‘The grit and the glory’: new series to show racing as never before

Jockey Bryony Frost with Greaneteen after winning the Betfair Tingle Creek Chase at Sandown Park.

(Image credit: PA)

Champions: Full Gallop, a new six-part documentary series showing jockeys “as you have never seen them before”, comes to TV screens tomorrow (19 July) at 9pm on ITV1 and ITVX.

Going behind the scenes with jockeys, trainers, owners and horses as they compete in the 2023-24 jumps season, the series features contributions from key players including trainers Paul Nicholls, Nicky Henderson, Willie Mullins and Dan Skelton and jockeys such as Harry Cobden, Sean Bowen, Harry Skelton and Bryony Frost at key meetings including the Cheltenham and Grand National festivals.

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Gemma is an experienced journalist, who was a member of H&H staff from 2014 to September 2025. She is passionate about all equestrian sports, including racing and point-to-pointing. She has enjoyed riding out for top trainers Nicky Henderson and Charlie Appleby and took part in a charity Flat race at Epsom in August 2018. Gemma’s has reported from numerous five-star events around Britain and Europe, as well as European championships.

‘The grit and the glory’: new series to show racing as never before

RMG chief executive Martin Stevenson this week described the launch of the docuseries as a “huge opportunity” for racing.

He said: “The question is how can we build on this. I hope everybody will love it and we can talk about the next series. The way these things work best is to build them over a number of series and to really draw people into the stories so it becomes one of the ways they enjoy the sport.

“We want people at home to be able to engage with racing and to see it in a different way, to get a glimpse behind the scenes and experience the grit and the glory.

“We hope to ultimately widen the sport’s fanbase. Racing is clearly facing some challenges, but it still has a huge audience and if we can get a decent fraction of the people who enjoy jump racing engaged then we’ve succeeded.”

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