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According to ATR tonight Matt Chapman has been given 15 meetings for the first six months of next year as a trial.
Oh dear meetings I will have to watch with the sound off. Let’s hope Mr Chapman has a change of mind and sticks to what he is best to.
I just hope he doesn’t do the race commentaries in the bombastic, over-the-top and ridiculously fake voiced way he does them for off-tube commentaries from foreign courses for At The Races.
He does a great job in making out the runners from the often very blurred and poor quality foreign races and, as I have said before, did well in taking over at the last minute when it became apparent at Hexham that the late commentator Doug Fraser hadn’t turned up. Fraser was later found dead in Leeds after apparently jumping into water near his home, of course. Very sad.
Wonder if Chapman will be teamed on course for any meetings with dear old John Hunt, one of the country’s top commentators, according to Chapman. If they share races on a card, he will be able to tell Hunt to his face that he is one of the country’s top commentators, instead of doing so every time he links to him on At The Races when he insists on telling viewers "how fortunate we are today to have John Hunt" commentating at that particular meeting.
Wonder if Tanya Stevenson will be given any racecourse commentating slots next. Hayley Moore is obviously leading the way after winning the Filly Factor competition. How about an Old Mare Factor competition for Tarns?All three of the 2011 "trainees" are being given 15 days, in their own right, in the first six months of 2012 – effectively as a trial.
Whereas with the 2010 batch David Fitzgerald stood out head and shoulders above the other duo, this years group were very much of a similar standard.
I believe there is a drive to try and recruit more younger commentators as it has been recognised the current list has become "top heavy" in terms of age.
There will be three further "trainees" in 2012 – Filly Factor winner Hayley Moore, Tim Peters (not the racecourse presenter) and Gareth Topham.
If I were a betting man I would have the last named as a very short priced, odds-on, favourite to be on the 2013 rosta, I’m only surprised he has not been on the scheme sooner.
All three of the 2011 "trainees" are being given 15 days, in their own right, in the first six months of 2012 – effectively as a trial.
Whereas with the 2010 batch David Fitzgerald stood out head and shoulders above the other duo, this years group were very much of a similar standard.
I believe there is a drive to try and recruit more younger commentators as it has been recognised the current list has become "top heavy" in terms of age.
There will be three further "trainees" in 2012 – Filly Factor winner Hayley Moore, Tim Peters (not the racecourse presenter) and Gareth Topham.Very interesting, Paul. Thanks very much.
Sounds like a sign of the times that, as with everything these days, seemingly, youth is everything and experience is seen as expendible. Hence the culling of older TV newsreaders and weather presenters, to be replaced by autocuties instead of the experienced older brigade. I’m not called Crusty for nothing (as Lady Patch will testify).
The older commentators, such as Iain Mackenzie and Tommo, are still at the top of their game, in my book. So was Graham Goode, who was pushed out last year, despite still doing a good job and improving his racecourse commentaries performance over the previous couple of years.
I have to confess I have never heard commentaries by Gareth Topham, Neville Ender, Tim Peters or some of the other ones better known from the point-to-point fields. Any links to have a listen would be appreciated, Paul or Jeremy.
Good job you mentioned that it is not the Tim Peters who is the Midlands-based raceday presenter. I would have assumed it was him if you had not said so. That Tim Peters has got a fine, booming voice, reminiscent of a budding Bruce Friend-James, so I could quite have (wrongly) seen him as a racecourse commentator.
I’ve never heard Lord Leigh (Christopher Leigh) either. Many years ago, back in the days of the old Racecourse Technical Services lists, he was on the proper rota as C.D.P.Leigh for a couple of meetings for one May when there was a glut of meetings, no doubt giving the powers-that-be the opportunity to give him a couple of meetings to do under rules.Sounds like a sign of the times that, as with everything these days, seemingly, youth is everything and experience is seen as expendible. Hence the culling of older TV newsreaders and weather presenters, to be replaced by autocuties instead of the experienced older brigade. I’m not called Crusty for nothing (as Lady Patch will testify).
I think it is different for commentating, the edge can go with age.
You cannot deny that both O’Sullevan and Bromley carried on far too long – although granted they were way older than the current batch of callers.
I recall one of our leading commentators saying to me that he finds it more difficult and he has to do more prep work as he gets older.
The older commentators, such as Iain Mackenzie and Tommo, are still at the top of their game, in my book. So was Graham Goode, who was pushed out last year, despite still doing a good job and improving his racecourse commentaries performance over the previous couple of years.
That’s a very subjective viewpoint.
My personal view is there are at least two, possibly three, commentators on the current rosta who are well past their "use by" date but clearly those who make the decisions think otherwise.
Apologies guys if this has already been covered…
Does anybody know if there is a website or blog etc anywhere that lists the commentary roster ?
It’s the first thing i do when i buy my racecard on arrival to see who is on duty. Most are good for different reasons and i’m happy with most names especially likes of Hoiles Holt & Hunt
As for Lee McKenzie well yes there has to be one to hope gets removed from the list !
Any help would be appreciated please
Does anybody know if there is a website or blog etc anywhere that lists the commentary roster ?
It’s the first thing i do when i buy my racecard on arrival to see who is on duty. Most are good for different reasons and i’m happy with most names especially likes of Hoiles Holt & Hunt
As for Lee McKenzie well yes there has to be one to hope gets removed from the list !
Any help would be appreciated pleaseNo, it’s purely an internal staff rota, sent out to the commentators concerned and those affected by it. Courses are notified but it’s certainly not a publicly available document available to racegoers. It would cause too much furore, judging by the high emotions certain commentators generate on this forum and wider afield.
You’ll certainly be in a minority if you try to get Lee McKenzie banned. There was a whole thread devoted to him recently and there was an avalanche of support for him.You cannot deny that both O’Sullevan and Bromley carried on far too long – although granted they were way older than the current batch of callers.
I recall one of our leading commentators saying to me that he finds it more difficult and he has to do more prep work as he gets older.
My personal view is there are at least two, possibly three, commentators on the current rosta who are well past their "use by" date but clearly those who make the decisions think otherwise.Sir Peter O’Sullevan certainly kept going too long. I was amazed how long he did carry on commentating. The occasional slips became more obvious and more frequent but I still admired him and liked listening to him.
It certainly annoyed Julian Wilson how long he kept going. Poor Jules kept hanging on and hanging on, hoping for the day when O’Sullevan would call it a day. His bitterness was later revealed when he let it be known publicly that he felt betrayed by his colleague who, he had believed, would stand down to make way for him at a reasonable point.
O’Sullevan later gently got his revenge by saying that it would have been by no means certain that Wilson would have got the top job after all. The then newly-emerging Jim McGrath would have been more likely to have been favoured by BBC bosses, he claimed.
The proof that O’Sullevan did not always emerge with the greatest credit was when John Hanmer ended up doing the commentaries for the last few races of Frankie Dettori’s Magnificent Seven at Ascot because the great man was not expecting in advance to commentate on those races and was never keen to do so when he had not adequately prepared. Hanmer was the one who ended up calling the key later races that really went into the history books.
Hanmer, in those days, regularly did the tail-end races at Ascot for showing during another programme, whether the Sunday of the Ascot meeting, if it was covered in those days, or more likely at Glorious Goodwood in the next week or so, when the BBC still covered that meeting.
It’s inconceivable that the same would have happened from Channel 4 in the same circumstances for the extra Magnificent Seven races. Graham Goode or, now Simon Holt, would have covered the extra races. Simon has been known to cover all the Cheltenham Festival extra races not shown live, although they have taken Mike Cattermole’s course commentary sometimes.
O’Sullevan was part of a distinguished list of long-serving BBC elder statesmen commentators, with Dan Maskell (tennis), Ted Lowe (snooker), Peter Alliss (golf), Bill McLaren (rugby), Richie Benaud, John Arlott and Peter West (cricket) who made it a golden age for sports commentators. David Vine, Ron Pickering, Henry Blofeld and John Motson have all played key roles too.I have to confess I have never heard commentaries by Gareth Topham, Neville Ender, Tim Peters or some of the other ones better known from the point-to-point fields. Any links to have a listen would be appreciated, Paul or Jeremy.
If you have a subscription to the Point-to-Point Racing Company’s
Viewpoint
repository of footage from Point meetings, there are quite a number of examples of Gareth’s work in there to enjoy.
His portfolio of Pointing commentary engagements probably only stands at around 15 fixtures per annum, due to a combination of his other work commitments (commentaries at harness racing, radio work, etc.), some hunts sticking to their longer-established choices (Eddie Williams still has the most engagements in Gareth’s native Wales), and in one instance another commentator undercutting him by working for free.
Those meetings that do employ him love him to bits, though, and that portfolio includes some very well-regarded fixtures – none more so than the Pointing season’s final "Classic", the Lady Dudley Cup at Chaddesley Corbett in late April. You can definitely find his calls from the last two renewals of that fixture on
Viewpoint
.
Other places to use him include Lydstep, Cilwendeg, Hexham PtP, Andoversford, Tweseldown and Aspatria – the latter being his longest-standing gig after he answered an SOS for a caller several years ago, despite the course being 300 miles and five and a half hours from his then Cardiff base!
The more Pointing-savvy among you will notice the geographical spread of those bookings – west Wales, Cumbria, Hampshire, and many points in between. Very much a case of get gig, go to gig, nail gig, keep gig, wherever in the country that gig may be.
He also deputised for Mark Johnson at last Easter’s meetings at Kimble and at Lockinge, as the lateness of the holiday meant those fixtures took place after Skegness’s finest had already left for his summer tenure in the United States.
Pointing fans’ first experience of Gareth this season will be at the very popular South Midlands Area Club meeting at Whitfield, Northamptonshire (between Brackley and Towcester) on Sunday, December 18th. This is a superb young course which attracts big fields, and the executive there places great store in getting good quality commentators as far as possible – Stewart Machin called the first meeting there in May 2009, for example.
That Gareth has been asked to perform duties at the SMAC meeting for the third season running reflects no small degree of credit on him. He is, as PaulO infers, as splendid a commentator as there currently is outside of the roster.
gc
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
Can’t disagree with any of that and as Paul allude’s to I’d make Gareth Topham a very very short priced favourite to be the one of the three mentioned who makes it big
Apologies guys if this has already been covered…
Does anybody know if there is a website or blog etc anywhere that lists the commentary roster ?
It’s the first thing i do when i buy my racecard on arrival to see who is on duty. Most are good for different reasons and i’m happy with most names especially likes of Hoiles Holt & Hunt
As for Lee McKenzie well yes there has to be one to hope gets removed from the list !
Any help would be appreciated please
Most of the time you can whittle down who the commentator is going to be anyway thru historical or preferences ie thommo or Darren Owen seem to do newcastle jumps, pre summer 2010 Doug Fraser at Hexham, Mike Cattermole Cheltenham, Iain Mackenzie Cartmel and a lot of southern summer Jumps. Malcolm Tomlinson is your man for Beverley. Hoiles and Holt for the Royal Ascot meeting. AWTs seem to go thru their share of commentators and Perth is always a hard one, unless there is a northern meeting the day before.
DaveMost of the time you can whittle down who the commentator is going to be anyway thru historical or preferences ie thommo or Darren Owen seem to do newcastle jumps, pre summer 2010 Doug Fraser at Hexham, Mike Cattermole Cheltenham, Iain Mackenzie Cartmel and a lot of southern summer Jumps. Malcolm Tomlinson is your man for Beverley. Hoiles and Holt for the Royal Ascot meeting. AWTs seem to go thru their share of commentators and Perth is always a hard one, unless there is a northern meeting the day before.
Darren Owen seems to do most of the Carlisle meetings.
The one thing you can definitely count on is that, if it is a Flat meeting, it won’t be Iain Mackenzie. He doesn’t do a single Flat meeting all year and hasn’t done so for many years.
He did, many years ago, do Flat meetings but, because of his links with point-to-point racing and the obvious links to National Hunt racing, he obviously opts not to do so.
I far prefer watching jumps racing, even lowly or Irish meetings, not least because you get better value for money with the viewing.
It’s always surprised me that former jumps champion John Francome seems to much prefer Flat racing. He certainly gives that impression to me on Channel 4. The BBC used to have separate pundits for the Flat and the jumps (Jimmy Lindley and John Hanmer for the Flat and Richard Pitman for the jumps).
Iain Mackenzie seems to do the big three-day April meeting at Perth every year, although former commentator Andy Orkney did it at least once, I seem to remember.
As has been pointed out elsewhere, Alan Howes does a lot of Fontwell meetings, as does Tony Ennis. A few years ago, Dave Smith seemed to do virtually every Brighton meeting. Simon Holt does a lot of Lingfield meetings, not least because I believe he lives nearby.
As mentioned before, Malcolm Tomlinson lives in Beverley, which explains why he has got Beverley stitched up. Same with Mike Cattermole at Windsor. He lives nearby.
Ian Bartlett seems to do a lot of Chepstow and Bath meetings.
Graham Goode used to do a lot of Leicester and Nottingham meetings, no doubt because he lives near Leicester and was a director at Nottingham.The final choice of course commentator does rest with the racecourse.
Which is why, occasionally, a non-rostered commentator does appear on-course.
The most notable is Mike Vince at Ascot for Shergar Cup and Champions Day, he also used to call Bonusprint day at Aintree, which was at the sponsors request.
Brighton have used Hayley Moore on a couple of occasions this year and it is not unknown for courses to use an Irish caller (usually Jerry Hannon) for Irish themed meetings.
However when courses take this option they still have to, additionally, pay for a Racetech commentator, who will be used for the off-course commentary.
Racecourses do have the option of providing Racetech with a "preferred" and, if so inclined, "unacceptable" list of commentators, although most do not bother.
Also it is not unknown for commentators to request specific gigs as courses they do not normally call at, usually to help them get the "full set".
Darren Owen, for example, has called at Towcester and Plumpton for the first time this year (he was also meant to call at Folkestone but that meeting clashed with Ginger McCains memorial service) as he wants to add more Southern courses to his CV.
There is also a dearth of Northern based commentators so a few southern based callers are doing Northern tours, the most recent being Richard who did Aintree, Kelso and Musselburgh this last weekend. Both Barty and Lee have also been doing a fair number of Northern expeditions in the last year or so, not forgetting, also, Crusty’s friend Mr Hunt.
There is also a dearth of Northern based commentators so a few southern based callers are doing Northern tours, the most recent being Richard who did Aintree, Kelso and Musselburgh this last weekend. Both Barty and Lee have also been doing a fair number of Northern expeditions in the last year or so.
I remember Lee telling me when I broached the subject with him once than Musselburgh is actually relatively easy to do despite his being based in or close to Southampton – have airport, will travel! I presume the same availability of (very) short-haul flights is what’s enabled Tony Ennis to call an increasing number of fixtures at that venue also.
gc
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
Brighton have used Hayley Moore on a couple of occasions this year and it is not unknown for courses to use an Irish caller (usually Jerry Hannon) for Irish themed meetings.
Jerry was the Irishman of choice for "Irish Evenings" at Worcester and Sandown during summer 2006, though I’m not sure to what extent that practice has endured more recently.
Hayley performed her first jumps commentary – a 2m handicap chase – at Lingfield’s opening twig-hopping fixture of the autumn in November.
Musselburgh allowed the budding American caller Jonathan Horowitz to call a race or two several years ago (certainly once in 2006) whilst – if memory serves – he was studying at the University of St Andrews. I don’t know if this is still the case now, given his studies have presumably come to an end since then.
gc
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
I remember Lee telling me when I broached the subject with him once than Musselburgh is actually relatively easy to do despite his being based in or close to Southampton – have airport, will travel!
gcYes it’s probably a photo finish between Lee and Myself as to who has the better knowledge of airline timetables – I will concede Southampton to him but think I win with Luton and Stansted
(well that was when I was still able to fly)
The most notable is Mike Vince at Ascot for Shergar Cup and Champions Day, he also used to call Bonusprint day at Aintree, which was at the sponsors request.
It’s good that Mike Vince has been used by Ascot and Aintree, in some ways. They obviously rate him and it can’t be nice for anyone to lose a source of income, as he did when he was dropped as a commentator.
Speaking of which, Dave Smith must be feeling the pinch after suffering the same fate. Mind you, he does still have his various other sources of income, such as his racecourse judge role and his TV work, including greyhounds. I assume he still does his Sky work.
After mentioning Sir Peter O’Sullevan, still going strong in his 90s and other distinguished elder statesmen sports commentators in an earlier post, I was interested to see in today’s Racing Post birthdays list that it was Peter Dimmock’s 91st birthday today.
He’s from before my racing time but he is credited as being a TV racing pioneer. Let’s hope he doesn’t suffer the same fate as former commentator Cloudesley Marsham, who was also featured in the same list, in his 90s, last year and only a very short time later died.
On a day of other distinguished birthdays, I also noticed ex-Sporting Life editor Monty Court was 83 today and journalist and author Sean Magee was 62.Both Barty and Lee have also been doing a fair number of Northern expeditions in the last year or so, not forgetting, also, Crusty’s friend Mr Hunt.
Hope Paul will raise a smile when I say that I also noticed that it was racecourse commentator John Hunt’s birthday today. He is 46 today. Paul did play devil’s advocate by mentioning him above!
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