By the time you read this, I will either be taking Mrs Oakley out for a well-deserved dinner at Le Caprice or I will be carrying a sack of stones and a pair of leg-irons, looking for a deep river. The Cheltenham Festival will have come and gone, probably taking with it most of my
The refusal of Manchester City footballer Wayne Bridge to shake the hand of his former Chelsea team-mate John Terry in a dispute over the favours of a lingerie model received roughly the same attention in the media last Saturday as the outbreak of a new war in the Middle East. Racing hardly got a look-in,
Taxi touts outside greeted me with a hopeful ‘Bula’. Mynah birds squabbled in the jacarandas and teenagers on the nearby parkland were throwing long passes with a rugby ball. Not quite your average UK betting-shop setting, but this was the Fiji branch of Grants Waterhouse. I had stepped in seeking a little inspiration for the
It is not just the superstars who make a sport. In cricket the Vaughans and Pietersens win the headlines but it is the gritty Paul Collingwoods, making runs when others are losing their heads, who give the England side character. So who expresses jumping’s ethos? Try Warren Marston. A crowd-pulling name? Maybe not. But Warren
It is minus two and the paddock behind Epsom’s famous South Hatch stables, still dusted with snow, is bone-hard as the horses circle for inspection by trainer Jim Boyle. Come off on this ground and you could easily snap a collarbone. But there is not a whisper of apprehension. When Wunder Strike, who scored his
Where would we be without ‘all-weather’ racing on artificial surfaces? Where would we be without ‘all-weather’ racing on artificial surfaces? With Sandown’s jumping card frosted off last Saturday, I wasn’t the only one who scuttled across Surrey to Lingfield’s polytrack, where Betdaq had sponsored an extra day to keep the cash tills rolling and the
For me little that is memorable, and even less that is sheer fun, has been penned about football, apart from Gary Lineker’s definition of the game as ‘Twenty-two men chasing a ball — and in the end the Germans win’. For me little that is memorable, and even less that is sheer fun, has been
Advice should always be received cautiously. I have in mind the two hunters in the American woods. One fell to the ground, his eyes rolling in his head. His companion called the emergency services by cellphone: ‘I think my friend is dead. What do I do?’ The operator cautiously urged him, ‘Now, sir, let’s stay
It was one of those moments when a clunking great pile-driver comes up and thuds straight into your duodenum. I can weave through the form for a 24-runner handicap at the sputtering fag end of the season. I can summon the maths to cope with a series of cross doubles at, say, 13–8, 11–4 and,
How can Flat racing keep its public enthused when the moment a superstar emerges he is whisked away to other duties? Winning the 2000 Guineas, the Derby, the Coral Eclipse, the Juddmonte International, the Irish Champion Stakes and the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, Sea The Stars gave us a glorious summer. But at only
It takes a lot to keep me away from Newmarket’s Champions’ Day meeting but the prospect of an hour on stage at Cheltenham’s Literary Festival with Ruby Walsh and Paul Nicholls talking about Paul’s autobiography Lucky Break (Orion, £20) was lure enough. The champion trainer’s careers master might have been surprised to find the ever-reluctant
For followers of every sport there are trigger words, often in pairs, which immediately bring great moments to life. ‘The Thriller in Manila’, Muhammad Ali’s third fight against Joe Frazier, probably does it for boxing. Any bracketing of ‘Coe and Ovett’ brings back famous finishes for athletics fans. No true cricket supporter can hear mention
Watch young jockey William Buick in the parade ring tipping his cap politely to owners and he looks too slight to be driving home hefty old handicappers. The pink choirboy cheeks have ladies wanting to pick up the 20-year-old and cuddle him. But like other top riders who have had those good manners and angelic
Should we cheer him or shun him? There was nothing special about the race on Wolverhampton’s all-weather track last Friday night, a 12-furlong handicap won by Paul Howling’s Our Kes, nothing special except for the fact that the jockey on board had ridden his last winner in Britain back in July 2006, at which point
Variety Club day at Sandown, a splendid tradition which raises many thousands for disadvantaged children, is always a bit of a test. That chap over there in the tailored jeans and the shark’s tooth necklace — is he the star of something I should have watched last night or just a jack-the-lad from the local
It is the weather men rather than the steaks most of us want to grill slowly over hot embers this non-barbecue summer. But there are consolation days and nowhere better to appreciate them than Newmarket’s July course. The staff are friendly. Nobody looks askance at those who choose not to wear a tie and the
Horses, of course, have more sense than to bet on people. But how much do they know about what is going on? Watching the contenders parading before the Betfair-sponsored King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes, the richest race in the UK calendar, you could not miss the frothy sweat already streaming down the flanks
Many worry these days about the quality of British racing. Racecards are stuffed with low-rated handicaps for poor-quality animals simply to keep the betting-office tills churning. But the quality of the men and women steering them from the saddle has never been higher. You could not expect to see a better example of riding from
Half an hour before it might have been Armageddon. The sky was black as pitch and the rain was bucketing down, not the happiest sound in a yard which two years ago was flooded out. But as an athletic bunch of horses jingled round the copper beech in Harry Dunlop’s trotting circle the atmosphere was
Newmarket trainer William Haggas should be one of racing’s ambassadors to the world. Win or lose he communicates pleasure. Take Triple Aspect’s victory at Sandown on Saturday in the Agfa Listed sprint. ‘He’s a really scrubby little thing and he moved to post like a goat,’ declared the candid trainer. ‘But he’s really genuine and