High stakes are at play as all eyes turn to the launch of a summer of sport

Mick Appleby trains the favourite in the first race of the resumption, but will not be at Newcastle to put the saddle on Stone Mason in the Betway Welcome Back British Racing Handicap – a modest dash that will feel like the Derby when the stalls clang open.

Last week, Appleby sent two runners to Jagersro in Sweden and has had to stay at home for 14 days. Behind the headlines in sport’s return, there are thousands of human stories, all of them to do with survival, of the spirit and the finances.

As horse racing and snooker answer the Government’s easing of restrictions from Monday, Appleby is the trainer most likely to win the first of Newcastle’s heavily oversubscribed races. “It’s not going to be a walk in the park,” he said from his yard in Oakham, Rutland. “I’m surprised he’s such a short price to be honest.”

Appleby was out of the blocks last week when he took Star Of Southwold and Mohareb to Malmo in Sweden. He says: “We drove up to Immingham and then got on a freight ferry. We were 18 hours on the ferry, but it was a good journey – the sea was pretty calm, and the horses travel better on the ferry than when you’re driving, because you’re not stopping and starting and going round bends.

“Mohareb finished third in the Listed race. It was good to go in the bar and have a drink. Obviously, I’ve got to self-isolate now for 14 days, but that’s not a problem. I can’t go racing to entertain owners [because of the restrictions] so there’s not much point going. I probably wouldn’t have gone anyway. I’d only go for the owners.”

Like all the trainers and jockeys at Newcastle, Appleby is a pathfinder for an industry that was shut down following the Government’s dubious decision to allow the Cheltenham Festival to go ahead.

All this after a weekend press briefing in which the Government simultaneously welcomed sport back and warned that the UK was “at a dangerous moment” with a worryingly high number of new cases and deaths. “Don’t tear the pants out of it” was how Prof Jonathan Van-Tam, England’s deputy chief medical officer, warned the public to be sensible.

With anxiety and confusion across the country, sport’s return might seem presumptuous – and premature. But so far-reaching are the medical protocols that racing and snooker are able to back up their insistence that returning is a low-risk proposition. Others quickly follow, with the Premier League 2½ weeks away from being able to whistle Manchester City and Arsenal back to action (not forgetting Aston Villa and Sheffield United).

“The British sporting recovery has begun,” claimed Oliver Dowden, the Secretary of State for Sport, sounding like a TV executive. “Football, tennis, horse racing, Formula One, cricket, golf, rugby, snooker and others are all set to return to our screens shortly.”

Ten 12-runner races behind closed doors on an all-weather racetrack might not sound like a hallelujah moment. All are sponsored by the same bookmaker – a clue to where the impetus for racing’s return has come from. There will, however, be a surge of relief across all sports to see that live action is scientifically possible again, if only in soulless environments.

There is racing, too, at Deauville (France) and Cologne (Germany). In that sense, Britain is not rushing back. The UK’s coronavirus stats, however, are less propitious than those in other European countries. But the detail sport will want to emphasise is that coming back under tight restrictions does not significantly increase the risk of coronavirus spreading. After the Cheltenham Festival debacle (when there were 60,000 crowds – a crucial difference), they had better be right.

This new sporting life moves fast. The Bundesliga returned on May 16. Within 14 days, Bayern Munich had moved 10 points clear and seemingly boxed off another German title. Golf’s PGA Tour returns at Fort Worth on Thursday week and the top football leagues in Italy and Spain are vying with the Premier League to be back on screens. The FA Cup has crowbarred its quarter-finals into June. Women’s sport remains the glaring omission.

On the day the Racing Post returns to print after a two-month break, snooker cues off with a Championship League event without an audience at the Marshall Arena in Milton Keynes, where the 64 players must test negative to be able to participate and accommodation is provided “on-site”.

This is the first time the great British summer of sport has stopped off in a snooker hall in Milton Keynes, or indeed on Newcastle’s all-weather track, but the glamour will return quickly: with the 1,000 and 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket, then Royal Ascot and Premier League clashes.

Appleby says he managed to make it through the core of the lockdown without losing any staff or owners. His reward is to sit in front of a TV screen at 1pm and watch Stone Mason carve a small place in history.