Grand National-winning trainer Toby Balding has been awarded an OBE for his services to racing in the New Year Honours List.
Given honour for services to racing
Grand National-winning trainer Toby Balding has been awarded an OBE for his services to racing in the New Year Honours List.
Balding, 74, not only won the world's greatest steeplechase twice with Highland Wedding (1969) and Little Polveir (1989), but had the rare distinction of claiming the two other biggest races in the National Hunt calendar.
The Cheltenham Gold Cup went his way with Cool Ground in 1992 and he saddled two winners of the Champion Hurdle, Beech Road (1989) and Morley Street (1991).
He first took out a licence in 1957 and trained more than 2000 winners in all on the Flat, as well as over jumps.
Balding also nurtured many young jockeys, including 15-times champion and BBC Sports Personality of the Year Tony McCoy and the now successful Irish trainer Adrian Maguire.
Although Balding retired from training at the end of the 2004 Flat season, he has remained part of the racing scene by serving on several committees and organisations.
In December 2006 he was elected an Honorary Member of the Jockey Club.
"It's gob-smacking. All one has done is one's duty and one's job," he said.
"We are all racing folk and all do a very good job for racing. As far as I am concerned, this award is for racing.
"I have been politically active for a long time in that I was part of the triumvirate that started the National Hunt Trainers' Federation that turned into the National Trainers' Federation and that was 40-odd years ago.
"Then I had three years on the British Horseracing Authority.
"I am honoured. Racing has been very good to me and anything I might have given back it deserved. And like the majority of us, we are all racing nuts.
"Magic is how I describe racing. I've spent most of my adult life playing with other people's toys!
"I've been blessed in that I've had some very good horses.
"The only organisation I am on at the moment is on the Jump Racing Development Group, but I might get myself involved again because I think it's absolutely essential that racing has a strong voice.
"It's where my loyalties have always been. I'm a jumping man through and through, though I have been lucky enough to have some extremely decent Flat horses."
Jim Gale also receives an OBE for his services to the racing industry.
He was chief executive of the Northern Racing College at Rossington, near Doncaster, until his retirement in 2009.
