No active racing writer in the last quarter of a century has connected with the fans of the sport as Alastair Down has. His great gifts were the depth of feeling necessary to fully understand the meaning and emotional appeal of our sport – and the talent to transform it into prose full of love, humor and humanity.

Alastair always acclaimed the universality of racing in his writings, celebrating the sport’s ability to act as a great leveller, and his words resonated as keenly with the punter in the grandstand or in the betting shop as with the great and the good of sport.

Above all, Alastair loved racing and its people with an enthusiasm matched only by his love of time spent in good company. Whether in the press room, in the winners’ enclosure or at the bar, he was a storyteller and a bon vivant whose presence brightened and brightened each day of the races.

Remembering Alastair Down:

I first met Alastair as a rookie in the press room, impressed by the dean of our game and had the pleasure of being quickly sidetracked by him. For many years the pint and cigarette with Alastair at 11am outside the Cottage Rake bar was for me as much the heralding of the start of Cheltenham as the tumult that greeted the supreme novices.

This commitment to mixing business with pleasure may have contributed to Alastair’s infamous attitude to deadlines and those in the newsroom were delighted to hear him assure an increasingly instructed that his article was exactly seven minutes away, even though everyone present could see it. I had barely written seven words.

Still, these items were usually worth the wait. His ability to tell the story of a race was unmatched; the prose galloped with breathtaking intensity, those long, poetic, drawn-out sentences that dipped, soared and tugged at every string of the soul.

Alastair Down enjoys a glass of wine with Nicky Henderson in the Seven Barrows gardenCredit: Edward Whitaker

And his love of racing shines through in every line: the thrill of seeing a performance of true courage, the joy of an underdog’s victory, the heartbreak of death or despair, and the belief that triumph is always at hand. corner of the street. Touched by the tragedy of his own life, Alastair felt deeply concerned and shared it with us with raw honesty.

As Alastair’s editor for several years, I had the pleasure of commissioning many quality articles from him – some were even submitted on time – but none was more important to me than the introduction that he wrote for the first edition of the Racing Post published after 1976’s closing day during Covid, a period when we stopped publishing and the future never looked so bleak or uncertain.

The best of Alastair Down

I have it here in front of me now. This is vintage Alastair: moving, irreverent, funny and hilarious, keenly aware of the national and personal trauma we were experiencing, littered with biblical and historical allusions (the Prodigal Son, Dunkirk and Little Bighorn are all named) and completely infused. with affection for the game and its inhabitants.

“It’s not just about the countless workforce, skills, knowledge of the horse and their well-being, it’s also about what racing does for us as beings humans,” he wrote.

“Sometimes we lose sight of one of the most remarkable and overlooked functions of auto racing. Our sport generates a staggering amount of love.”

Alastair never lost sight of him. He was the chronicler of our shared love affair with auto racing, and for that service, we loved him too.