​For his book ‘Celebrating A Century of the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, Malcolm Pannett paid homage to the format of Reg Green’s 1987 masterly history of the Grand National. The two books are composed of an identical pattern: introduction, though Pannett wrote his own introduction, whilst Desmond Lynam graced Green’s book, followed, after the all-important acknowledgements, by a brief history of horse racing in France prior to the establishment of the race the author describes as ‘the greatest horse race in France – arguably the world’ and a short gallop across the history of Longchamp and a timeline of events that led to the first running in 1920 of what is undeniably the most prestigious race across the flat in, well at least, the whole of Europe. Others, non-Europeans, may have their own views on which flat race is the most prestigious or greatest. I’m ambivalent on the matter.
I bought the book from the Racing Post so that I would have a bedtime read through the Christmas festivities. I would normally, have I done since, bought a couple of books from the National Equestrian Book Shop but for a months now their website has taken against me, accusing me of not knowing my own post-code. The problem, I am relieved to announce, is now resolved and three books that came from this route await my choice on the bedside cabinet.
As with all ‘histories’ of sporting accounts, as soon as the book is on the bookshelves it is outdated. By the time I opened the first page Sottsass had won an Arc beyond the timescale of Pannett’s book. It was, of course, the same with Reg Green’s history of The Grand National, one of my favourite racing books. There is a major difference between the Arc and the Grand National and that is the Arc has barely altered in its one-hundred-years, whereas the Grand National Green wrote about is a very different beast to the race Tiger Roll has won these past two renewals. There was, of course, the two-years the Arc was run at Chantilly because of the knocking down and rebuilding of Longchamp or ParisLongchamp as it has, needlessly, been renamed. But essentially the Arc is unaltered apart from the use of starting stalls and the ever-increasing prize money.
Whereas, at least formally, you find romance and the cruelty of fate in Green’s book, there is very little racing romance to discover in any of the 101 Arc’s. The race is very much a bun-fight for those owners, trainers and jockeys at the pinnacle of the sport. For instance, the winning-most trainer in Arc history is Andre Fabre, the most-winning owner is shared by Marcel Boussac and the late lamented Khalid Abdullah. The most successful jockey, of course, is Frankie Dettori. To be involved in an Arc you must be of the elite. There is no buying the winner of a seller in the provinces and going on to triumph in the Arc. You couldn’t write a ‘National Velvet’ type story centred on the Arc as it would be just too fanciful.
And that is why watching the Arc is not the be-all and end-all of my day as it would be for Aintree, Cheltenham or even Royal Ascot. I did get caught-up in the Enable fever and desperately wanted her to win her third Arc, as I did Nijinsky, the Arc incidentally that first enthralled the author and began his life-long love of the race.
If you have a similar fascination with the Arc, and I dare say there are more in the Pannett camp than mine, this book is an absolute must-buy. Yes, as with any horse race with a hundred-year history, it deserved three volumes to do the subject justice but no publisher in this day and age was ever going to accept such a concept and, in the circumstances, Pannett has produced a fine reference book. This book will certainly give me an edge next year when John Randall’s infernal Christmas quiz in the Racing Post.
It is priced at £25, which is a bit steep for my tastes, though I think I got 10% off due to the Post’s end of the year sale. It is published by Pitch Publishing. 

​Without intending to belabour a point many will disagree with but what we are having to live through, this manufactured global health crisis, is designed by unelected powerbrokers to allow governments all around the world to announce ‘The Great Reset’, the brainchild of the founder of the World Economic Forum’s Klaus Shwaub (spelt wrong, I know) and his associates.
Without wishing to suggest the B.H.A. should piggy-back on this shameful agenda to pull the rug from under the feet of populations around the world, we have lived now for 10-months without on-course bookmakers and, if any of them remain solvent, it might be the time to go all-hog and think the unholy of all unholy ideas and ask ourselves this question – Is this the time to set about establishing a ‘Tote Monopoly’ in this country.
For decades now, perhaps even longer, the dilemma of prize-money has haunted the sport. Great Britain and Ireland practically invented the sport, certainly drew up the first rules and disciplines, and without question own most of the prestigious races in the world, yet our prize-money lags far behind our major competitors.
In suggesting his own solutions to the age-old problem, Richard Hoiles dismissed the ‘Tote Monopoly’ solution as a ship that had long sailed. He is right, it has sailed from port but it is not scuppered; one ship-to-shore signal and that old lady can turn around and return to harbour. Every idea put forward by Richard Hoiles, and others down the years, are all workable, all have fancy multi-digit numbers attached to them but they are piece-meal, add this number to that number and multiply by two.
The ‘Tote Monopoly’ system of funding the sport works in every other racing jurisdiction and if you said to France, Australia or Hong Kong that they should find another method of funding the sport they would send the men in white coats around to have you sectioned. To fund a sport as money-hungry as horse racing a system where all profit from betting returns to the sport is the only sensible solution.
The sport of horse racing in Great Britain and Ireland needs a reset, a great reset.
Of course, this will cost a humungous amount of money to set-up but given the success around the world of similar methods of funding the sport, would any bank or money-lending institution seriously refuse such an opportunity? And remember, the core owners of our sport are wealthy individuals, many of whom are ideally placed and have the financial skills to offer advice and leadership in setting up the monopoly I suggest. Someone once said, John Banks, I think, that bookmaking was like printing your own money and a well-run Tote Monopoly would be the sport’s mint. 
I am sick of reading about how poor prize money is in this country. I have no problem with the major races having reduced prize money. An Epsom Derby worth £500,000 would be exactly the same race if it was worth £1-million. A Grand National worth £500,000 would be the same race if it was worth £1-million. Ebor Handicaps do not need to be worth £1-million. But 2-year-old maidens at Newmarket should not be worth less than £20,000 to the winner. A 4-year-old hurdle at Plumpton or Fontwell should not be worth £3,000 to the winner but a minimum of £10,000. In fact, no race should be worth less than ten-grand to the winner.
Our prize-money shames us. Doodling around the edges of the problem has to stop.
I do not subscribe to the notion that owners should always make the sport pay. It is sport, even flat racing, but equally owners should not be supporting the sport on their shoulders; they should at least be given the chance to break-even.
And it is not only about owners. A properly funded sport should have the capital to improve the sport in every manner possible. Stable staff could be big-wage earners, not little-wage earners, for instance. 
With money to spare, Wetherby’s could instigate a system where owners pay their training fees direct to them and Wetherby’s would then transfer it into trainers’ accounts. I am sure such an arrangement costs money, which at the moment the sport cannot afford.
Money remedies most problems.
The B.H.B. needs to get active on this matter. With consistent proper funding, the sport will not have to chase after and depend on sponsorship and advertising and if to achieve such a prized goal a quieter, non-bookmaker atmosphere on a racecourse is the price, I would take it every day of the week. The B.H.A. and all of us cannot stand idly by and allow the lifeblood of the sport, owners, drift away to become telly-viewers.

​It seems rather on the cruel side for the Racing Post and racecourse executives to engage us with headlines and optimism that spectators will be allowed back onto racecourses in the near future. We are in the grip of institutionalized psychological torture – you can have x-number of spectators, followed by a ban on spectators, followed by another x-number of spectators, followed by, well you get my drift – and to speculate on the possibility of a return to a limited number of people allowed on a racecourse again comes under the heading ‘wishful thinking’. Remember, the vaccine does not vaccinate against the virus and the vaccinated can still transmit infection. I know it sounds like the punchline to a bad joke and I am not making it up. It is fact. So, what will have changed in the population for spectators to be allowed back on racecourses? It will still be masks, anti-social distancing and sanitising.
I tentatively predict spectators will not return in any meaningful numbers until mid-summer at the earliest, a time of the year when viruses habitually hibernate and far enough down the line for the first dose of vaccine to be in the arms of the hopeful. And it might be 2022 before we return to the good old days that existed prior to the 2020 Cheltenham Festival. This present virus has mutated over 20,000 times in its journey through the continents, it is what viruses do, apparently, and the odds on it mutating again are pretty short. This game has not yet played out by a country mile, sadly.

In differing ways, the disciplinary hearings of Charles Byrnes and Aidan O’Brien are quite similar. Both were found guilty of negligence in one form or another, yet, though I believe both were treated unfairly, Byrnes staggering so, O’Brien not so much, the punishments were poles apart.
The Charles Byrnes saga I dealt with yesterday, and I repeat to lose his livelihood for 6-months after being found guilty of negligence, while the disciplinary panel completely overlooked the more heinous crime of cruelty in dosing a horse with a sedative 100-times above the screening limit, endangering the lives of both horse and jockey, said more about those prosecuting Byrnes than it did about the defendant. 
Given Aidan O’Brien was the man who brought the cock-up at Newmarket to the attention of the stewards and that he wholly took responsibility, apologised sincerely and has taken measures to ensure such an error can never happen again, it was an act of curmudgeonly ingratitude to double the fine above the entry point for such an offence to £4,000. O’Brien can afford to cough-up 4-grand, obviously and I dare say the original cock-up dented his pride more than any fine could ever do but I think a £2,000 fine would have been adequate and a special mention for his honesty and sincerity and for pointing out a hole in B.H.A. race-day security. Racing’s hierarchy never share any of the responsibility for cock-ups, do they?

For as long as I can remember the expansion of Royal Ascot and the Cheltenham Festival has been kicked about amongst the public and journalists, with neither side winning the argument. That was until the 2020 flat season when the extra races at Royal Ascot were regarded by one and all as a great innovation, leading to the addition of a seventh race on all five-days from now on. Although I am an advocate of a fifth-day at Cheltenham, I would prefer to replicate what happened on the Saturday after a 4-day Royal Ascot, prior to the Jubilee celebration, at was referred to as a ‘Heath Day’, when the main race was the Churchill Stakes. I have always proposed the Saturday after the Festival be considered on similar lines, with the Cross-Country Chase beefed-up to attract more foreign runners and made the central race, with all those proposed new races trialled to see which races are successful enough to be upgraded to the Festival proper, with axed races reduced to the ’Heath Day’.
Although Royal Ascot is undoubtedly the most prestigious flat meeting in the country, with the Cheltenham Festival having a similar status in the National Hunt calendar, there is a gulf of difference between the two. Cheltenham crowns champions, whereas Royal Ascot does not crown a single champion, not even the winner of the Ascot Gold Cup is regarded as a champion. Also, though this difference may not be as substantial, the Cheltenham Festival is a massive boost to the local economy and it can be argued that a fifth-day would be greatly welcomed by local business, especially after the slaying of the national economy that has occurred. For that reason alone, I think a fifth-day should be added to the Festival, with my suggestion far more economical to bring to fruition than a bona-fide fifth Festival-Day.

One other matter: Cheltenham has agreed, and this is another example of wokeness that does neither the image of Cheltenham nor St.James’s Place Wealth Management any favours, that the Foxhunters will now be known as the Cheltenham Open Hunters’ Chase, deleting the word ‘Fox’, when they could so easily have  renamed the race The St.James’s Place Wealth Management CHAMPION HUNTERS’ CHASE.

​I dislike cheats in any walk of life. I especially dislike people in racing cheating. I give exception on this matter to people who cheat bad or unfair laws; to my way of thinking these people are heroic and deserve to come out on the right side of history. But owners who ask or demand their jockey ‘to pull’ their horse or trainers who use illegal medication to either stop a horse or make it go faster than its form should allow, I hold these people in contempt.
Unfortunately, in racing there is a history of people being warned-off where in a court of law it might be proved there is be no case to answer. Absolute proof of guilt, seemingly, is no requirement in a racing court for someone to be found absolutely guilty. If the stewards think someone is too clever for their own good, there seems no limit to how hard they will try to bring him or her to book. The stewards back in the late sixties were suspicious of Captain Ryan Price, even though he employed two of the most honest and sincere jockeys in racing history, Fred Winter and Josh Gifford, as his stable jockeys. Twice he had his license to train removed, twice it was returned without apology.
The same mind-set remains in official circles, it seems, with Charles Brynes the latest trainer to feel the weight of 
suspicion against his throat. I have little knowledge of Brynes except what I read in the racing press and what I hear from t.v. presenters. It seems he has a reputation for bringing off audacious gambles. I suspect that as with many of his colleagues, given the might of opposition in the training ranks in Ireland, he has to land the occasional gamble to balance the books.
But to get to the matter-in-hand. Byrnes has been handed a 6-month suspension of his training licence for leaving a horse unattended in the Tramore racecourse stables. That is the only bit of evidence against him. His ‘neglect’ caused no harm to the horse. This is not an animal welfare issue. Whereas Irish racing has against it a situation where Leopardstown is the only racecourse in the fair isle fitted out with enough C.C.T.V. cameras to monitor the whole racecourse stables complex.
Also, Byrnes has a reputation, I believe, for winning money on his horses to win races not for betting on his horses to lose. I would also like to believe that Byrnes, as a licensed racehorse trainer, has at least respect, if not love, for the horses in his care. Would such a man dose his horse with 100-times the screening limit for ACP? Was he, or the real perpetrator, trying to stop Viking Hoard from winning or trying to kill the horse and its jockey?
Byrnes and his son brought Viking Hoard to Tramore, placed him in the stable allocated and went off for a pee, a drink, some lunch, to deliver the colours to the weighing room … We don’t know. Only that father and son left Viking Hoard unattended for 20-minutes and which in that time-frame the horse was dosed with a highly dangerous amount of sedative. I suspect in leaving their horse to settle after the journey to the races the action of the father and son was no different to most of the horses that raced at Tramore that day. I would suspect it is universally routine for a horse to be left to settle after its journey. If Byrnes was going to stop his horse the sensible thing to have done was to have administered the drug in the horsebox not in the stable-yard, even if he knew security at the course was woefully inadequate.
Ireland has had a reputation for turning a blind-eye to wrong-doers and now, to improve its image, they are using the horseshoe in the boxing glove as a method of putting the fear of God in the wrong-doers that allude their detection. Charles Byrnes might for all I know be the cleverest, cutest villain horse racing in Ireland has ever known but to hammer him with having his licence taken away for leaving his horse unattended for 20-minutes in a stable-yard with lax security is as much of a wrong-doing as the scum-bag who actually carried-out this crime.
Yes, when a horse is doped, the buck stops with the trainer. But to take this reasoning to an absurd conclusion, isn’t this equal to the postmaster being found guilty when robbers have entered the building, tied him up, bashed him over the head, before going off with the day’s takings? Racing court-rooms have the vibe of a secluded kangaroo court, with the accused having to prove his innocence to a jury already convinced of his guilt. 

​Unlike the flat which starts with a whimper and tales off into an echo of its beginning, the National Hunt season has a rhythm that has hardly altered down the decades of my life. Summer jumping keeps the sport ticking over, providing income for hard-up jockeys and trainers and diversion for people like me, jumping enthusiasts, followed in October by a scattering of races – not enough for my liking – to encourage the better-class horses into the limelight of public scrutiny and then come November and December it is the rat-a-tat-tat of a major race every weekend, culminating with the King George on Boxing Day and the Welsh National the following day.
With the exception of the Betfair Chase, which I believe only dilutes the quality of such races as the Ladbroke Trophy and in most seasons, though perhaps not this season, the King George, there is little to be critical of in the race programming.
February, too, is well-formed, with the major races, mostly handicaps interlinking with Champion Hurdle and Gold Cup trials, charting a reasoned passageway to the holiest of racing festivals at Cheltenham. January, though, is a bit of a damp squib as far as I am concerned. January has no highlight, with Trials Day at Cheltenham at the end of the month more of a lighting of a beacon for what is to be looked forward to in March rather than a Winter centrepiece in itself.
Now, it is one thing to come up with an idea and something entirely more troublesome is to come up with the finance to bring the bright spark of well-intentioned flair to fruition. But I am an ideas man; I am not a man to be trusted with either financial matters or power tools. But January needs a boost and whether the B.H.A. has noticed it or not, it is my intention to provide the debate.
There are two races completely missing from the racing programme: a big money 2-mile handicap chase and a 4-mile championship chase. I am excluding the Grand Annual as that, although any trainer, owner or jockey, would love to win the race, it is only a side-dish to the meatier fare on offer at the Festival.
I used to argue that Cheltenham’s first big handicap chase of the season should be over 2-miles and not half-a-mile longer. I no longer think that. Though I contend that the race that used to be the Whitbread at Sandown, given that the end of the season has staying chases by the cart-load – Grand National, Irish National, Midland National, Scottish National etc – in this day and age the season’s finale would attract a better class of horse if it was a 2-mile 0-150 handicap.
But I digress. Last Saturday there was the Warwick Classic Chase as the feature race. Now, I recognise that January can have 4 or 5 Saturdays in it but I don’t think the number of Saturdays in the month is an obstacle to the idea of a 2-mile handicap chase. I personally would like to see such a race at Newbury as for one of the best racecourses in the country/world it does not have enough major races either on the flat or over jumps. I see no reason why the Mandarin Chase meeting could not be held in the second week of January rather than December. The Mandarin, which I would restrict to novices, would make an excellent and valuable accompaniment to the race I propose.
The 4-mile Championship Chase is a pet-idea of mine. When I proposed the idea to Sandown as a double-header with the Tingle Creek they poo-pooed it with barely concealed contempt, telling me they had big plans for the London National. This was nearly 10-years ago and the London National remains an anonymous regional long-distance chase.
It is my contention that this country’s most popular races are the Aintree Grand National, followed by the Nationals of Wales and Scotland and of course the Gold Cup, with regional nationals gaining popularity all the time. The sport was constructed upon steeplechases for staying-type horses. Until the early 1950’s, unlikely as it might seem, the main race at the Cheltenham Festival was the 4-mile National Hunt Chase. And it is not like the popularity of the staying chaser has waned. Yet there is no conditions chase, outside of the National Hunt Chase, in the entire race programme. Such a race would provide, especially in January, an attractive proposition to trainers with staying chasers that are burdened by huge weights in races like the Welsh and Scottish Nationals but who are not classy enough for the Gold Cup and other conditions chases. Yala Enki comes to mind and better-class horses such as Santini and Native River.
In some years a 4-mile Championship Chase might not be a strong affair, something that can be said of the 2-mile Champion Chase, a race when it was first mooted was thought by critics to be unnecessary as it might be a boring spectacle. In those times, steeplechasing was all about the stayer.
So, there are my 2 ideas to sexy-up January. All that is needed now is for the B.H.A. to think-up the same idea, find a sponsor, rejig the race-programme and for owners and trainers to endorse the races with quality entries. Easy-peasy, lemon-squeezy. Yes, it will never happen.

​As good as they are as jockeys, Rachel Blackmore, Bryony Frost and even Hollie Doyle in some respects, owe a massive deed of gratitude for their opportunity to shine on the big stage to the great Irish amateur jockeys Nina Carberry and Katie Walsh, two people who in their self-effacing way helped to smash the glass ceiling with the warning ‘no female can go any higher’ etched deep into its surface.
It was not a race either Carberry or Walsh won, I believe, not even the Irish Nationals both have on their c.v.’s, that weakened the integrity of that glass ceiling but the day punters backed Seabass and Katie Walsh into favourite for the Grand National. Here was universal confirmation that having a female on a horse was no impediment to its chances, even in the most famous horse-race in the world.
Of course, it no doubt paved the way at the beginning of their careers that both Nina and Katie are members of two of the most decorated and famous racing families in Ireland, not that the blessing of being a Carberry or a Walsh would take them far if they had not married their talent to commitment and hard work. Both were rewarded with races won at the Cheltenham Festival, both were sought-after by trainers both sides of the Irish Sea when they had a runner in one of the amateur races they considered had more than a good chance of winning. To have Carberry or Walsh booked prior to the Tuesday of the Festival was all that was needed for the odds to shorten and to catch the eye of top tipsters.
Between them they changed the mind-set of owners and trainers. Certainly J.P. McManus was never slow to put either of them on his horses, even at the Festival, and if he is not a man to suffer fools or to risk his cash unwisely. I rather suspect, as with the rest of us, he was saddened by their retirements and, though Rachel Blackmore has emerged in the paid ranks to grab the headlines, no female amateur has appeared on the scene to continue the legacy they established.
In changing the course of racing history, it must be remembered that as talented as Nina Carberry undoubtedly was, she declined to turn professional as she did not think she would be successful and that greater opportunities would come her way if she stayed amateur. Yet, along with Katie, she had cast her dye, cracked open the glass ceiling and broke down the barrier that prevented female jockey being seen as the equal of the men. It is because of their achievements that no eyelids are battered when the name Blackmore, Frost or Doyle appears next to a favourite, even in the biggest and most important of races. And they are not alone. It is not just the Blackmore, Frost and Doyle show; in Britain there is Pinchin, Worsley, Fuller and Wonnacott who never harm a favourite’s chance, and other female jockeys who win on a regular basis, though it is not exactly the same in Ireland where a female outside of Blackmore riding a winner remains a bit of a novelty.
All that said, to my utter astonishment and dismay, there seems to be a pushback against the success and popularity of Bryony Frost by her male colleagues. Never did I suspect Bryony might cause a divide in the sport. Do the belittlers and backbiters not realise the benefit that her openness and honest approach brings to the sport; that she is quite probably the greatest communicator this sport has ever had; that she reaches beyond the lens of the camera into the imagination of children who sit with their parents in front of the t.v. screen? 
Whether we care for it or not, whether we poke fun at the ‘woke society’ or believe it to be the making of modern mankind, we no longer exist in sexist times. The mantra of ‘what goes on the weighing room should stay in the weighing room’ belongs to a time that has had its day. Female jockeys face the same dangers as their male colleagues, if they are not treated with respect both in and out of the weighing room, it cheapens the sport and brings it into disrepute. That Bryony has the strength of character to bring this matter into the glare of publicity demonstrates a greater concern for the image of the sport than those who believe the weighing room sits outside of the law of the land and the changing of society and morality.
It is shameful that the legacy of Nina Carberry and Katie Walsh should be seen to be violated by male colleagues green with envy at the success and popularity of one of their own kind. I just hope that Blackmore, Doyle and others do not have similar tales to tell as ‘Frosty’ has had to endure.

​Steeplechasing was born out of the hunting field, where any obstacle horse and rider came across was to be crossed in order to keep up with the chase. I will not consider the morals of fox-hunting, it is too long a debate, with too many recommendations for its continuance and one large argument for its termination. Yet the sport as we know it, with the exception of banks races in Ireland and cross-country races, displays no association with that famous day in 1752 when Mr.O’Callaghan and Edmund Burke struck a bet to see which of them could ride from the steeple at Buttevant to the spire of St.Leger church in the shortest time. We can only assume that either the day’s hunting must have been without exhilaration or one or both of the participants was in great need of extra revenue. For us, though, a sport was born that decade after decade has continued to enthral and excite us with its wild unpredictability and romance. 
I suspect only the Aintree Grand National, amongst all of the meetings held every year, displays any similarity with the early, unregulated, days of the sport. No plough anymore, of course, or stone walls, but it is likely that if Captain Becher were to visit on Grand National day, he would recognise both the race and the fence in which he unwittingly gave his name, if he didn’t recognise the grandstands. The first Grand National was run in 1839, yet surprisingly (it surprised me) the first hurdle race was run in 1821 on Durdham Downs in my home city of Bristol. It was run in three heats of 1-mile with 5-hurdles. It drew little enthusiasm from rider or spectator, apparently. 
In 1867 the Jockey Club endorsed this lack of enthusiasm for hurdle races by declaring ‘that in future hurdle races shall not be considered as coming within the established Rules of Racing’. It was only around the time of the 1st World War that hurdle racing gained a foothold and by the late 1920’s the Liverpool Hurdle had gained enough prestige that it was one of only five other races, outside of the Grand National, worth more than a £1,000 to the winner.
I must be related to the early pioneers of steeplechasing, none of whom had many good words to say about hurdle racing as I am not wholly enamoured by this division of the sport. Arthur Coventry thought hurdle racing’s only attribute was that it was a good medium for gambling.
When you see someone pay a large six-figure amount of money for the winner of a maiden Irish point-to-point and then ignore its natural propensity to jump a steeplechase fence by running it in hurdle races, it seems a retrograde action in my eyes. Yes, you can argue this policy has paid-off handsomely with Envoi Allen, Denman, too, in the past, and with plenty of others but how many have failed to make the grade, how many have fallen by the wayside by an inability to adjust to the discipline.
It is my contention that in their own unique way animals are as smart as we are. But they do not think as we think. You cannot take a young horse, schooled over only steeplechase fences, and explain to it that it must put that technique to the back of its mind, to stop jumping off its hocks, and flick its way over the insubstantial gorse-filled sheep hurdles that it will now face. When in the heat of battle, with noise and action all around, with the jockey wanting to communicate with the horse through the reins, his legs and perhaps his voice, a horse travelling at 30-mph has to coordinate his eyes, legs and body in less than a second. It takes little imagination to presume there are times when he will fall back on what he first learned about jumping and either jump the hurdle too big or a fence too low, sometimes with dire consequences.
I am an advocate of hurdles as we know them being replaced by smaller versions of the steeplechase fence, as I believe it is in France. And we are always being told how well French-bred horses can jump, aren’t we? I had hoped the fixed-brush hurdles used at Haydock would have caught on with jockeys and trainers but seemingly the rubber-faced hurdles are taking precedent. On safety grounds I am sure this is a step in the right direction and cannot understand why all courses do not use them. Cost, perhaps?
Although hurdle races would change out of all recognition, I believe a gradual change-over to miniature steeplechase fences would lessen horse fatality as from its earliest days learning to jump till retirement the horse would only need to learn one style of jumping and hurdle racing would go back to, as it was first envisaged, I believe, a feeder system for steeplechasing.
Yes, it might lessen the appeal of the division, though equally specialists would emerge as was the case back when hurdle racing first appeared on the scene. What would become of the major hurdle races as we have them now, I cannot be sure. Certainly, miniature fences could not be jumped at the speed hurdle races are now but I am sure the new division would evolve into its own spectacle.
It would be interesting to know what jockeys make of this proposal. I’m pretty sure static jumps of the size of hurdles would result in less falls and consequently less injury to horse and rider, which is a recommendation in its self.
The image of the sport in the eyes of the ignorant public in these times of woke should not be underestimated. The steeplechase fence is as safe as it can be, I suspect, with perhaps the exception of which is the best colour to have take-off rails so the horse can best see the fence, but hurdles, in my estimation, are a hazard to safety. They move, which can catch out even the best of jumpers, and as horses convey over them, lickity-split, they make a rat-a-tat-tat sound similar to machine-gun fire which must be scary for the young horse.
I very much doubt my suggestion will be implemented, not in my lifetime anyway, but it would be a step in the right direction if it might stimulate debate on the matter. I doubt if Nicky Henderson would ever be convinced by my reasoning but perhaps the younger, more enlightened, trainer, might.

​I’ve never been under the illusion that the weighing room is or ever was a sanctuary of propriety. High-jinks, ribaldry and the ups and downs of sporting endeavour would dominate on a daily basis, I would suspect, over morality, prayer and chivalrous conduct. ‘All’s fair in love and war’ might be the unsaid motto of such a cloistered assembly room.
Of course, the weighing room has been for a hundred-years or more, at least until more recent times, a male sanctum, with, as it once was considered on sailing-ships, an underlying emphasis on it being ‘no place for the fairer sex to be found’. Men will be men, of course, and men who risk life and limb four or five-times a day on a daily basis might have a different code of ethics than us poor mortals whose dull lives are not enlightened by entry to the hallowed room where brave men slip on the coloured cloths of their profession.
But as ugly and corrupted as 2020 might have been, with our daily lives continuing to be blighted by an insanity no one could think ever possible, we have moved on from the time of ‘On The Buses’ and ‘Confessions of a Window-Cleaner’. To read that the B.H.A. are holding an investigation into complaints of bullying by her weighing room colleagues by Bryony Frost is as sad and disturbing a news-story as has confronted me since the disgrace of the Grand National that never was.
That someone as charismatic and publicly loved as Bryony Frost should be subject to harassment from her jockey colleagues is, to those of us outside of the world she inhabits, baffling and deeply upsetting. 
There is, of course, two sides to every story. I doubt very much if Bryony is saintly. Indeed, I would be surprised if she could not hold her ground in any assault on her character. But I cannot believe she is anything other than a good human being and reading between the lines it seems others are involved, people for what ever reason she is trying to protect. It is what you would expect of her, is it not, to put the welfare of others before her own? Perhaps at the start of her troubles she stepped in to help a colleague who was being bullied or made fun of and as a result unwittingly drew the fire onto herself.
After the King George, I thought Paul Nicholls sparing in his praise for what was a consummate winning ride. The same could be said of A.P.McCoy. And all the talk post-race was the de-brief the beaten jockey would be subjected to for allowing Bryony to boss the race.
Of course, at the heart of this will be green-eyed envy and perhaps the denting of machismo, a girl stepping up to the plate and putting the top jockeys in their place, with the journeyman jockeys thinking it should be them given the chances Bryony has been given. I just hope the stokers of the flames do not reside at Ditcheat, the claimers who are in competition with her for rides.
For Bryony’s sake I hope the B.H.A. get their asses in gear and resolve this matter in quick time. For her sake this matter must not drag on; it must not be responsible for removing joy from her eyes and the smile from her face. She is, whether her fellow professionals care for it or not, the best advertisement for the true meaning of our sport, the one jockey with the charm, courage and ability to encourage fresher faces into horse racing. No one in the sport can engage with the public as she can and if the hotspot of this controversy is envy then I suggest one of the senior riders in the weighing room needs to stand-up to remind the culprits of the rights and wrongs of the situation. If jockeys have stood silent while bullying and harassment was going on in front of them, they are as culpable as those lashing out with the barbed words. I, for one, might think twice in the future from buying from the Injured Jockeys Website if I suspect the weighing room is inhabited by dishonourable men capable of malice towards one of its own.

On the Welsh National: Silent Reprieve a very good winner, no matter he carried a feather-weight. And though I must reference Bryony once more, it should not be overlooked that the best horse in the race was Yala Enki. I suspect that time will prove that in trying to give Secret Reprieve the best part of 2-stone he was attempting the impossible, especially if Secret Reprieve were to go on and win the Grand National, where again he is sure to be favourably weighted.
I personally would run Yala Enki in the Grand National, even though he fell at the first in the Becher. Uncharacteristically, Bryony gave him a kick going into the fence and Yala Enki overjumped, landing on his head. Bryony was more unseated than the horse fell and ridden more conservatively I would not be at all surprised if he again finished in the money. In every other staying chase Yala Enki is always going to have to carry a huge weight, making it just as difficult for him to win the top race he deserves as it would be to win at Aintree. And remember, Bryony succeeded in steering Milansbar, another horse notable for missing a fence here and there, to the winning post in the Grand National a few years ago. And Yala Enki is twice the horse Milansbar ever was.

​On Wednesday the Racing Post published a letter of mine where I suggested that in winning the King George at Kempton on Boxing Day, Bryony Frost achieved the most important victory for a female jockey in British racing history. As is the Post’s habit, what was published was not word-for-word the letter I sent in – they added, took away, censored my thinly veiled criticism of the paper and changed the emphasis but to all effect my point remained.
Though it would not be evident from what was published, I made the observation that in contrast to her victory in the Ryanair at the Cheltenham Festival when she returned a heroine of our time, with her photograph on the front page of the Times, on this occasion there was a mooted quality to the praise she received, even, I thought, from the Racing Post.
I added, and this point would be hard to find in what was published, that the mooted response was in fact perhaps an indication that female jockeys had now found parity with their male colleagues, with big races going the way of the fairer sex so normalised that it no longer warranted column after column of appraisal and analysis. I am sure this will sit well with Rachel, Bryony, Bridget, Holly, Hayley and co who are, I dare say, mightily tired of their gender being the main talking point in their success.
Frodon’s victory at Kempton was not just another victory for the female of the species, as A.P.McCoy’s win at Towcester when he became the winning-most jockey of all-time was not just another winner. If a list was compiled of the top ten victories for female jockeys in Britain and Ireland, it is my contention that Hayley Turner’s July Cup success would now only be placed second, with Bryony Frost’s King George top of the pile. I believe it was that aspect of the media coverage that was lacking. It was a milestone for the sport as much as it was a milestone for both the jockey and her female colleagues. The bar is raised once again; it will require a female jockey to win a Champion Hurdle, Cheltenham Gold Cup, Grand National, one of the five flat classics or perhaps an Ascot Gold Cup or Arc, to remove Bryony from her place at the top of the tree.
The other aspect of the fall-out from the King George was the rubbishing Frodon received from racing experts and social media commentators. Did no one recognise the ease of the victory? Bryony did not have to ride a finish to win the race and by all accounts Frodon was as fresh as a daisy the next day, suggesting it was hardly a taxing race for him.
The experts seem to think Bryony will not be allowed to ‘boss’ the race in the Gold Cup as she did at Kempton. Did no one notice Nico de Boinville trying to hassle Frodon only for Santini to fluff his lines several times. They are now talking of putting blinkers on him at Cheltenham, not a good sign for a championship race. 
Bryony ‘bossed’ the field in the Ryanair and practically all the races she has won on Frodon. It is easy for her to dictate the pace because there is no horse alive that can match Frodon in the jumping department. Remember, the legend that is John Francome considers Frodon the best jumper of a fence he has ever seen. And he is amenable; Frodon does not fight Bryony when she wants to slow the pace and he responds instantly when she wants to go faster. Watch the King George again; he gains a length at almost every fence; ground Bryony does not give back. The opposition have to quicken to stay in touch. And with horses behind making mistakes, it allows Frodon half-a-length here and half-a-length there more of an advantage.
I am constantly astonished by experts who think, for instance, that Santini is a better prospect for the Gold Cup as the course will suit him better than Kempton, when the form-book clearly illustrates that Frodon is a Cheltenham specialist. He has probably won more races at Cheltenham than all the other main Gold Cup contenders put together.
I was wrong Boxing Day as I was of the opinion that as a strong stayer, as I believe Frodon to be these days, Kempton would not suit his style of racing. I was delighted to be proved wrong and hope come the Gold Cup all you nay-sayers will be as delighted to be proved wrong when Bryony becomes the first female jockey to win the Cheltenham Gold Cup.

As I write I do not know the result of the inspection at Chepstow. As the crow flies, I live not far – there is a big stretch of water between North Devon and South Wales – from Chepstow and given the weather we have had to today and are forecast for tomorrow, I would give the meeting a fighting chance of surviving.
One point I would like to make is this: if they cannot race on Saturday, and given the rise in temperature for Sunday onwards, and that they cannot have spectators or catering, they could take the option of postponing the meeting till Sunday. I realise they will lose I.T.V. coverage and the revenue that goes with it but a better option I would suggest than having no Welsh National at all this season.

​Nicky Henderson does have a point, you know, when he says, as he so often does, ‘where else can we go’, as he did after supplementing Santini for the King George, and will doubtless say again when confirming his plan to get Altior back to Cheltenham in a bid to regain his 2-mile championship crown.
There is a nightmare scenario gaining momentum in the media, fuelled by official or unofficial briefings by the government or its black ops division of official ‘moles’, that sooner or later, based on flawed or corrupted testing data – the rogue virus is out-of-control, it’s mutated, our hospitals have seen nothing like it since 2018 (it’s seasonal, it’s what happens in winter, I.C.U.’s get overstretched by respiratory conditions brought-on in older people by the combination of wintry weather and on-going health problems) – the country will be thrust back into a lockdown (even though over twenty scientific studies and papers have concluded that lockdowns do not ‘slow the spread’ but actually accelerate or maintain the spread – but what has science had to do with what has been going on over the past nine-months?) resulting in all sport being prohibited.
But to return to my point. Today, January 1st, 2021, the country racecourse at Tramore stage a significant Cheltenham Gold Cup trial. For the third year in succession Al Boum Photo will turn-up, no doubt win in a common canter, harden as Gold Cup favourite, and all racing eyes will be on Tramore. If it wasn’t for Ireland wanting to be ‘best boys in class’ when it comes to the c-scam, this day would draw Tramore’s largest crowd of the year.
But if Tramore should be postponed and it proves impossible to run the race at another venue, Willie Mullins would still have a multitude of options for Al Boum Photo in the weeks and months leading up to Cheltenham. The Irish race programme caters for its top horses in a way we do not over here. Santini really only has two races he can run in between now and the Festival, the Cotswold and the Denman. But Henderson also has to find a race or races for Champ and though we live in unprecedented times, this is winter, even if the climate is warming at an equally unprecedented rate of knots, and it is possible we could suffer a long period of frost, snow or more likely rain, causing a large scar to appear in the race programme between now and the Festival.
Once upon a time there was a Gold Cup trial at Wincanton, the John Bull, was it, run the same day as the Kingswell Hurdle? To my mind the smaller racecourses should be allowed or encouraged to stage condition chases and hurdles for all divisions of the sport to increase the opportunities for a) trainers to get a run into their horses prior to the Festival and to incentivise them into running their top horses more often and b) to give the smaller racecourses the financial boost of a large crowd.
But it is not only the second half of the season that requires more condition chases and hurdles. I am no admirer of the Betfair Chase, especially as it is normally run in a quagmire that can bottom a horse for the rest of the season. But it is what it is, at least until the sponsors or the B.H.A. see sense and move the race to a racecourse more befitting one of the main steeplechases of the season. Yes, trainers these days since the advent of all-weather gallops, can get a horse win-fit on their seasonal debuts, but wouldn’t it make the job slightly easier for them and more interesting for the public if there were races for the championship horses leading up to the Betfair?
Just for arguments sake and using the most popular horse currently in training as an example: if Paul Nicholls wanted to aim Frodon at the Betfair next season, or any of his top chasers, would it not make life easier for him, more interesting for the public and a financial boost to a local course if he could give Frodon a prep run at Taunton, Wincanton or Exeter? It wouldn’t matter if there were only three runners as Frodon and Frost are a big enough draw to attract the crowds on their own.
Willie Mullins farms such races in Ireland, sending his good horses to any country course that puts on a conditions chase with half-decent prize-money. And this type of race exists throughout the season in Ireland, giving owners and trainers good pots to aim at and greater opportunity to make the game pay.
We cannot criticise Nicky Henderson for the light campaigns he gives his best horses prior to Cheltenham, for prioritising the Festival over the rest of the season, if the race-programme gives him no incentive to run his horses more often.
Whether we have a Festival or Gold Cup to look forward to this season is in the lap of corrupt science. I suspect they will happen but not necessary on their allotted dates in the calendar. What is more likely is that many horses will take up their entries on a limited preparation, with some, like Champ, I suspect, making their seasonal debuts in championship races, which will be unsatisfactory all-round. That will not be the fault of the B.H.A. Even I, a year-round of critic of their performance in running the sport, cannot lay the unfairness and stupidity of lockdowns at their door.
But they could be more proactive in ensuring trainers have no excuse for keeping their best horses wrapped-up in cotton wool throughout the main part of the season. The B.H.A. could also be more proactive in incentivising trainers into running their best horses in suitable races at the smaller racecourses and thus by boosting attendance and profit and brightening up Sunday or week-day racing. Win, win, I’d say.