|
DAVID CARR |
Weblog: What do you mean the Wi-Fi doesn't work? The life of a Racing Post reporter
Farewell Eric - the hacks' best mate
Henrietta Knight was not the only highly respected and widely loved figure to call time on their career today and announce they are bowing out from a role which has put them in the glare of the media spotlight.
Stalwart press room steward and caterer Eric Walmsley shocked everyone at Haydock this afternoon by revealing that this was his final day. He is 75 and he has been in charge for more than a decade but he is super-efficient, always on top of everything and perennially cheerful. We'll all miss him.
It's a measure of the affection in which he is held that everyone called him simply 'Eric' and it was a devil of a job to find someone who knew his surname, so that his departure could be marked in the paper.
He is/was a stickler for detail, so that for example this morning - like a wine waiter - he insisted that I taste a cup of coffee from the hit-and-miss new-fangled machine before putting it up for general consumption.
They are hot on detail and precision at Haydock.
So that when MD Dickon White came in for a pre-racing chat and found himself drowned out by the PA system he made it his business toget the volume on the nearby speakers turned down.
And clerk of the course Kirkland Tellwright is determined to let punters know the exact distance of races whenever the track is slightly adjusted - where else would they advertise contests over 7f 1yd and 1m 1yd?
Mind you, a tiny change in length can make an awful lot of difference.
Ask the five shapely young lasses engaged in promotional work for a firm of solicitors who sponsored one of the races today. All wore the tiniest of red skirts - had any of the girls' hemlines been a millimetre shorter, the world would have been their gynaecologist.
Unusual firm they were working for. Their racecard advert offered 10 per cent off family law fees and wills (which might have been handy for any elderly members who caught sight of the promotions team) and 30 per cent off Dominos Pizzas in St Helens - an interesting cross-promotion.
A little more attention to detail would not have gone amiss from myself earlyon.
Looking to canvass opinion among jockeys who rode in the first race on what the ground was like. Ideally catching one or two of the 'also-rans' on their way back to the weighing-room.
Descended on a likely candidate
Me: "How is the ground riding?"
Freddie Tylicki: "Why are you asking me? I don't know - my horse didn't go in the stalls."
Oops.
Comments