It can’t just have been me who watched Tom Queally coming into the winner’s enclosure at Newmarket and wondered whether this was a flat jockey we were seeing. Queally may have been told to do something (or been through the ‘Dettori-personality-training-club’), I don’t know, but his encouragement of the crowd really made an already hair-tingling moment even more so. I’d love to have been there but it still looked great on TV, which is probably more important to attract new fans to the sport. Too many times has a jockey won the major race and barely managed a smile. With the exception of Rooney on occasion, the football generation almost always demand utmost passion from their sportsmen. This is partly why, in my view, darts has been seen to perform better than snooker in terms of attracting new fans – the personality of the players. I'm not expecting "Ryan 'the monster' Moore" but Dettori is one of the most famous sportsmen in Britain for a reason and if more jockeys (I appreciate not all) can take a similar approach to how they look to the media then the better.
In terms of the Champions Series, the organisers should be pleased with how it all went – Channel 4 did a good job and the whole event seemed more polished to my untrained eye. The website for the event is also a fantastic effort. But points go to Dettori and Queally who, together with their horses (Frankel was the most impressive winner of a flat race I’ve ever seen) made the start, given the recent negative press racing has had, to the Qipco British Champions Series the best it could possibly be.
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