Inside Track: Faulty info puts Inside Track on wrong course

A newspaper would not make it on to the street in time if deadlines had not been met. Dailies have a much stricter regime than their weekly cousins; but if working for one of the latter, your copy still has to be in on time. If it’s not it will be spiked – or, whatever the alternative is in this computerised age.

I’m a strict subscriber, always thinking about those at base who have the finishing touches to apply before sending the sheets off to be printed.

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I was in their position myself at one time, often keeping an eye on the clock as the witching hour approached, and dreading hearing the phone ring.

Nowadays, rather than face a pile-up of unfinished or stored articles on Sunday night, I get stories off as soon as they have been pieced together.

Such was the case last Friday week. Informed word had come this direction from Dundalk Stadium that the horse meeting planned for that night had been called off due to Storm Amy, and was carried over to the following Tuesday.

So, I got pen and paper out to say this was happening. And to give the story a bit of bulk, I mentioned the fact that Bar One Racing would be the track’s headline sponsor for the all-weather Winter Series. I sent it off, and then got on with other work.

It was embarrassing, not to mention annoying, to be told last Monday that the meeting wouldn’t be taking place the following day, but on this Tuesday. Far too late to have my piece withdrawn, or even corrected.

I wasn’t, however, the only one who’d been ‘sold a pup’. There was an English-trained horse down to run in one of the feature races, and in the knowledge that the meeting was going ahead on the following Tuesday, connections stabled the horse on the track, prepared to keep him there over the weekend.

English accents were heard at their loudest and what was being said wasn’t laudatory when connections were told that the meeting wouldn’t be going ahead until the following Tuesday.

There’s unlikely to be a Stewards’ Inquiry, maybe just a word in the ear to those in the racing authority responsible for making the original announcement to smarten up their act.