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DAVID CARR |
Weblog: What do you mean the Wi-Fi doesn't work? The life of a Racing Post reporter
Winner takes it all for Suzzanne
Spot the difference. Same track where they had raced for four days in the previous five but there was something different at Wolverhampton this evening. A crowd.
Quite a good one too. Plenty of boxes full and 600-odd bookings in the restaurant. Not, alas, because the lure of a card full of high-quality races had proven irresistible to the folk of the Black Country, who'd deserted the pub or their snug fireplace to brave the cold and see a string of top-notchers strutting their stuff Dunstall Park.
No, it was because Saturday nights under the floodlights are something of an institution here and this was the first of 2012.
And there was the added attraction of a group playing after racing. Bootleg Abba.
A new name on me but apparently they were formed in 1996, they have played as far afield as Singapore and Kazakhstan and they wowed racegoers on their visit here last year.
An even bigger name was here last night. Michael Dickinson, no less. With his 'Tapeta' hat on, on a fact-finding visit to observe the Polytrack artificial surface.
Alas not on a reconnaissance mission ahead of a return to training, great though it would be to see what the man who sent out the first five in the 1983 Cheltenham Gold Cup could do three decades on.
But there was a feat to rival the Bregawn-Captain John-Wayward Lad-Silver Buck-Ashley House one-two-three-four-five in its miraculousness this evening.
A punter slipped over between two of the bookmakers' pitches. Took a heavy fall. Gave his head a nasty bump. And did not spill a single drop of his pint. Would have been a definite ten had there been a gymnastics judge watching.
Of course, the true hero of the night was Suzzanne France.
She suffered brain damage in a career-ending fall at Redcar back in 2007 and is still partially blind but who has refused to give up, has reinvented herself as a trainer and who enjoyed her first winner with Stamp Duty.
Understandably emotional, she claimed not to knowwhat to say. But she still came up with the quote of the day, a joyful: "I'm still half-blind - but I managed to see that!"
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