Graham Cunningham tribute following the death of Alastair Down
Graham Cunningham reacts to the death of Alastair Down, a good friend and former colleague at The Sporting Life newspaper.
The death of someone of genuine significance does strange things to you.
It shocks you even when you shouldn’t really be shocked.
Rocks you into selfishly wondering about your own mortality.
And mocks you as you revisit sporadic messages stretching back 30 years.
The first message I ever received from Al consisted of a priceless reassuring wink after he and editor Tom Clarke had interviewed me for a reporting role at the Sporting Life’s offices in Canary Wharf back in the mid ‘90s.
And the second came a few weeks later after my first ever story for the Life – a sparkling treble for Tony Dobbin as I recall – was prefaced by the immortal words “Doncaster report by Gerald Cunningham."
The pre-mobile answerphone messages rained in swiftly that morning but the one that simply boomed “OH GERALD” in that rich, fruity baritone voice stood out head and shoulders above the rest.
And A. Down stood apart from the rest throughout an epic journalistic career that saw him scale unprecedented heights while juggling a chaotic personal life that ultimately wore him down.
Yes, some of us had the temerity to chuckle at certain familiar elements of his pored-over prose, wondering when the next ‘red in tooth and claw’ or ‘X wasn’t born he was hewn from granite’ might make an appearance.
But this was the bloke who penned the booming Life opinion piece that prompted the famous Top Cees libel trial, a case which ultimately cost the historic and ailing paper fortunes in damages.
This was the bloke who broke free from jump racing’s cosy club – knowing exactly what it might cost him - to brand the decision to run Red Marauder’s 2001 Grand National in atrocious conditions as “gutless, witless and utterly reckless."
More importantly, this was the bloke whose love of jump racing and ability to commit that adoration to print and spoken word enabled him to cut through to every level of racing’s disparate parish in a way that hasn’t been achieved before or since.
You won’t be surprised to hear Al was strictly a text rather than a WhatsApp guy, nor was he given to wasting words in our occasional exchanges.
But there is something special about receiving a short note from one of the best to ever do it, especially when you know they are fighting their own hard battles at the time.
I don’t profess to know exactly what Alastair has gone through in recent years but the demons that haunted him never dimmed his appreciation for the fun side of racing or his ability to deliver a generous nod to fellow scribblers and gasbags who could only dream of emulating him.
“Lovely to hear you on the box again”, appears several times.
“Good to hear the slightly unfashionable word ‘vim’ from Musselburgh today”, another that makes me smile.
And I suspect that the cryptic “any marauding Magyars about?” must have been a reference to the Hungarian sprinter Overdose during an RTV chat about the ‘Budapest Bullet’ and his ill-fated tilt at the Prix de l’Abbaye.
The decision to name Cheltenham’s Press Room in honour of Alastair this time last week seems even more apt after today’s sad news.
I wasn’t at Cheltenham that day but I did spend an hour or so in his company at the Hunt family funeral in August.
That was a day I will never forget on numerous levels, not least because a man who knew more about the pain poor John was enduring than practically anyone present was in attendance and putting on a good show.
With his tweed jacket hanging loose, the 68-year-old Al was a shadow of the charismatic, sharp-suited star I met in a swanky corner office on the 23rd floor of One Canada Square all those years ago.
But, with ciggie in one hand and glass of white in the other, the old fire burned again as he waxed poetic about a First World War book whose name he couldn’t quite recall.
Alastair Down got home at a little after half seven on Thursday August 15th and texted me to say: “Good to see you Graham. First Day On The Somme. Martin Middlebrook."
It pains me to say that, wrapped up in my own little world, I never replied.
Maybe there’s a message in that for all of us.
Like Cheltenham, we need to tell the great ones what we think of them while they’re here.
And, for all his flaws, Alastair Down was cut from rare cloth indeed.