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DAVID CARR |
Weblog: What do you mean the Wi-Fi doesn't work? The life of a Racing Post reporter
Bee lovely at Ayr
She's so lovely. She's so lovely. I think that she is beautiful. What else could you say on the night that 'Scouting For Girls' came to Ayr?
Bee Brave was certainly lovely, beautiful, pretty and a fitty to Sharon Watt when she made a winning debut, which the trainer admitted was very much a surprise.
And though she was a rank outsider, half the crowd seemed to celebrate her victory too. Never have you heard so many people cheer the announcement that a 50-1 shot had won a photo-finish.
For the first two-year-old winner of a trainer who had only ever run one juvenile in the past? And only has seven horses in her yard in total?
They were mostly high-pitched cheers. Bordering on screams. Like the shouts from the women-pretending-to-be-men in the crowd watching the stoning in 'Life Of Brian'. And that's the clue.
'Ladies night' was full of once-a-year-racegoers. People unlikely to approach the science of backing horses in quite the same way as, say, Tom Segal.
"Oh, my mate's called Sharon, I'll go for Sharon Watts's horse."
"I got stung by a bee last week, I'll go for Bee Brave."
"I like yellow, I'll go for the one in yellow."
The type of people more likely to have a couple of quid at the Tote window than venture into the betting ring - and it was no coincidence that the winner paid just £18.10 on the Tote.
It would be ungentlemanly not to say that "She's so lovely" could not also apply to each and every one among the large female contingent among a 7,000-odd turnout.
The usual vast acreage of flesh was on show, though the recent upturn in the weather mean there was real tan as well as the artificial variety - and the odd sunburnt patch.
But the real 'lovely' ones on the night were Shirley Teasdale and Margaret Wilson.
Teasdale becoming the first female rider to win the race run in memory of Jan Wilson, who won on this card a month before her death in the Malton fire in 2009, then talking movingly about how the promising apprentice as just who she aspired to be when she started her career.
Wilson speaking even more poignantly about how she and her husband back this event, a pony racing series and several projects at Jan's school, all done to keep alive the memory of their only child - her eyes occasional moistening but never allowing herself to give in to tears.
It's not only in the Olympics that emotions flow in the sporting arena.
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