​As it is doubtful that anyone trawls the archive of this site, it allows me to recover old ground occasionally, and I do so again here.
I used to enjoy the flat as much as I continue to do National Hunt. Over the years, though, the flat has taken on, for me if nobody else, a persona of predictability, with the large multi-national breeding operations dominating the major races and standing on the throat of romance. I do not deny that Coolmore, Godolphin, Juddmonte and others bring great benefit to the sport through employment and sponsorship, and occasionally, as with the Irish 2,000 Guineas this weekend, a smaller operation can succeed. And there is legitimacy in the argument that in recent years National Hunt has also become dominated by the mighty few. But I conjecture that the flat has become just that, flat.
My big gripe with flat racing is with the racing calendar, with only marginally second in gripiness how the various championships are delivered. A system that leaves out the first month and last few weeks of a season when calculating the champion jockey, and with the jockey who rides the most winners in either the entire flat season or the calendar year not being declared champion, is absurd; a plan to suit a convenience.
But to return to the racing calendar. If I had my way the season would start the week after the Grand National and would start not with a whimper but a bang! I would return the Lincoln, very much in the way the Grand National remains recognisable to the Grand National of history, to a barrier start and a field size of 40. I know this is a radical suggestion and will no doubt frighten jockeys and bewilder health and safety experts but it would elevate the Lincoln from an ordinary mile handicap to what it used to be, a race of distinction, a race to anticipate.
If the Guineas and the Epsom classics cannot be moved from their early season slots to later in the season, I would elevate the Eclipse from a Group I to a classic, allowing for a ‘classic season’ that will allow both Guineas horses and Derby and Oaks horses to complete for the Triple Crown. In my eyes this makes perfect sense. Mile races in April, mile and a half races in late May/early June and back to a mile and 2-furlongs in July.
What about the St.Leger, I hear you cry! I would make the St.Leger the most valuable prize in Britain, run over the present distance but open to three-year-olds and upwards, and forming the third leg of an older horses middle-distance triple crown – the Coronation Cup, King George and Queen Elisabeth, St.Leger. In fact, I would implement Triple Crowns for stayers, sprinters, milers and mile-and-a-quarter horses as an incentive for owners to keep horses in training beyond their three and four-year-old careers.
I will admit I am not won over by ‘Champions Day’ as no equine champions are crowned. It is very much a day of consolations races for horses who do not have Arc or Breeders Cup aspirations and who have hit the bar throughout the season. If the ‘Triple Crown’ idea were given the green light, a big ‘if, of course, ‘Champions Day’ could host the final triple crown races for stayers, sprinters and milers. I would return the Champion Stakes to Newmarket where it would be the final race for the mile-and-a-quarter Triple Crown.
I would scrap all listed races. Fillies and mares should earn ‘black type’ in handicaps, if unable to do so in Group races. Finishing third in a Salisbury listed race is buying listed status on the cheap and doesn’t make a filly a better breeding prospect than one who has won top-quality handicaps. Listed races are not there for the racing aspect but as a sop for breeders. In fact, too much of the flat programme is designed with breeders in mind.
There should be no one-million-pound handicaps. Races with the pedigree of the Ebor and Cesarewitch should be open to all and not the mighty stables that can afford to keep a horse back solely to have it in front of the handicapper come the big day.
The flat is increasingly lacking in romance, as it is, which is why when syndicates get lucky it is more of newsworthy than when Coolmore or Godolphin are triumphant, which come the big races is most of the time.
And what the flat is desperately in need of, as Bryony Frost has proved over jumps, is a female jockey riding at the top echelon of the sport. While there are female jockeys doing well at the moment, the glass ceiling remains intact, with little likelihood of it being broken any time soon. Though it would not solve the dilemma, I am a strong advocate of a six-figure stakes race confined to professional female riders run at one of the main racecourses, with a series of top-quality handicaps, also restricted to female professional jockeys, throughout the season. If females do not get on good horses in important races how will we ever know if they can compete on level terms with the men?
To my mind, the whole race calendar needs to be overhauled, with the flat and all-weather treated as two different variations of the sport. During the summer months, there should be no flat racing one Sunday in every month to allow jockeys time with their families and occasionally whole meetings restricted to jockeys (the journeyman jockeys) who have ridden a limited number of winners in a set period.
If I ruled the flat, the flat would be a different country. I’m not boasting that it would have more highs and greater dollops of romance, but it would be fairer, champions, equine and human, would be crowned through winning ‘triple crown’ races and by winning the most races in a full season.
 

​Is the Epsom Derby the greatest race in the world? It is often said to be ‘the greatest horse race’ but is it? Personally, I think it is absurd to give the Epsom Derby such an attribution and I dare say the French, The Australians and Americans would also argue otherwise. In its day, yes, it was unrivalled. In its day Parliament rushed through its workload so that ministers could leave London in good time to greet the Monarch at Epsom. And though it was never claimed to stop a nation, as the Melbourne Cup is said to do, the Epsom Derby was, in its prime, the greatest sporting event in the country. Those days are long behind us and it is questionable if the Derby is even the greatest race in our own country. Even on the flat – obviously the Grand National is the greatest race in this country, if not the world – I would say it is only the equal of some other races in the calendar.
My problem with the Epsom Derby, and in the main with the whole of flat racing, is that it is too early in a horse’s mental and physical development to be putting them to the supreme test. Would we allow four or five-year-olds to run in the Grand National? No, they would be deemed too immature. I dare say it can be said that the Derby sorts out the men from the boys, the colts who will go on to be stallions from the colts who either be gelded for a longer career-span or sold overseas, their parentage their greatest asset.
The connections of the Dante winner, Telecaster, are torn between going for glory because there is only one Epsom Derby and the concern that the race might be too strenuous for a horse yet to reach his full maturity. In short, whether Telecaster wins the Derby or merely runs into a place the experience may but ‘bottom’ him, leaving them only a shell of a racehorse for the rest of the season? It is a fine balancing act between the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of winning ‘the greatest race in the world’ and the risk of spoiling the future of their golden egg.
This should not be a consideration when it comes to the ‘greatest horse race in the world’. But then I believe there should be no two-year-old races before June and there after no Group 1’s either. In racing’s historic times horses were still being treated like beasts of burden with races run in heats like present-day athletics, sometimes over distances of 2-miles plus and even when match races were a thing of the past horses would quite often run in two races in a day, and not so long ago as one would think. Nowadays the opposite is true, with running a horse twice in a day banned and in many instances in need of a long period of recuperation to freshen-up for a big race three months hence.
As I write the present favourite for the Derby has run twice, with the majority of the opposition having graced the racecourse less than half-a-dozen times. It might aid my argument to mention that last year’s victorious three-year-old met with injury soon after the Derby and has not run since. Coincidence, perhaps, but is a racecourse with undulations and cambers the best place to run immature horses for the ‘greatest prize of all’? The perfect venue, though, to thoroughly test the soundness and maturity of older horses.
If I could reinvent flat racing, I would have all the classics run as four-year-old races, then it makes sense to have four of the five classics run prior to Royal Ascot. As outlandish and nonsensical as this idea sounds, I believe in the long run it would benefit the breeding industry as unsoundness and breathing problems would be better exposed if bluebloods had to race an entire season before they were judged and elevated in status by racing at Epsom for the ‘greatest prize in racing’. The ‘quart into a pint pot’ styled flat racing calendar is another debate of its own. To have four classics and Royal Ascot over and done with before June is out, when the season goes on till November, is plain odd.
Oh, what will win the 2019 Epsom Derby – Japan. You have to read between the lines on occasions will Aiden O’Brien and he keeps reiterating that ‘his horses come on for a race’ and the ones who I think will come on the most are those who were beaten in their trials, and when interviewed by I.T.V. after the Dante, though he was tight-lipped as ever, I got the impression from Ryan Moore’s facial expression that he was more than delighted by Japan. Therefore I would not be surprised if Japan is the horse he will ride at Epsom.
 
 
 
 
 

​The 1965 Grand National was the first of the ‘last Nationals’. In the actually television commentary, the words ‘can this be the last time horses gallop to Becher’s Brook’ were used. Some people attended the race just to say they had witnessed the ‘last National’ and there were 47 starters, 14 more than the previous year. It must have been a sad, almost bittersweet, occasion.
Yet the race itself proved to be a bit of an epic, with two horses with a similar background fighting out the finish. The winner, Jay Trump, was the result of an accidental mating and began his racing career at a dirt track, Charles Town, where the horses were just commodities and where affection was thin on the ground. To quote from Jane McIlvaine’s book ‘The Will To Win’, Jay Trump ‘Couldn’t get out of his own way on the dirt. Besides, the horse is a rogue. Last year he ran into a post and nearly killed a boy. You can’t get a jockey to ride him.’ I suspect Charles Town was not as bleak and unforgiving as McIlvaine portrayed it, though it was the last place on Earth anyone would expect a Grand National winner to come from.
The incident where Jay Trump ran into a post when circumstance forced him to jump a running rail almost cost him his life and would have done if his then owner was not more of a saint than a sinner. If the racecourse had a horse ambulance the pain and injury perhaps would have been reduced, the hole in Jay Trump upper leg large enough for part of the muscle to fall out and the bone to be exposed.
But when Tommy Smith came looking for a cheap horse to buy, a horse who would make a steady hunter if he couldn’t jump the post and rails of the Maryland Hunt Cup, it became a case of Jay Trump or go home with no horse. And for some reason Tommy Smith just liked the horse. He could visualise muscle where only weakness was on display and a gleam in a coat made dull by a lack of grooming and care.
As a foal, Freddie, too, nearly died and like Jay Trump was bought cheaply, with no thought of being campaigned on the big stage. He was to be a hunter in the Border Country and, if he proved equal to the task, a point-to-pointer. That was all that was expected of him. Yet he was to become one of the most popular chasers of the sixties, carrying 11st 10lbs to be beaten just under a length by Jay Trump and 11st 7lbs when runner-up the following year to Anglo, a horse incidentally who began his racing career called Flag of Convenience and who dropped Tommy Smith in the stable yard on his first morning riding out at Fred Winter’s.
I ought to mention that Pontin-Go, fifth to Team Spirit in 1964, had run in the 1963 Grand National under the name Gay Navarree.
To return to Jay Trump. It was very much a case of ‘he came, he saw, he conquered’, as he only ran six times in this country, the only rides Tommy Smith enjoyed during his stay as he was determined not to chance injury and jeopardise what for him was the fulfilment of a life-long dream to ride in the Grand National. What he was attempting to do was something no one else had achieved. Yes, Battleship had come from America and won the Grand National but he was ridden by a professional English jockey. Jay Trump was attempting to be the first American owned and American-ridden winner of the world’s greatest horse race. As the race is nowadays, I suspect it is an honour he will hold for many years into the future. And there was no fluke about their victory as apart from Rondetto sliding to the ground four out when seemingly full of running, he finished, along with the gallant Freddie, twenty lengths clear of the third horse.
It is widely known that Jay Trump and Tommy Smith had won the Maryland Hunt Cup twice prior to his Grand National success, what is less publicised is that on returning home he won a third Maryland Hunt Cup. With nothing else to prove he was retired soon after to live a long and active life in the hunting field, dying aged 31. The horse who had started life as a commodity for punters died one of the most celebrated horses in American racing history as is buried at the winning post at Kentucky Horse Park chase course, the Red Rum of American steeplechasing.
Freddie, too, lived a long life, making it to 28 years-of-age.
Tommy Smith fared, perhaps less well. He retired from riding the same day Jay Trump retired, went into health-care, trained racehorses for a while before a riding accident caused such an horrific injury, he was a quadriplegic for the rest of his life. He died in 2013. It is a bitter coincidence that Fred Winter, too, suffered an injury that rendered him incapable of living out his life without 24-hour care.
 

​Question: doesn’t it go against the spirit and heritage of a race when the winners and placed horses in races designated as classic trials are not considered by their connections as either experienced enough for the classic itself or they have a preference to wait for Royal Ascot or a race in France or Ireland? Or indeed anywhere but Epsom. I am referring, of course, to the Musidora at York this week but my comment refers to any classic trial for any of the classics.
There was a time that if an owner sold a horse with classic entries those entries lapsed as the new owner had not paid for the initial fees and was not eligible to run the horse in races the horse was previously entered for at the time of the change of ownership. That came to be considered anachronistic and detrimental to the sport and entries transferred with the horse to the new owner. I think the time has come to consider changing the long-established system whereby horses are entered for the classics as foals as in the modern age it is as anachronistic as engagements becoming void when a horse is sold.
I realise a good percentage of the prize money pot for the classics is drawn from the first entry stage, when these blue-bloodied thoroughbreds are still skipping about the paddocks with their mothers, or at least soon after. But with sponsorship now accounting for a big chuck of the prize money – and can anyone claim the Epsom Derby is more respected if it has a million-quid first prize than if it were half that amount? – I think the spirit of the sport is being compromised by continuing with a system determined at the time of Admiral Rous when the sport was very much the preserve of the aristocracy.
The present system leaves us with the main trial for the Derby, the Dante Stakes, being won by a horse not even entered in the Derby, clouding the aftermath excitement with ‘will the owner stump-up the £85,000 supplementary fee?’ Not to mention the trainer hesitant to commit to Epsom as sixteen days between the Dante and the Derby may not be enough time for the winner to recover his full strength to be able to show himself in his true colours at Epsom? Which is another subject to be debated? Why have a racing schedule that compromises both the Dante and the Derby when thought and planning would ensure at least a further week between the two races.
If the Epsom Derby and Oaks are to maintain their blue riband status in the world of racing it is beholden on the powers-that-be to protect both races from the shortcomings in both the entry system and the foibles of race-planning. At York this week barely any of the major players in the Musidora are intended runners for the Oaks, the winner of the Dante is not even entered in the Derby and the runner-up, though bred to stay the Derby distance, will not be running at Epsom as sporting considerations are second-bested by the need to protect stallion value. My second thought may be a little unfair on John Gosden, though in general on the flat sporting considerations are negated by protection of investment.
When the Queen receives her diary for the year, she starts by pencilling in Royal Ascot and I suspect the Epsom Derby as no engagement, within reason, supersedes the importance to her favourite race-meetings. Race-planners should take her lead and pencil in the same dates and work forward and backwards from Epsom and Royal Ascot to ensure there is adequate time between, in this case, York and Epsom, to ensure genuine classic horses can be primed to the height of their fitness for both meetings.
There is so much emphasis these days on the importance of ‘turnover’, about the integrity of bookmaking and punters rights, that to have conjecture leading up to what is perceived, though it certainly is not, as the ‘greatest horse-race in the world’ – how they must cringe or indeed laugh at such a claim in Melbourne, Kentucky or Paris – on whether the owners of the Dante winner will pay the large supplementary fee to run, cannot be in the interests of the sport. If the present archaic system is to continue the ‘win and you are in’ condition should be applied to all of the Derby and Oaks trials. This Derby this year will be massively poorer if Telecaster does not run and the result will be diminished if Telecaster runs poorly if it proves the York race took too much out of him.
It seems to me that the only owners, and by default trainer, who take the Epsom classics at all seriously are Coolmore. They are not teasing punters with ‘will the 2,000 Guineas winner run in the Derby’. Not that they need him, of course.
It is all very well churning out the old maxim of ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ but why wait for the bolts to rust or the wood to warp? Think of the Epsom Derby as the flower meadow of the flat season and then on Derby morning go in search of a flower meadow. The Epsom Derby, like flower meadows, deserve to be protected. Change the entry system, ensure an appropriate amount of time between York and Epsom and include ‘win and you are in’ as a condition for all of the recognised classic trials and prevent the farrago of ‘will the owner stump-up the supplementary fee?’

​Jockeys come; jockeys go. Some you remember fondly, some you forget. I dare say if a certain jockey rides you a 50/1 winner when you were on your uppers, you’ll remember him till the moment of your last breath. I’ve never backed a 50/1 winner so my favourite jockeys are not based on pecuniary improvement. Occasionally when reading a name from the past will come up and intrigue me enough to prompt me to indulge in a little research. Frankie Durr is a case in point.
He was prominent in the jockeys’ table at a time when my interest in the flat was equal to National Hunt. Not so, these days, sadly. I can’t say why he was never high on my list of favoured jockeys. Ignorance on my part, quite likely. I suspect back then, the middle sixties/early seventies, when I was young and could not conceive of the notion that I might not know enough about the sport to have such strong opinions on nearly aspect of the game, I perhaps thought him undistinguished, and old. Even now all the photographs of him show him as wrinkled. And although he never rode my favourite horses in the early sixties he was associated with one of my favourite all-time horses from the flat, Trelawney. He also rode Commander-in-Chief, not the Derby winner of that name but the Jubilee Handicap winner.
Just for the record and do his memory justice, he rode the winner of the 2,000 Guineas twice, Mon Fils in 1973 and Roland Gardens in 1978 and also won the St.Leger twice on Sodium in 1966 and Peleid in 1973. Everyone one an outsider. But it was the big handicaps which were his forte.
If he were riding today, I would respect him to greater effect than I did when he was alive. He refused to ride at evening meetings as he wanted time to be with his family and on account of hating driving, he rarely rode far from home. Today he would be considered eccentric and there is nought wrong with peaceful eccentricity.
He was also an advocate for sparing the whip. He had a saying which he oft repeated to apprentices who rode for him. ‘The horse is first. It’s second, third and fourth.’ As with Bryony Frost today, Frankie Durr maintained that no jockey was great, it was the horse that made them great.
‘The first principle in getting the best out of a horse is to be kind to it.’ Was also one of his guiding principles. I hope this is the first piece of advice given to every youngster that attends the various racing schools. It is because use of the whip is perceived by the public as being unkind to the horse that the role of the whip in race-riding is so controversial. 
He also would not have a horse hit. Long after his death I am beginning to like him more and more.
He advised his apprentices to study the horses they might ride, telling them that in a year a horse grows seven times more than they do. He would tell him, usually illustrating his teaching with images and stories to make his point more succinct, that a small horse takes shorter strides than a bigger horse and advised them that if they are riding a small horse they should always be on the inside rail as going the shortest way round will compensate for the extra strides a small horse must take in comparison to bigger horses.
Frankie Durr was a thorough professional. He knew the rules of riding and knew how to go within a centimetre of breaking them. ‘If there’s a gap early in the race, take it. But only go half-a-length in front of the other two. If a jockey follows you through, he ends up in a pocket and that will make his horse shorten its stride and hold him back.’
He was also a big one for studying wind direction, always advising his apprentices to keep tucked in till the last moment before making a forward move when the wind is in the faces of the horses. And the direction grass is cut was also important, wanting his horses galloped in the direction of the cut, not against it. He was a man for seeking out every small advantage possible. I dare say it is why he was so successful throughout his riding career in the big competitive handicaps.
The small amount of research I have done of him leaves me in doubt that he was a thoroughly professional jockey and trainer. It was why he rode for most of the top owners and trainers of his day, believing that with horses and racing you could never acquire too much knowledge. It is a lesson for all us. Certainly it is a lesson I should have learned long ago.
It seems unfair that a man who was fit and active all his life, who regularly played golf in retirement, should be admitted into hospital with something as trivial as a nose-bleed and yet not return home.
 

​It is to hoped that when it comes to sport the cream will always rise to the top. I suspect, as all sportsman (and women) are subject to the same frailties as the rest of us, that on occasion any one of a number of personality traits, including inherent lack of confidence, can blight even the greatest of talents. And, of course, in sport as in life, there can only be a limited number of ‘winners’ per day, per month, per year.
That does not mean governing bodies of individual sports should allow fate to become an absolute dictator of success and failure. We all live our lives within the whimsical realm of fate. I could step out of my front door this morning and be knocked to kingdom-come by a pimply-faced skate-boarding teenager using the pavement as his own personal Cresta Run. Or the skate-boarder might find himself knocked into the path of a hairy V.W. hatchback driven by a wishful-thinking Ayrton Senna wannabe imagining himself baring down on Lewis Hamilton on his way to Superdrug or his gran’s. I do believe, though, that people who strive for success, especially in a sport that is dangerous and requires sacrifice, should be given the opportunity to prove their true worth. The chance to fail with grace, if you like.
I am going to guess that there are a million race meetings per calendar year in this country. I might be wrong. It might be ten or twenty less than a million; it does though seem like a million, especially while the flat overlaps with National Hunt during the winter and vice-versa during the summer. Whatever the actual figure, it is obviously too many. Everyone agrees. It is perhaps the closest to uniformity of thinking that exists in racing today.
Racecourses, obviously, are businesses and each and every racecourse in Britain and Ireland is precious, worthy of listed status. In an ever-increasing urbanised world of tarmac and brick racecourses provide, especially when located in cities and towns, a green oasis of nature and fresh air. They must survive. But do the smaller courses need De Sousa, Murphy, Johnson or Skelton at every meeting to draw a profit-making crowd. I doubt it.
In a clear depiction of the work ethic of jockeys (or is it greed?) much was made of the jockeys riding at Chester in the afternoon before flying down to Chelmsford for the evening meeting there. But is such devotion to the job really necessary and should the B.H.A. be sanctioning, even encouraging, such a strenuous work-load?
Of course, to prevent a jockey, who is after all self-employed, accepting whatever number of rides he or she is offered could be seen as a restraint of trade. A jockey only has a relatively short career, on top of which they will doubtless have a mortgage to pay and a family to support. It can also be argued, that as their largest overhead is the cost of travelling to and from race-meetings, which for those jockeys who are grateful to be offered one ride a day can steal any profit from their day’s work.
The point, indeed suggestion, I am labouring to make is this: why not have whole race-meetings restricted to jockeys who have only ridden a certain number of winners in the previous six or twelve months. In the past I have advocated one race per card, three or four times a week. Yet in Ireland recently the whole of a National Hunt card was restricted to these lesser, though in many instances equally talented, men and women of the weighing room. During the summer, when the field sizes are usually on the small side, a meeting a week, perhaps in the evening, could be similarly designed, giving opportunity to those who work equally as hard as the ‘big boys’, drive as many miles, without the aid of a chauffeur, and whose only wish is to be given an even break. How often have you heard a jockey described as ‘seriously underrated? Or ‘underused’?
Would the number of spectators at an evening fixture in April at Wolverhampton be affected in the top jockeys were not in attendance or a fixture at Fontwell in May? Would betting turnover be adversely affected? Are the names of Moore, Dettori, Johnson or Skelton used by racecourses when advertising meetings?
The female only jockeys meeting at Carlisle has proved a rip-roaring success, not that I am suggesting that an all-journeyman meeting would hit such heights. But what I propose would take only pennies from the pockets of Messrs Moore, Murphy, Kirby etc, whilst on the flip-side would allow them more quality time with their loved-ones, and in the main restrict the wear and tear on their cars and lower their travelling costs.
Owners who retain their own jockey will be disadvantaged at times if this suggestion were to become adopted and trainers would occasionally have to take a chance on a lesser experienced jockey but overall I believe turning whole meetings, perhaps one or two a week, to the type of jockey who daily help keep the show on the road, the jockeys who bravely throw a leg over horses the top jockeys wouldn’t touch with a jewel-encrusted barge-pole, can only bring benefits to both the individual and the sport.
 

​If the Gimcrack at York was altered to more truly represent and honour the horse it is named after the conditions would state no horse to run that is over 15-hands high. Gimcrack himself was only just over 14-hands. In todays terms he would be thought too small to bother with. Now that, Mr. O’Leary is a ‘rat of a thing’. And an almost white rat at that. He was, and perhaps what he should be famous for, the first British trained horse to win in France as in 1766 he won a match over the not insignificant distance of twenty-two and a half-miles, completing what today would be considered an endurance test in under the hour. If the same were attempted today there would be questions asked in Parliament.
Of course, in the early days of the sport most thoroughbreds were not true thoroughbreds, having quite a lot of working-class blood in their pedigree, some might have even ploughed the land. The best and most famous horses of the day were all comparatively small, if set against today’s racehorses. Eclipse was only 15-hands, 2 inches, whereas a horse named Magog was so named because at 16-hands he was considered a giant amongst horses. And back then horses were not raced as two-year-olds or even three-year-olds.
Eclipse, a horse whose name has resonated through every century since his death, did not race until he was five-years-old and had an unbeaten career that only lasted seventeen-months, changing ownership three times. It might be thought that he won what we might think of as ‘proper races’ but that is not the case. The first race he won was the excellent and grandly named Noblemen and Gentleman’s Plate at Epsom, a race that constituted three four-mile heats. In such races if the winner could ‘distance’ his opponents, that is win by more than 240-yards, he was spared running in the next heat. It was after this first heat that his flamboyant owner, Dennis O’Kelly made his now famous boast ‘Eclipse first, and the rest nowhere’, winning a bet where he said he could name the first three horses to finish.
Eclipse won ten-races, which would be all the more impressive if his reputation had not gone before him as six of those ‘races’ were in fact walkovers.
We, perhaps quite rightly, perhaps not, revere the name and reputation of Eclipse, though I doubt if he were alive today, even trained by a master like Aidan O’Brien or Sir Michael Stoute, whether he would cut much mustard in the races that matter. It is said he was the second great horse of the thoroughbred world, after Flying Childers, though if one was overly critical, he was perhaps only a big fish in a very small pool. A legend, undoubtedly, and a prolific and good sire, but not a truly great racehorse.
As the sport has progressed down through the centuries, and we are a sport that has a longer lineage than any other true and proper sport, a fact that shouldn’t be overlooked when journalists are proposing the sport’s future, speed has come ever more to the fore. It can be clearly evidenced from the dates the classic races were first run. The St.Leger 1776. The Oaks 1779. The Derby 1780. The 2,000 Guineas in 1809 and the 1,000 Guineas in 1814. It is surprising that a six-furlong ‘classic’ has not yet been proposed. When races over a distance short of a mile were first run they were described as ‘short races’ and were a novelty that I suggest were prophesied never to flourish. Now, sadly, they dominate.
Of course today horse racing is both an industry and a sport, with high-class thoroughbreds with blue-blooded pedigrees sought after as ‘investments’ by fabulously wealthy people with three-quarters of an eye on the breeding sheds and the escalation in value of their shares, with the racing of their ‘investments’ no doubt considered a risk that cannot be avoided. In the 18th century the prize was to be able to boast that your horse won more races than the horses of your friends. Whereas these days the classic races only form part of the equation. Pedigrees that have the famous names of the past in them, Hambletonian, Highflyer, Herod and of course Eclipse, are greatly prized, though in their day I doubt if breeders were quite so enamoured in what went before. Eclipse sired the winners of 344 races, dying aged 25. Stallions today would cover as many mares in three seasons. Stallions that shuttle between continents might reach that number in two covering seasons.
It is said by those who know about such things that the reason for the extraordinary vigour of his blood and the influence his name still holds when it comes to lines of descent is that he was allowed to mature before he was asked to race. The past, though, to use what has quickly become a hackneyed expression, is a different country and no breeder through choice would keep a horse about the stud doing nothing but looking fabulous. Tis a pity no one is bothering to experiment.
 

​The agile minds of Racing Post journalists were put to work a few weeks ago (April 28th edition) in an effort to come up with a sensible and sustainable method of achieving a new finance stream for horse racing. Bill Barber, Lee Mottershead and Lewis Porteous presented between themselves 10 diverse options. Whether they convinced themselves that any one of the schemes they presented was the definitive solution to the problem I very much doubt, though a combination of the better ideas would, I am sure, make a statement if not actually improve racing’s finances.
Which of the three great minds came up with following cricket’s lead and overturning the very principles and heritage of the sport with racing ‘goes twenty20’ I doubt we shall ever discover. If it were Barber, for instance, I would suggest the other two should seriously consider sending him to Coventry, though there are worse places to live in purgatory, or send him to the company’s shrink. Mad, bad and dangerous is the category I would place this idea in. Horse Racing is a life, a daily routine. It has evolved over centuries through natural progression. To upturn the heritage of the sport is tantamount to saying that the sport has gone terribly wrong over the years, when all the evidence suggests the sport is healthy and continues to be much loved. Championship Horse Racing and City Racing are nothing more than pie in the sky. The Racing Post gave this idea 4 Jeremy Corbyn’s. Why Jeremy Corbyn’s? That passed me by, I’m afraid. I give it zilch minus one. Mad, bad, dangerous and rather insulting to the fibre of the sport.
The best idea the triumvirate put into print was the formation of an in-house on-line bookmaker. It’s the nice friendly elephant in the room, isn’t it? Every other ‘racing jurisdiction’ has its own tote and no one reads about journalists coming up with ideas in those countries to solve their financial problems, do they? The Racing Post gave this 5 J.C.’s. And I concur. Buy one of the big on-line bookmakers and convert it into a British Tote.
The idea of aping Ireland and having all the big meetings start late afternoon has appeal, though only limited appeal. Firstly, if horse racing is lost to terrestrial television than the game is truly up. It was an inspired choice to go with I.T.V. but will they give consideration to televising York, Chester or Glorious Goodwood, to name but three, on the main channel at a time when their viewers are used to seeing Emmerdale or Coronation Street? And the idea only applies to flat racing, the least attractive of the two codes when it comes to viewing figures, due to the fall of night for most of the year. On occasion, this is a good idea. The Racing Post gave it 2 J.C.’s, while I thought it worthy of 3.
I was surprised they only gave the idea of improving the diversity of those who attend racecourses 2 J.C.’s. As I have said when criticising the idea of C.H.R. & City Racing, if you want to entice more people through the turnstiles send a fleet of coaches to every large city and town in sequence and give free travel and entrance to anyone who wishes to sample the ‘racing experience’. In fact, free entry would give racing an advantage over most other top-level sports. Not Royal Ascot, of course, or Cheltenham, Aintree and the big meetings. No one would expect free entry into blue-riband events but the ordinary fare should be free entry, with profit made from what is found inside the racecourse. This idea has potential. I rate it 4.
Fewer fixtures is a no-brainer. Not wholesale elimination of meetings but a maximum number on any one day and no two meetings to be staged within fifty miles of one another. And if bookmakers’ close shops at the rate predicted, I see no objection to the occasional day with no racing at all. Everyone must chill at some time. The Racing Post gave this suggestion 2 J.C.’s. I give it 4. Not because it comes close to answering the question but because it is simply a perfectly good example of excellent housekeeping.
The idea that revolved around extending the levy to money bet on foreign racing confused my less than agile brain. It must have confused the Racing Post too as they only awarded it 1 J.C.
As someone who has no love of the ‘Pattern’ and the proliferation of races designed simply to award black type to the owners of fillies and mares for the purposes of artificially boosting their value come the sales, the Robin Hood approach to the problem found rich favour with me. The Epsom Derby would lose none of its kudos if it were worth fifty-per-cent less to the winner than advertised this year. Million-pound races are, in fact, an abomination to a public who view racing as nothing more than a rich man’s entertainment. My view of horse racing is that it is a working-class sport underpinned by the fabulously rich. Of course, the Derby should have a first prize larger than any other race on the flat but it does not need six noughts following a one to the winner. The value in winning the Derby comes once the winner goes to stud. Routinely cut 30% from the first prize of all Group races and give that money to the lowest levels of the sport to encourage more people to own horses, to give syndicates a greater chance of making a profit. And cut the number of Group races altogether and rid the programme of listed races. The Racing Post rated this 4 J.C.’s. I give it 5 as this is a good example of radical housekeeping at work.
To my dismay, the Racing Post got most excited by the concept of ‘reimagining what racing could be’. Yet another example of racing shooting itself in the foot by suggesting that the product is broken and in need of an overhaul. It is not broken. It is healthy and exciting. What is needed is not an overhaul, not even a make-over but more dynamic governance. Not 3 or 4-furlong races. Not teams of horses or jockeys. Or north versus south trainers’ competitions. Or relay races, match races (so last century) or time trials. The Racing Post say 5 J.C.’s. I say zilch minus two.
My best idea to produce a new finance stream? A super-bet on the lines of the I.T.V. 7. If a £50,000 pot draws 100,000 entrants, what would a monthly £500,000 pot draw? The National Lottery is not well-loved. Here is an opportunity, not to replace the Levy, and on its own it will not provide the solution, to draw the eye of the non-racing public. If a super-bet were to bring in only £100,000 a month …..
In summary: a weekly super-bet, with a monster monthly super-bet. Promote horse racing as a working-class sport. Free racecourse entry. Adopt a Robin Hood approach to the distribution of prize-money. Fewer fixtures. And racing’s own on-line bookmaker business. Not ‘simples’, I confess.

​“Which one is Ruby riding?” Is a question that can no longer be asked. Ruby has made the decision for each and every one of us. He will not be riding any horse in public ever again. His retirement will leave a hole in the sport in this country and especially his homeland as wide as the Grand Canyon. Indeed, in Ireland he is not only the greatest-ever jockey but one of its greatest-ever sporting icons. He is known far and wide not by his christened name but by the name of a precious jewel.
When A.P. was riding for Martin Pipe, setting records we couldn’t believe would ever be threatened let alone beaten, I used to say that the difference between Ruby and A.P. was that Ruby rarely rode a bad horse and A.P. rarely rode a good one. Thanks to J.P.McManus that changed in the latter years of A.P.’s career but it does reflect the two true differences between two of the greatest jockeys I or anyone will ever be lucky enough to witness in action. Ruby could write twenty chapters of a book dedicating each chapter to just one of the great horses he rode. A.P. could barely pen a 500-word essay devoted to the great horses he is associated with. While A.P. was establishing his legendary status by cajoling, wagonning and persuading through the greater force of his personality horses of dubious ability to win mediocre races at grassroot racecourses, Ruby was taking days off, readying himself for the good horses on the great occasions.
I read all the time about the great jockeys of the past – Winter, Freeman, Biddlecombe, Rees, and others – I cannot though believe that anyone outranks Ruby in the pantheon of greats. He was, no longer can I write or say ‘he is’ – the greatest jockey of my lifetime. I recommend his autobiography and urge him to write a second volume. He’s good at that, too. As he is at broadcasting his knowledge and thoughts through the medium of television.
My favourite Ruby ride was in winning on Un de Sceaux at Cheltenham when horsemanship was never better demonstrated.
 
Ruby didn’t have to bother much about his weight. But an excerpt from a book I am presently reading really brings home how great the change in society between now and days past has become. I will quote the opening sentence: ‘To men who remember the days when four stone was a weight often assigned to horses in great handicaps, it seems strange that the starting of a horse handicapped at six stones four pounds should be in doubt because neither of the two lightweight jockeys can be secured for him.’ No cream eggs or cream horns in those days. Rickets, yes, and malnutrition without a doubt. And no three-square meals a day. No takeaways, also. Lesson for us all, I suspect.
In 1852, 43 horses went to post for the Chester Cup – eye-opening if not eye-watering in itself – with six of the runners carrying four stone, one of which finished fourth.
The lightest a jockey has ever turned the scales is, not that you’ll believe me, two stone-thirteen pounds when George Thompson, then eight-years old, won a match race at York. He later went on to become one of the best amateurs of his time.
George Fordham won the Cambridgeshire when he scaled three stone thirteen pounds and the Chester Cup when his weight had ballooned to four-stone ten-pounds.
And James Doyle thinks he has it hard trying to do under nine-stone, though he is, one must concede, a fully-grown man and all the above were children. But it clearly demonstrates how molly-coddled, under-exercised and over-fed today’s children must be.
The one disappointment I have come across is that a contemporaneous article poured cold water on stories of apprentices being buried in the muck-heap in preparation for riding at a very light weight. A silly tale, John Osborne called the notion. I thought it highly believable.
What did surprise me was that when fasting a very small amount of food can easily put three or four pounds on a man, even if the actual weight of the food is much less. Richard Marsh wrote that when he was riding, before he turned his hand to training, he was offered a good ride that required him to slim down to eight-stone, seven-pounds, whereupon having reached the required weight he allowed himself the comfort of a small sherry and the lean part of a small chop. Three hours later he found himself to be three pounds heavier.
In comparison to the ‘olde’ days, modern jockeys have it oh so easy, don’t they?