On-course bookmakers used to hold all the aces, now they have a pair of twos

It was while basking in the euphoric memories of Italia '90 following Jack Charlton's sad passing that the thought crossed my mind: what if Covid-19 had been Covid-89; if the global pandemic had originated 30 years earlier? Just how differently might we have dealt with things?

Lockdown would have been even lousier for starters. No Netflix, Zoom, or TikTok. We would have watched a lot more of Henry Kelly on Going for Gold instead of Bradley Walsh on The Chase; baked a lot less banana bread and a lot more pineapple upside-down cake (that was the designated dessert for those with a sweet tooth back in the Eighties and Nineties, my mother tells me); and we might actually have had to speak to each other rather than swipe and surf.

Our coping mechanisms would have been very different 30 years ago and I cannot help thinking racing's reaction to the coronavirus crisis would have been very different as well.