The Last Gunfighter
In my view and in no particular order, the greatest racing drivers are Manuel Fangio, Strirling Moss, Jack Brabham, Tazio Nuvolari, Jackie Stewart, Jim Clark, Ayton Senna, Nikki Lauda, James Hunt and Michael Schumacher. Some may argue about including some in this list, but no-one can argue with the fact that on balance the really great drivers lived to tell the tale. It can also be argued that Clark and Senna suffered freak accidents. But so did Felipe Massa. Luckily he survived.
So the news that today, Michael Shumacher is to return is extraordinary. But it is to be welcomed.
It is the return of the last gunfighter.
But then I can’t complain. I’m nearly 62 and I’m still writing software after almost 44 years.
Lightning Sadly Strikes Twice
Hopefully Felipe Massa will be OK after his freak accident, whilst qualifying on Saturday, but tragically Henry Surtees was not so lucky. Both were hit with bits of other cars, that happened to be bouncing on the track.
Motor racing is dangerous, but so are other sports, like horse riding and rugby, although motor racing has just had a bad week. But what is interesting is that the authorities are probing the reasons for the accidents and that some of the ideas they incorporate eventually filter down to our daily life.
But as a statistician, I can’t help feeling that both accidents were against odds of thousands to one.
After all on Sunday in Hungary, Alonso’s Renault lost a wheel and it bounced harmlessly down the track, before coming to rest by a crash barrier. But that was totally avoidable, as the mechanics had not put the wheel on correctly.
It also has lessons for us all, in that how many of us check all the wheels before we take our car on the road?
Sometimes I do, but on my last trip to Holland, I found on return that I had a damaged tyre, which probably should have been changed before I left. A failure would have been supremely annoying, as my Jaguar does not have a proper spare wheel! And do you know how to change a wheel on your car?
So although the tragic events on the race track of last week, were very sad and my heart goes out to everyone involved, do we take those simple precautions that would make us all safer on the roads, at work and especially in the home?
I doubt it!
Outsiders – Al Muheer and Terimon
On Saturday, Clive Brittain won one of the televised races at Ascot with Al Muheer.
The horse was at a price of 40-1, so the bookies were very happy, as at those odds few would have backed it, although there was some support in the forums on the web.
But I didn’t back it!
Unlike in 1989, when Terimon was second in the Derby at 500-1. I had ten pounds each way! So I trousered over £1000.
So if nothing else the trainer has form.
I actually saw Terimon perform his last piece of work before that Derby on Newmarket Heath. Everybody thought it was good and that horse was in good form. But did he really have the form to do well in the Derby. The owner, Lady Beaverbrook, wanted a horse in England’s most famous race and Clive had promised her that he’d beat more than beat him. I think it is true to say, that the jockey, Michael Roberts, rode him intelligently to get the best place possible and in the end he was a fairly easy second, without troubling the great Nashwan.
Terimon went on to win several races in the highest classes and looking back he was just beaten in his first race of 1989 by Braiswick, who was probably the best filly that year.
20/20 hindsight is a great thing!
As an aside to this one, my son was working in the city at the time and managed to persuade a bookie to give him 1,000-1 each-way. He bought a new suit on the proceeds. It was also the first bet of one of the secretaries where he worked.
Three Years to the Olympics
It is now three years to the Olympics. My spies tell me that the project is really on budget and on time. Why my spies? Because, I wrote one of the original project management systems and some of those guys we trained and worked with are still in contact.
I think though we underestimate how much the Olympics will be worth to East Anglia, the area where I live. The night we won the Games, I was at a dinner at Anglia Ruskin University. Someone had calculated a figure of a large number of hundreds of millions of pounds.
So don’t knock the Olympics.
The Advantages of European Time
I was at Newmarket Races last night and got chatting to a friend about one of my beefs with the UK; the fact that we don’t have the same time as most of the UK.
To take a narrow view, horse racing would benefit enormously, in that with longer evenings, there would be a much longer time, when evening meetings would be viable. As they would generally be an hour later, there would be much more time to finish work and come racing, so it would be likely that current evening meetings would benefit. Not that last night wasn’t a large crowd!
Now if racing would benefit, so would lots of other outdoor activities and sports, from just walking in the park to playing a game of golf. I also think that some sports like football, where they use floodlights would benefit financially as they wouldn’t need to be used so much. Aren’t we supposed to be saving energy?
There is always the argument that more children would get injured going to school in the dark. This is wrong, as when we didn’t put the clocks forward in the winter of 1968-69, the number actually went down, as most accidents occur after school and then it was light. Incidentally, I worked at ICI at the time, and the worst thing that happened was that people left their lights on when they parked after driving to work. Cars warn you now!
And there is the argument about farmers not wanting to get up in the dark. I have kept horses for years and you do a lot of the work according to the sun and not the clock. All my farmer friends are the same and don’t care at all what the clock says.
So is the real reason, we don’t have European time, the fact that if we did, the tabloids would say that we are cow-towing to the wishes of the EU. Bollocks!
You will note I have not said anything about the international advantages of being on the same time as Europe. They are so overwhelming, I’ve not bothered.
Status Quo at Newmarket
I went to Newmarket Races last night and after racing Status Quo performed.
Status Quo at Newmarket
They were very good. Strangely they are not a band that I’ve followed, which was probably because I was at Liverpool University in the 1960s and tended to follow the bands I’d seen there.
It was interesting to note that Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt got together in 1967. That means that they have been a partnership longer than I was married to my late wife, who I met coincidentally early in the same year.
It’s almost sad for me!
Two Freddies
Freddie Flintoft’s exploits on Monday morning as he bowled out the Australians to win the Second Test were awesome and he deserved the Man of the Match award. There was fire, accuracy and variation in one of the best displays of fast bowling by an England fast bowler in recent years.
I’m also reminded of another display of awesome fast bowling, by another Freddie, that I was lucky enough to see on television in 1961. It was at Headingley and the bowler was the legendary Fred Trueman. This paragraph comes from his obituary in The Times.
Trueman stored away in his memory his ideas of every batsman’s weakness, whether it be a lowly undergraduate or one of the great players of the day, and he expected to take a wicket with every ball he bowled. He had such a wonderful range that at Headingley in the Third Test match in 1961 he was able to take 11 Australian wickets for 88 runs bowling quickish off cutters (including a spell of five wickets for no run in Australia’s second innings), and two years later, in the Third Test match against West Indies at Edgbaston, to take 12 for 119 with pace and swing (the last of six of them coming in 24 balls at the cost of one scoring stroke).
Sadly, England lost that 1961 series by two matches to one.
I hope that’s not an omen for this series.
No Fairy Tale – Poor Tom!
There was no fairy tale and the 59 year old Tom Watson didn’t win the Open.
Real Tennis
I play real tennis and this morning I’m off for a game.
Membership costs me about the same as I would pay at a normal gym, but it is so less boring.
Real tennis sometimes gets the reputation as an elitist game, but if they let me play then that must be far from the truth. You have to remember too, that every player has a handicap, so you can play any other in the world and have a level games with a fair winner. It’s all computerised and on the web too!
You Don’t Have to Play Old – Part 2
He’s still in front!
The Anonymous Widower 