Kempton Park: ‘I’m doing something special, attending 60 racecourses in one year’
As part of this series we turn the camera on fans and punters to discover their love for horse racing
THIS is the first of our Love Racing series - where we turn the camera away from the horses on track and onto the spectators.
Here at Sun Racing we are passionate about horse racing and we know YOU are too and we want to discover people's unique attachment to the sport and why they also love it so much.
This time round we went to Kempton Park to shine a light on the racegoers and find out more about the fans who make horse racing what it is today.
Graham Roberts
Graham said: “I’m doing something special thing this year.
"I turned 60 in February, and there’s 60 race courses in the UK - so I’m going to every single one.
"I was meant to start in February but I lost a few weeks to the Equine Flu, so I didn’t start until I went to Huntingdon last Sunday.
"This is my second. I’ll complete the set between now and October. Which isn’t easy as there’s five in Scotland, three in Wales and the rest of them are spread out across the UK.
"It’s tricky to plan. You can’t go consecutive days in Scotland, for example. Tomorrow is the third and we go on from there.
"On the bank holiday weekends, like the first one in Easter, I’m doing five days in a row.
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"My first experience of horse racing was in 1964.
"I used to go on holiday with my parents to Devon and they always took me and my two brothers to Newton Abbot or Devon and Exeter.
"So from 1964 to now… it’s a long old time!
"Ever since then, horse racing and Queens Park Rangers are my favourites. So I’m much better off coming here!”
Elayne Brill and Gary Brill
Elayne said: "Your adrenaline really gets going doesn’t it, when you’ve bet on a race.”
Gary added: “Yeah, it does but you don’t need to bet sometimes to enjoy a race to enjoy it.
"With Cheltenham coming up, you don’t need to necessarily need to bet on a race, as it’s amazing, quality. We don’t come to Kempton often, we usually come Boxing Day. We’re more close to Newbury so we go there quite a lot.”
Elayne added: “We do a lot of the big festivals don’t we? We do Cheltenham, the winter festival at Newbury and Goodwood and we went to Aintree last year which was good fun.
"So the bigger meetings we prefer. We were going to go to Warwick last week but it got cancelled, because the horses were sick!
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"So we thought we would come here in instead, we’re both off this weekend so we booked a hotel and thought we’d come and stay. My passion probably came from when I started working at Corals, that’s when we got into horse racing. It’s a good day, a good fun day out.”
Gary added: “I like it for all sorts of reasons really, the betting side of it, the competitive racing – big meetings, it’s pretty much all of it.
“We go to quite a lot of meetings together, so it’s always good wherever you go really.”
James Stokes and Colin Stokes, Kempton Park
Colin said: “We’re the newest bookies of the whole lot. Everyone says the game is dying but as we’ve come into it, we think it’s OK and found it workable.”
His son James added: “We’ve always been fans of horse racing, and thought we would get into a business which we enjoy.
“And always big gamblers! So we thought we would go on the other side of the fence. I have early memories going as a child with my father taking me, so I would have been maybe 8 or 9 years of age - obviously I wasn’t betting so I just enjoyed the horse racing.
"I looked forward to it throughout the week, you see the races, the thrill you get - obviously you want your horse to win. And now when you do win, it’s a payday and when you don't win you try again next time.”
Family from Hampshire, Kempton Park
“Racing has been our game for years. The first horse racing meeting I went to I was about 12 or 13 and I have been going for the last 30 odd years.
"We actually owned a horse which won the Imperial Cup at Sandown at 33/1, the Ebony Express.
"The hustle and the bustle, the cash flowing, the winning - it’s all good. It’s a great day out for the family, we love it.”
