Access All Areas ITV Racing
“IT may all look smooth, but we’re paddling under the surface,” says Ed Chamberlin, the lead presenter on ITV Racing, wiggling his fingers to mimic a swan’s legs.
He’s just come off air after four live races on Festival Trials Day at Cheltenham. The TV viewer would have enjoyed a thrilling afternoon of top-notch racing at National Hunt’s premier venue, with three races at Doncaster thrown into the bargain.
“It was an odd afternoon,” Ed says. “A Doncaster race went off late, so everything was out of sync. It meant we couldn’t show some Emma Lavelle footage we wanted to, but that’s how it goes.”
Live sport is an outlier in the decline of terrestrial television. There’s little appetite for watching big matches and races on catch-up, so live action has a captive audience. From a production point of view, live sport demands unbelievable flexibility, reacting, improvising and often throwing a meticulously planned “running order” into the bin. Throw the enigma of horses into the mix and the show is on a knife edge.
Director Lewis Hurt explains: “The day Prince Philip died, we only found out
