Travesty Of Justice and Not In My Back Yard

So Kieren Fallon escapes a driving ban because it would cause him exceptional hardship, what complete and utter bollocks to coin a phrase.

He was in court because he failed to inform the police of the driver of a car caught in a speeding trap, a car registered to Fallon.

Fallon told the court, 'I wasn't the driver. I had a driver for a week because I was going to Scotland. We had his name and date of birth but didn't have his address. That was the mix-up.'

So Fallon expects us to believe he employed a driver and all he knew about him was his name and date of birth? He did not bother making a record of his address or make a note of his driving licence details, that is incredulous and although he may have managed to convince the magistrates he does not convince me. Presumably this driver was paid – was he paid in cash? Are there no payroll records? Was he employed via an agency? If so they would have records. Indeed is there any evidence this so called driver actually exists? Or was Fallon actually driving the car himself?

Fallon told the court “I am no longer famous and he could not afford a full time driver.” Again that is absolute rubbish and it is simply a case of Fallon worming his way out of yet another embarrassing situation in which he finds himself.

At his best Fallon is one of the best, most talented, jockeys of his generation, as an individual he has shown time and time again he is a flawed character, lacking in principals and a generally unpleasant and unreliable individual.

He managed to pull the wool over the eyes of the Lincoln Magistrates but frankly if he turned round and told me it was raining outside I would still want to go outside myself, just to make sure.

The decision of the Lincoln Magistrates makes a complete mockery of the law.  

In her first speech as Chairman of the Racecourse Owners Association Rachel Hood made the case for a three tier structure of racing, with the lowest tier being self funded.

It is nice to know Ms Hood reads my musings as I proposed something very similar over a year ago.

By all accounts Ms Hood was listened to politely as she made her speech, it is the shame she was not able to demonstrate the same civility when Lord Derby made his speech at the Annual HWPA Derby Awards.

Ms Hood was protesting about Lord Derby’s proposals to build a new housing estate in Newmarket and was one of a group heckling Lord Derby.

Of course this was a classic demonstration of NIMBYism (not in my back yard), something at which the British excel. Be it protesting about wind farms, high speed rail links or 1,001 other projects.

Of course these NIMBY people will never admit their motives are selfish, it is always for the greater good – of course it is.

It has to be said a vociferous minority of population of Newmarket seem to be the world champions when it comes to NIMBYism. They will object to anything be it a supermarket – objected to a supermarket being built saying there was no demand. By all accounts the supermarket is doing a roaring trade and is profitable. They objected to a budget hotel being built – the argument being there was no call for a hotel, the truth being they didn’t want any commercial opposition to the grossly overpriced hotels which already exist in the town. Ignoring the fact a reasonably priced hotel would bring more visitors to the town and thus more money into the local economy.

Basically the vociferous minority of Newmarket NIMBYists just do not live in the real world – if they had their way Newmarket residents would still be getting around by horse and cart.

Recently a number of the NIMBYist’s acolytes made a move to try and get Lord Derby removed as patron of the Horse Writers And Photographers Association (HWPA).

Unsurprisingly the move was overwhelmingly rejected, making it clear most HWPA members did not want the association tarnished by their grubby little campaign.

Hopefully in future Ms Hood will treat others with the same respect she was shown when making her speech.            

An Open Letter To Rod Street

Dear Rod,

I am writing this letter to ask you to reconsider the format of the semi-finals of The Filly Factor and, in the process, avoid a potentially embarrassing situation.

Now if I am not mistaken the aim of The Filly Factor is to try and find a female commentator to break into what is exclusively a male domain and to also promote the cause of women in a male dominated arena.

Whilst there may be debate in some quarters concerning the suitability of the timbre of some women’s voices, that does not concern me here. The aims are laudable and there is no reason why there should be a female commentator, so long as the criteria for selection is to the same exacting criteria currently used for male commentators.

My genuine concern is this weekend’s semi-finals, as they are currently proposed, will not only undermine what is being set out to be achieved, it will actually set back the cause of female commentators.

I was at Newbury races yesterday afternoon when three of the semi-finalists were having a training day. As part of the day they were allowed to share the commentary of a charity race at the end of the card. Now I do not normally remain behind for such novelty races but yesterday I made an exception.

To be brutally frank the efforts of all three were embarrassing and cringe worthy. 

One of the three is an experienced broadcaster and even she was struggling to identify runners in an eight runner race.

Now I am not criticising the ladies taking part, they are all doing their best but commentating on a horse race is not a skill acquired overnight, It takes plenty of time and practice, not a couple of afternoons watching a professional commentator.

Yet these ladies are being asked to provide a racecourse commentary, in public, this weekend when they clearly are not ready for it. These brave ladies run the risk of humiliation and embarrassment, through no fault of their own, for the sake of a competition.

By all means go ahead with the semi-finals but with their commentaries being kept on a closed loop, rather than being broadcast over the PA on course. That way, should any of the ladies freeze or make errors they will not be exposed to public scrutiny, humiliation or ridicule. The two winners can then undergo some intense training before the final in July and the final in July should only go ahead if the finalists are of sufficient quality.

They are not even being helped by the venues. At Bath there is no second commentary position and even yesterday afternoon there were negotiations in progress to try and find a suitable commentary position for the finalists. In the case of Doncaster it is known to be a very difficult course from a commentary perspective and couple that with the usual large fields it again puts additional, unnecessary, pressure on the participants.

I appreciate I have only heard three of the eight in action but is is worrying the three I have heard are the ones considered to be the front runners.

Also has anybody considered the public reaction to these commentaries? Top price tickets at Doncaster on Sunday are £32. How would you feel, if having paid that amount of money,  you then had to listen to a “commentary” which was not fluent and from which it would be very difficult to actually follow what is happening – if it were me I would  be demanding my money back.  

For everyones sake please reconsider what is planned this weekend.

Regards

Paul

Rod Street has responded to my letter and it can be found at  http://bit.ly/hMiuJ9

A Bad Day At The Office

At my age you would have thought I had learned not to build expectations too high because from a height there is usually only one way to go and it isn’t necessarily higher.

Last week I was saying how much I was looking forward to the Derby meeting, well by the end of Saturday afternoon I was beginning to wish I was anywhere but Epsom Downs.

It was the classic “bad day at the office”!!

Actually the day started pretty well, setting off from home at 7:15 for the 65 mile journey to the course, I was there by 8:30 with the added bonus that the car park allocated for the press was one which facilitated a relatively easy escape after racing.

After a quick bite to eat it was time for one of my Derby Day traditions, walking the course. This year I thought I would try something different and record a podcast describing the characteristics of the course and trying to explain just how steep the initial climb from the start is.

It is actually quite surreal walking the course that early in the morning, with very few people around – it is hard to imagine a few hours later there would be in excess of 120,000 people on Epsom Downs.

The course was the best I have seen it on Derby Day and as I reached the half-way point it was amazing, even at 9:45 in the morning, to see most of the prime positions by the running rail had been taken. Already there was the chap, who seems to be there every year, who puts boarding across his car’s roof rack, onto which he puts a garden chair – giving him an excellent view  of the action.

By 10:15 it was back to the media centre to edit the sensational podcast – it was unusable. The equipment which had worked so well when tested on Thursday afternoon had decided not to cooperate on the day and there was an incessant buzz in the background which would have taken hours to edit out.

Anyway a stroll on The Hill, where the Derby Day atmosphere is fantastic soothed my demeanour – it has to be one of the best “free” days out of the year – especially when the sun is shining.

Back to the media centre for a spot of lunch – salad, knowing my luck it will be a German salad, no beansprouts though so I may be in luck, then it is off to see a potential winning Derby owner arrive.

Normally it is just Her Maj and Phil the Greek who attend Derby Day, this time she has bought most of her family with her.

I felt sorry for the young lady who was singing the National Anthem, earlier in the morning, during rehearsals, he dulcet tones could be heard across the Downs singing the anthem again and again – when it came to the real deal there seemed to be a problem with her microphone and she could barely be heard – perhaps they had borrowed the microphone I had used for my podcast?

Anyway I, at least, managed to get a decent photo of The Queen.

It was back to the press room which was now beginning to resemble a glasshouse – jackets had long disappeared in the glass fronted, non air-conditioned, media centre, full of sweaty hacks (and hackettes)  not to mention a couple of hundred laptops throwing out heat.

The Racing Post’s Paul Eacott had Tweeted “it’s going to be like Tenko in the media centre by the afternoon.” He wasn’t far wrong and the security around the place was just as tight as well.

Trying to get to the parade ring to view the runners was proving to be a nightmare. Firstly you have to get past the police / security cordon between the media centre and the parade ring then, once through that, you have to find a spot where you can actually see the horses.

Normally the racing media can usually go into the parade ring if all else fails but at this meeting that was a no-no, partly because of the number of media present and the fact The Queen was going to visit the parade ring so they did not, understandably, want the riff-raff in with her.

In the end I had to settle for either seeing the runners on the horse walk, which conveniently passed behind the media centre, or just settle for watching them going down.

It was just as tricky watching the racing itself. This year they seem to have added some new marquees in the centre of the course. As a result the only starts you could see were the 5f straight start and, if you leant over the barrier and if you squeezed yourself into the far corner of the viewing area, you could just see the back of the 1m 2f start.

Watching the racing itself was little better, the only parts of the track visible were a 1f section of the far side and approaching Tattenham Corner before they swing to approach you head on. It did not make race reading at all easy.

I managed the best I can doing updates for the web site, or at least thinking I was doing updates. Just after the Dash I received a text asking me “if everything was OK?”

 I replied “yes, why shouldn’t it be?”

Only to be told there had been no updates on my web site since just after the first race – which was news to me as I had been sending regular updates, seemingly without any problem.

So right in the middle of preparing for The Derby I was having to try and sort out what was, or rather what was not, happening with my updates. I could have done without all that and I would like to apologise to all those sitting near me for the profanities that passed my lips during that time.

I spent so long trying to find out what the problem was with the updates, by the time I went out to watch The Derby all the viewing spots on the Media Centre terrace had gone and I was resigned to “watching” the race from by the running rail after the finishing post.

I somehow managed to cobble together a report on The Derby, plus a couple of photos but I still had the problem of getting the updates online.

In the end I had to log directly into the web server hosting my site and manually apply the updates – so an update which is normally applied in seconds, at the press of a button, was taking up to five minutes a go – not to mention having to apply all the updates which had not been applied.

I completely missed the Surefooted Stakes.

So all in all it was a very trying afternoon, the sort of afternoon where anything that could possibly go wrong managed to go wrong. The sort of afternoon where you seriously question why you do what you are doing.

For me the only consolation was, sorry M'aam, I backed The Derby winner.

The Ultimate Test

This week sees one of my four “must not miss” meetings as most eyes in the racing world focus on Epsom Downs for The Oaks and The Derby.

The other three “must not miss” meetings are, by the way, Cheltenham, Royal Ascot and Arc Weekend at Longchamp.

I have to fess up here and say The Derby has not always been a favourite race of mine but being of a certain age I am now in position where I am allowed to modify my views and for me it is now the supreme test for a horse on the flat. A race which, in its own way, is as demanding for the three year old colts as the Grand National is for seasoned handicap chasers.

In days of yore I used to spend Derby Day on The Hill, partly because it was free but even when I could afford to go to the main enclosures I still stuck with The Hill, not least because of the incredible buzz and atmosphere, even though viewing was restricted to the big screen.

Another advantage of being on The Hill is you can stroll to the start and see the top thoroughbreds  prior to the race. Having been to the start of many races the atmosphere before The Derby is different. The usual banter is absent, even the usually exuberant Dettori is unusually quiet and contemplative. When the gates swing open the sheer horsepower is clearly evident.

Now Derby Day is a working day for me and I have even developed my own ritual on the day.

I ensure I am at the track by 8:30 in the morning and after a hearty breakfast I set off for what is now the most important part of the day for me, walking the course.

There is a surreal feeling walking across the near deserted Downs at 9:00 on Derby Day, it is difficult to imagine that in a few hours time there will be around 100,000 people, hopefully, enjoying the day.

Soon I am at the end of the racetrack and the only clue as to the importance of the position is a sign which reads “1½ Miles, Derby and Oaks Start, 2400 metres” .

Looking round you can see the course rising into the distance but even then you do not fully appreciate how difficult the course actually is. The first 3½ furlongs of the course is a steady uphill climb but it isn’t until you actually begin to walk it that you realise just how tough a climb it is.

Now I love walking – I will walk all day, however by the time I reach the top of the climb I invariably find my calf muscles beginning to tighten and beads of perspiration forming in places I do not want beads of perspiration forming and that is only going at a sedate pace.

By the mile pole the angle of ascent has decreased to a gentle incline, flattening out by the seven pole before a gentle left hand swing and finally a chance for the runners to get some breath into their lungs before beginning the descent for home.

The descent begins gently just after the six furlong marker, the speed increases but it isn’t going to get any easier as they head towards Tattenham Corner, jostling for position and the straight opens up before them.

A wide open expanse but this is no ordinary straight, the infamous camber will result in the unwary or unbalanced being pulled towards the far-side rail as if being pulled by some irresistible force.

Walking the course early morning there is an eerie quietness, come the race the horses will be meeting a wall of sound like they have never heard before, as the entire straight is lined on both sides by the shouting, cheering crowds.

It takes me about 35 minutes to walk the course, for the winner glory comes some 2½ minutes after the gate opens – running into the record books as winner of The Derby.

For me, after walking the course, a couple of bottles of water and a sit down.  
For winning connections, after the race,  financial rewards and glory, for the winning horse the prospect of a life at stud.

For those who were there plenty of memories to take home.  

The Derby, The Oaks and Coronation Cup are all hard races run on a very difficult course.

Can you imagine if Epsom came along today, as a new racecourse?

Do you think they would actually be granted a licence to race with such a testing, idiosyncratic track?

The answer is probably no but fortunately the course came along a long time before ‘elf and safety rules and overpowering officialdom.

As a result we have a race which is the ultimate test of the horse and horsemanship and long may it remain that way.