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DAVID CARR |
Weblog: What do you mean the Wi-Fi doesn't work? The life of a Racing Post reporter
Breaking a record - though not for attendance
Another chance to see history being made tonight and this time it actually happened. Just a shame there was rather less of a crowd to see it, six days on.
To be fair, had the 32,000 folk who went to the St Leger turned up at Wolverhampton this evening they'd have had to hire Molineux across town to find room for them all. Dunstall Park is not Town Moor.
And whereas Camelot had to get the better of eight useful rivals at Doncaster to emulate Nijinsky and complete the mythical triple crown, Dvinsky needed only to turn up to earn a slightly more obscure place in the record books.
Which is not to diminish Dvinsky's achievement in the least. To be sound enough to run a modern-day record 218 times and still to be up to winning races at the age 11 and after such a busy career is truly commendable.
He ran better than his eventual ninth position might suggest this evening, chasing a strong early pace and eased once clearly held, and is not one to write off on appearance 219 which is likely to be in a fortnight or so.
Pity there were only three or four dozen to watch him in the parade ring and that the punters braving the drizzle on the stands for the race itself numbered in the tens rather than the thousands.
Obviously nothing like the size of the Doncaster crowd but quality is as important as quantity and tonight's turnout included a group of lads clearly going for a modern take on the Village People.
As with the 'YMCA' chart-toppers there was sailor and a builder but the 2012 West Midlands version also ran to an RAF captain, a CSI investigator, a priest and a leprechaun.
Traffic problems on the M6 and elsewhere may have kept numbers down and certainly delayed a few riders, causing a flurry of jockey changes.
Always difficult to keep tabs on late switches and Midnight Flower slipped through the net.
Commentator Malcolm Tomlinson called Martin Lane on board during the 6.30 and At The Races's Matt Chapman launching a pre-race interview with the same jockey - who was actually Tom Eaves (who then kicked himself for not pretending to be Lane and seeing how long he could keep it up).
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