It will be a pleasure to bid farewell to sombre Saturdays

Now that we know silence was never golden, certainly not on racecourses anyway, I think I speak for us all when I say it will be a pleasure to bid farewell to sombre Saturdays.

Tranquillity is about to be terminated at the places where we like to shout most thanks to the government’s announcement this week that coronavirus restrictions will be relaxed in England and racegoers will return to Ludlow and Lingfield on Wednesday.

That means next Saturday at Sandown, as Altior clears the pond fence in the Tingle Creek, hopefully tracking Politologue with Greaneteen, Defi Du Seuil and Rouge Vif poised to pounce, there will be a hum hopping off the grandstand. Oh, how we have missed that.
Sandown won’t be heaving, of course, with just 2,000 allowed through the turnstiles and that number will include annual members and owners as well as some of the paying public, but it is a flicker of light at the end of the longest, darkest tunnel racing has ever known.