They have been racing over this patch of the Sussex Downs since 1802. King Edward VII, who popularised both the panama and the linen suit, called it ‘a garden party with racing tacked on’. For me, it is Ascot without the excess. Goodwood’s stands with their floating canopies don’t look like a concrete imposition on
Eclipse Day at Sandown Park was nearly a disaster. Feeling for my wallet en route to Waterloo, my heart sank as my hand went into an empty pocket, and then I remembered. Mrs Oakley, by then uncontactable at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, had the night before purloined it to pay for a MarshRuby takeaway
Gutsy stayers can thrill with their courage, canny jockeys with well-executed tactical plans. But in any sport there is nothing like the exhilaration of sheer face-whipping, wind-in-the-hair speed. Ask those fans in South Africa who had to sit through the leaden fumbling of the so-called England football team against Slovenia. Not just overhyped, overpaid and
Manton has a magic. The majestic beauty of the famous training centre on the Wiltshire Downs has to be seen to be believed, especially at daffodil time. There are gallops in every direction — the Barton Gallop, the Clatford Gallop, the Valley Gallop, the stiff Derby Gallop used traditionally 20 and 10 days before the
The best racing yards combine experience and tradition with youthful energy. Walk into Park House Stables, Kingsclere with the blackbirds swooping about their brood-raising business and you feel the vibes immediately. There is grandeur and solidity about the red-brick Victorian yards built by the great John Porter, trainer of 23 Classic winners, with their turrets
It was to have been Ascot on Saturday. But alternative political duties for CNN intervened. ‘OK,’ said the little green man descending from his flying saucer in Parliament Square, ‘I appreciate that “Take me to your Leader” won’t do right now. But when can you take me to your Leader?’ I had been musing at
During elections, said H.L. Mencken, all the parties rush around the country insisting that the others are unfit to govern — and in the end they are all proved right. I don’t bet on politics because as a part-time political commentator I don’t want to be accused of letting wagers colour my judgment, but I
Biblical scholars say that five is the number of grace, three the number of perfection. ‘Fifteen, therefore, relates to acts wrought by divine grace.’ I don’t know if Tony McCoy was saying his prayers as his mount Don’t Push It cleared the last and headed round The Elbow for the Grand National finishing line but,
Espying Katie Walsh at Newbury with a ride for Nicky Henderson, I couldn’t help recalling one bookie’s reaction to the finish of the gruelling four-mile National Hunt Chase for amateurs at this year’s Cheltenham when she and Nina Carberry finished first and second, both earning bans for overuse of the ‘persuader’. ‘Birds first and second,’
By the time you read this, I will either be taking Mrs Oakley out for a well-deserved dinner at Le Caprice or I will be carrying a sack of stones and a pair of leg-irons, looking for a deep river. The Cheltenham Festival will have come and gone, probably taking with it most of my
The refusal of Manchester City footballer Wayne Bridge to shake the hand of his former Chelsea team-mate John Terry in a dispute over the favours of a lingerie model received roughly the same attention in the media last Saturday as the outbreak of a new war in the Middle East. Racing hardly got a look-in,
Taxi touts outside greeted me with a hopeful ‘Bula’. Mynah birds squabbled in the jacarandas and teenagers on the nearby parkland were throwing long passes with a rugby ball. Not quite your average UK betting-shop setting, but this was the Fiji branch of Grants Waterhouse. I had stepped in seeking a little inspiration for the
It is not just the superstars who make a sport. In cricket the Vaughans and Pietersens win the headlines but it is the gritty Paul Collingwoods, making runs when others are losing their heads, who give the England side character. So who expresses jumping’s ethos? Try Warren Marston. A crowd-pulling name? Maybe not. But Warren
It is minus two and the paddock behind Epsom’s famous South Hatch stables, still dusted with snow, is bone-hard as the horses circle for inspection by trainer Jim Boyle. Come off on this ground and you could easily snap a collarbone. But there is not a whisper of apprehension. When Wunder Strike, who scored his
Where would we be without ‘all-weather’ racing on artificial surfaces? Where would we be without ‘all-weather’ racing on artificial surfaces? With Sandown’s jumping card frosted off last Saturday, I wasn’t the only one who scuttled across Surrey to Lingfield’s polytrack, where Betdaq had sponsored an extra day to keep the cash tills rolling and the
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
Advice should always be received cautiously. I have in mind the two hunters in the American woods. One fell to the ground, his eyes rolling in his head. His companion called the emergency services by cellphone: ‘I think my friend is dead. What do I do?’ The operator cautiously urged him, ‘Now, sir, let’s stay
It was one of those moments when a clunking great pile-driver comes up and thuds straight into your duodenum. I can weave through the form for a 24-runner handicap at the sputtering fag end of the season. I can summon the maths to cope with a series of cross doubles at, say, 13–8, 11–4 and,
How can Flat racing keep its public enthused when the moment a superstar emerges he is whisked away to other duties? Winning the 2000 Guineas, the Derby, the Coral Eclipse, the Juddmonte International, the Irish Champion Stakes and the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, Sea The Stars gave us a glorious summer. But at only
It takes a lot to keep me away from Newmarket’s Champions’ Day meeting but the prospect of an hour on stage at Cheltenham’s Literary Festival with Ruby Walsh and Paul Nicholls talking about Paul’s autobiography Lucky Break (Orion, £20) was lure enough. The champion trainer’s careers master might have been surprised to find the ever-reluctant