Section:GDN 1N PaGe:37 Edition Date:190808 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 7/8/2019 20:07 cYanmaGentaYellowbl
Thursday 8 August 2019 The Guardian •Sport^37
RacingBanham hopes training career
will put father’s past behind her
Britain’s youngest trainer, Chelsea
Banham, had her fi rst runner last
night and insisted there is no reason
for anyone to worry about the trou-
bled disciplinary past of her father,
Gary, who was at one stage given an
indefi nite ban from the sport. “I had
absolutely nothing to do with that,”
the 20-year-old said as she prepared
to saddle Makambe, a fair fourth in a
Yarmouth handicap last night.
Banham Sr was found to havethreatened investigators from the
British Horseracing Authority who
wanted to question him about bets
against Sabre Light when that horse
was beaten at Lingfi eld.
He was given a six-month ban for
conduct prejudicial to the sport and
an additional, indefi nite ban for fail-
ing to answer questions related to the
case, but has more recently persuaded
the BHA to lift that ban and has since
bought a stable near Newmarket for
his daughter.
Chelsea Banham pointed out that
the events that led to her father’s ban
took place nine years ago. “That’s beenleft now for several years,” she said.
“At the time of this I was very young.
He’s fi nancially backing me all the way
but any involvement with the horses
is left to me.”
Training horses has proved a
tough life for many but Banham Jr is
undaunted and insists she has had
plenty of relevant experience. “I’vebeen involved with horses most of
my life and have been to the British
Racing School under the fl exible learn-
ing programme while I was at school- I was there for two years. I’ve had
a couple of jobs where I learnt all the
basics, went back and did my training
modules, and I was assistant to Alan
Bailey for a year.” For the past year she
has assisted at her present stable while
Paul Howling held the licenc e. But she
is now ready to strike out on her own.
“ It’s a lot of responsibility. I’m fairly
laid-back ; I feel confi dent enough. I
know I’m young and I’m very lucky
to have the backing from my family
and Paul. It’s a great opportunity and
I’m grateful.”
She starts out with 17 horses in
the stable and room for more if she
is able to attract new owners. “The
facilities are great. We’ve got a fi ve-
furlong straight gallop, a four-furlong
Wexford sand round canter. We have
Chris CookHaydock 2.00 Arletta Star 2.30 Embolden
3.00 Goodnight Girl 3.30 Fancy Flyer 4.00 Throne
Hall 4.30 Celestial Force 5.00 Blue Medici
Brighton 2.10 Tarrzan 2.40 Moorland
Spirit 3.10 De Vegas Kid 3.40 Mister Chiang
4.10 Multamis 4.40 Confrerie 5.10 Enthaar
Yarmouth2.20 Praxedis 2.50 Mr Kiki
3.20 Dame Freya Stark 3.50 All Right
4.20 Yimou 4.50 Dutch Story 5.20 Trulee
Scrumptious (nb)
Newcastle 5.30 Melgate Majeure 6.00 Blazing
Dreams 6.30 St Ives 7.05 Pinarella 7.35 Scheme
8.05 Huraiz 8.35 Tarnhelm Sandown
Sandown 5.40 Steeve 6.10 Vasari 6.45 Native
Tribe 7.15 Just The Man 7.45 Golden Force
8.15 Rock The Cradle (nap)Chris Cook’s tips
Trainer Chelsea Banham
saddled her fi rst runner,
at Yarmouth, last nightschooling facilities, grazing paddocks
for the horses. It’s absolutely brilliant.”
Banham’s partner is the jockey Joey
Haynes, who rides out at the yard most
mornings and will be aboard most of
her runners.I
t is almost 25 years since I stood
in the French town of Pau on
a July afternoon in 1995 and
watched the six members of
the Motorola team, including
a young Lance Armstrong, ride
into the Tour de France stage fi nish
a few hundred metres in front of the
peloton. It remains the single most
impressive and aff ecting memory I
can summon up in over 30 years of
following cycling.
The men of the Tour had taken
eight hours to ride that day’s
mountain stage over some of the
race’s greatest ascents at the pace
of a funeral cortege, in honour
of the Italian Olympic champion
Fabio Casartelli, who had died the
previous afternoon after falling offBjorg Lambrecht’s death this
week was the eighth of an
international rider since 2016.
Is the sport really worth it?William Fotheringhamat high speed on the descent of the
Col du Portet d’Aspet; on Tuesday
the fi eld of the Tour de Pologne paid
an identical tribute to the young
Belgian Bjorg Lambrecht.
The 22-year-old, one of the
brightest young prospects in world
cycling, had left the road and
crashed 48 kilometres into Monday’s
stage and died in the race ambulance
on the way to hospital. His
teammates rode across Tuesday’s
fi nish line in Kocierz in formation, as
Motorola had that day in Pau, with
the same black arm bands on their
shoulders.
Lambrecht’s death prompted
an outpouring of emotion among
professional cyclists, amateur racers
and those who follow the sport, as
did Casartelli’s. Cycling remains a
small world, ruled by a few degrees
of separation. My son, who is the
same age, dug out a photograph
from a Belgian amateur race a few
years back. That is Bjor g, he said,
and there I am, riding next to him.
The death of Casartelli was
defi nitely a landmark, because it
took place in the most high -profi le
cycle race of them all. Another was
the death of the Kazakh Andrei
Kivilev in the 2003 Paris-Nice; that
tragedy prompted the UCI to make
it compulsory for professionals to
wear protective hard-shell helmets.
It seems incredible now but a dozen
years earlier, professionals had
gone on strike and forced the UCI to
backtrack after an earlier attempt to
make helmets mandatory.
In comparison Lambrecht’s death
feels uncomfortably like the latest
in a sequence of untimely deaths,
more specifi cally among Belgian
professional cyclists. This week the
newspaper L’ Équipe listed eight
international riders who have died in
competition in the last three years.
Five were from Belgium: Lambrecht,Antoine Demoitié, Daan Myngheer,
Michael Goolaerts and Stef Loos.
Three of the eight died of
heart attacks while racing; fi ve
were related to crashes. It is
a disconcertingly high rate of
attrition but there have always been
complaints that professional cycling
is becoming more dangerous for its
participants. Possible explanations
include the increasing complexities
of running cycle races of any
kind on open roads: the constant
construction of road furniture, the
growth in traffi c, stretched resources
among organisers all make the task
of running races tougher.
However, only an in-depth study
based on many seasons can prove
that conclusively. What can be said
for certain is that this represents
a high mortality rate set against
mainstream sports. It is a truism
that this is the price road cycling
has always paid because – unlike
Formula One in recent years, for
example – it has retained its roots▼ The Lotto-Soudal team during
Tuesday’s Tour de Pologne stage,
run in tribute to their late colleague
LUC CLAESSEN/GETTYon the open road with all the
dangers that entails. The risks can be
mitigated to some extent but never
removed.P
rofessional cyclists, I
wrote after the Casartelli
tragedy, were united,
like coal miners and
fi shermen, by the fact
that they had no option
but to ignore danger on a daily basis.
The risks run by the professionals
have changed in degree perhaps
but in essence they remain the
same as in 1971 when the world
champion Jean-Pierre Monséré died
after colliding with a car in a race
in Belgium, or in 1951 when Serse
Coppi, brother of the great Fausto,
suff ered fatal injuries in the Milan-
Turin race.
What I would add to that now is
that the risks run by amateur racing
cyclists are similar if not greater;
on British roads in the bulk of races
the tarmac is shared with traffi ccoming in the opposite direction
that is under no legal obligation to
slow down. It is no surprise that risk
assessments for courses used for
races run under British Cycling rules
span dozens of pages.
For any road race organiser,
professional or amateur, the feeling
that you are enabling athletes to
participate in a potentially fatal
activity is a daunting responsibility.
Somehow, you retain your belief that
the game is worth the candle, that
the things that road racing brings an
athlete are worth the dangers, while
praying that everyone stays safe.
This week’s tragedy, as with that of
1995, shakes that faith and makes
those prayers all the more fervent.One more tragedy to
shake the faith of any
cycling enthusiast
Professionals had
forced the UCI to
backtrack after
an attempt to make
helmets mandatory
Bjorg Lambrecht
died during the
Tour de PologneРЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS