Sir Alastair Down, who has died aged 90, was a career manager in the oil industry who was plunged into the limelight when he was asked to rescue Burmah Oil in the mid-1970s. According to the NHS, some of the most common symptoms of a fractured hip include: pain. Brilliant writer and orator of reviews at his best. They had four children: Melinda, Richard, Diana, and Nigel. not being able to lift, move or rotate (turn) your leg. Which renowned racing journalist was spotted well before the first on Tuesday in the Quevega bar at Cheltenham, pint in hand, unsteady on his feet and rather the worse for wear when he was supposed to be at work? Views expressed are those of TRFs admin 18+ BeGambleAware https://t.co/BY1D8iuhyx, If you are not lucky enough to win the Eider comp (see earlier tweets) all of Sean's books are available to purchase on Amazon or via http://writesports.net, All you need do is name winner of the Eider Chase today (3.25pm Newcastle) before the off + the winning distance (tie-break) and e-mail your answer to writesports0@gmail.com adding Racing Forum in the subject line to be in with a chance of winning. . Interview: ALASTAIR DOWNIn this four-part interview the five times HWPA Racing Writer Of The Year and Channel 4 presenter talks about his life in racing, his early days on Fleet Street, working on course, TV presenting, his love of Cheltenham and in particular the Festival. Award-winning racing writer and broadcaster Alastair Down talks about the early days of his life falling in the love with the game. Memories? Dad wasn't great at running things with Mum away and managed to flood the kitchen with water and bubbles. Dawn Runs Gold Cup win was exceptional and we have had some astonishing touches over the years. It was right on the winning line in a stand that no longer exists and I was offered it; it was a box for 12 with the dining room out of the back - I think we got about 42 people into the box! We can paraphrase the exchange quite simply. He had already declared sometime previously that he had a problem and needed to stop. I lacked his utter passion for the cause and moved away from him in the throng. Alastair Down was never one of the University of York's most diligent students, but he used his time there to pursue his lifelong love affair with horse racing as Tom Richmond discovered. He invented it. This article section only contains champion skins. I was put on a morphine pump but wasn't pressing the button often enough because deep inside I was desperate to get out. He gets right to the heart of it. A barefaced but brilliant touch looked likely to be landed until Robin Wonder came and did him on the Flat. Simon Nott is author of: 2014 - 2017. The Frosts are a tight-knit, in-it-together family rooted deep in their native Devon soil on the edge of Dartmoor. She says: "I'm very family orientated and was taught from an early age to respect money. All in his own inimitable style. Having tried various anti-depressants in the past, he has settled on sertraline and feels quite lucky that it works better than other medications. Every day in the 10 days up to the meeting, lots of horses start dropping out due to injury and then all those months of planning and years of planning can easily go up in smoke it is not a window of opportunity, its an arrow slit, and everyone is wanting to all fire through that arrow slit all at once. Its a huge ask for a horse, let alone one that is absolutely legless. Copper has been known to kill tomato plants if placed directly into the stem or base, but placing copper wire around the wound may not have the same effect. "Mum was bawling in the paddock and Dad and my brother Hadden were charging up the horsewalk leaping about. One is a marginal decision, the other a post-pub rite of passage for over-thirsty youngsters. "That's why they got me a mobile aged six, so they could find me. The conclusion was that I'd bruised the membrane around my kidney. Please god may it be true. There would be no me if there wasn't a we," she adds. Im 64 now, I probably do live a different sort of life to the one I did, but I still do more than most people do. You have to be careful and everything has to be properly tested of course, but given how prevalent depression is and just how much more the debate has advanced, it could work. There is some cruelty in its beauty, its a very hard place and I have seen desperate tragedies to horse and human there and you know that those risks are being run on your behalf. Then he asks me if I remember the last time I came off them, which is a few years ago, and he digs out the notes to remind me and shows me that I had a massive, massive, massive crash. 'She began to close down, she was fading away'. "The nurses and Dad ended up going through all the hospital laundry a disgusting job, but that's what fathers do for daughters. Throughout the period Campbell still juggled the political with the personal, regularly speaking to Labour leader Ed Miliband, who tried and failed to persuade Campbell to run the partys 2015 election campaign. 'He's slowing the whole bloody thing down!' Sponsored, of course, by Specsavers. Not as often as I did to Ed, he chuckles. But of course after the Gold Cup, I was watching it with a friend of mine and he said Alistair, you dont want to watch this and of course Cyril and Nortons Coin had won it! Alastair's Ruby Plush - Quilt Cover Set - Bonus Euro Pillowcase or Cushion with Every Quilt Cover. Hes very good at his job but excess will hurt both his performance and obviously his health. So across the moor I went. He was to an extent the prisoner of his own carefully cultivated persona, but those who chose to look beyond the superficial found their own reward. "It affects you in ways you don't understand. Sad really. But I don't see it as being about my career because at Ditcheat we're all in it together. He also explains his love of Cheltenham includin. The Reptile, whose views on her daughter's choice of man can only be guessed at, repeatedly knocked on his door to tell him that his customarily splendid dinner was about to be served by Jenny. Think Alice Plunkett and Tanya Stevenson yes they wanted to throttle him some days, but they knew he was some man to have at your shoulder in the trench when the foe were closing on you across no man's land. Alistar is an alternative form of Alistair, the Anglicized form of Scottish Gaelic Alasdair, ultimately from Ancient Greek , meaning "Defender . It is a sadness that few people could see beyond the buffoon and that was his fault. He also talks about the human risk in racing and the perception that horse racing is a toffs game and those with delusions of grandeur. Lastly, one other thing that I wanted to say, if you have never been to Cheltenham, then you must go! "Eventually it was found that I'd put a kink in my ureter, which is the tube that carries urine from the kidney to the bladder, and I was filling up with all sorts of stuff. His own heavy drinking days, which culminated in a severe breakdown in Hamilton in 1986 while a political reporter following then Labour party leader Neil Kinnock on the campaign trail, did not leave him somehow better equipped to help his son through a similar ordeal, however. There were no tears at that moment, but I write these sparse words through a hopeless mist. It was quite a drizzly day, a very weird day. "I could see ten hedges instead of one, the grass was a funny colour and I was talking absolute rubbish. Alastair talks about owning legs in racehorses over the years, a gamble that went astray at Leicester Races. After one two-hour op the bear was gone and I couldn't take that. As has been said the recent article on J T McNamara was excellent. Many a time I had to sell ponies before they had reached their full potential. She has an affair with his publisher and conceives a child. Nicola Pagett in Harold Pinters Party Time at the Almeida theatre in 1991. I spoke to him often on the phone as the sand ran through the timer. Alastair talks about owning legs in racehorses over the years. Hes popular with a minority who like him and like his style, but there is a majority there to defeat him which is split every which way.. Her behaviour became increasingly erratic and she developed an obsession with Alastair Campbell, Tony Blairs spokesperson, whom she bombarded with love letters. "I love my hunting and hounds. Somewhere in the maddening, magnificent maelstrom that was Mac there thumped out a belief in ordinary folk and that he was beholden to stand up for them through tremor and tempest. Her book suggested a recovery of sorts. She was a glacial, beautiful . It was a good week, yeah I enjoyed it, he says. It is and it isnt, because he told me to take them! Absurdly so in public utterance. I tremble for her now without the mad rock of her incarnation, but if any consolation can be found she might turn to the words of the great Philip Larkin, whose extraordinary poem An Arundel Tomb closes with the climactic line: "What will survive of us is love.". When she won her first 10,000 race she bought Mum a new Aga. 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. In 1942 he was appointed a Member and in 1944 an Officer of the Order of the British Empire, and in 1945 was appointed a Knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau. John McCririck: his use of tic-tac attracted attention. Bryony is a good runner, a big climbing fan and an avid surfer. Alastair Down, Self: Channel 4 Racing. He laments the lack of improvement in the treatment of those same people in some aspects of racing. Campbell was also able to challenge Health Secretary Matt Hancock over the Governments handling of the coronavirus pandemic and social care, while health minister Nadine Dorries was grilled over the lack of mental health support for children and adults over the last 15 months. And she was absolutely passionate about what this can do and theyre talking about treatment which involves a single-dose plus therapy. Moving from our house in London to a cottage in Surrey in 1997, Alistair hoped to make a fresh start for our marriage. Theres still an assumption, deep down, that the so-called milder mental illness is a lifestyle choice.. But it doesn't bother her.". He stood outside the box on the balcony all afternoon, smoking this most enormous double-barrelled joint. It was agony when I was surfing because my body couldn't process the saltwater I was swallowing. The man is incredibly boring, but sadly the Fryite-Pollingiste tendency get tumescent over every word the old **** says. Good as his word he strode in and sat at the end of the table. There are few mysteries as complex as other people's marriages, but should you require a textbook definition of devotion look no further than Mr and Mrs John McCririck. Perhaps the bleak time then was a brutal apprenticeship for the massively exciting now. She was delirious and hallucinating. Alastair had just been announced as being unwell, so I thought Id take over, As Alastair is unwell, I have pre-written his race report for the Supreme. My depression scale, he called it. Meeting Alastair Down. He will soon tell you if you f*** up but if you listen to him you'll learn and he wants to teach. When Alastair had his breakdown in 1986 and I was told that he was in a police cell in Scotland, it was almost a relief to understand that there was actually something wrong with him, not me.. How their casework gets done? The fact Im going wild swimming in the Isle of Skye rather than rant obsessively about Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings although I can do that and there may be something in that. Fearless in his views, his courage lay in the fact that unlike the rest of us he felt no overpowering need to be loved. The distance from the top of the hill to the winning post.everyone just thinks its down the hill and round the corner - but if you stand at the bottom turn and look up to the winning postthey talk about the Cheltenham Hill; you dont see the winning post until youre on ground level with it and it does rise away from you into that tunnel funnel of noise and people. Alastair Down talks to the young jockey riding high after her Grade 1 success Bryony Frost: Paul Nicholls' conditional rider has been one of the stars of the jumps season Edward Whitaker 1 of 1 UPDATED 12:38PM, JAN 15 2018 Came the day when Bryony Frost was running a touch late getting to Taunton to ride one for dad Jimmy. $19.00 - $99.00. When I first used to go, or watch it on telly even before that, before the drainage systems went in, about 24/25 years ago, the horses would come up that hill in bad ground, as an Irish friend of mine says, like snipe leaving the bog, weaving from side to side - but a bit slower than snipe! I'd like to live in a place where they cordon off swans Cheltenham Festival 2023: British trainers eager to end Irish dominance, The Most Successful Jockeys at the Cheltenham Festival, 6 Ways Free Horse Betting Tools Can Help You Win, Grand National contenders await weights announcement. I do still say to my psychiatrist when I see him: Do you want me to be on these pills forever? And hell say: Well, its not my choice, its your choice. Sam Hanson meets up with Alastair Down to find out where his love for Cheltenham and in particular the Cheltenham Festival all stemmed from. I can think of potato farmers who have had a double there and have won an Arkle and a County Hurdle, who nobody had heard of before or even since - and a retired steelworker from the north-east won a handicap and he only had five horses; now that to me, is part of the romance of jump racing and that is the bit that which we seem to have slightly lost. She stood out, too, in Pinters Party Time on a double bill with Mountain Language at the Almeida in 1991. They will all be good each-way bets. He talks with some pessimism about the future of racing, touches on the use of the whip, his prediction being that it will be banished. Pinter directed her at the National in 1983 as Helen, a stunning and slyly provocative enchantress in The Trojan War Will Not Take Place, translated from Jean Giraudoux by Christopher Fry (his text is better known as Tiger at the Gates), so it was no surprise that she occupied the Vivien Leigh role of a not-so-kittenish Lady Teazle in John Bartons production of The School for Scandal at the Duke of Yorks later that year. I had one that I backed from 25s which went off at 8/1 which fell in the paddock! I will leave you to speculate on how the past encounters of either party determine their interpretation of the word virgin; suffice to say the riders found it dead and sticky. Bleak time then was a brutal apprenticeship for the massively exciting now take them few people could see the! Use of tic-tac attracted attention sand ran through the timer was that I wanted to say, if have. 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