Watch: ITV Racing's Kevin Blake takes on animal activist in TV debate

ITV Racing presenter Kevin Blake said no-one cared more about racehorses and their welfare than those in the sport as he made an impassioned defence of horseracing and the Grand National in a TV debate on Thursday night.

Speaking on TalkTV in a debate with a representative from an animal rights group planning to protest at Aintree on Saturday, he contrasted the vast worldwide TV audience for the race with the 100 to 200 people expected to join the protestors on Grand National day.

The potential for disruption at this year's Grand National was reported this month with activists allegedly planning to scale security fences and create a human barricade on the course. In response, Merseyside Police said "a robust policing plan" would be in place.

Blake, who this month helped launch Stand Up For Racing, a grassroots organisation that aims to promote the racing and breeding industries and "correct false information about racing", said many held misguided views about the safety of the Grand National.

He said: "The race is not perfect and isn't without risk. Racing itself is on this and has been on it for decades. It's important for those who don't watch racing every day to know the Grand National is a very different race to what it was in relatively recent times.

"The fences have been massively modified. Everything around the race has been modified with a view to reducing the avoidable risk. The most recent changes to the fences were made after the 2012 renewal and since then the race has never been safer. The fatality rate has dropped to 1.1 per cent, it has never been lower. The average number of fallers in those nine renewals has dropped to five compared to 11.6 prior to those changes. Nobody made horseracing make those changes. This was all self-driven in the interests of reducing avoidable risk.

"The problem we have is risk can never be eliminated and it's up to us as intelligent reasonable people deciding what qualifies as acceptable risk."

Watch: Kevin Blake takes on animal activist in TV debate

Julie Harrington, chief executive of the BHA, said that everything in racing "has horse welfare at its heart" and expressed her confidence in the police's strategy for Aintree on Saturday.

Speaking on Good Morning Britain, she said: "We've got huge confidence in Merseyside Police and if anyone is thinking of causing disruption they should respect the safety of the humans and the animals taking part in the sport."

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