Hammond back in the saddle for Sky racing

THE new Sky Sports Racing channel will complement ITV’s terrestrial coverage and help boost the profile of the sport, it was claimed yesterday. The latest dedicated sports channel in the Sky stable will be born on January 1, a rebranded and significantly repackaged version of the At The Races channel. It will look like a Sky Sports channel, have HD pictures, innovations like super slo-mo cameras and schedules including, in a nod to Sky’s

Monday Night Football, a Monday Night Racing show. Sky’s involvement has been seen by some as the first steps in what could end in a bid for the rights to cover the sport currently held by ITV. Some of Sky Racing’s biggest on-screen talent, which includes Matt Chapman, Luke Harvey and Jason Weaver, also work for ITV. They have been tied down to work for ITV when both channels cover one of the jewels in their crowns, Royal Ascot, next year. But ATR chief executive Matthew Imi said: ‘There’s been a portrayal of our relationship with ITV being somehow adversarial. That could not be further from the truth. We both have a common objective to grow the sport. We should be working together to achieve that and that is the intention.’ Sky Sports Racing’s coverage of Royal Ascot will be led by Hayley Moore, sister of jockey Ryan, ATR regular Gina Bryce and Alex Hammond (above), who returns to a racing TV role after 15 years as a Sky Sports News regular. Hammond will be the first face of the new channel when it launches at 9am on January 1. Also working as a pundit will be former jockey Freddy Tylicki, whose career was cut short by a fall in 2016 which left him paralysed.