jennywales
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Through the Bins: At the End of the Day....AT THE END OF THE DAY……
Sometimes I wonder how people can have the stamina to endure 4 days of the Festival. I’ve been on my feet, off my rocker, off my head and in a seriously collapsed state after just three days, and one of them wasn’t at Cheltenham! I am not sure which is the best approach – abstain from racing for months and months in order to save up for one huge binge, or attend in small doses, day by day, at the smaller courses and just take it very easy.
Saving up for a huge binge has its attractions – you can plan, and line up parallel treats like a nice B&B and dinners out. The downside is that, at least for us oldies, it is tiring, and sometimes almost too emotional. The upside of the infrequent-ish visit to the local or semi-local course is that you support racing in your area, the course can do with your business and it isn’t nearly as intense (therefore more relaxed). The downside is, of course, that it is exactly not all those intense things that you love so much about the big meetings……
I am not, therefore proposing to undertake a detailed analysis of the 18th October Cheltenham meeting – it would take too long, I am too tired, and in any case it will be written up more competently than I ever could in the Racing Post.
Just in case you are disappointed, however (OK, unlikely, but I’m going to inflict it on you anyway!) here are some observations.
I did not think Fair Along could do it. And Fair enough, he didn’t. However, he was ridden very enterprisingly by young Rhys Flint, who is going to be a great loss to the pointing scene in Wales because he is now a professional (a conditional at Phillip Hobbs’s); Rhys kept him up to his work all the way, and led for most of it, only to be outlasted in the straight by Rose Dobbin nee Davidson (they got married about 4 weeks ago), on Mirage Dore. As it was a tasty 9s, and as I had backed it, both Rose and I were pretty pleased with ourselves.
In the next, I have to say that at one stage I thought Poquelin was out of it, he jumped sprawlingly at the water and did not cease to make little mistakes. However, St Ruby produced what must have been one of the rides of the year, getting up with a late run and doing French Saulaie, who I have always liked since I saw him win at Worcester a while ago, on the line. Ouzbeck did it expectedly well in the next, and Diablo managed a win (at last) for the Twiston-Davies yard, running what looks to be a decent sort in the Irish raider Valerius of Gordon Elliott’s, out of it up the hill. Twiston-Davies quickly followed up with a win for Leamington Lad, and then the 6th, which ended up with only three runners. Of these, Thyne Spirit toodled along at the back, Mister Gloss (who has been until now unbeaten and talked of as a potential good thing) made mistake after mistake, and then collapsed gracefully (or if you’re being kind unseated rider) at the third from home, while Ballyfitz, a very good-looking sort with a head carriage much like Racing Demon (he finds the way the grass grows very interesting, I think) came home alone at a hack canter. Thyne Spirit, bless him, was remounted (I must look up the new rule about that!) to finish second, thus depriving Ballyfitz of a clean sweep of all £22,000-worth of prize money! (PS Apparently Thyne Spirit will keep the second place but his jockey will get a ban for remounting a lame horse. I have to say that Thyne Spirit didn’t look lame, just a bit disconcerted, as he passed the post….)
I did, however, learn one thing today – and the joy of racing is, in part, that you are always learning. I met, purely by chance, two young people who were local (Cheltenham) residents but had never been racing. This was their first visit. By a chance question about how to order food, we started to chat, and they asked me if I would tell them a bit about racing in general and answer their questions. I have to say that the questions came thick and fast, everything from how to read the racecard to what happens to a horse who falls and is injured. I actually surprised myself with how much I knew! But the last thing I said to them before they left the restaurant was along the lines of
“Enjoy the betting, and the boozing, because that is a part of racing – but go to the parade ring and see the horses close up; it’s the horses that enable you to do all the other things, so pay them the respect of admiring them when they are paraded for your knowledge and pleasure.” And behold, when I was myself attending the parade ring I turned around, and there were my friends – looking, learning and enjoying themselves.
And that’s what racing, for the spectator, should be all about.
© JennyWales 2008
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