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DAVID CARR |
Weblog: What do you mean the Wi-Fi doesn't work? The life of a Racing Post reporter
Getting sand in our eyes
WHAT a view from the press room at Haydock. Tall trees in the background. Horses in the middle. And the new all-weather track right in front of us.
At least that is what it looked like. As though I'd fallen asleep after eight races at Wolverhampton last night and woken up to find myself still there (if you can imagine such a nightmare).
Don't panic. It's not really happening. After ripping up the chase course and all those famous old drop fences they are not ditching turf racing for the delights of Polytrack.
It was just that they have started work on the final stage of redevelopment plan and all the grass has been flayed off the outer track in the straight from the furlong pole to the bend.
Turf should have been relaid on top of the sand by now but it has been too damp - apparently, if you handle the soil when it is very wet it takes an age to recover as it goes 'puggy' in the words of clerk of the course Kirkland Tellwright.
'Puggy' was a new word on me.
Internet research reveals it is either the name of an indie band who 'have performed live on Belgian television', a slang term for a fruit machine or 'someone who has bad hair, big feet, smells, is ugly and has no friends'.
None of which was what I think Kirkland had in mind - he cameover all Nigella as he explained that it meant the soil 'loses the floury quality that you are looking for'.
Main source of dampness today might well have been tears.
After the poignant win of Ballesteros, who'd made his debut here on the day that his namesake died back in June.
After the success of Al's Memory, whose owner revealed that his young son insisted he name the horse after his twin brother who had died of cancer.
And after a pre-racing chat with a bookmaker for our new Monday question-and-answer feature - he'd have made anyone cry with his gloomy view of the outlook for punters and layers, all thanks to the betting exchanges which he blamed for everything short of global warming.
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