Sports Podge 2026: Mark Blundell, Olympians & Britain's Most Exclusive Sports Lunch

This year, Podge went racing. And I, somehow, was waved through onto the grid — a clerical error I have no intention of reporting.

For the uninitiated, Sports Podge is an invitation-only annual lunch that brings together the passion, personalities and relationships forged through sport. Three hundred of the great and the good from across the sporting world take their places on the grid to enjoy a standout lunch, hear inspiring stories and meet fascinating people — before the pace eases and the conversation drifts to the paddock bar, where more connections are made, ideas flow, and a legend or two is never far away. It is, in short, the sort of room where you reach for the salt and find yourself passing it to an Olympic champion.

What strikes you first is not the silverware, nor the wine, nor even the alarming density of honours per square metre. It is that everyone present is extraordinarily intelligent, interesting and kind. Not to mention successful. I confess I do not know how Phil does it. How a single man can reach into the entire population of the planet and pluck out, with apparent ease, the very best of it.

It is your fantasy dinner party made flesh. Out of anyone in the world, who would you choose? Phil does the choosing for you — and, infuriatingly, the people he picks turn out better than the ones you would have picked yourself. The seating alone takes Phil and his family, Clare and Babs, weeks of deliberation, and their choices are flawless. In my ordinary life, I stumble across someone I would happily install as a best friend perhaps once a year, if the wind is in the right direction. Phil produces them for me effortlessly, one per place setting, like a conjuror who has tired of rabbits and moved on to better company.

And make no mistake: Phil may be the name above the door, but his wife Babs (Boss Lady) and his daughter Clare — Podge's MD and his business partner — are every bit as central to the magic. A senior marketing force who cut her teeth at the IoD on Pall Mall, Clare was the one who drove the lunches to their spiritual home at the Institute of Directors, having earlier sharpened her craft at the digital agency Precedent. Phil supplies the seventy years of knowing precisely who to seat next to whom; Clare and Babs make sure the room actually runs.

A small sample of the grid

A complete roll-call would read like an honours list crossed with a sporting hall of fame, so allow me a representative few. Mark Blundell — sixty-one Grand Prix starts, a Le Mans winner and three-time IndyCar victor, now steering MB Partners — held court with the easy charm of a man who has nothing left to prove. Tabby Stoecker brought Olympic skeleton pedigree; Lizzy Yarnold OBE, a two-time Winter Olympic champion turned executive coach, doubled it. Bruce Mouat arrived from British Curling, proving that ice, in all its disciplines, was rather well represented.

Football was out in force and, refreshingly, much of it female and senior: Sue Day, directing the women's and para game at The FA; Alex Teasdale steering the women's game at England Rugby; Alexandra Willis as the FA's Chief Digital Officer; and the redoubtable Annamarie Phelps CBE, who chairs the International Working Group on Women and Sport. David Kogan OBE, chairing the Independent Football Regulator, was on hand to remind us all that the beautiful game now comes with paperwork. Ben Calveley represented the British & Irish Lions; Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, Sky Sports pundit and Chelsea ambassador, represented the rather more direct school of forward play.

The administrators of British sport had clearly all received the same invitation. Stuart Pringle OBE of Silverstone, Sally Bolton OBE of Wimbledon and the All England Lawn Tennis Club, Simon Hayes of Sport England, Hugh Chambers of Motorsport UK, Caroline McGrory bringing legal sang-froid from the Cadillac Formula 1 team, and Adrian Wells flying the flag for Surrey County Cricket. The microphone, meanwhile, belonged to broadcasting royalty — Clare Balding CBE, Clive Tyldesley OBE, the motorsport broadcaster Jennie Gow, the presenter Jolie Sharpe and the novelist Alison Kervin OBE. Add Tom Corbett of Barclays, Velvett Stratford-Wright steering football partnerships at Unilever, Karen Webb Moss of Aquatics GB, Ollie Phillips of Optimist Performance, and young Archie Clark, of whom much more shortly — and you begin to understand the problem. The Venn diagram of money, success and power overlaps generously in that room, yet none of those circles is the point.

The secret, such as it is

How does he do it? At first meeting, Phil presents as the consummate gentleman from up North — the sort you would happily share a pint and an afternoon with, no agenda required. Yet behind the extraordinary kindness and generosity sits a mind that reads the room, and everyone in it, instantly. The answer, I have decided, lies in experience. Phil has lived a rich and full life, and across his seventy years he has met every variety of person the species produces, from the very best to the genuinely awful. He now knows the difference at a glance, and chooses accordingly.

That is the secret of these events. They are not elitist about money, success or power — though, as noted, the room is well stocked with all three. The true membership criterion is altogether harder to fake: creativity, a fascinating life, interesting ideas, and a kind and generous soul. There were, it must be said, more CBEs and OBEs than you could shake a hockey stick at. But the honours were the least interesting thing about anyone wearing them.

Lunch, served with music and impromptu brilliance

Before a fork was lifted, Joe Webb — Mercury Prize shortlisted and Jazz FM's Instrumentalist of the Year for 2026 — tickled the ivories for the room as it settled into a three-course meal and some very fine wines indeed. A pianist of that calibre as an aperitif is the sort of detail one notices, and gratefully.

The conversational pièce de résistance came courtesy of Kate Beavan, who worked closely with Bernie Ecclestone for two decades and is, I can report, sharper than a factory full of surgeons' knives. She interviewed the Le Mans legend Mark Blundell live and entirely impromptu on stage — utterly brilliant, and unexpectedly personal. Mark opened up about life, Formula One, the business of sport and, above all, people. Much sage advice was imparted, alongside a few proper giggles. It is not every lunch where the after-dinner entertainment leaves you better at your own job.

The simulators, and the indignity thereof

Naturally, where Podge goes racing, there must be machinery. Race simulators were duly experimented with, and every single session was won — to nobody's astonishment and everybody's quiet resentment — by the actual racing drivers. Archie Clark proved lightning quick and is, maddeningly, just seventeen; catch him this year in the Porsche Carrera Cup GB, where, I am instructed to mention, sponsorship is very welcome. Jon Cole emerged as officially the fastest photographer on the grid, which is either a compliment or a warning to anyone holding a stopwatch. And Gordon Smart of BBC Radio 5 Live played the dark horse to perfection, posting times that suggested radio's loss might one day be motorsport's gain.

Networking, properly understood

I made a great many new friends that day, and the proof is in the diary: we have already met up since, with more rendezvous in the planning. This, when it is done right, is what networking actually means — not the exchange of business cards by people pretending to like one another, but the deliberate, generous placing of genuinely good people side by side, and then standing back to see what grows. Phil and his family do the placing. The rest of us simply have the good fortune to be placed.

It is, needless to say, invite only. I remain genuinely unsure how the hell I got in, and I am keeping very quiet about it. But there it is — even Phil, for all his uncanny judgement, is entitled to the occasional mistake.

A word on the sponsors

You can tell a great deal about an event by the company it keeps, and a quick glance at the Sports Podge sponsor list tells you rather a lot. The digital craftsmen were out in number — Mallard & Claret with their bespoke Webflow and WordPress work, Globant driving fan innovation for elite clients including in Formula 1, Apply Digital transforming customer experience across complex ecosystems, and Gameday streamlining the unglamorous-but-essential business of running clubs, leagues and events. Goodwood lent the occasion its world-class sporting pedigree, while SELA and Destination Sport spoke to the global machinery of large-scale events, elite hospitality and fan travel. The Hub printed all the gorgeous materials, and Freemans Event Partners kept the room fed, watered and beautifully produced; Jupiter turned venues into destinations; and Works crafted the brand identities and experiences that major federations rely upon.

The grown-up advisers were present too, as they tend to be where serious sport gathers — HaysMac on accounting and tax with two decades in the sector, Pinsent Masons offering full-service legal counsel across sport and entertainment, and PSD scaling global sporting organisations through executive search. Holding it all together, Barclays, supporting British sport for over twenty-five years across football, tennis, cricket and Formula 1. It is a roster that reads less like a list of logos and more like a portrait of who actually makes modern sport function. Which, come to think of it, is rather the point of the whole affair.

So: this year, Podge went racing. I came for the lunch, stayed for the people, lost comprehensively on the simulator, and left with a fuller address book and a slightly bruised ego. À l'année prochaine, Phil.

See more at Sports Podge 2026

Photography by Jonathan Cole