Thirty years and not a single regret

To be honest I thought it was a perfect day. Thirty years of sponsorship at Brighton came to an end with Dark Sun winning my Class 6 handicap and then, against all odds, we had a dead-heat in the following race, the executive having kindly added my name.

There is always a touch of sadness on occasions like these and a tendency to look back at some of the winners and the stories associated with them. David Ashforth still shared sponsorship back in 2001 when Luke Dace’s Scenic Lady thrashed a field of 18 over the full mile and a half trip.

It was still a seller in those days and Luke was probably relieved to buy her back for 3,200 guineas. It was the right move because she promptly followed up at Lingfield before finishing second in a multi-runner handicap at Epsom.

I go back a long, long way  –  let’s say as far as Operatic Society and beyond  –  and I can’t remember a time when I didn’t link certain years with favourite horses, favourite songs and famous events. Mention 1970 and I go quiet for a few minutes because that was when my father died suddenly. But it was also the year of Nijinsky and the Triple Crown, plus Tintagel II’s comprehensive triumph in the Ebor. At 13 I was deeply into anything trained by Richmond Sturdy and Tintagel was his best horse.

The Berlin Wall went up in 1961 and I remember it quite clearly, though not as clearly as Psidium winning the Derby. I just thought there was something typically French about jockey Roger Poincelet’s reaction afterwards, his shy smile giving way to the shrug they all do so well, as if success on a Harry Wragg-trained 66/1 shot was nothing out of the ordinary.

Trainer Chris Dwyer’s smile was broader when he won the Carnaby seller with 9/4 favourite Arcanista. I have very fond memories of that day because Solveig’s Song  –  a lament in Norwegian composer Edvard Greig’s Peer Gynt Suite  –  is by Norse Dancer. In thirty years she was easily my best tip, 10/1 from 14/1, and no one in the box could quite believe it.

I drive home quite slowly and not necessarily by the quickest route after a heart-warming day at the races. So the next day I avoided the A34, which is subject to the kind of massive restructuring which possibly made the rabbits think they’d missed Watership Down In favour of No Hiding Place, and veered off towards Littleton.

I knew all about the stud, of course, but had never driven through the village. Littleton Lad, Littleton Lass, Littleton Queen. Les Hall won with the first two but lost his licence over Littleton Queen, who proved just as slow for Ken Cundell –  he of Stalbridge Colonist, conqueror of Arkle fame, as she had for Les. He was soon reinstated.

Following that route takes you close to Hazely Down, where war poet Wilfred Owen was found wandering after escaping from the (later) infamous hospital at Netley. A broken man completely adrift, he should never have been sent back to Normandy in the first place.

By complete contrast, Siegfried Sassoon retained all his faculties but openly admitted that, like many young men, he’d been very foolish in his burning desire to sign up when World War 1 broke out. The Somme paid him out, not quite in full but in mental scars to last a lifetime.

If I didn’t believe that all things which happen to us are either random or self-inflicted, I’d wonder about some ethereal script. But the fact is that the A36 runs close to Heytesbury, where Sassoon spent his final days  –  not quite at mid-off or mid-on but in those neutral areas where catches seldom come. And even those he put down were immediately accepted by teammates aware that his mind was somewhere else.

I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats

And in the ruined trenches lashed by rain.

Dreaming of things they did with balls and bat

And mocked by hopeless longing to regain

Bank holidays, and picture shows, and spats,

And going to the office in the train…

Or maybe even the five and nine (five shillings and ninepence) taking them from London to the seaside, the cheap temptations along the front and, we hope, a gloriously imponderable seller to follow. It’s escapism pure and simple and I’m all for that, as anyone will tell you.

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