You have to take it as fact that luck plays a big part when it comes to tipping winners. Jockeys, if they do not have actual control of where they finish in a race, can make decisions in response to things that happen in a race, sometimes the right decisions and more often, I suspect, the wrong decisions. The punter, on the other hand, can do nothing but wait, grimace or hope for the gods to smile upon them. Once the tape go up or the stalls open the punter is as lonely as the innocent man about to be hanged.
Every race, from a humble seller at Redcar to the Grand National is a puzzle to be solved. On Saturday, I was very much down and out by the seventh fence, yet the horses that finished first and second were both probable winners according to my scatter-gun calculations. I was also correct in dismissing Grangeclare West, the favourite at the time I was forming a set opinion on what might win and what I could not see winning. Pricewise, perhaps Britain's foremost tipster, put up Percival Legallois to win the race and he failed to get round. I did write on Saturday that I hoped the weight would beat I Am Maximus and that proved me twice wrong. He won and the weight did not beat him. Iroko, if fate allows, will win a National, of that I am sure, with next year being his best chance, I believe.
No matter how you imagine the finish of a race, or even who you would like to win, the result is always out of your hands. Apart from the I.T.V. presenters who proposed I Am Maximus as the winner, all the others were wrong in their assessments, including such notables as Ruby Walsh and Mick Fitzgerald. So when it comes to nominating two fallers before halfway, I or you, were in good company, and that is the sort of company we all should want to be in.
There will be two racing people with the surname of Williams serving time for crimes committed once the second Williams is sentenced in the coming days or weeks. The now ex-jockey Levi Williams was in a brawl outside a pub that led to the murder/manslaughter of a man and ex-trainer Evan Williams is about to start a sentence of 3-years imprisonment for the assault of a man he mistakenly mistook for a poacher.
The first Williams I have no sympathy for; the second, though no one can say he has been hard done by, I wish some leniency had come his way from the judge. His barrister told the court that without Evan at the helm, his business had no chance of survival, putting many jobs at risk. Yet, in the time the licence has been in his wife's name, the stable has had a Cheltenham Festival winner. It is a family business, with, I believe, his two daughters, a son-in-law, as well as his wife, his assistant trainer, working at the stables. I can see no reason why Fingerpost Farm cannot continue in Evan's absence. I hope so as in 18-months Evan will be up for parole; it will give him something to occupy his mind during the loneliness of his incarceration.
The Racing Post is celebrating its fortieth anniversary this week. It came into being on the 32nd anniversary of my birth, not that they knew this at the time. I bought a copy of the first Racing Post and it resides in the draw of this desk as I write. Edition number 1 is very different to issue number 13, 698 and it is a sobering thought reminding myself that I have purchased very nearly every copy. I freely admit that my life revolves around reading the Racing Post, which I do on-line these days, and then writing this inconsequential and vanity project of a blog, a word I deeply dislike. It is a very long shot but I hope I am around for the Racing Post's fiftieth anniversary.