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DAVID CARR |
Weblog: What do you mean the Wi-Fi doesn't work? The life of a Racing Post reporter
Wet, wet, wet at Wetherby
It sounded so good in last week's racecard. "Party in the paddock evening".
"Listen to the lilt of the Paradise Steel Band as the evening sun sets over Wetherby."
Well the steel band made it. And the sun did set. I should think. Though nobody could see it, as the clouds never threatened to part all night.
And you'd have had to venture outside the marquee to watch it, not an attractive proposition on a wet, decidedly un-Caribbean evening.
I've never been to Garrison Savannah in Barbados but I can't imagine it is much like this.
Low point was before the third race, a novice chase which attracted just three runners.
Three tight-lipped jockeys stood bedraggled in driving, non-stop rain. Joined by the merest handful of connections and media men (or, more precisely, man). The barest smattering of paying customers around the parade ring.
All soaked through, even those with umbrellas seemed unable to escape the all-pervading dampness.
Welcome to summer jumping.
Donald McCain had the right idea, away on holiday in the Portuguese sunshine as Mountain Hiker and Bunclody scored to make it seven winners from just 11 runners since he flew off on Sunday morning.
He had a double at Uttoxeter as well this evening, the staff were thinly spread and Donald's cherubic ten-year-old nephew Toby ended up receiving the prize after Bunclody's success - his beaming smile just visible over the bottle of champagne with which he was rather incongruously presented.
Not every trainer had headed for the sun and Marjorie Fife was walking proof of how bad conditions had got here.
Wearing an expensive-looking pair of trousers that had got so muddy it was getting hard to tell whether they were blue jeans which had got splattered with earth, or brown ones which had acquired a smattering of blue.
But she let loose a defiant "I don't care" after her victory with Ritsi - funny how a 50-1 winner puts fashion concerns right out of the window.
Not the first time that Wetherby has been dealt a poor hand by the weather this season.
Chief executive Jonjo Sanderson reflected: "We lost our January Saturday, the Towton Chase meeting and our Sunday.
"Frost, snow and flooding - we just needed famine and fire for the full set."
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