Pupil Megan now has medals in sights
- BALDING ON SELF-RESPECT
SHE’S only 16 but Megan Havers will be targeting gold for Team GB in the Olympic archery event in Paris.
The schoolgirl, who shot her first arrow while on a caravan holiday, had to combine her training and competitions in the sport with her GCSE exams this summer.
Just weeks after attending her prom, Megan will take her place as the youngest member of the six-person archery squad in France.
She said: “I can’t believe it. When I had my prom, no one knew I was going to the Olympics because it hadn’t been announced yet and when I go back to school I will be an Olympian. I just can’t get my head around how that works.”
Megan had to sit some GCSE exams late at night in far-flung places with the agreement of exam chiefs. She was given special dispensation because of the exceptional circumstances.
The schoolgirl, from South Charnwood High School, in Leicestershire, is one of a group of teenagers representing their country.
Gymnast Abigail Martin turned 16 in April and has only recently becoming age-eligible for senior competition.
She had just finished her GCSE food tech and geography exams when Team GB boss Mark England rang to congratulate her on going to Paris.
Abigail already boasts a silver medal from the 2024 European Championships in Rimini, Italy.
She will be joined by 17-yearold schoolgirl Phoebe Gill. Phoebe sealed her spot in Paris by storming to 800m victory at the 2024 UK Athletics Championships, beating Olympic finalists Jemma Reekie and Georgia Bell, the latest step in a remarkable 2024 for her. In May, she broke the 45-year-old European under-18 record, by clocking 1:57.86.
She is seen as a real prospect for glory and will join Tokyo silver medallist Keely Hodgkinson, a veteran at 22, on the start line for her Olympics debut.
“I just started to take my training really seriously,” said rising star Phoebe, from St Albans, Herts.
“I just love it so much. I know that things will change as I go to uni. But I will be able to train with another group.”
She added: “I have looked up to Jemma for so long, she is an inspiration. It is amazing to think that I am now competing alongside her. “To get to the Olympics is just unbelievable to me. It is a dream come true. I got so emotional when I knew that I had done it.”
With the world gearing up for two weeks of the world’s greatest athletes, Clare Balding was preparing for her own physical and mental feat.
The BBC presenter, 53, will be putting in long hours to bring us news of Team GB medals at the Paris Olympics.
She will also be front and centre of coverage of tonight’s glittering opening ceremony along the River Seine.
And cheering her on from the sidelines will be her partner of 21 years, ex-Radio 4 broadcaster Alice Arnold.
The pair met on a night out at a BBC function and sealed their love by entering into a civil partnership in 2006.
And in 2015, the couple got married in a private ceremony.
Today, Clare shouts loud and proud for LGBT+ rights but admits coming out was not easy when she started to become a household name.
She says: “I think my mother was very concerned it would affect my work. I’d been to the Sydney Olympics in 2000. But until you own it, it’s not legitimate.
“That is why I say to people ‘don’t hide the thing that makes you happiest. Don’t hide your love’.
“Why would you do that? But luckily, the world has changed a lot.”
Clare had “one very serious boyfriend for two or three years” before meeting Alice. He was in the Army and had proposed before going on a tour of duty. But Clare knew then it didn’t feel right.
She says: “I thought ‘he’s only asking me because he thinks he’s in danger’. I meant to say yes at this point. And I knew I didn’t want to. And I said ‘Look, that’s a lovely thing to say but ask me again when you come back’.
“When he came back, he didn’t ask me again, and I thought, ‘Thank God’.
“When I first fell in love with a woman, it was completely different.”
Clare says her marriage to Alice works because they are a team, even though Alice often beats her at golf.
She laughs: “What are we like? Well, I would use a sporty term, I would say being a team. Trying to achieve the same goal. But I think we are amazingly open and honest with each other. And I do think that is easier sometimes when you’re two women or indeed two men. Not all the time...
“Men and women do think differently. And I think sometimes that is challenging in relationships. I’m not saying that straight relationships never work. Of course they do. But there are challenges that are not challenges for us. It’s interesting.”
Animal lovers Clare and Alice
There are elements of sport that have a huge impact on general life
CLARE BALDING ON BELIEF IN THE IMPORTANCE OF HER ROLE
share their home in West London with their terrier dog Archie. Clare’s love of animals began at an early age after Queen Elizabeth II gave a horse to her parents Ian and Emma Balding, daughter of racehorse trainer Peter Hastings-Bass, who was related to the Earls of Huntingdon. Clare’s blue blood stock goes back to Henry VII. She’s the great-granddaughter of MP Sir Malcolm Bullock, who famously hid his homosexuality as it was illegal at the time. Horsemanship has been a passion on both sides of her family. Her dad Ian trained Mill Reef – 1971 winner of the Derby and Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe – and her brother Andrew trained Casual Look, the winner of the 2003 Epsom Oaks.
Her maternal uncle William Hastings-Bass was once trainer to the late Queen.
“I met the Queen for the first time probably when I was two or four,” she tells Gyles Brandreth on his Rosebud podcast.
“The first pony I learned to ride on was a gift from the Queen called Valkyrie, who was a little fat Shetland pony.
“The Queen was so at home around horses. She loved the way the jockeys or the stable lads and lasses were with her. I think she loved the naughtiness of racing.
“You know, if you stood and watched a race with her, which I have done, she’d say something like, ‘Oh, look, it’s Hughesy out the back with his bum in the air’.”
Paris will be Clare’s eighth time reporting on the Olympics, after presenting her first for BBC Radio in Atlanta 1996. She’s also hosted coverage of five Paralympics.
As millions tune in tonight, she hopes to do more than entertain.
She wants to engage with youngsters to learn lessons from the Games and says sport is just as powerful as politics in having an impact on the world. She once dreamed of being a politician but gave up on it.
She says: “Originally, I wanted to go into politics.
“Then I met quite a lot of politicians and decided I did not want to be in it!
“It is weird how things influence you, and it might happen in today’s generation of students.
“When I was at university there was a big campaign in newspapers about dangerous dogs – which is unfortunately rather topical right now – but that had a huge effect. I could see that those campaigns were influential.
“So I wanted to have a voice that was independent. “I was full of really big ideas at the time, so my ideas switched from politics as a way of influencing the world to journalism.
“I present sports. You can say ‘What does that matter? It’s a great triviality’ but, actually, there
I think my mother was concerned it would affect my work but I had to own it
CLARE BALDING ON COMING OUT AS A TV BROADCASTER
are elements of sport, I think – particularly with the Paralympics and women’s sports – that have a huge impact on general life.”
Once the Olympics are over, Clare hopes they will help cement the future of the late Queen’s favourite Commonwealth Games.
They are set to take place in 2026 – the first to be held during the reign of King Charles III.
The venue has yet to be decided and there has been controversy in recent months after some nations said they cannot shoulder the cost of hosting it.
Clare says: “It would be such a shame if the Commonwealth Games doesn’t continue. Maybe it’s unrealistic to think that it should cost as much as it does.
“But the Games are wonderful. It’s 56 countries of such different backgrounds, it’s fantastic.
“It would be lovely to think that some nations that haven’t had the chance to host an Olympics, or a big multi-sport event, could be supported enough to host the Commonwealth Games.”
If sport can change the world, as Clare believes, it sounds like a good place to start.
Coverage of the Paris Olympics opening ceremony begins tonight on BBC1 from 5.45pm.