THE PAST IS UNDOUBTEDLY A DIFFERENT COUNTRY.

​I use phrases and terms like ‘we live in different times’ too regularly these days. It is as if I am nostalgic for a time, especially in racing, that occurred before I became aware of this magnificent sport. My favourite books are those that inform me about horse racing in the thirties, forties and fifties, which only reinforces the fact that the age of now is as different to the age of then as chalk is to anthracite. At present I am reading Peter O’Sullevan’s autobiography ‘Calling the Horses’ and as you can easily imagine it is a fascinating and authoritative read.
O’Sullevan was a modest man who allowed his readers to believe his successful career was all down to good luck and the charity of friends. This sentiment was quite probably the only rubbish he ever wrote. He was a good and great man, a superb journalist, though in my estimation, even if he remains ‘the voice of racing’, not the finest of commentators.
People of the quality of Peter O’Sullevan never truly die. They make too much a mark in life, leave too big a gap in death for any ordinary mortal to fill. If only it were not so as his wisdom and influence will be sorely missed when Animal Aid and its supporters in the Labour Party make their first offensive in their war to have the honourable sport of horse racing made as extinct as dishonourable pursuits such as badger and bear-baiting.
Living in an age when even the smallest of towns has at least one bookmaker on its High Street, back when Sir Peter began to bet bookmakers were far and few between, with getting a bet on, except on a racecourse, as shady a deal as buying Class A drugs today.
In his autobiography, though this is said with the benefit of hindsight, he wrote some pretty startling and poignant prose. ‘Even so, when it came to the Coventry Stakes on 17th June, ten days after the Normandy Landings …’ is a stark reminder of the times he lived in and that in limited form horse racing continued in this country despite the ravages of war.
The adjective to best describe O’Sullevan, to my limited knowledge of the man, is meticulous. In his autobiography his recall for detail can only be ascribed to meticulous bookkeeping. When he was first appointed to the Press Association his salary was £9 9 shillings a week, plus 17 shillings and sixpence temporary war bonus. He had a record of every bet he struck and he was even able to detail the slow deterioration of Dante’s eyesight and that by the time the St.Leger came around the Derby winner was totally blind.
He was astute enough to realise that at the end of the war French horses would be fitter and their trainers in a better position to have them prepared for the big races and self-funded he would conduct stable tours of the most prominent trainers, reporting back to his readers on horses worth backing for the classics and the Lincoln, a far more prestigious race back then and which the French targeted with the same dedication as if it were a Derby or Guineas.
He recounts a tale that no racing reporter is ever likely to encounter in this technological age. Accompanied by Johnnie de Moraville, he was set to cover Wincanton races on 28th February 1946. It was the duty of Press Association duty reporters to be ‘on site’ by 7 am to telephone London regarding prospects for the day’s racing. This entailed setting off at 4 am on roads ice-bound and covered in snow. The closer they came to Somerset the more abandoned cars they encountered and the less likely it would that racing would take place. After sliding into many ditches, fifteen miles from Wincanton they made the decision to locate a call-box and inform the London office of the grim news. “Wincanton prospects nil. More follows.” He decided that the news he had imparted was too feeble and minutes later made another transfer-call to London updating his report to “Wincanton racing has been abandoned. Quote from the clerk of the course to follow.” In need of a warming brew they continued their journey, stopping seven miles from the course at Mere. Mere was snow-free and there was green grass down in the valley. Their rivals, the chaps who worked for ‘The Tape’ who informed the B.B.C. and other subscribers like prominent owners and trainers, were ahead of them and they hot-footed it to the course expecting to find golden sunlight and skylarks, to be relieved to be informed by one of Neville Crump’s lads that ‘You’d need ten pickaxes to bury your grandmother out there.’ Smart phones and computer technology have taken all the romance and adventure out of life, haven’t they?
Peter O’Sullevan was one of the best of the best. He loved horse racing and horses and no one more deserved to own top-class horses – he owned enough of the lesser kind – which he achieved with Be Friendly and Attivo, two horses you can bet your bottom dollar lived long and happy lives in retirement. He led where other have followed. His halcyon days as a journalist and commentator were conducted in a different age, a better age, perhaps, an age when technological invention in the sport were the patrol camera and starting stalls. Would he approve of how racing is facing its future? He may have been insightful and as a journalist a campaigner for improvement such as the patrol camera and horse welfare but he was not one for rocking the establishment, at least not in public. And as a man who must have raised more money for equine and animal charities than almost anyone before him, I cannot think other than he would be appalled by a so-called animal charity wanting to ban the sport he so loved and the rather feeble way the B.H.B. and racing’s stakeholders are preparing the sport to stave off the biggest threat yet to its future.