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My Dad stood my bets a few times in the early-70s. He stopped doing it when I landed 3 out of 4 selections in doubles one Easter, either 2 1/2p or 6d depending on the year. Given that one of the winners was Lime Street at about 8/1 I suspect my pocket money was well boosted that week.
I suspect it was either 1971 or 1972. I believe the loser was Hashi Benkei at Kempton. Anybody confirm the year?
Isn’t it sad that I can remember all this, but I can clearly recall watching Arkle and Mill House when i was about 3 or 4 and I was bitten by the bug at that time. I watched racing regularly from that point onwards. They didn’t need bouncy castles and the like when I went to Ascot with my grandparents, I went for the racing.
(Adopts Ron Manager voice)
Lunchtime Evening News for the form, basic racecards that just gave the bare details of runners and colours, the number boards at Ascot, Nijinsky winning the KG+QE, marvellous!
I suspect a fair percentage of those involved on this board were introduced to horse racing through watching on TV. Channel 4 may not please some more established racing fans, but they can still do a recruitment job for the sport.
By the way, is ‘blackfingernail’ a Tom’s equally cheerless twin bother? What a ‘Carry On’, eh?
Rob
I was certainly attracted to the sport by TV and that was in black and white for goodness sake!!
Nicholas Silver winning the 1961 National is my first real memory but I can remember watching the racing on ITV and BBC with my Grandad on Saturday afternoons and having fun bets with him for pennies.
Paul, 100% with you on that. We must be about the same age because I will never forget Carrickbeg being passed by Ayala up the run in in 1963 and dear old Team Spirit in 1964. I told the postman and all the old ladies in Langholm to back him – I was six. Terrestrial TV was what got me hooked, – a certain Irish horse, name of Arkle helped it along, that and seeing Freddie at Carlisle in October 1964.
In those days racing was part of the nations consciousness; even my mum talked about it as well as my dad. It was funny at work today, because my boss was using a biro and he came over to me and said ‘I think this must be yours’. It had William Hill written on it. I told him the Betfair biro was better. Made a change from Imodium or something
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