The Times
11 July 2024
On Saturday John Hunt was sitting at the end of the narrow loft that is the press room Sandown Park. He was talking of that afternoon’s Eclipse Stakes, of the Olympics he would be commentating on next month and, as he usually did, of his family. And now they are gone.
The power of evil is a terrible thing and what happened to John’s wife and daughters quite unimaginably dreadful. What’s more it comes with the most bitter of ironies – that if he were still in his previous profession P.C. Hunt would be just the sort of warm, kind, utterly professional policeman you would want to break this, the very worst of tragedies.
He is an ordinary man who does extraordinary things. Peering into the mist capturing the drama as well as detail of a pack of horses coming at you or into the pool and calling the roll is not something for the faint hearted or untalented and one of John’s proudest challenges has been doubling up swimming championships in Glasgow with racing at Ayr.
John Hunt is an unflashy but infinitely relatable guy whose quiet face can take on an engaging sideways grin as he tells tales of his own adventures or of his father Paddy Hunt, an ebullient Irishman who gave his wife a splendidly hard-working racehorse which in view of Judy’s origins and pulchritude he named Broadstairs Beauty.
Racing has its fair share of charlatans but no one has ever put John Hunt amongst that number. For all its scattered community and bouts or scattiness there is a family bond to the game just as there is to those who work at the broadcasting coalface across other sports. That’s why the two most moving tributes have been from a chokingly emotional and also bereaved husband Mark Chapman introducing BBC radio from the semi-final in Dortmund, and a from-the-heart piece of eloquence from friend and fellow commentator Richard Hoiles opening ITV’s coverage of racing at Newmarket.
Whilst we chatted racing on Saturday John also scribbled notes when the talk turned to swimming and ideas came as to how to pitch to the widest audience. But family was never far away. In Paris the BBC had booked a decent hotel very different from the moderate digs in Tokyo. Maybe Carol could come out for a visit. Now she won’t.
The only possible compensation for evil is the need it places in aiming for the good. John Hunt always tries to think the best of things. May we follow as well as support him from this horror to better times ahead.