Saturday at Leopardstown with RTE 1 and a complex sport opened up a little to the untrained eye. Racing provided a simple match-up and two nose-bagged stars faced each other across a Dublin paddock.
It was a race with genuine pacemakers, a race with the the best riders money could buy, Michael Kinane and Frankie Dettori, and with a couple of the richest owners in the business, butting heads. There was £476,750 in prize money but it didn't matter. Saturday was racing as sport, with two horses beautifully matched. Up to 12,000, we were informed, arrived to watch the Irish Champion Stakes, most of them in the know.
"When you give Irish people top-class flat racing, they'll vote with their feet," observed Ted Walsh. "It's the sort of crowd you'd get at Leopardstown at a Christmas meeting with Danoli and Dorans Pride." It was a race of only a handful of animals and only two, Galileo and Fantastic Light preoccupied minds. We were told Ballydoyle had brought along Ice Dancer as a pacemaker for Galileo and that the Godolphin camp convinced jockey Richard Hills to dump six rides at Kempton to pilot Give The Slip, the pacemaker for Fantastic Light.
Tracy Pigott, on the ground at the track, collared Galileo trainer Aidan O'Brien for a hushed conversation before the off.
Stark as a Presbyterian spire, the alpha and omega of the industry shed light only on his own discomfort in front of the cameras. O'Brien, looking like any number-cruncher in any office in any part of the world and quite fetchingly underwhelmed by the breadth of the event, was economy personified.
The lad O'Brien is the Aswan Dam of horse husbandry and what he offers to the intrusive camera is a trickle from one of the sluice gates.
The horseracing Nile runs into O'Brien's equine mind and he gives us the Dargle on RTE.
Still, wise men stoop to listen.
He explains how his $50 million colt Galileo has learned from a previous race at Ascot.
"It was made for him. It has made him more professional. It will make him know he is to run to the line," he said. 'Wha'? you think to yourself. If only Paul Gascoigne could have learned that.
John Hall takes us back in time to when Sadlers Wells (was there ever a more pricey sperm?) won the same race 17 years ago.
"Wouldn't it be something if Sadlers Wells' son Galileo came along to win the race again?" he mused.
Galileo is placed at the sort of odds where you bet your detached Howth dormer on half an acre to possibly win the family saloon car, Fantastic Light a good deal more generous.
The experts could hardly have been faulted. The two pacemakers set out with the favourites anonymously bunched in a knot so far behind they were almost off camera. The hired hands peeling away then invited the two heralded gladiators to ignite their afterburners and repay the hype in a gripping climax.
"On terms," said Hall of their neck-and-neck explosion to the line, Fantastic Light upsetting the odds in the photo finish. "Epic" was another word he used. How true.
The Williams sisters, illustrated how the rest of women's tennis is not "on terms" with their game, although "epic" describes them beautifully. Like Martina Navratilova and Steffi Graf, they are reshaping the landscape.
Eurosport's daily diet of afternoon highlights and live evening coverage suggests they believe that tennis is interesting for more than two Wimbledon weeks each year. It is. It is something RTE patently do not believe, but let's not crack an old nut and in truth television sport has had a heartening fortnight.
Ireland v Holland. Germany v England. Kerry v Meath. Galway v Tipperary.
Galileo v Fantastic Light.
Eurosport captured one of the most pivotal US Opens for years with the humiliation of Martina Hingis, the world number 1, and the destruction of Australian and French Open champion Jennifer Capriati.
Venus or Serena. Take your pick from the two finalists. Serena hit 10 aces and 40 winners against Hingis in the semi-final. The Swiss had zero aces and five winners. That's a shocker and quite a message to send out to the women's tour organisers.
Hingis is not the best player in the world, yet she has held the title all of this year because she honours sponsors and tournaments where the Williams very often aren't bothered. Hingis gathers tour points and money, Venus and Serena collect majors and money.
"Terminator Tennis," said Eurosport, who could possibly have coined a new phrase for the sisters' style. Even the fearless Capriati was forced to blink when her short returns seduced Venus into several of her two-handed charges to the net, the racquet swirling above her head like Braveheart's axe as he routed yet another foppish English platoon.
"I'm not here to defend my title," she said. "That's negative.
"I'm here to win a title." Fightin' words.
"There is men's tennis and women's tennis," said Eurosport.
"Then...there's Williams' tennis." Here's what Hingis must do. The failed number one, must acquire bigger muscles (recommended method: human growth hormone, EPO and testosterone but make sure you say it was in the nutritional supplement) and hit the ball harder.
The real bother now for the game is that if Venus is having an off tournament, the likelihood is that Serena is still cutting timber. What a bummer for the rest of the professional tennis world.
America is still lukewarm to tennis but 22,000 filled the stadium at Flushing Meadow for Venus and Capriati.
The only other match, apart from the finals, to attract such a number of hotdog-eating, beer-drinking, phone-using fans was Agassi's trip with Sampras in the men's semi-final.
These old dogs have their attractions, even Fantastic Light at all of five years old.
Sport on television
MONDAY
Eurosport Noon. US Open men's final. You probably won't have stayed up most of Sunday night to see the men's final. A repeat on Monday in keeping with Eurosport's coverage gives a second bite.
TUESDAY
TV3 7.30 p.m. Champions League. Liverpool against Boavista in the opening game at Anfield in what we used to call the European Cup.
WEDNESDAY
TV3 7.30 p.m. UTV 7.30 p.m. A conflict of loyalty for those in the country who follow a Scottish and English team. Celtic take on Rosenborg in the Champions League Group E, while Manchester United face Olympiakos on UTV at the same time.
THURSDAY
Sky Sports 2, 6 p.m. Go on take a break from football and see how the Ryder Cup players are holding upin the World Championship in the run-in to The Belfry. The breaks are irritating, presumably to suit US television. Just call it veggie TV.
FRIDAY
TG4 9.20 p.m. Laochra Gael. Thought of going for Turf Wars or The John Daly Show but they didn't measure up. Make do with the documentary on Con Murphy, winner of four consecutive All-Ireland medals for Cork and a former president of the GAA. After all these weeks, it's the climax of the GAA season, the biggest, most important and widely followed of them all.
SATURDAY
UTV 11.30 a.m. RTE 1 11.55 a.m. The Italian Grand Prix. Neutrals might be fed up with Ferrari's domination of the World Championship but Monza is a little special and Michael Schumacher is bound to receive a hero's welcome. A bit of colour, if not very competitive.
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