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From Olly Murphy’s Facebook page:
I’m delighted to say Thomas Darby has been retired and will have an amazing retirement with Holly Tetsill who has devoted her life to TD over the last 7 years!
A winner of 7/27 starts, including a long distance hurdle at Newbury. He was also placed in 2 Grade 1s reaching a mark of 158 at his peak!
Happy retirement Thomas 💙
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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.
The final point-to-point until the autumn takes place this Sunday at Bratton Down (EX31 4SG) up on Exmoor. There should have been another fixture the following Saturday at Umberleigh, but that’s already fallen foul of the ongoing very dry spell.
The 2025-26 fixture list won’t be published for another three months, I’d have thought, but recent precedent suggests it will all kick off again on the first or second week of November, most likely around the Knightwick circuit in the Malvern Hills. Two of the winners at last November’s Knightwick fixture, Barton Sun and Gracchus de Balme, have had a pretty good day of it again today.
The new season up here in Yorkshire will resume a couple of Sundays into January, at Mick Easterby’s own course at Sheriff Hutton.
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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.
That’s splendid, espmadrid, many thanks indeed for sharing! (I’ve long since owed you a reply to a private email, incidentally – my apologies).
Obscured a little as it was from that sideways view, it’s nevertheless on the softer sides of unseats, isn’t it. We’d give that as “rfo” (rider fell off) in the pointing comments in running, for sure.
The middle one down the straight at Fontwell isn’t notably trappy, as far as I can recall – certainly not compared to the downhill one at the start of the back straight.
Yeats– this would have been among Alan’s very first Racetech calls, as he joined the roster in 2004 alongside Malcolm Tomlinson and Phil Curry.
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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.
Dale Benkenstein sent on his way by Lancashire earlier this week, it appears, and an opening night’s victory in the T20 Blast immediately follows. Possibly coincidental, equally possibly not.
I suspect that’s it for Dale as a coach in this country, having taken two counties to the foot of CC division two in the space of two and a half seasons. A shame on a personal level, considering his more fruitful experiences as a player over here for a while.
Let’s see what the future holds for his son Luc at Essex going forward. It’s been quiet from him so far this year, but I’d have assumed to see more of him in the one-day format anyway, what with Matthew Critchley continuing to block his most obvious path in the CC starting XI.
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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.
£30k would be weeny as an outright prize, let alone a prize pool. Hardly a ringing endorsement of the code or of the time of season.
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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.
Just watched the video for the first time. Unless I missed them there’s not a single hurdle or fence jumped, no sign of any artificial surface racing, and not the merest suggestion of rain.
It’s certainly selling a pretty narrow, and not especially representative, tranche of what a raceday experience might comprise.
Think I’ll stick to the £15 or under entry, access all areas, unvetted picnics and (usually) absence of cokeheads at the Yorkshire Area point-to-points, where the going is not just good, but reyt.
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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.
Large update on this thread to follow sometime in the near future.
More immediately, however, a quick question to the floor. Would anybody happen to know the precise dates between which there were two separate commentary feeds directly from the racecourse, please – one from the Racetech-booked caller and one from the commentator for SIS/Sky/whosoever else?
I’m thinking this must have started around the early May Bank Holiday in 1992. That does appear to have been the week in which both John Hunt (Salisbury 06/05/92; Racetech booking unknown) and Richard Hoiles (Bath 09/05/92, whilst Bruce Friend-James did the Racetech shift) made their respective first ever racecourse commentaries. John confirmed that was his first go in a YouTube interview with Simon Nott not so long ago, detailing how he’d even done a full recce to the course and back the day before.
The excellent Robin Carmody, responsible for so much of the original impetus in this thread, suggested to me that the practice ceased in spring 1995 ahead of the Racing Channel launch that November, though if anyone can absolutely nail it down that’d likely be hugely appreciated by the both of us.
I’d long assumed that the two streams were in deadly competition with each other, but that’s likely not actually true. They were serving two distinct audiences, one on-course (with a need to refer to colours, etc.) and one off-course (to mostly listeners rather than viewers), and of course there was a degree of overlap between the personnel working each service.
Indeed, fellow anorak and point-to-point/Equida commentator Mike Crolla recently sent me the link to an edition of Channel 4’s Morning Line, in which Graham Goode actually launched an impassioned defence of the parallel services, citing how a merged team would see some commentators go out of pocket and the remainder would be sent all round the country more than previously thereafter to the detriment of their wellbeing.
Certainly Graham’s first point was borne out, with the likes of Doug Fraser edged out of the commentary picture for a few years and the likes of SIS’s Paul Alster never making it onto the Racetech roster in the form we’ve come to know it since.
Thanks in advance!
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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.
Cool Roxy won eleven at Fakenham, of course, with nine other podium finishes from 26 course visits all told.
My favourite pointer Chesnut Annie won on ten of her twelve visits to Howick, including all nine between 2007 and 2012.
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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.
It’s interesting that Ice Saint pecked at the same fence a circuit earlier.
Horse or pilot error?
And error or “error”?
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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.
That sounds more to me as if the person asking her hadn’t been adequately trained in broaching those sort of conversations, as any boss ought to be sufficiently confident to deal with whatever the follow-up question might be.
An institutional failing, that, and similar examples likely abound across many sectors. As with so much else, I’d maintain DEI presents no insuperable headaches to employers or employees in and of itself, other than when the understanding and implementation of it is only partial.
Put it this way; if I can work my way round the intricacies of the handicapping system or a self-assessment tax form, then remembering to address people in accordance with their wishes really cannot be beyond my intellectual gift.
That’s easy for me to say, perhaps, working in one of the regular place-sitters in Stonewall’s top 100 LGBTQIA+ friendly employers. You’re absolutely at liberty to suggest that they and I found, and indeed deserve, one another. I’ve heard worse.
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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.
Updating my commentator spreadsheets the other day, I noticed that Derek was back at Ayr on April 28th, so the errors in January appear not to have led to a never-darken-our-doors-again instruction to him from the course.
He didn’t appear to be his usual ebullient self to this pair of ears, however, at least initially. He stumbled out a mention of the runners setting out on their first circuit in the opener, which was a sprint over the straight 6f; and there was a nervous chuckle inside the distance, seemingly to buy himself a second or so to sort out the placed horses behind the easy winner.
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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.
” A lot of commentators these days sound like they go by the televised pictures instead of using their own eyes.”
Broadly, the ones who’ve spent at least some of their formative education in point-to-points and harness racing, or indeed still call at them, are the ones less reliant on monitors. One thinks immediately of messrs Harris, Owen, Topham, Powell and to a certain extent Fussey, all still very comfortable with the binoculars.
Anecdotally, Derek was attending Hutton Rudby point-to-point back in March in his capacity of host and MC of the silent auction, and was heard to ask where the duty commentator’s monitor was (the commentary “box” being nothing but a trailer, utterly exposed to the elements).
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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.
My Bad Lucy (for an unspecified quiet life outside racing), River Tyne (for broodmare purposes) and Churchills Boy (to his owners) all confirmed as retired in the past week on Nick Gifford’s Facebook feed.
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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.
“Is this the ranting of a disgruntled ex-employee or an incisive description of the BHA’s modus operandi?”
Who can possibly tell, though it’s notable that the incursions of DEI thinking and practices into the BHA’s workings were so unbearably, unspeakably horrible that the author could stand the stress and strain of operating under them for (checks article again) a mere five to six years.
“Horseracing, needless to say, is no place for politics”, he opines. Mate, everywhere is a place for politics.
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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’ll eat my tennis socks if nobody’s quick off the mark in registering one of his first colts under the name of Nick Kyprios.
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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.
At 37 years of age Greg is far from too old to be resuming Flat race riding, and the tree surgery business he’s run in the interim will presumably have kept him fit up to a point (accepting that nothing is likely a complete substitute for riding itself).
Ultimately, his return will live or die on who is prepared to trust that his rehabilitation is absolute and permanent. The Johnstons, Iain Jardine and Sandy Thomson appear to have given him their blessing and support, though as the last-named has saddled the grand total of one Flat runner in the past five years that’s not going to be worth the candle in terms of getting Greg back on the racetrack.
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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.
Ginger, there was admittedly just a little bit devil’s advocacy about some of the points I raised back there. I’ve certainly not spent the past two decades trying to clear Sean Fox’s name, put it that way!
That said, I’ve just had a look back at the edition of the Hunter Chasers and Point-to-Pointers annual for the one season Ice Saint spent between the flags. The gist of which is that, in the context of his being stationed with a Ben Pollock yard somewhere near the height of its powers as a pointing operation at the time, he was a disappointing type.
A win was gained in maiden company around Market Rasen’s now defunct pointing line, but he was all out to hold on despite having been gifted the winning opportunity two out by the leader’s exit. “Weakened”, “Weakened tamely” and “no extra” appear in the write-ups for his three completions either side of that, and he signed off in that sphere by pulling up two miles into a full-distance Dingley Restricted.
The annual goes on to register considerable surprise that Ice Saint was subsequently able to win twice under Rules that following summer. But look at the four efforts following the second of those wins – all defeats by between 19l and 60l, all weakening efforts, including when dropped back to an extended 2m2f.
On the basis of which, in that prevailing poor heart, I’d not have taken a short price about Ice Saint actually seeing off any and all challengers if having kept on his feet in that Fontwell race, a 2m5f contest.
That’s all as maybe. I think it would be great if espmadrid were able to upload the Fontwell race to his excellent YouTube account (if he has a recording in his possession), for people to make their own minds up once again. When all’s said and done, we’re all relying on memories of a race from 21 years ago that few of us will have seen in the interim.
It didn’t do a right lot for Sean Fox’s career, either way – just ten winners across eleven seasons thereafter, a link-up with that patron saint of lost causes and fallen angels Richard Guest only enduring for about a season or so.
Interestingly, Fox’s final Rules winner (2008-9 season) was gained riding for Ice Saint’s trainer Matt Gingell.
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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.
