Book Review: My Chequered Career by Steve Rider
Steve Rider has been a mainstay of British motorsport broadcasting for more than 40 years. His book My Chequered Career: Thirty-five years of televising motorsport, published in 2012, charts his rise from regional TV, covering Colin Chapman’s Lotus and local stock cars on Anglia Television in the 1970s, to anchorman for national network ITV’s ground-breaking Formula 1 coverage in the 2000s.
Rider has helmed the televising of many sports, of course, notably golf and rugby. But it’s to the benefit of My Chequered Career that this smoothest of smooth operators sticks mostly to the race and rally elements of his TV work. Golf and football provide some interesting context, however, notably when competing for finite sports rights budgets and in Rider’s often crazy travel schedule to fulfil Champions League football commitments between flyaway Grands Prix.
The deaths of Ronnie Peterson at Monza in 1978 and Ayrton Senna at Imola in 1994 are pivotal to the narrative. Rider was trackside on both days. That his Anglia crew had unfettered access to the Italian GP that year – as it did to pretty much any event in that period – shows how much motorsport broadcasting changed in the near-two decades until the day of Senna’s death, on which Rider was the lead presenter for BBC.
His insight into the technical evolution of his workplace – where Rider himself had some innovative ideas – and the behind-the-scenes machinations of rights bidding at the BBC and ITV, were of most interest to me. Naturally there are some great anecdotes, too: his stories of working with Lewis Hamilton in his debut F1 season are fascinating from today’s perspective, for example. There are also a few dinner-party-style stories that I found less engaging, but the author’s knowledge of and enthusiasm for motorsport, from the grassroots up, are never in doubt.
It's interesting to see how the broadcast market has evolved in the decade since My Chequered Career was published. In the UK, live F1 has completed its move to Sky and the technical innovation has continued apace. On the sporting side, a better program of support races under Liberty’s ownership fixed a problem identified by Rider in the book, while the introduction of sprint races – an idea he also floats in the text – has spiced up the show.
Now in his early-70s, Rider has stepped back from presenting global sporting events but continues to host British Touring Car Championship weekends on ITV4. That feels like an appropriate final chapter in a long and varied career, especially given his pivotal role in making Super 2000-era BTCC must-see TV in the 1990s – something for which British motorsport fan will be forever in his debt.
My Chequered Career: Thirty-five years of televising motorsport
by Steve Rider
Haynes, 2012. ISBN 978-0-85733-273-8
Find it on eBay
Find it on Amazon
Rider has helmed the televising of many sports, of course, notably golf and rugby. But it’s to the benefit of My Chequered Career that this smoothest of smooth operators sticks mostly to the race and rally elements of his TV work. Golf and football provide some interesting context, however, notably when competing for finite sports rights budgets and in Rider’s often crazy travel schedule to fulfil Champions League football commitments between flyaway Grands Prix.
The deaths of Ronnie Peterson at Monza in 1978 and Ayrton Senna at Imola in 1994 are pivotal to the narrative. Rider was trackside on both days. That his Anglia crew had unfettered access to the Italian GP that year – as it did to pretty much any event in that period – shows how much motorsport broadcasting changed in the near-two decades until the day of Senna’s death, on which Rider was the lead presenter for BBC.
His insight into the technical evolution of his workplace – where Rider himself had some innovative ideas – and the behind-the-scenes machinations of rights bidding at the BBC and ITV, were of most interest to me. Naturally there are some great anecdotes, too: his stories of working with Lewis Hamilton in his debut F1 season are fascinating from today’s perspective, for example. There are also a few dinner-party-style stories that I found less engaging, but the author’s knowledge of and enthusiasm for motorsport, from the grassroots up, are never in doubt.
It's interesting to see how the broadcast market has evolved in the decade since My Chequered Career was published. In the UK, live F1 has completed its move to Sky and the technical innovation has continued apace. On the sporting side, a better program of support races under Liberty’s ownership fixed a problem identified by Rider in the book, while the introduction of sprint races – an idea he also floats in the text – has spiced up the show.
Now in his early-70s, Rider has stepped back from presenting global sporting events but continues to host British Touring Car Championship weekends on ITV4. That feels like an appropriate final chapter in a long and varied career, especially given his pivotal role in making Super 2000-era BTCC must-see TV in the 1990s – something for which British motorsport fan will be forever in his debt.
My Chequered Career: Thirty-five years of televising motorsport
by Steve Rider
Haynes, 2012. ISBN 978-0-85733-273-8
Find it on eBay
Find it on Amazon