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DAVID CARR |
Weblog: What do you mean the Wi-Fi doesn't work? The life of a Racing Post reporter
Decision time for Owen
Getting your name in bizarre or unusual circumstances is no bar to success in racing. History proves it.
Remember Grand National winner Aldaniti, whose name was derived from the first two letters of breeder Tommy Barron's four grandchildren, Alastair, David, Nicola and Timothy.
Smart chaser W Six Times, who owed his name to the touting auctioneer's claim: "Walks well, will win when wanted."
Even AA-youknownothing, named after a barrister's reaction to Raceform race-reader Alan Amies' testimony in the Top Cees case, won five races.
So Decision By One is not one to oppose just because he owes his name to apathy.
Tom Dascombe recalled today: "He got called Decision By One because last year I was desperate to run him and they hadn't named him so I said 'come on, I need a decision by one o'clock'."
It has not held the horse back as the trainer was speaking after the three-year-old had won for the second time in three races at Haydock today.
'They', incidentally, are the Half a Third partnership, which includes Stoke City defender Jonathan Woodgate and his possible future team-mate Michael Owen, who is living proof that you can get to the top and still be nice - even when people get a shade arsey with you.
His services are no longer required by Manchester United and I would have been failing in my journalistic duties were I not to ask him how it felt to be 'between clubs' yet there was no storming off in a huff, no 'I've come here to talk about racing, son' but just a smile and an ultra diplomatic 'I'm looking at different options to see where to go next.'
A smile that got even bigger when I suggested it would be good if he joined Woodgate at Stoke, and reminded him how he must have enjoyed filming childrens' TV classic 'Michael Owen's Soccer Skills' at the Britannia Stadium in the late 1990s.
Though 'The Twilight Zone' might be a more appropriate programme after the spookiest of coincidences.
Decision By One wasdrawn nine of nine, jumped out in front on the stands' side and made all the running - exactly as the Dascombe-trained Bassett Road did when drawn nine of nine in the same race 12 months earlier.
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