IAN Ferguson described Ron McKnight as “a long-established friend” of the horseracing community in Northern Ireland, following the journalist’s recent passing.

Based in Co Down, McKnight was a long-serving contributor to the Belfast Telegraph, and earned a reputation for his encyclopaedic knowledge, and passion for racing.

“Ron had been a great pal of mine for a long, long time,” Ferguson reflected. “He was a very enthusiastic man about racing and a good judge of form, he was very shrewd at it.

“He reported on the point-to-pointing in the north of Ireland for a long time. Jimmy Robert preceded him, and then Ron came along on, keeping everybody up to date on the point-to-points for the Belfast News Letter and the Belfast Telegraph. He wrote a racing column for both those papers for many a day.

“In the North of Ireland, he was a long-established friend of everybody in racing. He was a good form correspondent, and was well up in the tipsters’ lists every year.

Judy Maxwell was another of McKnight’s many friends in racing, and the horsewoman said of her late friend: “He’s a great loss to the industry, he was a great friend to so many. We will seriously miss him. He hadn’t been well for quite a long time.

Information

“He was a wealth of information, he just knew everything and forgot nothing. Things generally don’t come out of left stage without something behind them, and he could fill in the picture behind it all.

“He had a lifelong association with racing.

“Trainers often didn’t mind speaking to him because he wouldn’t elaborate on something, or if they asked him not to talk about X, Y, or Z, then he didn’t. He was a journalist of the old-fashioned variety, who respected his sources and could be trusted.”

Ron McKnight is survived by his wife Sandra, stepdaughter Karen, her husband Sam and Richard, grandchildren Shaun and Sasha, and great-grandson Joel. A celebration of Ron’s life will be held in Norman McBriar & Son’s Funeral Home on Monday (January 20th) at 10.30am, followed by interment in Dundonald Cemetery at noon.