Racing folk sometimes wince as the whiskered commentator John McCririck, a professional chauvinist, refers to his wife Jenny as ‘The Booby’. He was at it again in the racecards for this year’s Cheltenham Festival, but I will worry on her behalf no more. Two days after the Gold Cup, I was lecturing on Cunard’s Queen Mary 2 as we steamed through the South China Sea en route from Hong Kong to Vietnam.
Those on board were treated to an unmissable aeronautical display alongside the liner as a hundred big birds soared, dived, skimmed within an inch of the waves, wheeled, glided and co-ordinated flight tracks with the precision of the Red Arrows.They were, the commodore confirmed, Red-footed Boobies. Quite how such a resourceful, graceful bird acquired such an insulting name I will never understand.
Recollecting this year’s Festival highlights in High Seas tranquillity has been hampered somewhat, like my lecture programme, because when a jet-lagged Mrs Oakley and I arrived in Hong Kong the laptop with my Cheltenham notes was still languishing somewhere in an Indian airport, having failed to make it back into my carry-on baggage after the security check when we changed planes at 1 a.m. Even allowing for Mumbai’s midnight mêlée, Mrs Oakley was not impressed, and when I countered that she, too, has been known to lose things I was reminded sharply that two pashminas and a cardigan in four years hardly equals my tally of a laptop, a pair of Swarovski binoculars, three mobile phones and my best cuff links. Though they were expensive pashminas…
It was nonetheless a vintage Cheltenham and the lessons were clear. Never let statistics dominate your winner-search. No six-year-old had won the Gold Cup since 1963 Long Run’s doubters pointed out before the race.
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