ITV pundit Mick Fitzgerald was forced to apologise for bad language ahead of the Queen Mother Champion Chase on Wednesday afternoon. Chaotic moments were aired moments before the start of the Cheltenham Festival race, when jockeys rode out towards the first fence to give their horses a look.
The pressure was on Nico de Boinville as the rider of red-hot favourite Jonbon, who was already looking a little edgy before the race began. De Boinville was not best pleased when rival jockey JJ Slevin seemed to lose his bearings on Solness and clatter into a barrier.
Nearby ITV microphones picked up De Boinville saying: “JJ, what the heck are you doing, man?” He appeared to add: “Walk the hell away! F***’s sake.”
As De Boinville approached Fitzgerald at the barrier, he again said: “What the f*** is he doing?!” Realising that he was on live TV, De Boinville immediately said sorry and offered a hand of apology.
Fitzgerald followed suit, saying: “Sorry about the language. Jonbon just getting a little bit warm down here. If anything was going to set him off, that would. Nico has just pulled the ear plugs out, he’ll chuck them on the ground, and hopefully it’ll be plain sailing.”
ITV presenter Ed Chamberlain also apologised once Fitzgerald handed back to him. And it turned out not to be plain sailing for Jonbon, as a bad error coming off an early fence left De Boinville with a huge amount of ground to make up.
He defied the odds to lead the favourite back to a second-place finish behind Marine Nationale, but many punters still lost out. De Boinville was not pleased with how things transpired.
When asked by ITV whether he had pulled off a miraculous run just to get second, he replied: “I think so, yeah. It was a good run to finish second. It all went wrong. The start was massively iffy. I’m not blaming anyone but he didn’t like the tape underneath his nose. Horrendous.”
The winning jockey, Sean Flanagan, paid tribute to the late Michael O’Sullivan, who also rode Marine Nationale to victory at Cheltenham in 2023.
“It’s hugely emotional for a lot of reasons,” Flanagan told ITV. “All the jockeys have been under a cloud for the last couple of weeks. I’m only the man that steered him round today, Michael is the man who made him what he is, and he will never be forgotten for that.”
