Turning The Sporting Tables On Your Man

by electricnerve

Do you get fed up of your man telling you that you don’t know anything about sport? And do you sometimes wish that once, just once, you could show him that you don’t have to be big and hairy to know the difference between one sort of ball game and another? I know I do.

I mean, why is it that I have to disappear if there’s a game on TV and ‘the boys’ are round for a few beers? Why shouldn’t I have a seat, something to drink and - here’s a revolutionary thought - something to say about the game itself?

What is it with men? They just seem to assume that they have some sort of magical power that the rest of us don’t have, can’t have and couldn’t ever have no matter how hard we might try. Where do they get that idea from?

Granted, if you’ve spent 30 years sitting on a sofa and doing nothing other than watching other people run around chasing a leather bladder, you might have learned something besides how to open a bottle of beer with one hand and how to leave crumbs all over the furniture.
But why should I not be able to take a seat there too?

As it happens I’ve discovered something that is fantastic to watch - as a spectacle, as a sporting event and as a sport that I know my old man knows absolutely nothing about. I’m going to get him to sit with me and watch the Cheltenham Festival horse racing from England in March. It's the biggest horse racing festival in the world and it is just so exciting to watch.

Firstly, there are hardly any rules. It’s just a race. The horse and the rider who cross the line first win. Who needs 30 years on the couch to get the hang of that? That means that all those supposedly expert observations - “I know this and I know that and you know Jack” - don’t cut it anymore.

The other thing is, the races are always a surprise. You just don’t know who’s going to win, right down to the last few hundred yards. Since some of the races go on for over a mile that means you can’t take your eyes off it for a moment.

I’ve seen some of the action and it just looks SO dramatic.

The thing about the Cheltenham Festival is that it goes on for four days, and it’s covered on UK TV and streamed over the net. There are hundreds of races (in truth it’s 27 but it’s easy to lose count), and since they each only last for a few minutes it doesn’t have to take up the whole day - a thing that otherevents like the World Cup seemed to do last year!

I like to pick the horses with the best names. There is all sorts of information about which horse is fancied and which trainer is ‘in form’ - as if the trainer does any running!) and there’s all the usual chest beating ‘I know better than you’ machismo going down, but what is really great is that no-one really knows. You can see sometimes, they’re just making stuff up to sound important. I like that. It feels kind of familiar, if you know what I mean!

The big race - which is likened to a grand finale - is named the Gold Cup and takes place on March 13th at 3.20 UK time (4.20 in Nigeria). As I said before, I like the names of some of the horses. It seems to me to be every bit as good a way to pick the winner as all that hot air. My favourites are Champagne Fever - because I’d like a bit of champagne fever - and On His Own - because that is what you know who will be if I do win it big!

That maybe a bit drastic, but it would be great to see my horse galloping away from his. Then we’d see who the sports expert in the house really was. Maybe he could pick up all the crisps and beer tops from the floor afterwards…