interview | ed chamberlin
of his life, a little terrier around those fences. Everyone loved it.” A seasoned TV sports anchor, after 19 years presenting football, Ed left to return to his first love: horse racing. He admits that after taking over from Channel 4, ITV’s first raceday – appropriately at Cheltenham on New Year’s Day 2017 – was a baptism of fire. Or, more accurately, rain. “When we went on air, in the Parade Ring and at the heart of the action, it was raining hard and it turned into a monsoon. You couldn’t see Luke Harvey’s face. Sir Anthony McCoy, who’s a very close mate, is a miserable so and so at the best of times, but he gets even more miserable when it’s cold and gets even more miserable than that when it’s wet, so you can imagine what he was like. We had water in cameras, cameras that weren’t working – literally everything that could possibly go wrong pretty much did go wrong.” The fact that the fledgling team was determined to make ITV’s coverage different from anything that had preceded it added extra pressure to a sodden day’s racing. The channel came in for a lot of criticism the next day but, he counters: “We made the decision to be different, to change things from what had gone before. We judge a lot of it by numbers, and they’ve been pretty good from day one.” He’s bullish in his belief that ITV’s coverage is constantly evolving to meet the demands of viewers. “One thing ITV will never do is rest on its laurels; we’ll always look to improve. I love the wire-cam, I’d love that to be even longer to show off the Shopping Village. I’d love to extend it, to see what people are up to in The Orchard™, whether they’re looking at Bentley cars or sipping Champagne. The restaurants and the food have become so much a part of the raceday now, I want people at home to feel part of that experience.” It’s obvious to anyone watching the racing on TV that the onscreen team clearly get on. Asked if recently retired Ruby Walsh will be added to the roster for a bit of banter with fellow Irish ex-jockey AP McCoy, a wide smile spreads across Ed’s face. “Banter’s one way of describing it. Those two don’t agree on much. They’re great friends, but I think they’d be quite lively. I think that dynamic of Walsh and McCoy. I say Walsh and McCoy… it’ll probably be Walsh v McCoy, and I’d love to tap into that. Thursday – the golden hour – that will go down as one of the great hours of sport” “I think this festival was unique in that there was one massive highlight on the
That would be a little bit like the combination I worked with before, Neville and Carragher, who saw eye-to-eye, but my goodness, they went head-to- head, and I would be the one chucking in the odd little grenade. I think I’d have to do that with those two, so yeah, that’s potentially very exciting. That’s a definite possibility, but we’ve got a pretty strong team already, so we’ll see.” He doesn’t shy away from controversy, and the subject of horse welfare has garnered its fair share of news headlines in recent times. It’s an issue Ed has strong views on. “We have the best welfare provision in the world. It’s very much at the forefront of what people do. A lot of it goes on in the background, but it’s very important for us to show it on TV as well. “For me, the grooms are the unsung heroes; without them, there would be no racing. The BHA [British Horseracing Authority] does a great job with welfare, and we can’t let up on it, but at the moment, we are the absolute standard bearers for world racing on welfare. No stone will be left unturned both in terms of welfare for jockeys and
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