IT rained, the sun shone and then it rained again. At one stage the talk was of heavy ground and the jockeys opting for the stands’ side, which happens here sometimes.

And as the afternoon wore on it came to pass, Hollie Doyle leading the field across in the Goodwood Cup like an old hand quietly and calmly teaching youngsters.

In fact, she is the youngster taking the racing world by storm and leaving no one in any doubt that she is the star in this world of ‘hail fellow, well met!’ happily with us again now that there are more masks on the ground than around the chin.

Many in the crowd had come to see Stradivarius but, along with many others, he waited for another day, sidestepping the race he has made his own. Doyle made sure there was no anti-climax, sending Trueshan clear in the closing stages and reminding jumps aficionados that Alan King can cut it on the level, as well.

The jockey complied with most interview requests but there was the little matter of winning the next two races, as well.

Trueshan was 6/5 favourite and value was hard to find over a long, showery afternoon. With seven non-runners in the opening Chesterfield Cup, Migration started a barely believable 2/1 following his promising reappearance at Sandown.

William Buick, who could win on the proverbial clothes-horse at present, brought him with a perfectly timed run, and this before the jockeys opted for a pitch closer to the stands’ side.

Good start

Like Royal Ascot, Goodwood craves foreign involvement and this was a pretty good start, even if winning trainer David Menuisier is a Frenchman plying his trade at nearby Pulborough, where Guy Harwood and Dancing Brave ruled a long time ago.

Not as long ago as the mighty Hungarian mare Kincsem, of course, who won all 54 of her races, including the Goodwood Cup in the 1870s.

What a journey that must have been. She had a great sense of timing and indeed of theatre, shuffling off this mortal coil on her 13th birthday. Sadly, many of her descendants bade farewell with the onset of two World Wars.

Kincsem was often ridden by Otto Madden’s father, Otto himself having been born in Hungary. He was champion jockey here on four occasions and won four of the five classics, including the Derby on Jeddah in 1898.

Andrew Balding had two runners in the Chesterfield Cup until the weather ruled out Bell Rock. He thus had only a small chance of making inroads into his father Ian’s record in the race, which amounted to a remarkable six victories, including two for Mailman in 1984 and 1986.

Several buildings at Goodwood have vanished, including the stand where Peter Bromley commentated for BBC Radio. There was room for Peter and the equipment but not for his assistant, responsible for prices, interviews and occasional repartee with afternoon presenter Gloria Hunniford.

Went clear

This particular dogsbody needed Mailman to win in ‘84 and the 13/2 chance went clear a couple of furlongs out, at which point her main supporter ran down to the next corner of this sadly defunct structure, there to rejoice as Mailman drew even further ahead.

The £1,300 to £200 was a decent bet 37 years ago and might have heralded a bright new dawn, a day for ‘starting over’. Might have done.

1961 was quite a year, as well. Psidium won the Derby at 66/1 and wasn’t even Harry Wragg’s main hope. A man on Epsom Downs was so delighted he couldn’t resist telling the bookmaker paying out that he only struck the bet because he’d been on a cruiser called Psidium in the war.

Many of the men with satchels are blessed with a world-weary sense of humour, accentuated by a creditably rapid response. ‘Pity it wasn’t the Titanic’ lives on in the memory.

County championship

And 1961 was also the year when Hampshire won cricket’s county championship for the first time. O tempora, o mores!

Everyone wore white and the pyjama-clad frolics of today, not to mention popular songs whose insistent beat and repetitive chorus might weary people ‘d’un certain age’ (unless their name happens to be Caroline, of course) would have seemed part of a dystopian world they had no great desire to visit.

Hampshire won the title despite losing to Sussex at Hove. Games were played over three days – Saturday, Monday and Tuesday – and in those far-off-days the two skippers, Ted Dexter and Colin Ingleby-Mackenzie, thought nothing of driving to London on the Monday night to see Peggy Lee at the Pigalle, where their host was the raffish Old Etonian and racing man, later to become the Scout on the Daily Express, Charles ‘Chubby’ Benson.

Stanhope Joel told them that his horse, Writ Of Error, had no chance in the last at Goodwood on the following day and that Noel Murless’ I Claudius would win. They repaired to a night club and, in those pre-breathaliser times, made their bleary way back to Hove in the small hours.

Dexter knocked off most of the 160 runs required for victory but was out to a shot best described as ‘desultory’ before running to the groundsman’s hut in time for the radio commentary on the 4.45.

This was a good example of that line we’ve come to cherish, ‘Mine’ll nearly win, you know’, because I Claudius nearly did but had no answer when Writ Of Error breezed past to score at 33/1.

Anti-climax

A vague sensation of anti-climax bordering on despair was not improved by the sight of winning owner Joel beaming at the television cameras.

Ingleby-Mackenzie cried off Hampshire’s next fixture with a broken finger and went to Goodwood instead. It was no great surprise that he adored horses because he had the constitution of one.

He could follow a night on the tiles with a prize-giving at a local school, the better part of a day’s cricket and more revelry in the evening.

When I interviewed him 20 years or so ago, he was living in a little house backing on to Lord’s cricket ground. He ended his days much as he’d lived them throughout his life.

And between the rain and the sun on Tuesday, I thought of him and how he and his riotous gang of talented reprobates would have enjoyed Hollie’s success and all the other delights of a season suddenly re-born.

Quite what he’d have made of ‘cards only, please’ when all he wanted was a stiff gin and tonic and had waved his £20 note for minutes on end is another matter.

But the strawberries were just as good as in ‘61 and he and his party, properly dressed for the occasion, would have reminded people cracking on a bit, as we tend to say, that we really ought to seek out Our Man In Havana and Alec Guinness just one more time.

Alternatively, if they’re thinking of a remake we have the hat, we have the coat and few can match our desire to live in the past.