Tom Scudamore looking forward to Moment at Ascot

Over the last few days I’ve spent three afternoons as a pundit on CoralTV and thoroughly enjoyed it.  When you’re suspended it’s really handy to have something to do, and with the girls at school, it was nice to keep busy and do something different, and gave me an excuse to watch all the racing which was good. It was constructive and I also enjoyed myself.

They are a nice group of people at CoralTV’s Milton Keynes studio, it’s always a friendly atmosphere and they make me feel very welcome when I go there. Television is something that one day I would really like to go into, so it’s great to have some practice and get some experience while I’m still riding.

When I watch racing broadcasts I often wonder if the ex-jockeys could be used more to explain and bring to life race-winning or losing manoeuvres in the way that football and cricket analyses and explains events before, during and after matches. Sometimes you have situations where you watch a football match and you think a defender was at fault for a goal, only for the ex-footballer pundit to explain why that defender was actually trying to cover for another player’s mistake, and it wasn’t his error. That level of insight is really good for the viewer.

You could do much more of this for analysing jockeys, and their rides, perhaps to explain why a jockey made a particular move in a race or went a particular route in a finish, as the ex-jockeys would be able to provide insight that maybe viewers wouldn’t appreciate.

The constraints on time because of adverts may make it difficult to do this type of detailed analysis on Channel 4 Racing to some extent, whereas football has before and after the match, and cricket has several breaks for lunch and tea, as well as before and after. But perhaps the Racing channels have more scope to use jockeys even more? AtTheRaces does some good analysis with some of the ex-jockeys, and there was an excellent piece with Ruby Walsh and Oli Bell on RacingUK recently. It’s definitely something I think there could be even more of.

It’s wonderful news that Hereford is to be re-opened, and Martin Cruddace appears to have changed things at ARC and they seem to be showing more of a commitment towards Racing. Bringing Hereford back will be very popular. My grandparents lived twenty minutes away from Hereford and my brother trains near there. It’s a great track, I’ve had loads of winners around there, and I’m really looking forward to riding there again later this year.