As you probably gathered from the results, I did not manage to get hold of Angelina for her input, (see raceweb passim), so it was not a great weekend on the tipping front. My physical condition was also hindered by a conference on Saturday night with the Madeira branch of the Confrerie des Buveurs de…
A la recherche des sous-titres perdu.
My relationship with the works of Proust has much in common with my relationship with Angelina Jolie. If we could get along we would probably be chums, but I wouldn’t necessarily want to tuck myself up in bed with either to relax. Also, I am almost Frenched-out, as Angelina might have said, having had a…
Whoops – but please don’t cancel me.
Now and then one steps out into the bright light of day and steps straight into a pile of the very worst sort of ordure – an innocent comment of a chum’s political statement, namely: Political Correctness is Fascism pretending to be manners. The disputed author was George Carlin, the American stand-up comedian, actor, social…
Let’s hope Mr Jobsworth stays at home.
It’s going to be interesting to see what August 1st holds for Goodwood. I had already decided to attend and was planning to join a throng on Trundle Hill where, on that magnificent and historic site, the less-inherited have always watched the racing. I suspect there will be at least a 1,000 bodies with picnics…
If the room stops spinning, I’ll give you some tips
When trains arrive in stations at 70 mph going sideways, or your marriage to Mr Depp ends up in court, or you have spent many happy hours in the company of your camera-wielding mate, Ghislaine Maxwell, the term “Train Crash” can be fairly applied. At 4:30 this morning, I walked away from just such an…
Never ask “What can possibly go wrong?”, because Murphy will tell you!
I wept all the way to the bank yesterday, with frustration, fury and sorrow. If I am brutally honest, and as many of you will know I am an infinitely lazy bugger. A fading international boulevardier with a penchant for interesting stories, a knowledge of racing which infuriates and delights me in no small measure,…
FICK FACK FOCK the declension of the Latin for stuffed
Some gremlin attacked the writing today and thus refused – unnoticed by me – to update the end product. This meant that the pair of you who read this stuff sadly missed out – probably – on backing one of our best days ever. Sounds like total tosh? Of course, it does – but please…
It never rains, but it pours
A frighteningly quick post today, as once again we face more midweek racing as attention turns to The July meeting at Newmarket and the Dante at York (both courses racing GS). You have to be strong to keep up this sort of relentless pressure and, as I showed in my last post, PROFITABLE! Even I…
In the cold light of day – the weekend wasn’t a total disaster
I have finished grinding my teeth, and I sort of accept Frankie’s apology with his admission on Sunday, that he should have come 2nd. Saturday was a bit of a blur and my eye definitely came off the ball, as I was also running a near-£1k Sweepstake that was effectively paying 17/2 to the winner…
“To win without risk, is to triumph without glory.” Pierre Corneille
I was reminded of Corneille’s view when wondering why I felt quite so deflated after Serpentine’s Derby victory. It is certainly nothing to do with Aidan’s training abilities, although his entry numbers must have an impact on various stakeholders. There is at least something devastatingly simple about Aidan’s racing philosophy and I paraphrase: “Contrary to…
Saturdays TV Races
Well, the Golf is 50/50 having lost Kevin Na in the Cut but with Tyrell Hatton looking to initiate a Day 3 charge. He’s still 16s but its only for 4 places now, whereas we had him for 7 places. Bottas has shortened and is now a 4/1 chance. The Indycar practice was enthralling and…
The Oaks – All you need to know
The picture above was taken one hundred years ago – it is the start of the 1920 Epsom Oaks. The winner Charlebelle is seen second from left and she was bred and owned by Alan Cunliffe at his stud in Tipperary. Her sire, Charles O’Malley was third to Lemberg in the 1910 Epsom Derby. She…
The Derby – Profiles of the Runners & key trends
THE DERBY RUNNERS Racecard No (draw) HORSE NAME (Trainer/Jockey) 1 (5) AMHRAN NA BHFIANN (Aidan O’Brien/William Buick) Unimpressive debut, (13/16 Curragh – Gold Maze 5th). 3yo career might have some shape, but he was 4th LTO with the first three taking minor honours in the Irish Derby. If you drew him in a sweep and it…
Pizzas In, Eyes Down, it’s a proper weekend of sport on the box
I have got to take some time out from my near-constant dismay at the car-crash that passes for nuanced debate these days. It’s just a stream of liberal, Woke, virtue-signalling, prurient guff that a small minority with little education and less common-sense, tirelessly promulgates in the name of change. Instead, I shall heave the shutters…
Fred Archer’s four runners produced a great race.
Went the day well? It rained, it blew, Madame took the shears to the barnet, and the racing turned out to be way better than I had expected – indeed the Fred Archer turned out to be a proper race, where an early tussle possibly left the favourite shy of petrol at the finish and…
Sunday, bloody Sunday
Well stap me vitals, and call me Greta – nine TV races on a drizzly, blowy Sunday afternoon and 56 runners between them. Just goes to show the vital jobs that race-planning, the NTF, and the BHA do in ensuring that public interest is maintained at the highest level. My friend McFly-on-the-wall tells me that…
I’m in no rush to get to the beach today
Am I alone in thinking that the thousands of people on Bournemouth beach, of which at least 25% appeared to be children, might perhaps have been missing the point? Am I going mad when the real news tells me that a very decent primary school headmistress is suspended, because she declared in public that not…
Royal Ascot: Saturday 19th June 2020 – Day Five
Our Literary correspondent, High Rise, sent me a brusque note today about my curmudgeonly criticism of ITV and specifically Francesca Cumani’s hats. He pointed out that the poor girl needs to keep her face free because she is on TV and thus, the wide-brimmed hat a la Ms Eliza Doolittle would not cut it for…
Royal Ascot: Friday 18th June 2020 – Day Four
Really tricky on Thursday, despite the 14 hours notice of impending rain and likely going changes. I was already struggling when I got tucked up by Roger Varian and his observations on Molatham’s last outing on Soft ground. “He’ll hate it” he said or words to that effect. Lumme, it turns out Roger, old darling,…
Royal Ascot: Thursday 18th June 2020 – Day Three
Well, what a cracker for all the Sir Busker owners! Madame had a small wedge on it and we spoke to the rightfully incoherent shareholder afterwards. We might try to speak again tomorrow. We continued our policy of bringing comfort to those more fortunate than us today, by delivering vital supplies to a family in…
Royal Ascot: Wednesday 17th June 2020 – Day Two
With hindsight, the last Magnum of AIX yesterday was possibly a step too far. Suffice it to say, that I was so drunk, I only backed Pyledriver on the grounds that he was being ridden by Sylvestre de Souza. I remember nothing after 9:00 pm, and this morning the idea of solids is too much…
Royal Ascot: Tuesday 16th June 2020 – Day One
No preliminaries, we all know why we’re here…… Kick On! 1:15 pm – Buckingham Palace Handicap (Handicap) “Cripes” as Bunter might say. Tricky or what? I have cogitated about this field for almost 40 minutes and only managed to narrow it down to a dozen. I don’t think the draw is going to matter much,…
Strange times indeed
If you thought this week that Time had taken leave of his/her/its senses, then you are not alone. Most of this week seems to have had every minute of each hour filled with angst at This tribal issue, and ennui at That. Do I really care if Sid and Bob sling a statue into the…
Love is a many-splendored thing
What might we have learned at Newmarket last week? FAR ABOVE could be very good if he goes to The Prix L’Abbaye, where he will almost certainly get the damp ground he prefers, despite spanking 11 others in The Place House Stakes. Does KAMEKO get 10f or 12f? My guess is he’s quite likely to…
We need some Guineas
It was a real delight to see the resurrection of The Pharoah of Galway, Peter O’Tool and his wise insights into the 2000 Guineas. On my side I had two hours sorting out the Gremlins; (for those of you with a technical bent, it was the SMTP routing handler which was set to Local rather…
Qipco 2,000 Guineas Analysis
If Pinatubo has ‘trained on’ he may be a once in a generation horse with the ability to turn this into a procession. There is, of course, no reason to believe that he hasn’t – he is firm in the market and Charlie Appleby clearly has a spring in his step. Certainly it would be…
A second run at the tips
Every now and then, we might be able to find the time in our grinding schedules, to step out for a light snack at lunchtime. Perhaps some potted shrimps and a chilled glass of the 1999 Jean-Noël Gagnard Chassagne-Montrachet. Perhaps a ripe fig and a small piece of the Brillat-Savarin. The sun shines gently on…
Apologies
Hours of work have simply disappeared when I hit the Publish button. It was the second time today it has happened and I have obviously got a gremlin. This, therefore is by way of a Test and I will try and let you know the shortened version of my efforts later.
One step forward, two steps back and one to the side.
I signed off the last note, “Onwards, ever onwards”. My concept of the S de Souza’s front-running ability wasn’t far off the mark, but it did feel lateral rather than progressive. We had you might remember a ½pt e/w Yankee for 11pts total and a 2pt win on his CITY WANDERER. We had a winner…
An unbalanced world around the racing
A terribly sad and worrying note from my chum Thomm in St Pauls, Minneapolis who lives in what might be considered akin to the Sloane Square end of Chelsea. In fact, it is less than 2 miles from where the police started this whole ghastly business and Thomm’s description of the last 72 hours makes…
Day 2 of the return.
While I would love to pass off my crude notes as some sort of well-honed guidance, the reality is of course that I am, like most of you, still getting my eye in. The things you forget to check beforehand – like Newcastle’s Clerk going in deep with the harrow. I hadn’t clocked a couple…
Astonishing how a few winners bucks up the soul
Well, that actually went pretty well. We saw a couple of decent maidens and marked some notebook performances; we had a couple of decent results and – thanks entirely to Alex “But-er” Hammond, we discovered after the first that they had harrowed the Tapeta very deep and the ground was running soft. Sadly I didn’t…
What’s got 720 legs and has just come back?
Yup – it’s racing. After months, and with sobbing flat trainers down to the last dozen of that jolly Burgundy they picked up at Cagnes-sur-Mer; with owners getting sticky with the sobbing trainer, and with Lambourn 90% convinced that social distancing was a binary option, we have 10 races for our edification tomorrow. Unsurprisingly and…
So much good news…
As various bundles of intelligence thump onto my desk, the headlines make for depressing reading. (I say headlines – I am from the BJ school of thought. If you want heavy lifting with an explanatory note, you need Cummings SPAD software v20.x!) Seven of the 19 Eurozone members will have debt higher than 100% of…
Claudius The Bee, by John F Leeming
John Leeming seems to have been a remarkable man. Born in 1895 into a middle-class Mancunian family, Leeming was an accomplished glider pilot by the age of fifteen. Some sixteen years later, and already a successful businessman, he founded the Lancashire Aero Club, the UK’s first-ever aero club for enthusiastic amateur pilots. In the 1930s,…
A Sunday Quiz – or questions that need answering
I am trying hard not to be grumpy, but I fear that I could easily become the younger cousin of that most despicable of all social stereotypes, The Sanctimoanious Suburbanite. Like the Remoaners before them, sufferers simply can’t stop telling anyone who’ll listen, why people in London are the real menace… oh and that Mrs…
If Sir Mark hasn’t worked this out by now, my name’s Dolores!
As Brighton, Carlisle, Nottingham and Worcester decide to keep the doors shut this summer, the BHA has published their fixture list and their future racing plans. You can have a look at the original press release by popping over to the DOWNLOADS Section, on the menu bar above. One key feature of these amendments is…
A healthy obsession with numbers, or the death of reason?
Almost every conversation in the last four months has inevitably contained a number, statistic or formula. Even the barely sentient will rush to tell you what the R number is, or why the death-rate in Bolton is so similar to that of Belize. We are surrounded by statisticians and number crunchers and most of them…
Three in and one out – the simple realities of rural life
A perfectly ordinary day to start. Brekker, a trip to the opticians to get new specs, as my eyes have been giving me grief since March, some work on the new project. For the Memsahib, a trip to her Pa with supplies, some 2MSD offspring cheer and a chance to walk our dog, Polly the…
Royal Ascot news! 120 races over two weeks!
Exciting news from HM Vineyards, where Her Majesty’s loyal advisers have produced an exciting programme of more. There are now six extra races, (Sorry about the Fake News headline) including consolation races for the Royal Hunt Cup and Wokingham. This year – and only this year – there will be three new races; the 14f …
Finally. A proper Sunday and a chance to catch up on some news.
Much like the Monkees 4th hit, “Pleasant Valley Sunday”, the Charcoal was burning everywhere last Sunday – not least at Raceweb Towers. Some delicious Lamb cutlets from a whole carcass purchased from my neighbours, butchered and wrapped sensibly at the local abattoir, some Tabbouleh, some homemade Treacle Tart, a bottle of delicious Antinori, and the…
Quizzing the future?
What Ho, tout le monde et Bienvenue to racing “in absentia” from Longchamp. Like a Shakespearian speech, the racing was sans crowds, sans le picnic, sans hacks (well there were five in fact, but that was the entire interested world’s press), sans alcool, even sans owners. Pretty well sans everything. That includes, in my case,…
Good eggs need your support.
Some years ago, I was introduced to Sam Hoskins who had just launched Hot to Trot, a racing syndicate which, in name at least, had all the potential of becoming a hotbed of syndicated lust. What actually transpired, was that a number of my chums secretly took up Sam’s offer to hotly trot and added…
Old Soldiers Never Die – by Private Frank Richards. DCM MM
This extraordinary memoir catalogues the experience of the author as he underwent four years in the western front trenches without even being wounded – an outcome that he himself rates as a twenty thousand to one shot. Private (he refused many offers of promotion) Frank Richards was born in 1883 and, according to Google, was…
What’s new and things to do
High Rise has posted two new book reviews, and I am thrilled to discover that I have actually read one of his recommendations! The reason I was so delighted to secure HR’s literary services, is that he is an intellectual giant, despite his penchant for a tasselled shoe, and I have always held him in the…
GBH by Ted Lewis
Published in 1980 this was Lewis’s last book before he died of the drink aged 42. A very large proportion of my (male) friends would put Get Carter into their list of top ten films, the Michael Cain version that is. Lewis wrote the underlying novel in 1970 first published as Jack’s Return. This book,…
Keep right on to the end of the road….
Somewhere in a rat-infested cellar in Hamburg, will gather tonight a little group of Aryan thugs to celebrate the birth of Adolf Hitler. I can’t tell you the address or the names of the participants, but rest assured some will meet – because that menace has never gone away. Similarly, because we live in a…
A view of the news
It has been in recent days, increasingly clear from all the various sensory inputs, that we – the general public – are becoming tiresomely self-righteous. Our moral outrage is relentless, self-harming, corrosively dangerous, and ultimately self-destructive. There is an alarming rise in domestic violence as partners suddenly realise that their sense of smell has returned,…
Waiting for Robert Capa by Susana Fortes
I have a friend who owns an original, signed photograph by Robert Capa, it is one of his most precious pictures. It shows three women walking across an arid landscape that one presumes to be Spain(from the date and the title). The woman in the lead is the oldest, followed by a girl in her…
If it’s Saturday, it must be the Nippy Girl at Dannero
Yes, folks, this is what it all boils down to – the inestimable sport of Trotting or Harness Racing. The latter, according to Wiki, is the more correct title and is described thus: Harness racing is a form of horse racing in which the horses race at a specific gait (a trot or a pace). They usually pull a two-wheeled cart…