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DAVID CARR |
Weblog: What do you mean the Wi-Fi doesn't work? The life of a Racing Post reporter
Reeling in two very different tales
It's always easier looking back on the disappointment of one that got away a while ago than looking forward with dread to the one you fear is about to wriggle outof your grasp.
Especially if you are a famously accomplished fisherman with a net full of catches that are the envy of the riverbank, rather than a relative newcomer who wonders where the next bite might be coming from.
So it was intalking to two men at either end of racing's celebrity scale today.
First up Michael Kinane, who won just about everything worth winning in his riding career but who was asked to reflect on what must have been one of his most frustrating days in the saddle.
When Entrepeneur, the hottest favourite for the Derby in 50 years, a 2,000 Guineas winner who nobody could see getting beaten - does that ring a bell for Saturday? - trailed in fourth behind Benny The Dip.
Might not have been a fun topic for conversation back in 1997 but he's had 15 years to come to terms with it, did win the race three times before he retired and was able to look back on it with a smile - "I turned up on the day but he didn't."
It's also unlikely in the immediate aftermath of the Derby, with stallion value to worry about, that he'd have volunteered the opinion that the horse had "suddenly decided he didn't enjoy racing too much" but Entrpreneur was sold to stand in Russia back in 2005 and Kinane's words are unlikely to have much impact on the Voskhod Stud's marketing campaign.
American Spin is likely to be sold to someone rather closer to home when he comes under the hammer at Doncaster tomorrow but he might as well be going to Russia as far as his trainer is concerned.
Luke Dace is a rather less famous name but this is the hurdler who might have made him better known.
The one he said he'd been waiting all his career for when thehorse won at Haydock early this month.
Yet agonisingly he has to sell him. Two-thirds of the horse are owned by Luke and his wife Louise, who is due to give birth to their third child any time and the sale is the only way they can find the cash to build the bigger house they need as no bank will lend them the money.
No wonder he calls the situation heart breaking.
You'd hope that a rich owner might just read about his fate, take a shine to the horse and buy it to stay in the yard. But fairy tales tend not to happen, even in Derby week.
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