker for a time and then as a journalist, eventually appearing on Sky Sports for the first time in 1999. He worked with Jeff Stelling co-presenting the betting show The Full SP, then moved over to become one of the main presenters on Sky Sports News. Having covered Champions League and World Cup draws in addition to top-flight matches being broadcast on Sky, he left in 2016 in order to join ITV Racing’s team when the channel won the rights to show races from 2017 onwards.

Tony McCoy

A P McCoy
Paul via flickr

Sir Anthony Peter McCoy’s is a name that will be known to anyone who enjoys horse racing and a good few people who don’t. Better known as AP McCoy or Tony McCoy, he was born in the County Antrim hamlet of Moneyglass in 1974 and rode his first winner when he was just 17-years-old. That was in 1992, riding his 4,000th winner at Towcester in 2013 to demonstrate not only his success but also his longevity in the saddle. He set a record for the number of wins as a conditional jockey when he won 74, being the first of many records that he would claim during his career.

Having been named the Champion Jockey a record 20 times, which was every year that he was riding as a professional, McCoy won the Cheltenham Gold Cup, the Queen Mother Champion Chase and the Grand National, in addition to countless other famous races. Little wonder, then, that broadcasters were keen to enlist his services, first managed by BBC Radio 5 Live in the October of 2013 when he appeared on the 5 Live Sport show alongside Dan Walker every Friday. He became part of the Channel 4 coverage when it launched and moved over to ITV in 2017.

Alice Plunkett

Whether you know her as Alice Plunkett or by her married name of Alice Fox-Pitt, the former racer is one of the key voices in ITV Racing’s coverage. She began her time on horses in hunts, moving on to riding in point-to-point events before taking part in the Fox Hunters’ Chase at Aintree in 1993. She was just 19 at the time and it was only her fifth ride on a racehorse, taking Bold King’s Hussar to 14th. She went on to ride on the flat as well as in National Hunt events, being the only woman to ride on the Grand National course at Aintree and at Badminton Horse Trials.

Having given up competitive racing in 2000, Plunkett was taken on to the Channel 4 Racing team in 2001 and remained with the broadcaster until it lost the rights to the racing in 2016. When ITV took over, however, Plunkett moved there and went on to become one of the broadcaster’s main presenters for its National Hunt coverage. On top of that, she has worked with the BBC, being the national broadcaster’s equestrian correspondent for BBC Radio 5 Live on top of hosting equestrian events for the likes of Sky Sports, Eurosport and Horse and Country.

Mick Fitzgerald

Mick Fitzgerald
CharlesFred via flickr

Mick Fitzgerald had a career as a jockey that lasted for more than 15 years, gaining experience on the pony circuit in Ireland before riding out for Richard Lister, a flat trainer in County Wexford, when he was just 16-years-old. He moved to the Curragh to ride for John Hayden and then was forced to switch to National Hunt racing after a growth spurt once he’d left school. He proved himself with regular rides, ending up earning a retainer to ride for Nicky Henderson and went on to win the Grand National in 1996 with Rough Quest and the 1999 Cheltenham Gold Cup on See More Business.

Having been leading jockey at the Cheltenham Festival in both 1999 and 2000, largely thanks to his excellent relationship with Paul Nicholls, he fell at the second fence of the 2008 Grand National and suffered a spinal injury. He retired later that year and began working with At The Races, switching to Channel 4 Racing’s team in 2013. When ITV Racing took over coverage in 2017, Fitzgerald was one of those who moved over to the terrestrial broadcaster. A close friend of AP McCoy, Fitzgerald works with Nicky Henderson as an advisor when he’s not broadcasting.

Francesca Cumani

Francesca Cumani
julie bishop via flickr

Francesca Cumani, the daughter of trainer Luca Cumani, was born in Newmarket in 1983, so in many ways it was inevitable that she would end up working in horse racing in one capacity or another. She was educated at Tudor Hall School in Oxfordshire, the independent boarding and day school for girls. When she left school, Cumani attended the University of Bristol and left with a degree in French and Spanish. In the wake of her time at university, she returned to work in the family business, which involved the training and breeding of horses for racing, prior to moving into the world of broadcasting.

Her first taste of the media came after she went on a trip to take horses to Australia, being offered the chance to work as a guest presenter on the horse racing coverage of Channel 7 in Australia. Having excelled in the role, CNN employed her as a presenter for the channel’s show Winning Post. She demonstrated the work that she’d done at university by presenting that show in both English and Spanish, taking on a position at ITV Racing upon the launch of the channel’s racing coverage in 2016. Three years later she and Chamberlain were join winners of the Broadcast Sports Presenter of the Year award.

Oli Bell

Raised in Somerset, Oli Bell received a drama scholarship when he was younger and studied in Peterborough. His school had its own radio station, with Bell being given the breakfast show slot as a 15-year-old before taking on the role of a live reporter at the Burghley Horse Trials the following year. This led to him covering the Land Rover G4 Challenge as well as the British Touring Car Championships, then when he was 18 he became one of the editorial assistants for Racing UK. It didn’t take long before his charm and effervescence resulted in him moving in front of the camera as a presenter.

Bell was soon covering events including the Grand National, Royal Ascot and the Cheltenham Festival, which led to him being headhunted by Sky Australia in order to present their international coverage of sports. Once, whilst covering races at Ascot, he ran onto the course in an exuberant moment that resulted in Queen Elizabeth II calling him a ‘lunatic’. Bell became part of the ITV Racing coverage when the channel launched it in 2017, remaining in place ever since. There was a time when he and Francesca Cumani were a couple, but they broke up in 2020.

Chris Hughes

Christopher Hughes was born in Gloucestershire on the 22nd of December 1992. His parents were farmers and he was part of a large family, having one brother and four half-brothers. Whereas the majority of people on this page became part of ITV Racing’s coverage thanks to the fact that they worked in the horse racing industry or because they were broadcasters, Hughes first came to public prominence when he was one of the contestants on the third series of Love Island. He ended up finishing third, later making 13 appearances for Bourton Rovers Football Club.

Having also played for his local cricket side, Hughes went on to become a golf clothing ambassador. Clearly keen to continue trying to make a name for himself, he had a brief music career with Love Island co-star Kem Cetinay as a duo named Chris & Kim. In 2019, ITV Racing decided to bring Hughes on board as part of the team covering the racing and he has maintained his position ever since. It isn’t the only sporting role that he’s played as a broadcaster, however, as BBC Sport also used Hughes as a presenter for their coverage of The Hundred in 2021.

Richard Hoiles

Each sport will believe that commentating on it is the hardest thing to do, but horse racing might just have the right to claim as much and have no one else argue. The fact that Richard Hoiles got into commentating after answering an advert in the Sporting Life, with no broadcasting experience to his name at the time, makes his position as the main commentator for ITV Racing all the more impressive. That was in 1992, with Hoiles not even realising he was supposed to send in a demo tape initially but being given an opportunity once he eventually did.

Having been interested in racing since he first stood by Plumpton Racecourse’s open ditch when he was around seven-years-old, he went on to become one of the most recognisable voices in horse racing and had commentated on the likes of the Victoria Cup, the Cheltenham Gold Cup and the Grand National. Like many others, he began working for ITV Racing when the network launched their coverage in 2017, working alongside other names on our list in order to bring the watching public the information that they need about what is taking place on the track.

Sam Quek

Sam Quek
l3o_ via flickr

Samantha Ann Quek was born in Liverpool on the 18th of October 1988. Her mother was English and her father was Singaporean Chinese, whilst Quek also has a twin brother. They moved to the Wirral Peninsula when she was five-years-old, attending Birkenhead High School and then Calday Grammar before earning a BSc in Sport & Exercise Science at Leeds Metropolitan University. It was whilst at Birkenhead High School that she started playing hockey, being selected to play for Wirral County, going on to represent both England and Great Britain as a defender.

Quek came to prominence when she played for the Great Britain team at the Summer Olympic Games in Rio in 2016, winning the first gold medal for the women’s team in the sport. She then moved into working in the media, appearing in the 16th series of I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! and appearing as a guest on A Question of Sport. She has been a presenter on sports shows for numerous different channels and in 2024 she began to work for ITV Racing, becoming the Social Stable reporter when the broadcaster was showing major meetings.

Mark Johnson

Born in the Lincolnshire town of Skegness in 1966, Mark Johnson attended Skegness Grammar School and then King Alfred’s College in Winchester before going to the London College of Printing to study Television and Theatre Studies. He then went on to earn a postgraduate degree in Radio Journalism, commentating on his first horse race in 1986 when he covered racing at Tweseldown Racecourse in Hampshire. In 1995, Johnson had the honour of calling his first of horse racing’s Classics, commentating on the St. Leger Stakes at Doncaster Racecourse.

When Luke Kruytbosch died unexpectedly, Johnson was given the role of Track Announcer at Kentucky’s Churchill Downs in the United States of America. As a result, he became the first announcer to call both the Epsom Derby and the Kentucky Derby, also doing paddock commentary alongside Jill Byrne. Since 2017, Johnson has also worked for ITV Racing, covering fences one to four and then 17 to 20 at Aintree Racecourse for ITV Racing’s Grand National coverage. He also works for Racing TV, showing that he’s a talented and experienced commentator for different networks.

A Long History of Horse Racing Coverage

ITV Blue Logo
Asenine via Wikimedia Commons

Although ITV hasn’t always had the rights to broadcast horse racing, it does have a long history of showing the country what is happening on race courses up and down the country. That is thanks to the fact that it first began showing horse racing on the fourth of October 1969, which was when races were shown from two courses each week as opposed to one. That was under the title of They’re Off, then in 1972 the name was changed to The ITV Seven, which was a reflection of how many races would be shown on a weekly basis by the broadcaster.

The coverage broadcast by ITV came from the likes of York, Sandown Park, Doncaster and Newcastle, whilst some of the minor courses around the country such as Warwick and Market Rasern were also shown. The terrestrial broadcaster had fewer of the big races during the winter, so it would look to concentrate on the National Hunt events taking place from the smaller venues. By the 1980s, ITV had chosen to reduce its racing coverage and sometimes only one meeting would be shown. The final broadcast came from Kempton Park and Thirsk on the seventh of September 1985.

Having been on Channel 4 since the middle of the 1980s, ITV won back the right to show racing in the January of 2016, with coverage beginning a year later. The broadcaster confirmed that it would show major meetings such as the Grand National, the Cheltenham Festival and Glorious Goodwood, amongst others, as well as meetings on a Saturday from lesser-known locations. There have been some big names who have presented coverage of racing for ITV over the years, including the likes of John Rickman, Brough Scott and Lord Oaksey.