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DAVID CARR |
Weblog: What do you mean the Wi-Fi doesn't work? The life of a Racing Post reporter
Faster, Higher, Stronger, Cumbria
Back to where it all started seven years ago. It was July 6, 2005 to be precise.
Driving to Carlisle one morning when Jacque Rogge opened an envelope and announced that the Olympics were coming back to London - I always think of it when I pass the spot on the A65 in Kirkby Lonsdale where I nearly swerved off the road in surprise and excitement.
A lot has happened since then - the woman I was going to stay with that night is now my wife; the six-year-old lad then completing his second year at primary school is now often my teenage eyes and ears in the paddock; and there's an entirely new press room and weighing-room here.
And Carlisle marked the (slightly) bigger events taking place in the capital this afternoon with a 'sports day at the races'. Basketball, sack races, magnetic darts and the like.
There was also a collection for a very worthy sporting cause. Threlkeld cricket club, near Keswick, who are currently confined to the pavilion as 100 tons of rubble was washed onto their pitch it by last month's heavy rainfall.
Carlisle sympathised with their plight, having suffered with the weather themselves, though they have also had a couple of blows of their own of late.
Hayley Turner is apparently set to bypass the track's unique all-women riders' meeting tomorrow week, just as she did last year.
And though this place is good enough for Lady Gaga and Jools Holland, who've both played here recently, DJ Sara Cox has had a better offer.
She'd long been booked to appear here on ladies' night but will be taking to the air on Rado 2 instead - the cue for numerous 'Carry On'-style double entendres involving her name and the phrase 'pulling out'.
But don't despair. She'll be replaced by Envy UK, who are proclaimed to be leading Westlife and Take That tribute act.
And there were glad tidings for racegoers early in the afternoon as a message on close circuit television proudly declared: "Our fish and chip shop now serves sausages, pies and gravy."
Which most racegoers at places like this probably reckon to be more relevant news than the non-appearance of someone who was only going to play a few CDs anyway.
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