Racing Ireland chief says Cheltenham ‘should probably not have taken place’

• Kavanagh says with hindsight Festival should have been off
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The chief executive of Horse Racing Ireland has stepped into the debate over the staging of last month’s Cheltenham Festival by suggesting that the event should “probably” not have taken place because of growing concerns about spread of coronavirus.

In the course of a 30-minute interview with the website Sport For Business, which also focused on Irish racing’s response to the crisis, Brian Kavanagh was asked whether he thought that Cheltenham should have “pulled the shutters down” in the middle of its four-day Festival meeting, which ran from 10 to 13 March.

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