More than a million viewers tuned in to watch the BBC?s coverage ofOlympia last month.
According to the latest broadcast ratings figures, show jumping featuredin the top 10 as the fifth most watched sport on the Saturday beforeChristmas, with an audience of 1.83m seeing some top-class performancesfrom the world?s leading riders.
Show jumping came behind coverage of premiership football (3.76m) andboxing (2.31m), but nudged ahead of racing, which had 1.79m viewers.
With some of the best coverage of the sport in a long time, thepopularity of the event may have evoked memories for BBC bosses of thegreat days of the 1970s, when wall-to-wall coverage of show jumpinggenerated huge audiences.
