Praise aplenty as Clare signs off from her 'most beautiful sport'

There is no bigger name in sports broadcasting than Clare Balding. For two decades the sport with which she has been most closely associated on television has been racing. This afternoon, when she ends Channel 4's coverage of Qipco British Champions Day, that association will come to an end.

Balding will retain close links to her home sport, not least through her family and a new role on the Epsom Racecourse Committee, but today marks the end of her long stint as TV's face of what she described this week as "the most beautiful televised sport of them all".

Until Balding came along, racing broadcasters tended to do racing and nothing else. The former amateur rider changed that.