It is a sad indictment on our great sport that the last of the veteran racing scribes has effectively been given his marching orders.
Nico Kritsiotis writes in the Sporting Post Mailbag that after 38 years of superb journalism, David Mollett, more affectionately known in racing circles as Molly, has been retrenched by the Business Day and will be hanging his pen up.
I heard the news this week that he is one of a large number of employees who have been told to go under a massive cost-cutting exercise.
Dave Mollett
Molly is an award-winning journalist having won the Equus Journalist Of The Year prize in 2009 and 2015. Prior to joining the Business Day, he was Racing Editor of the Rand Daily Mail from 1974 to 1985.
He still heads up the popular UK tipping service on Racing 240 but his writing days are surely not over as there is life in this old dog yet?
This move further highlights how media has shifted in the last decade to be more internet-based rather than printed.
The demise of many publications in the last 5 years, accelerated by COVID, has put paid to a glorious line of our racing scribes in South Africa, probably too numerous to mention, all who did a fine job to raise the profile of horse racing in South Africa and keep it in the headlines.
David Mollett will be the last of the golden age and that is rather sad and disheartening.
