Sports reporter Lewis Anderson attends the annual Saints and Sinners night at Hamilton Park where he speaks to Racing TV presenter Gordon Brown, former Scottish footballer Tam McManus and his wife, Mhairi McManus.
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00:00 Well it's a special night tonight because it's the Saints and Sinners meeting which dates back to 1965.
00:05 A charity night for good causes, small charities benefiting from the proceeds raised from tonight.
00:12 So this is a special night tonight. Hospitality's pretty full, we've got good horses here tonight,
00:18 we've got good jockeys as well and a nice crowd and the weather's nice as well.
00:21 So it's one of the big evening meetings of the year here at Hamilton Park.
00:24 I've been here a few times but it's not the first time I've been in the owners' bit
00:28 so it was quite exciting to see the horse. Mari picked the winner as the best dress
00:32 and she put money on it and it beat mine into second so I'm getting bittersweet
00:36 the memories of that race but listen it was great publicity for a fantastic charity.
00:40 Hamilton's obviously unique in that it races only through the summer months and as you mentioned
00:45 there the crowds here are always fantastic. Really good and they've got such a wide variety
00:50 of different meetings here, different themes, music nights as well. I think the configuration
00:55 of the track helps as well because you know unlike an oval shaped track for example they go down the
01:00 home straight the opposite way to take in the loop to get the distances of the races to get in so the
01:05 crowd can engage a little bit as well. I think the way the paddock's set out it's a very leafy
01:10 sort of woodland area around here, it's full of lawns as well and I think when the weather's nice
01:15 it's just a really relaxing place to come to go racing. I think it's great getting the community
01:20 together as well because where it is and obviously bringing everybody together a nice night make sure
01:26 you come and enjoy yourself. No rain as well. Exactly you know we always get rain in Scotland
01:31 so yeah it's good not to rain. Scottish racing we've seen the successes, Lysander Russell for
01:36 example in the national hunt scene and we've got a lot of top trainers here Jim Goldie in particular
01:41 and Scottish racing's really thriving at the moment. Really good I mean I'll use that dreadful
01:46 phrase really punching above its weight I mean owners have a great experience here at Hamilton
01:50 as you can see behind us they've extended the owners area, they're above prize money levels
01:57 you know the minimum prize money levels here are you've got two meetings here where which is over
02:02 two hundred thousand pounds in prize money so really sort of pandering to the owners.
02:06 Mark Johnson of course one of the the top trainers before he handed over the license
02:11 to his son Charlie he's on the board of directors here so they get good input here
02:16 and as I say the owners are well looked after and if you do that then they send their nice
02:20 horses here and that's why you get the quality of racing that we're seeing tonight. And just
02:24 finally the facilities as well I'm guessing top-notch. Amazing honestly it's been so so good
02:29 we're so glad we came along it's for such a good cause for funding Euro and everybody treated us
02:34 really well so thank you.