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DAVID CARR |
Weblog: What do you mean the Wi-Fi doesn't work? The life of a Racing Post reporter
Cool night for star spotting
Forget the Bet 365 Gold Cup card at Sandown or the final splashings of the Punchestown festival, Haydock was the place to be if the form book was any guide.
There were stars galore in action here on this day last year.
Prince Of Johanne won the opener and he went on to land the Cambridgeshire. Nathaniel took the finale - at odds of 1-20 - and proved himself one of the top horses in Europe by lifting the King George VI & Queen Elizabeth Stakes.
And as if that wasn't enough, local-boy-made-good Rick 'I'm Never Gonna Give You Up' Astley sung after racing.
Not sure if those who braved a chilly April evening saw as many future equine heroes 12 months on.
The Galloping Shoe, who won Prince Of Johanne's race, may be up to performing on a slightly bigger stage but with the best will in the world it will be a decidedly below-par King George if Sir Graham Wade wins it.
The musical offering was distinctly different this time too. No cheesy 1980s chart-topper to attract the forty-somethings but instead Noah And The Whale.
Who happen to be among my wife's favourites but who might otherwise have passed me by, I am ashamed to say, and their brand of indie folk would not have the mass market appeal of Madness or Steps, who both appear here later this year. It's fair to say I've seen Haydock busier than it was this evening.
N and the W are from Twickenham so I assume they'll have been accustomed to weather more fitting for a rugby international than a Flat race meeting.
It was cool. Certainly an evening on which it was better to be built like Bill Beaumont than Kate Moss. Yet there is a section of the population in this part of the world who appear to regard short, diaphanous dresses, bare arms and teetering high heels as compulsory attire for evening racing. (Though I am a fine one to talk as my claim to apressroom colleague that 'it's not that cold' meant I had to prove a point - so I spent the second half of the night in shirt sleeves)
I could sympathise with the racegoer seen clasping a pie more as a heating aid than an evening snack. And while costa coffee cups were everywhere, not a single jug of Pimms was spotted all night.
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