LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) - The Cheltenham Festival gets underway on Tuesday with senior racing figures hoping jump racing's showpiece event can restore trust in the sport following the shocking image of high-profile Irish trainer Gordon Elliott sitting and grinning astride a dead horse.
The four-day Festival is described by former leading jockey Mick Fitzgerald as the "greatest show on earth".
However, the annual battle for supremacy between the best horses in England and Ireland, with the glorious backdrop of The Cotswolds in south west England, is also on a rescue mission.
Organisers were heavily criticised for going ahead in allowing daily crowds of more than 50,000 mingle as the coronavirus pandemic took hold in the country last March.
"If Cheltenham was being held in Ireland, I don't think it would be on, quite frankly," Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said at the time.
This time round due to the present coronavirus protocols there will be no crowds, not even owners.
Ireland-based jockeys will have separate changing rooms to their English rivals and all stable staff from Ireland will be housed on the premises and forbidden from leaving.
Irish trainers -- which will not include Elliott as he serves a one-year ban with six months suspended for bringing racing into disrepute -- and jockeys will stay in a hotel which is within the secure bubble.
Jerry Hill, Chief Medical Adviser to the British Horse Racing Authority (BHA), says like everyone it has been a learning process with regards to coronavirus.
"Would we have done something different with a different set of knowledge?" he said at a briefing on Wednesday.
"History teaches us things and it's a foolish person who doesn't learn from history.
"The situation we are in now, we know so much more about this disease, about how best to control it, how to continue functioning as a society and as a sport."
Fitzgerald -- who won the blue riband of jump racing The Cheltenham Gold Cup in 1999 on See More Business -- says the criticism levelled at racing at the time was unwarranted.
Other major sporting events went ahead with packed stadia -- England v Wales in the Six Nations and Liverpool hosting Atletico Madrid in the Champions League.
"Not too many people were slagging them off," Fitzgerald told AFP.
"But they turn round and blame Cheltenham."
The images from Cheltenham will provide drama and increased television viewing figures over the past year indicate racing has picked up an extra following.
However, that was prior to the Elliott scandal -- and a video of an Irish amateur jockey jumping on a dead horse further damaged the image of the sport.
Retired Irish riding great Ruby Walsh spoke of his "embarrassment" at what Elliott described as a "moment of madness".
Fitzgerald says those turned off racing by that "horrible image" should give it a second chance.
"If you are somebody whose first exposure to racing is this you are turned off by it," he said.
"I would want all those people turned off to give us a chance.
"99.99 per cent of people involved in this sport have nothing but the best interests of the horse at heart."
Fitzgerald -- who was close to tears when he first saw the photograph -- says evidence of the love for the horses is reflected by the stable staff.
"Somebody willing to be exposed to the elements 365 days a year you don't do it for the money which is not much but for the great love of horses," said the 50-year-old Irishman.
William Woodhams, CEO of bookmakers Fitzdares, told AFP there is no need to panic.
"I always like what Bruce Millington (former editor of the Racing Post) once said… 'I don't get why racing obsesses over young people," said Woodhams.
"'It is a sport you discover over time and build a bond with. There is no more enjoyable sport to follow as you hit middle age and have a bit of money in your back pocket'.
"So, I am confident it will bounce back from all of this."
