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Morning line alright so far, Emma Spencer seems like a good enough host and at least Cunningham can actually use the tough-screen! They seem a good pair, Channel 4 may finally have gotten the mix right.
My Channel 4 gripe today relates to the fact the Channel 4 Watch Online facility on their website did not work at all. Stuck at work, I locked myself away with my laptop in a side meeting room to sneakily watch a few races, and not once did it stream, despite refreshing the page a hundred times. It managed to stream advertisments first though!
My second gripe is that the highlights show does not start until 00.40 tonight.
Maybe I could just do the decent thing and buy a device to actually record the racing in the day, although my flatmate is very satisfied with the cheap and nasty Freesat box we decided to get on moving in.
In the meantime I have decided to go for the only other alternative option which ensures I can actually see some racing this week, and that is working from home for the next two days. After that I might just ditch my job and find one where watching Royal Ascot counts as part of it.
Sign up on RacingUK and see it there. It’s free for the replays.
I thought Clare made a couple of inaccurate comments yesterday, one about Sole Power beating the older horses at 2, I’m sure he was a three year old, can’t remember the other, but at the time I thought "that’s so not true". But I actually prefer how they’ve gone, this is a better incarnation than the last one. I’d prefer less fashion and non racing features, but realise they have to appeal to more than just the racing aficionados.
The Fall on Channel 4 Racing, doing the fashion.
What would Mark E. Smith have said about ex-guitarist/wifey Brix on Channel 4 Racing?
Value Is EverythingThe pompous Clare balding has just declared that royal ascot is the greatest race meeting……what? Better than the Cheltenham festival? You daft cow
I agree with Claire. But they are both great meetings & we are spoiled to have them both in our Calender.
Am I alone in detecting a bit of needle between the excellent Cunningham and the unlikeable Luck….there seem to be any amount of differences of opinion and even more points made by Luck to Cunningham as potential talking points that are basically ignored or Cunningham then appears to make an unrelated point to McGrath( who must be enjoying working with someone so knowledgable compared to the clueless Francome who used to bluff his way through on likability but not much familiarity with the form book.
Cunningham and to a lesser extent McGrath seem unwilling to have their agenda set by Luck as the studio anchor man…..no bad thing and more watchable than bland platitudes and talking heads without opinions but I sometimes sense Luck’s discomfort that he is not allowed to be the boss or the most knowledgable.
Fitzgerald has nothing of interest to say,Spencer is the blandest of the bland and Stevenson has never been up to it from day 1.
Balding is somehow not as good as she was when on the BBC……never better than when getting people to talk but lacking something in bringing insight to summarising the climax of races.
I’m not sure about needle between Cunningham and Luck, WFTW. GC could have taken Luck up on quite a few of his errors today, but dealt with them delicately to avoid embarrassing him.
For example, Luck described the ungainly Chigun as "a beautiful mover" moments after Cunningham had drawn attention to the horse’s ugly leg action and inability to cope with undulating tracks. GC declined the open goal after that.
Am I alone in detecting a bit of needle between the excellent Cunningham and the unlikeable Luck…
No, you are not. I picked up on it right away. It was obvious.
I don’t know why, but it all seemed a bit petty on Cunningham’s part; he was being petulant and contradictory for no reason: maybe he’d backed a few losers ? All credit to Nick Luck for not letting it get to him though – he is much too savvy and professional for that. That said, "Lord Snooty" did let his guard slip when the conversation of Camelot’s poor showing cropped up.
I think some of the Luck family’s heirlooms went the O’Brien horse’s way.
Gambling Only Pays When You're Winning
… moments after Cunningham had drawn attention to the horse’s ugly leg action and inability to cope with undulating tracks.
Did Cunningham mean courses like Ascot, Newmarket and The Curragh? The courses at which Chigun’s last three victories occurred?
If you’re going to have a form "expert", at least make sure he knows what he’s talking about.
Well, that was a new low.
What was??
Throwing a microphone in Johnny Murtagh’s face as he’s walking from the stricken Thomas Chippendale.
Zooming in on the horse’s lad whilst he had tears streaming down his face.
Getting an interview with the lad moments later.It was shameless exploitative tabloid voyeurism at its most base. Whatever "public interest" there was that merited such actions must surely have taken a backseat to an individual’s right to grieve in private.
Well, that was a new low.
What was??
Throwing a microphone in Johnny Murtagh’s face as he’s walking from the stricken Thomas Chippendale.
Zooming in on the horse’s lad whilst he had tears streaming down his face.
Getting an interview with the lad moments later.It was shameless exploitative tabloid voyeurism at its most base. Whatever "public interest" there was that merited such actions must surely have taken a backseat to an individual’s right to grieve in private.
It’s a difficult decision whether to show greif like that BH. In my opinion not so one-sided a decision. I can understand your point of view, not everyone would want that attention. However…
Every viewer could see the grief shown by owner, trainer, jockey and particularly groom in the paddock; and sympathise. Am sure it would’ve been done differently just a decade ago. Yet, if C4 did not show that distress – then…
a) C4 would be accused of sweeping death of horses under the carpet.
b) If the only time "Joe Public" see connections is picking up the trophy, then "false" smiles may be misunderstood as uncaring. That all that matters is a winner.
Realise everyone is different BH, but if I were one of any of those connections – I would not want the public to get the wrong impression. We (racing enthusiasts) know how these unfortunate incidents effect connections; many C4 Saturday Royal Ascot viewers will not.
Value Is EverythingIt’s a difficult decision whether to show greif like that BH. In my opinion not so one-sided a decision. I can understand your point of view, not everyone would want that attention. However…
Every viewer could see the grief shown by owner, trainer, jockey and particularly groom in the paddock; and sympathise. Am sure it would’ve been done differently just a decade ago. Yet, if C4 did not show that distress – then…
a) C4 would be accused of sweeping death of horses under the carpet.
b) If the only time "Joe Public" see connections is picking up the trophy, then "false" smiles may be misunderstood as uncaring. That all that matters is a winner.
Realise everyone is different BH, but if I were one of any of those connections – I would not want the public to get the wrong impression. We (racing enthusiasts) know how these unfortunate incidents effect connections; many C4 Saturday Royal Ascot viewers will not.
I also understand your point of view.
Nevertheless, in pretty much every other instance of these incidences, on Saturdays or otherwise, deaths of horses, if reported at all, are done so very briefly and rounded off with "commiserations to the connections who must be devastated." Largely to put the incident in the past but also as a respectful means of not sensationalising the incident.Furthermore, deaths on televised Saturday cards aren’t necessarily a rarity so why not interview every connection of every horse who fatally falls or breaks down? Today was an exception because it made for some bloody good television.
In no other similar scenario would anyone, on camera or otherwise, want to ask the thoughts of someone in grief immediately after such an incident. For one, any viewer would have been able to correctly predict what the connections were going to say verbatim. For another, it’s a matter of common decency to give such a person some space in the immediate aftermath.
As for "Joe Casual", I also felt that the subsequent litany in the box was little more than a means of pushing the anti-anti agenda;- "See? You see that? People involved with horses love horses. They’re crying and everything. This is irrefutable proof that horse racing isn’t cruel. Take that anti-brigade." This agenda is tiresome, patronising and frankly inflated when one considers that any adult watching a "marmite" sport like horse racing should be able to make their own decisions without the presenters resorting to affected justifications.
Horse deaths on a Saturday of Royal Ascot are
not
a comman sight BH. It is (at least partly) a different audience than a normal day or even normal Saturday. The usual
"commiserations to the connections who must be devastated"
, would (imo) not have been enough today.
Certainly I would not like to see this type of thing as the norm BH, but on days like this it sadly needs to be done.
Value Is EverythingIt’s a difficult decision whether to show greif like that BH. In my opinion not so one-sided a decision. I can understand your point of view, not everyone would want that attention. However…
Every viewer could see the grief shown by owner, trainer, jockey and particularly groom in the paddock; and sympathise. Am sure it would’ve been done differently just a decade ago. Yet, if C4 did not show that distress – then…
a) C4 would be accused of sweeping death of horses under the carpet.
b) If the only time "Joe Public" see connections is picking up the trophy, then "false" smiles may be misunderstood as uncaring. That all that matters is a winner.
Realise everyone is different BH, but if I were one of any of those connections – I would not want the public to get the wrong impression. We (racing enthusiasts) know how these unfortunate incidents effect connections; many C4 Saturday Royal Ascot viewers will not.
I also understand your point of view.
Nevertheless, in pretty much every other instance of these incidences, on Saturdays or otherwise, deaths of horses, if reported at all, are done so very briefly and rounded off with "commiserations to the connections who must be devastated." Largely to put the incident in the past but also as a respectful means of not sensationalising the incident.Furthermore, deaths on televised Saturday cards aren’t necessarily a rarity so why not interview every connection of every horse who fatally falls or breaks down? Today was an exception because it made for some bloody good television.
This was completely different to the other sad fatalities that sometimes occur in jump racing in that it was the winner of the race dramatically dying of a heart attack just after the winning post. They could hardly brush that under the carpet if they tried. The horse was not able to follow the usual pattern of being filmed in the winners enclosure, so that merited at least some explanation. I think the discussion in the studio afterwards was too far mind. I had to switch over as I found it too obvious a display of trying to set off the detractors before they had even had a chance to get going.
On a more general point, I cannot warm to Graham Cunningham. He comes across as a wee bit of a smug know-it-all when in fact he usually just states the obvious. I don’t get the impression he actually knows much about horses.
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