​Last week’s series of article in the Racing Post focusing on horse welfare, with emphasis on the retired racehorse and equine research, was a prime example of what the newspaper for the industry should be known for. Horse racing is a many faceted sport, encompassing the thoroughbred from pre-birth to death. The efforts of the horse on our behalf, and that joins owner, trainer, jockey, punter, stable staff and race-goer as one, should be respected both when in training and when retired, and when they stand on our toes, kick us in the groin, bite us on the arm or dump us without ceremony on the gallops, in a muddy puddle or in the stable yard, we should shoulder half the blame as usually it is our mistake that led to the incident.
As I have said before, those of us who follow horse racing in any capacity are nothing without the horse. I suspect last week’s articles preached to the already converted and it is a pity the Post is not aligned to one of the mainstream national dailies as that is where such articles would do the most good, would open the eyes of readers who have always believed that to horse racing horses are a little but a throwaway product used and abused for the entertainment of ourselves. The Post has a team of great writers, tis a shame their work cannot be read by people away from the sport.
What heartened me the most from last week’s articles is that it is clear the B.H.B., unlike when the Jockey Club ruled the turf, are making horse welfare a priority and not allowing owners to renege on their responsibilities to both the horse and the sport when their horses are retired.
Alastair Down, as always unafraid to tread his own path, decried the call from Ed Chamberlain and his bosses to dumb down racing terminology. I side with Alastair on this issue. Horse racing has a history that no other sport can boast; its peculiar language derives from the shallows and peaks of that history. To those of us who have followed and derived immense pleasure from the sport for fifty years or more the journey is one of accumulating new knowledge, of light being shone on the shadowed corners. To this day I have no idea how the odds for doubles and trebles are worked out. Yet I do understand, and deeply disapprove, of the method for defining the champion jockeys of the flat and though my tone might betray my disapproval I could explain the method to a someone ignorant of the sport. Our races may be measured in old-fashioned furlongs whereas the youth of today only know metric but in asking questions of our sport they will gain knowledge of the ‘old ways’ of our country as at the same time learning about our sport.
The answer to the problem may lie either in providing a glossary of racing terminology in all race-cards or as a booklet that can be bought at the entrance of all racecourse. Once you start down the road of dumbing-down what can only happen is that standards can only continue to slip. The Welsh and Cornish fight to keep their native language alive and racing folk should do the same. We should try to raise up the knowledge of people, not talk down to them.
This week is Derby week. I am a racing man from my grey hair to gnarled feet, yet this week feels like any other week during the flat season. They refer to the Derby as ‘the greatest race in the world’, which clearly it isn’t, even if its history should demand it to be the ‘greatest’. Thus far I have seen no mention of the Derby in any of the National dailies, unlike the Grand National and Cheltenham week which can be featured a week in advance. Even if it is only the fashion element that arouses the editors of the daily papers Royal Ascot is more eagerly awaited than the Derby these days.
There are, in my opinion, two reasons for the slump in interest in the Derby. 1) It is run on a Saturday. When it was run on the first Wednesday in June it was an excuse for people to take a day off work. Now it is just the big race on a Saturday. The specialness is removed from it; its history adjusted to suit modern living. 2) The romance has been removed from the race. Although the race has never been able to rival the Grand National in the romance stakes – very few long-priced winners, very few winners trained in reduced circumstances, and even when an unknown like Padraig Beggy wins, as last year, the romance is consumed by the fact the horse is still a Coolmore horse. And that’s the other real problem with the Derby – the predictability. Every year one horse dominates, usually a horse owned by Coolmore. This year Coolmore might provide half the field. I admire Aidan O’Brien and his family, they are a credit to themselves, their country and the sport. But what is happening to the Derby is that it is threatening to become a Coolmore benefit and that will always scupper the romance of the race.
Mind you, God only knows what anyone can do about it, but not allowing the likes of Gina Mangan to ride in the race does nothing to increase the Derby’s popularity with the public. Coolmore, if they are to run seven horses on Saturday, could at least consider putting up a female jockey on one of the seven, just to give the neutrals something to focus on, to give the race the chance to provide a little romance.

​Some horses gain immortality in our sport more for having a race named in their honour than in the majority of us having any idea of their achievements. At Ascot’s Champions Day there is, or was, the Diadem Stakes, named in honour of a filly owned by Lord d’Abernon and ridden to most of her victories by Steve Donoghue, a great horseman/jockey and legend of the weighing-room.
Steve Donoghue, or Stephen as he signed his name to his autobiography, was born in Warrington and aged fourteen he decided he wanted to be a jockey and set off on foot, without bothering to inform his parents, with his brother to Stockton races to ask Dobson Peacock, who trained at Middleham, for a job, determined to make good. Of course, he wanted to be a jockey not a stable lad and soon became disillusioned. He tried working for John Porter with the same disappointed. Did he get disheartened? Not Steve Donoghue. Game as a pebble he went to France to try his luck, finally achieving his dream first winner at Hyeres, a provincial track in the south of the country. In fact, he established his reputation in Europe and Ireland long before he rode a winner in the land of his birth and going on to become champion jockey 8 times.
Donoghue described Diadem as a charming mare and he was so attached to her that at the St.Leger meeting, even though he was actually out injured with a broken wrist and missed riding the favourite in the big race two days earlier, he took the ride on her, top-weight in a 7-furlong handicap, and riding her with one hand won by a head.
I often write about the unwillingness of owners and trainers to expose their horses to determine the limitations of their ability, though that cannot be said of George Lambton or Lord d’Abernon. Diadem raced from 1916 till 1921, running 39 times, winning 24. She won the Coventry as a 2-year-old, the 1,000 Guineas, the King’s Stand Stakes twice, the July Cup, was second in the Oaks, having run in the Derby only two days before, twice second in the Champion Stakes and incredibly, at least from the perspective of today, was also second in the Cambridgeshire.
She was also unwittingly involved in an incident at Glorious Goodwood that is perhaps not as well recorded as perhaps it should be. At the start of the King George Stakes, as the tapes went up, she was knocked sideways by one of the other runners, Sun d’Or, described as a ‘brute’ by Donoghue in his autobiography. In a five-runner race only one got an even break, going on to win comfortably. This was just after the end of the 1st World War and according to Donoghue horse racing had attracted ‘a very riotous and undesirable element’ and as he cantered back past the enclosures he was addressed by loud boos and jeers. As he unsaddled the mare, elements of the crowd, ‘the very dregs of humanity’, he was openly accused of pulling the mare and threats to his life were insinuated.
Victor Smythe, the jockey riding Sun d’Or was so upset by the rebellion that he thought he had caused that he apologised profusely to both Lord d’Abernon and George Lambton. Then the stewards questioned Donoghue and he recommended they call an enquiry. Though they agreed, to his surprise it was not to be conducted in the sanctuary of the stewards’ room but on the open verandah outside, in hearing distance of the ‘contemptible creatures’ who considered the best outcome was Donoghue either having ‘his throat cut’ or his license taken away. It was in this public auditorium that for twenty-five minutes they conducted the enquiry, the bear-pit atmosphere rendering it impossible for anyone to hear clearly what was being said. The only satisfactory outcome of it all was that Donoghue was exonerated from blame. In his autobiography he wrote ‘I should not think that the experiment was considered to have been so successful as to warrant its being established as a precedent for any more open-air enquiries’. Explanation, if it were required, for why it took so long for television cameras to be allowed to witness modern-day stewards’ enquiries.
It is only when you compare the racing record of a horse such as Diadem to the horses of today that you begin to question what might have changed in the thoroughbred in the interim years so that owners and trainers today keep their charges to the same distance of race throughout their careers? And secondly, why they do not race their top horses for the length of time that Diadem endured?
Of course, the answer is that the race programme and especially ‘the European Pattern’ encourages them to do so. There are many more races these days for the top horses over all distances throughout Europe and indeed the world. This makes life for trainers much simpler, though whether it improves the race-fare on offer to the race-goer is a matter for debate. Or indeed whether it does anything to improve the quality and soundness of the breed.
Finally, Jockeys of Donoghue’s era are perhaps thought-of as being more cavalier with the use of the whip than the jockeys of today. To counter this assertion, I will quote a paragraph from ‘Men and Horses I Have Known’ by George Lambton. ‘Stephen is a great lover of horses, but I am sure Diadem held first place in his affections and she thoroughly reciprocated it. I have seen her after a hard race, as he unsaddled her, turn round and rub her nose against his hands, more like a dog than a horse. Win or lose you could not have made Stephen hit her for anything in the world.’
Perhaps a nod in the direction of why Diadem raced so willingly for so long.

​I do not drink alcohol. This is not to stand judgement on those who do; it is simply an admission of inadequacy on my part. It is not that I dislike alcohol, it is more that alcohol does not like me. Drink, be it from the grape or the grain, does not jolly me up. Sadly, the reverse is true; it dries out the brain and leaves me in a state of unwellness that can pervade for days. These days I just do not have enough functioning brain cells left at my disposal to put those that continue the unequal struggle to get me through the day at risk through alcohol poisoning. It is one of my greatest regrets in life that my chemical composition disallows me from living life as a likeable drunk. Pity the sober man for he knows not the merriment of true camaraderie.
I also have lacking in my character a desire for adventure, though my character also demands I do not follow my fellow man with sheep-like devotion, so the very idea of taking narcotics, legal highs or any substance associated with the word coke or coca, and that includes Coca-Cola, scares the living-crap out of me. I may be lacking is so many respects of human endeavour but my saving grace is that I am not so inherently stupid that I take drugs in a vain attempt to either make sense of the world or to fun-up my life.
So why anyone would go to a racecourse and spend the day drinking in a bar and sneaking off to the toilets to snort or inject illegal substances into their bodies when they might get a natural high by watching and betting on horse racing is beyond my comprehension. It hardly seemed credible when I read that Sodom and Gomorrah had visited Sussex one warm Saturday afternoon, with fifty of its finest hooligans illustrating with fist and volume what life might become for all of us if society does not get a grip on the problem of too-much drink too easily available and the descent into hell that is drugs on our streets.
Were these idiots who gain pleasure through drug-induced violence not given the advice at school ‘never do anything in life you would be too ashamed to tell your mother about’? Did they go home to their mothers, lovers or wives with a black eye and a ripped jacket and say ‘it wasn’t me, the big bully started it. I got caught up trying to get away to find a policeman’? Probably not.
Apparently, Goodwood’s response to the violence was lamentable, though you have to give them some leeway as the trouble came out of the blue and could not have been predicted. Crime and horse racing are not new acquaintances, on a much smaller scale similar isolated incidents have occurred at other racecourses. Once upon a time, back in the days of ‘Brighton Rock’, razor gangs were known to frequent racecourses and con-artists, cardsharps and pickpockets regularly tormented racegoers. I suspect race-meetings have never enjoyed, even now, a reputation to put them alongside church socials and poetry recitals. When drink and stupidity collide trouble of one sort or another will occur more times than not. Add drugs to the cocktail and eventually blood is sure to be spilled.
I suspect the violence at Goodwood and Ascot will prove to be a bump in the road; a wake-up call to racecourse management to beef-up security and to take the possibility of drug use on its premises seriously. Change will occur because of these unsavoury incidents.
 Racecourses should be family friendly, race-meetings promoted as family fun days, with day-care provision for children so that their parents can have a carefree couple of hours to themselves. And there should be entertainment on offer other than just the racing. Indeed, if racecourse management were to liaise with experts in advertising and promotion the scope for getting non-racing people to the racecourse on race-days is nearly endless. Markets, lectures, small fairs, music, exhibitions, riding lessons, jousting, demonstrations of horse riding skills, parades of rehabilitated racehorses, cookery demonstrations, all the fun of the fair. I suggest that race-meetings could be more than just horse-racing. It might try being a day out for all the family, not specifically the drinkers and gamblers of the family.
If I had my way most week-day race-meetings would have free entry and free race-cards, with ‘meeters and greeters’ at turnstiles to direct and guide anyone new to a race-meeting, to demystify the jargon, to enhance the racecourse experience from first foot-fall.
What happened at Goodwood and Ascot, to my way of sober thinking, was both self-generated and a reflection on modern society. I read a headline from the back page of the Daily Mail that clearly suggested that racing has an historic problem with drug use. It does not. The problem is widespread in society; I dare say there are employees of the Daily Mail that regularly use drugs, its readers, also. All racing is guilty of is failing to be one step ahead of the problem, as is often the case, sadly.
 
 

​This week the ridiculously expensive Racing Post is highlighting Horse Welfare and the progress that is being made by the powers-that-be to improve the life of the thoroughbred from cradle to grave. Let’s not beat about the bush, The Racing Post must be commended for travelling a road that maybe ten years ago they would have avoided because their readers might have thought the topic ‘nothing to do with them’, when in fact it is of importance to all of us. It is on the sword of horse welfare that our sport might founder in years to come. The B.H.B. should also be congratulated.
In an article by (sir) Alastair Down – the honour is conferred by me, though as she must read the Racing Post one can only hope Her Majesty will recognise his contribution to racing and literature and rest the ceremonial blade on his shoulder sooner rather than later – on Carrie Humble, the founding mother of racehorse rehabilitation in this country, we are reminded of the disgrace that hit horse racing flat in the face with the appalling neglect of Hallo Dandy, the 1984 Grand National winner. Carrie Humble rescued the horse, returned him to health and he became the flagship of Thoroughbred Retraining.
I am a naïve sort of person and believed that anyone blessed by the good fortune of owning a Grand National winner would take their responsibilities seriously and ensure the horse was happy and cared-for in retirement. I was shocked this was not the case and it made me question Gordon Richards and Neale Doughty as, again naively, I thought they would want to make certain for themselves that their hero was in good health. 1994 was the year I discovered to my horror that to some people the horse was only a vehicle to personal success. The scales fell from my eyes the day I read about Hallo Dandy and since then I have believed that respect for the horse should be key to every element of the sport. From foal to retirement.
The B.H.A. and its director of equine health and welfare should be praised for the research work they are conducting, especially as it will be in-depth and given the proper consideration. This is no knee-jerk reaction to either bad publicity or the demented wailing of those opposed to our sport, though, as the Princess Royal said in her piece that accompanied Alastair Down’s article, perhaps we should reach out to these people and regard them as ‘critical friends’ rather than a threat to our way of life. They are in many ways a mirror that reflects what may go unrecognised by those of us who through over-familiarity with the status-quo of our everyday accept as normal that what might have room for improvement.
I doubt if a forced break for horses that have fallen will do much for horse welfare, though perhaps if every faller is assessed by a vet before it is allowed to return home injuries might be flagged up sooner, with perhaps a compulsory veterinary certificate of soundness required before it is allowed to run again. It should be the same for any horse that pulls up on the flat. But it can only be applauded that the B.H.B. is not only researching this issue but is prepared to reject the proposal if the facts dictate it do so. This is not a publicity exercise.
It’s brilliant that fatality and faller rates have dropped by a third in twenty years, especially as there must be far more racing now, and I hope it is a similarly good news story with regard to serious injuries.
I remain unhappy with hurdle racing as the potential for a hurdle to swing while horses are jumping, for a horse to put a leg through the hurdle, is unfair and potentially far more dangerous than an open ditch or water jump. Why we have not switched to the brush hurdle is beyond my comprehension. National Hunt is the only equine sport where a horse is asked to jump a fence that is not secure and padding the hurdle does not, to my mind, go far enough. I would love to know what jockeys think of brush hurdles, whether they prefer the traditional hurdle. It is fascinating that horses cannot see the colour orange and if a colour for padding can be found that horses can see it could easily reduce fallers and fatalities even more.
When I first started writing to the racing papers about my concerns on horse welfare the response of the powers-that-be was that once a horse left a licensed stable it was no longer the responsibility of racing but the sole responsibility of its owner. It demonstrates the progress that is being made that such a stance is no longer the official line and that racing as a whole has the responsibility to ensure horses are treated with respect and dignity whether they are mere foals or old warriors pensioned off to a life of ease. I also tried unsuccessfully to rally bookmakers to linking the Grand National with raising money for horse charities, suggesting they might have charity boxes in betting shops. Not one reply.
This sport is nothing without the horse. No stone should be unturned to ensure we do not have to bow our heads in shame at the treatment metered out to horses whether in-training or out.

​Even the great minds of science cannot say whether the egg came before the chicken or vice-versa. With horse racing and betting it is more clear-cut – betting provided the stimulus for the advent of horse racing.
Purists, who like myself love horse racing for the bravery of horses and the aesthetic uncertainty of every race and only enter the red-lightish portals of a betting shop on Grand National morning, might not like the truth of the situation but without men wagering money that their horse was faster and possessed greater stamina than another horse, life would be so different for us. It is not so far-fetched to claim that if those betting exchanges had not taken place many centuries ago so many of the people who feature in today’s racing papers and on the racecourse would not have been born. No Moore, No Piggott, no Walsh.
The truest saying in racing is that to win a small fortune on the turf it is advisable to begin with a large fortune. If there were more winners than losers when it comes to gambling there would be less bookmakers. You never see a bookmaker on a bicycle is another hackneyed saying that remains true today even if it is less true than in the days when the ‘coup’ was considered more a way of life than a crime against the sport.
In 1903 the five men who made-up the Druid’s Lodge Confederacy brought off possibly the greatest gamble of all time when Hackler’s Pride won the Cambridgeshire. It would be pure guesswork to say how much exactly they took from bookmakers but it was a lot. Jack Fallon, the trainer, who was not even one of the five conspirators, claimed to have won £32,000, which in today’s money would be a cool £1.4 million. Some estimate the Confederacy won over £11-million in today’s terms. But nobody can be sure as in those days only bad publicity could come from a bookmaker admitting to such huge losses. They were successful because of several factors; meticulous planning, right down to taking a second claim on young Jack Jarvis so they could be assured of having him ride Hackler’s Pride four months later when the money would be down; using numerous commissioning agents all round the country, and indeed around the world, to get their bets on in small enough amounts so as not to attract suspicion; and by not having Hackler’s Pride anywhere near fit for the first part of the season and running her in sprints when they knew she stayed a mile really well.
Yet not one member of the Druid’s Lodge Confederacy was in need of money. Percy Cunliffe, regarded as the mastermind of the operation, had interests in the City of London and owned large parts of Salisbury Plain. Wilfred Purefoy was a member of an Irish family that owned large estates in Ireland. He also bred horses on his own estate in Tipperary. He was responsible for spreading the bets wide and far. Holmer Peard was the top equine surgeon of his time. He had a hand in constructing Phoenix Park racecourse and was considered a fine judge of a horse. Captain Frank Forester was a great horseman, Master of Hounds, the great-nephew of the last Duke of Cleveland from whom he inherited a large fortune. Edward Wigan accumulated his wealth from hop growing and possessed an understanding of horse racing that was obviously useful to the other members of the Confederacy.
I suppose in the age in which they lived the ‘celebrities’ were not sportsman or musicians but the headline acts who took charge of battles and worked out strategies to win wars. To employ a similar mind-set to get one over on the bookmakers could be seen as living in mimicry of war heroes. Certainly, their motivation was not simply one of accumulating great wealth as in differing degrees all five members were financially independent. And though bookmakers, and no doubt the Jockey Club, called foul it could be said the Hackler’s Pride gamble was a work of genius.
But why should horse racing and betting be inexorably linked when human nature and the sport itself can be so easily corrupted? Why must every racing paper fixate on providing tips for readers who doubtless have their own idea of what might win? The Confederacy’s gamble may have been a work of genius but underpinning the operation was the corruption of Hackler’s Pride running beforehand unfit and untried-with.
This will come across as if I am opposed to betting. I am not. I am though opposed to those people who through addiction gamble more than they can afford to lose. These people give racing and the bookmaking industry a bad name. It is said a well-fed cat will catch more mice than a hungry one. The Druid’s Lodge Confederacy were all well-fed; they had the patience to wait the whole season for their big punt. What I do not understand is why ‘gambles’ are still lauded today? Is the instinct to wage war, to outflank the enemy, still so deeply embedded in the psyche of some people that they must risk all for that one life-saving victory?
I do not understand the need to bet and the need to truly gamble is entirely lost on me. Perhaps I am being disingenuous; when Neptune Collonges won the Grand National he helped me out of a financial hole that was not on my own doing.
 
 

​I follow flat racing though, if I am to be truthful, I am not a true fan. My heart lies 100% with National Hunt. Yet I appreciate that the sport of horse racing originated not so much in the hunting field but on the widespread heathlands, with gentleman of the aristocracy wagering large amounts of money with one another as to who owned the fastest horses. In those days there were no rules and argy-bargy and gamesmanship were not necessarily frowned upon and fortunes were lost on these up-to 4-mile match races. I find the history of flat racing a stimulating study, especially during the years when the Epsom Derby held such national importance that Parliament adjourned for the afternoon. For instance, I have a love and respect for Brown Jack that no flat horse of my lifetime has yet to equal.
Historically flat racing has been given advantages not really available to National Hunt, though this argument does not necessarily apply to Ireland, a country where the dividing line between the two codes is not so apparent and though it must contend with the variable weather of early spring and late autumn flat racing enjoys the privilege of staging all its major events throughout the summer and consequently it has the capacity to attract a much larger attendance than National Hunt, with far less chance of having abandonments through rain, frost or snow. Yet even with the advantage of better weather and greater prize money it remains in the eyes of many, I suspect, the second-most captivating division of our sport.
What flat racing rarely delivers is equine heroes and when it does they are whisked off to stud before they set on the mind’s eye to quickly become a memory of what might-have-been. When anyone lists the names of great flat horses what is conjured are names that lit up the sport for a very short period of time, their careers orchestrated with the precision of the latest boy band, their limitations rarely discovered. We will never know the true abilities of horses such as Sea The Stars and Dancing Brave as they were not given the opportunity to race through to maturity, which by the way, in the thoroughbred, is five-years-of-age. They were financial assets in need of exploitation.
This aspect of the sport is where flat racing fails: at the top end it is a business, a shop window for the breeding industry. At the top end flat racing is not truly pure sport.
In the archive of this website there is a piece where I champion the radical idea that in order to give the flat a flagship boost to the season and to provide the sport with a flat race ‘that is a bit like the Grand National’ the Lincoln should be a forty-runner race started from a barrier as in days of yore. A madcap idea, I grant you, yet you must agree it would capture the attention of the media and the public to greater effect than the present-day humdrum Lincoln.
I have also advocated a ‘Melbourne Cup’ type race for this country and with the £1.million Ebor and Cesarewitch we are going in that direction. I have also proposed ditching the St.Leger as the fifth classic and giving the honour over to the Eclipse, making a Triple Crown of the 2,000 Guineas, Derby and Eclipse, a more appetising proposition for the ‘industry’, you must agree, than having a final leg run four months after the Derby and over a distance not given any real credence by breeders world-wide. I have also suggested that the St.Leger should become the richest race in this country as compensation.
The concept of Triple Crowns is not as exploited as it could be. I would instigate Triple Crowns for all divisions of the sport – sprinter, stayer, middle distance, two-year-old colt and filly and so on. The same with handicaps, with the top three heritage races over all the usual distances combined to provide further Triple Crown winners.
I would certainly scrap the Qipco Championship series as it makes sense to no one but those at the top end of the sport and is illogical to anyone outside of the sport. To begin the season at Doncaster in March but for the jockeys’ championship to start in May is simply stupid, especially as it ends weeks before the final day of the season. It is the sort of concept that could only have been dreamed-up after a long day emptying champagne bottles in the company of ‘marketing airheads’ flush with the success of their posters promoting the hairdresser of the year competition. ‘Champions Day’ should be the full-stop to the season, as Punchestown has become for National Hunt in Ireland and Sandown has become over here. ‘That’s the way to do it’, if you want to do the job right.
There are also too many meaningless Group and listed races staged for no other reason than to provide ‘easy black type’ for breeders. Indeed, I would strongly argue that the balance of power should be altered so that the sport is administered more for the benefit of the sport itself rather than for what is beneficial to the breeding industry.
Recently I have detected a swing in policy from the powers-that-be toward doing all they can to protect the large urban racecourses whilst allowing the smaller ‘country’ courses to live or die by their own efforts. I may be wrong in this assessment and hope I am as the foundations of this sport lie not with the glory of Cheltenham, Newmarket, Ascot or Aintree but in the workaday everyday of Fakenham, Ripon, Salisbury and Cartmel. To help sustain such courses I have advocated we follow the path of Ireland where throughout the summer there are many festival meetings linked to local tradition and events.
Flat racing, I contend, requires a root and branch kick-up-the-pants. It has become samey, predictable and in part a free-for-all of race-planning that has consequently caused fixture congestion, with a jockeys’ championship that is so stupid that the jockey who rides the most winners during the turf season is not necessarily the champion. In fact, the jockeys’ championship reflects the grey-mud thinking of the powers-that-be, with ridiculous ideas such as championship team racing and street racing given credibility, yet any idea that might put extra earnings the way, for example, of the journeyman jockey is frowned upon as ‘entertaining mediocrity’ or such pap.
Having said all that; I much prefer flat racing in Britain and Ireland to that provided by other countries such as America, France or Australia.
 

​Computers, allied to the hi-tech voodoo superhighway of cyber-space and I.T. and coupled with the slow but sure deterioration of brain cells that to be honest were never red-hot with intelligence even when the writer when young, agile and virile, confuse me. When faced with computer-speak, even when it is deliberately dumbed-down for my benefit, my brain becomes fog-bound and my mind’s eye fills with images that only Homer Simpson might appreciate.
I do not believe I have ever correctly filled out a form in my entire life. Not first off, anyway. And I’ll often use blue ink when it is clearly stipulated that only black is acceptable. On-line renewals of matters of such importance to me as website domains render me as confused as when a schoolchild in a science or maths class. How I am expected to survive in a virtual world when I flounder around in the real world like an eel in the bottom of a boat?
How people with on-line businesses cope with me as a client I do not know. They do a better job than I do with myself, that I can tell you. But anyway, to cut to the chase.
My latest faux-pas is that in my promotional e-mails to racehorse trainers introducing my website and collection of short stories to them – I am using the ‘Horses In Training’ annual and am currently up to C’s – I have blithely informed them that the print-on-demand edition of the book is to be sold for £1.99. This is wrong. Seriously wrong. CreateSpace, Amazon’s print-on-demand wizards, will tell you how incompetent I am with this sort of thing, if you should be in need of further proof. No. ‘Going To The Last’, my collection of horse racing related short stories is in fact to be priced at £8.99. The error occurring simply because I was not aware that CreateSpace take £5.99 from the sale of each copy. The cock-up is entirely mine; I can blame no one else. I, Keith David Knight, am but a fool. If only there were Alcoholics Anonymous type meetings for I.T. Idiots there might yet be hope for me.
The book, though, is beautiful. It even has my name down the spine. You cannot believe the long years I’ve waited to witness such a miracle. Of course, the achievement would be greater, would allow me greater esteem, if The Racing Post were the publishers and not Modest, which is me. Or if Pelham, Headline or Hodder & Stoughton paid for the publication and promotion of the book. But then it was never offered to them as back in the day when I worried myself over such matters no literary agent would even read the manuscript as they were quite certain there was no market for such a quirky collection of short stories. Horse racing, apparently, when it comes to the literary world, is indelibly connected to thrillers and bodice-rippers. Dick Francis and those who have trod his path have done racing no favours with their tawdry novels of corruption, murder and sex in unhygienic places.
There you have it: ‘Going To The Last’, 25 short stories involving Arkle, Desert Orchid, possibly Foinavon and a horse I knew and never will forget, Mischievous Jack, plus a fictional take on the sad death of a jockey I tried to write a book with. Bloody good value at £8.99. You’ll never regret buying the book. I promise. You will not find anything else like it if you shop for seven or eight years. 

​It paints a picture in plain sight when a trainer with 261 horses in his charge wins the 1,000 Guineas and the result is declared a breath of fresh air for the sport. I am in no way offering comment or criticism of Richard Hannon and it was refreshing to witness the joy of a syndicate winning a classic. I have a great liking for both Richard and his father. As a callow youth I badly damaged an ankle riding, and of course falling off, a Hannon horse that for whatever reason was out-of-training at a livery yard where I worked. I was also seconded to lead up a big chestnut three-year-old for Hannon senior one Easter or Whitson at Chepstow. I have a fondness for the Hannons born out of experience.
But as I said; the man has one of the largest stables in the country and is not a complete stranger to training classic winners.
The picture painted by the racing media was of a sport which has become ‘samey’, largely predictable, with the sport hammered out of the sport by what is in effect the success of people who are as much stockbrokers as they are men of the turf. Last season was perhaps memorable for the distinction of it being dominated by Aidan O’Brien, a man who is undoubtedly a gentleman bestowed with greatness, whose greatest achievement in life has not come about through training horses but through a-grade parenting skills that are apparent every time you listen to one of his children. It would though be thoroughly boring if last season was replicated time and time again?
Flat racing is not an inclusive sport; certainly not at the top end, and this is its greatest weakness when it come to attracting new customers to the racecourse. The sport is about money and the breeding of horses to make money. Indeed, I would say that the actual sport of racing horses comes second, at the top end, to the wants and demands of the industry of breeding. This is an even greater weakness when it comes to marketing the sport as every above average racehorse is whipped off to stud before its name can cross from the racing pages to the wider sporting world.
I doubt if it will ever happen, not that I ever thought it would, and with Enable on the easy list at the moment the prospects of a clash with Cracksman have diminished even further, but wouldn’t it have been a great marketing opportunity for the sport if the owners of the two horses had committed to challenging each other in a series of races through the summer and autumn. Say the Coronation Cup, the King George & Queen Elisabeth, the International at York, and the Arc? Denman versus Kauto Star with knobs on, wouldn’t you agree?
For flat racing to thrive, to expand its audience and its involvement in the wider world, those involved with the top horses, the owners and trainers, must be prepared to put the welfare of the sport before advancement of their own interests. For the benefit of the thoroughbred in general, going into the future, horses should be campaigned to establish their limitations not to protect them from a defeat that would undervalue their prospects as a stallion or broodmare. Horses with health deficiencies or infirmities should not be used as commercial stallions and no horse should be allowed to go to stud on the back of a two or three-year-old career. The soundness of the thoroughbred will only deteriorate if unsound horses are allowed to pass on their genes to future generations. This is not an issue that should be left to the breeders to address but should be governed by the greater interests of the sport. This is an issue the B.H.B. should be getting their teeth into.
The sport is greater than any individual and I believe those fortunate to be able to earn a good living from the sport should do all in their power to support, protect and promote the sport, and that includes the topmost owner/breeders and trainers. With privilege comes responsibility.
Where National Hunt scores by a wide margin over the flat is that it constantly produces equine heroes that become part and parcel of the sport over how many years fate allows. Frankel manifested greatness and his aura brought people to the racecourse. But only as a four-year-old. If he had retired to the covering barn as a three-year-old there would be no legend, no book written about him. If he had stayed in training as a five-year-old the debate about which racehorse was the greatest of all time would be rendered moot. Frankel would be the Arkle of flat racing.
Back in his day Brown Jack was so famous both a steam train and a pub were named in his honour. Frankel, perhaps the greatest flat horse of all-time, has achieved no similar honour. Which perhaps paints another picture.

​It is odd how during life you form affinities with people you have no physical association with, whilst other people equally unknown to you are considered ‘the other side’. To my shame, the Rimells fell into the latter category, as certain modern trainers do now.
For reasons I now consider illogical, I always favoured a Fulke Walwyn horse over a Fred Rimell trained horse. I suspect this support for someone from a different sphere of society to my council house upbringing was due entirely to my childhood ignorance in favouring Mill House, Walwyn’s greatest horse, over the Irish intruder, Arkle. At the time, though I most likely was unaware of it, Rimell and Walwyn were the great adversaries of National Hunt racing, as it is today with Henderson and Nicholls.
When Fred Rimell died and his wife Mercy took over the licence, to continue to turn out big race winners from Kinnersley, she came over through the media as self-opinionated and perhaps domineering. After reading ‘Mercy Rimell: Reflections on Racing’ edited by Ivor Herbert and published as long ago as 1990, I have altered my opinion of her.
As someone whose love of horse racing and respect for the horse is all-consuming yet falls short of born-in-the-saddle and raised-in-the-stable life experiences of true horseman and women, I am in awe of people with the reputation of Mercy Rimell. I fear that one-by-one racing is losing these indomitable characters, men and women whose life from cradle to grave was determined by equine activity, who could hunt one day, show a pony in hand the next, judge at a horse show in the morning and buy expensive yearlings for millionaire clients in the afternoon. Not too soon into the future we will notice the hole this calibre of horseman has left in the fabric of our sport and we will regret the passing of their kind. It is why, for one thing, that hunting, though not the wanton killing of foxes, is so necessary. Pony racing is a great benefit when it comes to giving experience to budding young riders but it should not exist in isolation as the main form of teaching young adults to ride. On that, if little else, I would hope, Mercy Rimell would agree with me.
In all honesty I was expecting her views to be more strident than they were. Perhaps Ivor Herbert edited her more scandalous opinions. She was generally favourable to the stewarding of her day, believing it was better ‘to have bungling amateurs than crooked professionals’, and was mildly complimentary towards stipendiary stewards. I was surprised to the extent that she liked the jockeys employed by both herself and Fred, though I suspected that no matter how skilful a jockey was he had to be liked by the Rimells to be employed by them. She liked Peter Scudamore and apart from his party lifestyle she had nothing but praise for Terry Biddlecombe. For reasons unstated she seemed to prefer John Francome to Fred Winter. She got on well with Richard Linley, though she thought him not forceful enough riding into the last fence. Sam Morshead, ‘a bit wild’, was brave but got horses ‘unbalanced’ and was not one of their best jockeys. John Burke, though, was, ‘a different league altogether’, and a close second to Terry Biddlecombe as the best stable jockey Kinnersley ever employed. Mercy said he had too much success too soon, winning the Gold Cup and Grand National when he was only twenty-one and drink soon destroyed his great talent. Bobby Beasley was not a great horseman but a great jockey blighted by temperament and bouts of depression and took ‘far more controlling than any owner’.
As someone who believes the on-going future of our sport depends on greater opportunities for women I was disappointed by her views on ‘females’. ‘There are a lot of things females can’t do’ is a statement that is becoming ever more challenged in this present decade and though, having proved the point herself, she was a hundred-per-cent behind women training she was less supportive of female jockeys. ‘The only thing they shouldn’t be doing is riding in professional open races. They are not strong enough’. Tellingly, the chapter on women is the shortest in the book.
When you are shy or have little in the way of communication skills, when small-talk is as hard to achieve as a foreign language poorly learned, answers to question tend to be more honest and less reflective than from someone with a more open personality. It is why, I believe, people like Boris Johnson engage their tongue before their brain has time to rise from its slumber to exercise discretion. Mercy Rimell, I feel from this book, fell into this category. People who knew her might be of a different opinion. It was Fred who dealt with owners because he ‘was good at that sort of thing’, finding good in everyone and never having a bad word. That he left to his wife.
I suspect Mercy could pour scorn on an angel one minute and by the next would be engaged in being charitable to a sinner. I like that in a person. It is character, if infuriating to the outsider. She could walk the walk even if she could not talk the talk. Some people achieve success with horses by being their master whilst the select few achieve success for no other reason than horses like them and respond to them accordingly. Mercy Rimell could communicate with horses and was a horsewoman to her core; a compliment she would accept as her due.
 

​Paul Nicholls has a wealth of riding talent to call upon and I wonder if the hierarchy will remain the same at Ditcheat as last season. Sam Twiston-Davies is the main man, the stable jockey, yet the rides are shared around, with Sam not always the preferred option and towards the end of last season he was riding more and more for his father. This, of course, may be with Paul Nicholl’s blessing. With Harry Cobden and Sean Bevan to call upon he is not exactly scratching around for top-class jockeys. But as Paddy Brennan said when he was stable jockey to the Nigel Twiston-Davies stable at the time Sam emerged as the talent he has proved to be: blood is thicker than water.
Twiston-Davies senior has, perhaps, as many potentially top-class horses to call upon next season as Paul Nicholl’s and he does generally get his horses fit and ready earlier in the season than Paul Nicholls and could arguably give his son enough early winners for him to mount a serious challenge to Richard Johnson. It might be that Sam will see a permanent link-up with his father as his only hope of becoming champion jockey, and he is an extremely likeable chap which will allow him to stay on good terms with Paul Nicholls as well as picking up the good spare rides essential in pursuit of the title.
Sam is honest, too. Several times this season he has suggested he has ridden a few poor races, that he has ‘messed up’ once or twice, and that Nicholls may have had ‘words’ with him. Nicholls has a winning mentality; I can imagine losing races he should have won would not sit well with him. Since he lost the services of Ruby Walsh he has tried several jockeys, each one capable to the point of brilliant, as stable jockey and failed to gel with any of them. Is Sam substantially better than Daryl Jacobs?
In Harry Cobden Nicholl’s has a ready-made replacement. He rides with dash and verve and his smile must wilt every young woman’s will to resist his charms, and he is in the enviable position of being almost first choice for Colin Tizzard, someone who also might be considering having a stable jockey as with the Potts horses, even if they remain within the Potts family, unlikely to have a retained rider next season, it will make it easier for them to have a number one.
The other interesting situation at Ditcheat for next season is where in the hierarchy will National Hunt’s ‘golden girl’ Bryony Frost sit? He’ll not want to lose her, not that she’ll be in any hurry to leave, yet before long she will lose her valuable 3lb claim and as things usually develop for jockeys in big yards when they lose their claim they tend to slip below the next swashbuckling 7lb claimer to come along, and Nicholls always has a hungry claimer to call upon.
With Miss Frost we must forget she is female. Anyone who watched her on Milansbar in the Grand National or Present Man in the Bet 365 (or whatever) at Sandown can bear testimony to the undeniable fact that she is a brilliant horsewoman. I am not suggesting for a moment she will ever rise to the top job at Ditcheat even if the potential is there for her to become the most successful female jockey in racing history flat or jumps. Horses like her and that is a priceless quality for a jockey. What’s more the public and the media like her and that can only be beneficial to Nicholls’ and his stable.
Sam Twiston-Davies is a fine jockey but he has a foot in two camps. I am sure he truly appreciates the honour of riding for Paul Nicholls but there must be times when he wishes he were going into battle for his father, as he did in the Grand National, and that is a scenario similar to when Ruby Walsh was torn between choosing a Nicholls horse and a Mullins horse. Home and nationality won out then and perhaps blood will prove thicker than water now.
I am a great admirer of Sam Twiston-Davies, as I am of Paul Nicholls, but sooner or later the call of the heart will lead him back to Grange Hill Farm, where according to the current edition of ‘Horses in Training’ he remains the number 1 jockey. In fact, if he coverts the champion jockey crown I rather think it is a no-brainer.