THE end of April marks a watershed in the history of racing and the British Broadcasting Corporation. For the first time, the venerable BBC will not have a racing correspondent, having taken the decision to remove the role and, with it, the services of a man who could rightfully be called a ‘voice of racing’.

I say rightfully because Cornelius Lysaght has a most distinctive voice, one whose tones are perfect for racing which is both a sport and a business. While Irish racegoers may be less familiar with him than our near neighbours, Lysaght has Irish roots, and an obvious love of Ireland and some of our best horses and people.

For a man who is well versed in the art of the interview, being the griller rather than the grilled, it was somewhat unusual to be conducting this particular interview in a virtual sense rather than face-to-face. Then again, surrealism is one of the present moment’s buzzwords.

This weekend should also have seen the staging of what those of us of a certain age know still as the Whitbread, following on from the Grand National - two highlights in what would have been the finishing straight for Lysaght on the BBC racing microphone. Covid-19 put paid to that, and that itself had a strange synergy with how his predecessor’s time at the Beeb came to an end.

Lysaght told me about his family background and its connection to the birthplace of steeplechasing. “I had a very south of England upbringing in rural Herefordshire, where my parents ran a successful bookshop in Ross-on-Wye – not be confused with Hay-on-Wye where there are lots. Ours was the only one. Aged nearly 13 I went to Eton where my contemporaries included Boris Johnson, though he was a scholar and I was more of a tailed off also-ran! So I didn’t really know him - and certainly wasn’t in the same classes.

“My father Dermot had grown up not far away from Ross, just inside South East Wales in Monmouthshire, but the Lysaghts came originally from north Cork. He was very proud of his Irish roots, something that has rubbed off on me, and clearly had some very good times staying a lot with cousins just outside Doneraile in the 1950s, enjoying life in and around the Duhallow Hunt which was pretty lively at the time I think - and maybe still is.”

His local racecourse provides him with his earliest memories of going racing, though for a man with an encyclopaedic knowledge of racing, he cannot remember the first visit. “It would have been Hereford when I was very, very young. I have no memory of going to the races for the first time, but it would have been there in the 1960s. I’ve rarely been so upset as I was when driving home from the final fixture before it closed down in 2012, but happily it is up again now and thriving.”

Eton

Educated in the hallowed halls of Eton, a stone’s throw from Windsor racecourse and not a million miles from Ascot, Lysaght did have some friends at school who later became colleagues at the tracks. “Marcus Armytage, now of the Daily Telegraph, was one friend, and I went from Eton to Windsor racecourse, which was very close by and which then had jumping as well as flat racing.

“It was to see him ride in his first chase under rules, many years before he won the fastest-ever Aintree Grand National on Mr Frisk. I have a feeling that he and Brown Jock got round very much in their own time that day.

“Though George Baker, the trainer, was younger than me, it seemed that every time I walked down the main Peascod Street in Windsor he was hanging around outside the bookies. I’d have been far too much of a ‘wetty’ to do that.”

Lysaght succeeded Peter Bromley at the BBC, and it was a golden era then of broadcasting talent. What had been the career path that led him to that position? He explained: “Peter retired on the day Galileo won the Derby in 2001, having been denied a final Cheltenham Festival at which to work because of Foot and Mouth - ironically the same has happened to me in relation to Aintree because of Covid-19.

“I started in radio in July 1981 working for a commercial station, Severn Sound in Gloucestershire, which was handy for a guy wanting to report on Cheltenham. Then, after a few years with Racecall, a company which provided what was then seen as the novel service of putting race commentaries on the telephone, I joined the BBC in August 1990 for the start of Radio 5, which was to become 5 Live from 1994.

“Initially my main role was to do racing bulletins as part of the breakfast show each morning with Clare Balding, who was just out of university, and Robert Cooper, now of Sky Sports Racing, initially as side-kicks. When Peter Bromley retired I became correspondent and Luke Harvey took over the bulletins.”

What has it meant to work for a world-renowned organisation such as the BBC? Lysaght’s reply reveals a deep respect for his employers. “It would have been a privilege to have had the opportunity to broadcast and write about racing for listeners or readers of any organisation, but to have been able to do it for the BBC, with its profile and prestige across the globe, has obviously been immense.”

He tells of a recent encounter which demonstrates that global reach. “I was reporting from the Yeovil, Somerset count at the general election in December 2019, and when introducing myself to the, as it turned out, Australian-born MP Marcus Fysh, was puzzled to hear him reply with words to the effect that he already knew me. ‘No, I don’t think so’, I said, but it was all because he’d regularly heard my pieces on the BBC World Service during his childhood.

“That made my day, and it needed a lift as it was 6.20am before the acting returning officer finally declared the result!

“I have always been a fan of radio and listen to BBC Radio 4 (a lot), 5 Live (a bit), Radio 3 (more and more) and Absolute 80s (frequently, particularly Frank Skinner on a Saturday morning). And all the associated podcasts are a broadcasting revolution.”

New beginnings

At this time of departure, and new beginnings, what have been Lysaght’s broadcasting and racing highlights? He reveals the difficulty in doing this, and his love of what could be called, the small man in racing.

“I have just worked out, for a ‘farewell’ programme that I am doing for 5 Live, that since I started there have been 29 stagings of the Cheltenham Festival and of Royal Ascot, 28 Aintree Grand Nationals and, if my maths is correct, 146 classics - and that’s just in Britain. And the BBC wants me to pick out the 10 most memorable!

“You probably think I’m just saying this because I’m talking to The Irish Field, but in all that time, for the combination of the best, most exciting races and the best story with the best characters, I think you’d have to go a long way to beat the iconic pair of Danoli and his trainer Tom Foley during those great days in the nineties.

“I was certainly the first journalist from Britain to go to Carlow to see them - and it took some finding - and was probably one of the first journalists, full-stop.

“I have owned a few shares in horses, and as a massive fan of racing in Scotland, particularly at Perth, they have mainly been trained there. Firstly by the late Susan Bradburne, mother of Lorna Fowler who’s proving to be a right chip off the old block, and more recently Nick Alexander.

“One of them, a horse named Craiganboy, ran and won at Ayr during a trip to Ireland when a couple of us were going to see Henry de Bromhead. I watched the race in a betting shop in Waterford with Marcus Armytage and Marcus Townend of the Daily Mail, and I imagine in that branch of Paddy Power they might still be talking about those noisy bloody Englishmen who made a spectacle of themselves one Monday afternoon.”

A couple of Irishmen are named when Lysaght is quizzed about his racing and broadcasting heroes, and not names that you might expect. One of them brought to mind a most amusing exchange that is all the better for being read aloud!

“Broadcasting wise, the BBC has a brilliant racing commentator in John Hunt who’s diversified fantastically well to do swimming on the radio! In racing, I’ve always been a huge admirer of Adrian Maguire, the greatest jump jockey never to be champion. He had to bounce back a few times when he was riding but never stopped smiling.

“And, for the likes of Golden Cygnet, Drumlargan, Sound Man and others, Edward O’Grady would be another, even if for ages I thought he didn’t know my name because he kept calling me ‘Eamonn’.

“In the end I summoned up the courage to correct him, and he said: ‘No, you are Eamonn – knock, knock’. To which I (hesitantly) reply, “Who’s there?’

“EO’G responds: ‘Eamonn’, to which I answer ‘Eamonn who?’ EO’G, by now with a faux posh English accent, roars: ‘Eamonn old Etonian’, dissolving into laughter at the same time. Perhaps you had to be there, but it was very funny at the time.”

Edward O'Grady joked "Eamonn old Etonian" \ carolinenorris.ie

Work interests

While most racing journalists and commentators would be solely focused on that for work, Lysaght’s other work interests reveal an interesting mix, including his first book, World Racecourses. “In the last year or so I’ve done some political stuff for the BBC, writing and performing some racing commentary-style pieces about various events on the popular Brexitcast. That went down quite well, and I did some reporting around the general election. I’d love to work on putting racing’s case even better at the Westminster parliament and at the Scottish parliament in Edinburgh.

“I did that book in 2018 and it’s my only one to date, but it would be nice to think that there might be another to come. We all need a bit of cheering up these days, and there are one or two quite funny stories to be told. Adrian Maguire will be pleased that there isn’t enough room here for either the one that took place in a Chinese restaurant in Navan, or the one in the pouring rain at Perth! That’s chapters nine and 10 sorted for my book.”

Is racing an all-consuming passion or does Lysaght have other interests outside of racing that he pursues for relaxation? He reveals a little-known talent for the stage. “As a teenager I wanted to be an actor and was a quite well-reviewed Earl of Kent in a production of King Lear at the Edinburgh Fringe.

“It was a sell-out, since you ask,” he says laughing heartily, “way back. However I got into news and then racing journalism instead. Also, I probably took it a bit too seriously early on, so that now, in middle age, I’d like maybe to do some of the travelling that I never did in my twenties.”

At the end of the month Lysaght finishes full-time with the BBC. While he has been complimentary about the BBC, this must be a very difficult time. His disappointment is palpable. “I obviously didn’t agree with the BBC’s decision to dispense with a correspondent, specialising in one of the principal sports that takes place in these islands, but I completely respect its right to make that decision.

“So sounding off like my football colleague Alan Green did about losing his commentary role didn’t feel like the right thing to do. Bitterness is not a useful commodity in my opinion. I have done well out of the BBC for a very long time, but, equally, it’s done pretty well out of me too, especially in the early days when Radio 5 was trying to establish itself as a new network, and I hope my contribution to the BBC is also respected.

“One of the articles in the mainstream media about my departure headlined a quote from me saying, ‘I feel like my insides have been torn out’. Not really my sort of line, but I must have said it, and I suppose that is how I feel.

“I am very sorry to have missed the chance to report for the BBC one last time from Aintree, and, actually, from a final Scottish Grand National at Ayr, one of my absolute favourite fixtures of the year. It would have been great to have had the chance on the last day of the National Hunt season at Sandown to put Brian Hughes’ name right up in the lights as new champion jump jockey. Hopefully we’ll all be back at those events in 2021, in one capacity or another.”

As one door closes, what are the doors that will open for Cornelius Lysaght in the future? “Before the lockdown I was talking to people about a few things, so hopefully something will come up. I’ll have to be patient, as do we all.

“I know racing is a business as well as a sport, but there are plenty of other sports and businesses having to sit on their hands at the moment and which are struggling as a result, and there is no reason why racing should be any more entitled than others. I’m not sure appearing to seem entitled is a great look when there’s still so much misery around.”

Advice

What advice would the broadcaster give to a young Cornelius Lysaght with the benefit of hindsight? Is there anything he would have done differently?

“I would have told myself to be careful on that tightrope in working life between, on the one hand, standing up for yourself enough so as not to be walked all over, but, on the other hand, to not stand up for yourself so much that you’re labelled a member of the ‘awkward squad’. It’s not a balancing act I’ve necessarily always found easy.”

As a regular visitor to Ireland, which of our meetings does he recommend most to friends back in Britain? “Most of the principal fixtures are well known – at the Curragh, Punchestown, Fairyhouse, Galway and so on. One that has not really cemented its place in people’s consciousness -yet - is the Dublin Racing Festival at Leopardstown in February. There is probably not a more enjoyable weekend meeting around, with so many good horses and riders on display in races sandwiched in between the chance to sample all the delights associated with Dublin city itself. We just need some more British challengers.

“People were fearful that Ireland playing at home in the Six Nations would somehow detract from the racing, but during the last two years the rugby has actually added no end to the whole experience. In 2021 I won’t be attending for the BBC, but it’s right towards the top of my list to be there, whatever is going on.”

Cornelius Lysaght has no blinkers on when it comes to seeing the wider racing picture, and Irishmen were to the fore when I concluded with the poser, what changes had he most noticed over the last 30 years?

“Apart from the emergence of the two APs, O’Brien and McCoy, the most staggering change, I think, when you see Willie Mullins, Gordon Elliott, Jessie Harrington, Henry de Bromhead and company in their pomp, is that Aintree 1999 saw the first Irish-trained win in the Grand National - Bobbyjo for the Carberrys - in 24 years, while Imperial Call’s success in the Cheltenham Gold Cup three years earlier was a first for Ireland in a decade. You couldn’t imagine gaps like those any more.

“And for those of us who’ve been watching closely, what a pleasure it’s been to witness the Ger Lyons operation grow from almost nothing to the force it is today. It is especially enjoyable seeing Ger’s brother Shane climbing the ladder from riding the first winner in which I was involved as an owner, in a conditional jockeys’ selling hurdle at Bangor-on-Dee, to Group 1-winning assistant trainer. There’s another chapter for my book.”

The BBC’s undoubted loss must surely be some other’s gain, and it is odds-on the name Cornelius Lysaght will continue to shine brightly, passionately advocating for racing at a time when it needs it more than ever.

World Racecourses by Cornelius Lysaght was published in 2018