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Lovely to see Cartmel on ITV this afternoon – it’s a quirky, but beautiful course.
One of those courses where you see more on TV than you ever will on course, even from the integrity tower.
The nearest to point-to-point you’ll find at a regular course.
I think you can probably guess how pleased I was to see Cartmel gaining some terrestrial coverage this last weekend, Paul
. My favourite Rules course of the lot, although I’m still not entirely used to seeing the place with no spectators save connections and a few curious villagers peering over the stone wall. Cartmel in August means crowds, and big ones.Grand to hear Bomber on commentary duty also.
gc
Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.
Fakenham has the feel of a point to point about it as well.
Very much by design. The course was referred to as West Norfolk Hunt rather than Fakenham a good many decades ago, and the hunt of that name still hosts its point-to-point there every spring.
gc
Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.
A Csaky is a completely new one on me.
Replying to one of my own posts of nearly eight years ago, I’m now as convinced as I can be after extensive further research that A Csaky was actually Count Alexander Csaky, the third, final and especially loved husband of the sculptor Dame Elisabeth Frink.
In addition to occasional forays behind the mic, Csaky, who according to the obituary for Frink in the Independent was, “a cultivated businessman who loved horses, dogs and the country as much as he cherished his wife’s work” (in which, of course, horses and dogs featured prominently), appears to have held a permit until the start of the 1990s. I have found evidence of one training success, winning a four-runner Lingfield Equitrack short bumper around Xmas 1989 with the homebred Rawlsbury, piloted by a still-claiming Dean Gallagher. There may have been more pre-1988, but time and resources do not enable me to confirm this.
Either way, amazing what you find down the rabbit hole of t’interwebs sometimes.
gc
Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.
‘Afternoon,
In the hope that Robin still patrols these waters, can I ask him whether the excellent list he shared in this thread many years ago still exists in a readable form anywhere at all, please?
I’ve just clicked on the Mediafire link in order to check whether any of the 150-odd entries I’ve accrued through some research of my own in the past few weeks are already known, so’s I can share them. I’m getting a file not found error instead, however.
Very happy to be advised where to go if not Mediafire. Many thanks in advance!
gc
Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.
So rare, it’s taken another month to follow up. Good evening, Tank!
gc
Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.
“Graysons Column used that term sheepfriend not that I am suggesting you are him.”
Friendsheep, wasn’t it, Gamble?
gc
Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.
To my own list from further up this page, I’m afraid I must add three more examples of racism from people engaged in racing that have popped up in my social media feeds since the weekend alone.
Specifically: two gruesomely Islamophobic share-if-you-agree posts from a licensed trainer and a winning amateur rider, followed yesterday by an example of Sinophobia straight out of the 1970s comedy circuit from a prominent sponsor of recent vintage.
No names, as these were sent to my personal feeds and thus aren’t in the public domain in the same way as the previous examples. Nonetheless, I have gently suggested to the subjects in question that their posts, any of which would have earned them summary dismissal if shared in many professions outwith racing, do not do them particular credit.
As I said before, if the sport isn’t intrinsically racist, and I do not believe that it is, its practitioners don’t always do all they can to convince otherwise.
gc
Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.
This makes me very, very happy to read.
The Saturday just gone represents the tenth anniversary of the one and only occasion on which he and I met, at a routine Monday afternoon Southwell jumps meeting (76 runners across six races and a Richard Johnson double, my notes tell me).
A genial, wise, perceptive soul, it was a pleasure to listen to and learn from him. I don’t think we stopped chatting for the whole three hours, other than to refuel briefly on a plate of chips and raid the open sweet stall on the way out.
If you’re reading this, sir, my very best wishes to you and the new Mrs Maxilon5!
gc
Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.
phil walker wrote:
I’m sure Dan and Harry Skelton are a great partnership, but I find it rather unedifying that they are being applauded for winning a large amount of pathetically weak summer jumps races============================================================
I’ve never quite reconciled the idea that class 4 or 5 handicaps run in the summer are automatically weaker than their winter equivalents, just by virtue of when they take place. There’ll be contests around the south east jumps tracks this winter (and increasingly one thinks of Lingfield, when it isn’t flooded, that is) that will be more gruesome than anything a Cartmel on near-perfect ground can throw up in high summer nowadays.
Either way, Virgilio’s win and Too Many Diamonds’ narrow second at Listed level, plus the class 2 and 3 victories of thirteen other individuals, doesn’t read like a Martin Pipe-esque hoovering up of just the grimmest races imaginable. The summer jumping calendar has never been more blessed with nice prizes (Perth class 2 handicap hurdle this Saturday and Southwell class 2 handicap chase a day later, anybody?), and the Skeltons have merely proven a bit more perspicacious than most in targetting and bagging them. Good on ’em.
gc
Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.
GoldenMiller34 wrote:
The Skeltons are big dogs playing with puppies who are using their advantage of being a huge operation, soundly backed, to hoover up multiple morsels of money (thus denying the smaller outfits who desperately need some success and glimmer of hope to keep going).==============================================================================
I can’t agree that they’re denying other handlers any vestige of a living, considering the late spring and summer jumping calendar is as plump as ever it has been fixtures-wise and the Skeltons can’t run something in every race.
Put it another way: if the Barfoot-Saunt yard was able to bring to an end a win drought lasting nearly twelve years and well over 200 runners back in the spring, opportunities still abound.
One might as well suggest that Gordon Elliott should be asked to stay away from Perth on the basis that he farms meetings up there at will. And yet, at the most recent fixture at Scone Palace the likes of Maurice Barnes and Lucy Normille still found winning opportunities.
gc
Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.
Clivexxx wrote:
Their call center was/is rerouted to Liverpool during the day and is just fine The Indian branch is total crap not just on accent but efficiency too.========================================================================
Happy to report that my experiences as a Virgin Net/Media/Web/whatever else user of nineteen years’ standing would be the exact opposite.
The non-UK call centre operatives, as has been widely reported previously including a core of graduate and postgraduate level students, are intelligent, inquisitive (as far as the scripted parts of their job will permit them to be, admittedly), unstintingly polite and blessed with mellifluous accents that take little to no working out. They and I have never not enjoyed wholly satisfactory interaction when the need has arisen.
The UK equivalents… not so much.
gc
Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.
Whilst my back was turned
A horse ate a syllable
of this haiku.gc
Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.
Delighted to see that Lensio has managed to get out more or less in one piece, and ending on a winner also.
He can be seen with family in tow at practically every point-to-point in Yorkshire, and I don’t expect that proximity to the sport at grass roots level to be getting anything other than stronger still now that he won’t be having to spend as much time bombing it down to Wiltshire or Dorset a couple or more times a week.
Indeed, nothing would surprise me less than were he to have a wee dabble at training a pointer or two from next season, perhaps giving rides – and invaluable counsel – to one or two of the younger local lads and lasses. Watch this space…
gc
Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.
Of the trainers to have made the original complaints referred to in this article, I note with interest that just the 42 runners have been sent by Mr Nicholls from Ditcheat to Worcester in the past five seasons, and just 40 by Mr King from Barbury over the same period.
That doesn’t make them particularly regular visitors when one considers there are twenty meetings programmed on the Pitchcroft per annum (it picked up a couple of additional spares in 2017, taking that figure to 22); and whatever the rights and wrongs of the quality of their provision in the Owners and Trainers area(s), I imagine ARC would only worry more should the day ever come that Worcester’s more regular visitors, such as Jonjo O’Neill (235 runners there in the last five years), Neil Mulholland (140), Dan Skelton (130) and Philip Hobbs (130), started talking aggressively about going elsewhere to appease owners.
With opportunities needing to be found for sizeable strings year-round, however, wheresoever those may be, I’m not sure I can see that happening any time soon. In comparison, it’s not as if either Nicholls or King have too many of the sort of animals that need to be found openings in 0-110 handicaps in June and July.
gc
Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.
Wouldn’t you know it – just over a week after I originally wrote the above, the MD at Kelso confirmed the charging of ten people for possession of cocaine at its Sunday meeting…
gc
Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.
LD73 wrote:
“The only problem I really see is in what other evening meetings in the calendar would warrant ITV broadcasting them, the Brigadier Gerard night (with 2 listed and 2 G3 races on the card) is high profile with said races very often having a big impact on the Royal meeting – I am not sure that the standard evening racing fare we get would yield the same results”.================================
Sandown’s evening meeting took place on the same day as Chelmsford announced the framing of a fixture which will actually offer a little more prize money than Brigadier Gerard night (and include stakes contests), so there’s one possibility.
Given the almost Reithian enthusiasm ITV/ITV4 has displayed for taking the show to smaller courses on a few occasions now, I’m hopeful that a small programme of evening broadcasts could yet be framed to complement the Sandown event, comprising:
– Stratford hunter chase evening (framing the coverage around what I think remains Britain’s richest hunter chase away from Aintree and Cheltenham),
– the new Chelmsford megabucks event,
– the Windsor August Monday night fixture with the final of their valuable sprint series (perhaps augmented by the moving of their Listed event to that evening also),
– Red Shirt Night at Pontefract (again, with one of the course’s Listed events transferred),
– Glasgow Stakes night at Hamilton (maybe with the final of the course’s 2yo series moved to it also),
– a weekday evening at Cartmel, ‘cos it’s too stunning and amazing a place not to get a look-in forever (and because the executive there have never been more proactive than now in terms of framing class 2 handicaps).
That wishlist doesn’t strike me as excessively long; the potential for using the shows to promote the sport at below the highest levels is appreciable; and several of those tracks would be tremendous fits for the same sort of access-all-areas coverage afforded to Kelso and Wincanton recently.
gc
Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.
Bless you, Moe, many thanks! Hopefully more of my gentle prodding of the sport and its stakeholders to follow – or else just more interminable droning on about 1980s/1990s permit-holders and low-grade yaks. Lassen wir uns überraschen…
gc
Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.
