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DAVID CARR |
Weblog: What do you mean the Wi-Fi doesn't work? The life of a Racing Post reporter
Old racing journalists never fade away
Resons to be cheerful amid the occasional late-spring hailstorm today.
There might still be a future for some of us. Perhaps.
It never pays to be complacent in this game. No such thing as a job for life nowadays.
And who'd want an ex-racing journalist once the press room door slams shut for the final time?
Well there were familiar smiles at Haydock from two men who proved that there is life after you hang up your laptop - or have it forcibly removed from you.
Such as Tony Elves, ex-Timeform, ex-Sporting Life, one-time Newmarket correspondent of the Racing Post and a man guaranteed to enliven any press room he enters with a joke and a booming laugh.
Sunderland's answer to Basil Brush.
Now reinvented as the agent and driver of Tom Queally, hence his presence up north where his man rode the first winner.
In between booking rides for the Curragh at the weekend, Mr Elves made us all feel hold by reminiscing about his first visit to Haydock as a student, when amateur rider Michael Dickinson won a race on no less a horse than Silver Buck.
Fellow 'Mackem' Ken Matthews still writes a couple of times a week for the Sunderland Echo but he describes himself as retired - but there is still plenty of life in him and he he runs the 50-strong Reveley Racing 1 syndicate, whose Swinging Sultan looked a handicapper to follow as he scored an easy win this afternoon.
Of course, retirement need not necessarily mean that your face is not seen again.
That is certainly not the case for former top jump jockey Russ Garrity. His teenage son Jack had just his second ride in public on Breakheart in the apprentice race and was probably less than amused to see the racecard run a photograph of his father instead by mistake.
But today's oddest sight was the list of non runners on the press room noticeboard, ending with "Rocksilla (DIE)".
Which seemed a bit harsh to the poor three-year-old, until I realised it was not an angry invocation but an abbreviation for 'declared in error'.
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