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DAVID CARR |
Weblog: What do you mean the Wi-Fi doesn't work? The life of a Racing Post reporter
At least the sun is smiling
When the sun is cracking the flags outside but after a summer spent dodging the rainfall you find yourself working on news. Inside.
When the person you desperately want toget hold of seems to have gone out of their way to make their number untrackdownable.
When you finally get them andthe conversation goes: "Hello, David Carr from the Racing Post, could you spare just a couple of minutes for a chat".
"Well...................." The line went dead. And my quarry made sure they didn'tmake the silly mistake of picking up again.
When an earlier phone conversation went: "Hello, is that name of Group 1-winning trainer?
"Yes."
"David Carr from the Racing Post, do you have time for a quick chat about name ofhorse?"
(In a different voice) "Sorry, wrong number". Dead again.
Oh to be in the open air enjoying an eight-race card at Wolverhampton instead - which is not something you hear people say very often.
Strangely (or not) I had more luck the further afield I tried.
Overseas calls may be expensive but atleast you tend to get hold of someone who does not treat you as though you have got bubonic plague.
In Ireland, Johnny Murtagh was his usual talkative self on the subject of Britain's new whip rules, saying jockeys will have to adapt but pointing out that the real losers may be owners who find them saddled with an expensive but lazy horse who cannot win as the coercion it needs is now illegal.
Frenchman Gerald Mosse has ridden a lot in Hong Kong, where 'don'tspare the horses' is the watchword of a gambling-mad population who expect to see maximum effort made on the animal they have backed and he said: "If I hit seven times I get ten years in jail because they think I don't try!"
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