Precautionary inspections?

[Colin Phillips]

It's not often that I agree with Chaparse's rantings but yesterday was one instance.

What inspection isn't precautionary?

His argument was that, calling an inspection "precautionary" gave people in the industry and racegoers the impression that the meeting was more than likely to go ahead. It seems yesterday's meeting at Catterick was called off about 30 minutes before the first race was due to start.

He, of course, as is his style went off into a hyperbolic rant about banning the word "precautionary" from clerk-of-the-courses' vocabulary.

There was also a strange outburst from the Punter's Pal (Claude Duval) who was 'working' for ATR at Lingfield yesterday. He had a go at the Thirsk management for arranging an inspection at their course for 7.30 (could have been 7.00) Friday evening. Saying that they were treating the press with a lack of understanding and respect, quoting deadlines and wasted form study time. Even stranger was that about 30 minutes later he announced that the Thirsk management had brought the time of the inspection forward to the afternoon. The power of the media, ay???

 

[Shadow Leader]

No-one gives Duval the time of day - he probably had two bottles of red wine on board anyway so was spouting his usual shite.

 

[Love Everlasting]

The reason the Thirsk inspection was planned for 7.30 was because the stewards who would make the decision were at Catterick for the racing so they can't be at 2 places at the same time! Then when Catterick was called off the stewards were able to check Thirsk early. Doesn't take a brain surgeon!

 

[davidjohnson]

Catterick were unfortunate victims of the British weather yesterday. Had they inspected at 7am, 9am or 11am they would have been passed fit for racing.

 

[Warbler]

There was also a strange outburst from the Punter's Pal (Claude Duval) who was 'working' for ATR at Lingfield yesterday. He had a go at the Thirsk management for arranging an inspection at their course for 7.30 (could have been 7.00) Friday evening. Saying that they were treating the press with a lack of understanding and respect,

I shouldn't laugh, but will just say typical. Just another example of the most self-regarding profession on the planet. Admittedly not as bad as radio 5, (they truly are shocking in thinking that the whole world revolves around their needs). Three of them set a standard of their own (Peter Allen, Nicky Campbell, and Victoria Derbyshire). One of my favourites was when the last named tried to conduct a 2 hour phone in about an internal BBC decision to move some capacity to Manchester from London. She had to abandon it after half an hour as the public turned on her and basically told her to concentrate on, and report news items instead of trying to turn the show into a protest of vanity and use listeners to do their bidding for her.

 

[Sara]

The Racing Post, or a snapper therefrom, decided at 4.30pm it might be a good wheeze to cover the first floodlight meeting at Great Leighs last Thursday and phoned to that effect. A suggestion was made that the lights should be turned on early in case said RP snapper didn't want to stay long - he'd never before graced the track with his presence btw.

Given there are 850 bulbs in the floodlights and it costs £1000 to run them for an hour, they/he were told it wasn't, er, convenient to comply with their, er, whims

What has amazed me in my so far very brief and fortuitous 'career' in the racing press-rooms is the way racing journalists are spoon-fed, esp at the Grade 1 tracks, with endless info and detail in factheets from which they can write their pieces. You do see quite a few of them on the phone to eg trainers, but they tend to be the over 50s...