In my view, the gap between BBC and ITV football coverage has narrowed to a sliver in recent years, but there’s something about the FA Cup showpiece that calls for the Beeb. Their football colleagues had a tough assignment, going head to head with the BBC for the Cup Final. It remains a damn tricky broadcasting and journalistic balancing act, the amount of attention to pay or not pay to the antis, but ITV handled it well on the day. Hoiles calmly shot down the claim that the protest would not take place during the running time of the actual race by the use of timestamps from the footage and said: “It shows that the protester waited for the race to start before coming on the course.” One group who apparently do not want the thoroughbred to exist, or anyone to enjoy watching them run at any time, are the Animal Rising lot, whose disruptive activities were well covered by Richard Hoiles especially.

after the football rather than before it, because that could have led to a potentially huge audience. He suggested that ITV could have had the Derby moved to 6.30pm, i.e. Ancelotti himself owns horses, although sadly with more the sort of success he had at Everton, rather than his AC Milan years.īut then something far more surprising later, shocking even, when Matt Chapman said something profoundly sensible on air. This was delivered in voice-over by Carlo Ancelotti it is always a pleasant surprise to hear the gravelly tones of the managerial eminence grise. A stirring montage featured the following quote from Italian breeding legend Federico Tesio: “The thoroughbred exists because its selection has depended not on experts, technicians, or zoologists, but on a piece of wood: The winning post of the Epsom Derby”. ITV4’s The Opening Show saw presenter Oli Bell curling a nicely hit free-kick onto the winning post at Epsom, setting the tone for ITV’s two-handed offering: The Epsom Derby and the Manchester derby. And Saturday found the seasoned televised sport consumer opening the curtains, admiring a pleasant morning, and closing the drapes again as a preventative against glare on the screen. The biggest sporting day of the year so far.

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