There was a time, thankfully many moons ago now, that yours truly gave considerable consideration to seeing what the darker side of the tracks had to offer. No doubt a large cohort of people will be horrified by the mere thought. Now read on…
Wheelchair or not, the desire to fit in with my peers and push limits a bit was as strong in me as would be the case with any normal person. Perhaps even more so.
There’s a small part of me – very small – which often regrets not having the fortitude to go through with it. Especially given some of the particulars mentioned. However, deep down, there is a realisation that is a case of, to quote Garth Brooks’ hit Unanswered Prayers.
The point of all the above is that people push boundaries all the time. Ted Walsh doesn’t push boundaries, in some ways at least. He calls things as he sees them. No holding back, no sugar coating.
However, to use one of da’s famous quotes, if you bought him for a fool you’d have a particularly bad bargain. Yet the snowflakes reappeared like Spring crops peeping out of the ground when the famous father of the even more famous son got a tad colourful when referring to a horse which had given a jockey a particularly bad fall at Punchestown.
It was purely Ted being Ted. Which anyone who has either seen, heard or known anything about horse racing in Ireland for the better part of the last half century will know. A few examples of Ted-speak:
“I rode her and I rode her mother as well” – referring to two different mares upon which he had won races, or “Two snooty nosed British auld ones came over and looked in at the butt of the fence and said ‘Oh the poor mare’, and not a word about the lad lying under her! (Himself) – recounting one particular Aintree Grand National tumble.
Yet his Punchestown pontification even had Junior Minister Pippa Hackett – No, I never heard of her either – acting as spokesperson for the nation’s department of outrage and snowflakes. We may have the snow ploughs at the ready again!
Then again, the same ensemble were probably rolling up their snowballs when both Gavin Cromwell and, primarily, Gordon Elliott were maliciously targeted by deviant, covert reporting enabled by intrusion onto their private property.
As somebody for whom horse racing is an immense part of what makes life worth living, the most annoying thing about this whole much ado about nothing is that those doing the dung agitation probably wouldn’t know a horse from a cow’s udder. But then, one need only look at the chief shit stirrer. Those to whom they are aligned seek nothing more than the destruction of agriculture and rural Ireland in general.
Never have a scatty rabble of wafflers had a more ill-fitting title for themselves.