William Hill: 4-1 Imperial Call, 9-2 Dorans Pride, 7-1 Danoli, 8-1 Coome Hill, Dublin Flyer & One Man.CHAMPION CHASE: Coral: 100-30 Klairon Davis, 7-2 Viking Flagship, 5-1 Ask Tom & Strong Promise, 7-1 Sound Man. William Hill: 11-4 Klairon Davis, 3-1 Viking Flagship, 9-2 Ask Tom, 6-1 Strong Promise, 8-1 Sound Man. Tote: 11-4 Viking Flagship, 7-2 Klairon Davis, 9-2 Strong Promise, 5-1 Ask Tom, 6-1 Sound Man.Results, page 27. Collier Bay will be confronted by high quality opposition when he races tomorrow for the first time this season. The champion hurdler faces a maximum of five rivals at Towcester but they seem certain to fully test Jim Old’s seven-year-old who is likely to be ring-rusty after an absence of 11 months.
Tomorrow’s pounds 6,800-added contest is the newly-instituted Champion Hurdle Trial, sponsored by The Sporting Life. The other entries include Relkeel, who was favourite for the 1995 Champion Hurdle but unable to run because of injury.
Jockey plans for Collier Bay are dependent on the outcome of Graham Bradley’s appeal in London today against a two-day riding ban imposed at Leicester last month for careless riding If successful, Bradley will be in the saddle tomorrow. If he fails, Jim Old, Collier Bay’s trainer, must look elsewhere.Old may be two-handed in the Towcester race as he has also entered the promising novice Juyush, unbeaten in his only two races so far over timber.David Nicholson, who trains Relkeel, may also run Escartefigue. The sextet is completed by Nick The Beak, trained by John Upson, and Paul Nicholls’ Storm Damage The advance going is good to soft.. You do not need to be in your 50s to know what Nat Lofthouse means to Burnden Park, the mascot says it all. “Lofty” is a lion and in Bolton no amplification is necessary. A bull may be more natural in terms of alliteration, a horse more pertinent to Wanderers’ nickname of the “Trotters”, but if a man-stuffed animal suit is deemed necessary then the king of the jungle is a natural choice.
Lofthouse, nicknamed the “Lion of Vienna” after two goals against Austria in 1952, is as Bolton now as cotton was when he signed for the club the day after the Second World War broke out as a 14-year-old. He never played for or managed any other club and, as president now, Burnden Park is as much a part of him as he is part of it.
When the club moves to Horwich this summer, he will be displaced more than anyone. Part of the pitch will be nurtured in his garden but the scene of his memories will be bulldozed away in the pursuit of progress Yet he welcomes the change “It’ll be a sad day,” he said, “but a happy one too. You have to adapt with the times.”Some of the die-hard fans don’t want to move but I think once we get there, particularly if we are in the Premiership, they’ll get used to it I’m sure they all think: ‘This is nice This is comfortable. This is our home.’ When I was born my parents had a little two-up, two-down with a toilet in the back yard Now they build houses with two toilets, one en-suite.
Things have moved on.”Lofthouse first became acquainted with Burnden before he reached his teens, climbing up a drainpipe to sit on the old IPA Bar, which was knocked down to make way for a supermarket in 1986. That halved the Railway End terrace, a piece of football architecture notorious for the disaster of 1946 when 33 people died in a crush that would have an awful and louder echo at Hillsborough 40 years later.Lofthouse was by the referee as the dreadful news of what was happening behind one of the goals was brought to the pitch. “I believe those people over there,” a stone-faced police officer said, pointing to the bodies being placed on the ground, “are dead.” When the match restarted to appease an angry crowd unaware of what was happening, the Bolton and Stoke players had to file past corpses laid to rest in the dressing room area.”It was a sad day,” Lofthouse remembers. “But I think the referee did the right thing restarting the game.
