Icons and brahmas

Mention of the whip-borrowing incident in yesterday's chapter brings to mind Racing UK presenter Peter Naughton, who apparently was the man who spotted the transfer. Am I the only person recently to have been rather bewildered by Peter being referred to on Racing UK as 'The Ethical Tipster'? Do we know why Peter is regarded as being signficantly more ethical than other tipsters? Does this mean that he is the only ethical tipster, or just that the others, although ethical to a certain extent, are less so than he is? One might argue that if he was as fore-sighted as he is, supposedly, ethical, he might have kept the discovery of the whip exchange to himself, because then he would not have been the catalyst for some ethically-questionable false accusations of cheating to be made on his channel towards Mr. J. P. McKeown. But that's by the by. Why the ethics? It's not even as if he comes from Ethics, because he is, I believe, a Yorkshireman!

The other strange thing about Peter is that he has collected another title, which is that of a 'National Hunt Icon', as he was described in the Racing Post three weeks or so ago. (I think he is National Hunt Icon Number 34, but I could be wrong on that detail). What's this all about? I think you'd be lucky to find one person in a thousand who would put Peter on his or her list of top 100 National Hunt Icons, so who compiled this list? That's so strange.

Anyway, that has got me thinking about National Hunt icons. Whom would we put in our list. I think why the list, segments of which appear intermittently in the Racing Post, is such an odd one is because it only includes people who have recorded a Racing UK podcast (is that the right word?) on the subject, which obviously rules quite a lot of people out. It rules out most of the people whom I'd put on my list, anyway. Obviously the list should really comprise mostly horses, but if we leave them out off, and we leave off people who are dead, with whom are we left? Jonjo O'Neill and John Francome, obviously, and Richard Dunwoody. Peter Scudamore and his dad. Michael Dickinson. Martin Pipe. Vincent O'Brien. Terry Biddlecombe and Henrietta Knight. Graham Thorner. Jeff King. Andy Turnell. Tommy Carberry, and Paul. Ted Walsh, and Ruby. Tony McCoy. Josh Gifford. Stan Mellor. Mick Fitzgerald. Ginger McCain. Peter Easterby. Jenny Pitman. Paul Nicholls. Paddy Broderick. Steve Smith-Eccles. But let's dig a little deeper. How about Joe 'The Iron Man' Guest? Or Ron Atkins (whom I was delighted to spot at Fontwell a few years ago, leaning up against the parade ring rail)? Ted Caine, trainer of Quixall Crossett? Gerry (G.P.) Kelly, who seemed to go on riding over jumps into his fifties, even though he probably didn't ride a winner after his twenties? Gene Kelly, rider of Gay Record? Ray Goldstein? Oliver Carter (who I believe is very unwell)? Barbara Lockhart-Smith? And, of course, Newmarket's own Ian Watkinson.

You might have wondered where that was all leading, so now I'll put you out of your misery. There are two people whom I'm always pleased to hear from, and they are Ian and Bill O'Gorman. Either can be guaranteed to come up with a flood of brahmas, and Ian's latest came on Sunday morning. I'm never in a hurry to start the day on a Sunday, but Ian never sleeps, and every morning his first task is to scour the Racing Post in search of things to complain about. One such offending item recently was a photograph where, if you looked very closely, you could spot some jumps jockeys wearing jewellery. Anyway, when I turned my phone on last Sunday, a text message came through from Ian asking if I could ring him when I got the message. This I did. His first question was had I seen the photograph of Monet's Garden jumping a new type of hurdle in that day's Racing Post? (I hadn't; and it transpired that the horse had been used as a guinea pig to see whether these hurdles would be satisfactory). Anyway, the gist of this was how could this be a satisfactory trial of the jumps if the guinea pigs were horses such as Monet's Garden, who are going to jump well whatever you put them at? And this led us to this rather amusing tale which I thought I might relate in words as close to Ian's as possible.

"When they decided to hold jumping at Teeside Park in 1968, they decided that a couple of horses ought to school over the fences before they used them in a race, just to check that they were actually jumpable. Captain Crump sent up a horse, and Arthur Stephenson sent down a horse. But the problem was that they were really good horses, two of the best jumpers in the country: one of them, I think, was Pawnbroker. So these two horses galloped round one circuit of Teeside Park, ridden by Paddy Broderick and Pat Buckley. They jumped the fences really well, and everyone was happy with the way things were going. So the next week they had the first jumps meeting at Teeside Park. The first race was a novice chase. There were five fallers at the first fence, all falling independently, and of a 15-horse field, only about three got round. So they abandoned the rest of the chases and made the fences a lot less stiff before the next meeting."

Which, of course, is of no relevance at all, as I'm sure that these new jumps are very safe, and suitable to be jumped not solely by horses of the calibre of Monet's Garden. But I enjoyed Ian's reminiscence, and if anyone else has enjoyed it, then I haven't passed it on in vain.