Toby Moody Motorsport commentator

From the Goodwood Festival of Speed to Dakar to MotoGP, Moody's is one of the best-known voices in motorsport

- BRETT FRASER

YOU MIGHT NOT RECOGNISE TOBY MOODY, but if you're a motorsport fan you'll almost certainly have heard him. For 18 years the voice of Eurosport's MotoGP coverage, he has also commentated at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, Le Mans, X Games from downtown LA, the World Endurance Championship, and several editions of the Dakar Rally. 'I covered five Dakars in Africa when it was still a bit hairy," he says, 'two in South America and two in Saudi Arabia.

Moody's long career behind the microphone began in September 1992 at the Shelsley Walsh Speed Hill Climb when he was only 18. 'My mother and father met racing Mini-Coopers in the late '60s. Then they got married, stopped racing, but were still involved in the social life surrounding motorsport. And then my father started commentating and he was very good at it. He was the lead commentator at Shelsley and it was there that I asked if I could have a go,' recalls Moody.

'He told me I had to do it the hard way, start at the bottom and work my way up, and after commentating at a couple of meetings at Shelsley, I was paid the most fantastic compliment by an older gent who had been coming to the hill climb since 1947. He said to me, "I can have a nice lunch and lie in the grass at the top of the hill. But I can listen to your commentary from the bottom of the hill with you describing the scene in such detail and I can see everything in my head." I hadn't realised I'd been doing it, I just did it, but it was thanks to Howard Stockley that I then undertook the job with such seriousness.