Slowly but surely, our long sporting nightmare is coming to an end

My fellow racing fans, our long sporting nightmare is coming to an end. All being well – and doesn't that phrase sound like a hostage to fortune in this accursed year – from next Wednesday fans will return in numbers to racecourses in England for the first time since late March.

For eight months, bar two measly test events, fans have been shut out of our cherished sporting arenas. We missed the Derby, Royal Ascot, York, Cheltenham's autumn meetings. We watched from the sidelines as the great fixtures of the calendar played out before empty grandstands. We bemoaned those lost afternoons at local tracks, old friends swapping old jokes and nurturing old passions.

Throughout, it has been a relief to have the sport to entertain us in our living rooms, but every spartan, fanless backdrop only served to taunt us with the memory of the world we'd left behind and the unanswerable question of when we might see those times again.