Timeform Annuals

Grasshopper

Grasshopper

Senior Jockey
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Nov 14, 2006
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I’ve just been informed that Timeform will no longer publish Chasers & Hurdlers (and the inferior, dandruff-spattered effort ‘Racehorses of’ series), and that this year’s annual will be the last effort to go to print.

This decision has seemingly been prompted by their “successful transition” to a “predominately digitial platform”.

I have swerved buying C&H this season - for no better reason than I ran out of room on the bookshelf, and couldn’t be arsed getting round to a re-jig - but this is nevertheless hugely unwelcome news.

Thumbing through old copies of C&H is about as fine a way to waste time as it’s possible to imagine, and it’s verging on criminal that it is being discontinued.

A sad, sad, loss in my view, and something that will be greatly missed by yours truly.
 
Without wishing to benefit from your misfortune Grass I haven't purchased this for a while due to them still being available in hard cover mode only and have been desperately waiting for a digital edition so are they saying they'll still publish this but in digital form or that they're scrapping it altogether, replaced by the ability to read the comments online via subscription ?
 
Lee, as I understand it, it is being wholly discontinued.

I'm going to message David Johnson tonight to see if he can give me any more gen on whether they will go digital with it, but the initial indications are it's game-over. :(
 
That is a real shame. The ultimate racing publication of our lifetime no more.

I understand not going to print but surely they'll continue it in digital format. They must.
 
I don't / wouldn't buy them because, in my experience, Timeform is only just another opinion and no more authoritative than a few others.

The quality of their writing has also gone downhill significantly over the last generation, presumably down to a dearth in grammatical knowledge among its writers and, even worse, editors.

I suspect they've enlisted enthusiastic undergraduates with a view to training them on the job but either the training or the raw material simply isn't as good as it once was.

Phil Bull would be spinning in his proverbial if he read some of the stuff they produce.

Can't say I'll miss it but I do understand that many will and I reckon they could do more to save it.
 
granger said:
The next generation will treat a paper book like we would writing carved in stone
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It's a depressing vista indeed but not far off the mark.

People keep asking me why Orchidette (now in her early 30s) is still unattached since they are always complimentary about her looks and personality but she has said more than once that she finds it very difficult to be attracted to a guy with whom she can't hold an intelligent conversation (on any subject - she'd talk football with them if they could talk sense about it).

I suspect she'll stay single for a long time. She frightens them :lol:

I've been trying to drop hints to her that she should get interested in racing, hoping she might want to take over my ratings methodology and perhaps improve it. The thought of it dying with me saddens me.
 
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Desert Orchid said:
I don't / wouldn't buy them because, in my experience, Timeform is only just another opinion and no more authoritative than a few others.

The quality of their writing has also gone downhill significantly over the last generation, presumably down to a dearth in grammatical knowledge among its writers and, even worse, editors.

I suspect they've enlisted enthusiastic undergraduates with a view to training them on the job but either the training or the raw material simply isn't as good as it once was.

Phil Bull would be spinning in his proverbial if he read some of the stuff they produce.

Can't say I'll miss it but I do understand that many will and I reckon they could do more to save it.
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It’s assuredly not the case with Chasers & Hurdlers, DO, where the quality of the essays has been as high as ever. C&H gives you something totally different from what you’d get in a race-card, Black Book, or any of the other standard Timeform offerings.

It’s much more an alamanc of the season, than it is a ratings publication.
 
What a tremendous shame. I am not someone who buys them on an annual basis but I have amassed quite the collection which I use for the purposes of nostalgia and intrigue.

Is this basically it for the almanac?
 
Grasshopper said:
It’s assuredly not the case with Chasers & Hurdlers, DO, where the quality of the essays has been as high as ever. C&H gives you something totally different from what you’d get in a race-card, Black Book, or any of the other standard Timeform offerings.

It’s much more an alamanc of the season, than it is a ratings publication.
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I would hope it would be so, GH.

My brother buys the '50' books every season and I sometimes get a wee peek at them but have been horrified more than once at the poor sentence structure and punctuation.

It was a presumption on my part that the C&H annual would suffer the same ignominy so I would be happy to be wrong.
 
granger said:
You have my details Mo.

Put her in touch.

We can go to Celtic Park for anniversaries and birthdays.
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Excellent.

But do you go to Mass?

:lol:

It would help a great deal if you could discuss the tone and tenet of Shakespeare and what influence he might have had on Burns. (Robert, not Tommy :))
 
I picked up the 1977/1978 edition for a fiver off ebay tonight.

Apart from this year’s annual, it was the only remaining gap in my collection - which I felt compelled to close on the back of this news.

Will sort out this year’s annual tomorrow, and make space on the bookshelves.

Still gutted. :(
 
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