Clare Balding’s horse trainer father Ian Balding has died aged 87.
Mr Balding was a well-known trainer and Cheltenham Festival-winning rider.
He made his name with horse Mill Reef, who won numerous events for the trainer just six years after Mr Balding was handed his licence at the age of 26.
Mill Reef was a two-year-old horse at the time who went on to win the Derby, Eclipse, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes and Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe.
There was such success that Mr Balding was named as champion trainer in 1971.
But he was also known for training winning horses for the late Queen Elizabeth II, notably securing victory for her at the 1974 Musidora Stakes at York with Escorial.
Mr Balding had 65 winners, but perhaps his greatest victory was when he himself rode as an amateur jockey on Time in the National Hunt Chase at Cheltenham in 1963.
He went on to ride his own horse named Ross Poldark in the Foxhunter Chase over the Grand National fences at Aintree in 1985, aged 46.
He retired from the sport in 2002 and handed the reins of his racing dynasty, based at Park House Stables, in Kingsclere, Hampshire, to his son Andrew.
Andrew Balding has also secured multiple victories at Group and Grade 1 level since.
Mr Balding’s daughter Clare is now the face of sport across the BBC and Channel 4, but made her own debut in the world of horseracing as a presenter for the Royal Ascot highlights in 1995.
She also rode competitively, winning the KJ Pike & Sons Celebrity Charity Flat Race at Wincanton in 1997 on her father’s horse Pay Homage.
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