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This may sound harsh but Stickels has been in this work for a long time. It is his only job, and a specialist one. It would surely not be unreasonable to expect him, from experience, to have developed a gut feeling as to how things will pan out and to make the right judgement call regarding watering ect
It’s not as if he has to consider the interests of large numbers of connections involved with decent ground horses as by this time of year many will have been put in rest mode for the spring and those targeting animals at the Ascot races would have done so in confidence that their would be plenty of ease underfoot.
Mind you, Stickels got into the job through his family and I do recall his mother making a notable blunder or two in her role!
An end to Greyhound racing north of the border would definitely be looked back on as watershed moment because, as commented above, they won’t relent and Scottish jump racing will be the next target at the same time that English Greyhound racing comes under pressure….and so on.
I sometimes wonder what would have happened if racing had stood firm when the Grand National came under pressure, hastening the end of Bechers as we knew it followed by the loosening of the spruce all round – though as referred to earlier the back pages of the national newspapers would not hold back with images of dead horses (back then they’d also show grim pictures of the corpses of Grand Prix drivers being carried away from their burnt out vehicles).
The two most dramatic racing connected back pages images I can recall, both from Bechers, would be Jonjo knelt down over the deceased Alverton in 1979, who moments before had been absolutely lobbing along like the well handicapped animal he was, and Dark Ivy from the 80’s, being a grey, and building a following from the general public in the days leading up to the race.
During a period in the 80’s when Monty Court had page 3 of the Sporting Life to himself when editor, he once penned a supportive piece about a prominent RSPC figure ( Bernard somebody or other) whom Court claimed was a ‘racing fan’ and considered it wise for racing to work together with him and his ilk. One could sense then that changes were pending and that racing would begin to yield.
We’ve now reached a point were certain powers in the sport erase parts of its history – remember just a few years back when as a pre Grand National feature they had a few ex jockeys around a table discussing their past experiences in the race – Jonjo could not recall ever being in with a chance of winning the race!
A good thread this – it’s very difficult to measure with any degree of accuracy the present level of hostility towards racing, and then even harder to make comparisons with decades past.
I just feel that in the 70’s and 80’s the chances were that you’d bump into many more people who would raise the subject of animal welfare issues when racing was discussed than nowadays. Perhaps those that otherwise would be applying their energy to stir up anti racing sentiments have now been swept up by the ‘ x amount of years to save the planet’ brigades- in different circumstances I could certainly imagine that geeky looking lad who tied himself by his neck to the goalposts at Goodison Park being a ‘ban racing’ activist!
Added to this is that there just seems to be a bigger indifference to the sport from the general public than ever before – it just doesn’t float the boat of most of the emerging generations, irrespective of this nonsense we are fed about how ‘student days’ (come on number four!) are going to guarantee crowd engagement in future years.
Unfortunately, social media enables small numbers to run campaigns that come to the attention of multiple times more number of people than a large 70’s or 80’s style demonstration outside a racecourse could ever do and I fear that the most damage will be inflicted when the wastage issue is reignited, as surely will be the case sometime soon.
Fred Winter himself was not a fan of the old style Triumph, of the opinion it could ruin a horse (though the likes of Night Nurse, Monksfield and See You Then all ran in it). To many fans it was a real butterfly in the stomach race with most of the runners lining up having had trials in small field/steadily run events, now faced with a crazy cavalry charge. The jigsaw would start being pieced together early in the season, the ante post market for the race would be included daily in bookmaker adverts in the Life from early December onwards, and you’d end with a good balance between animals who had been out early, and the likes of Pollardstown, First Bout and Alone Success who appeared late. I honestly loved the race as it was.
I’ve no doubt a push for the fifth day will resurface some time soon, with those in favour using the finances angle on the grounds that both the sponsorship revenue and Saturday
‘ cult’ racegoer revenue support the wellbeing of the rest of the meeting or something similar.Sadly it’s too much too wish for a return to 18 races over three days. There is no need for mares this and mares that events with a sex allowance available, the 3m novice hurdle is one open older novice hurdle too much, the Fred Winter or whatever it’s now called would fit in well to the April meeting, the Ryanair would slot in well at the Cotswold meeting, while not only is if questionable that the Cross Country event belongs there, one could also ask whether there is any place for the Bumper which is in a way a relatively new addition to the fixture.
He was very reserved in his role as a lackey to Peter Bromley on Radio 2, commentating on the first half of the Ces ect. Sounded a completely different character to the one that eventually hit the screens in the early 80’s but then again I doubt there would be any messing about under the wing of Bromley.
On the subject of ratings of the greats – I feel nowadays that if Timeform believe an animal is capable of hitting the 140 mark, they will do their best to apply an intepretation of a piece of form to raise the horse to this magical mark. Sea The Stars, being an animal who would win professionally in the sense that he would always leave the impression that there was more left in the tank if needed, was never going to flatter himself on the weights and measures ratings front. Timeform got him up to 140 on interpreting that in the Irish Champion Stakes, Mastercrafsman, who was beaten five lengths, ran only marginally below the level of his York performance when beaten a length.
I’m sure if Nijinsky’s career happened now they’d interpret the King George victory to move him up from his 138 into the 140’s applying the same subjective logic that they ‘ just know’ he’s a 140 + horse.
Now has to complete the final step and succeed as a first rate sire of sires. Incredible to think that both Nijinsky and Mill Reef, fantastic sires as well as racehorses, now have almost extinct male lines.
Had a hunch I’d erred almost as soon as I published -and have the annuals on a shelf 4 ft away too but thought my memory was better than it really is – also, Galileo got a 134. Like many I thought Hawk Wing was flattered and all the cards fell right for him in that Lockinge to enable him to return that rating. Dreadful flop at stud.
Fascinating read but only due to the co operation of Haggas, Gosden,Tate and Nicholls – I would add that there had come a time when it was considered that early two year olds training on to win classics had become obsolute – then out of the blue came Generous and Dr Devious, both May debutantes, who won Epsom Derbies.
The present Ballydoyle set up have also had a good few early appearing juveniles training on to win classics, including Rock of Gibraltar who I’m sure still has the highest Timeform rating of any A P O’Brien horse on the flat. Also,relatively recently, Jim Bolger’s Dawn Approach ran in the very first juvenile race of the season.
These occurrences are imo a plus for the sport, much preferable than the time when there was an over obsession with once raced backend maiden winners from the glamour yards.
Many will recall the almost euphoric hyping up of a Luca Cumani trained animal called Pirate Army in the late 1980’s, who’d won a late season Newmarket maiden (Old Vic unplaced in the same event). God knows how many articles appeared in print during the winter predicting all sorts of big race successes for him and it was silently deemed a sin not to include him in any list of horses to follow – was quite tickled when predictions proved wayward so fed up I was of hearing the name repeated so often.
Yep, Cracaval had won the Vase then was unplaced in Troy’s Derby with Shoemaker aboard. Ile De Bourbon had won the Coronation Cup by a wide margin on his previous start. Had the years mixed up and should have double checked – have the 79 form book in my hand now but was too lazy to check properly.
Correction, relied to much on memory there, Ile De Bourbon had won the 78 King George but stayed in training in 79.
They were both run on the Saturday in 1979, which was the September Stakes first staging when King George winner Ile De Bourbon, having his first outing since, started at 1/3 and was turned over by Cracaval.
I saw Little Owl win the first ever staging of the Timeform Chase, which was for first and second season chasers. He was in his second season as a chaser, had already won the Peter Marsh, and had his task made easier when a certain Wayward Lad, in his novice season, unseated Tommy Carmody at the last on the far side.
Funnily enougn I recall reading Richie Benaud’s autobiography and for someone whom you’d expect to be an avid traditionalist, he was a big supporter of these razzmatazz formats, as he believed they maintained and renewed interestin the sport. Even if one feels no association with any of the manufactured teams, it’s still a team game and some may just relish seeing some top quality cricketers in the flesh – unlike in racing where it’s the horses that rule.
Have happily not watched a single minuite of this nonsense but the knock on effect is also detrimental as at a time when the chokker block fixture list thins out what should be reasonably in depth handicaps at the courses normally associated with quality cards, this has damaged them notably more. This is readily apparent when glancing through the five day entries for what now threatens to be an established six week period at the height of summer, every summer.
I hope and pray this dreadful ill thought out project fails abysmaly. Am not sure what the average crowds are for Brigadier Gerard evening at Sandown, or Winter Hill night at Windsor, but going back to basics and staging more traditional cards like this on midweek evenings with the emphasis on the quality of racing is surely the wisest path to take for attempting to reinvigorate genuine interest in the sport – though I fear things are past the point of no return and the game will just have to reset itself on a lower plain.
