The turf
Catching up
Robin Oakley
Nobody could fail to be cheered by half an hour's conversation with playwright Ronald Harwood, one of the pleasures I enjoyed at the weekend.
One time, he told me, he went to visit Maggie Smith when she was starring in one of his works. Reviews had been friendly, going on gushing. Theatre-goers were queuing round the block for returns as he went in to find the great lady putting on her make-up. 'How are you, Ronnie?' he was greeted. 'Oh, fine,' he said, ‘. . . strug- gling with a new play.' So are we, darling, so are we,' responded the great lady. There are no people like theatre people for the Perfect put-down, as with the late John Gielgud on Ingrid Bergman. 'Oh dear, dear Ingrid . . . speaks five languages, such a Pity she can't act in any of them.'
Another pleasure was to join the perfect house-party on a group visit to Charleston, the Downland retreat of the Bloomsbury set, decorated by Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell. As the lady tour guide took us with style through the intricacies of the group's tangled relationships, ending with Angelica Gamett's eventual marriage to her father's boyfriend, I was reminded irre- sistibly of the cynic attempting to describe Siegfried's latest encounter in the Ring to a bemused non-Wagnerite: 'She was the only woman he ever met who wasn't his aunt.'
From all of this you may gather that I was not in my accustomed position on the racecourse last Saturday. Indeed, the near- est I got to a serious gamble was investing a pound in five attempts to accumulate a decent score throwing welly-boots into strategically placed dustbins, and taking a position in a 'Guess the Weight of the Calves' competition at the Iford village flower-show. I felt seriously in need of advice from Wally Pyrah and Compton Hellyer of the Sporting Index spread-bet- ting firm.
Social pleasures apart, I was almost too depressed to go racing anyway last week- end. Watching the sport that I love appar- ently throwing away the prospect of a lucrative £225 million media rights deal with the Channel 4 consortium, just three weeks short of the date it is supposed to present to the government its plans for the future financing of horse-racing, was just too heartbreaking. Sports like golf and rugby which have pooled their media rights have hit the big time and become popular and prosperous. The history of snooker and showjumping have demonstrated how crucial television coverage is. But racing, it seems, cannot shake off the scourge of fac- tionalism. The top 12 courses and the other 47 cannot agree. The British Horse-Racing Board and the Racecourse Association bosses are bitterly at odds. Current deals run out next year. TV schedules are fixed a long time ahead. Racing appears to be on the brink of ensuring that a sport which should be a pleasure for the majority will restrict its appeal instead to an ever-shrink- ing minority.
While I was off the track at the weekend I did take the chance of catching up on some racing reading. Tony Stafford's Daily Telegraph Pocket Racing Guide (Collins Willow £9.99) is both a useful guide to the basics of the sport and an entertaining per- sonal account by a man who has long had his fingers on the pulse of a remarkable number of top stables. He takes you deftly through the comparatively new worlds of spread betting and Internet gambling and gives a real sense of the rhythms of the rac- ing year. But, judging by the questions I am asked, a few more paragraphs on handicap ratings might be handy in the next edition. I took with me too Timeform's trusty annu- al Racehorses of 1999 (available from them in Halifax at £68) simply to check at leisure how they were doing on the Classics this year.
The answer is: pretty well. Spotting the potential of two-year-olds for turning into top-class three-year-old winners and com- mitting yourselves to print in the winter before their Classic season is not easy. Like everybody else they had seen the quality of 2,000 Guineas winner King's Best. But of Lahan, the surprise winner of the 1,000 Guineas, they declared: 'Big, lengthy, rather unfurnished filly with scope. Power- ful galloper . . . will stay lm, probably 1114m. Almost certainly a smart filly in the making. Sure to win more races.'
Oaks winner Love Divine was described as a rangy filly who had shaped well in a Doncaster maiden, keeping on willingly. Will prove suited by 1'/4m and 1V2m. Sure to improve and probably at least a useful performer in the making.' Of the colts, Sin- ndar, winner of the Epsom and Irish Der- bies, merited the comment: Will stay 1 V2m. Type to progress further and win more races.' And the Epsom runner-up Sakhee got a similar rating: 'Will stay 1'14m. Sure to improve further and win more races.' If I had to make all my political predictions as far off the event I don't think I could much improve on that record.
Robin Oakley is political editor of the BBC.
Previous page
