An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.
The run-up to the Cheltenham Festival is a quiet time for many punters with some of the best horses in the land effectively wrapped-up in cotton wool so as not to sustain an injury that would keep them out of their big-race targets next month. However, there is plenty of competitive racing on offer at
Football is becoming a testing ground for every madcap idea the supposed guardians of the sport can come up with. The latest is the blue card, a stopgap between the yellow and red cards for bookings and sendings off, designed to send players to a sin bin for ten minutes should they commit one of
The heavy rain of the past 48 hours is good news for two horses that I fancy for the ultra-competitive Betfair Hurdle tomorrow (Newbury, 3.15 p.m.). The ground is now ‘heavy, soft in places’ and more rain forecast later today. I put up BRENTFORD HOPE at 14-1 for the race four weeks ago and his
You couldn’t miss the heartbreaking irony of one of the greatest rugby players who ever pulled on his boots passing away just as the latest tournament was getting under way featuring 18-stone behemoths smashing into each other. Barry John, who retired at 27 and died last Sunday at 79, could have walked through brick walls
Vince McMahon is the godfather of modern wrestling, an American entrepreneur and media magnate worth a cool $2.8 billion. He was raised in a trailer park in North Carolina but went on to turn the World Wrestling Federation (now known as WWE) into a global phenomenon. McMahon is responsible for creating superstars like Hulk Hogan
The look on the doctor’s face as he showed my parents the X-ray of my skull was quizzical but reassuring. ‘We were a bit worried by this line on the left,’ he indicated a very thin line from the top of the cranium, straight down. ‘But we saw that there is a line exactly similar
The two-day Dublin Racing Festival this weekend will – just as Cheltenham Trials Day did a week ago – provide a host of clues to which horses might win the big races at the Cheltenham Festival in mid-March. I covered tomorrow’s Grade1 Nathaniel Lacy & Partners Solicitors Novice Hurdle (Leopardstown, 1.20 p.m.) in my column
Most England managers lose their jobs over bad results: Roy Hodgson was sacked after being humiliated by Iceland, Graham Taylor for losing a must-win qualifier against Holland, Kevin Keegan quit after a bitter home defeat to Germany. There have been exceptions, though: Sam Allardyce went for bragging to an undercover reporter how he could do
If a glittering eight-race card at Cheltenham tomorrow doesn’t whet the appetite for the Festival in less than two months’ time, then nothing will. Plenty of reputations will go on the line at Festival Trials Day and there will be an abundance of clues to which horses might be winning huge prizes between 12 March
Did football officials watch Mr Bates vs The Post Office? They should have – and learned from it. Otherwise they could be next in the crosshairs of a TV dramatist. Just as the Post Office failed to act as they should have done to protect sub-postmasters, football – and rugby for that matter – is
Golf has always felt like the embarrassing uncle of the sporting world, from those garish check slacks and snobby clubhouse rules to the desperate middle-managers sucking up to the boss at the 18th hole. Like many non-golfers I could never understand the appeal. Surely only a masochist would find pleasure whacking tiny balls into tiny holes.
The former England football manager Sven-Goran Eriksson has terminal cancer, he says he expects to be dead before the year is out. In an age when such grim diagnoses are usually kept private until their morbid predictions have come to pass, it was characteristically candid of the 75-year-old Swede to go public like this, even
With tomorrow’s cards at Ascot and Haydock both victims of the cold snap, and Lingfield’s Sunday meeting under threat, it makes sense to look ahead with some ante-post bets, for once on both sides of the Irish Sea. I like to back horses in the Randox Grand National a long way ahead of the race
I’m not sure how the BBC would have taken it in my Nine O’Clock News days if after a tough interview I had embraced a disconsolate politician (though I can guess and it wouldn’t have been to the corporation’s credit). It was, though, the best moment in the ITV coverage of last Saturday’s racing, when
Due to my rather efficacious dabbling in semaglutides last summer, I’m currently on the mailing list of several online pharmacies, and the other day I received an email making me aware of the existence of ‘fit notes’ – ‘formerly known as sick notes’ – following ‘an appropriate online consultation with one of our GPs’. The consultation
Most racehorse trainers are creatures of habit and they love to target races which they have won in previous years. Alan King consistently hopes to win the Wigley Group Classic Handicap with one of his best staying chasers. He has enjoyed regular success in the race, winning it no less than three times, in 2008,
The British are fond of ferrets. There is a portrait of Queen Elizabeth I at Hatfield House holding one on a collar and lead. For Yorkshire miners in the 1970s, tales of ‘ferret-legging’ – an endurance test whereby two of the rodents were put down competitors’ trousers – were legendary. (The world record is held
It is surely the ultimate challenge in international cricket: winning a Test series in India. It’s the pinnacle for a Test team, much harder than in Australia. India have lost only one home series in 19 years, in 2012, when Graeme Swann and Monty Panesar spun Alastair Cook’s England to an epic victory. The latest
At 8 a.m. this morning, my column was done, the ‘i’s were dotted, the ‘t’s crossed. I had even suggested a headline, ‘Three mudlarks for Sandown tomorrow’. Within half an hour, I would be pressing the send button on my weekly email to my friends at Spectator Life. Sadly, just 20 minutes later, the whole
I can tell when my life’s going OK. My stray thoughts are not about what a loser I am but about what a terrible footballer I am. Why didn’t I shoot when I had that chance? Why did I pass to the opposition? And, oh dear, I wonder how Diego’s knee is? For almost a
Some people seem to get all the bad luck. No Cheltenham Festival regular will ever forget the 2020 Triumph Hurdle when Goshen, trained by Gary Moore and ridden by son Jamie, came to the final hurdle coasting and 12 lengths in the lead, only to make a fractional misjudgment and hurl his rider into the
I am slightly surprised at the way that bookmakers have priced up Monday’s Paddy Power New Year’s Day Handicap Chase (Cheltenham 2.05 p.m.). Stage Star is a lovely young horse who has, with the exception of a flop at Aintree in April at the end of a long season, improved with every race over the
There are only some seven weeks left for connections to get their horses qualified for the 2024 Randox Grand National. This year it will be harder than ever to get a run in the Aintree marathon, with just 34 runners, instead of the usual 40, for safety reasons. That means a horse will need an
I have followed the fortunes of GIN COCO closely for the past two seasons and, even though the gelding will turn eight on New Year’s Day, I am convinced his best days still lie ahead of him. He has been lightly raced during his career with three wins from just nine runs and he could
There are a lot of extremely able jump trainers in Britain but only a handful are really adept at successfully preparing a horse for a big target, such as a race at the Cheltenham Festival or one of the season’s most valuable handicaps. These are typically the contests in which the leading Irish trainers also
The flamboyant, ridiculous mixed martial arts fighter Conor McGregor is considering a run for the Irish presidency. ‘Potential competition if I run,’ he tweeted yesterday, along with a picture of Gerry Adams, Bertie Ahern and Enda Kenny, the three septuagenarian current favourites for the job. ‘Each with unbreakable ties to their individual parties politics… Or me,
The weather is going to play a key role in the outcome of tomorrow’s big race, the Coral Gold Cup (Newbury, 2.50 p.m.). To start with, the cold snap might even claim the card altogether with a course inspection due at 7.30 a.m. on race day. Secondly, after little rain over the past fortnight, the
You didn’t have to like football to feel some sort of affinity with Terry Venables. He had bags of East London charm, oodles of enthusiasm and glossy good looks (as long as you didn’t mind the gold medallion around his permanently tanned neck). As it happens, I like football very much – so it was
There are two high-class chases taking place tomorrow – one at Haydock and the other at Ascot. They will have a bearing on the betting markets for the Ladbrokes King George VI at Kempton on Boxing Day and the Cheltenham Festival. However, neither race this weekend is now an attractive betting proposition because each has
