Changing room chat: Turf legends get back in the saddle

Published on Tuesday 7 September 2010 15:59

RACEGOERS attending the opening day of Doncaster's St Leger meeting this afternoon are in for a feast of nostalgia as retired riding greats return to the saddle for a one-off charity race, the Fudge And Smudge Leger Legends Classified Stakes.

Former Flat champions Kevin Darley and Pat Eddery and Derby-winning John Reid, will be joined in the field of 19 by other legends such as National Hunt favourite John Francome and Charlie Swan, who will be forever remembered for his association with Istabraq, winner of a hat-trick of Champion Hurdles at Cheltenham from 1998 to 2000.

Tony Dobbin is riding Grand Diamond for his friend, Renfrewshire trainer Jim Goldie, and hopes he is fit to do himself justice. "I used to ride quite a bit for him when I was riding, he's a friend and a very good trainer and the horse won last time out," he said. "I do plenty of riding out and have done more cycling than Lance Armstrong lately and I'm on my exerciser quite a bit. Hopefully I've done enough."

The race is off at 3.45 and will be shown live on At The Races.

Livingstone relive lucky Euro escape

LIVINGSTON fans were quick to point out yesterday that it had been wrongly reported that the only time a Scottish club had drawn opposition from Liechtenstein in Europe was when Falkirk lost to FC Vaduz last season. Livingston played the same outfit in a 2002 Uefa Cup qualifier - a tie that has every reason to linger in their memory. After drawing 1-1 away, the second-leg was balanced at 0-0 at Almondvale when Vaduz had a 'goal' disallowed in injury time, because the whistle had gone a split-second earlier.

Rice pays for her Twitter outburst

TWITTER has landed sports stars in all sorts of trouble recently, and Stephanie Rice, Australia's triple Olympic gold medal-winning swimmer, became the latest to learn of its pitfalls as she lost a sponsorship deal with Jaguar after making a homophobic remark on Twitter.

The 22-year-old tweeted "Suck on that f****ts" after Australia's win over South Africa in Saturday's rugby union Test.

Rice was heavily criticised and later apologised but it wasn't enough to prevent the car manufacturer axing her.

Weir Hailed in Spain

YESTERDAY'S tabloids were dominated by the build-up to Scotland's clash with Liechtenstein and the ongoing saga that is Wayne Rooney's private life.

However, the Sun did a bit of digging and found that our very own David Weir has been heralded by the best footballing nation in the world for his remarkable achievements in becoming Scotland's oldest cap at the ripe old age of 40. Spain's biggest sports paper, Diario Marca, devoted an entire page to the veteran Rangers defender under the headline El Abuelo Escoces - The Scottish Grandfather. The Sun also had words from Spaniard Carlos Cuellar, Weir's former defensive partner at Ibrox, who said: "David has the ambition of a rookie just starting out. He played next to me for 95 per cent of my games for Rangers and was a huge influence. I will always be grateful to David."

Elsewhere, in the Daily Express, Dundee United assistant manager Gary Kirk tipped young striker Johnny Russell to follow in the footsteps of David Goodwillie by using his recent loan spell at Raith Rovers as a catalyst for forcing his way into Peter Houston's first-team. "David went on loan to Raith and has not looked back so Johnny can do it too," said Kirk.