WHO knew we would ever look fondly back at the David Coleman era? These days, we cast around in vain for the sort of personable and knowledgeable TV sports presenters who convey a passion for proceedings without indulging in preening narcissism.
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n the next few years Clare Balding may become the BBC's go-to presenter for major sporting occasions. They have had a conspicuous vacancy for that role ever since Des Lynam opted for a gilded down-slope to retirement with ITV. One of her main rivals, Gary Lineker, his own biggest fan, is in decline. His latest gaffe, an excruciating "fart" pun about Rafael Van Der Vaart, was the embarrassing nadir of the BBC's uneven Euro 2008 coverage.
Balding is far classier, although paradoxically she doesn't look entirely comfortable anchoring the BBC's Royal Ascot coverage. In horsey parlance she should be bred for the trip, on a line through sire Ian Balding and dam Emma Hastings-Bass, but maybe there is something about Royal Ascot's anachronistic "upper-classes on parade" aspect that sits uneasily with her broadcasting ambitions.
Balding's forte is as a sports enthusiast, not a socialite, and she is understandably keen not to make an issue of her gender. Ladies' Day at Ascot though demanded that she dress up in a hat and a garish gold and white polka-dotted frock that couldn't help but distract from her insightful comments on runners and riders. It didn't help that Willie Carson's sightline was invariably level with her cleavage, lending their chats an unsettling Benny Hill subtext. On Friday she looked more comfortable in a sensible red dinner-lady's smock.
The BBC, concerned about the nation's women seething at every night being football night, offers Ascot and Wimbledon as an afternoon sop to the distaff audience. So there was far too much ludicrous waffle about hats and hemlines, most of it drawled bitchily by James Sherwood, a character who appears to have been invented by Evelyn Waugh in a bad mood, effete enough to make Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen sound like Jim Bowen by comparison.
Balding, who has the cheery demotic sense of a gel happier cleaning out a horsebox than wondering whether pearls go with taffeta, was unmoved by Sherwood's news that the Duchess of Devonshire was wearing anthracite grey. She is more at home discussing racing technicalities with Kevin Darley, or gently buttonholing Jim Bolger about the lingering Derby controversy.
Moving on from the ladies in the Royal enclosure to another bunch of long-faced, highly-strung, elegantly inbred creatures, it was reassuring to have my expensively-acquired suspicion of flat racing reinforced.
In these days of instant internet betting, I couldn't have been the only observer concerned about the way Thursday's 4-1 favourite in the Hampton Court Stakes, Kensington Oval, emptied his bowels copiously behind the starting stalls like some equine Paula Radcliffe on a high-fibre diet. If my betting account hadn't sustained heavy damage after Italy v the Netherlands, I would have been frantically laying against. The horse trailed in second last.
Perhaps as an embodiment of the warning that your investments in racehorse performances can go down as well as up, the BBC's betting market reporter is Angus Loughran, "Statto" of yore. Given that he was declared insolvent in February this year it would have been a witty touch to have him wandering the ring in a burlap sack with holes cut out for his pale limbs, but sadly he was in the conventional topper and morning suit (hope the rental company demanded payment up front).
In keeping with his nerdish persona, Loughran's financial woes concerned unpaid council tax rather than slow horses and fast women, but you'd still be wary of following his financial advice. He wasn't taking any chances with Friday's tip, and Cuis Ghaire obliged at 8-11, so creditors form an orderly queue please.
He spoiled this slightly by warning us that 6-4 shot Patkai would lose. It won at a canter. Solvency can be a long road.
