the first racing post. (Part 1)

​‘We’re Off! Welcome to the Post’. So wrote Graham Rock, the Racing Post’s first editor in a brief opening statement of intent.
The Racing Post came into my life on April 15th, 1986. It is now 36-years old. To my amazement, I was only 31 back then and the paper has become for me the birthday present that keeps on giving. The paper cost just 25p, a working man’s price. Now it is £4ish, only affordable by the monied society. And me, a working man still.
On page 5 there is to be found a story titled ‘The Mill Reef Mystery’. Page 9, Derby blow for Biancone. Page 49, Ballyregan Bob’s big date. The first horse to be photographed in the paper was Sonic Lady.
Page 2 is dominated by Ray Gilpin’s report from Wetherby, with Jimmy Fitzgerald’s high hopes for Artful Charlie, a half-brother to Burrough Hill Lad. Opposite was the story of the £5,000 match race between Dawn Run and Buck House arranged for Punchestown. The two were expected to meet at Gowran Park but Dawn’s Run trainer, Paddy Mullins, had missed the supplement in the Irish Racing Calendar listing the extra meeting.
Will O’Hanlon reported on page 2 of a Nicky Howe double at Wolverhampton and there was a birthday greeting for Tom Waugh, 71 that day. George Ennor reported from Folkestone on Henry Cecil’s first runner and first winner of the season, Tussac, ridden by Steve Cauthen. Michael Dickenson had his first runner for Robert Sangster in the same race. Bolivia, though, finished 32-lengths last of 5.
Botterill’s sale of 2-year-olds in training, described as a deserving enterprise, disappointed. There was also a report on the previous day’s racing at Limerick, headed by another winner for Robbie Connolly since his move to The Curragh.
Colin Mackenzie, in his Post Diary Column, reported there was controversy over the premature death of Mill Reef at the National Stud. The horse was 18 and was said to be suffering from a heart condition. It seems many people were unhappy at his condition prior to the decision to put him down.
Lester Piggott sacked his agent, Mike Watt, who defended himself by claiming that Piggott was ‘almost impossible to work with’.
The Queen Mother held a party at Clarence House to celebrate her treble at Sandown the previous month. Special Cargo, Insular and The Argonaut were the three horses responsible. 
Bill Wightman took one look at the trophy for a race won by his horse Single at Chepstow and exercised his right to accept cash instead. ‘I didn’t come up the Thames on a motorbike,’ he said.
Sir Mark Prescott, 38 at the time, whose ambition was, to quote the Racing Post, to ride as many winners as possible over the sticks and between the sheets. In a whirlwind finish at Hereford, he beat future champion Graham Thorner. ‘I was as pleased as Punch, especially as old Graham was moaning like hell. I took my girlfriend off to a local hotel to spend a pleasant night.’ Unfortunately, the following morning he read in the paper that unbeknownst to him, the judge had changed his mind and awarded the race to his rival. ‘Try explaining that to a girl who didn’t understand about racing!’
Heading a story about ‘lovely redhead Tarnya Davis, there is a photograph of her with Another Duke and her fiancé Paul Nicholls. It might be Paul Nicholls and I’m not saying it isn’t …… it’s just the full head of black hair and lean figure suggests otherwise. Tarnya was one winner behind Gaye Armytage and Candy Moore in the female jockey championship, though at the time she was coming back from a dislocated shoulder.
Page 6 is dedicated to mug-shots of the ‘Racing Post Stable’. Tim Richards, Tony Morris, George Ennor, Ray Gilpin, Adrian Cook, Colin Mackenzie, Paul Haigh, Howard Wright, Simon Crisford (now trainer, then ‘Newmarket Man), Mike Palmer (Greyhounds) Neil Morrice (Lambourn Man) and Paul Johnson (Football Editor). There was also an advertisement for the much-missed J.A. Allen Horseman’s Bookshop in Lower Grosvenor Place.
Page 8 is a full-page advertisement by Robert Sangster’s Swettenham Stud, listing its stakes winner over the past 3-years, yet headed ‘Don’t Write Us Off Just Yet!’
Page 9, Racing Post News, featured Patrick Biancone’s Derby hope taken out of the race because of Epsom’s ‘unique lay-out’. The trainer had wanted to give Pradier and three companions a work-out at Epsom but was denied permission. Biancone took the decision with good grace. Mahmoud Fustok, though, was planning to run 2-fillies in the 1,000 Guineas, Rose of the Sea and Prospect Tora.
Derek Candy, it was reported, had one to ‘conjure with’ come the St.Leger. Ile de Roi had been impressing on the gallops at Lambourn.
Michael Stoute had a strong hand in the coming week’s big races, including Green Desert in the Free Handicap and Jareer in the Greenham.
Kit Patterson, Britain’s longest-serving racecourse official, bid farewell to Catterick on April 15th, 1986, having called-off 5 Catterick fixture that season. He was to be replaced by Charles Enderby, a former army officer.
And, finally, for now, Budweiser were to sponsor all 7-races on Irish Derby Day, contributing IR£290,000 towards the prize fund, with the main race having a guaranteed value of IR£450,000.