I’m not sure how the BBC would have taken it in my Nine O’Clock News days if after a tough interview I had embraced a disconsolate politician (though I can guess and it wouldn’t have been to the corporation’s credit). It was, though, the best moment in the ITV coverage of last Saturday’s racing, when presenter Alice Plunkett put her arms around Laura Morgan and hugged the tearful trainer who had just lost her star horse. Earlier in the programme, Alice – who seems to be friends with everyone in racing, from the merest muck-shoveller to owners campaigning £200,000 jumpers – had interviewed Laura following the success of her stable’s J’Ai Froid at the same day’s Warwick meeting.

The ups and downs of the sport could hardly have been more starkly illustrated when, in the Silviniaco Conti Chase at Kempton, her three-time winner Notlongtillmay was fatally injured in a last fence fall. His trainer deserves the utmost respect for asking to come back on air once more to announce the death and to say how much her stable star would be missed: ‘It’s absolutely horrendous. He didn’t deserve that. It’ll leave an absolutely massive hole in the yard every day. He was such a character. We brought him here with a little pony called Ernie who always goes racing with him…’ We should also respect the ITV team for agreeing. Horses do sometimes die and racing has to be honest and open about the downside of our uniquely thrilling sport. The ITV team give us polished broadcasting, a real sense of drama and unparalleled tactical analysis but simple humanity is their best quality.

Horses do sometimes die and racing has to be open about the downside of our uniquely thrilling sport

I had been tempted to go to Warwick, where there are six races with more than eight runners compared with only two at Kempton. They had too an appealing veterans’ chase. I chose the Thameside track in the end because its January fixtures often throw up clues to the Cheltenham Festival. In the race which claimed the life of Notlongtillmay there was a big one. Joseph O’Brien sent Banbridge over from Ireland and my companion arched an eyebrow when I backed him on his first run in 275 days against Paul Nicholls’s Pic d’Orhy, the race-fit winner of a string of chases. Ably handled by J.J. Slevin on his first ride at Kempton, Banbridge was a little rusty with his jumping compared with the slicker Pic d’Orhy but responded better to his rider’s urgings for a big one at the last than Pic d’Orhy did for Harry Cobden and went on to a clear victory. Slevin said Banbridge, already a Cheltenham winner, is stronger than last year. He looks great value each way for this year’s Ryanair.

Owner John Hales has won many of jumping’s major prizes with Nicholls and when bloodstock agent Anthony Bromley secured the French-bred Kalif Du Berlais the hope was that he might provide the veteran owner with his first Gold Cup. Paul often takes a Caribbean break at this time of year but he was on hand to see Kalif Du Berlais lead all the way under Cobden and win the juvenile hurdle impressively. ‘Look at the size of him,’ said his trainer admiringly. ‘He’s a beautiful horse for the future and very much a chaser.’ His jockey, meanwhile, told John Hales: ‘This one needs looking after.’ Many French-bred horses, says Nicholls, take a year or 18 months to acclimatise and start developing but Kadif De Berlais has never looked back from the moment he entered the yard. They won’t be targeting Cheltenham’s Triumph Hurdle this year but in Gold Cups ahead Il Est Francais may have another compatriot to contend with.

Dan Skelton, who was for many years Nicholls’s assistant, is the one British trainer who looks capable before too long of rivalling the big two – Nicholls and Nicky Henderson – for the champion trainer’s title. Dan, it seems, has picked up more than a few training tricks from his mentor as he was absent last Saturday in Barbados. It did not stop the Skelton yard having a total of six winners across three meetings for what would have been a 3,818-1 accumulator. At Warwick brother Dan rode the promising Grey Dawning to an impressive 14-length victory over Lucinda Russell’s Apple Away and also won a two-horse contest for the novices chase with Etalon. There were another couple of winners for the yard at Wetherby while at Kempton the Skelton yard took the Coral-sponsored £100,000 Lanzarote Hurdle with Jay Jay Reilly at 33-1. The winner is, not altogether surprisingly, owned by one J.J. Reilly, who told me that he had been confident of success two obstacles from the finish. It wasn’t just the prize money he was counting either, having backed his horse at 40-1. Happiest man on the course was the Skelton yard’s 3lb-claimer Tristan Durrell, who not only rode a shrewd race to take the Lanzarote on a horse whose last nine outings had been over fences but who won the three mile handicap chase too on Flegmatik. Not a bad way to score your first double.