IT’S another day at the coalface for Nick Luck.

Up at an ungodly hour to be at Racing TV’s studios in west London to present live coverage of the Japan Cup at 6am, then off around the M25 and up to Newmarket to interview Sam Bullard and William Buick at Godolphin, then trainer Alice Haynes at her yard, before moving out to the National Stud to host their stallion show.

Long after dark, he makes the two-hour trek back to the other side of London to his home in the affluent suburb of Teddington (close to Twickenham) and somehow finds time to speak to me, aware that he needs to prepare to compere the following day’s glitzy Horserace Writers and Photographers Association awards lunch, at which he is destined to win the Peter O’Sullevan Trophy given to the Broadcaster of the Year for a 10th time.

It’s a Sunday, but at no point during our hour-long conversation does he give any indication that he might be pressed for time, batting away my apologies for making his long day even longer with the natural ease and good humour that has become the trademark of his screen and audio presence.

Sky dive

Indeed, as we are about to part, it is him, not me, that extends our chat, with the words “You couldn’t possibly find a space in your article somewhere to mention…”

Fair enough, he has been so accommodating, it’s no problem to give a spot of publicity to a new Luck project. Maybe he has a book out for Christmas that he’d like to plug?

Not a bit of it. He just wants The Irish Field readers to know that he recently completed a sky dive to raise money for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust and that any donations, however small, via this link would be much appreciated.

Xanthe, the youngest of his three daughters, suffers from cystic fibrosis. “I think that it is a brilliantly-run charity and I cannot speak highly enough about what they have done for us and particularly for people who are really struggling financially,” he says. “They run a really tight ship and are incredibly committed and I’m passionate about raising as much awareness for them as possible.”

Asked his reaction to being known as one of the hardest-working people in the racing media, Luck replies: “That is quite a flattering description. I do enjoy being busy though.

“The nature of this job is quite addictive and you get to the point where you don’t want to miss anything. What I do has, geographically-speaking, broadened out significantly over the past few years, which means that you want to keep tabs on more and more and more. Although I have lots of well-meaning people telling me that I should slow down, and saying helpful things like ‘do you ever see your children?’, I am wary of taking my foot off the gas too much.

“And I love it. I was talking to a couple of people at the stallion show today, shareholders in the new sire Diego Velazquez. They were successful people, who have done far more impressive things than I’ll ever do, and they were wide-eyed, suggesting to me how great it must be getting to go to all these race meetings around the world, indulging my passion.

“They were absolutely spot on. Sometimes I need conversations like that to remind me that, however busy I am and however stressed I may feel on occasion, mine is a very lovely position to be in.”

Secret of success

Delving a bit deeper into the secret behind his success, I ask what he regards as the key attributes of a good broadcaster. After plenty of thought, he replies: "Aside from the obvious technical aspects of the job, I think that it’s having an awareness of what’s going on around you and being on the ball and quick-witted.

“I was really lucky. I was able to do 25 to 30 hours of live broadcasting a week under relatively gentle scrutiny”

“Most of all, though, you need to be a good listener, that marks out any good broadcaster. You can then get the best out of the people that you are working alongside and create a good atmosphere that allows other people to feel comfortable.

“Nowadays, you’ll find that most people are pretty good at the art of talking to a camera, it’s no longer the rarefied art that it used to be because everyone’s grown up doing it. So almost anyone is likely to be fluent and assured in front of a camera lens.”

Luck did not get into broadcasting via conventional channels, if such channels even exist. A racing and betting fan from an early age, he spun out his career in further education to four years by completing a masters degree in French literature, not really knowing where life would take him.

Then, while toying with the idea of making a living out of acting (he once shared a stage with Benedict Cumberbatch in a Harrow school production of Shakespeare and, in adulthood, performed in a comedy sketch show at the Edinburgh Festival) a friend of a friend told him that the newly-formed At The Races television channel was desperate to find someone to host its late night coverage of US racing.

First job

He had some knowledge of the way things happened stateside, having spent his gap year working for an equine research company in Kentucky, so went for a screen test with the attitude that he might fill this role for a while until he found himself a proper job.

“I was really lucky. I was able to do 25 to 30 hours of live broadcasting a week under relatively gentle scrutiny,” he admits. “I was just being nicely guided in the right direction and I learned a lot.” Luck by name and lucky by nature.

Now, over 23 years on and many accolades later, he is in demand across the planet. He has covered all of the biggest races on their domestic calendar for US networks, most recently NBC, and six weeks ago became the first non-US citizen to win the Jim McKay Award for broadcasting excellence at the National Turf Writers and Broadcasters Dinner in San Diego.

He has also extended his portfolio by becoming the voice of BBC Television’s equestrian coverage. “After Mike Tucker retired in 2017, the BBC didn’t have anyone to commentate on Burghley [Horse Trials] and I had worked with the producers before so they asked me to fill in at the last minute,” he explains.

The relationship has endured ever since, and allowed Luck to be behind the mike for five British gold medals at the Paris Olympics. “Paris was a huge thrill, calling the show jumping out of the arena at Versailles was epic,” he says.

“It was the most stunning sporting venue that you could possibly imagine, I can’t believe that any games has had a better equestrian venue. The gantry was high up in the grandstand, it was boiling hot and you couldn’t see your monitor because the sun was shining straight into it, not that any of that mattered.

“The better the British team did, the more coverage we got on the main channel and it was a real privilege to call top level equestrian sport for the nation’s broadcaster.”

It is a testament to his versatility that Luck received no special training for this diversion into a very different branch of horse sport, though he is quick to deflect praise for the quality of the coverage.

“I was very lucky [again!],” he says. “All I had to do was stay in my lane. I have spoken to my opposite numbers around the world who find it quite challenging to work with their designated equestrian sport summarisers. By contrast, I have the best summarisers that you could imagine in Bobby Hayler for dressage, Tina Cook for eventing and Andy Austin for show jumping.”

Asked to pick out other career highlights, he goes straight to the obvious and nominates hosting the Channel 4 coverage of the Grand National, admitting to regrets that it only lasted for a few years. “Working on the Kentucky Derby is another highlight, it is unlike anything else and is one of the great pieces of sporting Americana,” he adds.

Daily podcast

He reveals that he sleeps in his own bed only about 50% of the time (‘maybe slightly less’). Yet he gently rebuffs my suggestion that at some points the five days per week production of his 50 minute-long Nick Luck Daily [NLD] podcast must turn into a grind.

“If that were the case, after 1,400-odd episodes I would have probably called it a day. I actually enjoy the doing of it, the production of it and the editing of it. I also enjoy trying to find new angles, different ideas. I even try to get someone on every day who hasn’t been on before, which is quite a challenge.

“Sometimes figuring out when to do it and fit it in with everything else can induce a bit of anxiety. Luckily, I have Charlotte Greenway working with me and have done for four and a half years. She helps enormously.”

If you’ve not yet tried listening to NLD, Britain’s most popular racing podcast, maybe you should. Available to download on your smart phone by around midday every weekday, it touches on stories from all corners of the racing globe, from Scandinavia to South Africa, North America to South America, Hong Kong, Japan and Australasia, yet retains its British and Irish core.

While leaning on Luck’s own exotic itinerary, thus covering things like the recent Bahrain International Trophy in great detail, on some days it may still end up with Luck and regular guest Jane Mangan dissecting at length a novice chase at Limerick.

Best of all, it’s free, the only cost being the listener’s ability to stomach some low-key advertising. In conjunction with The Irish Field’s The Racing Edge, it may help keep your finger on the pulse of the racing world!

NLD was born in the depths of Covid, as Luck explains. “I had an idea to do something with a bit of a global feel to it a year earlier, a daily news digest with correspondents from other countries, but too many people got involved and I felt that I was getting pushed around, so I shelved it.

“Then Covid came and there wasn’t much to do at that point and, imagining that the status quo might end up being the way of the world for ever, I thought that it could be a way of getting a bit of advertising. But it certainly wasn’t built around a business plan with sponsors raring and ready to go.

“It’s a big commitment and I wonder if I hadn’t started it in the middle of Covid whether I would have started it at all. I made a rod for my own back as it then had to carry on, once people are advertising and paying. More than that, you’ve then got a select but loyal group of listeners for whom it’s become a part of their day and I don’t want to let them down.

Breaking stories

“It has allowed me to break stories on a regular basis, though it certainly didn’t set out with that as a primary purpose. It was when I started to cold-call more people, ambushing them if you like, that I began to find things out before other people did.”

Looking back on the podcast’s best scoops over the years, he settles upon John Gosden dispensing with the services of Frankie Dettori as a high point. “I remember pulling into a lay-by somewhere near Newmarket with my computer on my lap, taking calls from John Gosden on one line and Pete Burrell [Dettori’s business agent] on another.

“You always have to be ready even if you are on the move. I like it that people imagine that I am in a fancy recording studio somewhere - that is as far from the truth as you can possibly imagine.”

As for the decision to pin his own name right at the top of the flagpole in deciding upon a title for the new podcast, he can only offer embarrassed laughter when I suggest that ‘Nick Luck Daily’ doesn’t exactly scream horse racing at you should you be scrolling through a podcast directory! He assures me that very little thought went into the title and jokes: “I do hope that it’s not a sign of an out-of-control ego”.

Aware that my questioning had been rather Anglo-centric, I finish with the query ‘Who is your favourite Irish-trained horse of all time?’

“Of course the top three are ones that I bred with my mum, Gentlemansgame [third in last year’s Cheltenham Gold Cup] and the two that I have a share in with Joseph O’Brien, Lady With The Lamp and Beset [who between them have won four listed races],” he jests.

“Outside of those, it would have to be Danoli and Dorans Pride, two real Cheltenham folk heroes from when I was in my teens. They left the deepest impression on me.”

We had started our conversation marvelling about what happened at Tokyo Racecourse some 14 hours earlier, when French handler Francis Graffard saddled Calandagan to become the first European-trained winner of Japan’s biggest race for two decades.

“It was amazing, really special,” Luck says. “What Francis Graffard has done this season for international horse racing is immeasurable. Almost single-handedly he might get a new generation of fans enthused by his globe-trotting stars like Sir Michael Stoute and André Fabre did in the 1990s.

“I would suspect that Francis took the job of training for the Aga Khan on the condition that he could modernise quite a lot and that’s probably going to sustain that operation.

“I have found that Francis is one of the best people to work with. Always available, always picks up the phone, makes it sound easy. He must be incredibly busy - and stressed - some of the time, but you’d never know it.”

Sounds familiar, that description. Messrs Graffard and Luck, two men that racing is all the better for having in its midst.