Neil Morrice

Neil Morrice is a regular face and voice on South Africa’s Tellytrack channel as Phumelela’s UK correspondent and also pens a daily column for the Citizen’s Racing Express. With nearly 4 decades in the news trade to his credit, he appeared as a guest speaker at Summerhill’s Winter School to share some of his stories. We took the opportunity to get to know him better.

Neil Morrice was born in the English spa town of Harrogate in North Yorkshire on 9 September (he waves vaguely when asked what year). He has racing in his blood. His grandfather, George Leonard Seaton Morrice (Len), inherited a handsome share of the family’s tin smelting business. It was the halcyon years of the British turf where the silks of the aristocracy held sway. Len dived headlong into this heady world, distributing his inheritance in grand style across the best the British and French turf (and their bookies) had to offer.

With the family fortune reduced in pretty short order, Neil’s grandmother Lily held things together, applying her training in the rag trade and eventually relocating the family from London to North Yorkshire. The episode had a profound effect on Neil’s father, John Seaton Morrice, who although also keenly affected by the racing virus, kept his interests to strictly modest limits. He took young Neil racing at York for the 1972 Benson & Hedges Gold Cup clash between the mighty Brigadier Gerard and Roberto. The bug had successfully passed to another generation. “I couldn’t get enough of it. Not so much the betting – and believe me I would try to get on, masquerading on behalf of my Dad – but the sheer grandeur and that innate stuffiness that existed in an aristocrat-dominated and elitist sport in late sixties and early seventies England.”

Early career

After finishing his A levels at Knaresborough grammar school, Neil flirted briefly with tertiary education before the university of life exerted a stronger pull. “The only thing I was any good at apart from sport was English, so I got a job at Ackrill Newspapers.” Initially employed as a news reporter, the Ackrill offices were situated in Harrogate, conveniently close to Ripon, Thirsk and Wetherby and it wasn’t long before Neil was posted to the sports desk and covering racing. Neil continues, “The great thing about journalism is that you can specialise in anything and I wanted to specialise in racing. I wrote to Sir Peter O’Sullevan, Lord Oaksey and Tony Morris for advice and they suggested I try the London Press Association. I contacted the PA, sent copies of a few of my articles and they offered me a job on the racing desk. I left home and went to live in London.”

The UK arguably enjoys the best selection of newspapers in the world and until the 1980’s, Fleet Street was the industry’s nerve centre. The Press Association was situated at 85 Fleet Street and Neil’s time there provided him a solid grounding. “It gave me a broad grasp of the industry. I learnt to do betting forecasts, conduct interviews over the phone, write tipping pieces and even occasionally go racing! There weren’t a lot of racing journos in those days and it was a case of ‘dead men’s shoes’ – you had to wait your turn. I left in 1986 and as it turned out, I was lucky to leave when I did. Fleet Street as we knew it ended a year later. It was the end of an era.”

Neil relocated to Oxfordshire in April 1986 to join the newly established Racing Post as their Lambourn correspondent. The brainchild of Brough Scott, backed by Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, The Racing Post was established as direct competition to The Sporting Life. Over a 12-year period that Neil describes as ‘outright war’, the two publications went head to head. In 1998, the Sheikh sold The Racing Post to Rupert Murdoch’s Trinity Mirror (owners of the Sporting Life) for £1 on condition that the Sporting Life was closed down.

A scoop that Neil is particularly proud of from that period is the piece he wrote breaking the news that Major Dick Hern, sacked as the Queen’s trainer in late 1988, was moving to Kingswood Stables in Lambourn. “It was an important story at the time. The way I got it was from Harriet Smyly, (sister to Teddy Grimthorpe), who was selling the property with her husband Mark. I find that wives and girlfriends are often good sources. Brough sent me champagne, so I knew he was pleased.”

Branching out

Neil left the full-time employ of Racing Post in April 1998, choosing to become a freelancer. “I found it suited my personality and it suited me to do more than one thing and be able to explore the media spectrum in racing. To remain successful you’ve got to be ready to diversify at all times. Presenting is about the only thing I haven’t done and I’d be happy to have a crack at that. It’s also been my policy to take the initiative and get myself to big meetings, even when I wasn’t paid to go. I went to my first Breeders’ Cup on a wing and a prayer, but it was so good for the contacts I made and there are a lot of things that might never have happened if it hadn’t been for that trip. The Breeders Cup and Arc really got me going. I’ve now done 27 Breeders’ Cups and 30 Arcs.”

Asked for any favourite renewals, Neil cites Zenyatta’s Breeders’ Cup Classic defeat to Blame in 2010 as one of the most memorable. “She was a much needed asset to racing in the US and generated a lot of good press in a time where there was a lot of negativity. I know it’s not the thing to say, but it’s a shame she didn’t win. It was a tremendous effort.” Other standouts include Sunday Silence defeating Easy Goer in the 1989 Breeders’ Cup Classic thanks to tactical riding by Chris McCarron and Arazi’s 5 length walkover in the 1991 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile.

Of the Arc winners, he singles out Peintre Celebre – “Andre Fabre has always regarded him as one of the best” – and Sea The Stars. “Sea The Stars did something you rarely see. He pulled the arms off Kinane all the way and still had limitless energy to display finishing speed at the end of a Gr1. It’s something I’ll never forget.”

However, he reserves the title of the greatest for Frankel. “It’s the greatest overall story of a horse and trainer that I will ever see. Frankel’s stellar career enabled Sir Henry to somehow cope with the most awful illness and live longer than he could have done otherwise. Most people rate Frankel’s 2000 Guineas win as his best, but true greatness is measured against other horses and for me, the 2012 Queen Anne was Frankel was at the very height of his powers. He’d beaten Excelebration twice, both times by 4.5 lengths and in the Queen Anne he destroyed him by 11 lengths. It was the most astonishing surge I’ve ever seen, made even more so when judged by the fact that Excelebration went on to stamp himself as a champion miler.”

Lester Piggott

Neil has a deep admiration for Lester Piggott, who was such a dominant force on the world stage for so long. “To overcome setbacks like a cleft palate and being deaf in one ear to dominate for as long as he did was already the stuff of legend. His brushes with the tax man and the fact that he came back from retirement to win another Classic and Breeders’ Cup Mile only make him more so. He’s got tremendous charisma. He doesn’t say much, which means that when he does it’s all the more meaningful. I often get him to sign bits of memorabilia – most of the time he doesn’t make any comment, but every now and then he’ll pause and say ‘great race’. When he says that, you can be sure that it was. He’ll be 80 on 5 November and given his history there’s a certain irony that he’s now living in Switzerland through a romantic link. He seems very settled there. The lifestyle and the climate really suit him, although I should imagine the prices don’t!”

South Africa

Neil’s networking skills resulted in meeting Ken Rutherford and his current position at Tellytrack’s UK correspondent. “I was invited for 2012 Met and that’s how it all started. I greatly enjoy the people out there and the colleagues I work with. It’s given me something of a new life and I regard South Africa very much as a second home. Having travelled all over the world, it’s a pity that South Africa was one of the last I visited – I wish it had happened sooner, but either way, I’m glad to have reached this point.”

“From a UK perspective, South African racing is very exciting and the day to day UK betting shop punters enjoy watching and betting on it. Your exotics for example have an almost magnetic attraction. They’re more interesting than the UK equivalent and are so good it takes away the tendency to play fixed price bets. SA racing gives the impression of being very well run. Horses are always turned out well and having two grooms to a horse shows a lot of care and attention to detail. I also think your standards of riding and jockeyship is very high. Your trainers are very media friendly, which makes communication easy.”

How to be a tipster

“I think betting is THE essential ingredient as a tipster. You need to bet and back the horses you’re tipping, otherwise you lose your authenticity. I consider myself an information-based tipster, rather than a form reader. I get my information by going to the gallops as often as I can, but Newmarket for example is 3 hours away, so I also rely on informants in some of the major racing stables for tip offs. However, there is no substitute for seeing things with your own eyes and I watch a lot of racing. It’s the thing I’ve done every day of my life.”

“Every aspect of the game interests me. I love going racing and everything that happens at the track more now than ever before. I walk the course, converse with owners, trainers and jockeys and am much more focussed on the field as a whole and looking for horses finishing down the field that might be the right one on another day.”

Schedule

With his quilted gilet and spectacles at the end of his nose, it would be easy to dismiss the softly spoken Yorkshireman as a mild country gentleman, but behind the affable exterior is a committed, dedicated professional with a ferocious work ethic.

“I have to plan my international schedule carefully as I attend Dubai, SA, Hong Kong, Singapore, France, USA and now Germany. Then there are all the UK festivals to factor in as well.” It’s a punishing schedule, which requires a lot of time away from home, but Neil says candidly that he’s a bit of a workaholic. “A few years ago I decided to really make it count. I get up at 5am, sometimes earlier when the clocks change, but I don’t need to set an alarm. My first thought when I wake up is ‘what am I doing today?’ Then my day structures itself as a series of deadlines, the first of which is my 5:30am bulletin for Tellytrack. After the initial bulletin, I methodically go through what I have to produce for the day, I prepare a second Tellytrack bulletin for the evening broadcast, produce a daily column for the Citizen and when I’m in South Africa I produce features ahead of the big races. I make sure I get to bed early – 10pm at the latest. I have one day off a year on Christmas Day. I’ve created a bit of a monster really, but it gives me tremendous satisfaction.”

Future plans?

“Ideally I’d like to settle part-time in South Africa. I don’t think anyone should be told to retire and I’d like to carry on working for as long as I can deliver. If I’m lucky, I hope to drop down on a racecourse one day!”

Parting shot

Any fancies for the forthcoming Goodwood meeting? “Solow in the Sussex Stakes. In the Stewards Cup perhaps Huntsman’s Close will provide Roger Charlton a record-equalling 4th victory and I’d add Lancelot Du Lac as a second each way bet.”