Endless news from the BBC telling me of the Red Warning for firestorms in Auchtermuchty, the first since Mrs McGregor set fire to the Chip Pan, causing a column of black smoke that could be seen clear across the firth. Government advice is being handed out even as I type: Go immediately to your nearest…
Author: Capt. Kneesup
It was the best of times… but it was no longer the Aga of reason
In the Shires, Tory women are already preparing in their six-oven Agas the cakes and biscuits consumed during the hustings, as Rishi and whoever turns up for the triannual Tory leadership elections. They and their cohorts will promise to deliver whatever is perceived as locally vital and promise to be either more woke or more…
Newmarket July Festival Day 3
A dreadful day at Newmarket for readers of this column where we lost two selections in a horrific on-track accident. Both TRIBAL ART and SUMMER’S KNIGHT suffered terminal injuries in the Bet365 Trophy handicap. I won’t say any more, but I was already shouting at the screen before the accident, at the amount of scrimmaging…
Stand by to fend off all boarders: July Festival Day 2
The Hon. is diseased and I have run out the Yellow Jack to warn the bumboats, tinkers and itinerant matchstick sellers to stay away. I have had to move a number of appointments, and cancel a Sunday lunch that would have had a range of very splendid wines served alongside delicious food. I have changed…
The Newmarket July meeting – how cute.
As I sit at my desk, the summer idyll is only broken by the rolling TV news being broadcast into my office. The 1922 Committee is about to be called together, and at any moment I am expecting a call from No 10 as I become by accident, the last man standing in the Valley…
This next month will prove crucial to the future of racing
I suppose one might describe this past week as better than expected. In cellar terms, not a filthy glugging week, but more a robust cru bourgeois week. A bit of tennis, a drinks party, a soupcon of American cousins, some musical theatre, a brace of jolly (and free) dinners, and a visit from my travelling…
The Spectacular, The Not Bad and the surely unacceptable
Let’s get this over with as quickly as possible. Mea Maxima Culpa – I would have had more success at selecting Ascot winners if I’d simply opened the Rand Corporation’s, “A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates“, and pulled stall numbers out at random. (I recommend the book as the hygienic alternative to keeping…
As promised John Reid MBE’s tips for Royal Ascot Saturday
These were John Reid’s tips for Ascot today, as given to the customers at The Royal Foresters. It looks like a very sensible placepot list! The Royal Foresters’ motto for Royal Ascot week has been A Friend to Racing. With John’s tips record over the first four days, I think the Royal Foresters has more…
Too Hot for fun
Apart from drinking tea, when the temperature heads this far north, we deploy the electric fan, my last punkah wallah having disappeared back to Wolverhampton to join a train strike. With the tea and the fan, I recommend a trawl through any collection of Rudyard Kipling’s poems, which will remind you instantly of the miserable…
The Aga Can’t.
For a brief and glorious moment, I truly thought I was home free. Arriving back last night to Camp Tamarkan, the temperature was slightly north of melted engine block territory but I brushed it aside knowing that I had less than a week to go before The Aga was switched off and removed. The financial…
I might have taken too many steps – Ascot Day 3
A CORRECTION: The Cousin of Capt Smyly isn’t. She’s his Niece! Nice. He’ll be able to invite her to The Derby Dinner. I must admit I did think she looked more like young Beaujolais and less vintage Claret. The Hon. took me around the No 1 car park yesterday, on what she described as a…
Smiles for Day 1 and onto Royal Ascot Day 2
What a marvellous day. I spent the morning in the company of one of the best jockeys of the last quarter of the 20th century John Reid, and his brother Noel, having breakfast and chatting about the day’s racing and various mutual chums in the Vale of the White Horse. Then running slightly late, onto…
Bad Manners, The US Open and Royal Ascot Day 1.
In the midst of all the Ascot preparations, the thinking, the calculations, the decisiveness and confidence, sadly coupled with the loss of all value perceptions and risk management, I managed to scramble home from The Derby crash, by dint of good fortune and the bond of friendship. I cannot recall a more topsy-turvy year when…
The 243rd Derby Day
I have captured a photograph of the great tipster Prince Monolulu who would stand on the Downs by the rails and shout to the crowd “I Gotta Horse” as he sold his tips. In the world of Low Life, it is almost impossible not to find the steps of Jeffrey wondering through and indeed Graham…
The Derby Meeting – Oaks Friday
Overarching all that we do in these brief few days, the aura of Her Majesty’s presence shines out. From the top of White Horse Hill, the Defence College Military Wives Choir sang The National anthem as the beacons sprang into fiery life across the Vale and The Downs, as far as the eye can see….
It wasn’t just Derbys…
Quite rightly, there have been thousands of words written this last 48 hours about Lester. Everyone has their favourite stories and every hack has crafted lines in which they can tell them. I only met him once with Peter O’Sullevan before Peter’s annual award lunch, which I used to run. There was nothing memorable about…
I am struggling with cabbages and bad butchers.
A balmy summer’s evening and some catching up, plus menu planning and other bits and bobs. Firstly, those of you who follow the Golf will know that we had our second Majors win of the season – the winner was not a huge surprise… but then we also tipped the 3rd and 5th with Cameron…
A cracking dinner and Sunday racing – I had to write
Nowadays, one seems to get through most of life’s invitations pretty well. The starting point is nearly always the feeling that I am deeply fortunate that someone likes the Hon. enough to invite me as well. More often than not, one eats and drinks well and only occasionally might the table include an indignant liberal…
No Nay Never No More
I know – for one brief joyous moment you thought there would be no more from Kneesup. No, I will probably take a break for a couple of weeks, after I give you my thoughts on the second Major of the year, The US PGA; but meanwhile my “Never” refers to the new exciting world…
The FA Cup, Golf and The Lockinge
They’re racing early tomorrow because of the FA Cup. For some reason, I had it in my head that the Cup was next weekend and that this weekend we had The French Grand Prix. I spent 20 minutes proving to myself that The French GP is in fact the Spanish and that it is happening…
York’s Dante Meeting Day 3
Normal service resumed today and I am beginning to scratch the scalp. Certainly, some of the results have been very unexpected, but nonetheless, I am beginning to doubt my ability to handle a computer form book. We are 52½ pts down since January which, it could be argued, still makes it a bloody cheap hobby….
The Dante Meeting Day 2
Another (as in rare and yes we have had them before), profitable day at Raceweb Towers! The crowd at York was down – but according to the ITV racing presenters, it is because the whole country is in trouble, and has nothing to do with racing. With that sort of intellectual rigour, they should be…
The Dante Meeting Day 1
It wasn’t a bad weekend for results, which started to bring us back towards the sunny uplands, and away from the Slough of Despond. We had four winners on Saturday at 7/1, 15/2, 9/4 and 5/4. We had Max Verstappen win at Miami; entirely and as predicted because of Red Bull’s power rather than Ferrari’s…
All this and The Kentucky Derby
What a joy to be at Badminton. From the Car Park to The Members Enclosure was just shy of 3000 paces. Shopping with The Hon, and a trip to The Beaufort Hunt tent (the cheapest beer within 2 miles!) and several passages to get Rose and lunch added another 3000. Then I repeated The Great…
The looming of a long weekend.
I’m still slightly reeling – as indeed is The Hon. – at the result of Man City, Real Madrid. We had both been given free £5 bets on the game by Bet365, and both of us had opted for the Draw-Draw in the ½-Time Full-Time Result market, at 6/1. The first half was tense, but…
I’m frightened for the people of Marlborough
By the time I left Marlborough today, I was convinced that scientists from the Pavlov Institute had, under the orders of Perfidious Putin, invented a nerve agent that slowly removes all common sense in the general population over a period of time. This inevitably leads to mass hysteria and the breakdown of all law and…
Chester May Meeting Day 1
Many years ago, Brough Scott, the late great Tony Fairbairn and I went to see Woodrow Wyatt the late and not very great chairman of The Tote. The meeting was to discuss one of my rarely brilliant ideas, which I had discussed with Brough and Tony. We had agreed on a partnership in principle but…
1000 Guineas
The Almost God of Thirsk smiled briefly in our collective direction when I wrote, DUBAI LOVE is getting first-time cheekpieces from S Bin S and while he’s a perfectly nice horse the issue is his ability rather than his focus. PISANELLO’s Beverley victory LTO came in spite of major traffic problems in the last furlong…
I almost made 2000 Guineas today
A day of almosts… we almost had a wonderful set of fourfold accumulators come off; we almost got it right on Ricci Rich having the winner – we just went with the wrong one; we almost had a winner at Newmarket if it hadn’t been for some pretty poor positioning mid-race. I was almost Prince…
Punchestown Day 4
This looks like a day for favourites – or certainly top of the market players. I have suggested doing an accumulator at the bottom of the page, but I quite like the look of the last race, where I can see surprises being sprung.
The Guineas Meeting Day 1
It isn’t every day that we pull a 25/1 winner out of the hat, but that is what we did in the Bumper yesterday at Punchestown. We also had several decent e/w shots and at one time I thought we were in with a shout of taking the La Touche – but like so much…
Punchestown Day 3
Unlike other racing columns, this one is totally transparent in keeping its readers abreast of its own follies. Yesterday, and not to put too fine a point on it, finding winners was easy peasy if you simply stuck to Mullins and ignored most previous form. We had one winner in the outstanding Facile Vega and…
Punchestown Day 2
Not the worst day I’ve ever had at Punchestown, helped by a winner and a couple of places, which in turn were helped by the resurgence of Elliott and the skills of Jack Kennedy who was riding brilliantly. I was cross at my own dismissal of Mighty Potter as a third-placer, when I only mentioned…
No time to spare
I once had to write 1000 times Procrastination is the thief of time: Anon Today has been nothing but a sea of procrastinators delaying me from important business. I hope all their horses are rated 58 and only race at Chelmsford. The last and some would say the best of the Spring Festivals starts today.
Armageddon Management – can I help you?
I am in a dark mood today – not by way of any change, I hear the cheap seats mutter – but I have had a dozen stabs at this preamble. One piece of a now-lost 45 minutes was so full of end-of-days predictions, that Apocalypse didn’t really do it justice. Decisions made in a…
Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?
Showing a woeful grasp of history, the bollocks-sphere has rung with the mutterings of the illiterati, suggesting that the Bishops have no right to involve themselves in matters temporal; and that Cantuar is a Woke liberal who is being racist when he suggests that Rwanda is unfit for Syrian refugees, (but OK for Gorillas according…
The Irish Grand National.
I wanted to touch briefly on The Cheltenham Festival which the Jockey Club seem determined to have as a five-day meeting regardless of the outcome of what I have already described as the thin veneer of a consultation. I did however just want to give you a few reasons why I think it’s a bad…
Well Done Peter O’Sullevan Lambourn Open Day
I don’t know about Middleham, but in lovely Lambourn, the sun hit some 20º, and the day was glorious. The streets were packed with thousands of racing enthusiasts, several hundreds of members of a simply curious public, and what felt like thousands of children. So I quit the throng sometime after two, having seen enough…
So farewell Cheltenham…
Just one more day of potentially impactful racing at the home of NH racing, for which I have just two tips. The purists amongst you will point out the May Hunters meeting, but in reality, that is a posh Point to Point, but with more expensive drink. I used to go to that meeting primarily…
Welcome to The Twilight Zone
I have this vision of hundreds of people around the country, wandering around in their Jim Jams and dressing gowns, shuffling from fridge to kettle to cornflakes to toaster waffles while they try to transition – is that still a normal word, or has it been stolen by the thought police – between jumps and…
Sunny side up – at last
What a weekend for sunshine and sunny moments. Sam Waley-Cohen being hugged by Marcus Armytage – a rare and precious mantle now shared. Scottie Scheffler taking the Green Jacket after some spectacular golf under intense scrutiny and pressure. Both sportsmen set the highest standards for grit, determination, consistency and general good-eggedness, which left me feeling…
It’s Grand – but is it Cornish?
My day can be summarised by the outcome of the Aintree race at 4:40 pm, and my huge wager on STAG HORN. So appalled was I by the unfolding drama, that I hurled abuse and a half-eaten Cornish Pasty at the television, as I decided that STAG HORN had been bumped and bored and generally…
Lumme – What went right there?
By crikey – even I startled myself. It’s been a while since I did a bit of banking, but e/w doubles and trebles, the favoured drinking method in the Hillside Clubs and my preferred betting poison, delivered what I believe is called A Result. A total investment of 30 pts delivered three winners, a 25/1…
You’re not allowed to say boo to the Goose
Editorial Note: No people died from Covid in the writing of this article and the author has recently tested negative – again. Even as Thor’s Day gets into gear and as the first rounds get underway at Augusta, I shall be back at The Great Western Hospital undergoing what should have happened on Monday, after…
The eyes have it – the eyes still have it.
Before I tell you about my week, I apologise for the number of links I have included. They are there because I think they’re important and I hope you’ll click and read them. Most of it is considerably more illuminating than my own scribbles. I had lunch this week with my old chum, the former…
You thought I had forgotten?
Yeah, yeah – I know it’s The Dubai World Cup and that the shoulder races to the big one are all very high quality. Yes, I also know that they all carry enough prize money to pay for a 1″ advertising spot on the rear wing of a really ordinary F1 car, driven by a…
Cheltenham – An Apology
The management would like to apologise to all those who feel in any way underwhelmed by the astonishing absence of success delivered by Captain Kneesup’s team of expert analysts here at Raceweb Towers over Cheltenham week. As those of you who have dropped by for a glass of Old Bual and a little Seed Cake…
Race, kick, run, vroom vroom Sleep
If Cheltenham moves to five days, this is what this morning will feel like – except you’ll have to put your tweeds on, kick the empty bottles and the knackered spaniels aside and head for Cleeve Hill again. I don’t know how trainers do it… we were back home by 11:00 pm, but on our…
The Last Post of Cheltenham
There was a moment on Thursday when the Kneesup world took a definitive turn for the worse. Not the excessive prices that Cheltenham has been charging for a Pint of Guinness, nor the ludicrous absence of mobile signal in the 21st century; nor the woeful and controlled wifi signal that allows you to only bet…
Cheltenham Thursday St Patrick’s Day
I have just read some unutterable drivel that suggests that the Turners Novice Chase, while not totally brilliant with only the four horses competing in a championship race, is somehow still great, (and thus excusable), because we will actually get a great match race between Bob Olinger and Galopin Des Champs, and neither will be…