What's in a TV channel?

I felt really bad yesterday. I fell in with Colin Williams while riding out. Colin, as some of you may know, nowadays rides out for Mark Tompkins. He was riding a very unimpressive-looking horse, who it transpires is good: Alan Devonshire, who ran adequately in last year's Derby despite pulling far too fiercely. Alan Devonshire is very keen, so Colin rides him out on his own. And I fell in with Colin riding across town to Racecourse Side. Anyway, I told Colin how much I'd enjoyed the Evening with Sir Peter O'Sullevan, for whom of course Colin rode Be Friendly to win the Vernons Sprint Cup at Haydock. It then transpired that Colin hadn't known about the evening until afterwards, which is why he wasn't there. He'd have loved to have been there, and I'm sure that Sir Peter would have been really pleased to see him there: he was pleased enough that one jockey (Michael Hills) was in the audience, so I'm sure that he'd have been even more pleased to see a jockey who used to ride for him. I'd actually seen Colin the day before the talk and had been going to mention it, but as it turned out I got distracted and wasn't able to shout between the two strings, but wasn't too worried about it at the time because, as the talk had been announced in the Racing Post, I'd assumed that Colin would have known about it. Which evidently he hadn't. So that was a real pity.

Anyway, Colin and I were talking and he mentioned a two-year-old filly which Harvey Leader had trained during Colin's apprenticeship, and on whom Colin had won a couple of races. This filly had won the Brocklesby - due, of course, to be run this coming Saturday - and had dead-heated with a very good filly called Pugnacity. I don't remember Pugnacity as a racehorse, because I was only very young in those days, but I do remember her as a broodmare, particularly as the dam of Relkino, who was placed in Empery's Derby before defeating Artaius in the following year's Benson And Hedges Gold Cup - before, of course, becoming the sire of David Nicholson's very good hurdler Relkeel. Anyway, and here is the coincidence, that was yesterday - and then today I picked up the Racing Post, and there was a picture of Pugnacity jumping the last hurdle to win a race yesterday. Not the same Pugnacity, of course, but that's quite a coincidence. One might feel that, by breeding a Derby place-getter, Pugnacity would have earned herself perpetual rights to her name, but then I suppose that if Gyr didn't earn that by running second in Nijinsky's Derby, nor Firestreak by siring the Derby winner Snow Knight, then it's no surprise that Pugnacity's name can be re-allocated.

Which brings us on to the subject of names. I know that Owen Byrne takes his role as BHA names czar very seriously and, although I do sometimes think that he has been insufficiently respectful of names which ought to be sacrosanct (Gyr and Firestreak springing to mind straightaway, although in his defence I suppose that with the latter he presumably felt that denying the Queen a name wouldn't be the thing to do) I would have to say that overall he's a good custodian. And what particularly has made me aware of this is the discovery of the slackness of his French counterpart. The other week, while doing some research for a thoroughbredinternet piece, I chanced upon the shocking fact that Octagonal (pictured) has a son called ... Octagonal. That's just terrible. The Big O junior is, of course, French-bred, from Octagonal's time at Haras de Quesnay, so I suppose that, strictly speaking, this is permissable - but honestly! I don't know who deserves more shame: the person who applied for the name, or the person who granted it. The worst case of family duplication in Britain recently has been Photo Flash, the dam of last year's Richmond Stakes winner Prolific. Photo Flash's third dam was called ... Photo Flash! That's just terrible. Whoever named her must have known her pedigree, and it's not as if the original Jim Joel-owned Photo Flash was just an ordinary mare either. That's just so poor. And in that case I attach no blame whatsoever to the names czar (which I suspect wasn't Owen, because if Photo Flash was named as a two-year-old, she'd have been named in 2001, and I suspect that Owen has held the job for fewer than seven years) because he couldn't have been expected to know the mare's pedigree, other than her sire (and his antecendents) and dam. But whoever applied for that name should hang his head in shame!

Well, that's been a fairly purposeless little wander. I've been meaning also to enter into the Cheltenham TV coverage debate, which has occupied many column inches in recent Racing Posts. Noel Meade got this going by writing to the Racing Post to say that Channel Four had wasted too much time showing anything but horses, and I think that he's right (as it seems do most other correspondents). I tend not to watch Channel Four, other than during the races (as Racing UK show the replays so often, one can get the best of both channels' views of the races by watching Channel Four live and then watching the Racing UK replays subsequently) because Racing UK in general gets dragged off on fewer red herrings - although some of the Racing UK presenters are better at concentrating level-headedly on the subject in hand than others. I suspected that by not watching Channel Four I'd mostly only miss things that I wouldn't mind missing - and I had reached that conclusion even before discovering today that Channel Four had shown a film of Alastair Down eating steak and chips while the horses were in the parade ring for one of the races! But what I would say - and I hope that a Racing UK employee might read this and take note - is that Racing UK, while very good at giving us a view of each horse in the parade ring, generally makes the critical mistake of showing too little of each horse, ie roughly only the area from the jockey's foot upwards (often because the caption obscures anything lower than that). That, of course, gives a good sight of the colours carried and of the horse's colour and face, and makes it easy to fix in the mind what image one will be looking for in the race. However, if one is to form a good idea of the horse in general and of his fitness in particular, one does need to see the whole horse. I know it's only a small point, but if the camera could just pan back a little, the overall result result would be a more informative view. It's bad enough that trainers are allowed to put sheets and rugs on horses in the parade ring - which in my view should not be allowed and which is why it is very rare to see a horse which I train wearing anything other than his saddle. etc in the mounting yard - because that makes it hard enough for people to get an idea of how fit the horse is, but if one can only see a fraction of the fraction that it is visible, then it becomes doubly hard.

And my final thought for the night, continuing the TV theme, is to express my surprise when I read recently in the Racing Post that Alastair Down is frequently told by critics that Channel Four is wrong not to cater for a younger audience; I was thinking that they catered only for the younger generations!

Oh, by the way, reverting to the names theme, I was thinking that, were I a tabloid editor, I would give this piece the title "What's in a name?"; but as I always think that that rhetorical question, even by the standards of cliches in general, is meaningless and pretentious, I won't. So I've come up with an even lamer title.