A GREATLY NEEDED BOOST TO MY EGO.

​There is nothing more uplifting for the soul, for belief in yourself, than to hear a world leader in his chosen profession say calmly and with authority something you have bleated about without any degree of authority for years. It made my ears prick up when Aidan O’Brien told A.P. McCoy, during their film for I.T.V.’s coverage of Royal Ascot, that his horses are exercised seven days a week.
I have advocated this practice for many a long year, believing, as Aidan does, that horses are easily bored and that no athlete, human or equine, can gain from inactivity.
Of course, it is easier for Aidan to implement such a routine as Ballydoyle is different to 99% of other stables as he has all the people he needs to get the job done efficiently and without overstretching his staff.
Yet the principal remains. I have always argued that staffing arrangements in most yards is archaic and lacking in common-sense. Highly skilled men and women are expected to muck-out and groom, while lesser skilled people are put up on horses in need of soft hands and great riding ability simply to make up the numbers on the gallops. People can only progress, of course, from unskilled to skilled through regular practise and coaching and I am not suggesting that trainers neglect the need to employ youngsters and to teach them the skills required for riding highly-strung thoroughbreds. But not everyone is best useful to a trainer on the back of a horse, as the most skilful riders can sometimes be of little use with a fork or body-brush.
If Aidan’s genius, or the edge he has attained over his rivals, beyond that of having the best of the best thoroughbreds at his disposal, is the practice of working his horses seven days a week, then perhaps we can accept his routine is best for horses and trainers should find a way of copycatting him.
Though wishing they were not so indispensable to trainers – one can only think that once the novelty value has worn horses must get as bored on the horse-walker as in their box – and God-forbid the machine for allowing trainers to canter six or more horses unridden never becomes equally as indispensable, horse-walkers do allow for a horse to have some sort of exercise seven days a week. As are equine swimming pools and treadmills. I wonder if Ballydoyle is equipped similarly.
Universal employment laws that brook no dispensation, as Aidan O’Brien knows all too well, complicate my argument. Yet no more than trainers staying faithful to the old tradition of their staff only having, at most, every other week-end off. If racing yards could achieve a full quota of staff, and this would be achievable if more people were employed to carry out the stable husbandry side of work, a six-day week, at least, could become a reality. It may be unrealistic in some instances to achieve my aim. Indeed, it might be beyond some trainers to have the flexibility of thought to implement a six-day week, and some employees are so dedicated they would rather care for their beloved horses than take a day away from them. But a rolling six-day week would allow an employee to have a day off a week and one of the weekend days when the opportunity comes around. And as trainers fairly claim, during the off-season staff get all the holiday they require.
Of course, employment law does not demand an employer take a day off every week, though perhaps it would help them see the wood for the trees if they did.
In many ways horse racing can be seen as an archaic sport as it has hardly altered in two-hundred years. Yet it must exist in a very modern world that has dictated that Man must be placed above all other living things. The horse, though, is not and cannot be placed above the needs of Man in our sport, and if the horse is better cared-for by being exercised seven days a week, as advocated by no less a genius as Aidan O’Brien, then trainers should find a method of achieving the same, and at the same time make the job easier for their staff, and perhaps more acceptable for potential new employees.
I rest my case.