Champions: Full Gallop Partie Deux – Racing’s Glossy Gambit or an Expensively Polished

Horseracing’s great and good are galloping ahead with a second series of Champions: Full Gallop, ITV’s glossy, six-part docuseries that offers a rose-tinted peek behind the curtain of National Hunt racing. Buoyed by a £1.115 million investment from the Horserace Betting Levy Board (HBLB), this new season aims to draw fresh eyes to the sport with all the high drama and sweeping orchestral scores a production budget can buy.

But beneath the sheen of slow-motion gallops and heartfelt jockey confessions, there’s a dishonesty to Full Gallop. It’s not so much a documentary as an infomercial, designed to promote rather than describe the true realities of UK horseracing.

The question, of course, is whether Champions: Full Gallop actually delivers what the sport needs. Racing fans may enjoy the behind-the-scenes glimpses, but many already know how the story ends. If you’re fully immersed in National Hunt, you don’t need ITV to tell you who won the Cheltenham Gold Cup or how Shishkin fared in the King George VI Chase.

What you might need, however, is an honest portrayal of the sport, one that includes the real stars: the punters. Imagine a scene where the camera pans to a betting shop, where a lifelong racing fan is yelling at the screen, clutching a betting slip as their carefully chosen 20/1 outsider fluffs the last fence. Now that’s drama.

But instead, we’ll likely get more of Ed Chamberlin reminding us for the 17th time that “The Cheltenham roar is like nothing else in sport,” while Alice Plunkett marvels at a trainer’s ability to use a pitchfork.

The Sanitised Story of Racing

Let’s be clear: Full Gallop isn’t interested in the full picture. This is racing without the muck, without the misery, and certainly without the punters. The financial hardships faced by day-to-day owners, the relentless grind of smaller trainers barely scraping by, the despair of punters tearing up betting slips after a favourite falls at the last — none of these messy, human realities make the cut.

Instead, the series serves up an airbrushed narrative where horses are always majestic, jockeys are saintly gladiators, and owners are nowhere to be seen unless they’re basking in the glow of a Cheltenham winner’s enclosure.

While Champions captures the beauty of National Hunt racing — the dawn gallops, the thundering hooves, the emotional victories — it’s all a bit too polished. The mud is picturesque, the bruises are poetic, and the sweat has a Hollywood sheen.

But where are the grittier realities? The trainer despairing over a failed gamble, the punter who’s lost his shirt on an odds-on favourite, the bookie balancing payouts with a cigarette and a calculator? Without these elements, racing loses its soul, reduced to a glossy montage of gallops and grins. All thats missing is Harry Cobden played by Ashton Kutcher legged up by George Clooney.

No Big Losers (Or Winners)

In the world of Champions, racing is pure and noble, with nary a hint of financial ruin or high-stakes risk. Yet the reality is far more complicated:

• Day-to-Day Owners: For every millionaire enjoying a champagne toast after a big win, there are dozens of small-time owners watching their bank balances bleed dry. Where are their stories?

• The Financial Grind: Smaller trainers, often working with shoestring budgets and second-hand horses, live in a constant state of financial peril. But in Full Gallop, the sun always seems to shine on the gallops.

• The Punters: Betting, the lifeblood of the industry, is conspicuously absent. Where are the euphoric celebrations of a longshot winner or the crushing despair of a favourite tumbling at the last?

Without these elements, Champions feels like a sanitised pantomime rather than an honest portrait of the sport.

An Overproduced Spectacle

There’s no denying that Full Gallop is visually stunning. The drone shots of dawn gallops, the close-ups of jockeys’ mud-splattered faces, the soaring music swelling as a horse leaps the final fence — it’s all beautifully crafted.

But it’s also overproduced to the point of parody. Every moment feels staged, every narrative triple-repeated to ensure even the most inattentive viewer understands. Racing is hard, the series insists — again and again, just in case you missed it the first 12 times.

It’s as if the producers are terrified that the audience might lose interest if they don’t ladle on the drama. The result is a series that’s more about selling an image than telling the truth.

What’s Missing? Reality

For all its access to weighing rooms and training yards, Champions fails to capture the reality of UK horseracing:

1. The Owners’ Struggles: Owning a racehorse is often a financial black hole, with the majority of owners receiving less than 15p back for every pound spent. Yet Full Gallop skips over the sacrifices and risks involved in favour of glamorous winner’s circle moments.

2. The Financial Hardships of Trainers: While the series features big-name trainers like Dan Skelton and Paul Nicholls, it ignores the struggles of smaller yards trying to make ends meet. For them, a single injury or bad season can spell disaster.

3. The True Role of Betting: Racing is built on betting, yet Champions avoids showing punters and bookmakers altogether. Where’s the betting ring buzz, the ecstatic shouts as a longshot wins, or the quiet devastation of a punt gone wrong?

4. The Big Losers (and Rare Winners): Racing is a zero-sum game. For every jubilant winner, there’s a loser walking back to the paddock in silence. But in Full Gallop, it seems everyone’s a winner, provided they look good in slow motion.

The Industry’s PR Machine

Alan Delmonte, the HBLB’s chief executive, defends the £1.115 million investment, calling Champions a “compelling proposition” for promoting the sport. But it’s hard to shake the feeling that this is less about celebrating racing and more about papering over its cracks.

By focusing solely on the glory, Full Gallop avoids uncomfortable truths: dwindling prize-money, a reliance on betting revenues, and the widening gulf between big and small trainers. These issues don’t fit the glossy narrative, so they’re quietly ignored.

For the Converted, Not the Curious

For seasoned racing fans, Champions: Full Gallop offers a peek behind the scenes, albeit a heavily polished one. For newcomers, it’s an accessible introduction, albeit one that’s more fairy tale than fact.

But for anyone hoping for a true portrayal of horseracing — the highs, the lows, and the muddy in-betweens — it’s a disappointment. Racing doesn’t need more propaganda; it needs honesty. Without it, the industry risks alienating the very people it depends on: the owners, trainers, and punters who keep the sport alive.

Conclusion: A Full Gallop to Nowhere?

Champions: Full Gallop is undeniably beautiful, engaging, and dramatic. But it’s also a missed opportunity. By sanitising the sport and ignoring its more complex realities, the series does little to address racing’s deeper challenges and the day to day realities.

Yes, the gallops are stunning, the jockeys inspiring, and the horses magnificent. But where are the gritty truths that make racing what it really is? Where’s the risk, the sacrifice, and the raw humanity?

Without these, Champions feels less like a celebration of horseracing and more like a corporate brochure — glossy, impressive, but ultimately hollow. Let’s hope series two finds the courage to tell the whole story.