Robin Oakley

Team spirit

Sometimes it is all about how you look at things, as was made clear to a clean-living accountant who had helped old ladies across the road, given generously to charity and even found something nice to say about George Osborne. When he shuffled off the mortal coil he found himself sharing a heavenly cloud with an old crone. Peeved when on the first cloud they passed he saw Saddam Hussein sharing a duvet with a gorgeous blonde he put in an official complaint to St Peter. ‘Ah, you just don’t get it,’ he was told. ‘He is her penance.’

I, too, may have been looking at something from the wrong angle. I was hooked by the Olympics, and not just by the extraordinary combination of talent, courage and intelligence in running that puts Mo Farah so high in the athletic pantheon. I found myself absorbed by the niceties of keirin tactics in the Velodrome and enthralled by the intricacies of the dressage arena. The biggest surprise of all was watching the double trap shooting final in which Peter Wilson won gold: I could never have imagined that I would find a shooting event on television keeping me glued to my seat by the tension of the unfolding drama. My fortnight of Olympics mania inspired me, along with an invitation from the sponsors Dubai Duty Free to their elegant Shergar Cup lunch at Ascot, to give the concept of racing as a team sport just one more go.

I have until now been a Shergar Cup sceptic. Racing to me is all about the individual. Only one horse and rider can be first past the post. The idea of having groups of jockeys dressed in the same colour competing for a team prize with points accumulated through an afternoon has seemed to me unnatural, especially with teams assembled under such gimmicky concepts as ‘Europe’, ‘The Girls’ and ‘The Rest of the World’.

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