HA’WAY the lads…crack open a Newcy brown and get set for a night on the Toon like never before.
Okay, to be totally accurate it will be an afternoon, and you’ll have to be content with a seat in front of the telly – but you know what I mean.
After 76 days, although it seems so much longer, horse racing will lead British sport out of lockdown at long, long last.
June has always been Gosforth Park’s biggest month of the year. That’s when 30,000 mad for it Geordies pile in for the Northumberland Plate, and show the nation how to have fun.
This time the stands will be empty, hangovers will be home-induced and no ticker tape of losing betting slips fluttering around the silver ring.
But June 1, 2020 will still go down as the most momentous day Newcastle racecourse has ever seen. The day the sport of kings wore its crown with pride.
A sanitised, protocol-packed, follow-a-new-set-of-rules afternoon it maybe, but one we’ll never forget.
When the stalls fly back at 1pm, they’ll be racing for a purse nearly £1 million less than next months’ rescheduled Derby, but in years to come, the winner will be just as memorable.
A dozen horses, ridden by mask-wearing jockeys straight from a Zorro convention, will storm down the straight chasing a slice of history.
Ten races, 120 runners…and for those in the saddle, finally able to open those letters from the bank with a little less trepidation.
Few professional athletes have had such a lean time of it as your average Flat jockey. And no, by lean time I don’t mean a diet of lettuce leaves, a glass of water and gulp of fresh air.
For most, it is a week to week existence. No rides means no money. Not aside of a few quid for riding out each week, with no carrot of a winner at the end of it all.
Of course it won’t be a meeting like any they have known before. No showers, no saunas, no changing room as they know it and – certainly NO hugs and handshakes if they win.
Instead the Colonel Porter betting hall won’t host fans desperate for a pie and a punt, but will be a makeshift site for those preparing for battle in specially constructed cubicles.
There will be a one-way system from there to weighing out, heading to and from the parade ring and a safe distanced area for one jockey and trainer once there.
Oh, and that’s AFTER every member of stable staff – who had to be declared at the same time as horses and riders – completed a Covid-19 training programme earlier in the week.
There will be coveralls, face masks, gloves, goggles, hand sanitisers and thermometers. It will be more PPE than gee-gee. But who cares?
And before the sanctimonious start bleating about stripping a stretched NHS of much-needed employees, bear this in mind.
Pray God there is no need for ambulances, hospitals or medics, but if so, they will be private ones. The services won’t be stripped of staff by racing, so don’t bother climbing the soap box.
Rightly so. And if all that is what it takes to come back – and let’s face it, no sport is better equipped to handle a safe distance return than this – we’ll take it.
Just a pity, then, that the British Horseracing Authority has been as hush-hush as the French resistance throughout it all.
This was the chance of a real publicity coup. A chance to shout from the rooftops how racing has led the way, while football has been bogged down in self-serving tiffs and tussles.
An opportunity to bellow that today – one of four meetings at Newcastle this week – brings live action back to the screens.
A few days which will also bring the Guineas meeting and the start of Royal Ascot before we are bogged down by rows over VAR, referees and diving footballers again.
The floor was there for the BHA’s taking. Instead all we’ve had from the governing body is…well not much. The sport of thoroughbreds led by PR donkeys, the more cynical might claim.
So thank Heavens the jockeys, the trainers and Newcastle racecourse have been beating the drum.
About their delight at the return, about what it means to be back…about their pride at being part of a sport which has shown the rest a clean pair of heels.
Take Roger Fell, for example. A successful, if lesser known, trainer. A man who, at 65, may have been more concerned with his own well-being right now. Not a bit of it.
Even more remarkable, given Fell has actually been through his own coronavirus battle in the head-on, no-nonsense manner you’d expect of a straight-talking Yorkshireman.
He shrugged that off with a “it floored me for a while but tonsillitis as a kid was worse” response, preferring instead to focus on the chances of his ten runners this afternoon.
That’s what really matters, tha’ knows…as Fell would doubtless say.
Ah yes, finding a winner. That really would cap it…although many of us see ten races as simply meaning we’ll lose more money than usual.
In fact I must confess to being behind as soon as the final declarations came through, having decided to beat the odds and back Caravan Of Hope in the 5.05pm a few days ago.
It takes some doing to be chasing your losses before racing has even re-started. I blame Hugo Palmer.
That being the case, it’ll have to be Ice Pyramid and all weather champion Ben Curtis, and Danny Tudhope’s Be Proud instead.
But you know what, if they both go up in smoke, for once it won’t really matter.
What does is the fact horse racing is back…I may even have one of those cans with my corn flakes to celebrate early.
