Tales from the track

For me little that is memorable, and even less that is sheer fun, has been penned about football, apart from Gary Lineker’s definition of the game as ‘Twenty-two men chasing a ball — and in the end the Germans win’.

For me little that is memorable, and even less that is sheer fun, has been penned about football, apart from Gary Lineker’s definition of the game as ‘Twenty-two men chasing a ball — and in the end the Germans win’. Horseracing, though, has always attracted both purple prose and anecdotage.

Sea The Stars’ winning of the 2000 Guineas, the Derby, the Coral Eclipse, the Juddmonte International, the Irish Champion and the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe has made it a special year for racing books. Most of us will never see as good a horse again and in Sea The Stars: The Story of a Perfect Racehorse (Racing Post, £20) the newspaper’s excellent team have put together a vividly illustrated record every enthusiast will treasure.

We forget the now veteran jockey Mick Kinane’s wry observation after their 2000 Guineas victory: ‘They said he couldn’t win the Guineas because he was a Derby horse. Now they are saying he can’t take the Derby because he is a Guineas winner.’ Sea The Stars was, of course, the first in 20 years to win both.

In Chinese culture eight is a lucky number and Hong Kong-based owner Christopher Tsui brought the same seven companions with him every time to watch Sea The Stars run. His mother Ling, who championed Sea The Stars’ dam Urban Sea, noted that in Chinese history ‘Emperors were all looking for a “Thousand Miles Horse”. The criterion was that the horse had to be calm, strong and tireless.