Pros and cons for Lambourn carol service
Not every voice at this annual event in racing heartland is expected to be up to scratch
The Flat and National Hunt seasons plough on relentlessly all year but, in Lambourn at any rate, ’tis the season to be jolly.
Tonight, the Injured Jockeys Fund holds its annual carol service in the village church at 6pm before withdrawing to Oaksey House for drinks – or, more likely in a few cases, gargling – and nibbles.
Among the cast of performers are a certain number of professionals, such as Heather Main, the Kingston Lisle trainer, who is opera-schooled. Former jockey Philip Blacker, on the saxophone, and his wife Louise, a handy soprano, make a formidable double act.
Interspersing the good music are readings from Brough Scott, who is giving Warrior, his grandfather General Jack Seely’s story of a war horse, a final outing in what has been a busy year, the centenary of the Armistice.
Cold Feet actor and big jump racing fan Robert Bathurst will read his own composition, Gold Cup Prattle, while Clare Balding will also be up on the pulpit – six feet above contradiction, as a vicar once told me – clearing her voice for Sunday’s BBC Sports Personality of the Year.
The organiser, Lady Oaksey, will read a 17th century nun’s poem which, she says, might have been written for her: “Keep me from the fatal habit of thinking I must say something on every subject and on every occasion. Release me from craving to straighten out everybody’s affairs… teach me the glorious lesson that occasionally I may be mistaken.”
Pulling it all together is musical director and pianist Craig Pilgrim, the former point-to-point jockey who interrupted rehearsals yesterday to attend Ascot sales in search of his next pointer. He has had the devil’s own job of knocking the less professional trainers/ jockeys choir into shape for An Owner’s Lament.
This will be sung to The 12 Days of Christmas tune with Oliver Sherwood, Harry Whittington, Harry Dunlop, Jamie Snowden, Dom Ffrench-davis, Warren Greatrex, Tom Garner, Richard Chugg, former jockey George Baker and Nicky Henderson assistant Toby Law es taking a verse each.
It begins: “On the first day of Christmas my trainer said to me… What a very fine filly she’ll be.”
Anyway, to precis the song, by day six the trainer has built the owner up by talking about Cheltenham, on the ninth day he even suggests a party should be prearranged for the filly’s debut, before the inevitable day 10 “My trainer said to me… her blood’s not right this morning” and concluding with day 12’s “We should wait until next season”.
“It’s frightening how bad some of them are,” Pilgrim told me. “They are tone deaf and aren’t singing the words. You’re a bad singer [he has experience] but there’s space at day nine if you want it.”
Newmarket hosts its Racing Welfare charity carol concert at Tattersalls tomorrow night. The town’s band is providing the music and, probably the reason it is in a sales ring not a church, the address “Christmas reminiscences” will be given by the Very Rev Sir Mark Prescott.
Tickets for both can be bought through the respective charities and, at Newmarket, on the door.
You would have thought Gary Moore, who is hoping to win a second big chase at Cheltenham this winter with Baron Alco on Saturday, left his days of being injured behind him when he gave up riding and started training, but he regularly sports a wound, the most recent being a sort of boxer’s cut to his left eye.
Always keen to upgrade his facilities at Cisswood Stables in Lower Beeding – should that be Bleeding? – his latest installation is a water splash for the horses of the type which is all the rage chez Mullins and Elliott in Ireland.
But he was riding a new horse recently arrived from Newmarket – the only water horses see in Newmarket is in their buckets – which was not keen on the idea of Moore’s walk-through bath, whipped round and deposited Moore on the bank before one of its hooves connected with the trainer’s face.
If everyone was like Moore, the NHS would be overstaffed and in financially good order. He told his wife, Jayne, he did not have time to go to A&E and that he would get it stitched by the course doctor, failing that the vet, when he got to Sandown on Friday.
So, she did her best, binding the cut together on a temporary basis, but, as yet, Gary still has not had time to go to a course doctor, so he is still walking around with a partially patched-up facial wound.