Message to the Sporting Life family from the managing editor

The first thing to say is that I hope you, your families and friends are all as well as can be in these unprecedented, worrying times.

I wanted to speak with you directly as we at Sporting Life are a family, bonded together with our love of sport. We are more than just about winners; who is riding in the 2.50 at Lingfield; or who is out injured again with another hamstring tear. All of us are about the passion and camaraderie of sport, of speaking to like-minded people who crave that extra insight and intelligent opinion and comment.

It is a very strange time to be working in the sports industry - or any industry. As a sports content website what do you do when there is little live sport to cover? Should we even be thinking about sport when the world is facing its biggest crisis in a lifetime?

We know for all of us that sport is a way of life, an escape, a distraction, an outlet. When so much else is changing and there is so much uncertainty it is important we all can still have that distraction and that comfort of familiarity. That is why we will continue to provide a service at Sporting Life, while ensuring the safety of our staff. So I can promise you that the Sporting Life team will be working as hard as ever to provide you with the best and most engaging sports insight, comment, interviews and features.

I know these uncertain times will see us all face new challenges and experiences, for many it will mean isolation from family and friends and, for some, the feeling of loneliness. We ourselves are now working from home and I know I will miss heading into Sporting Life HQ everyday and talking, laughing and debating with our wonderful team - it is one of the biggest reasons I love my job and feel so lucky to work for Sporting Life.

What makes Sporting Life so special, that has made it the UK's longest running sports content brand (161 years and counting) is you, our incredible readers, our teammates. You are with us day in day out. That is why we are determined to be there for you during this period.

Rather than just speaking at you, we want to engage directly with you and give you further platforms to discuss and debate your passion with likeminded people. We want to help combat those potential feelings of isolation; loneliness; a lack of control.

Therefore we will be creating a lot of new innovative ways to be closer with you. We will be holding regular Q&A sessions where you can speak to and quiz our journalists and pundits on a range of sports and topics.

We will be creating a racing community group on Facebook, which will be a forum for you to discuss all racing topics and sharing memories of great races, horses, trainers and jockeys.

We will be reopening the old Sporting Life mailbag and asking for your comments and opinions on many different subjects, which we will publish. We will also be asking you what you want us to write out; what have you always wanted to know more about or gain more insight on? Tell us and we will listen.

Details of all the above to come on our website soon, so please do look out for them and do join in.

In sporting terms Sporting Life tries to predict the future, sadly none of us can call what the future in wider life holds for us all. But we will control what we can control and I can promise you that Sporting Life will continue to be there for you, as I know you will be for us. As as family, as teammates, we will all get through this together.

Thank you for being with us, take good care of yourselves and your loved ones.

Gareth Jones
Managing Editor