I no longer pay much attention to the big races, prefer to scrape a small profit from lower class handicaps, but I must have a look at the Fighting Fifth now.
You surely must. The key is finding the one that ran to it's best. When you look at the winner and rate it off every other horse, you can see the monster that CH could well be. I have seen a horse like this once before, Golden Cygnet, and if Nicky had had him he would not have broke his neck running in the scottish champion hurdle against Night Nurse and Sea Pigeon as a novice. I so wish Nicky had trained Golden Cygnet, or someone like him. Putting a novice up against those animals was criminal as a Novice. I was listening to that race on the old extel commentary? no visual in those days, it was like God had died when the news came through. Watching it on youtube is truly heart rending now.
How many remember the small loudspeaker hanging off the wall with the extel commentary? That is all you had then apart from what was on bbc or itv on a saturday afternoon to watch or a really big meeting in the week. Hard to believe you couldn't see every race isn't it? a bit like football. You can see every team now play every game, in the 60s and 70s it had to be on bbc or itv, or it was lost forever visually.
My local bookie in the 70s was a 2 up 2 down house with the front room as the bookies. Fookin shite. It all changed really in the 80s, things changed, not all races on TV but it started improving visually, bookies moved forward then. I still remember the chalk it up result guy in the 70s, that was your results, on a chalk board hand written. A lot of people think it was great then in many ways, it really wasn't, it was shite. You went to put your bet on, the counter was 6 foot high with a meshing on top with a little gap at bottom to put your bet on, just in case you fancied robbing them
It really was sh1t you know.
Just a few memories there for the oldies on here.
. The good old days..fookin not.
For those who think racing TV coverage is sh1t now, well you best be grateful with what you have now seriously. In the 70s on BBC you had Julian Wilson, one shoulder 3 foot higher than the other, wabbling generic bollox to the camera..then he would bring Jimmy Lindley on..all you got from him, bear in mind was he was the paddock watcher ffs,..all he ever said was...XXXX looks a picture in the paddock..fookin hopeless,,,every horse was that,,what on earth was the point of Lindley? He so had the easiest money in TV racing coverage history.
Just a few memories when I was a younger man. I hope you enjoyed those memories you wrinkly ones like me.