Is it my imagination. I thought that Horse Racing was meant to be a major sport in the United Kingdom? Our main racing personalities are household names-right? Frankie Dettori has presented "Top of the Pops" and has been a team captain on "Question of Sport" and "Mutton Chops" McCririck has battled with Sly Stallone's mother on "Celebrity Big Brother" and fought tooth and nail with the ghastly former Conservative Member of Parliament Edwina Currie on "Celebrity Wife Swap"....
So how come yet again there is no jockey nominated for the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award. Frankie Dettori came closest to victory when coming 3rd behind Damon Hill in 1996 but a first victory in the 2007 Epsom Derby on Authorized should have at least seen him make the final 10.
And what about Britain's most consistently successful sportsman of the past 15 years-Phil Taylor excepted (sorry Phil I don't count Darts as a sport)-Tony McCoy. Tony McCoy is on course to win his 13th National Hunt jockeys Championship in a row and his record 289 wins in one season will probably never be broken.
True AP McCoy lacks Frankie's charisma but amongst the nominees is tennis player Andy Murray who has the personality of a stuffed haggis and this year only managed to improve his world ranking from 17 to 11.
Sportsmen representing fifteen separate sports have lifted the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award since its inception in the early 1950s-yet no-one from racing has ever won the title.
There are two sportsmen from the world of racing who year in year out perform at the top level of their sport and their talents should be rewarded by the public.
Vote McCoy/Dettori for 2008 BBC Sports Personality of the Year!
Sunday 2 December 2007
Saturday 1 December 2007
Introduction
Little did I know when I boarded an Amtrak train in Chicago a few hours after the running of the 2001 Arlington Million that I was about to take a train ride that would completely change my life.
This was my first trip to the US during the Summer months and that trip had taken me to Monmouth Park, Del Mar and then Arlington. Ahead of me lay an 18 hour train ride to my final destination Saratoga Springs NY.
To be honest Saratoga isn't somewhere many European racefans aspire to go to. There's too many major race meetings that clash with it during the six weeks of the meet. The King George at Ascot is normally run during Saratoga's opening weekend, followed straight away by Galway and a Deauville meet that last 5 weeks-and I haven't even mentioned the Ebor meeting at York and Baden Baden which has its big meet normally on Labor Day weekend. Throw that into the pot with the fact that only 3 European trained (flat) horses have run at the Spa in the last 10 years and if that hasn't put a racefan off-they find that the nearest airport with direct flights to Europe is over 150 miles away-and there are only 2 trains a day.
A friend of mine had given Sean Clancy's "Saratoga Days" for my birthday and I resolved to read the book so I at least new something about the new city and racetrack I was visiting.
It was only meant to be a 4 night day in Saratoga. I was going to the track on Monday, visit the Racing Museum and other sites on Tuesday and then help my friend Eva who was volunteering at the Belmont Child Care gala at the Canfield Casino on Wednesday. And then it was back home to Britain on Thursday.
Well after one day at the track I decided I couldn't come all this way and miss the Travers-especially as i'd seen Point Given at Belmont and the Haskell-so I stayed till the following Monday.
The track and even more so the city as a whole had obviously left a significant impression on me but if anyone had told me that within 5 years I would have sold my home in Newmarket, the small shares I had in horses in the UK, and had a New York owners licence and a bought a Condo in Saratoga-i would have told them that they were out of their minds.
Well it happened. One week in 2001 turned in two the following year and four weeks by 2005 and then the penny finally dropped as I realised that I wasn't staying enough in Newmarket to justify having a home there, hated the town (i'll go into that on another occasion) and of course that by late 2006 my £'s could go a long way in Upstate New York-especially if I went back to househunt long after the season was over.
Yesterday was the first anniversary of the purchase of the condo. If I leave home in London at about 430am I would hope to be opening up my front door at about 7pm EST. 19 1/2 hours-certainly can't go for the weekend!-but I don't miss Newmarket at all and have only been racing in the UK once since April 2006.
So that's where I'm at now. I found my spiritual racing home but in truth i'd be in the Internationalist camp if racefans were given labels. I'm just as interested in Denman lugging 166lbs this afternoon to take the Hennessy Cognac Gold Cup as I am in the intriguing "race" between Russell Baze and Jorge Ricardo to see which of them will be the first to reach 10,000 career winners.
I don't know if either of them are following the exploits of the other-one currently at Golden Gate Fields and the other a Brazilian jockey who now rides in Argentina and plies his trade at San Isidro and Palermo the main tracks in Buenos Aires.
Both passed the 9900 mark a few weeks back and Ricardo , probably due to Baze serving a recent 15 day suspension, currently holds a lead of 20 wins. Regardless of whether you think racing in Northern California sucks or that Argentinian racing is beneath contempt-history is about to be made-and unbelievably 2 jockeys will probably reach the mark within 2-3 weeks of one another as at November 30th Ricardo leads Baze 9946-9926. And there's a good chance that whilst we're all alive-we'll never see another jockey coming close to their 10,000th victory
This was my first trip to the US during the Summer months and that trip had taken me to Monmouth Park, Del Mar and then Arlington. Ahead of me lay an 18 hour train ride to my final destination Saratoga Springs NY.
To be honest Saratoga isn't somewhere many European racefans aspire to go to. There's too many major race meetings that clash with it during the six weeks of the meet. The King George at Ascot is normally run during Saratoga's opening weekend, followed straight away by Galway and a Deauville meet that last 5 weeks-and I haven't even mentioned the Ebor meeting at York and Baden Baden which has its big meet normally on Labor Day weekend. Throw that into the pot with the fact that only 3 European trained (flat) horses have run at the Spa in the last 10 years and if that hasn't put a racefan off-they find that the nearest airport with direct flights to Europe is over 150 miles away-and there are only 2 trains a day.
A friend of mine had given Sean Clancy's "Saratoga Days" for my birthday and I resolved to read the book so I at least new something about the new city and racetrack I was visiting.
It was only meant to be a 4 night day in Saratoga. I was going to the track on Monday, visit the Racing Museum and other sites on Tuesday and then help my friend Eva who was volunteering at the Belmont Child Care gala at the Canfield Casino on Wednesday. And then it was back home to Britain on Thursday.
Well after one day at the track I decided I couldn't come all this way and miss the Travers-especially as i'd seen Point Given at Belmont and the Haskell-so I stayed till the following Monday.
The track and even more so the city as a whole had obviously left a significant impression on me but if anyone had told me that within 5 years I would have sold my home in Newmarket, the small shares I had in horses in the UK, and had a New York owners licence and a bought a Condo in Saratoga-i would have told them that they were out of their minds.
Well it happened. One week in 2001 turned in two the following year and four weeks by 2005 and then the penny finally dropped as I realised that I wasn't staying enough in Newmarket to justify having a home there, hated the town (i'll go into that on another occasion) and of course that by late 2006 my £'s could go a long way in Upstate New York-especially if I went back to househunt long after the season was over.
Yesterday was the first anniversary of the purchase of the condo. If I leave home in London at about 430am I would hope to be opening up my front door at about 7pm EST. 19 1/2 hours-certainly can't go for the weekend!-but I don't miss Newmarket at all and have only been racing in the UK once since April 2006.
So that's where I'm at now. I found my spiritual racing home but in truth i'd be in the Internationalist camp if racefans were given labels. I'm just as interested in Denman lugging 166lbs this afternoon to take the Hennessy Cognac Gold Cup as I am in the intriguing "race" between Russell Baze and Jorge Ricardo to see which of them will be the first to reach 10,000 career winners.
I don't know if either of them are following the exploits of the other-one currently at Golden Gate Fields and the other a Brazilian jockey who now rides in Argentina and plies his trade at San Isidro and Palermo the main tracks in Buenos Aires.
Both passed the 9900 mark a few weeks back and Ricardo , probably due to Baze serving a recent 15 day suspension, currently holds a lead of 20 wins. Regardless of whether you think racing in Northern California sucks or that Argentinian racing is beneath contempt-history is about to be made-and unbelievably 2 jockeys will probably reach the mark within 2-3 weeks of one another as at November 30th Ricardo leads Baze 9946-9926. And there's a good chance that whilst we're all alive-we'll never see another jockey coming close to their 10,000th victory
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