I am aware that my last post will lose a bit of credibility as I show you this, but here it comes…
Welcome to Ascot!
The Ascot racecourse is one of the most important (if not THE most important) and the most famous racecourse in England. My friend wanted to celebrate his birthday there (yes, that is the type of high-class friends that I have (actually it was only £10 to get premier class because it was the inauguration, still not a millionaire…)) and I immediately accepted since it was a great chance to be witness of this incredibly British ritual.
Unfortunately it was not the Royal Ascot (oh dear, sounding rather posh today!) so while people WERE dressed in a fancy way, it was not the extravagant type. As I just realised I have been doing a good ob at ignoring the pictures and you are probably wondering what is going on. The second pictures shows the grandstand (apparently that is a word (at this point I am just taking anything that Wikipedia says for the holy truth)) from the entrance with the little lawn in front where the horses are paraded before the race so you can make sure that you are not betting on the horse that is limping (you can get a better view on the next image). On the third picture you can see the view on the actual racecourse from the other side of the grandstand. There are seats for the first class people but as we were not aware of this we stood on the lawn for all of the races.
This is the promised lawn. The horses are walked on the grey circle and the owners of the horses and the jockeys are standing in the middle looking important.
More or less like this.
It was actually a quite stressful schedule: There were six races, one every half an hour. At the beginning of every half hour we read about the horses and their jockeys for this race in the little booklet that you are given. Then you go watch the horses on the little circle from the pictures above and see how they are doing that day. After that you run to the other side of the grandstand and if you want to bet you have to place them then. Otherwise you just run with me to the from of the fence to get a good spot and wait for this:
It was a great experience (although the travel there and back took 5 hours in total….)!
I should start wearing a monocle...
pff, es sollte ausser dem royal ascot, den matoh ascot geben :P que iria mas gente :P Irenoh findet dass das ein wichtiger Schritt in Matohs Karriere als professioneller Ponyhofinhaber ist, er sollte aber seine Karriere als Kasinospieler nicht vernachlässigen!
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