Ronald Reagan once told his staff that they were always to wake him if there was an emergency ‘even if I am in a Cabinet meeting at the time’. All of us, Mrs Oakley included, have our definition of an emergency and the other night she shook me awake at 4 a.m. to confront one. I was led to the bathroom where, safely entrapped under a glass, was a spider. He was admittedly a beady-eyed, muscular and long-legged spider but there was no way he could have escaped that glass before morning. Nevertheless, such was Mrs Oakley’s agitation that he had to be defenestrated at that instant.
I duly earned my Brownie points although not altogether graciously. I had just fallen asleep for the first time in 36 hours following a virulent dose of food poisoning and for me there was no reason why the spider’s return to his no doubt anxious family in our web-entwined rosebed could not have waited until morning. (Mrs Oakley’s arachnophobia does not demand destruction; removal from her vicinity is enough. But she does insist on the vital need for speed.)
It will, however, be a long time before in a fit of bravado I again prize open and consume a brace of firmly closed mussels in a dish of moules marinières. For three days, no organ in my body seemed to be left undisturbed by the reaction induced by those malevolent molluscs. The only good thing was that feeling too wrecked to do anything else I became completely enthralled by the Paralympics: wheelchair rugby, sitting-down basketball, Ellie Simmonds in the pool, David Weir and Hannah Cockcroft hand racing their way to victory in their chariots, Jonnie Peacock and Oscar Pistorius flashing to victory on one blade or two.
It was not just the triumph of the human spirit involved, the overcoming of adversity, the sheer positivity and drive displayed in overturning the hand dealt to them in life that captivated me so completely, it was also the sheer quality of the contests. This was no special branch of sport in its own particular set of inverted commas, this was raw, competitive contest pure and simple. It deserved its place on our TV screens and it deserved the audiences who turned up to cheer on the Paralympic athletes with every bit as much commitment and joy and excitement as had been engendered by Mo Farah and Usain Bolt.
It was all the more enjoyable that the Paralympics, too, produced a few tantrums and accusations and an occasional bad loser. Even the normally graceful Oscar Pistorius, the man to whom the sport owes so much, got grumpy at one stage about the length of the blades worn by a competitor — and then answered his own complaint the best way by ending a gruelling fortnight with a totally majestic gold in the 400 metres.
A disabilities correspondent was asked on a BBC programme to explain the technicalities of one event. Knowing from deep experience how pitifully earnest BBC executives can get about these things, I felt for him when, with admirable candour, he declared, ‘Look, I’ve been doing everything I can to avoid the word but all I can say is that, at the end of the day, some races have to be handicaps with people’s performances graded according to their levels of disability to try to produce a level playing field.’ Paralympic officials don’t always get those levels right, any more than the band of British horseracing handicappers get it right every time. If they did, every handicap should finish with all the horses crossing the line together.
I was not aware of racing providing any of the Paralympics GB team but if it does so in future we should bless the life of John Lawrence, Lord Oaksey, who has died at 83. Not only was he one of the finest amateur riders of his generation, who won a Whitbread Gold Cup and came agonisingly close to taking the Grand National on Carrickbeg, but he was also the best racing journalist of my lifetime, an inspiration to me and others. Oaksey’s description of Fred Winter’s ride to win the Grand Steeplechase de Paris on Mandarin in 1962 after the bit broke in the horse’s mouth, leaving him with no brakes or steering, will never be bettered as a piece of sporting journalism. I have read it time and time again.
But John will be remembered not just for the warmth and humanity and lucidity of his prose. When two fine jockeys, Tim Brookshaw and Paddy Farrell, broke their backs in 1964 the future for them, as for most in those days who suffered injury riding, training or caring for horses in racing stables, was bleak. John was the driving force behind the Farrell–Brookshaw fund, which duly morphed into the vital Injured Jockeys Fund, transforming the lives of so many who would otherwise have faced a miserable life. My abiding memory of him will be as a cheery, ungrand figure sitting behind a table at some minor racetrack in all autumn weathers selling IJF Christmas cards and calendars, always ready with a throaty chuckle to greet another good racing story. Here was a truly good man.
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