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The other possibilities are A3/Cobham exit/A245 & A307 to Esher or, dare I say, public transport. It depends what part of Essex you’re coming from and how fast a train journey it is into London. Whichever terminus you come in to, it should be less than half an hour to Waterloo, and there are trains from there to Esher are at 20 and 50 past the hour which take half an hour, and as others have said, the walk across the course has some entertainment value.
15 minutes with a clear run, but allow double that, because the last time I approached Sandown from that direction there was traffic queueing all the way from Esher down the A244 back to the junction with the A3.
Thanks, racinggirluk, especially the idea about a visit to a stud while there. Perhaps next time you’re there you won’t have to drive past.
If only there were some cheap flights….
Jeremy and Paul, regarding cheap flights to Germany, the city of Cologne is an easy 20 minute train ride from the airport. We stayed in a hotel near the central station, and it was if anything a shorter journey on the local train out the other side to the racecourse. You didn’t even have to speak German to have a bet, you just filled in tickets like jackpot/placepot ones here. All very civilised, and I’m sure I will look for a few more German towns with racecourses to visit.
Paul, you have touched on one of my big bugbears about new racecourse developments, namely the tendency to build stands with little or no canopies to protect racegoers from the elements – at least, those who aren’t lucky enough to be in corporate boxes and restaurants. Sometimes they combine this without enough terraces (or "steppings" as they call them nowadays). Newish stands on the Rowley Mile, Stratford, Windsor and Towcester are all guilty of this. What’s so bad about having a roof to keep the rain off?
Well said. It was a shame he couldn’t have one last ride from the Mark Johnston stable today, after all the winners they’d had in the past.
Interesting that in the last race Spencer went two or three clear and was in no danger, yet he continued to ride with great vigour to the line to increase the winning margin to eight lengths. No thinking about handicap marks, "winning cleverly" or easing down today!
Does anyone know why some sponsored races are titled “the sponsor’s name, registered as the old race name? What is this registration status? Could there be more of it, so as to protect the old names and guarantee they still appear in the race titles?
It’s not just the big races. Bread and butter races at lots of meetings were often named after nearby towns and villages, or were memorials to people and horses connected with the course. They weren’t household names, but they meant something to local racing people and provided some pleasing continuity by their annual appearance in race names.
This little bit of heritage has been lost because of the expansion in the number of fixtures and the blanket renaming of races with only the sponsors names. I can understand the need for that, but it’s so much less meaningful than the old names.
My interest in racing began when I saw a chaser called Tetra Humpty Dumpty running on TV in the 60s. Goodness knows what the owners were thinking of.
In more recent times Transvestite’s runs bring the inevitable comment about having a great change of gear.
I’m glad David has raised this. As a very occasional small stakes (and unsuccessful) punter, I wonder if I should bother taking 7/2 about what I think is a 3/1 shot, but I suspect that "value" approach will only work out over a very long time given the number of bets I have. More often I often see something at 7/4 when I think the right price should be 5/2, and it wins without me betting on it. So although the concept of value is appealing, the upshot seems to me, as a mug punter, to bet on what I think is the most likely winner, regardless of the price. Especially as the favourite is always top of that Racing Post table for total winners/runners.
Pip, coincidentally the only time I came across him was yesterday when I found he trained a winner at Fontwell in 1936 called Shipbourne, ridden by the famous amateur Lord Mildmay (before he was a Lord).
It’s a bit Catch 22, but it generally helps if you know his date/place of birth or death (or marriage) to get clues to find out more. Have a look at the familyrecords.gov.uk. If you can get to their offices in London you can search through big folders listing the births, marriages and deaths of almost everyone since the mid 19th century. Find him in there and you can send off for a copy of the B M or D certificate, which will have more information. It might be easier to contact the Local Records Office covering Ayr, as that was where he trained most recently – and maybe he died in the area. They might be able to suggest some places to look, or do some research on your behalf for a fee.
Thanks dj and Gareth, it was Antonius Pius that was controversially 2nd in a couple of big foreign races. Jamie also rode Powerscourt, who was disqualified from the Arlington Million after hanging and causing interference. Maybe this hanging is something in the way O’Brien trains, maybe it’s in their genes, or maybe it’s statistically quite a reasonable number of occurrences given his high number of big-race competitors.
I may be wrong, but wasn’t it noticed a few years ago that there were a few O’Brien horses that hung under pressure in big-race finishes? This dates back to the time Jamie Spencer rode for them – was there one case in the Breeders Cup?
Lots of names here that bring back happy memories. One of my earliest favourites was Pendil – the best chaser of his era, yet somehow he didn’t win the Gold Cup. More recently there was Grey Abbey, who like Dessie seemed to keep on winning against the odds. His Scottish National win was terrific. A front runner with all that weight, and unproven over such a long distance, surely he couldn’t possibly win – but he did, gloriously.
Thanks for identifying Vague Idea so quickly, Grayson.
Adrian’s post reminds me that reading the write-ups of each horse’s performance in the point to point results (when they used to be in the Post), you could work out there were some dramatic if not bizarre events in dire Maidens and Members races. And these would be conveyed using the most succinct abbreviations, long before textspeak was invented.
I hope this will be a cue for a few examples of amusing commentaries about dire pointing performances.
