Dress Rixo / Wellies Le Chameau

Hi Kate! Let’s get right into it. What was life like growing up on a dairy farm and what was the first touch point for your career?

So I just had this obsession with horses from such a young age. Every year at school, I feel like there’s always that slightly strange horse girl who just canters everywhere. That was me; round the playground pretending to be a horse.

I just had this obsession with horses and my parents could never have afforded to have bought me a horse. I grew up in Cornwall so I was just surrounded by countryside and beaches and everything. And so I was very much in touch with animals but could never have had my own horse. And then I just went racing one day at the age of five and I was just obsessed. This was just the coolest thing I’d ever seen. And from then on I just had no doubts that that’s all I wanted to do was work with horses in horse racing specifically because it was so fast and furious and it was so cool. It just blew my mind from such a young age. So I feel very lucky in that sense. A lot of people go years without knowing what they want to do or what their passion is. I found it at such a young age. I’m so grateful.

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Wow, I love that. When did you realize that you can actually make a career out of this? Because it’s a dream job, isn’t it?

Oh, massively so. I mean, I was very lucky because my dad was a careers advisor. Not only for spawning my sports interests because he literally raised me to be a boy. I actually have a brother, but I was elected to be the boy apparently. So he not only got me into all sports and we discovered horse racing together, but he was also a careers advisor. So he knew the exact paths to go down. He’d actually advised a jockey himself who went on to be a really good jockey from Cornwall. And so he knew the British Racing School, but it was always the plan that I would go and do my GCSEs. Both my parents were in education, so do GCSEs, do my equivalent of A levels, International Baccalaureate. And then I could be free to go to the British Racing School and learn how to work in racing and how to ride racehorses properly. Uni was never the plan for me.

What’s the horse racing industry like; did you have any challenges to getting to where you’re now?

Oh, I’ve got so many challenges but I adore it as an industry. It’s my absolute world, it’s my religion, it’s everything. But it is a very tricky industry to gain any respect in if you are an outsider. And I came into the industry never having owned a horse in my life. I got riding lessons when I was 11, 12, when I was big enough and strong enough, and when my parents felt that I could actually control a horse. But I never had that grounding. My name meant nothing going into the industry. It’s an industry which I do love in this sense, but it does present its challenges where you really have to prove yourself to get any semblance of respect within racing. So I’ve had to gain that respect. The first day in the yard, nobody knew who I was. I came from the racing school, I had to prove that I could ride racehorses well, I had to prove that I had the work ethic, I had to prove so, so much. Because there’s no time in racing. There’s no time for people to be taking the time to explain and to care. And that was a shock to my system when I first went in, when I didn’t have tutoring as such. You have to learn on the job. And if you don’t learn fast, you are getting bollocked. If you don’t learn, it’s dangerous. So you do learn fast and you grow a backbone, you really grow a backbone and then some. But that was the first challenge, just proving myself in that sense.

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And then every kind of step through racing into the media side of things, again, you kind of have to prove yourself because it is very much the inner sanctum of racing. As I say, if you’re from a family who was in racing beforehand, you’re naturally there. Rather, you have to apply for membership if you’re an outsider. And that’s no one’s fault in terms of the people who get opportunities who are already within racing. They can’t help the family that they’re born into, just like I can’t help the family that I’m born into. It’s just, you have to go through extra processes of proving yourself.

So that’s been a challenge along the way, but one of my favorite things is when people underestimate you or don’t know who you are, don’t know your name, and you pull out some line, some knowledge base, something that just stops them in their tracks, and it confuses them for a second before then you can almost see the respect starting to cross their face. So I do love that. I don’t want to put myself on any sort of pedestal here whatsoever. But I would love it if even just one person looked at me and thought, Kate’s not from any racing background. She hadn’t had any involvement in it, but she’s managed to forge a career out of horse racing. So why can’t I from an outsider perspective? I would love that if someone thought that.

Oh, I absolutely love when people underestimate you, it is satisfying to prove them wrong.

I know you’re a big advocate of making it more accessible for those who might not, like you said, be born into it. What do you think the industry needs to do to change that?

It’s trying, it’s really trying to. It’s got all these different initiatives. And it is getting better in terms of social media use where again, there used to be kind of a disdain for the use of social media within racing and pulling in the crowds. I think one massive and massively unheralded aspect of racing moving forwards is race day TV, where they go to the tracks and ask about race day fits. People have seen it all on TikTok, all on Instagram, over people getting involved talking about their outfits. And again, there’s a lot of snobbery within certain parts of racing, a lot of the fan base in racing where they say this is nothing to do with racing, nothing to do with the horses. These people are just here for the fashion and the drinks and all of that. So what? So what if they are? They’re going racing, they’re having a great time.

Industries are about the bigger picture. Football is not just about 22 men kicking a ball around a field. It’s everything that goes with it. It’s the styling or the glamour that goes with it. There’s so much more. But there’s a lot of people in racing who don’t want the sport tainted. However, I would just say to those people, it’s not going to taint it in any way. It is just this whole wider picture. We want to grow the sport and make it more global. These sorts of ways of accessing people are the way to go, I think.

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I have seen those videos! I find them quite enjoyable. Speaking of broadcasting, you are a broadcaster now as well. You’ve worked in almost every corner of racing and are also presenting in football as well. What was that transition into broadcasting like?

It was an absolute baptism of fire. I kind of look back now and I think, how did someone let me go live? I knew nothing of what I was doing. Basically, I had started writing little bits for the Racing Post and that snowballed into race day presenting, as you say, there’s the hospitality hosting, running through the cards, showing my knowledge base of the sport. And then through the radio. But even then, I kind of thought to myself naively, oh, the jump to live TV, that’ll be nothing of a jump, that’s absolutely fine. I’m so ready to go. And I think back now to my first live shift, because that came about basically by me being tenacious, I’d say. It makes you sound irritating when you say you’re tenacious, but I hope I wasn’t irritating, hah. 

I knew a few of the producers at Sky Sports Racing, and I had done plenty of years’ work now of doing podcast appearances, William Hill Race on Radio, Racing Post Live, where it was like a YouTube live show. So I was onto them about it, saying, is there any opportunity? I’d love just to have the discussion. And eventually it led to me getting in contact with the head of Sky Sports Racing and he basically told me, unfortunately there’s no opportunities right now. And I thought, gutted, but you know what, I’m used to no’s by now. I can’t even tell you how many no’s I’ve pushed back to have in my entire career. It’s ridiculous.

So I thought, right, there’s another one, another time though. And then about a week later, he called me back up again. And he said, we’ve actually got a brand new show. We’re looking for a host, the pre-record, every Friday morning, previewing the weekend action. Would you be interested? And of course, I was absolutely straight away. And he said, also, whilst we’re on the subject, what’s your American racing knowledge like? And I just lied, lied through my teeth and said, oh, it’s great. Absolutely. He said, oh, cool, because we’ve actually got some stateside shifts, some live shifts up for grabs if you’d be interested. I said, yep, absolutely fine. He said, great. Your first shift will be in two weeks. So I had to learn about America in two weeks. And I knew nothing. I didn’t know what a maiden special weight meant. I didn’t know what an allowance race was. I didn’t know anything, really.

So in two weeks, I thought, well, I can’t go back on this now. I’m just going to have to do it. I’m going to have to learn to the best of my ability. Thankfully, the day went well. I don’t want to see the footage back now. But so many things for that first live shift. First time having talkback in my ear. I didn’t know what the sound on tape was. I didn’t know what the countdown to break was. I didn’t know anything. And luckily, I had the best team and they are the best team at Sky Sports Racing ever who were so patient with me, didn’t call me out, just helped and guided me through everything. But I look back now and I just think, how did I survive a four-hour shift of live TV, not knowing what I was talking about and not knowing what they were saying in my ear, but somehow we made it.

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Sometimes you just gotta wing it! And now you’ve crossed into football broadcasting as well. What has racing taught you that you’ve been able to bring into football broadcasting?

So much. It was a much easier transition than going into racing broadcasting because I knew at least the presenter techniques in my ear. I knew all of that straight away. So yeah, that’s been two years now. And I always loved football. As I say, my dad raised me to be a boy effectively. So I always loved football growing up. And Aston Villa just reached out on social media and so many of my jobs have come about because of my social media. And so they reached out and just asked, would you be interested in us? We’ve got a job opportunity.

And I thought, oh God, I wonder what this could be. Could this be a race day presenter, race day, match day presenter? I thought, no, no, don’t get your hopes up, it won’t be that good. And it was exactly that, and it was so good. It was the best thing ever. And it taught me from racing to football, the analytics, it’s, I’m not gonna say it’s easier, but it’s different because in racing, you will have a whole card or multiple cards. Say when I’m doing a stateside shift, I’ll have 10 different race meetings going on and they will all have eight to 10 races on each card, each of those races averaging eight horses in a race.

You’ve got to know everything about all of those horses, the race overall. You’ve got to know everything about your jockey, your trainer, the breeding of the horse, the owner, what that then means for the horse’s next target, how they’ve done previously in terms of their form. It’s so much. With racing, there is so much information. It’s so complicated. Then it was quite nice to go into football to have one game to preview with Aston Villa, where I just have to really know both starting 11s, obviously the context of the game; you’re talking about concepts really in terms of players’ confidence, wider picture amongst fan base, rather than racing, it’s very much, know it or you don’t.

It’s almost like maths. My dad was also a maths teacher as well as a career advisor. So part of my learning is when we used to go point-to-point racing and we’d have the bookies boards and he’d test my maths with the odds and he’d be asking me, Ok, total up those odds now. Tell me what the overround is. And I was 12 years old trying to figure out an overround of 120% to realize that the bookies were putting us away. I loved all that and I loved the fact that racing is so formulaic in that sense rather than football. It’s all conversational.

So it certainly helped me with racing in terms of how much work to put into pre-doing anything. But then I really got to enjoy football because you could talk about more emotion and that’s what I love about football so much.

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Were you or your dad always a fan of Aston Villa at all?

You know what? My dad was a massive Wolves fan, like his whole entire life, where he would travel here and everywhere to Europe following Wolves and everything. So I have no idea how he let me work at Aston Villa. My uncle is a massive Villa fan. My dad’s side of the family is big. There’s a whole load of brothers and they’re either Birmingham City, Wolves or Aston Villa. So I lucked out basically on one out of the three of them. I think I’ve done well enough for Villa.

And it’s great then because I can go to Villa and I’m fortunate enough where one of the other brands that work for Betano, who were the Frontier Shirt sponsors, they would have a box that they’d invite my uncles to come along and to watch it and, it was great fun for them. And also seeing a full circle moment for me.

At least some of your family supports it! From what you said, you have to be so knowledgeable about when you’re broadcasting in racing. Was there ever a moment where you were on live TV and you were like, damn, actually, that’s wrong information that I’ve just said. How do you even go about that on live TV?

Oh, honestly, sometimesI would do the 10pm till 2am shifts for the stateside action. It is kind of how they get everyone involved. On most shifts in Sky Sports Racing, you’re the presenter and the pundit as well. You’re everything. So you are talking relentlessly for four hours. Especially at that time of night where you’ve got a race every five minutes up until 2am and you are starting to lose your mind at that point when it’s getting towards the latter stages. The racing’s not as good, you feel like it’s just déjà vu with certain race after race and you’ll be looking down through the card and just be thinking, oh no, that was a slight miss. But to be fair, actually, I say loads. There haven’t really been, to be honest with you. Like, I’ve got a system worked out where I never kind of get the wrong race. There was one time where, one race, I can remember this, where it ran, it was at the track and it was running half an hour late for some reason. So all of our systems had shifted onto it being the next race. And I was previewing it as if it was the next race.

And then they set off and I thought, the commentator’s got all the wrong names here. Why is this commentator talking about this horse? He’s messed up here. And I was almost laughing at the commentator. And then I realized as they got to the end, thought, oh, we’ve actually missed the race. This actually was the right one. They were just running half an hour behind time. So at that point, we just had to apologize and just say, we’re so sorry. You know, they were running so late. But no, to be fair, even though it’s so busy, we’ve actually got a pretty foolproof system going. Or if you do make a slight misstep saying this horse won last time out, just correct yourself and we’ve got such good viewers and fans out there that they don’t pull you up. I think they appreciate how much we’ve got going on and how many races and horses we’ve got.

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I would definitely have so many blips haha. Racing aside, you defended some online abuse a while back and it put you really on the map. Looking back, do you think that experience has sort of changed the way you approach having a voice publicly?

Yeah, it’s interesting actually. I’ve kind of changed in voicing opinions because you do feel that if you stick your head above the parapet with any sort of opinion, that is when you are inviting counter arguments there. And people online can get quite nasty about it then as well.

I do feel that when I first started, I would voice opinions and it really used to affect me if someone would come back with a polar opposite opinion or tell me I was an idiot or all of this. And it did stop me from voicing opinions for quite a while then because I just thought, what have I got to gain from this? And I do probably nowadays think that to an extent now where if I’m on a show and I’m being paid to give my opinion, absolutely. I don’t really take it upon myself now to go and voice an opinion on my own social media because I think you guarantee you’re gonna get people who are just looking for an argument with you. So what have you got to gain from that rather than if you’re doing your job and you’re being asked to give an opinion –  a completely different story because that is literally your job.

So I wouldn’t really voice too many opinions outwardly myself nowadays just because I just think the way social media is now just a bit pointless. It’s just pointless. The content that I share more so now on social media is just more kind of lifestyle things. And if people don’t like that, then oh well. Oh well at that point. I can’t be bothered with unwanted nastiness. 

Amen to that. People online can be horrible. Last but not least, you’ve had such a great career so far, but is there anything else that’s still in your bucket list?

Well, I would love to do more football broadcasting. I would love that. Racing is always going to be my heart and passion and my absolute love of my life. Football, I have loved these last two seasons talking about football professionally rather than just as a fan. It has been so much fun and I would love to do more than the football landscape. I’m not sure exactly what that’ll look like, which broadcaster that might be with or whichever, but I would love to do some more in football definitely.

Let’s manifest that for you! But speaking of football, obviously now the Premier League has started again – what are your predictions? 

I do think Arsenal will win this quite comfortably. They’re just the only team in the Premier League that has got any sort of stability and having stability as a foundation, or just even having the foundations, is going to be so crucial for this Premier League season.I think that they’ll win just by pure consistency this season. 

I know Aston Villa have got off to a terrible start so far. We’ve got 10 new signings, so we’ve got a whole new team, that once they gel under Unai Emery, that I feel will be absolutely fine. So I’ve predicted Villa to finish sixth and I’m still standing by that. We had a terrible start to last season. We literally didn’t score for five games. I don’t think it’s going to be as bad a start as last season and we had the best season in a lot of people’s lifetime for Aston Villa last season, finishing fourth, lifting the Europa League trophy. And for Bayern to win the Champions League. Just for you!

I appreciate that!

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