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Who is the new woman on RUK tonight? Seems a bit out of her depth to me – as nervous as hell.
Let’s see how she grows into the role. Anybody can be excused first-night nerves; it isn’t easy to go live on air in front of an audience of hundreds.
It was Tessa Etherington who is one of the trainees on the Darley Flying Start scheme.
Is she related to Jimmy and Tim Etherington?
Don’t know
Don’t forget the "H", Tessa
H
etherington.
http://www.darleyflyingstart.com/2012-t … herington/
Probably the most intelligent member of the team. Cambridge and Harvard educated.
Value Is EverythingHmmm, a ‘self-employed’ barrister . . .
‘Sorry to bother you, guv. I was just passing and noticed your roof. Looks like you could use a bit of litigation there.’
http://www.darleyflyingstart.com/2012-trainees-2/tessa-hetherington/
I wonder if Darley are offering a flying start to any of the children of the slave labourers in Dubai?
w
onder if Darley are offering a flying start to any of the children of the slave labourers in Dubai?
Is this a racing forum or a mainstream broadsheet ???
WTF ….NOBODY should make emotive comments like this …its a disgrace
imo
Is this a racing forum or a mainstream broadsheet
I’ll assume that you know that "mainstream broadsheet" is an oxymoron. The closest you’ll get is
The Times
, and I somewhat doubt that they’d include such a story.
As anyone watching RUK’s coverage from Salisbury last night would know Willo has completely lost the plot. It’s a shame because he used to have quite a good knowledge of the formbook but this has been overtaken by his infatuation for numbers, times and metrics. He can only tell you who a good jockey is by looking at his metrics. He said De Sousa came over to the stands side far too quickly at Sandown the other day and should have done it far more economically but if he’d thought about it instead of putting everything down to ft/per sec he would have realised why he did it.
Similarly he can only tell a good buy at the breeze up sales by times, quite condescending towards Henry Candy because he thought Candy didn’t use times and just went by pedigree and his eye.
Anyone know how successful his collaboration with Mark Johnston and breeze up buys was/is?
It was quite hard work for presenter David Fitzgerald at Salisbury with him at times last night. But as anyone who saw it will know, the last few minutes of the broadcast were Pure Comedy Gold, I just wish I had Skyplus to relive them.
Willo is the mad scientist of racing. I loved his “…such a slowly run race, jockeys should be ashamed of themselves – oh I’m just being told that was a COURSE RECORD TIME” a few weeks ago. There must be a few genius angles in among all the gibberish but how do you find them in that endless stream of words?
I think you’re getting the wrong end of the stick with the breeze-ups yourself though, y-dawg. The best buys from the breeze-ups do tend to be the fast breezers, though admittedly the value has gone in the last couple of years. The Candyman rarely does any business at that type of sale so you can’t make the comparison.
I think you’re getting the wrong end of the stick with the breeze-ups yourself though, y-dawg. The best buys from the breeze-ups do tend to be the fast breezers, though admittedly the value has gone in the last couple of years. The Candyman rarely does any business at that type of sale so you can’t make the comparison.
I’m not making any comparison young fella. Willo specifically named Candy as he had a breezer Hidden Affair in the 6.45 and Willo said Candy had no interest in fast breezers.
The Candyman seems to have done pretty well to me in recent seasons not taking any note of any fast breezers. Would have thought it would be extremely hard to get any value at the breeze ups. Surely the same people will be after the same horses? ie The fast ones.
Yeah, exactly. It’s a big angle for first time out winners because the breezers tend to know a bit more about the job in hand but even the fastest ones often fall back into the ranks once the non-breezers lose their greenness.
+1 on The Candyman too. Some of his sales finds have been brilliant – unfashionable breeding, non-traditional conformation, cheap buys. I’d bet his prize money v sales price ratio is better than most. Handsome gent too.
As anyone watching RUK’s coverage from Salisbury last night would know Willo has completely lost the plot. It’s a shame because he used to have quite a good knowledge of the formbook but this has been overtaken by his infatuation for numbers, times and metrics. He can only tell you who a good jockey is by looking at his metrics. He said De Sousa came over to the stands side far too quickly at Sandown the other day and should have done it far more economically but if he’d thought about it instead of putting everything down to ft/per sec he would have realised why he did it.
Similarly he can only tell a good buy at the breeze up sales by times, quite condescending towards Henry Candy because he thought Candy didn’t use times and just went by pedigree and his eye.
Anyone know how successful his collaboration with Mark Johnston and breeze up buys was/is?
It was quite hard work for presenter David Fitzgerald at Salisbury with him at times last night. But as anyone who saw it will know, the last few minutes of the broadcast were Pure Comedy Gold, I just wish I had Skyplus to relive them.
Willo was trained as a mathematician, so it’s only natural for him to use stats for most of his analysis. Think I have learnt more from him and Simon Rowlands than any other pundit – importance of pace/sectionals etc. We don’t need every pundit to look at racing in the same way. I usually enjoy his humour and analysis. Very good on The Verdict. I know some of it can come over as patronising, but he is talking to punters with varied scales of racing knowledge.
That said Yeats, I agree Willo was at his daftest at Salisbury both analysis-wise and humour-wise. He reckons Trainers In Form is a load of rubbish. I agree a lot of crap is talked about the subject in the media. ie Just because a trainer has a winner that day, doesn’t mean a trainer is “in form”. Or even “in form” just because a trainer had one important winner the week before. Sometimes a trainer is in form before a lot of stats recognise it and don’t last in form as long as some stats suggest. However, done in the right way trainers in form can pinpoint winners. It’s an important part of my betting. His thing about jockeys coming over to the stand side gradually misses the point of horses running on the best strip of ground for longer and being able to get that best strip of ground too. Those gradually coming over are often caught wider than ideal.
However, although Willo was waffling on at Salisbury, he may have needed to fill in on a rainy evening. Maybe Willo is better at post-race analysis rather than pre-race/day of race tipping; but on the whole I think he (usually) does a good job.
Value Is EverythingOne of my pet peeves is the sheer amount of trainers and jockeys who are described as being “in form”. It can be a useful tool but really only with larger trainers as they have more horses. Liz Harrison is flying just now with 5 winners in recent times from very few runners but we may have missed the boat with her already.
As for Willoughby he’s not a presenter I have any firm ideas on but I only caught one race at Salisbury last night (the 1m 6f handicap) and remember thinking why is he wittering on when the runners are approaching the tape? And then after the race he remarked that Alice Mills had gone off too fast on Benbecula only for Fitzgerald to point out that she had steered a 25-1 shot into 5th of 12 and the winner had been up with the pace throughout.
What was the comedy gold at the last race?
I like Willoughby in small doses, you can see why ITV haven’t snapped him up
Don’t always agree with what he is saying but like his different take on things a bit like ginge…
Gaelic Warrior Gold Cup Winner 2026
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