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It was a very dignified and surprisingly understated farewell but I was surprised how superficial the closing montage was, virtually ignoring the Graham Goode era apart from Dancing Brave and a couple of others in favour of much more recent clips.
Before that, it was only really Graham Cunningham who slipped in reminders that it was Channel 4’s last day.
A roll call and clip of the many presenters, pundits and commentators over the years would have been good but sadly it was missing.
Rishi Persad and Mick Fitzgerald speaking fondly of “the last four years” seemed a bit incongruous considering the longevity of the channel’s coverage overall.
And no sign of a collection of funnies and bloopers. All strangely low key and unsatisfactory, perhaps an emblem of how Channel 4’s coverage had become.
Simon Holt seemed positively gloomy at the end, as well he might, and contrasted with Richard Hoiles looking and sounding very pleased with himself at Chepstow, as indeed he might, considering he has inherited the top commentator’s role thanks to John Hunt’s loyalty to the BBC.
Channel 4 managed to go out with a whimper, not a bang, but I certainly agree that we will probably come to look back on their tenure with affection.
It’s great that there are so many opportunities for people to go racing on Boxing Day when many are on holiday and can get out.
The racing authorities have often been criticised over the years for staging meetings on days and at times when people aren’t around so if a good number of meetings are scheduled when people are available, so much the better.
It was great when we used to have 16 meetings on Easter Monday, another prime example of staging meetings when racegoers are most likely to be around. Not to mention the many point-to-points.
It used to be great watching the greyhound racing on an ITV 4 when the horse racing was off in the winter because of the weather. There was occasionally a double-header with two tracks covered.
I remember one Saturday in February when there was only greyhound racing from Harringay on World of Sport because both ITV horse racing meetings were off. The BBC’s meeting was also off but Kempton, which survived and did race, was not televised.
Nobody switched to Kempton in such circumstances in those days. Now, of course, the TV coverage would switch there but in those days it didn’t because it was less easy and there were no betting shop pictures to take.
Gary Newbon used to present the greyhound racing coverage, with commentary usually by Reg Gutteridge, better known for his boxing commentaries.
It was all fairly pedestrian as a spectacle, especially Reg’s low-key and seriously lacking in excitement commentaries. Sad that those tracks are no more.
Similarly, the days of the BBC TV Greyhound Trophy on Sportsnight on a Wednesday was a highlight for several years for greyhound fans. It was presented by Harry Carpenter and taken very seriously.
Expect a return to the old Radio Two-style awful links and puns when Brough Scott returns to the fold.
They got so cringeworthy towards the end of his Channel 4 days that it was often excruciatingly contrived.
As in: “Galileo (or whoever) certainly showed a good turn of foot there. One man who always shows a good turn of foot – John McCririck.”
Cue loud laughing and an equally corny response from McCririck.
Brough’s awful puns became legendary for the wrong reasons. His on-screen double act with John Oaksey was always cringe making, with Oaksey insisting on referring to him as “Scott”.
No doubt his new role will see him becoming the wise old sage in the way taken in recent years by Alastair Down in his “purple prose” reflections for big meetings like Cheltenham.
Still haven’t heard about an ITV role for Emma Spencer (who is actually competent and good at what she does) and Tanya Stevenson yet (who, er, isn’t).
It all seems positively underwhelming. Thank the Lord for the Great Survivors Rishi Persad and Mick Fitzgerald (not).
Good old Robert Cooper’s quietly underspoken wit and self-deprecating style is not to be taken too seriously. He is a bit of a maverick but likes to send himself up and gently poke fun at things.
He won’t have been being entirely serious but lots of people are quite capable of watching racing without being totally dependent on the link with betting.
I and many others can cheerfully watch racing without wanting to know much about the betting.
A bit of an over-the-top response by Matt Chapman, to be honest. If he can’t come up with a witty response and has to sit pulling stupid faces, it hardly reflects greatly on him.
Tommo was just being Tommo. No harm intended and no doubt no offence taken.
It’s the po-faced attitude of not being able to have the odd silly joke that has made the current Channel 4 line-up such a bore at times. At least Tommo and his cringeworthy jokes brought a bit of light-hearted banter to the Morning Line, even though sometimes you could cheerfully throw a brick through the TV at times.
Thanks for the reply; I still make it only 60 outside of Ireland; are you including Folkestone?
A lot of purists insist quite rightly on counting Newmarket as two courses, the July course and the Rowley Mile, for official counts of the number of racecourses, rather than just the name of the town.
Not surprising when they have completely separate courses and grandstands.
This could be the reason why you say there are 60 courses but others say 61.
I fell foul of this many years ago when I originally completed my tour of visiting every racecourse in the country.
I was proudly celebrating visiting every course until it was pointed out to me that I had only visited the July Course and not the Rowley Mile. I hastily corrected this and scheduled a visit to the Rowley Mile to rectify the glaringly obvious accounting error.
Simon Holt seems to have been treated pretty shabbily judging by his Weekender column.
He was kept hanging on ITV for six months seemingly when it was obvious to him that they had no intention of keeping him on, even in a Graham Goode-style secondary role when Simon ironically got his chance at the expense of GG.
The biggest joke is that having Richard Hoiles as the main commentator is hardly a new voice considering how often he has been heard and sometimes seen on Channel 4.
I suspect the ITV team will be distinctly underwhelming. I bet the viewing figures will prove very disappointing because it seems a distinctly uninspiring line-up for racing fans, never mind the hordes of young viewers who will no doubt be clamouring to be prised away from their mobile phones and selfie stunts to sit watching horses and not-so-sparkling presenters for the afternoon.
I’m sure Mick Fitzgerald and Rishi Persad are just what a thrusting new and younger audience have been waiting for!
It’s great that Hereford has reopened. There was good coverage of the new era in the Racing Post.
The rise of the phoenix from the ashes seems to owe its new lease of life to a change of personnel at ARC and a more benign approach to supposed racecourse assets. It’s the most unlikely comeback since Lazarus and very good news as far as I’m concerned.
The omens appear to be good from the enthusiastic welcome that the reopening has been given.
It’s a shame that there will be no comeback for sister course Folkestone but that was always a much more unpopular and less well supported course.
My visits there were always very enjoyable but the Kent course seems, from the Racing Post update, to be being used as a dumping ground for equipment being used by workmen busy on housing projects nearby.
It’s a shame to see these courses go but I remember being reminded on this forum years ago that sentiment has no place when it is hard-headed business acumen that is needed to run racecourses profitably.
I still regret never getting to Teesside Park before it closed in 1981, especially as I had been to nearby Sedgefield several times by then.
I remember hearing about the closure in a cursory one-sentence mention on a Radio 2 sports desk bulletin. I also remember when it was announced that Lanark was closing.
A scheme to reopen Lincoln quite a few years ago, for point-to-points, I seem to remember, came to nothing.
Stil he’s better than the awful Martin Harris who can send you to sleep during his commentaries
I still remember the two-horse race that Martin Harris commentated on over the jumps at Leicester a few years ago.
It was truly appalling. He made very little effort at all to add anything interesting apart from just saying the two horses’ names slowly over and over again.
No mentions of the jockeys, the trainers or any bits of form.
As David Fitzgerald has proved, even a two-horse race can have an interesting commentary if the man calling it is prepared to do a bit of homework and spice up what he tells the public over the microphone.
I’ve always liked Mike Cattermole. Good voice and style and an absolute gentleman. Two of my friends were impressed with him at Chelmsford when he said Hello to them out of friendliness as they went in when he didn’t even know them.
I thought Simon Holt’s comments about losing the top commentator job were very moving and candid. They reflected great credit on him. It’s a shame he is going.
There are shades of what happened to Graham Goode when he was pushed aside to make way for Simon Holt, who had earlier seen off Raleigh Gilbert as second commentator to GG. The wheel has come full circle as tastes change.
At least Graham Goode was retained in a secondary role. Simon Holt has not even been given that consolation prize.
Alastair Down wrote a very good piece in the Racing Post bemoaning the loss to terrestrial television of Nick Luck for the sin of becoming too synonymous with Channel 4 (or more probably for being too posh in these dumbed-down days).
We are going to have to put up with the irritating and smug Richard Hoiles and his Oliver Postgate voice more suited to narrating Noggin The Nog, Ivor The Engine, Bagpuss and The Clangers for children’s television. The occasionally too languid Simon Holt will be missed.
Just hoping the celebrations about Tanya Stevenson being put out belatedly to elocution school are not premature. I’m sure we can rely on Uncle Matt Chapman not to keep slipping her favourite word “liquidity” into his betting ring contributions.
Yeats – money isn’t the main driver for everyone.
I know that Paul but I’d had a good bet with CrustyPatch that Hunty would be ITV’s main commentator. It’s very disappointing
I think John Hunt would have been excellent for the job, I have to say, but he has done absolutely the right thing in putting his BBC commitments and future opportunities first. Very shrewd move.
He will still have his racecourse commentary opportunities and will be in a strong position if there is a next time. Nice to see that someone shows loyalty to an existing employer these days.
Clare Balding did the right thing in rationing her Channel 4 appearances to a few prestige meetings this year and has reaped the reward in her BBC work on other sports, including the Olympics, and of course the Paralympics on Channel 4.
I’m surprised you weren’t drafted in, Yeats, to be on the interviewing panel for luring John Hunt (or at the very least a very highly paid consultant).
Mark Johnson would have been good but his American-influenced style at the end of races gets a bit tiresome. Young shaver Gareth Topham would be excellent.
Simon Holt may be deemed a bit too languid these days, excellent though he is, but I just hope Richard Hoiles doesn’t profit from John Hunt’s absence. No doubt he might.
After hearing Mogadon Man Martin Harris make very little effort again at Worcester recently, at least anyone trying to improve viewing figures will know to steer clear of him.
Why on earth should Channel 4 spend over the odds covering the Arc for the good of racing when they have had the rug pulled from under their feet after years of commitment to the sport and will lose the rights within months?
The BBC did exactly the same and pulled out of covering the Arc shortly after they lost the Crown Jewels of racing.
Channel 4 would get a tiny audience for what they say are increased fees for covering the race.
Why should they now go the extra mile and put themselves out when the end of the line is nigh? It’s a bit unrealistic to expect anything else and entirely understandable to dip out of covering the Arc.
It’s looking a truly underwhelming line-up and I’ll be surprised if ratings don’t plummet further, signalling the end of terrestrial coverage.
We will probably look back in a couple of years and rue the day that Channel 4 lost the rights.
Most non-racing people and probably many racing fans will never have heard of the main presenters. Rishi Persad and Mick Fitzgerald are proving to be the great survivors, making the transition from the BBC to Channel 4 to ITV.
Both have improved and I don’t mind either of them now. Mick always seems fluent, capable and knowledgable, able to pick out runners easily and confidently in things like the Grand National replays and is probably often criticised unjustifiably, no doubt often for the sin of being Irish.
Glad that the appalling Tanya Stevenson seems finally to have run out of luck, unless she becomes the latest drip-drip surprise announcement, but she has managed to get her finger in so many pies as a result of her Channel 4 ramblings that nobody should shed any tears for her.
Hayley Turner, with her glottal stops, bad grammar and inarticulate waffling, is a poor choice. Another reason for Emma Spencer to keep well away from her, although it doesn’t seem like the Pouting Heiress is joining the team at the moment.
All in all, it seems the new team will make the present Channel 4 line-up look positively scintillating. No doubt it will all prove a big disappointment and ITV will realise they have made a big mistake and that most people don’t give a hoot about racing. I hope I’m wrong but the omens aren’t good.
Ah yes, bells are ringing, thanks. My thought of Windsor racing on New Year’s Day was I think a mixture of confusion and dodgy sublimity as there’s a Fairlawne Chase run at Cheltenham on that day!
Windsor used to race on New Year’s Day many years ago and the racing, featuring the New Year’s Day Hurdle, used to be quite a good card. It was occasionally televised in the old days as part of shared coverage and made for good viewing.
The course returned briefly to jumping when Ascot’s development work was being carried out and it was good when two Saturday cards in November and December were televised by the BBC.
Windsor was a bit unlucky a couple of times, I remember, when the rescheduled Ascot jumping cards were abandoned because of bad weather on a couple of occasions when they were due to be covered by the BBC.
It always used to interest me in the old days how certain courses always seemed to race mainly on one particular day of the week.
You could always rely in those days on Taunton and Wincanton nearly always racing on a Thursday, with the very occasional Friday just for a change. I remember being told years ago that there was a reason for it nearly always being a Thursday, something to do with the needs of the local farming communities, I seem to remember.
Then there was Fakenham nearly always having a Friday, apart from its Bank Holiday Mondays and the long-gone Saturday in December that formed part of the ITV Seven once a year.
Sedgefield nearly always used to race on a Tuesday and Leicester nearly always had Mondays, sometimes with a second-day Tuesday.
I always used to think how unfair it seemed that Ludlow and Pontefract didn’t have any Saturdays. Nothing much seems to have changed.
I remember being told that the reason that Pontefract’s meetings nearly always used to start at 2.45pm was that it was to give the local miners chance to get to the course after finishing their shifts at 2pm.
I presume those courses that had these seemingly unfavourable weekday meetings must have been quite happy or that there must have been local reasons for them having the particular “quiet” days on which they raced. If not, I presume the managements would have railed against the unfairness of it when other seemingly more favoured courses had lots of Saturdays.
The vagaries of the fixture list conceal plenty of interesting tales of why quite a lot of smaller courses seemingly appear quite happy to race on days of the week which others would avoid.
I presume grant payments from the racing authorities and TV rights payments are now a key factor these days in allowing courses to keep racing on what would be seen years ago as quiet weekday slots.
The management of Ludlow doesn’t seem to mind all those midweek fixtures and apparently remains a thriving, well supported and profitable course. Similarly, Norman Gundill at Pontefract has never seemed to mind the lack of Saturdays.
Certainly agree that the main reason so many people on this forum and elsewhere dislike Nick Luck, Clare Balding and Oli Bell so much is good old-fashioned inverted snobbery and class prejudice. It’s always acceptable, it would seem, to sneer at such people and brand them patronising and smug.
Nobody seems to have even considered Clare despite the fact that she is supremely professional, knowledgable and high profile. I doubt ITV would use her, though, and it wouldn’t surprise me if there are some really off-the-wall appointments that astound viewers.
I think ITV will want to have a complete change and it wouldn’t surprise me if Paul Ostermeyer proves to be correct in his view that, like me, John Hunt could be a very likely front runner for senior race commentator. I don’t think the languid Simon Holt is nailed-on by any means (or Richard Hoiles).
Just as long as Tanya is belatedly shown the door.
I still think ITV will turn out to be a big disappointment (no evidence for saying that, just a gut feeling) and that many of the critics of Channel 4, including myself on occasions, will rue the day that the channel lost out. Hope I’m wrong but I fear the worst.
