Protesters tried to enter the track during the third day of the Randox National Grand Festival. Credit: PA/ITV
Sir Anthony McCoy told Animal Rising protesters during Saturday's ITV Grand National coverage: «These people don't want to be told, they have their own opinions. That's the sadness. We don't have to justify ourselves to any of them because they don't deserve it.
That's his point of view, and it's very watchable, punchy sports expert. But it is also a reflection of the problem: neither side in this dispute wants or can hear the other.
It is clear that the argument that horses are well cared for and, as Mick Fitzgerald said, «they are better cared for than some people» is not suitable for a large number of the British public.
It's not for lack of trying on the part of ITV. The production couldn't have done more to appease naysayers and onlookers once a year by repeatedly getting presenters and pundits to bring up the racing side of the debate about the moral issue of horse death by getting established trainers to speak. about how they care for animals by talking to equine welfare experts. But like the man said, we have enough experts. McCoy or Lucinda Russell have literally nothing to say to ITV viewers that would affect some people.
What Saturday's program didn't bring to the fore was the opposing viewpoint, and whether racing people like it or not, the opposing view exists. You wouldn't expect the horse racing program and horse racing experts to be anything but unabashedly pro horse racing, and ITV didn't tie itself in the knots that sometimes stifle the BBC's coverage of these binary, emotional battles. If the opposite point of view is «ban racing», then why? But this thing isn't going anywhere. Richard Hoyles said, «It's a shame to give him oxygen.» and Ed Chamberlin said, «My message to these guys would be, 'Why today? What about the rest of the year?'"
The answer, as these two respected and smart broadcasters certainly know, is that ITV is a racing showcase and the Grand National is the biggest shopping day of the year. Saturday, under these conditions, was not a tempting sight. You can still enjoy racing and the Grand National and feel like the chaos and carnage on the first track doesn't look good.
Both sides seem to think that the other is not just wrong, but beyond the pale
The biggest challenge for a sports program is when it also becomes a news story — BT Sport's failure in the final Champions League debacle in Paris is a prime example of how not to do it — and coverage of Saturday's protests was acceptably impartial, ITV repeatedly showed us which caused delays as protesters invaded the racetrack without glorifying it.
But telling the public how wonderfully horses are cared for when viewers can watch them die on Saturday teatime television will be a challenge in 2023. Not shown is the first fence, where Sixteenth Hill fatally fell, nor Valentine, where a mad horse rushed forward Lifetime Ambition and knocked him down. It's a no-win situation for a terrestrial racing broadcaster.
Racing and opponents are in the same position; each side seems to believe that the other is not only wrong, but over the line, deserves not participation but contempt, which, in turn, forces loyalists on both sides to gravitate towards the most absolutist views. Indeed, the nuance is apostasy. On Saturday, ITV did the racing case I described above; the opposite view is that racing is bad and wrong. Hoyles was on LBC on Sunday morning, rhetorically asking what would become of Britain's 40,000 Thoroughbreds if the sport was no more. McCoy quipped of the ITV protesters: «Honestly, if we take 20 horses and give them one at a time, what are they going to do with them? Put it in a garden?
It seems that the debate will disappear no more than 40,000 horses, and ITV, as the mouthpiece of horse racing, does not receive due attention from the handicapper of some public opinion.
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