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Almost exclusively a diet of Radios 4, 5, 6 and Dandelion now.
Radio 6 (evenings only; the daytime playlists are generally a bit too safe) and Dandelion for the music.
Radio 5 for certain sporting coverage and the deathless Fighting Talk but little else nowadays.
Radio 4 for so very, very much indeed; although John Humphrys’ attempts to patronise and talk over anybody female, working class or female and working class are increasingly tedious. The tremendous Angela Rayner just won’t take the bait, try as he might, and you can almost hear him bristling.
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.
The 1994 elicits happy and painful memories for me in exactly the same way as it does Paul, having invested (for me at the time) not insignificant increments of my then library holiday job wages on Just So each way.
Red Marauder was another grand National for me, coming as it did deep into my period of fanboy worship of all things Mason/Guest/Brancepeth oriented; but in truth any National in which there are as many horses going home at the end of the day as started it constitutes a perfect renewal for me.
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.
Patriot1 wrote:
“I know Charlie Deutsch was injured but surely you could move him to the inside of the track and doll off the inside”.===================================
Considering what has come to pass this week, Mr Deutsch may well be wishing they’d have dug a hole and let the ground swallow him up. The silly boy.
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.
Wordfromthewise wrote:
“Interesting to see […] Tanya Stevenson on the credits as a statistician yesterday…”=================================
Yep, IIRC Yeats (I think it was) and I pointed this out on here during the coverage of York last August also. Without having watched any of the ITV coverage of Aintree this time, beyond the first fence and a bit of the National (see above), I wouldn’t know whether her statistical contribution was especially worthwhile. From the comments here and elsewhere, however, I’m assuming quite possibly not.
However, arguably the most groundless assertion, statistical or otherwise, during the whole of the Aintree week was probably the nugget from Dave Nevison in the betting pit just before the Foxhunters.
“It looks a quiet betting heat, as you’d expect”, he offered. I personally doubt it was, and why would one expect it to be in any case? The Cheltenham equivalent consistently features among or just outside the top ten races with the biggest betting turnover of the entire Festival.
Put on a hunter chase full of either well-known Rules or ex-Rules horses, or else repeat visitors from the pointing ranks, and that degree of familiarity will draw in the punters. Not a hard concept, that, really.
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.
Crusty Patch wrote:
“I’m quite happy to admit that I was wrong in my original criticism of Ed Chamberlin for being bland and wooden. He has grown into the role and does a very good job. I particularly enjoyed the programme he fronted from Kelso recently.Great to see the Borders course taking centre stage and nice to see the TV magazine schedule clipping of ITV’s previous visit to Kelso in the 1970s and archive footage of a race from that coverage”.
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Mistaking the voice of John Penny for Raleigh Gilbert’s in that archive footage wasn’t Ed’s finest hour, but to his credit he corrected that within seconds of Twitter’s racing hordes doing their collective nut with him and the rest of that Kelso programme was indeed tremendous.
Broadcasts such as that, and Wincanton the previous autumn, ought to serve as enough encouragement to the comparatively smaller tracks that if they can find a clear enough Saturday in the racing calendar and put on a rich/interesting enough suite of races that day, they can still secure themselves some exposure even in this era of just the one terrestrial racing broadcaster.
I hope the execs at Pontefract and Cartmel have been surveying the Kelso and Wincanton shows with particular interest.
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.
Crusty Patch wrote:
“I certainly don’t agree that Francesca Cumani has become the “lead broadcaster” ahead of Ed Chamberlin. She had a very minor role at Aintree, reduced to grinning toothily and making only occasional contributions when standing at the table as part of the Gang of Four.”=============
…Most memorable of those contributions being to talk about horses at the bottom of the weights in the Foxhunters. Problems there.
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.
Paul Ostermeyer wrote:
“Julian Wilson was an appalling commentator and Hanmer was like mogadon – boring and monotonous. It could be the most exciting race possible but Hanmer would never change his tone or expression.Time and nostalgia plays funny tricks with the mind ….. in those days TV coverage was limited to ITV and the Beeb and only if you went racing were you exposed to other commentators so there was little to compare with.
Nowadays even the “average” commentators are better than the commentators of old.
I realise this may be considered heresy in places but, even at his prime, I think Peter O’Sullevan would struggle to be the top commentator up against the current crop.”
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No, that’s actually bang on, Paul. The relative paucity of regularly heard contemporaries to judge him against (in the sense that one couldn’t continuously compare him to up to twenty Racetech and heaven knows how many other providers’ callers in bookies or online for most of his career), compared with, perhaps, a disproportionate deference to that nonetheless wonderful voice of his, did I think lead to his reputation as a commentator being burnished a little.
Funnily enough my trawling through Espmadrid’s inexhaustible stockpile of old racing videos on Youtube does occasionally unearth Racetech (or antecedent) commentaries in which John Hanmer is not only more animated than one might expect but also more inclined to comment on how well the participants are travelling and jumping than Sir Peter ever was – his work on a three-runner conditions hurdle at Towcester hastily programmed one year to replace a number of Champion Hurdle trials lost to the weather is actually pretty sound.
On the other hand, and worryingly considering he got the National gig for so many years, give Hanmer a large field to contend with and he often floundered. Check out the Youtube footage of an umpteen-runner Folkestone novice chase, in which some of the runners don’t get a first mention until after halfway. Nobody on the Racetech roster would be allowed to get away with that nowadays.
The least said about some of Mr Wilson’s commentaries, especially the notorious “dead horse” reference in the 1989 National, so much the better.
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.
Paul Ostermeyer wrote:
“I thought he completely fluffed the drama of the runner-up making such a late challenge. He’d kind of switched off to concentrate on Tiger Roll, then had to compensate with something about him ‘slowing dramatically’ without any real sense of how close Mullins had come to winning.”This probably comes under the “too much information” category but I listened to the race whilst soaking in the bath so had the Five Live commentary which sounded interesting at the end.
When I actually got to see the finish I thought that’s nothing like how it sounded on the radio – so I can fully see where you’re coming from Joe – I’m all the more convinced Matt Hill, if he was going to be used at all, should have been out at the Canal turn and Dazzer should have been in the Grandstand”.
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I reverted to Five Live commentary in the car after the giant TV screen hired for the Hornby Castle point-to-point went phut a fence or two into the race proper; and goodness me, yes, didn’t Matt Hill nearly drop the highest profile commentary bollock since Trevor Denman’s unfortunate “Zenyatta, Zenyatta, Zenyatta, Blame…” finish to the 2010 Breeders’ Cup Classic. Heaven help him had Tiger Roll been mugged.
Hill had indeed been deployed out in the country for all of his previous Grand Nationals for Five Live during the mid-late 2000s and would have been best deployed out there again. I fear, however, that somewhere along the line the production team at Five Live got a bit too enchanted with the idea of making some sort of cultural exchange narrative out of Hill’s working on the National at the same time as John Hunt’s working on the Gold Coast.
…Which, considering any sports broadcast should always be about the protagonists first and foremost and about its commentators a very long way down the line, does rather betray a bit of a lack of professional judgment. Whatever Five Live picks up a Sony Award for in 2018, I doubt it will be this.
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.
Paul Ostermeyer wrote:
“I know a large amount of profit at racecourses comes from the sale of alcohol but I have to confess I really am at a loss as to why anyone needs alcohol when they go racing.Is the product on offer so poor it cannot be savoured or enjoyed without those attending having to consume alcohol – if the answer is yes then racing has a fundamental problem.
Are individuals lives so shallow they cannot enjoy an afternoon out or relax without having to consume a recreational drug?
They may sound naive questions but I really do struggle to understand the attraction of alcohol and peoples dependency on it.”
I don’t know if the above risks taking a slightly reductive view of anyone who sees fit to partake of an alcoholic beverage at a race meeting. Either way, as I’ve probably mentioned before on these pages donkey’s years ago, the issue for me is less about whether any alcohol is drunk and more about what is drunk.
There wouldn’t be anywhere near the same sort of profits returned if racecourse bars stuck to certain types of real ale, but then there wouldn’t necessarily be the same propensity for violence and disorder either.
Or to put it another way:
1) Have you ever tried to chug down as many pints of Old Peculier in an afternoon as pints of strong, cheap nitro-piss? Bet you won’t have got very far – it’s intrinsically harder to drink quicker.
2) Have you ever seen a punch-up of the sorts witnessed at Ascot or Goodwood of late at a real ale festival? Thought not.
3) Have you ever seen much in the way of trouble at Wincanton, where Badger Ales predominate in the refreshment areas? Me neither.
4) Have you ever seen anyone working at Wincanton with one of those accursed backpacks full of nasty lager on their backs, dispensing at will? Again, me neither.
My regular carshare friend at point-to-points espouses a further theory. Having seen such footage of the recent brawls as has been made public, he’s convinced that the level and intensity of violence perpetrated could not be performed by people merely full of alcohol, as diminishing returns would eventually kick in and the punches become more mistimed and ultimately aimless.
Instead, there must be some not insignificant element of drug-taking in the mix, too, probably cocaine but not exclusively, and the frequent impossibility of getting into a toilet cubicle to use it for its intended purpose at many Saturday Rules fixtures he’s attended in the recent past just adds to his suspicions.
If there is any kernel of truth in those assertions, and accepting that there’d be little way of checking adequately whether someone had taken a fistful of pills or a wrap in the coach to the races an hour prior, is there nevertheless some mileage in making checks of bags and belongings on entry to the racecourse a heck of a lot more stringent than is currently the case, if indeed not absolutely mandatory for certain high-profile/weekend fixtures?
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.
My username was created at the suggestion of Geoff Sanderson, former assistant trainer to Ted Caine and thus assistant trainer of Quixall Crossett, way back in autumn 2000.
Geoff was keen for me to add an occasional opinion piece to the other editorial and statto stuff I was doing for Quixall’s website at the time; and whilst the idea of a graphic comprising my head superimposed on the top of Nelson’s Column never materialised, the column of pieces itself did.
The avatar is pretty self-explanatory. As the son of a German immigrant utterly wedded to the fundamentally peace-seeking and cooperative ideals of the EU, and with too much of my personal, ideological and (latterly) professional DNA intertwined with those ideals, there will always be twelve stars around my heart.
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.
As much as I like Kempton & jumps racing in general today’s card is dreadful, a far cry from the days of the Charisma Gold Cup which always used to be a good quality 3 mile chase to start the season. It’s a real shame that this race & the Mercedes Benz Chase at Chepstow have been consigned to the history books.
Both the Charisma and the Mercedes-Benz do still exist in so far as the 3m handicap chases on the two respective cards have been retained continuously right through to the present day.
However, whilst the present-day Mercedes-Benz doesn’t differ hugely from its 1980s/1990s self in terms of the calibre of animal it can in theory or in practice attract, the Charisma has suffered several successive and increasingly humiliating donwgrades. I wrote this piece about its sad demise back in 2009, and it pretty much all holds true even now:
http://thatracingblog.blogspot.co.uk/2009/10/kempton-in-october-is-little-fun-with.html
Per Patriot’s question, yes, the feature hurdle is the erstwhile Captain Quist, and until it was increased slightly in distance in recent years the then-2m handicap chase was still recognisably what was once the Ferry Boat Chase.
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.
Twelfth home and beaten 89l they may well have been, but Paul Moloney’s completion aboard the dyspraxic gelding-cum-cyborg Buywise in 2016 was one hell of a feat of jockeyship.
I’ve no idea whether Chris Pitt intends to produce an updated version of Go Down to the Beaten, his account of a specific non-winner from each of the past however many decades worth of Nationals, but I’d nominate Buywise and his connections as the candidates for that year’s renewal any day of the week.
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.
None of any great length solely under Rules spring immediately to mind, but Mark Johnston’s farrier Justin Landy has already racked up a few sequences of between six and eight straight wins in his nascent point-to-point/hunter chase training career. If you disregard his hunter chase runners, his string went unbeaten in twelve outings between the flags from December 2015 to January 2017.
I also remember Martine Flint sending out twelve consecutive winners in the 2007-8 pointing season, all ridden by son Rhys as he powered on remorselessly towards that season’s champion novice rider title.
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.
Red Hot Indian by Little Bighorn out of Pepper Cannister.
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.
Oooh, not done one of these for a while…
Favourite five (Rules)
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1) Cartmel (quirky, improbable, but very dear to me)
2) Hexham (breathtakingly sited)
3) Pontefract (proudly municipal and a joy to visit)
4) Market Rasen (the first to take summer jumping seriously from a prizemoney perspective)
5) Southwell (Flat or jumps, a humble and unpretentious pleasure)Least favourite five (Rules)
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1) Ascot (antagonistic, elitist, overzealous guarding of many halfway decent viewing places)
2) Kempton (too often appears half-heartedly maintained on any but the biggest racedays)
3) Haydock (lairy clientele)
4) Stratford (viewing mostly hopeless for all but beanpoles)
5) Doncaster (unless the needlessly strict dress codes have been relaxed since last I visited)Favourite three (point-to-points)
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1) Dingley (the best natural grandstand you’ll find at any venue, Rules or ptp)
2) Hackwood Park (imperfect viewing but another place I have a major emotional investment in)
3) Lower Machen (best-appointed Welsh course, and very scenic with it)Least favourite three (point-to-points)
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1) Brafield-on-the-Green (soulless, featureless, and source of the worst food poisoning I ever suffered)
2) North Carlton (prison grounds lookalike, needlessly zealous restrictions on where to view)
3) Higham (too flat for satisfactory viewing, fences too variable, loss rate too high)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.
Thanks for that Jeremy, not noticed that but have several editions including all the Ebor meeting on tape, will watch out for it in the credits.
No problem. It might only be the extended version of the credits at the end of a Festival week that she appears in; I spotted her name quite by chance at (I think) the end of the Ebor Saturday, after what seemed like at least a dozen pages of preceding credits, possibly more.
A very cursory Google search during my tea break has failed to find any mention by her or anyone else of this arrangement, and she does not have a Directory of the Turf entry that might otherwise have been updated as appropriate.
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.
Chamberlin & Cumani lack knowledge and often come out with daft stats, nearly as bad as Tanya’s.
They might even be Tanya’s.
I haven’t been watching the ITV coverage frequently enough to know whether it is a permanent arrangement, but on perusing the credits at the end of the Ebor meeting coverage last month I noticed that Tanya got a credit as statistician.
Whatever the permanence or otherwise of this development, it seems to have been kept awfully quiet.
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.
