Steve Rider's journey to the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix began with an unusual request. After anchoring rugby league's Challenge Cup final at Wembley on the Saturday, the BBC received a call from Simtek, a new Formula One team.
"They had a suspension part they needed to get to Imola, and they wanted me to carry it by hand," Rider reflects. The component ended up "propped up against the back of our studio."
Within an hour of agreeing to transport the part, devastating news arrived. Roland Ratzenberger, one of Simtek's drivers, had been killed during qualifying.
The Austrian's death was Formula One's first fatality in 12 years, foreshadowing the tragedy that would unfold the following day.
Steve Rider was covering the San Marino Grand Prix in 1994 for the BBC
GettyTwenty-four hours after Ratzenberger's death, Rider faced the most demanding live broadcast of his nearly five-decade television career. Ayrton Senna's 190mph crash at Tamburello corner occurred on lap seven of the race.
Rider knew almost immediately that the crash was fatal, but official confirmation from the hospital would not come for several hours. During this agonising wait, he had to maintain the broadcast whilst being unable to share what he knew with viewers.
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The Brazilian driver had reportedly expressed safety concerns about the track the previous evening.
His friend and rival Alain Prost later revealed that Senna had told him: "I'm not optimistic at all about this race."
"In '94, you were effectively the only source of information," Rider says.
"People's mobile phones weren't going to be lighting up. So it was down to you to set the tone for how this awful news was delivered."
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Ayrton Senna was driving for Williams when he crashed
PA
The responsibility of being viewers' sole connection to events at Imola weighed heavily on the broadcaster.
Without social media or instant updates, television coverage provided the only real-time information about the unfolding tragedy.
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Rider had to navigate the delicate balance of keeping audiences informed whilst managing the emotional impact of Formula One's darkest weekend in over a decade.
The isolation of this role made an already challenging broadcast even more demanding.
The technical challenges of covering the tragedy were immense. "On site at Imola, there was a policy to say, 'This is an ongoing situation'," Rider explains.
The BBC had its own camera at the circuit, allowing them to cut away from the worst of the footage that Italian TV was providing."
Steve Rider went on to work for ITV for two decades
Getty
The broadcast coincided with the start of the World Championship Snooker final, creating an unusual juxtaposition.
"I was standing on the pit wall with all this going on, cutting in and out of frames of snooker," Rider recalls.
Despite the difficulty of switching between such contrasting events, he acknowledges: "But thank goodness for that. It was tough."
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