BRIAN KAVANAGH, CHIEF Executive of Horse Racing Ireland, has admitted that, with the benefit of hindsight, last month’s Cheltenham festival should not have taken place.

The festival was staged without restriction from 10 to 13 March, with calls to either cancel or move behind closed doors growing throughout the week as the virulence and impact of Covid-19 became more widely known across the UK and Ireland. 

Roughly 250,000 people attended the festival across its four days, and that they were allowed to do so without restriction has been cited as an example of the UK government’s relative inaction in trying to curb the spread of Covid-19. 

While Taoiseach Leo Varadkar announced the first of Ireland’s lockdown measures – which included the closing of schools – on 12 March (coming into effect the following day), the UK was slower to issue similar measures, closing schools on 20 March.

During the course of a 30-minute interview with Rob Hartnett of Sport for Business, Kavanagh was asked if he regretted that the “shutters weren’t pulled down” midway through the festival on Wednesday, 11 March. 

With hindsight, he said, the festival should probably not have been staged, but said he had sympathy for the British racing authorities given the government advice they received. 

“It’s very interesting, that was the very week where the whole thing [Covid-19] ramped up”, said Kavanagh. “I went there for the first two days and it was remarkable: I came back to a different country on Wednesday night.

“On the Tuesday night the images from Italy began to come through in great detail, and by the end of that week we were racing behind closed doors in Ireland.

“With hindsight, people would recognise that Cheltenham would have been much better had it gone behind closed doors. That’s not a decision we had any control over, it’s entirely a matter for the British authorities and the British government.

“At the same time, and you’ve heard this before, there was a full set of Premier League matches that Saturday [beforehand] and a Champions League match on the Wednesday night in Liverpool. So social distancing, as we know it now, was not really that well-known at that time. 

“The irony is that while Cheltenham was going ahead and while people were at the races, the pubs back in Ireland were packed with people watching Cheltenham. It couldn’t have come on a worse week. It was unfortunate because it was the last major sporting event to take place. 

“Should it have taken place? With hindsight, probably no. but everyone is wise after the event and the idea of saying in the middle of the festival, ‘We’re aborting after two days’, or we’re going behind closed doors, when your government is saying we’re happy for you not to, it’s not easy.”

UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock, meanwhile, this week again defended his government’s decision to allow the festival go ahead without restriction, telling LBC Radio they followed “scientific advice.”