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DAVID CARR |
Weblog: What do you mean the Wi-Fi doesn't work? The life of a Racing Post reporter
Great day for Bay
Great day this, an historic occasion at Doncaster. When it's on. The Great Yorkshire Chase, a famous old race and a traditional trial for the Gold Cup and Grand National in years gone by.
It can take a lot to call it off too. Senior race-reader Walter Glynn recalled the Saturday in 1965 when the Jockey Club wanted all racing postponed as a mark of respect for Churchill's funeral butDoncaster dug their heels in and the meeting went ahead - worse luck for poor Buona notte who was killed in a fall.
It's called the Sky Bet Chase now, thanks to the sponsors who understandably reckoned the new title was the way to get full value for their money, and before today it had only been run twice in its home county since 2006.
In 2007 it went to Southwell when Doncaster was being redeveloped and for the last two years it had been abandoned - bad news for Calgary Bay who'd been well fancied each time and who was switched to Cheltenham which does not suit him anything like so well.
But good things come to those who wait and Calgary Bay finally showed the folk of South Yorkshire what they have been missing with a ready victory under Dominic Elsworth, who made it a Yorkshire victory of sorts as he was born and bred in Guiseley near Leeds - home of the original Harry Ramsden's (until it closed down recently).
The Lightning Novice Chase on today's card is more of an interloper - can you name the five different tracks it has been run at in the last seven years?
Or where the River Don Novices' Hurdle was staged the last time it had a real top-notch winner in Neptune Collonges in 2006?
Neptune's stable-mate Rocky Creek looked smart in following in his hoofprints this afternoon and earned quotes for the Albert Bartlett Novices' Hurdle at Cheltenham in March.
But racing fans in these parts will be looking much further ahead than that - the racecard reminded everyone that tickets for the St Leger meeting go on sale next month. February 6 to be exact.
Though the award for precision has to go to Sedgefield clerk of the course Phil Tuck who has called an inspection ahead of racing tomorrow but reckoned to be "85 per cent confident that racing will go ahead."
That's 85 per cent, not 80 or 90 - he'd clearly done a detailed analysis of the various forecasts and made an exact assessment of the probability of an abandonment-inducing frost.
In the unlikely event that you are still wrestling with today's quiz questions, theLightning Novices' Chase has been run at Ascot, Huntingdon and Lingfield as well as Doncaster in the last seven years. And Neptune Collonges won the River Don at Wetherby
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