York Guides

Home arrow York Articles arrow The week when everybody won

The week when everybody won
Written by yorkguides.co.uk   
Royal Ascot at York was a stunning success that promises a legacy of valuable tourism for Yorkshire. Andrew Vine reflects on an extraordinary week.


Andrew Vine, Yorkshire Post

NOBODY who was there will ever forget it. And the cheers that greeted the arrival of the Royal party will echo long in the memory of York Racecourse.
This was a shining moment for Yorkshire as one of the greatest events in both the racing and social calendars said au revoir to its traditional home in Berkshire and moved north – albeit with a sense of trepidation – only to find the warmest of welcomes and an eagerness to enjoy the five-day festival that gave it a new energy and sense of purpose.
In talking to those who had travelled north to attend Royal Ascot, it was possible at first to detect a trace of astonishment at how well-prepared York Racecourse was for this most prestigious of meetings, but by the end of the first day any sense of surprise had evaporated, to be replaced by admiration.
That admiration was shared at the very highest level. The buzz from the Royal Enclosure was that the Queen had been delighted by her five days at Knavesmire, and the Duke of York was explicit and fulsome in his praise, telling the Yorkshire Post that the meeting had been a huge success.
As Royal Ascot bade farewell to York, the Duke of Devonshire, in his capacity as the Queen's representative, added his voice to the praise, saying: "We have been overwhelmed by the way the event has been embraced in the region and the welcome we have received.
"It has been one of the most significant racing events in living memory, something very special and a moment of history, and I say that with no exaggeration."
To say that the meeting was embraced by Yorkshire is exactly right. It will go down in history as the "Friendly Ascot", when tradition and pomp found a perfect balance with a warmth and good humour that were shared by everyone concerned, from the racecourse officials to the unfailingly cheerful and courteous staff of the railways and buses who did such sterling work in moving hundreds of thousands of people in and out of York for the five days of racing.
The measure of how friendly and relaxed the meeting was could be gauged from the body language and behaviour of the hundreds of police officers on duty in York, and what they had to do. On day one, though polite, they were watchful and a little tense. By day five, they were relaxed and bantering with the punters over their losses and wins. Over the course of the meet, the police had to make only 16 arrests, out of a total attendance of more than 224,000. Few events of this scale anywhere in the country can ever have passed off with so little trouble.
The doom-mongers and nay-sayers who predicted chaos in and around York during the week got it badly wrong. There were teething troubles with the traffic system on the first day, but overnight it was tweaked and from then on it ran like clockwork. It became a feature of the week for strangers picknicking on the lawns to strike up conversations about how easily they had been able to get to the racecourse.
There were some dissenting voices, of course. It was entirely predictable that there would be sour and mean-spirited sniping from a certain breed of London-based newspaper, for which the idea of a major event being held anywhere north of Watford is akin to it being staged in the Third World. But those news-papers' splenetic outbursts of small-minded metropolitanism in the guise of sophistication was not reflected in the views of those many racegoers who came from the south of the country. Even the BBC, which broadcast the racing, was guilty of damning with faint praise, tossing in asides about everything from the weather to the fashion that had the deadly rider "considering where we are" tagged on the end.
There were more thoughtful voices to be found in the racing press, which pointed out that York had done Royal Ascot a considerable favour by re-focusing the meet on matters of the turf instead of the ghastly parade of champagne-fuelled yahoos with more money than sense who infest the Berkshire course to be seen and make fools of themselves.
The punters who turned up at York did anything but make fools of themselves. The on-course bookies, especially those who had come north with the meeting, were to be found grumbling that this was a much tougher week for them than they are used to at Ascot. There, they cheerfully take big-money bets from pin-stickers who don't mind throwing away £1,000 or more on a whim. At York, they came up against a feisty crowd which knew its racing, backed judiciously, and won consistently, if not spectacularly.
There were, though, spectacular bets laid. A taxi driver with 25 years behind the wheel told with awe how he had picked up a fare outside the course who directed him to the centre of York, where he picked up a banker's draft for £30,000 made payable to Ladbrokes. It went on Indigo Cat, which came in at 100 to 30, which meant the punter walked away with a cool £130,000. The taxi driver did nicely, too. His £10 fare was paid with two £50 notes, and he drove straight back into York to bank them.
Money was made, too, by businesses in York which played fair. Once the weather picked up after the first couple of days, the restaurants and bars in the city centre became progressively busier, until by the Friday night, they were packed.
Accommodation that kept prices reasonable – even taking into account a modest mark-up aimed at the well-heeled – also did well.
Only the greedy lost out. Hoteliers who tried to fleece customers by inflating prices to an unreasonable degree gained little, and some ended up bartering with punters as they tried to fill empty rooms. Others simply priced themselves out of the market. A party of women from Blackpool who attended on three days told how they had planned to stay over, but abandoned the idea after a bed-and-breakfast owner tried to fleece them by quoting £140 each a night. No thanks, they said, and worked out it was cheaper and more fun to buy first-class rail tickets, enjoy a bottle of bubbly on the train, and get one of their husbands to pick them up at the station when they arrived home.
Tourism chiefs in Yorkshire are still doing their sums on what Ascot was worth to the county, though they believe £60m is possible. In the long run, though, its lasting legacy could be even more lucrative to the region. The thousands whose first taste of Yorkshire was a joyous one at Knavesmire could well return, either for short breaks, or for conferences, expanding the county's tourism base.
And there remains the question of whether Royal Ascot itself will be back next year. Until the meeting was under way, the Ascot hierarchy were adamant the meet would be back in Berkshire in 2006. And then a chink of uncertainty appeared, as Ascot chief executive Douglas Erskine-Crum said that if by any chance the course was not ready, York was the favourite to host the meet once again.
There are whispers in the racing world that while the spectacular new Ascot grandstand might be ready, the course itself might not. There is also talk that Epsom or Newmarket may host Ascot if it cannot return home. But there is a practical problem – it took two years to lay the ground for Royal Ascot at York, and neither Epsom nor Newmarket has the luxury of that length of time to prepare in time for next June. And, of course, York has the immeasurable advantage of having staged a phenomenally successful Royal meeting. And why would the Ascot committee – all betting men, presumably –back an unknown when they have a proven winner, and one which has Royal endorsement?
The next few months will tell. But as Yorkshire savours the memory of an historic week and looks forward to gaining lasting benefit from it, one thing is certain – everybody won when Royal Ascot came to York. And that's a rare thing for any race meeting to boast.
 
< Prev   Next >