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DAVID CARR |
Weblog: What do you mean the Wi-Fi doesn't work? The life of a Racing Post reporter
If only we'd heard the winning call
Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative.
Keeping an owner happy makes a trainer inclined to tell them only what they think they'd like to hear and eavesdropping on such a conversation is rarely a route to riches.
But that's not always the case - and what you wouldn't give to have been on the other line when Peter Chapple-Hyam phoned Paul Hancock the other day.
"Don't sell him! Take him out of the sales on Friday! He's in much too good a shape to let go," was the gist of it.
As the owner recounted to us after his King's Warrior had won the John Smith's Cup at 33-1 this afternoon.
Hancock described himself as self-employed, as did Andy Franks after winning with Anderiego earlier, but self-employed 'in corporate finance' rather than self-employed 'with a window-cleaning business' - which probably explains why he owns the horse outright, rather than with nine friends.
Fellow successful owners Matt and Lauren Morgan have clearly got good taste in films.
They have a two-year-old half-brother to Bogart so what else could they call it but Blaine, as Humphrey Bogart played Rick Blaine in Casablanca - so people in my profession will be able to wheel out all the 'Here's looking at you kid' and 'I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship' lines should the colt turn out as good as he looked today.
The crowd is often as big a story as the racing on Magnet Cup day (to give it the original name), as the combination of a 40,000 turnout, hot weather and the consumption of copious amounts of the sponsor's product has sometimes in the past had an unfortunately combustible outcome.
No hot weather to fan the flames today and most eye-catching sight was the arrival of a group of half a dozen cheerleaders.
Black leggings, black vest tops, vibrant pink ballet skirts and fascinators. Except on second glance they were clearly rather old to be cheerleaders.
And after spotting the one at the back carrying a huge inflatable phallus, I tumbled that this is obviously what the best dressed hen party is wearing in 2012.
They'll probably be scouring the racecourse website tomorrow, looking to find themselves on the all-encompassing digital photo taken by 'FanCam' just before the big race this afternoon.
A first on a racecourse, apparently, though old hat to those of us lucky enough to have been at last year's FA Cup Final (if you've got several hours to kill you could go to http://wembley360.wembleystadium.com/facupfinal2011/ and try to find my son Harry and I among the Stoke fans - possibly the least exciting game of 'Where's Wally?' in history).
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