​This piece will be all over the place and a little disjointed – what’s new, I can hear you say – as I am attempting to link two pressing topics of conversation that between them possess the capacity to take the sport down the road of destruction.
This week in the Racing Post it has been wall-to-wall articles on the imposition of affordability checks on punters. Let me be clear; this subject is the greatest threat to the survival of horse racing since the dawn of the sport and I am in no way criticising the Racing Post for giving it almost blanket coverage on its front pages. I just happen to believe that hereby lies the opportunity to think outside of the box, to start a conversation amongst administrators and racing enthusiasts to locate alternative ways to fund the sport. Let’s not make arrangements for our destruction before we have considered every option available to us to circumvent the Gambling Commission or the Government’s dastardly plan to kill off our sport.
Affordability checks are an assault on our God-given liberty to think and act as we please, within the law of the land, obviously. Gambling addiction is not, though, to be taken lightly. It is vice that can destroy not only the life of the addict but his or her nearest and dearest. But so can addiction to alcohol and no affordability checks are imposed on drinkers when they purchase booze in pubs, supermarkets or off-licences, if the latter establishments still exist. Drink is drink, whether its vodka, scotch or lager. Taken to excess, alcohol changes personalities and inhibitions and can lead to anger, mood-swings and anti-social behaviour and worse. Betting and gambling, though, are two completely different species and the B.H.A. should inform the Gambling Commission of this, apparently, little known fact.
Look-up the definition of betting in a dictionary and the word gambling does not appear. Bet/betting: to stake an amount of money as a bet. To make a bet with someone. Gambling: to venture or hazard something. To play a game of chance for money or property. Now, I am playing, to an extent, fast and loose with definitions as a bet is a risk in the same way as a gamble might be. But to me, a gamble is more associated with the risk of losing big or losing something as great as a marriage, reputation or a business. ‘He knew he was gambling away his marriage’. Not, he was betting away his marriage’. 
Though affordability checks are not in my domain as I have not had a betting account and would never risk gambling away the contents of a bank account, I will enter a betting shop to bet a few quid on occasion. I consider myself a bettor, not a gambler. If I placed a £1,000 on a horse I would be gambling. If a multi-millionaire placed a £1,000 on a horse he or she is betting a sum of money he or she can afford to lose. If J.P. McManus, for example, walked into a betting shop would he be asked to prove he could afford a four-figure bet? 
Affordability checks are morally wrong and its about time someone challenged their legitimacy in a court of law. Affordability checks are a gross infringement on our civil liberties. The origin for them can be traced to the introduction of slot machines in betting shops. Instead of arguing the acceptable stake for a machine, the betting industry should simply get rid of them, even if all they will be doing in transferring the problem elsewhere.
And here is a controversial point-of-view: this humungous problem is racing’s fault through its reliance on funding the sport through the revenue from the levy, betting shops and its total reluctance to even consider investing in its own tote, a system that has allowed countries long-thought our racing inferiors to overtake us to the point where we are but a dot in the distance. Let the sport die rather than do away with the betting jungle on racecourses!
We may have to accept that our sport is too top heavy, with too many commercial fingers in the pie, that the elastic has reached breaking point. Yes, the race-program, for now, must be reduced so that it reflects the reduced number of horses in training, as well as owners, trainers and staff. But this is the time, perhaps as the sport teeters at the precipice, for some old-fashioned blue-sky thinking, to reconsider the impossible and drag that ship back into harbour. Of course, the sport needs and deserves vibrant governance rather than the insipid leadership that is the hallmark of the B.H.A. 
The profits from betting on horse racing should go 100% to the sport. That is the golden solution. In the mean-time, the problem of gambling addiction should be dealt with in-house, with, somehow, a register of addicts, somewhat akin to a sex register, so that the sport can fund addiction therapy for those who have succumbed. But the sport cannot even think of such a scheme at the moment as it does not have the funds to extend a caring hand.
Affordability checks are an attack on our freedom. Ask a politician to tell us how much he or she earns outside of their parliamentary salary and we will be told that it is a private matter. Yet those same politicians are imposing bettors be asked the same question and for the liberty of placing a bet the shop manager must know what his life savings accrue to and what his or her monthly salary is. It is scandalous; and perhaps more concerning, is that it might just be the start of something far worse. The World Economic Forum do not like independent businesses. Nor do they like free-thought. They like control; track and trace, new normal, ‘own nothing and be happy’. That’s the future; how can betting shops and sport fit snugly within that agenda?

​Last Monday evening, at Wolverhampton, Hollie Doyle, 6-times Group 1 winning jockey, suffered what was described as a ‘freak fall’, resulting in, as was later diagnosed, a fracture of her elbow and ruptured ligaments in her arm. I may be wrong, though husband Tom was riding elsewhere that night, it seems she drove herself home, stopping off at Swindon Hospital to have her arm x-rayed. The x-rays were sent to be assessed by B.H.A.-appointed chief medical officer Jerry Hill. The following day (Tuesday) she was assessed by a B.H.A. appointed specialist and on the Wednesday, she was at Oaksey House in Lambourn for physiotherapy. 
Within 2-days Hollie was able to access a hospital, a chief medical officer, a specialist and a rehabilitation centre. In what other sport would this be possible? Horse racing may be in a bad place at the moment but there are elements within it that are a shining example of care and professionalism the rest of sport, and the general public, should be made aware of.

There is some disquiet amongst trainers that from last Saturday’s abandonments only a 3-horse race, as it would have been, is to be saved, to be run this weekend at an already jam-packed Cheltenham. Personally, and I may be alone in my view, but if a race only attracts 3-runners it does not deserve to be rescheduled. Yes, because it is re-opened to original entries, it will likely have 4, 5 or 6-runners, two of which will be no-hopers, at Cheltenham. Yet the Fleur-de-Lys Chase, due to have been run at Lingfield on Sunday, and worth the same amount of money as the Clarence House, is not be saved, even though it had attracted twice the number of runners.
Now, I don’t approve of Lingfield’s Winter Millions meeting as it can only have the effect of watering down competition between now and the Spring Festival meetings, but it was approved by the authorities and in his first manifestation served up plenty of competitive racing. But Lingfield is Lingfield and in winter it is the most relied upon racecourse to produce heavy ground and the freezing weather that scuppered the second instalment of the Winter Millions was evidence that this meeting will always be susceptible to abandonment even when the ground is raceable. That said, I believe the Fleur-de-Lys was a better candidate to be rescheduled than a race that most trainers totally ignored from first entry to last.
In my humble opinion, given its importance to West Country racing, the meeting that should have been salvaged from last weekend was Taunton. Insurance may come into play here, hence Taunton’s reluctance to ask the B.H.A. for a new date for the meeting, but of all the big races last weekend the Portman Cup was by far the most original. It is the only conditions chase outside of the National Hunt Chase at the Cheltenham Festival run over a distance in excess of 3¼ -miles. And it was a competitive race, even if Frodon was by miles the best horse entered, though there was no certainty he would stay the distance. In Ireland, where, yes, they have spaces available in the race programme to accommodate the rescheduling of entire meetings, the Taunton fixture would have been postponed not abandoned.
Also, while I am having another dig at the B.H.A.. Why does the sport always have to shoot itself in the foot? As Paul Nicholls quite rightly said, if the Clarence House was re-opened, given the race was to be run at Cheltenham, a completely different configuration than Ascot, he would have entered Greanateen, with other trainers, as Gary Moore has proved by allowing Editeur du Gite to run on Saturday, also having a rethink about the race. Of course, this could not happen because the rules do not allow it. The rule should be changed, shouldn’t it, for the benefit of the sport. It is the same with later entry dates for the major races, especially the Cheltenham Festival. If it will improve competitiveness, help reduce costs for owners and make life easier for trainers, races closing months before the day of racing should be eliminated. Simple measures that would cost the sport nothing and can only provide benefits to everyone involved.
Oh, on the subject of affordability checks, the death-knell of racing, no doubt, and ways around the dire consequence it heralds, as trainer Stuart Williams is quoted in today’s (January 24th) Racing Post, ‘ ….We need a turnover model for a start and, eventually, we need to move to a system like in Australia, where a lot of funding is coming from the Tote.’
Yet, as everyone keeps saying, the Tote boat has sailed. (Must keep the atmosphere of the racecourse jungle, mustn’t we?) The same people who doubtless would prefer to either come up with a complications of ideas that will require the favourable wind of good fortune to succeed in saving the sport or to simply allow the sport to slip away, rather than embrace a system that in various Tote forms has made racing in those countries a roar-away success.

​John McCririck, apparently, said of David Ashforth. ‘The outstanding racing journalist of our generation’. Arguable, I think even Mr.Ashforth will agree. Jilly Cooper placed her praise of Mr.Ashforth in the heavenly realm. ‘David Ashforth writes like an angel’. This is definitely debatable as not one of us, even the divine Jilly, can be certain if angels possess any grasp of punctuation, spelling or syntax. It is possible angels are actually experts on the preservation of feathers whilst being completely illiterate. Robin Oakley, I think, defined Mr.Ashforth with greater accuracy. He also names a racehorse in his praise of his colleague and, no doubt, friend, which Mr.Ashworth would admire. ‘An indefatigable researcher as well as the wittiest man writing about racing.’
When the reader buys a David Ashforth book, he or she can never be quite certain what is about to be discovered within its pages. His latest tome, ‘Ashforth’s Curiosities of Horseracing’, is curious in itself as all the acquired photographs in the book were sponsored (paid for?) by the Tote 0r the +o+e as they prefer their name to be now wrongly constructed. Prince, he of ‘Purple Rain’, has a lot of wrong-doing to answer for.
I would describe David Ashforth’s writing style as a cross between academic and impish. ‘Curiosities’, to shorten the title, is just a lovely book to handle, let alone read. The front cover has a photograph of Joe ‘Mincemeat’ Griffin leading in his 1953 Grand National winner Early Mist, flanked by two mounted policemen, with some over-sized leprechaun over-excitedly, causing a curious expression to flit across the face of the winning horse, jumps up and down, waving his hat aloft. 
Personally, I like chapter headings that provoke interest yet gives little away and Mr.Ashforth is a master of the craft. Three such examples to whet the appetite are: ‘Prince Khalid Chooses His Curtains’. ‘Frank Goes Legless’. ‘Eclipse Has Seven Feet’. It all makes perfect sense once read.
Unlike the indefatigable Mr.Ashforth, I am not a diligent researcher and with there being no ‘also by’ David Ashforth featured in his latest creation, an oversight, surely, I should as a favour to him list further examples of his work, yet in the half-light of 5.56am on a Sunday morning, I don’t feel energised enough to search them out from the dusty shelves of my small yet significant racing library. But they are out there, though as only a fool would part with one of his book, you will not likely find one in a charity shop. If out-of-print, I would suggest contacting ‘Ways of Newmarket’, antiquarian booksellers, the supplier of most of my racing library.
The reader will always learn something new, fascinating or downright unnecessary by reading a David Ashforth book. ‘Curiosities’ is no different. I suspect, and this is where the great man is so devilishly clever, this book may become Volume 1, with further volumes coming out in time for each succeeding Christmas.
His books, each and every one, is an achievement. Though his greatest achievement has been to repel the Great Reaper for so long, his battle with cancer (pancreatic, was it?) documented with his usual impish sense of humour during his time with the Racing Post, something he combined with attempting, and usually failing, to ‘win a grand’ for charity during the week before Christmas. Live long, live happy, Mr.Ashforth. I salute you.
And, dear reader, buy his book, any or all of his books, the royalties may be funding his life-or-death struggle with the repugnant Reaper of Death.
(I hope he is a nice man. Pleasant, you know. Not a drinker. So many writers are. Look at Alastair Down. You never know, do you, when praising someone you only know through their writing. The photograph, used by the publisher to persuade the uninitiated that he possesses the required knowledge to be considered an expert on the subject, does him no favour. He looks haggard. Would curmudgeonly, be unfair? I hope he is a nice man. I really do. I wouldn’t want my love of his work to be blemished at this late stage of our reader/writer relationship). I have not yet recovered from learning that Raymond Chandler, my favourite American writer, was lost to drink.

​It is easy, and perhaps lazy, to mark Jack Kennedy as a man who if he wasn’t on the receiving end of bad luck, he would have no luck at all in his life. Of course, he was born with an envied talent for riding racehorses and he has honed that talent with dedicated hard work over his short yet successful career.
As David Jennings (or was it Richie Forristal or Patrick Mullins? One of them, anyways) said of Kennedy, ‘he’s so laid back when interviewed, you think you should feel his pulse to make sure he was still breathing’. I’m paraphrasing but the beauty of the description of Kennedy’s character is clearly evidenced from Jennings, Forristal or Mullins’ superior writing skill. At the tender age of 23, he is already as good a rider as any of his peers, both in Ireland and Britain.
Talent and dedication is not a golden ticket, of course, for the level of success Kennedy has already achieved but it should broker some form of guarantee that a modicum of luck, at least with injuries, would come his way. At 23 Kennedy has already endured 5 broken legs. That is 2½ to either leg. And that is only half the number of serious injuries to come he has already endured. If I had suffered even a quarter of the injuries that have blighted his career I would be on medication for depression and going around uttering ‘woe is me’ to passing strangers. One can only admire Kennedy’s fortitude; the sang-froid manner in which he looks mocking destiny in the eye and in reply shrugs his shoulders and gets on with the important procedure of healing.
Apparently, instead of moping around, as I would do the day after once more having plaster applied to a lower limb, moaning ‘woe is me’, Kennedy was seen alongside Gordon Elliott watching horses schooling at Cullentra. Unbelievable! A lesson to us all, no matter how stupid his doctors may think it.
As soon as I read of Kennedy’s latest misfortune, the thought crossed my mind that Gordon Elliott would ask Davy Russell to reconsider his retirement. I wasn’t confident Russell would backtrack as it is known how much of a family man he is and I couldn’t see his wife exactly jumping for joy at the idea of her getting-older-by day (0nly 43. If only I could be 43 once more) husband reapplying for his licence to ride.
Jockeys are strange (mad?) creatures, though. When an accountant retires, you will not find him hanging around accountancy offices. When a boxer retires, will you find him the next day in the gym hitting a punchbag? Yet Russell continued to ride out, and doubtless schooling, at Cullentra. Is he, though, now looking forward to further Cheltenham Festival glory? No. He has said he will only fill Kennedy’s role as Number 1 at Cullentra until Kennedy is back riding, be that the day before the Cheltenham Festival (did I mention Kennedy has set mid-March as his goal to return?) or the day after. He will step away as soon as Kennedy is fit to ride again.
Of course, with Jack Kennedy’s track record, Russell might make as many swansongs as Frank Sinatra. For the sake of Jack and Russell’s loved-ones, let’s hope not.
THE SLOW SLIDE OF THE DUBLIN RACING FESTIVAL.
You would think, wouldn’t you, that with the Dublin Racing Festival being so lauded, it is a rip-roaring success. Yet, despite British fans attending the meeting in greater numbers, seemingly, every year, it continues to be ignored by British trainers, with only 2 entries from these shores in the Grade 1’s for this season’s renewal, with neither of them looking likely winners, and with many of the top Irish horses not being targeted at all that lovely Euro cash.
If it were not for the Irish Champion Hurdle, a corker of a race as long as Willie Mullins runs both State Man and Vauban against Honeysuckle, I’m not sure mouth-watering would be the right adjective to describe the meeting. Galopin Des Champs might only face stable-companions in the Irish Gold Cup, with A Plus Tard going straight to Cheltenham. Blue Lord will also perhaps only face opposition from his own team-mates, though if the ground is proper good then Sceau Royal still retains the ability to keep him honest. Mullins dominates the 2-mile novice Goffs Arkle, though if Sir Gerhard runs his presence will give the race greater interest. Facile Vega v High Definition in the 2-mile novice hurdle will be both informative and intriguing.
But let’s be honest, was this what the Dublin Racing Festival was created for – races that would have attracted the same number of runners, with the same level of competitiveness, as when the same races were strung-out over different racecourses over a period of 3-weeks.
Is it any wonder Willie Mullins targets festival meetings, be they summer, autumn, spring or winter, in Britain, Ireland or increasingly France, why he plots long-term strategies to run as many horses as possible to win for his clients and staff as much prize-money, 1st, 2nd, 3rd of 4th  as can be imagined? Definitions of the word vary. ‘A person endowed with extraordinary intellectual powers’. Or, ‘A single strongly marked capacity or aptitude’. To quote Conan Doyle. ‘Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognises genius’.
If only such a definition could be as easily applied to one of those people who are paid large salaries to govern our sport, on either side of the Irish Sea, as they can be to Willie Mullins, the master of Closutton.

​There is little or no doubt that the star of the female professional flat jockey is on the rise. It could be argued that the position held by female jockeys in the sport is about right if you take into account the year from which they started out from. After all, the first race on the flat for female riders was only in 1972, May 6th, to be accurate, at Kempton Park and won by Meriel Tufnell on Scorched Earth. May 6th, 1972, whether misogynists like it or not will forever be an historic date in British horse racing. More easily remembered than December 29th 1975 when the Sex Discrimination Act came into force in this country, the day that had the Jockey Club in a tizzy until they capitulated, realised politicians had them over a barrel, swallowed their united chauvinistic tendencies and fears of a marketing disaster and allowed the ‘weaker sex’ to ride under National Hunt rules. Bizarrely, though perfectly in keeping with the nonsensical thinking that could come from the Jockey Club at the time, they refused to allow stable girls working in flat yards to ride in races, though less fit, arguably, less experienced, female riders could ride over fences and hurdles.
Though providing good publicity for horse racing, it was a slow burn for female jockeys. Linda Goodwill won the first mixed-gender amateur race on the flat in 1974. Lorna Vincent became the first professional jump jockey to win against professionals in 1978 at Devon & Exeter (now just Exeter, though still many miles, a lot of them uphill, from Exeter city centre), and in the same year, 14th September, Karen Wiltshire made flat racing history when winning on The Goldstone. The date should be commemorated, in my opinion, as it was the day when everything changed for female professional flat jockeys. It was no more, no less, than a Moon Landings moment for the sport. On the 14th September, on a racecourse somewhere in Britain, there should be a race to commemorate Karen Wiltshire’s dogged determination to prove the doubters, the cynics, the misogynists, wrong. The female could ride winners on the flat!
Of course, Karen Wiltshire’s achievement should have provided boundless opportunity for the sport to promote itself. She had many offers to do interviews, especially with female magazine, but had to turn them down as she was advised ‘that the Jockey Club would not like it’. How times change; now the B.H.A. might argue that Holly Doyle doesn’t do enough interviews with the non-sporting media.
But is the female jockey at its appropriate position within the sport. After-all, the breakthrough moment for professional female jockeys was 45-years ago and though Hayley Turner made her mark in the sport twenty-years ago and remains one of the sport’s most popular jockeys, only Holly Doyle is being given the opportunities, and not so many if you tot the numbers up, to compete and win Group 1’s and classic races.
Approximately (I am using data published in the Racing Post which does not go down below 3-winners) female jockeys rode 484 winners between them in 2022. Holly Doyle rode, to be second in the list behind William Buick, 151-winners, with Saffie Osborne (the next female star of the weighing room) and Joanna Mason (as good as any professional, in my humble opinion) tying for second on a creditable 46-winners. Hayley Turner was next on 37-winners.
It is disappointing to learn that the next most-winning female jockey on the list, Grace McEntee, on 24-winners, has lost faith her career will progress in this country, even with her father being a trainer, and has relocated to the U.S.
Nicola Currie, one of the most under-used, male or female, jockeys rode only 17-winners from 225 rides, all her winners coming during the ridiculous short period in which the championship is determined.
In Ireland, the wheel of fortune continues to turn in favour of the female professional jockey, though in comparison to Rachel Blackmore’s rise to super-stardom over jumps the change of direction can only be described as slow motion. Siobhan Rutledge did though finish in joint 25th position in the Irish championship table, higher than Osborne and Mason achieved in Great Britain, to be fair, riding 13-winners. And though a good and improving number of female apprentices rode winners in Ireland last season only Amy Jo Hayes, with 7-winners, achieved enough to be mentioned in despatches (she was 31st in the table of winning jockeys).
More than at any time in the history of racing in Britain and Ireland, female participation is desperately needed. More people of either gender are needed to work in the sport. It’s a great life for anyone unafraid of hard grafting, with rewards that can come both financially and spiritually. Ireland must work harder to uncover their own Holly Doyle, to get the Irish glass ceiling smashed and forgotten about, to demonstrate that racing is truly a mixed gender culture and that the female has the same opportunities to reached the top as her male counterparts.
Holly Doyle, as good and hard-working as she is, makes the picture in Britain rosier than it actually is. She rode a quarter of all the winners ridden by her female colleagues last season. If you add the totals of Saffie Osborne and Joanna Mason to Holly’s total it comprises half of all the winners ridden by female jockeys.
I return to my old and favourite chestnut of suggesting the sport could only benefit from a race, with a six-figure prize-fund (if possible, in its first year) restricted to professional female jockeys (excluding those who claim more than 3Ibs). Female jockeys all around the world need a ‘Derby’ of their own, a race the top females are allowed the chance to ride a better class of horse than they usually get to ride. If provided with a date in the calendar between festivals, on one of those quiet Saturdays or even to brighten a dull Sunday, such a race would shine a spotlight on the sport and an opportunity for publicity in media outlets that normally would not feature horse racing. I rest my case. For now.

​The Racing Post recently ran a series of articles detailing the decline of British Racing against the success stories of horse racing countries around the world. Rather dramatically, though perhaps appropriately, they labelled the series ‘1-Year To Save British Horse Racing’. If anyone at the B.H.A. read the 3 reports, it should have served as a kick-up-the-pants. What the series lacked was a follow-up interview with Julie Harrington to seek out her response to what qualified as an in-your-face criticism of her, her predecessors and the B.H.A. as overseer to the welfare of horse racing in this country.
As an aside, I sometimes wonder if it is stipulated in the contracts of those who head-up the British Horse-Racing Authority that they learn to play the violin Nero-style, not with the gusto of a barn dance.
Beyond the three well-executed articles, what really hit home on the crisis in British racing was the article by Lewis Porteous on Tom George’s business plan for surviving the present crisis – the decline is at least 40-years in the making – by training in this country and having a satellite yard in France with his son Noel as the licence-holder. It would not surprise me if Tom George is not joined in such a venture by other British and Irish trainers in order to take advantage of the lucrative prize-money on offer across the channel.
Tom George summed up the chasm of mindset between the two countries when he said about French racing. ‘It’s all geared toward the horse rather than the betting.’
To quote facts from the article, in France they have races, for example, for horses that have not won £5,000 in prize-money in the previous year. In Britain, I suggest, with so many low-grade horses in training, there could be races for horses that have not won £5.000 in their careers. Obviously, such races as I suggest would be low-grade but the system would allow owners of such horses a fighting chance to either make money from the sport or at least break-even. In France, horses can keep competing in such races until they have won £5,000, then they progress into races for horses that have not won prize-money to the value of £10,000. 
This simple, no-nonsense, approach to race-planning has the advantage of allowing opportunities for horses on the slide or that are in the grip of the handicapper. 
To adopt a similar style of race conditions in Britain will require a wholesale   root and branch change in thinking by racecourses and the B.H.A. and I would put forward the proposal that this summer – there is no point delaying matters, the situation in this country is too dire – a month is set aside, both for National Hunt and the smaller flat meetings, to trial races conditioned by prize-money won in both the career of a horse and in the previous twelve-months.
Where we cannot follow the French example on how to fund and support horse racing is the annual travel allowance given to each horse in training. It is a splendid incentive, though with racing’s and national finances as they are at present, it can only be an aspiration for further down the line. In saying that, I do not advocate tinkering and delaying. Big steps must be taken in the immediate future; the big dreams, though, must wait until someone comes up with a solid, long-lasting, solution to the festering sores of British racing represented by diabolically low prize-money and lack of investment generally.
Six and seven-figure prize funds for major races at festival race-meetings, especially in regards of the flat, support the breeding industry to a far greater extent than the racing industry. Races worth £5,000 and conditioned to only allow horses that have not won the same figure, either in life or the previous year, would support those who earn their wages in racing stables and through racing stables. You cannot build from the top-down, as seems to be the policy of racing’s administrators. The taller, the heavier, the building, the better and sounder the foundations must be. Horse racing in Britain is shuddering, in the main, because its foundations have been allowed to crumble while the top-stories of the sport have been gifted the weight of heavier prize-money.
The time for tinkering is long gone. Now is the time for dynamism. Not surveys and steering groups and talking to stakeholders in the style of making a plan for a wedding reception. In France, and this cannot be repeated enough times, the sport is run not for betting but for horses, and if it is run for horses it is run for people, those who earn their wages from horses and the sport. To be succinct, it is run on solid foundations. Whereas, sadly, the sport in Britain is run on the shifting sands of the whims of its ‘stakeholders’!

​There is a cost-of-living crisis in Great Britain, as there is in most countries around the world. Coincidence; almost certainly not. Explanation for which is for another place, another time. The consensus amongst analysts and those with expertise in global finance predict recession in world economies to become far worse before they stabilise and begin the slow road to normalisation. So, attendances on racecourse could decline even further before the green shoots of recovery show themselves.
My advice to racecourse executives is to accept the situation, show some initiative to entice larger crowds, if not greater revenue, and to plan for a future that might be entitled ‘when less is more’.
The sport cannot expect even the most ardent horse racing devotee to pay premier prices to attend what I would term ‘workaday’ race-meetings, those which take place on Mondays or evening meetings on the all-weather on a cold Friday night (or any cold night). A man or woman with a mortgage, a family of young children and a myriad of household bills to pay, simply cannot afford to fill the car with fuel (or charge it with electricity) for a day at the races.
The rich and mega-rich quite possibly still do not blink an eye at the cost of petrol or the quarterly heating bills for their homes. But for the majority of racing enthusiasts, it is, I suspect, the number 1 factor in why they have not attended race-meetings, even at racecourses local to where they live, during the past twelve-months. If the analysts are correct, the numbers will dip even further during 2023.
Yes, I know the Racing Post on January 5th quoted a Bank of England forecast that ‘price inflation’ will reduce sharply in the middle of this year but from what I’ve heard from sources with their finger on the pulse of world economies, I would be reluctant to believe green shoots of recovery will follow quickly once the bluebells have left the hedgerows and woodlands.
What is required at the present is not doom and gloom and hand-ringing but initiative, flexibility on the part of racing’s leadership and a proactive plan to help guide the sport through troubled times ahead.
If necessary, the program book must be amended to take into account falling attendance at race-meetings. Southwell and Wolverhampton, for instance, should not race on the same day, even if one meeting is in the afternoon and the other in the evening. In fact, apart from the height of summer, I would propose curtailing floodlit racing altogether for the immediate time-frame to reduce the cost of using floodlights and the necessity of harrowing the all-weather surface to stop it freezing during the depths of winter.
A face-fan living equidistant between two racecourses within easy reach should not be given the choice of which to attend. Hereford, Stratford or Worcester, to give one example, should never race on the same day as each other or Cheltenham. Race-meetings should be organised so no two racecourses within fifty or perhaps slightly further apart should race on the same day. Racecourses should be given every chance to achieve the maximum possible attendance.
And I say again, racecourse should entice local people to their racecourses with reduced ticket pricing, including, if only once a year, free entry for those living in local postcode areas. Also, if under-sixteens can have free entry, why can’t the same offer be made to the over sixty-fives living in a fifty-mile radius of any racecourse.
And local racecourses should reflect the local trades, local festivals and local traditions; with racecourses being synonymous with a local market, horse-racing themed events, including raffles with prizes linked to the sport – membership of the racecourse, visits to local training yards, meet and greet sessions with jockeys, etc. And for those people attending a racecourse for the first time a guided tour, with advice on the do’s and do nots of racecourse protocol. Make racecourses more friendly and inviting to newcomers and less like a visit to a dark and strange land.
Oh, and a free bus or coach service from the town or city. It all costs money, yes, though greater attendances should pay the extra expense involved. Racecourses will soon become housing estates if more bums on seats cannot be achieved. Use it or lose it as the add once stated.
And less racing. To not think that less race-meetings would achieve more for the sport than a continual swelling of the race-program is to believe in fairies, to believe more chocolate you eat and more beer you drink the slimmer your waistline will become.
If there were less meetings, jockeys, the constituent part of the human element of the sport that the public, especially the young, can relate to, would be more freely available to promote the sport. Even in his final year as a jockey, Frankie Dettori might have the spare time to meet and greet the public through the media but the schedule for jockeys, especially flat jockey through the summer months, is too non-stop to expect the likes of Holly Doyle and Tom Marquand to find the time to do the same. Perhaps the day before all the major race-meetings should be left blank so that jockeys riding in the Derby or Grand National might have the opportunity to be interviewed by media outlets in order make the public more aware that a world sporting event is upcoming.
Back in the 1950’s 60’s and 70’s, the time period when Queen Elisabeth’s fascination and love of the sport gave us for free the best marketing available, the time of Arkle and the bloom of sponsorship, there was no all-weather racing, no Sunday racing, and far fewer evening meetings. Under the leadership of the B.H.A., and the Jockey Club before it, to an extent, the product has been allowed to be stretched beyond its capacity to endure. Now is the time to rein-in, to be inventive, to package the sport so that it is at its fittest to survive the turbulent times undoubtedly ahead.
It is now, more than any time in the past, when the sport of horse racing needs its own Sir Winston Churchill (himself an owner of good horses through the fifties, sixties and seventies) to rally the troops and to lead with the wisdom of someone who knows all that is needed to be known about the matter at hand.
If only!

​Of course, the answer to the above question is no, the B.H.A. is not fit for the purpose.
If you are of the opinion that I am wrong and that not only is the B.H.A. fit for purpose but also do a good job in running British horse-racing, please provide your evidence.
Horse racing is a specialised sport; it is a sport that requires people at the top of the pyramid that have an abundance of that specialised knowledge to make the informed decisions required to maintain the health, efficient day-to-day running and future prospects of the sport. I would contend that the B.H.A. is little more than an organisation of pen-pushers, with a leadership resembling Nero fiddling with his bow while Rome burned around him.
Every problem that virtually every sector of British racing must face on a daily basis, with perhaps the exception of those at the very top echelon of the thoroughbred breeding industry, should have been tackled decades ago by the B.H.A. Prize-money, to take but one example, has spiralled downwards now for many decades, ever since the Jockey Club were removed in favour of the B.H.B., through to the new governance recently awarded to the B.H.A. under the leadership Julie Harrington. An Epsom Derby worth over 1-million to the winner is not a sign of new growth but an indicator that the B.H.A. and its cohorts see the future of horse racing as an entertainment for the elite, when it should, as a policy statement/starting point or aspiration, be aiming, at the very least of its ambitions, to have one race at every meeting worth five-figures to the winner.
But what has reignited my ire towards the B.H.A. is their u-turn on use of the whip and their total disregard for the thoughts of those people who bothered to take part in their on-line survey on the subject. ‘We listened to what the jockeys had to say and altered our view accordingly,’ is spin for ‘we cocked-up, please don’t think badly of us, we done our best’.
This is not top-end leadership but sackcloth and ashes-speak of people promoted beyond their competence. 
When the B.H.A. sought to find a colour for take-off boards and the bars of hurdles that was compatible to the eye-sight of horses, it commissioned a university to conduct research. Yet, as far as I am aware, it failed to uphold the same thinking when it came to a subject that also impacts on the well-being of horses and, perhaps as importantly, the public’s perception of how we, racing people, perceive the welfare of the horse.
The whip issue within racing is very much like the public’s perception of the supernatural. You either believe or disbelieve, with science offering no real guidance either way. Horse racing is also similar to the supernatural in that if you believe a house to be haunted or if you believe the whip causes neither physical or psychological harm to a horse, no ‘circumstantial evidence’ to the contrary will change your point of view. Yet, horse racing in this country has been haunted by this issue for many decades, and will continue to be haunted, I fear, for decades to come.
When I learned that jockeys were to be represented on the whip steering group, I laughed; to me, it was akin to allowing the convict to have a say on his or her sentence. I was wrong, as it turned out. The B.H.A. might just as well negotiated only with the jockeys on the matter; it would, after-all, have saved time and expense. 
I am not accusing jockeys of either acting in their own interests or being wrong about the difficulties the new (or formally new) rules would present for them. What I am saying is that the discussion should have taken place at the outset, not at the eleventh-hour and that both the B.H.A. and the Professional Jockeys Association were at fault.
Again, as with the supernatural, a definitive answer to the age-old problem is held in abeyance not by those with point-of-views at either end of the spectrum of debate but by those who either do not understand what the fuss is about or who simply do not care.
The whip and its use, I truly believe, is fundamental to the long-term future of the sport.
The issue of the whip has been tinkered with the B.H.A. and its predecessors for over forty-years and when racing’s (now) governing body gave itself the opportunity to find a longstanding solution it cocked-it-up big-time. At the outset science should have been commissioned to settle once and for all (hopefully) whether horses suffer any physical or psychological harm from being struck by a whip, cushioned or uncushioned. Then, and they might have chosen this road irrespective of whether science was brought in to arbitrate, a series of racecourse trials should have been instigated to explore all or many of the possible solutions to the debate – eight-strokes, no backhand or no forehand, no-strokes, one-stroke, jockeys banned from taking their hands off the reins and so on. Or not so on as perhaps more than three options might have taken another decade to compete and I will not have lived long enough to learn what the eventual answer might be and would have to walk for eternity the corridors of power dragging my chains of ire and howling in agony at having to bear the sound of the death-knell of my beloved sport.
As an appendage to the above: wouldn’t it be a lovely way to live in the afterlife to wander the equine heavenly fields where the racehorses of the past graze at their ease; to ask them ‘how did you feel about being smacked relentlessly or restrictedly with a whip’? Of course, the answers may vary according to the racing era in which they lived.
I wonder if Drumlargan, for one, grazes contentedly, forgiveness in his heart?

​Yes, I got the King George ever-so-slightly wrong. It is what unites all of us who avidly follow horse racing. No one, not even Tom Segal or Paul Kealy or any of the superstar tipsters and analysts, are right more than 50% of the time. Of course, when one of them is on a good run of winners or tip a long-priced winner, it is trumpeted loud and clear. Yet winning streaks are in fact rarities and long-priced winners even rarer, so the bold type is perhaps a natural reaction by editors and t.v. presenters; akin to when detectorists dig up a large haul of Roman coins or Saxon gold. The general public never get to hear of the Victorian broach or the Cavalier’s broken spur that represents a ‘good story for the finds table’, though does nothing to extend our knowledge of British history.
Even someone with only a modest record of finding winners find winners occasionally. I, though, will not trumpet tipping Thyme Hill at Kempton when all the celebrity tipsters wrote him off and I certainly will make no claim that this rare occasion when I got something right makes me the equal of greater men. I simply stood by the best horse in the race even though he was proving slow at learning the craft of jumping a steeplechase fence. Class will out, as they say.
Of course, I was overly bold in my prediction that L’Homme Presse would win the King George and will not insult your intelligence by claiming he might or should have won. Bravemansgame ran out an impressive winner and even if L’Homme Presse had jumped straight it would be stretching credulity to think the result would have been different. No one could have predicted that as bold and efficient jumper as L’Homme Presse undoubtedly has shown us in every previous race would lose ground at nearly every fence running right-handed. But he did, didn’t he? And did anyone give any consideration for such an occurrence happening? I thought not.
Before Kempton, I had L’Homme Presse down as the most likely British-trained horse to win the Cheltenham Gold Cup this season. My belief is battered, though my conviction remains unbowed and the next run of Galopin de Champ may batter it some more. Cheltenham will, fingers crossed, play to the main strength of L’Homme Presse, his stamina. My fear at this moment is that something physical was amiss at Kempton and that once it materialises Venetia Williams will have no other option than to pull sticks for the season.
In my defence, what wrong-footed me when assessing the King George was the Clerk of the Course confidently predicting soft-to-heavy ground, when in fact the ground raced on was genuinely good-to-soft. I doubted if Paul Nicholls would have run Bravemansgame if the word ‘heavy’ had appeared in the going description, given he pulled the horse out of Cheltenham last season due to ‘soft’ appearing in the going description. And, and here I am grasping at the last vestige of my credibility, if he had not shimmied Charley Deutch out of the saddle at the last fence, L’Homme Presse would have finished a quite close second to a very good chaser better suited to Kempton than Cheltenham. Belief must be bolstered by evidence and since Boxing Day the evidence case-file has become a little light. L’Homme Presse believers will be praying for a wet Mid-March.
At least Frodon, the horse that never lets you down, ran into a place, as I equally boldly predicted.
The question I would like answered by ‘the experts’ is this: in lengths, how superior is Honeysuckle to Epatante? I am going to put forward 6-lengths, though as Honeysuckle only seemingly does all that is required of her, who can be certain that it doesn’t extend to 10 or 12-lengths. I doubt if anyone would tip J.P. McManus’s fine mare to ever beat Honeysuckle. So, here is the thing; if Honeysuckle is 6-lengths better than Epatante (oh, and was she ridden at Kempton to beat Constitution Hill or simply to beat everything else?) and Honeysuckle (unfairly, in my eyes) will be in receipt of 7lbs at Cheltenham, that puts the mare on the tail of Constitution Hill, at the very least, at the last hurdle. As brilliant as Constitution Hill is, and he might be even better as a chaser, I do not believe, at this stage with all the present evidence to hand, he is the shoo-in the betting suggests. In fact, in terms of value, Honeysuckle is the bet of the decade at 10/1.
And yes, none of us know, not even Nico de Boinville, the true extent of Constitution Hill’s ability. Both State Man and Vauban look genuine Champion Hurdle horses, better horses than anything Honeysuckle has yet beaten at Cheltenham, and Willie Mullins could run one or two pace-makers in hope of getting Constitution Hill into a scrap at a time of the race when so far he is hardly out of second gear.
To my mind, Constitution Hill is not Sprinter Sacre. Not yet. He might be Sprinter’s equal. He might become his superior. He might be the Arkle of our time. But he isn’t there yet and shouldn’t be spoken-of, or backed, as if he is. The 2023 Champion Hurdle is no one-horse race. Not by a long chalk.
I, though, cannot even boast of a 50% record of having my thoughts born out as correct on the racecourse.
I am even beginning to believe that Gary Moore’s Desert Orchid Chase winner, Editeur de Gite (have I spelt that right – I have no amplitude or liking for the French language) is a decent bet for the Champion Chase if the ground comes up soft. I’m not even sure Edwardstown would have beaten him at Kempton if he had not unshipped Tom Cannon.