It’s been a strange and almost surreal week. I lost my personal historian and favourite storyteller in record producer, arranger and legend Quincy Jones, who one memorable afternoon took me through every track on “Thriller”, and about what he learned working with Sinatra, Ray Charles and Michael Jackson.
Q is going to be an impossible act to follow.
Though knowing that no one lives forever, it’s still hard to accept that someone who put so much music knowledge into my being is no longer here.
What an amazing life he led.
The next day, Irishman Robbie Dolan won the Melbourne Cup aboard the John Simon and Sheila Laxton trained Knight’s Choice.
Though somehow always uncomfortable with the pastime and many involved in it, horse racing is another “course” I took over many decades and learned much about a very different “customer group”.
As for Robbie Dolan…
The person who put me in touch with Robbie was (horse trainer) Mark Newnham. Mark has a great eye for new young riding talent, and when in Australia had thrown his support behind Robbie Dolan just as he had with two other young Irish riders in Tyler Schiller and Tom Sherry.
Dolan hit the ground running, and apart from riding winners, suddenly appeared as a contestant on The Voice where he did very well performing, I think, a James Bay song.
It was during this time that having watched some YouTube clips I thought that he would be a good fit for the HKIR races.
Being the driving force behind the HKJC Happy Wednesday brand when it actually lived up to its name in a happy Hong Kong, I thought having the singing jockey- at the time, he was dealing with with his partner Christine and their very ill infant daughter Maisie- in Hong Kong as a performer would be a good idea.
As a music marketing executive who had run the regional offices of Universal and EMI Music and artists like Gorillaz, Coldplay etc, and was and still am personal friends with entrepreneur, manager and creator of the American Idol franchise-Simon Fuller- I had a few other ideas for Robbie in the entertainment world- if he was open to them.
For one reason or another, none of this worked out, but I have been following his life journey that came to him riding Knight’s Choice in this year’s Melbourne Cup.
One racing newspaper gave the horse no hope of running in the first ten and the other racing pundits ignored it despite weeks of intense nattering.
Though not having any interest in the race this year, thanks to intuition, and getting nervously ready for a much delayed appointment with a dentist after over thirty years of negligence to my teeth, I managed to watch a very very good ride and Knight’s Choice take out the Cup.
It took me a while to realise that the jockey was Robbie Dolan. This was joy of the first order.
Sure, it might not have been the greatest field of runners, but a winner is a winner, and what I saw was terrific piece of racing theatre.
It’s a movie waiting to be made.
Of course, the big race post mortems came through fast and furiously- how this and that should have won, a weak field etc etc.
As good friend and former jockey remarked, “Most racing people love to wallow in misery, Hans”.
Maybe this is part of the problem horse racing is facing today- jealousy and pettiness and pretentious old codgerness digging its heels in and unwilling to share in the happiness of others.
Maybe this is why many see as horse racing as a one trick pony in a “sunset industry” out of sync with the times…
More importantly, and to accentuate the positive, Well done, Robbie Dolan, Sheila Laxton, John Simon and the team behind Knight’s Choice!!!
The next part of the journey has begun…
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