I've been enjoying one of my favourite weeks of the sporting calendar this last few days.
While you might be thinking I’ve gone bonkers because there’s been nothing much happening apart from a few football friendlies, some miserable England cricket and the closing stages of the Tour de France, I have been revelling in the Go Racing In Yorkshire Festival.
We were at Ripon and Redcar last weekend, Beverley on Monday and then we had stable visits on Tuesday. Catterick followed on Wednesday, it was Doncaster on Thursday and now both Thirsk and York on Friday.
On Saturday we are at York – with Wet Wet Wet in concert after the racing – and then it all rounds off at Pontefract on Sunday.
It is a truly magnificent week to showcase all that is good about Yorkshire racing, and it’s wonderful that Skybet have been involved right from the start.
It’s seven years ago that Graham Orange from Go Racing In Yorkshire came to us with the idea but said they couldn’t get it off the ground without a backer.
Skybet got involved and we’ve been there ever since, now working alongside other sponsors who have come in to support, and the Festival just gets better and better.
We sponsor every single race and we use the Festival to try and raise money for the Injured Jockeys Fund, the Yorkshire Air Ambulance and New Beginnings, which is a group working on re-training racehorses.
When the weather is as good as it has been this week, Go Racing In Yorkshire simply couldn’t be better, and I have enjoyed travelling around and being in the paddock each race with Kevin Darley, the former champion jockey who now works for Qatar Racing.
We give Kevin a £20 free bet on every race to raise some extra cash for our good causes.
It is great fun, and if anyone fancies going to the meetings this weekend, I would very much encourage them to do so.
Going round the venues makes you appreciate the diversity of Yorkshire racecourses and perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that one out of every five racegoers in the UK goes racing in Yorkshire.
It’s a massive thing and while the racing is at the forefront for me, I’m looking forward to the Wet Wet Wet concert at York on Saturday.
That’s real family entertainment and I think the last time I listened to the band was when I was playing for Town back in the 1980s!
Click here to take you back to more Sports news.
Want to read, watch and hear more? You can download the FREE Examiner Apple App here, the FREE Examiner Android App here or you can view the paper as an e-edition on your Apple, Android or Kindle device by clicking here
To follow us on Twitter click here
