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Can’t wait to be there next Thursday always one of the most enjoyable cards of the year i find, a great mix if good older horses with some exciting young prospects too, looking through the card the 1m 3yo race looks very strong. I enjoy the itv coverage I like the banter between the group, definitely an upgrade from the channel 4 show anyway.
I remember the beeb showing an evening jumps meeting from Ascot but that lasted one year only. Hopefully ITV will stick with it for a few years.
And who knows if it is successful maybe we’ll see some bigger races at evening meetings on ITV instead of trying to cram them all in to Saturday afternoons.
Drone
“So, now that we have HD TV, one would have thought that paddock footage would be an ideal use for this splendid technology”
Might well be the case ………as soon as we have 3D TV.Paul Ostermeyer wrote:
“I thought he completely fluffed the drama of the runner-up making such a late challenge. He’d kind of switched off to concentrate on Tiger Roll, then had to compensate with something about him ‘slowing dramatically’ without any real sense of how close Mullins had come to winning.”This probably comes under the “too much information” category but I listened to the race whilst soaking in the bath so had the Five Live commentary which sounded interesting at the end.
When I actually got to see the finish I thought that’s nothing like how it sounded on the radio – so I can fully see where you’re coming from Joe – I’m all the more convinced Matt Hill, if he was going to be used at all, should have been out at the Canal turn and Dazzer should have been in the Grandstand”.
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I reverted to Five Live commentary in the car after the giant TV screen hired for the Hornby Castle point-to-point went phut a fence or two into the race proper; and goodness me, yes, didn’t Matt Hill nearly drop the highest profile commentary bollock since Trevor Denman’s unfortunate “Zenyatta, Zenyatta, Zenyatta, Blame…” finish to the 2010 Breeders’ Cup Classic. Heaven help him had Tiger Roll been mugged.
Hill had indeed been deployed out in the country for all of his previous Grand Nationals for Five Live during the mid-late 2000s and would have been best deployed out there again. I fear, however, that somewhere along the line the production team at Five Live got a bit too enchanted with the idea of making some sort of cultural exchange narrative out of Hill’s working on the National at the same time as John Hunt’s working on the Gold Coast.
…Which, considering any sports broadcast should always be about the protagonists first and foremost and about its commentators a very long way down the line, does rather betray a bit of a lack of professional judgment. Whatever Five Live picks up a Sony Award for in 2018, I doubt it will be this.
gc
Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.
Paul Ostermeyer wrote:
“Julian Wilson was an appalling commentator and Hanmer was like mogadon – boring and monotonous. It could be the most exciting race possible but Hanmer would never change his tone or expression.Time and nostalgia plays funny tricks with the mind ….. in those days TV coverage was limited to ITV and the Beeb and only if you went racing were you exposed to other commentators so there was little to compare with.
Nowadays even the “average” commentators are better than the commentators of old.
I realise this may be considered heresy in places but, even at his prime, I think Peter O’Sullevan would struggle to be the top commentator up against the current crop.”
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No, that’s actually bang on, Paul. The relative paucity of regularly heard contemporaries to judge him against (in the sense that one couldn’t continuously compare him to up to twenty Racetech and heaven knows how many other providers’ callers in bookies or online for most of his career), compared with, perhaps, a disproportionate deference to that nonetheless wonderful voice of his, did I think lead to his reputation as a commentator being burnished a little.
Funnily enough my trawling through Espmadrid’s inexhaustible stockpile of old racing videos on Youtube does occasionally unearth Racetech (or antecedent) commentaries in which John Hanmer is not only more animated than one might expect but also more inclined to comment on how well the participants are travelling and jumping than Sir Peter ever was – his work on a three-runner conditions hurdle at Towcester hastily programmed one year to replace a number of Champion Hurdle trials lost to the weather is actually pretty sound.
On the other hand, and worryingly considering he got the National gig for so many years, give Hanmer a large field to contend with and he often floundered. Check out the Youtube footage of an umpteen-runner Folkestone novice chase, in which some of the runners don’t get a first mention until after halfway. Nobody on the Racetech roster would be allowed to get away with that nowadays.
The least said about some of Mr Wilson’s commentaries, especially the notorious “dead horse” reference in the 1989 National, so much the better.
gc
Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.
Crusty Patch wrote:
“I certainly don’t agree that Francesca Cumani has become the “lead broadcaster” ahead of Ed Chamberlin. She had a very minor role at Aintree, reduced to grinning toothily and making only occasional contributions when standing at the table as part of the Gang of Four.”=============
…Most memorable of those contributions being to talk about horses at the bottom of the weights in the Foxhunters. Problems there.
gc
Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.
Crusty Patch wrote:
“I’m quite happy to admit that I was wrong in my original criticism of Ed Chamberlin for being bland and wooden. He has grown into the role and does a very good job. I particularly enjoyed the programme he fronted from Kelso recently.Great to see the Borders course taking centre stage and nice to see the TV magazine schedule clipping of ITV’s previous visit to Kelso in the 1970s and archive footage of a race from that coverage”.
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Mistaking the voice of John Penny for Raleigh Gilbert’s in that archive footage wasn’t Ed’s finest hour, but to his credit he corrected that within seconds of Twitter’s racing hordes doing their collective nut with him and the rest of that Kelso programme was indeed tremendous.
Broadcasts such as that, and Wincanton the previous autumn, ought to serve as enough encouragement to the comparatively smaller tracks that if they can find a clear enough Saturday in the racing calendar and put on a rich/interesting enough suite of races that day, they can still secure themselves some exposure even in this era of just the one terrestrial racing broadcaster.
I hope the execs at Pontefract and Cartmel have been surveying the Kelso and Wincanton shows with particular interest.
gc
Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.
Wordfromthewise wrote:
“Interesting to see […] Tanya Stevenson on the credits as a statistician yesterday…”=================================
Yep, IIRC Yeats (I think it was) and I pointed this out on here during the coverage of York last August also. Without having watched any of the ITV coverage of Aintree this time, beyond the first fence and a bit of the National (see above), I wouldn’t know whether her statistical contribution was especially worthwhile. From the comments here and elsewhere, however, I’m assuming quite possibly not.
However, arguably the most groundless assertion, statistical or otherwise, during the whole of the Aintree week was probably the nugget from Dave Nevison in the betting pit just before the Foxhunters.
“It looks a quiet betting heat, as you’d expect”, he offered. I personally doubt it was, and why would one expect it to be in any case? The Cheltenham equivalent consistently features among or just outside the top ten races with the biggest betting turnover of the entire Festival.
Put on a hunter chase full of either well-known Rules or ex-Rules horses, or else repeat visitors from the pointing ranks, and that degree of familiarity will draw in the punters. Not a hard concept, that, really.
gc
Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.
Why have they given Richard Hoiles a microphone for interviewing? The guy is drab and talks too much in the commentary box as it is without giving him more air time.
Thank goodness for the mute button.I was disappointed by ITV’s coverage from Sandown, it seemed to be done on the cheap copying the camera angles that you could have seen on RUK or in the betting shops, and generally felt rather muted. I doubt it will inspire other courses to stage evening meetings for ITV to televise.
ITV are happy with the viewing figures.
Ed Chamberlin is full of praise for Francescas work, that is not unusual though.
Nothing against Matt Chapman, but I for one did not miss the input from the betting ring.
What a great way to spend an evening watching racing on TV and I thought it was all done very well.
Without Matt Chapman we had more time to see more horses in the pre parade and paddock and going to post and the interview with William Haggas was very informative..full marks and lots more to come I hope.Things turn out best for those who make the best of how things turn out...Was there that night so missed the broadcast itself (forgot to record it too), that being said I think Francesca’s paddock walk & talk normally seems to come over as a bit last minute dot com when you only see her talking about a couple of horses max (probably more a time constraint issue) but I can tell you that she did seem to be talking about a lot more horses from what I could see but I don’t know whether that came across on the broadcast.
On a much less relevant note (well not really horse racing related anyway) sometimes she is called out on her choice of rather bright lairy outfits when doing her laps in the paddock talk but damn did she looked spectacular in that metalic looking silver outfit that for a lot of the men where I was standing (and no doubt for others around the whole paddock) made it extremely difficult to concentrate on assessing how the horses looked walking round. Apologies if that comment caused anyone to take offence for being of a sexist nature.
In any case, SkyBet reported an increase in turnover on a typical evening meeting screened on At The Races or Racing UK with Michael Shinners stating that “on what we would project for an evening meeting, we took 25 per cent more than we’d expect.”
Coral’s David Stevens said business was up on the night in shops and online. He said “Retail turnover on the card was healthy but, unsurprisingly, it was online where the upturn was most notable and the decision of ITV4 to broadcast the meeting undoubtedly played an important role in that.”
The only problem I really see is in what other evening meetings in the calendar would warrant ITV broadcasting them, the Brigadier Gerard night (with 2 listed and 2 G3 races on the card) is high profile with said races very often having a big impact on the Royal meeting – I am not sure that the standard evening racing fare we get would yield the same results.
It was just a practice for the F1 Championship racing, or whatever it is called, that is coming in the near future.
Also forgot to say I did not miss the walk in interviews with the winning jockey.
The parade ring shots of the horses on RTE’s broadcast from the Curragh this afternoon were superb. High definition, full side on and in slow motion. Wonderful pictures. This is how it should be done.
ITV/RUK/ATR please take note.
Why do you want paddock shots in slow motion Cav? Think they are terrible and would much prefer normal time. Unfortunately it seems to be catching on, I fully expect to see The Queen at Royal Ascot in slow motion
LD73 wrote:
“The only problem I really see is in what other evening meetings in the calendar would warrant ITV broadcasting them, the Brigadier Gerard night (with 2 listed and 2 G3 races on the card) is high profile with said races very often having a big impact on the Royal meeting – I am not sure that the standard evening racing fare we get would yield the same results”.================================
Sandown’s evening meeting took place on the same day as Chelmsford announced the framing of a fixture which will actually offer a little more prize money than Brigadier Gerard night (and include stakes contests), so there’s one possibility.
Given the almost Reithian enthusiasm ITV/ITV4 has displayed for taking the show to smaller courses on a few occasions now, I’m hopeful that a small programme of evening broadcasts could yet be framed to complement the Sandown event, comprising:
– Stratford hunter chase evening (framing the coverage around what I think remains Britain’s richest hunter chase away from Aintree and Cheltenham),
– the new Chelmsford megabucks event,
– the Windsor August Monday night fixture with the final of their valuable sprint series (perhaps augmented by the moving of their Listed event to that evening also),
– Red Shirt Night at Pontefract (again, with one of the course’s Listed events transferred),
– Glasgow Stakes night at Hamilton (maybe with the final of the course’s 2yo series moved to it also),
– a weekday evening at Cartmel, ‘cos it’s too stunning and amazing a place not to get a look-in forever (and because the executive there have never been more proactive than now in terms of framing class 2 handicaps).
That wishlist doesn’t strike me as excessively long; the potential for using the shows to promote the sport at below the highest levels is appreciable; and several of those tracks would be tremendous fits for the same sort of access-all-areas coverage afforded to Kelso and Wincanton recently.
gc
Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.
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