Cheltenham Showcase Meeting: Ed Chamberlin says racing can be 'beacon of hope' after Festival backlash

For all the photographed glory of Gold Cup triumphs, all the drama of a last fence fall captured in a frame, there is one image of the Cheltenham Festival which endures year after year.

The panorama depicts a mass of thousands of racegoers, packed from the back of the grandstand right up to the trackside rail, spread up and down the legendary Cheltenham hill, from the temporary stands which line the Guinness Village, to the finishing post and beyond.

And yet, as racing returns to this corner of the Cotswolds for the first time since the Festival, it is an image that, over the past seven months, has been more regularly used as a stick to beat the sport and its premier event.

“It's been criticised, I think, because of that, in normal circumstances, iconic photograph of 60,000 heads,” says ITV Racing’s Ed Chamberlin of the backlash the Festival has faced for having gone ahead in those final days of normality before the scale of the coronavirus pandemic and the restrictions that would be needed to fight it truly set in.

“That's been Cheltenham's problem because they haven't got the photographs of the Lewis Capaldi concert or all the other things that were going on at the time.”

Knowing what we know now, it is easy to look back upon that week in March and wonder how and why. But to do so, Chamberlin believes, would be to too conveniently forget the blasé mood of hopeful defiance/naive ignorance that existed within large swathes of the general public, and certainly within government, who did not ban mass gatherings until the following week.

“On the Monday, after the COBRA meeting, The Jockey Club and Cheltenham were firmly told: 'Keep calm and carry on',” Chamberlin recalls. “What else are they supposed to do?

“To me, it's all been very unfair and a lot of it's been done in hindsight. We didn't have that mindset at all. It's very easy for people to look back with hindsight and criticise but at the time, having been right at the heart of it, you didn't think that.”

Chamberlin will be back at Prestbury Park for the track’s Showcase Meeting, which begins on Friday as the National Hunt season ramps up.

“We're all really looking forward to going back to Cheltenham because it's such a special place,” Chamberlin says. “I think it'll boost everyone's spirit. Everyone loves the jumps, it has that advantage over Flat racing normally where horses will be coming back.

"It'll be like being reacquainted with old friends, really, lots of familiar faces at Cheltenham - largely equine, but the people as well. I think there'll be a real feelgood factor to have jumping back.”

Almost everything in the National Hunt season is viewed through the Cheltenham prism; tune in on Friday and should Gordon Elliott’s Galvin win the 2.25, Chamberlin will tell you that he has been cut in price for the National Hunt Chase in March.

Ed Chamberlin’s season hopes

The horse I’m most looking forward to is…

“I think Shiskin would be the one. For him to have won the Supreme when everything went wrong, and he still managed to beat Abacadabras, who could be a Champion Hurdle contender himself, I think Shiskin's very special. If he takes to fences the Arkle is at his mercy.”

The race I’m most looking forward to is…

“My favourite, I must admit is the Ladbrokes Trophy. I used to be the assistant plumber on Hennessy Day back in the day. That was the big day of the year and was sort of my holiday job. So now, to be presenting it, I always pinch myself every year. It's just one of my favourite races of the entire year.

“And I'd love Colin Tizzard - if he's reading the Evening Standard - if he could target Copperhead [at the race]. He's my long range fancy.”

This year there is an added layer, with the question of whether fans may be back in time for the 2021 showpiece. Chamberlin is “hopeful” that successful pilot events at Doncaster and Warwick, as well as the sport’s al fresco environment, will put racing at the front of the queue if there is a change in regulations and attitude in the New Year.

If that is the case, there would hardly be a more fitting symbol of resurgence than Goshen, the horse who unseated so agonisingly at the last in the Triumph Hurdle on the final day of this year’s meeting, returning to win the Champion Hurdle on the opening day of the next.

“My one wish for the season after the heartbreak of the Triumph Hurdle last year, I'd just love Goshen to come back and win the Champion Hurdle,” Chamberlin says. “When we sent AP [McCoy] off to comfort Jamie [Moore, jockey] as he walked back into the weighing room, I defy anyone who didn't have a tear in their eye when that happened.

"The way National Hunt racing goes and the rollercoaster that it is, you just wouldn't rule out them winning a Champion Hurdle.”

That remains a distant dream (and for those who have written the horse off after two disappointing runs on the Flat in recent weeks, an impossible one). A bleak winter, we are told, lies ahead but in racing terms at least it will be punctuated with a run of fixtures that Chamberlin calls “box office”.

More crucially than ever, though, they will be available to the masses on terrestrial TV.

“All the focus is on the Cheltenham Festival, but my favourite time of the year is the big Saturdays in the build-up to Christmas,” Chamberlin adds. “Every week I go to a big one.

“My message on the whole is just a desperation to be understanding for people who've lost jobs and suffered, but I think racing can be a real beacon of hope.

"That's what sport does - it can be irrelevant at times, but it can also be such a positive, such a boost for people. Hopefully it gives people a bit of joy and a bit of an escape.”

ITV Racing’s coverage of Cheltenham’s Showcase Meeting is on ITV4 on Friday 23 October and Saturday 24 October 1.30-4pm.

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