TV Today: ITV Racing: Grand National Festival 2024

TV Today

ITV Racing: Grand National Festival 2024 starts today at 2pm on ITV1 and ITVX.

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Having honed their survival strategies over millennia, mammals have evolved to be masters of the cold. In this episode, we journey across the globe, exploring a frozen world, from icy seas to snow-capped mountains and meet the unique mammals that call them home. For most, the cold is a killer. But for mammals, with their unique physical traits like warm thick fur and rich nourishing milk, and remarkable behaviours like hibernation, conquering the cold is possible.

We begin our journey on the Arctic islands of Svalbard, where polar bears, synonymous with this cold archipelago, dominate this remote frozen world. But as their world warms, and the frozen seas that are their hunting grounds disappear, they are being forced to find new sources of food. For the first time, we follow a polar bear hunting on land as it heads high up into the mountains in a rarely seen long-distance pursuit of Svalbard’s reindeer.

Mammals have been forced to adapt to the cold for millions of years. Whereas other species avoided the series of thick ice sheets that once covered a quarter of all land, mammals were able to survive the freezing conditions, and by adapting their behaviour, many are now completely at home in these inhospitable lands.

One land that has little changed since the last ice age is the tundra of northern Alaska. In this remote, hostile landscape, a mythical and rarely seen mammal endures: the wolverine. They rely completely on snow to survive, providing them meat from animals that have succumbed to the cold and dens in which to raise their young. Whilst other animals either flee or hibernate to avoid the coldest time of year, they stay active all winter, traversing the vast landscape in search of food. This privileged view reveals a surprisingly caring side of a highly elusive animal.

Knowledge can play a huge role in surviving the cold. Rather than roaming huge distances, some smart mammals will return annually to places they know will provide them with food. In Canada’s northern Yukon, a unique community of bears has been passing knowledge down the generations of a special ice-free river. While most bears are already hibernating, this late flowing river allows chum salmon to spawn into the winter months, giving the bears an opportunity for one last feast before hibernation that they simply cannot resist.

Mammals’ ability to hibernate is a clever way to avoid winter, and deep underground in an abandoned mine, little and big brown bats are well into their hibernation. But not all stay asleep. One sneaky bat wakes in order to mate while the rest of the colony sleeps on.

Bringing newborns into a world of snow and ice has many challenges, but mammals’ unique ability to produce fat-rich milk allows harp seal mothers to have one of the shortest weening periods of all. In just 12 days, off the coast of Greenland, they race to fatten their pups to independence as the icy nursery melts around them.

Far above sea level, the remote Kluane Mountains of North America support the largest ice field outside the poles. In this rugged landscape of rock and ice, pika, a relative of the rabbit, patiently wait for summer. Having stayed awake all winter, surviving on food they collected last year, once summer does return, they will all have just a few weeks to harvest nearly a year’s worth of food before the winter lockdown begins again. But storing your hard-earnt supplies all in one place comes at a risk if you can’t trust your neighbour.

Averaging 4,000 meters above sea level, the thin air of the lofty mountains of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in China struggle to retain much heat at all. As a result, life here always feels cold. Snow leopards are the top predator and have lived here for millions of years, but recently their lives have become linked with humans and the domestic yak they herd. It’s too good an opportunity to ignore. But through a community initiative, they have found a way to live alongside each other, even when the yak are taken by the leopards.

Back at sea level, on the shores of Canada’s Hudson Bay, for mammals specialised for life in the cold, a warming world is now the biggest challenge. Here, arctic fox and polar bears wait together by open water where there should be ice. For arctic foxes living here, as food ashore runs out, they would normally move and follow the polar bears onto the ice in order to scavenge off the bears’ kills. But as the winter freeze, and arrival of the ice is delayed, the bears cannot hunt, and life becomes more and more desperate. This has led to the foxes resorting to cannibalism, desperately fighting with each other to feed on the unfortunate foxes that have succumbed to hunger.

Presented by Ed Chamberlin, ITV Racing will broadcast five races a day of top class racing across the three-day Festival, with an extended show on Grand National Day.

ITV’s BAFTA-winning team include pundits and Grand-National winning jockeys, Sir Anthony McCoy, Ruby Walsh and Mick Fitzgerald.

Joining them covering all the action around the whole course will be Rishi Persad, Alice Plunkett, Adele Mulrennan and Matt Chapman. Brian Gleeson will be in the betting ring with Luke Harvey down at the starts. Oli Bell will interact with viewers at home and look at stats in the ‘social stable’ and the three big race commentators will be Richard Hoiles, Mark Johnson and Stewart Machin. On Saturday, Ruby Walsh will also be alongside Oli Bell for a fence-by-fence review analysing how the action unfolded and how your horse got on.

The Opening Show will be on ITV4 each day and ITV1 on Saturday. Oli Bell will host a preview all the big races and take in the morning action around the course. He will have guests with him each day and a big race line up on Saturday including Sir Anthony McCoy and Ruby Walsh.

Across the week, the award-winning production and technical team will use state-of-the-art equipment with approximately 50 cameras around the course including a tracker following the horses, a wire cam along the home straight and a drone.

The ITV7 team will also run a Grand National Sweepstake competition and every day there will be the hugely popular a free-to-enter ITV7 competition.

Opening Day – Thursday 11th April

On the opening day, three Grade One races headline the ITV Racing card – the Boodles Anniversary 4 year-old Hurdle (2.20pm), the Aintree Bowl Steeple Chase (2.55pm) and the William Hill Aintree Hurdle (3.30pm). At 4.05 is then the Randox Foxhunters’ Open Hunters’ Steeple Chase over the Grand National fences, followed by the 4.40 Close Brothers Red Rum Handicap Steeple Chase.