The sport of horseracing stands above all others as home to protagonists who, with equal gusto, both compete and enthusiastically share the positives of the game to the wider world for the benefit of all with an involvement. Simply preaching to the choir? In racing, a rarity indeed. Not least when three legs of perhaps next year’s Cheltenham Gold Cup winner have been sold with the fourth still up for grabs...
Matt Chapman, a racing polymath with numerous broadcast awards, newspaper and online columns, and a growing portfolio of businesses with scope to enhance the pleasure that hoi polloi like me take from the game, undertook this missionary work at the Royal Automobile Club where I hosted him for autumn's leg of twice-yearly horseracing suppers. Even allowing for how well disposed the table was to the Turf, all seated were in an urban landscape far from the likes of Lambourn and Newmarket cognoscenti. Yet, Matt, who was heading to the latter the morning after proceedings for filming just after 6am, stayed well beyond the occasion’s witching hour in sharing the provenance and true depth of his racing passion.
As he readily acknowledges, often with stoic self-deprecation, Chapman has his critics. This is partly because the demands of television’s strict time keeping require him to be perhaps more direct and to the point than some prefer. Given longer to expand on his views, more evident was the discernment you might expect of a Radley College music and sports scholar whom Cambridge considered worthy of offering an undergraduate place. Amid an emerging consensus at the table that ‘A’ Level grades below the required standard for top-ranked Varsity have ultimate been racing’s gain, there was a tip or two. Chatham House rule - and an aversion to seeing bookmakers shorten odds - means I can, with some reluctance, share only one; namely the Paul Nicholls-trained Thames Water. After all, has there ever been a name more appropriate to leak, and when the gelding wins all will have an opportunity to salute the aforementioned, when no one has had much good to say about Thames Water for a generation.
#horseracing, #yeeehaaa, #royalautomobileclub
With thanks to the club’s Marta Anna Jurga for being the ultimate events thoroughbred, and for Renato Pereira’s team for classic-race standard service. Thanks also to Henry Rose, mastertailor, for making a suit with Alice Milivoyevich’s award-winning Hackett London tweed. Joint favourites, all.
ITV, Paddy Power, The Sun, British Horseracing Authority, University of Cambridge
I have medals from the Sunshine State games too!