There's an old Jewish joke about a long-time married woman seeking to divorce her husband. The judge asks her why the couple suddenly want a divorce, after 61 years. "Well," she shrugs, "Enough is enough." And it felt a little like that watching the BBC split from horse racing on Saturday after 64 years. They bowed out with a casual shrug, and barely a backward glance.
I expected more. It was set up to be quite a finale, with Frankel's swansong coinciding with the BBC's – and the horse at least was afforded due respect. But given the Corporation's propensity for diving into the archives on the slightest pretext, the afternoon was not half as misty-eyed as one would have wished.
Channel 4 now holds pretty well all the terrestrial TV rights to horse racing; the Grand National, the Derby, Royal Ascot, the lot. The BBC, I understand, will still cover the Welsh Grand National, but that's not so much an involvement as a conjugal visit.
Incidentally, those of you concerned that the BBC's surrender of horse racing will mean an end to the current omnipresence of Clare Balding need not worry. She is to be Channel 4's main racing presenter, as well as being available on various other TV shows, on radio, in newspapers, in magazines, in book form and, I believe, as a takeaway Chinese meal. Indeed, I am told if Clare fails to appear on any media outlet over a 24-hour period, Social Services are instructed to check on her welfare.
In view of Clare's elevation to national treasure status, I suppose it was no surprise Saturday afternoon's look back at the BBC's history in horse racing concentrated on the past 14 years, and the Balding double act with Willie Carson. A sweet little sequence, over the Morecambe and Wise song Bring Me Sunshine, was mostly shots of the pair putting on funny hats, Willie giggling, and generally being two feet shorter than his interviewees.
Looking at the older clips, it seemed Balding arrived as a presenter almost fully formed. The clips may have been carefully chosen, but she never looked awkward. Reacting is one of the hardest things to do in TV – just feel the gaucheness watching almost any local TV news programme – and Clare almost always pulls it off, demonstrating a genuine sense of fun, without being any less of an authoritative presence.
She needs all her authority to put the five-times champion jockey Willie right on technical issues, about which he is often a little hazy. On Saturday, Clare was able to enlighten him on whether geldings qualify to run in the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe (they don't, although if you're a horse I suspect that's the least of your worries), while Willie revealed the fascinating information that "geldings can't go out to stud" – not, I suppose, without rendering the argument "this has never happened before" sadly inadequate.
"I was asked the other day, who is the funniest person I have ever met," said Clare, "and I told them it was you, Willie." Willie responded with a line beloved by fans of the gritty crime dramas of director Martin Scorsese, "How am I funny?" but disappointingly failed to go into the whole Goodfellas routine, lamely accepting Clare's response: "You are funny – in lots of ways."
The partnership between the two was worth celebrating all right, but I would not have been averse to a little historical perspective as well, what with horse racing having been such a key element of the BBC's history of televising sport.
In his autobiography Calling the Horses, the venerable BBC commentator Peter O'Sullevan describes the struggles of the pioneers arriving at Kempton Park in January 1948 when "involvement in TV racing was as much a hideous nightmare as an exhilarating adventure". O'Sullevan, once described as the only man alive with a "hectic drawl," has of course been celebrated by the BBC before, but I never tire of hearing the stories, and seeing pictures of the early days of televised racing when, to quote O'Sullevan, "shadowy black and white images … were as readily identifiable as white mice in a snowstorm or black mice in a coal mine".
I would have welcomed a little celebration of Frank Bough and David Coleman on big race days, and Des Lynam joshing with Jenny Pitman and others at the Grand National.
As it was, the BBC reserved its eulogies for Frankel, with an elegiac montage over the atmospheric new age piano music of Ludovico Einaudi – thank you Shazam – and was able to reveal, as its coverage finished, that the victory in the Champion Stakes was indeed Frankel's valediction.
And so this chapter in the BBC's history ended, not exactly with a whimper, but with a serious lack of black and white footage. Maybe the Corporation's normally voracious appetite for looking back at its past has been dulled somewhat by recent news stories.
Sit Down and Cheer, A History of Sport on TV by Martin Kelner is published by Wisden Sports Writing and out now
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