A life and a journey ends, from the Austerity Games to a minute’s Uefa-approved Europa Conference League solemnityRain rituals. Sombre men in coats. Waiting in a grey, mannered place while the BBC talks about the Queen. A day of non-cricket at the Oval turned out to be an eerily fitting place to wait out Thursday afternoon.For much of the time it felt like a pastiche of ceremonial Englishness, the kind of thing John Lennon might have scribbled on a napkin in the back of a London cab and considered turning into a waspish and satirical limerick. Timings and statements and black ties on the news. An obsessive tending of lawns. Queues, flags, beer and measured talk (nice pins, Rodney Hogg...
Potential attendance from Sheikh Mohammed and The Queen may see Flat racedays receive global attentionThe Classic generation does not have the racing stage to itself for long, but the few weeks between the Guineas and Derby meetings, when the Newmarket Classics are followed by a fortnight of Epsom trials and the best three-year-olds rise to the top, are as good as it gets for many fans of the Flat.And this time around, it will not be just the sport’s devotees who sit up and take notice as the springtime cycle starts to turn once again. At Newmarket this weekend and at Epsom in early June in particular, there could be faces in the stands attracting far more attention – and...
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