Cheltenham Et Al: The Best of Alastair Down

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He then switched to the Racing Post stable, his current employers, while becoming one of the faces of Channel Four Racing until being deemed surplus to requirements nearly two years ago when many of the ‘old guard’ appeared to be ditched in favour of more photogenic presenters. But missing the Festival is unthinkable for one of the finest sports journalists of our time, and a man whose presence is still much missed by viewers of Channel 4 Racing. I have one or two people that I talk to and some people that I listen to - including Patrick Mullins whose son is a great friend, so we will have a con flab. The thing that’s changed, in my lifetime is that if you went to Cheltenham when you were young, little yards won lots of races, so it was great and it gave the meeting added flavour.

You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Jim seemed to know most of the journos in those day and Colin McKenzie and Jonathan Powell were also part of "team Old".On his favourite racehorse: 'I'll still thump anyone who doesn ' t appreciate that Rondetto was the greatest chaser of all time. We’re lucky to be dealing with decent people,” adds Down, who does not hesitate to cite Dawn Run’s emotional 1986 Gold Cup win as his favourite race of all time. Alastair Down on the Cheltenham Festival: 'To go there and stand witness to extraordinary events is a rare and wonderful act of being at one with your fellow clutterers of the planet .

Thank you so much for sparing the time to chat and I'm sure The Festival will not disappoint, providing it's usual dose of wonderful fairytales. And when the time comes I suspect my ashes will find their final resting place at the top of the hill – a place of solitude and skylarks in summer but where the denouement begins to boil to brutal in winter.By turns moving, uplifting and laugh-out-loud funny, this book provides ample proof of one racing certainty: that no one catches the spirit of racing as Alastair Down does. I was surfing through channels thinking "you never know" and suddenly I was looking at the holy grail and not believing it. Cheltenham has been made easier over the years and many, many more ways than it has been publicised - but rightly so, and we are still making innovations, like after last year’s four miler - which was a bit like the refute from Moscow but without Napoleon. To be honest, we are talking five or six days ahead of the meeting, and I have learnt down the years that you get a flood of information from lots of people and you have to learn with people to separate the dreamers from the realists. From 1922 to 1927 he attended Edinburgh Academy, and from 1927 to 1932 attended Marlborough College.

Discover the joy of reading with us, your trusted source for affordable books that do not compromise on quality. In the old days you could muck about with them and get there because of the weight range of handicap was two stone and now that’s 4 or 5lbs, so it’s got to be the one that wins with a little bit ‘up its sleeve’ but they’ve all got ones, twos, threes and fours, whereas in the old days you could have six and you wouldn’t be put off if you thought that the man who trained them had the ‘brass neck’ to do it. It isn’t like that, you are in competition with every other so-and-so out there and you are looking for all the camaraderie of the weighing room (which is genuine and intense) and then they are out there to assassinate each other on course. On recovering after an over-indulgent day at Longchamp: 'I just wish to be left alone with my thoughts and sincere hopes that my liver, which I mailed home by separate refrigerated container, will arrive soon.Colonel Sir Alastair Frederick Down OBE MC TD (23 July 1914 – 22 October 2004) was a Scottish army officer, accountant, and oilman. I walked into the paddock with him and Geoff Lester after Collier Bay won the CH and value the video I have of that great moment.