|
DAVID CARR |
Weblog: What do you mean the Wi-Fi doesn't work? The life of a Racing Post reporter
Denman decision derails plans
Fridays aren't normally like this - they're usually the most predictable days of the week.
Everything geared towards Saturday's racing - wait for final declarations then churn out briefings, previews, set-up stories and the rest.
Unless news breaks at 9.51am that Denman, one of the most popular jumpers of the past 30 years and one of the best, has been retired.
So that everything goes out of the window and a massive tribute has to be shoe-horned into the running order.
Oddest part of the morning was that time and again I was phoning people who had not heard the news - Twitter clearly has some way to go in the more traditional parts of racehorse-training community.
Most unexpected recollection was Henrietta Knight's tale of 'what might have been'.
She'd been at Liscaroll in County Cork to see Denman win a point-to-point on his debut as a five-year-old back in 2005 and was mightily taken with him.
So much so that she instinctively reached for her chequebook, only to keep her hand in her pocket as the impressive winner had been Hobdayed - 'and I've regretted it ever since'
I could have stitched another trainer up by not making a tiny correction to their grammar.
What they actually said was: "Paul did an amazing job keeping him as sound as he did for as long as he did and he deserves an honourable retirement" - which suggests that it is Paul Nicholls who deserves an honourable retirement. Not what they meant at all.
This afternoon was spent reliving Denman's Gold Cup clashes with Kauto Star in a piece for tomorrow's six-page tribute - much more enjoyable than being stuck at Cheltenham and having to make sense of the latest cross-country chase fiasco.
Comments