THIS upcoming season, Reshmin Chowdhury will get back to work alongside Laura Woods for TNT Sports’ coverage of the Premier League.
Not to say she’s rested on her laurels this summer after fronting Eurosport’s Olympic output, which cemented her position among the elite broadcasters.
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Fans of talkSPORT have already become accustomed to her knowledge and wit hosting GameDay Exclusive on Saturday mornings.
But the 46-year-old had her work cut out convincing TV execs she was sports journalist material.
Reshmin, who grew up in an open-minded Bengali Muslim family, has revealed she was questioned about her expertise in the field because of her ethnicity.
Reshmin told us: “It is something I am passionate about. We need more representation.
“It shouldn’t be as hard as it was for me for someone getting into sports broadcasting now.
“I believe it would have been 100 per cent easier if I had an ‘in’.
“The barriers to entry were everywhere. I didn’t have a famous sporting person in my family, or know anyone in TV.
“And being British Asian… I think I had to convince a lot of people that I knew about football. That was the most frustrating part… I mean, is it a surprise?
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“I started off working in news, no one questioned me then. I have a politics degree, so it was quite normal.
“But when you come into sport, people look at you and they are thinking: ‘Does she know what she is really talking about?'”
Reshmin recalled a particularly nasty encounter with two male colleagues.
“I can remember when I was at the BBC a couple of guys asked me a question about a specific Real Madrid player. I knew they were testing me,” she divulged.
“And maybe this is the case for other women, and not just about colour – but they wouldn’t do that to another guy.”
Over the years, ambitious Reshmin has worked tirelessly to achieve her dream of working in sport. When it came to shows she wanted to work on, she would wait for the credits to roll and find out who was in charge and get in contact with them.
“In the last five or six years, the doors have opened for women in sport. But that hasn’t always been the case,” she said.
“I would look at programmes I wanted to work on, look at the credits at the end, find the name of the person who was in charge, and would call up the company and get their email address
“I did everything directly, which was how I got my break at Real Madrid TV.”
Now a leading light on TV and radio she is a role model for young British Asian girls who want to follow in her footsteps.
She said: “I get Bengali parents who come up to me and tell me their daughters want to become sports journalists because they saw me.
“I can’t tell you how much that means to me. Every time I hear that my heart drops.
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“I didn’t have that role model, so to know that I can be that role model makes my day.”
Despite her incredible success, single mother-of-two Reshmin admitted suffering “mum guilt” because of the sacrifices she made for her career.
Speaking about juggling family life with her presenting duties, she said: “It’s a minefield and impossible to have everything, but you can try.
“I love what I do, I am very fortune, but it’s a constant juggle. Gender roles are still not balanced, whether that’s societal or cultural or personal.
“I’ve been a single mum for the past four years, and I have to say some of the men I work with have told me: ‘We just shut the door behind us and our wives do everything.’ And I feel that’s a pretty true statement.
“When I worked with BT Sports, I worked on the Champions League and the Europa League coverage. I was pretty much on the road for eight years.
“You would go out on Monday and not come back till Friday, if the games aren’t in England.
“I look at people who now do our job and they don’t have kids. Add kids on top, you’re doing everything. It’s a military operation to get everything ready, from shopping to laundry, to cooking food and getting them what they need for the week.
“Then I might pack, I’ll do my prep, travel, do the job, but you come back and you have to be a mum straight away. You’re knackered, and it’s not your kids’ fault because they’ve missed you.
“That cycle went round and round. It was so difficult. I look back now and I will never do it again. I am much happier now I am not going from pillar to post.
“There is mum guilt, people look at you and judge you – not that I care about that.
“Unless you are a woman with kids who does that, I don’t think you can really understand the intensity of that juggle.”
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