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DAVID CARR |
Weblog: What do you mean the Wi-Fi doesn't work? The life of a Racing Post reporter
It's all go on Town Moor
PLENTY of nice-looking fillies seemingly primed for a big performance - the first line of my opening paddock report from Doncaster, but I could just as easily have been talking about the crowd.
Ladies day is an institution here. Thousands of locals pour into summer dresses, whatever the weather. A competition to find the track's best dressed racegoer, swiftly followed by the Yorkshire final to crown the most lovely lady in the whole county, or some such.
Which means it must be that man again - no such event is allowed to take place without Derek Thompson in simpering attendance.
Afficionados of Tommo TV would have been in their elementtoday, particularly when he interviewed a group of children from a local school, who had been taught a song about the St Leger and proceeded to sing it to the great man.
Picture the girls of St Winifred's School Choir in garish red jumpers, warbling away and vying for a place in the shot with the most widely-seen face in racing, and you get an idea of what you missed if you weren't here.
I was, from an early stage thanks to a Horserace Writers and Photographers Asscoiation meeting which took place in the 'Clock Tower Food Court'.
An odd room of bare brick walls and stone tiled floor which may just have been a gents in a former existence and whose high ceiling made acoustics rather lessthan ideal. (Strange sight in one of the current toilets this afternoon - the latch almost bent back on one of the cubicle doors. Somebody had clearly been in a desperate hurry t0o get out).
Also had to talk to Kieren Fallon before the opener about something he called 'an absolute disgrace' - sorry, you'll have to buy the paper to find out what. And busy, busy, busy once racing got under way.
Not everyone would have been happy to see the big sales race go to Coolmore - it is supposed to offer the 'little guy' the chance of a big prize and their colt Reply actually cost twice the £200,000 first prize. Nor is jockey Joseph O'Brien - son of Aidan - a little guy. At 5ft 11in, able to stare BBC Radio's Cornelius Lysaght straight in the eye, his days riding on the Flat are probably numbered.
"I am tall and I am not going to get any lighter," he admits - and one enterprising bookmaker is already quoting him for future jump jockeys' championships.
Throw in victory for John Oxx with his first runner of the year in Britain, a possible Classic colt for Charlie Hills and success for the always quotable David Elsworth and it was a hectic day.
All of which can excuse the leading writer, a former journalist of the year, who wanted a cup of tea late on in the afternoon - and filled his cup with gravy.
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