Gentleman of the media, Arthur Shone, dies at 68

Arthur Shone, former press officer for the North West Point-to-Point Association and a respected racing journalist, died at the weekend aged 68.

He had been fighting a year-long battle with cancer.

Shone’s columns about the sport appeared in various media outlets across the North West, including the Wrexham Leader, Shropshire Star, Cheshire Life magazine and BBC Radio Wales. He wrote a book about the defunct Wrexham racecourse and his passion for racing was so acute that he asked for his ashes to be scattered at Bangor-on-Dee racecourse, a venue for both Jump racing and point-to-pointing.

The racecourse has agreed to the request and said it will run a race in his honour later this year.

Shone’s role as press officer in the region coincided with some golden years, during which Cheshire’s Richard Burton won four national men’s championships and set a record for the number of British winners, and Sheila Crow’s Shropshire yard was one of the most dominant in the country. Shone took particular pleasure in introducing his readers to a new star in Crow’s stable, the 2009 Cheltenham Foxhunter Chase winner Cappa Bleu. Crow’s son, Alastair, had been national men’s champion in 1993 and 1995.

Nick Bostock, secretary to the North West Association, said: “It was with great sadness that I heard of the passing of the much-respected journalist and former North West Point-to-Point Area PRO Arthur Shone.

“Arthur, also known as Snowy, who lived in Liverpool with his wife Elizabeth, was a highly regarded journalist and racing correspondent for the Wrexham Leader newspaper. He was always seen in the action of post-race interviews at his beloved home courses of Aintree, Bangor, Chester and Haydock. He was also a successful tipster (pictured above, second right, receiving a bottle of champagne as the Leading Tipster at Bangor, alongside the leading trainer and jockey Donald McCain and Will Kennedy).

“It was from his association with North West pointing that I first realised Arthur’s passion for the amateur sport was no less than that for the Rules side of the game. He had insights from leading yards in the area, creating a pre-season mail-out that he would send to all the local press outlets, and he gave weekly previews and reviews of all the action that took place in the North West area when it was a much bigger concern than it is today.

“Even when he was no longer the Area PRO you would almost always see him at all of the North West points, still working away on his laptop doing whatever he could to keep the sport in the spotlight of the media.

“He will be much missed, not only by his wife, Elizabeth, and their family but by the racing community in the North West. It was a pleasure to have known him and I thank him for his friendship and support of pointing over many years.”