A year of lockdowns, PR disasters, warring jockeys . . . and National history

January

Still locked down
If anybody thought the clammy hand of Covid was about to relax its grip in the new year, then they were wrong. Lockdown merged into lockdown, owners grew more and more frustrated and the Cheltenham Festival went on behind closed doors, with a loss of £60m to the town's economy. At least we were still continuing largely uninterrupted, which was more than could be said for many sports.

Irish racing in turmoil
When trainer Charles Byrnes was banned for six months for "serious negligence" in a case involving a "nobbled" horse and some suspiciously heavy lay bets, it seemed like a hammer blow to the reputation of Irish racing. Little did we know what was waiting around the corner (see March).

We can't afford this
With racecourses still on the canvas after an estimated £250m blow to their finances from Covid-19, the Gambling Commission waded into racing with a raft of measures supposedly designed to protect problem gamblers, which the sport united in believing would spell financial disaster. Uppermost among the proposals were affordability checks that threatened to prevent punters from gambling on once they'd lost as little as £100 in a month. We hoped it sounded as crazy to Rishi Sunak as it did to the rest of us.