Just had a quick whizz through the recording and as I feared as soon as there's any silliness Luke Harvey's straight in there detracting from the conversations.Such an annoying chap, looked like Norman Wisdom in his cap.
Didn't see the point of a weather forecaster, male or female, and couldn't work out what VP's role is going to be either. Why MF was asking her how to ride Cheltenham is anyone's guess, I know the answer was for the benefit of the casual viewer but wouldn't it have been better for her to be asking MF ?
Anyway the show won't live or die on my observations so here's a professional journalist's viewpoint from Chris Cook of the Guardian.
It was like one of those days when you’ve backed some newcomer to the track that has a great home reputation and a classy pedigree, only to see it come out of the stalls sideways and trail the field by five lengths after 100 yards.
ITV Racing’s impressive roster of talent did not combine to make the powerful, confident first broadcast for which producers must have hoped as the channel ended its 30-year absence from the track but there were enough promising signs to suggest that future efforts will leave this first spin far behind.
It was a brave decision to ditch the on-course studio employed by Channel 4 and put the main presenters in the middle of the paddock and on balance it still feels like the right call, drawing the viewer right into the atmosphere of the day’s racing. Unfortunately, the atmosphere on New Year’s Day at Cheltenham was sopping wet.
“We want to go where the people at the track go,” was the advance word from the editorial team, thinking of the paddock and the betting ring, but that laudable ambition was foiled as almost the entire crowd sought shelter in the racecourse’s sundry bars and bistros. Overhead shots showed that, most unusually, the steps around the famous Cheltenham winner’s enclosure were deserted while ITV’s plucky front men stood alone, huddled under umbrellas.
“At least we’ve got a nice day for it,” was the game beginning from Ed Chamberlin,
poached from Sky Sports to be ITV’s face of horse racing. He claimed to be with those noted ex-jockeys Sir Anthony McCoy and Luke Harvey, but that had to be taken on trust at first, their faces obscured by raindrops on camera lenses.
“It’s wet, it’s miserable but it’s going to be terrific,” we were assured, a promise backed up by a montage of clips from ITV’s rich racing heritage, making early reference to Nijinsky and Lester Piggott, John Oaksey, Dickie Davies, Arkle and sun-soaked shots of Tattenham Corner. Then, deflatingly, came the first live action, a four-runner novice chase in which the expert commentary of Richard Hoiles was quite hard to hear for the first mile, because of the volume at which hoofbeats from the track were also played.
The graphics, which seemed to use up only a portion of the available screen, proved hard to read and not just for this writer, judging by Twitter complaints. And just at the point when viewers may have begun to harbour doubts, Matt Chapman dropped a clanger during his betting ring beat by playing an impromptu game of “hair or no hair” with a bookmaker.
Quite why anyone should be interested in what a middle-aged man keeps under his bobble hat is hard to fathom.
Chapman has waited an age for his debut on one of the main channels precisely because he has sometimes extemporised as oddly as this on At The Races, but he is self-aware and ditched some of the wackier stuff in recent years.
Surely only an excessive desire to entertain can account for him going immediately off-piste on his ITV debut. He will not have impressed many of those unfamiliar with his work but he will get lots more chances. Hardly any racing broadcasters have his capacity to inform, provoke and engage and perhaps he will give us a smoother run, now that the air is out of his tyres.
As the programme progressed, Chapman fared better despite suffering as badly as John McCririck ever did from the sort of fools who want to shove themselves into an on-air shot. Chapman may eventually need a couple of heavies to keep such folk at bay.
The best of this first ITV show was an affectionate portrait of the trainer Jonjo O’Neill, making splendid use of archive film of his glory days in the saddle during the 70s. “You’ve been in racing for 50 years,” the interviewer said. “Sure, I’m only a baby,” O’Neill smiled back.
On this evidence, features are going to be a very strong point for ITV. Pre-race analysis needs some work but we can doubtless expect better when the quality of racing is stronger than it was here.
The show gathered strength. Harvey did well to spot Daryl Jacob’s foot slipping out of his stirrup as the jockey fought a close finish and lost. A camera in the weighing room caught Sam Twiston-Davies’s reaction as he watched his younger brother, Willy, riding his first Cheltenham winner.
McCoy had the best line, telling Chamberlin: “In sport, anything’s possible. Who’d have thought of Leicester ruling the Premier League? Or that you’d go from a nice, warm studio working with great pundits in Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher to standing out in the rain at Cheltenham with Luke Harvey and me?”
Indeed, there may be some mileage in giving
McCoy the role of comedy curmudgeon, a series of surprise winners leading him to grouse that only the weather forecaster had got anything right. There certainly seems to be some creative tension between him and Chapman.
“We have survived, just,” Chamberlin concluded. The social media response to his show was by then so varied that one news outlet called it “the most divisive thing since Brexit”. Now that everyone involved has been blooded, it may be a relief to move to the calmer backwaters of ITV4 for two months of low-key jump racing. By the time of the Cheltenham Festival in mid-March, we can all hope to see a more polished performance.
