Tributes for Mike Tucker

“We have lost one of the true gentlemen of Eventing,” International Federation for Equestrian Sports (FEI) Eventing Director Catrin Norinder said. “He was one of the greatest ambassadors for the sport, both as an athlete and then through his work and contribution forming the future of the Eventing Sports with the FEI and with the BBC. His warmth, friendship and sense of humour made him enormously popular and he will be very much missed.” Other friends and admirers have also commented on his passing.

In his athletic career, Tucker competed internationally for 20 years, representing Great Britain at two FEI European Eventing Championships. He rode at Badminton 12 times and finished as runner-up there in 1983 with General Bugle. He was also a groom at the 1968 Mexico Olympic Games for Cornishman V, the horse that Richard Meade rode for Britain’s gold medal-winning team.

After gaining experience in amateur theatre, he joined the BBC in 1977, becoming lead equestrian commentator in 1992 after the sudden death of Raymond Brooks-Ward, shortly after the Barcelona Olympics. Tucker retired from broadcasting in 2017 after working at last year’s prestigious CCI4* Eventing competition in Badminton, which was won by Andrew Nicholson. Watch a conversation from that moment here.

Indeed, over the course of his 40-year career with the BBC, he became a fixture at major equestrian championships, including six Olympic Games and other high-level competitions like Burghley and Olympia. In fact, at those same Games, Tucker was a technical delegate, and was also active in other fields including such as course designer between 1993 and 2011. That work included elite-level courses for the FEI World Equestrian Games 2002 in Jerez, Spain and the FEI European Eventing Championships at Burghley in 1997. He was also a well-respected Technical Delegate from 1991 to 2014, including officiating at the Barcelona Olympic Games in 1992.

As the FEI reported, Tucker felt that the multiple gold medals for the British at London 2012 would be the high point of his commentating career, but four years later he described Nick Skelton’s Individual gold in Rio 2016 as, “the most exciting moment I’ve commentated on in my career – Nick was not the only one in tears.”