Wed, 6 November, 2024
Alastair Down
Posted: November 1st, 2024
One of racing’s great characters, the much-loved and admired writer ALASTAIR DOWN, has died at the age of 68 [November 1 2024]. A week before he died, Alastair was honoured by the naming of The Alastair Down Press Box, and a race that day, at Cheltenham, his spiritual home (Pic below: Racing Post). Tributes from colleagues follow this obit by David Ashforth
In person and on the page, Down was an unmissable figure – you were likely to hear him if you didn’t see him – who made a unique contribution to the sport he loved and, in the case of jump racing, was passionate about. Buzzing with enthusiasm, pacing like the proverbial ill-sitting hen, a cigarette not far away, seeking out the next engaging phrase, Down had a rare talent for writing, using his mastery of words to conjure up atmosphere and illuminate personalities while imbuing his pieces with emotion and humour. His writing earned him an enthusiastic following.
In his long prime, Down was an accomplished weaver of words and a cherished advocate for the sport through which he lived much of his life. Socially, he was not known for sitting quietly in a corner. A highly distinctive presence, full of teasing fun, Alastair was the life and soul of countless gatherings. Those who shared his company were treated to a lot of laughter and a rollicking good time.
Alastair was born in 1956. His father, Gordon, an insurance broker, was a keen although unsuccessful punter. Alastair followed his example, having his first bet, aged five, on Nicolaus Silver to win the 1961 Grand National. The light grey duly won, causing the infant to conclude: “This is a doddle. You just pick the white one.”
Tonbridge School was in striking distance of Lingfield racecourse. To further his education, Alastair attended regularly before taking a year off between school and university to test the notion that bookmakers could be beaten. He retained hope. Interviewed for a place at York University, Down was asked why he had chosen York? He replied that it was because seven racecourses were within an hour’s drive. After his arrival in 1975, Alastair studied them all diligently.
On one occasion this led to him having a large bet on an odds-on shot in the Yorkshire Cup. As a result he never backed an odds-on shot again. Instead he spent long spells several hundred miles from the university, studying books assiduously, particularly form books, and supporting Newbury and Cheltenham racecourses. It was his shameless boast that in his final two years at university, he attended only two lectures. Having managed to graduate, Down then ran a betting syndicate. Eight friends each ‘invested’ £500, a significant sum at that time. After a year, by which time half the investment had been lost, Alastair decided to return the remaining half and in 1979 got a job with Raceform, learning how to edit Raceform
Quickly moving on to the Sun, Alastair recalled, “The job was to go to the pub to get the first round in for lunchtime, spend two and a half hours there, then take sandwiches back to the office. It paid £35 a shift, in cash.” Satisfactory in its way, and having failed to get a job with Timeform, in 1981 Down arrived at The Sporting Life. Asked by editor Ossie Fletcher (“the only man I’ve ever met who smoked more than me”) to start in the second week in March, Down argued successfully to start the week after, leaving him free to go, unencumbered by work, to the Cheltenham Festival.
Alastair loved his time at The Sporting Life, relishing the cameraderie and lasting friendships he made and the sheer fun of it. In the 1980s and 1990s some of his best and most humorous writing appeared in a weekly column in The Sporting Life Weekender.
Down possessed a decent collection of flaws, driving successive generations of editors and sub-editors apoplectic with his habit of submitting copy late. As he once confessed, “From day one I was famous for holding up production and have done it ever since.” His plea of perfectionism was not always readily accepted; well, hardly ever. It was a habit that later periodically resulted in Down being summoned on to the carpet and threatened with dismissal.
For his growing following, Down was worth waiting for. One of his first interviewees was the formidable trainer Captain Ryan Price, whose last words when the interview was arranged were, “Don’t be late.” The appointment was for 10.30am. Down arrived at midday, enormously relieved when Price opened the door and the conversation with, “What would you like to drink?” Alastair recalled, “I thought, this is what I want to do for a living, meet people like him.” He did.
His star rising, in 1994 Down received the Racing Writer of the Year award from the Horserace Writers Association, an award he was to win another four times. In 2022 the Association honoured him with the President’s Award for his contribution to racing journalism.
Helped by his failure to gamble himself into trouble – Alastair once said, “I like a bet but it’s never been a matter of life or death. I’m a £50 or £100 punter” – he became the part-owner of Quinsigimond, trained with characteristic skill by Sir Mark Prescott to win four times in 1993. She was followed by Petomi, who won four more races for Down and his fellow owners in 1994-5. It was an interesting experience for both the owners and Sir Mark.
Things went less well in the High Court. On May 11, 1995, Down printed his opinion, shared by others in private, that Top Cees had been a non-trier in the Swaffham Handicap at Newmarket the previous month. On May 10, Top Cees, trained by Lynda Ramsden and ridden by champion jockey Kieren Fallon, had gone on to win the prestigious Chester Cup impressively. Down accused connections of cheating, an accusation that prompted Ramsden, her gambling husband Jack and Fallon to sue Mirror Group Newspapers, the publishers of The Sporting Life, for libel. In 1998 a jury found in favour of the plaintiffs. Damages totalling £195,000 plus costs estimated at £300,000 were awarded against Mirror Group Newspapers. Fortunately, Down did not have to pay them himself.
Less than three months later, MGN bought the Racing Post and closed The Sporting Life. Many long serving journalists lost their jobs and although Down moved to the previous rival, something was lost. Not, however, his writing nor his standing as racing’s wordsmith.
When John McCririck was on holiday, Down took over as reviewer of the newspapers on Channel 4’s Morning Line programme. Soon, he became a regular member of the team and, when Brough Scott stepped down as lead presenter, in 2001, Down took over, particularly prominent when the focus was on jump racing. In 2012 Channel 4 Racing employed a new production company and Down, along with other stalwarts, notably John McCririck and Mike Cattermole, was dropped. Although soon retrieved for preview packages at the Cheltenham Festival and beyond, it marked the end of Down’s regular television appearances.
It was a blow but writing was the heart of his career and he remained racing’s best known and most celebrated journalist, not just in Britain but also in Ireland, where he had many friends. He once remarked, “I love the culture there, where they love racing, drinking and words, which are second nature to them. I like their wonderful sense of the ridiculous, their humour, laughing at themselves. Racing was a party, before, during and after. They welcomed me almost as a native. I took to them and they took to me.” Alastair counted the Mullins, Walsh and O’Toole families among his friends. “I’d like to live in Ireland,” he once said, “but I’d be dead in a fortnight.”
Latterly, there were fewer trips to Ireland and, beset by personal troubles and tragedy, there was less easy joy in his life and less power in his writing. Married to Frances in 1988, with whom he had three children, Camilla, Clare and James, another relationship resulted in a fourth child, Saskia. In 2019 Saskia was murdered, together with Jack Merritt, in a terrorist attack at Fishmongers’ Hall in London. It was a shattering blow, the agony prolonged by the subsequent inquest and a feeling of guilt. Alastair never fully recovered and drinking became a safe haven.
He was not short of friends, nor of entertaining gatherings, and his children were, he said, “the abiding joy of my life”. His was a life that, through his unique personality and talent, gave the lives of many others a lasting lift.
In 2012, reflecting on his love of the Cheltenham Festival, he wrote his own epitaph. “When the time comes I suspect my ashes will find their final resting place at the top of the hill – a place of solitude and skylarks in summer but where the denouement begins to boil to brutal in winter. At the top of the hill all the dreams are still alive, the triumphs and tragedies of the long swoop down and hard haul up the hill to victory yet to unfold before the rapt ranks in the stands. On a quiet day, a few souls who share my blood, and some of those friends who truly understood why that blood was ever quickened in that place in the month when the hares go mad, will perform a simple ceremony. And that will be me done and literally dusted – forever lodged somewhere I believe I belong.”
There was to be one, fitting epilogue. Last month, Alastair was “chuffed to bits” to be at his beloved Cheltenham in the company of family, friends and colleagues for the naming of The Alastair Down Press Room.