Cheltenham Et Al: The Best of Alastair Down

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they have to organise all the staff and all the equipment - I mean Eisenhower spent less time planning the D-Day landings than Elliot and Mullins would have done to get those horses over here fit and well…. Discover the joy of reading with us, your trusted source for affordable books that do not compromise on quality. I imagine either Willie Mullins or Gordon Elliott which is hardly big news, I mean Gordon is running 60 horses and Willie will probably have 50. He would come and win this race every year because people realised that in all honesty - and I think I can say this without Jim suing me - quite frankly, they didn’t bother running him for the rest of the year.

We do quite rightly regulate it against it these days, but it is still a question of trying to get there with 7lbs less on your back and that is becoming much more of a skill. One particular piece on being snowed in and the need for essentials of life ("gaspers") made me cry with laughter when first written in the old weekender and I was delighted to see it.uk has been a home to passionate debate and intelligent discussion for horse racing enthusiasts since the year 2000. The ruddy-faced Down, who would use Channel Four’s ad breaks to smoke a cigarette to calm his nerves, does not miss his television role. In the old days you could muck about with them and get there because of the weight range of handicap was two stone and now that’s 4 or 5lbs, so it’s got to be the one that wins with a little bit ‘up its sleeve’ but they’ve all got ones, twos, threes and fours, whereas in the old days you could have six and you wouldn’t be put off if you thought that the man who trained them had the ‘brass neck’ to do it. As for the future, Down – whose son James is “studying criminology and pints” at Leeds University – will be back at Cheltenham this weekend for its prestigious Paddy Power meeting. On his favourite racehorse: ‘I’ll still thump anyone who doesn’t appreciate that Rondetto was the greatest chaser of all time.

From 1922 to 1927 he attended Edinburgh Academy, and from 1927 to 1932 attended Marlborough College. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.

In Double Trigger they meet in a chemistry that the old alchemists sought unavailingly for generations,” wrote Down. And I think in his words, “As I descended the stairs the mumps descended about 2 feet down too” and he ended up with mumps where a man doesn’t want mumps which I think is quite painful apparently and it was the only moment in his life where his love for me wavered! Julians SPK1000 Malta, is licensed and regulated by the Malta Gaming Authority under Licence Number MGA/CRP/131/2006 (issued on 01 August 2018).

And when the time comes I suspect my ashes will find their final resting place at the top of the hill – a place of solitude and skylarks in summer but where the denouement begins to boil to brutal in winter. For many years he was senior presenter on Channel 4 Racing during the jumps season, and he has been named Racing Journalist of the Year three times. On Frankel’s last race: ‘There were tears speckling the cheers, because there is something almost inexplicably humbling about being in the presence of greatness of this magnitude.

On his favourite racehorse: 'I'll still thump anyone who doesn ' t appreciate that Rondetto was the greatest chaser of all time. By turns moving, uplifting and laugh-out-loud funny, this book provides ample proof of one racing certainty: that no one catches the spirit of racing as Alastair Down does. His scholarly teachers at the exclusive Tonbridge School were, however, less enthusiastic – The Sporting Life was not available in the library and Down made arrangements to collect a copy from a nearby newsagent each morning. Cheltenham et Al offers a generous collection of his very best columns, providing the Down angle on the great horses, jockeys and trainers; the famous races which remain indelibly in the sport’s collective memory; the controversies; the laughs – in short, the highs and the lows of racing. I first went to the Festival actually when I was 19 and a friend of dads had a wonderful box which he couldn’t use.

Like when Desert Orchid won the Gold Cup, I’d had my boots on the second placed horse, Yahoo at 40s - but he jumped the last with a big leap and I didn’t utter a word for Yahoo because I was yelling for Desert Orchid and that is what it does to you. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.

Down commanded a platoon in the Battle of Sidi Barrani in December 1940 and lost his right eye in the engagement. I met him a few times a very long time ago as I had horses with Jim Old in his glory days with Mole Board and Collier Bay and Alastair also had a share in one there.