Racing Post

We won’t see another quite like Arthur

DAVID CARR Racing writer of the year

JUST because we have been inundated with bad news in the last 18 months, that does not make it any easier to cope when another sombre message arrives. That was the feeling on hearing of the death of Arthur Shone, the longserving racing correspondent of the Wrexham Leader, a contributor to Horse & Hound and former press officer for the North West Point-toPoint Association.

It is sad on a personal level. Arthur was fine company in the press room at Bangor or Chester and a walking work of reference: there was very little the man who once wrote a book about defunct Wrexham racecourse did not about racing in his area.

It is sad for readers who benefited from that wisdom over the years, including those who followed his point-to-point reports and pre-season horses to follow in the Racing Post Weekender, and knew all about highclass hunter Cappa Bleu almost before he had run.

But it is also sad for racing itself. It is the latest loss of an asset that few in charge appreciated until it was too late.

Time was when every region had a top-flight racing writer who spread the word among aficionados and uninitiated alike. Think of priceless ambassadors such as Chris Poole at the Evening Standard, John Morgan in Leeds and Doug Moscrop in Newcastle.

Those missionaries have all gone now and life has never been harder for the handful left trying to cover the sport for a regional paper.

Not only do they face a daily battle trying to convince a sceptical editor to provide space for a sport which fewer and fewer in the newspaper industry appear to value – or even understand – but pandemic protocols also mean that actually getting to the course and providing copy to fill those hard-won column inches is just as much of a struggle.

Things have improved since the early post-shutdown days when one journalist each from the Racing Post and the Press Association was the sole allocation for the written media, but severe restrictions on admission and access remain in place, despite the best efforts of the Horserace Writers & Photographers Association.

Owners are now allowed in the parade ring and winner’s enclosure but those areas are still barred to the press, who often find themselves having to make do with eavesdropping on interviews conducted for television.

It is the obituary writer’s cliche to say that we won’t see Arthur Shone’s like again. Sadly, in his case those words ring all too true.

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2021-06-19T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-06-19T07:00:00.0000000Z

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