Calling The Horses: A Racing Autobiography by O'Sullevan Peter

Author:O'Sullevan, Peter [O'Sullevan, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Published: 2014-11-05T22:00:00+00:00

Some years later Ascot’s urbane, widely travelled clerk of the course, ‘Nicky’ Beaumont, who made it his business to sound out public opinion, figured he’d solved one of the problems – the provision of viewing for 3,000 racegoers above box level. But the contractors regretted that, the way the stand was constructed, it would not support the weight.

In the interim I was to undergo a wholly unexpected experience of racecourse management from the administrative side of the rails. Soon after the Beckwith-Smith family put their 350-acre Lingfield Park on the market in 1974 it seemed that the eighty-four-year-old circuit was doomed as a racecourse, since neither the Levy Board, nor United Racecourses (Epsom, Sandown and Kempton) nor the Jockey Club subsidiary, Racecourse Holdings Trust, was interested in purchase. John Sutcliffe, who sent out the 1971 National winner, Specify, from his immaculate Headley yard, had a horse of Cyril Stein’s at the time. He persuaded Ladbroke’s chairman that acquisition of Lingfield would benefit the Group as well as ensuring the continuity of racing on one of the most attractive racecourses in the south of England. It was probably the latter consideration which largely motivated Cyril when he gave the OK – provided John could assemble an ‘appropriate’ board from within racing. Sutcliffe senior’s quixotic insistence that he needed my support in this area was politely undiluted by the doubts I expressed regarding competence to interpret a balance sheet.

Both I and my fellow board member John (Lord) Oaksey had at the outset less than nil expertise in the financial world, and neither of us would readily forget the stern address of chairman Sutcliffe at the initial board meeting following Ladbrokes’ £½ million purchase. Glaring round the table, he proclaimed: ‘Gentlemen, let me first welcome you by saying that I wish you to keep in mind at all times that a board of directors has one absolute clear priority, namely to remember that the principal purpose of their presence is to promote and safeguard the interests of shareholders. That said, let’s get down to business.’

It was the forerunner of many brilliantly chaired, relaxed and constructive meetings, before which I showed a fair profit betting on the late arrival of Lord Oaksey. John only let me down once when, obviously due to an oversight, he arrived three minutes before the ‘off’.

As a team, which included the notable expertise of Chris Collins and John Hughes, we were also involved in Ladbrokes’ Grand National rescue. This spanned seven years, starting in 1976 (Rag Trade’s year), when for the first time the TV coverage was properly marketed worldwide. As a result the income from sales exceeded the aggregate of TV’s previous fifteen years at Aintree, when negotiations were handled by a less than universally admired outfit inappropriately styled BBC Enterprises.

Before Lingfield’s resale to Ron Muddle in 1981, extensive and, hopefully, beneficial changes had been made. Sequel to our first board meeting was the establishment of a two-enclosure course with the Silver Ring and Tatt’s amalgamated for a

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.