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Horseracing at Beverley, Tuesday 23rd September 2025

September 24, 2025

I don’t think I’d been to Beverley races before. I remember attending an evening meeting down that way when I was working at Immingham some forty years ago, but as everything at Beverley looked new to me, perhaps that was Market Rasen. Maybe I should keep a list of courses I’ve attended. Perhaps I already do but have forgotten about it.

Anyway, I had some work meetings in the afternoon and Jen and I didn’t leave the house until 2.30pm. Fortunately Hickton wasn’t running until the final race of the day at 5.20pm and so we arrived with time to spare. Lots of cars were already leaving and parking was easy enough in the Owners Car Park. The fella on the gate didn’t even check our names before handing over our badges.

Hickton has been showing some decent form recently, with two third place and one second place finishes in his past four runs. This race was over a slightly shorter distance of ten furlongs, but the soft ground and the stiff uphill finish were generally considered to suit him.

The ground had been heavy up until the day before and that may have prompted a lot of withdrawals. By the time that they went to post, only six horses remained in the field. The bookies rated Hickton as the outsider in the field and he went off at 18/1.

Zak held him up as planned in the early stages and he made his move up the inside with a couple of furlongs to go. Unfortunately, he was blocked on the rail and just about stopped dead before rallying at the end for a fast finishing third place. Zak thought that he would have won with a clear run and it’s hard to argue with that.

He’ll probably run again next week if the ground stays soft, but I’d like to see him return to Beverley next year to have another crack at that uphill finish. It seems to suit him.

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Horse Racing at Catterick, Wednesday 23rd July 2025

July 29, 2025

It’s fair to say that Hickton’s career to date has been disappointing. After a promising two-year-old debut where he ran on to finish fourth of eight in a five-furlong race at Redcar, he has not challenged for a place since. Despite trying him over a variety of distances and going, he is generally one of the last two horses to finish. We’ve tried most things to change his fortunes including switching trainers and lopping off his nuts.

I could sense a growing feeling in the syndicate that there might not be any improvement to be had and that if we wanted to grace the winners enclosure, then it may have to be with a different horse.

I drove down to Catterick by myself as I was travelling on to Bradford afterwards to watch the Boro. It was heavy rain all of the way down, which whilst not the best conditions for driving are great for a horse with as little pace as Hickton.

I arrived just in time to see the race before ours and it was clear that the ground was as suitable for him as it was ever going to be.

The plan was that Zak would drop him out at the start and then try and pick horses off in the second half of the race. That’s exactly what happened. He stayed last until the half-way mark and then gradually improved his position. He was still going strongly into the final furlong when others were fading and by the time he reached the finish line he had overhauled all but two of the horses. If there had been another hundred yards he might very well have won.

Everyone was very pleased with third, particularly those of us who had got 66/1 just before the off. It was great that Declan’s faith in him was vindicated, and we now have a better idea how to get the best out of the horse. It’s likely that he’ll stay an extra couple of furlongs, but the key to it is holding him up on ground no better than soft. I’ll be hoping that we’ll get plenty more rain in the next few weeks.

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Horse Racing at Redcar, Sunday 20th July 2025

July 27, 2025

Hickton is a horse who needs soft ground and the lack of rain over the early part of the season has meant that he has only ran once this year. That was on the all-weather down at Southall, a month ago. It didn’t work out as he took a bump towards the end and faded from contention.

The heavy rain over the past few days made a return to the turf possible and he was entered in a nine-furlong handicap at Redcar. I thought I’d have a beer or two and so Jen and I took a taxi for the twenty-five-minute journey to the course.

We had an underwhelming buffet in the upstairs Owner’s Restaurant and just about broke even on the pre-Hickton races, courtesy of a single decent priced winner.

There was a fair bit of optimism among the syndicate due to the good to soft ground rating and trainer Declan’s positive assessment of his work on the gallops. Hickton had been backed in to as low as eighteens at one point but went off at twenty-eight to one, which is the price that I’d taken that morning.

The race didn’t go well. He ran strongly from the front again but faded inside the last couple of furlongs, slipping back to finish tenth of the twelve runners.

Zak, the jockey, reckoned that Hickton ran his race the wrong way around, expending far too much energy at the start and then leaving nothing in the tank for the finish. He has an entry for Catterick in three day’s time where the intention will be to drop him out in the back of the field and then let him come from behind to pick his rivals off late on. Let’s hope.

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Middlesbrough v Oxford United, Saturday 29th March 2025, 3pm

April 9, 2025

As we approach the business end of the season the visit of relegation threatened Oxford had to provide three points if we were to stay in the play-off hunt.

Jen and I had been to see Boo Hewerdine at Coulby Newham cathedral the night before and I was chatting with Col, an old school-friend. He was a Darlo fan as a kid but is more into ice-hockey these days. He had little faith in the Boro’s prospects of reaching the play-offs and even less confidence that we’d get promoted at the expense of whichever of the top three teams misses out on automatic. He’s probably right, but you’ve got to enjoy the chase whilst it’s still on.

The gig had good acoustics and a well-behaved crowd. Bonus point for the cushions that softened the effect of the wooden pews.

On the morning of the game, I nipped up to Declan Carroll’s stables at Malton to see Hickton, our syndicate horse. Most of the other fellas don’t bother with the stable visits and this time there was only Graham and I. Hickton is a friendly enough horse and likes to have his head stroked. Declan reckons that he’s progressing well, and he has an entry for Redcar early in April.

On this occasion, we drove up to the gallops to see him work with a couple of sprinters. They used the starting blocks and then had a stiff gallop for four uphill furlongs. He was sharply out of the stalls and ran well, keeping up with the faster horses before taking a bit of pulling up. If he doesn’t run well next time, it won’t be for a lack of fitness.

The Boro’s fitness was improving too, with regular centre-half Rav van den Berg making the bench. He got on for the final few minutes, so should now be available for selection. We’d been poor in the first half and went in at the break a goal down. At that stage, it looked as if Col had got it spot on in his play-off prediction.

We kept at it in the second half, with Howson holding everything together from deep. Iheanacho equalised with his first goal for the club and hopefully that will boost his confidence. It’s a loan that seems more in his interest than ours but if he hits form then it might pay off.

The winner, ten minutes from time, was a glorious build up full of flicks and backheels with the final one coming from Borges as he steered it home. It was the sort of move that you’d expect if you were five goals to the good rather than desperately needing a winner as time slips away for keeping your season alive.

The win took us to seventh, with only goal difference keeping us out of the play-off spots. Seven games to go and a Wembley trip is still a possibility.

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Middlesbrough v Derby County, Saturday 1st March 2025, 3pm

March 4, 2025

I got lucky with my full day back in the UK with both a Boro home game and a stable visit to see Hickton, the Riverside Racing Syndicate horse. I didn’t see him run at all as a two-year-old and so I’m hoping to be more involved in his campaign this season.

We’ve switched trainers for this season to the smaller yard of Declan Carroll and I went along with a couple of other syndicate members to watch him on the gallops.

Declan seems a decent bloke and was happy to spend an hour and a half with us, talking us through Hickton’s progress since arriving. He’s a horse that seems to have some ability, but is reluctant to show it. Hopefully Declan and his team can bring him on a bit.

We watched him run over six furlongs alongside one of the stable sprinters. It’s an uphill track so hopefully he’ll appreciate the much easier gradient next time he’s on the course.

After taking my Mam for quick jaunt around Aldi, I picked up Harry and we set off for the Riverside. Neither of us could work out how to get Radio Tees on the hire car radio, so we missed the team news. The Boro are short of centre halves at the moment, having sold Matt Clarke and then had Van Den Berg and Edmundson pick up injuries.

Jonny Howson still isn’t fit either and so Luke Ayling switched inside. Early in the second half he picked up an injury too which meant that left back Neto Borges took his turn to fill in. It feels as if they’ll all get a go at some point.

Derby are struggling at the moment and came for a point. We had the best of the chances, but it wasn’t until ten minutes from time that Finn Azaz broke the deadlock to give us a second win in four days. Hopefully we can build on that and get back into a play-off spot

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Horseracing at Meydan, Friday 8th November 2024

December 9, 2024

Jen and I had a week in Jordan planned and when looking at the flight options it made sense for us to meet in Dubai and then fly on from there. I’ve never really understood the attraction of Dubai, other than as a hub for going somewhere else. It’s a place where I’ve spent time doing some consultancy in the past, but other than drinking overpriced pints in the sunshine, I’ve never really found anything worthwhile to get up to.

We stayed down by the Marina, which has plenty of shade from the nearby skyscrapers. That made it ok for an early morning walk before the temperature rose sufficiently to make it uncomfortably warm.

I had the option of going to a lower-level football game, but it was a fair distance outside of town and would have finished quite late. We headed for the races instead, mainly due to it finishing slightly earlier than the football but also because it had the added benefit of plenty of bars. We’d got lucky in a way, in that this was the first meeting of the season at Meydan.

I’d bought tickets in advance for an enclosure managed by a pub-chain, McGettigan’s. Presumably that’s a name concocted to sound as Irish as possible. Basic admission was about a tenner, but we paid another fifty quid each or so for a wristband that allowed unlimited drink for a three hour timeframe.

There wasn’t any gambling, or at least there wasn’t for me as I couldn’t access my UK bookies account. Other people seemed to have no trouble placing a bet by phone, but I suppose as they lived there then they were up to speed on all the dodges.

Instead, there was ‘competition’ with a cash prize for anyone who could select the winner in, I think, six races. A sort of placepot, just without the variable pot. It seemed very popular, but I didn’t find out about it until after the first race had gone off.

After a month in Saudi, I made the most of my wristband and it was a pleasant evening sitting drinking as the sun went down. It reminded me a little of when we used to live in Seoul and we would pop down to the baseball after work. Then, as now, we had no real interest who won, the sport was there simply to provide a backdrop to the unwinding. It was just as well really, as we didn’t pick a winner all night.

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Horseracing at Riyadh, Saturday 19th October 2024

December 8, 2024

My trip to Riyadh had been based around football, but with my flight back to Al-Ula not departing until the evening of the following day, I had some spare time. The main activity in Riyadh seems to be shopping and I’ve little interest in that.

Fortunately, there was a race meeting going on and so after lunch I took a taxi to the King Abdulaziz racetrack. I can’t remember how much I paid to get in, but it wasn’t much. The stands were impressive, although well over the top for such a small crowd.

The facilities were impressive too, and I had a choice of eating from one of a handful of stalls or picking up something from a counter inside the main stand. I initially watched from a seat in a large stand and then moved down to a picnic table next to the track for a different perspective.

I was a little worried about getting to the airport on time, so only stayed for the first four races. That was sufficient though to get a feel for the place. I imagine that for the big meetings there would be quite an atmosphere and I’d be interested in experiencing a race meeting where nobody has been drinking.

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Horseracing at Aintree, Saturday 13th April 2024

August 12, 2024

I’m not sure when I first went to the National. It might have been in ’86 when West Tip won, or more likely I think for Maori Venture’s win the following year. It’s strange how I can easily recall the winners from the seventies and eighties but have no idea of the victors in recent years. A bit like the FA Cup, I suppose.

I can remember that I went on a bus from Stockton with Strach. It’s more likely to be ’87 as that was the year we did the Leger and the Arc too.

I know I went a couple of times in the early nineties. I was there for Party Politics and then the year when the false start didn’t get recalled. I’d taken my kids and, as you could in those days, parked in the centre of the course. I’ve a photo of my son somewhere, shorter than one of the fences.

It’s about fifteen years since my last visit. Paul and I went for a couple of years running and I recall him picking a big winner in the last race on one of those occasions.

This time I was there with Jen and had opted for some posh tickets. We were in the Earl of Derby Stand at one hundred and eight-five quid a pop. At least we got seats for our money. As with the previous day we were on the champagne, although the bar in our section was much less crowded than the day before, so it wouldn’t have been much of a hardship to keep making repeat visits for individual drinks.

I moved onto the whisky later on and then when they ran out switched to rum. That might have played a part in me tripping over some steps. Or perhaps it was just old-age.

Highlight of the day was bumping into an Irish wolfhound. The soldier who looked after him must have the best job in the Army. As the dog doesn’t go to war, neither does the handler. I could do a job like that.

Once again, we had little success with the betting and despite backing four horses in the big race came away empty handed. It was a shame really as it makes for a more memorable occasion if you’ve backed the National winner. As it is, I’ve already forgotten which horse came in first.

The weather turned ropey, so we hung on until well after the final race. By that time the storm had blown over and just about everyone else had cleared off. It made for an easy journey back to the Chester hotel.

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Horseracing at Aintree, Friday 12th April 2024

August 11, 2024

I’d booked tickets for a couple of days at the Grand National meeting last summer, soon after the football fixtures came out confirming that the Boro had an away game. These days I rarely know what I’ll be doing ten months into the future but sometimes you just have to make your plans and see if they work out.

As it turned out, the Grand National meeting coincided with a few days of public holiday in Saudi Arabia and so I headed back to the UK for a short break. Jen and I broke the journey to Liverpool with an overnight stay in Sheffield for a Paul Weller gig at the City Hall.

He was great, as ever. I’m not overly keen on long gigs, but the twenty-nine-song set flew by. He drew heavily on new stuff, which I’m fine with, playing just the two Jam songs and three from the Style Council days. He could quite easily have played an entirely different twenty-nine songs from his back-catalogue with no drop in quality. Who else could do that? Could McCartney get away with just two Beatles songs and three from Wings? And if he did, could he swap out the entire rest of the set for twenty-four different solo songs to those he usually plays? I doubt it.

It was amusing, as ever,  to see all the old blokes dressed as Weller, or even better, with their Weller haircuts. Dressing like Weller is fine as most of the stuff that he wears is more than decent clobber. But don’t do it at one of his gigs, fellas, you’re not cosplaying at a Star Trek convention. Save it for popping out to Aldi.

Next morning we drove across Snake Pass to our hotel in Chester. I picked it because it was a reasonably easy journey by train to the racecourse. The hotel looked ok from the outside, but it was one of those places that caters primarily for coach tours and so wasn’t up to much. I felt sorry for all those American tourists calling in there between Loch Ness and Stonehenge.

After dropping off our bags we caught the train to Aintree. It soon filled up with smartly dressed young people pre-gaming on Echo Falls rose. Our tickets were for the Princess Royal Roof, which is somewhere that Paul and I had watched the National from back in 2008. It seemed a lot busier on this occasion, despite it costing over a hundred quid and it not even being Grand National day.

It was Ladies Day and so a certain amount of dressing up went on. I’d been expecting to see some Peaky Blinder blokes, but that fashion seems to have slipped into the past. There was a good atmosphere about the place although the next day I read reports that some fighting had gone on.

The drinks were expensive. Maybe I’m getting out of touch, but over twenty quid for a pint of Worthingtons, a can of wine and a lemonade mixer struck me as outrageous. As did the scrum to get served. We switched to champagne at eighty-five quid a bottle from a dedicated bar instead, which didn’t seem too bad in comparison to the individual drinks, and I could buy it without having to stick my elbows out.

With just the one winner all day I avoided the scrum at the pay-out counters too.

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Horse Racing at Leopardstown, Sunday 4th February 2024

August 8, 2024

The sporting events were coming fast and furious over the bank holiday weekend. There was a horseracing festival at Leopardstown, and I’d booked tickets in advance for day two.

The night before we’d seen Depeche Mode at the Dublin Arena which was a very convenient two-minute stroll from our hotel. Jen is more of a fan than I am. They are not a band that I’ve listened to much, but I liked some of their early Vince Clarke era stuff when I was a kid and they’ve had enough hits over the years to keep my attention.

Next morning we caught the tram to somewhere near the racecourse. It was packed with people dressed up. I’ve never really seen the need to go to the races in the sort of clobber that you’d wear to a wedding. Mind you, I barely see the point of it for a wedding either.

There were double decker shuttle buses waiting at the final tram stop to ferry people to the course and despite there being a crowd of around thirty thousand, it was all very straightforward to get in and out.

We’d paid forty euros a pop for regular tickets, which were fine. We had access to the parade ring and to a terraced standing grandstand. There were plenty of bars and I didn’t ever have to wait long for my next Guinness.

In a stroke of luck, I was able to watch the Boro’s game against Sunderland on the telly between races, although I missed our no-doubt well-taken goal on the hour and then their spawny equaliser towards the end.

I was less fortunate with the horses despite having spent half-an-hour or so making my selections that morning. I seem to recall just the one winner, which wasn’t at big enough odds to counter all of the losers. Jen picked some more on the basis of their names and they did no better. Perhaps we need a new system.

With rain imminent, we skipped the last race to avoid any bus or tram queues and were soon back in the city centre to continue celebrating the bank holiday weekend.

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