It's been an award-winning week for our columnist Ed Chamberlin - who is now ready to step up his Cheltenham Festival preparations.
What a week it's been. It started with the British Sports Journalism Awards where Francesca Cumani and I managed to win Broadcast Presenter of the Year. It was a lovely surprise and very satisfying to see racing on the big stage at such an event.
We vowed at the start of the journey on ITV to broaden the sport's popularity and it will not do any harm to be beating the likes of football and rugby union at such events.
What went under the radar was the ITV team’s coverage of Gold Cup day at Royal Ascot being highly commended in the Live Broadcast section. We beat all the World Cup programmes and lost only to Sky Sports’ Test cricket coverage. We were all rightfully proud of our output at Ascot.
The week finished at Doncaster on Saturday where it was fun to be working with Francesca again. There’s no point pretending it was the greatest day's racing on the calendar but we had our fair share of good stories and exciting finishes.
The most heartwarming moment was Chidswell winning the 888Sport Grimthorpe Chase for owners David and Nicky Robinson. Their last week sums up National Hunt racing – from the heartbreak of losing Baywing in the Eider, to the glory of winning another of the north’s big staying chases on Town Moor.
Well done to Oli Bell and the team behind The Opening Show for raising the prize-money issue on Saturday morning and full marks to David Easterby for fronting up on behalf of the trainers.
The headline off the back of it was more talks next week and a potentially conciliatory tone from ARC chief executive Martin Cruddace. We’ll continue to follow the story very closely and hopefully a common sense solution can soon be found.
Despite their fantastic prize-money with £163,000 on offer, it was a shame to see Kelso attract so few runners. It was also a blow that One For Arthur, one of the stars who was due to line-up, was a late non-runner. He now heads straight to Aintree in a bid to win a second Randox Health Grand National.
Anyone scared off by the presence of the Paul Nicholls juggernaut would have been cursing after both Black Corton and Getaway Trump suffered defeats. The latter was beaten by a nice horse in Rouge Vif although the race didn’t cause many ripples in the market for the Sky Bet Supreme Novices’ Hurdle.
Down at Newbury it was good to see some familiar names get the chance to shine in the veterans’ chase. It ended in heartbreak for the Colin Tizzard team who looked all set to bag another big prize with Theatre Guide, who was clear when hitting the last and then cut down by Carole’s Destrier.
He was another winner for Ben Linfoot’s outstanding Value Bet column and it’s nice to see him in such good form heading towards Cheltenham. As ever, it'll be on my reading list the night before the Festival but before that I'll let Ben solve the Imperial Cup at Sandown!
I’m just boarding a train to London and Festival preparations go into overdrive next week. On Monday I’m filming a preview for sportinglife.com alongside Lydia Hislop, Simon Holt, Donn McClean and Mike Cattermole which promises to be a lot of fun.
Hopefully we’ll find you a winner or two and don’t forget you can join in the debate by submitting questions to the panel right here.
On Wednesday it’s the Sky Bet Preview Evening at Doncaster where I’m looking forward to hearing which horse Oli has chosen to be his seventh or eighth banker of the Festival so far. Warren Greatrex always talks well and I’m eager to hear what he has to say, while Mark Howard is a seriously good judge.
The race of the meeting is shaping up to be the Unibet Champion Hurdle on day one, although I'm sure those after it won't disappoint.
Buveur D’Air is bidding to win the race for a third time but standing in his way are two top-class mares in Apple’s Jade and Laurina. The latter seems to be friendless at just about every preview evening I’ve read about but I’m sticking with her. As I've said on these pages before, I think she's a monster.
I’m also vetting very excited by Epatante in the mares’ novices’ hurdle for the Nicky Henderson team and no doubt by the time this column returns next week, a few more will have made their way into by punting portfolio.
It's a wonderfully exciting time in racing. Speak to you then.