Sunday supplement By Tony Stafford The last Sunday of the old year, yes that’s right with the mornings getting 10 minutes lighter per week, is traditionally time for a mid-term report on the football, and the state of play among the top jumping yards. I might have room for those topics a little later, but […]
Sunday supplement By Tony Stafford You never realise it, but when you undertake to do something on a regular basis, if you do not then stick to the programme, there is always someone who notices. There I was last night, barely after 10 p.m. coming out of the pub in Marlborough High Street to make […]
Sunday supplement By Tony Stafford In sport, as indeed in most areas of human endeavour, assumptions can be dangerous. When I set out to watch England’s two innings in the Adelaide test on Friday and Saturday night, I assumed (first) that we’d get somewhere near Australia’s 590 first innings score and (second) having seen us […]
Sunday supplement By Tony Stafford Sometimes life poses you with difficult conundrums. On Saturday my choice was clear. Either go to watch my boss Ray Tooth’s comeback-making ex- Champion Hurdler Punjabi at Newbury in the 1.50, or toddle up to Towcester for the bumper at 3.25. Being of an optimistic nature, and with an appointment […]
Sunday supplement By Tony Stafford We’re right into the main part of the 2013-14 jumps season with turf Flat-racing almost a fading memory, two weeks after Doncaster wound up the campaign. It seems silly to be talking about Jonjo O’Neill, for instance being within six of his century for the season with still almost six […]
Sunday supplement By Tony Stafford When you’ve spent as many years in “journalism” for want of a better word, as me, there are several starting points when producing an article. When I worked at the Daily Telegraph in my early days in Fleet Street, we had a style book. As with long-lost days before even […]
Sunday supplement By Tony Stafford Not much happened in the past two weeks, just the Breeders’ Cup, AP McCoy’s 4,000th winner and the end of the 2013 Flat-race season at Doncaster on Saturday. I suppose pride of place must go to AP, a man who until his 3,000th win or thereabouts would have qualified for […]
Sunday supplement By Tony Stafford I don’t know about you, but I needed that extra hour. Ever since I drove overnight to Deauville for a Thursday race and then back again the same evening, I’ve been struggling a bit, and at no stage was I going to travel up to Doncaster for the Racing Post […]
Sunday supplement By Tony Stafford Fortune may have smiled again on Richard Hughes in 2013 as he continues on his path to a second consecutive jockeys’ title – cemented on Saturday with emphatic success on Olympic Glory in the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes on Ascot’s Champions Day – but for two weighing room colleagues, the […]
Sunday supplement By Tony Stafford A week on, and it’s still hard to believe what I, and presumably everyone else, saw. You think I’m talking about Treve in the Arc. If I’d written a piece last Sunday rather than slink under the bedclothes for a rare lie in until 7 a.m. I would have declared […]
Sunday Supplement By Tony Stafford I’ve always loved the Cheveley Park Stakes. In the 80’s it was Ma Biche that took my attention. The following decade it was Ravinella. More recently Natagora and Special Duty maintained the trend. When the French come over and win it, especially when the Head family are the trainer(s), they […]
Sunday supplement By Tony Stafford Having spent all my life doing my best to divest myself of any money I might have accrued along the way, I find late in the seventh decade of my existence, that I wish I had some. Well, more than some, or as that great writer and horseracing devotee Damon […]
Sunday supplement By Tony Stafford On Saturday morning, I was driven up to Doncaster full of hope that Great Hall would make the frame in the Ladbrokes St Leger. Despite weakening in the closing stages, excused by jockey Kieren Fallon as being in part due to his relative inexperience and probably unsuitable ground, the consensus […]
Sunday supplement By Tony Stafford Do you remember where you were twelve years ago next Wednesday? Like the day John F Kennedy was killed in Dallas, I remember it well. I’d just called my daughter from the Marriott Hotel in Lexington, Kentucky to wish her a happy birthday and then settled down to write my […]
Sunday supplement By Tony Stafford I bet three top-class jockeys in the early or mid-primes of their careers were woken with a jolt last week. Tom Queally, rider of Frankel, and a man always ready to praise the horse over himself; Ryan Moore, and William Buick, all learnt that from now on their turns in […]
Sunday supplement by Tony Stafford How was York for you? I didn’t make it there until Friday when it was pretty much a stopping off and refuelling point (nice nosh in the Press room!) before the last leg to Newcastle. The locals there were getting ready for Scouting for Girls – there were plenty of […]
Sunday supplement By Tony Stafford Have you enjoyed the summer? After all, we (the Lions) have beaten the Aussies at rugby, their cricketers in the Ashes (without playing that well), Andy won Wimbledon, Chris Froome the Tour de France and Mo won everything, except his team’s opener at the Emirates, and the days are getting […]
Sunday supplement By Tony Stafford I had a day off yesterday, and today I’ll miss the delights (on TV) of Deauville’s Jacques le Marois and The Curragh’s Phoenix Stakes, not to mention the Durham Test in favour of a gentle afternoon’s umpiring for my former Daily Telegraph colleague Steve Dillon at his annual charity cricket […]
Sunday supplement By Tony Stafford It was an unusual King George day for me. It was always going to be, once the news came through that St Nicholas Abbey had been badly injured and would miss not only that race, but all other future events, save a possible stud career. Even that was clouded in […]
Sunday supplement By Tony Stafford I stayed in the far north of England on Friday night, a trip organised in midweek because my boss Raymond Tooth was going to have runners at Pontefract on Friday night (Freeport ran fifth) and Market Rasen (Fair Trade, didn’t run in the Summer Hurdle) on Saturday afternoon. Anyway, there […]
Sunday supplement By Tony Stafford I wish I knew something about computers, specifically mine. Every time over the past week I’ve gone from one “favourite” site to another, the chance increases that some mysterious “add-on” of which I’ve no knowledge, forces the internet to stop working. At the same time, at least three of my […]
Sunday supplement By Tony Stafford I missed the Coral Eclipse yesterday. Normally I would have been cheering on Declaration of War and Mars from the grandstand boxes, but instead I was recovering on the sofa at home from a small operation designed to remove a BCC (basal cell carcinoma) from just below my right eye. […]
Sunday supplement By Tony Stafford There’s nothing I like better than giving advice. In fact, most of my working (and if I’m honest with myself, my post-working) life has/was involved offering advice to readers as to which horse to back, owners, where to send them and trainers, where to run them. It would probably have […]
Sunday supplement By Tony Stafford Have you noticed the nights drawing in? Last night driving back from Ascot for the last time, the pall of imminent darkness enveloped me. At the rate at which the weeks fly by at my age, it’ll soon be Christmas. Some people dread the prospect of another bout of winter […]
Sunday supplement By Tony Stafford A week that started off with a loss for my boss in a small court in Central London got better and better as it went on. The loss, trumpeted by the winner as a total vindication, looked anything but that in the face of some hasty rewriting of his court […]
Sunday supplement By Tony Stafford For two men in latish middle age, the last 220 yards of the Investec Derby at Epsom will have offered vastly differing emotions. Their respective horses, carrying jockeys sporting very similar blue colours, entered the contest with expectations of polar opposites. As the pair neared the finish, for one there […]
Sunday supplement By Tony Stafford You get those weeks. The previous 14 days brought three winners for my boss: a nice confidence-boost for Lewisham at Kempton; a hard-won novice hurdle win at the same track for Fair Trade and above all a last-to-first York victory for Cousin Khee. All the travel, by car, one trip […]
Sunday supplement By Tony Stafford As I was saying a week ago, it looked like a busy week in prospect. So it proved, but it was a period of seven days as much of lunching as racing, with various racecourse food outlets and indeed posh restaurants providing much needed sustenance to mitigate long road journeys. […]
Sunday supplement By Tony Stafford Where do I begin? Hang on, that’s a song title, theme tune of the film Love Story. Could have been written by Burt Bacharach, who is 85 today, but was irritatingly by someone else, Francis Lai in fact. I remember listening to Burt at one of the Tom Gentry Keeneland […]
Sunday Supplement by Tony Stafford Did you miss me? Last Sunday it was up with the lark and off to Wetherby, so no writing for me. I could have penned my weekly ration of minutely-chosen words on Saturday evening, you might suggest, but I was pretty knackered after a few days’ early mornings – including […]
Sunday supplement By Tony Stafford The name Sangster has been synonymous with racehorse ownership for half a century. At his prime, the late Robert Sangster shared with the also late and always great Vincent O’Brien as an innovator, bringing the best US-bred yearlings to Ireland to win Classic races. Robert, from the wealth created by […]
Sunday supplement By Tony Stafford I digress. I always do, and I’d already got halfway down when I thought I’d go back to the top and warn you all of what you probably already knew. Yes, I truly do digress, all the time. I like Sunday mornings. I was looking forward especially to this one, […]
Sunday supplement By Tony Stafford Yesterday I had one of my best ever days at the races. No, not “at the races” or even watching Attheraces, except for the odd minute I snatched in between Aintree coverage and news from the afternoon soccer. No, it was in my living room, in splendid isolation save the […]
Sunday supplement By Tony Stafford Sorry I’m a little late, one week and one hour to be precise, although last week’s absence was due entirely to the fact that I had nothing to say, not even to laugh at the Aussie cricket team or relief at England’s unlikely draw in New Zealand. No football, who […]
Sunday supplement By Tony Stafford Friday at Cheltenham was typical of all the Festival days I’ve ever experienced over more than 40 years’ attendance – I started late! – encapsulating the undying appeal of the experience. Rain, bad ground, bad luck and above all dashed hopes were there in equal measure. I’ve always loved the […]
Sunday supplement, by Tony Stafford Coming out of Sandown on Saturday evening, I bumped into the Guardian’s Chris Cook, son of the late lamented Labour politician Robin Cook, who asked me: “Are you staying for the Cheltenham Preview?” Having done one myself as reported by Mr Bisogno in geegeez.co.uk last week, and with another on […]
Sunday supplement By Tony Stafford Driving round the M25 – well driving and then queuing in equal measure – I remarked to my passenger Roy, more of whom later, that I’d got up at 5 a.m. to watch England paralyze New Zealand in the final one-dayer. Roy’s no cricket man, and he seemed almost astonished […]
Sunday supplement By Tony Stafford We came, we saw, he conquered. Just five days after I’d turned away in the nearest thing I can manage to anguish after Darlan’s horror fall at Doncaster, I was at Newbury on Saturday and thoroughly enjoyed My Tent or Yours’ domination of the Betfair Hurdle so-called puzzle. The only […]
Sunday supplement by Tony Stafford Twice in a couple of days, I felt that I had participated – vicariously at any rate – in two victories, which in fact were anything but. First there was that Arsenal comeback against Liverpool which could even have been a win, and then Cousin Khee’s snatching of defeat from […]
Sunday supplement by Tony Stafford Last Sunday, I referred to an incident involving a phone and a very insignificant step out of Claridges hotel in London which was enough to unseat your correspondent. The immediate after-effect was nil save the embarrassment of being picked up by three people, but 11 days on both my knees […]
Sunday supplement By Tony Stafford Sorry about last week. I was in a bit of a hump. Cousin Khee ran like a drain at Kempton the day before, but I must say Hughie Morrison sort of prepared me that Raymond Tooth’s young horse might not go on the ground and he didn’t. I won’t mention […]
Sunday supplement by Tony Stafford What is there about the name Ferguson? Twice on Saturday afternoon, the two best-known exponents of that surname got out of jail in the unlikeliest manner. First at Chepstow, Sheikh Mohammed’s bloodstock man John stepped up for a first Grade 1 jumps win as a trainer when Ruacana took advantage […]
Sunday supplement by Tony Stafford I set the alarm for its latest start of the year, but preceded it by half an hour when awakening at 7.30 a.m. to be confronted by pitch black outside. I thought it was going to get lighter today, and even if disenchanted at the beginning of the morning, I’m […]
Sunday supplement, by Tony Stafford Are you getting into the Christmas spirit? I didn’t think I was, but an unexpected invitation to the London Racing Club – new boss Lee Mottershead – for their quiz offered two types (home and shop-made) of mince pies, and crackers with hats. I think I was brought in as […]
Sunday supplement by Tony Stafford If you haven’t read today’s Racing Post I suggest you go out and get a copy. Peter Thomas is a writer I like and he’s done a massive piece on Derek Thompson – yes there is more than one name on the Tommo passport and there may well be one […]
Sunday supplement by Tony Stafford Another week, but what a Saturday! It’s always an early start on Hennessy Day at Newbury, but we made great time even though there was a bit of a blunder coming to the A4 turn off, as a lorry in the middle lane prevented my turning off the M4 just […]
Sunday supplement By Tony Stafford There was some big money going around this Sunday, for example Rory McIlroy got more than €1 million for winning the Dubai golf with Englishmen Justin Rose and Luke Donald also getting large chunks in second and third. British golf is looking pretty good with all three in the world’s […]
Sunday supplement By Tony Stafford Everyone has his heroes. I confess mine for the first few decades of my life was Denis Compton. I used to see his well-groomed Brylcreemed head to the left of the mirror in the barber’s shop next door to the betting shop in Clarence Road, Hackney where I once had […]
Sunday supplement (on Monday) By Tony Stafford Did you miss me? With the boss away in California for the by-now over-blown and like the world heavyweight championship de-valued Breeders’ Cup, I took a sickie, except I wasn’t sick, unlike Richard Hughes and William Buick who both, to put it politely, cocked up on the best […]
Sunday supplement By Tony Stafford Amazing what an extra hour in bed does for you. As I turned in at 1 a.m. on Sunday morning, I turned back the clock, which showed 12 midnight. Now was that midnight on Saturday? No because GMT doesn’t start until early Sunday a.m. So no more BEFAST – that’s […]