Marketing director Sharon Hamilton was crowned joint winner of RacingTV’s Tipstar Search For a Broadcaster competition with Liam Firkin at Cheltenham
The mother of a young jockey has earned the chance to become a racing pundit by winning a TV talent contest.
Sharon Hamilton, 54, from Newmarket is marketing director at one of the country’s leading auctioneers whose teenage son Fred Daly is apprenticed to top trainer George Boughey.
She entered Racing TV’s Tipstar Search For A Broadcaster competition for which she was one of six finalists at Cheltenham.
Competition was so fierce that there was dead-heat with Hamilton sharing the £1,000 first prize with 33-year-old Liam Firkin, a sales manager for a robotics and automation company from Ross-On-Wye in Herefordshire.
Hamilton said: “I did a bit of television about 20 years ago, reading the news for a local channel, then moved to Newmarket where I rode out and had horses in training.
“I had a couple of screen tests at Attheraces but my husband was training and there wasn’t time to pursue it. With Fred now 17 I decided to enter the Tipstar challenge. I needed something different in my life so I gave it a go.”
Hamilton was set the challenge of analysing the 15-runner Cross-Country Chase, during RacingTV’s live broadcast alongside host Nick Luck.
“For me it was the race with the most depth with some amazing horses,” she said. “There was so much to say about them and I absolutely loved it.”
As well as the cash prize the winners will be invited to take part in a live shift on Racing TV, produce a six-week vlog for the broadcaster’s social media platforms as well as guest on The Friday Club.
The last three winners of the contest are each regular RacingTV contributors.
Firkin said: “I am consumed and besotted by racing. I did an awful lot of research and preparation for the competition.
“I built myself a prompt sheet containing a lot of statistical information. I went to the extent of contacting each and every trainer with a runner in my race, the novices’ chase.
“My ambition is to represent the punter and the racing fan and to be at the forefront of a new way of analysing racing through data and facts.”
