Foresight and hindsight

Like many others, I was fascinated with the prospect of Saturday's race. I was asked many times who I thought would win but couldn't chose. Finally, I came off the fence in the week leading up to the event - but only to friends as I had not spoken to everyone involved and I did not feel sufficiently well researched to make a public prediction.

On 14 March I published a feature on Jock Waddington on http://www.parishwalk.com/ in which I wrote:

"But it's for his technique and his form over the short distances that I am marking his card as a future Parish Walk winner."

When I congratulated Robbie Callister on his second place on Saturday, he responded by saying that he wished my prediction had not been correct. referring to the above.

But this makes me sound too smart. The reality was that I said that this year would be too soon for him. I thought that the winner would come from Robbie Callister, Sean Hands or Michael George. Jock might possibly beat one of them if he got things right but not all three.

I predicted that Sean would win in a record time (once again I am in a minority who think the record can be broken) and that, if he got his pace right, Michael could get past Robbie in the final 10 miles.

How wrong could I be? Except that I predicted a top three of Sue Biggart, Janice Quirk and Marie Jackson - in that order!

Michael George may have had, by his own expectations, a disappointing race. But when it comes to predictions he was tipping Jock as the man to beat.