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

​Let’s start by stating the bloody obvious: Royal Ascot is unique. You could travel the globe eastward or westward for all of your adult life in search of a similar sporting and social occasion and end your days fulfilled for the adventure yet sadly lacking in achievement. Those who first went in search of the source of the Nile probably felt similarly deflated. Royal Ascot is a firework of brilliance sealed with royal approval. U.S., Australia, Hong Kong, eat your heart out.
It is a bewildering mix of history, pageantry, catwalk glamour, social exclusivity, old-fashioned style and etiquette, holiday fever and high stakes but most of all it is five days when mere commoners, workers-in-the-field, labourers, the underlings of society, can join their adored and respected monarch in celebration of horse racing at its finest. The ballyhoo of Royal Ascot maybe absurd yet it is equally truly wonderful. It is the United Kingdom (oh how I wish the kingdom was united) at its very best.
Having said all that, it’s the one race meeting I have no ambition to attend. Mainly for most of the above, though mainly because I believe it is a cruelty, bordering on a human rights issue, to force a man to wear ‘morning-attire’ –if that is the correct term – just to be allowed to watch an outdoor sport. Top hat and tails are for Fred Astaire – a great racing fan in his lifetime –Gene Kelly and Busby Berkley, not for someone of my sensitivities and signature fashion sense. Of course, Royal Ascot is one of those occasions when the female has it better than the male, able as they are to glam up and wear, within the strict dress code, whatever that suits their fancy. Men are allowed no option but to parade around with the jaded aplomb of an unfinished embalmed ostrich, their sweat, and it is the sweat of the agricultural fieldsman, not the demure perspiration of the loose-clothed ladies, as omnipresent as the aroma of formaldehyde, mothballs and heavy-duty cologne. I felt so sorry for the I.T.V. chaps having to smile through the discomfort, their marmalade or salmon sandwiches wilting under their ridiculous top-hats.
Would not have it any other way, though. To change Royal Ascot one iota would equate to demolishing St. Paul’s Cathedral or the Pelican Fish’N’Chip restaurant in Barnstaple that is officially the best of its kind in Britain.
Oh, there is horse racing as well.
Pallasator winning the Queen Alexandra was my favourite moment. How Gordon Elliott has transformed the old monkey from a raging torrent of wild water to a swan on a tranquil stream needs both explanation and an award. I’ve made this comment before but it bears repetition: why are there awards for riding performances but none for trainers who achieve great achievements. Of course, Pallasator could not go quietly into the evening; he had to remind us that deep within his psyche he remains the Pallasator of old by ducking away from an invisible monster only he could see, no doubt to remind the mercurial and brilliant Jamie Spencer who the big name was in the partnership. Pallasator and Spencer, not the other way around.
Cracksman losing is a better narrative for the summer than Cracksman winning on the bridle and frightening away the opposition for the King George and Queen Elisabeth, if he should go there. Of course, Messrs Gosden and Oppenheimer are now on the horns of a dilemma: do they risk running Cracksman again and further devaluing him as a stallion or do they crack on and hope for some rain to fall in July? Or perhaps wait for the Arc? Personally, I don’t think we will see Cracksman on a racecourse again. Blinkers seem the obvious way forward but that will suggest to breeders that as he got older Cracksman became as reliable as Pallasator. In Oppenheimer’s favour is that John Gosden is not only a great trainer but a wise council. I hope for Frankie’s sake Enable shakes off her injury and can be trained for the Arc.
I see Hunting Horn is being touted as the St.Leger winner in waiting, though I believe Southern France is the Ballydoyle horse to be thinking of come September. It is impossible not to like and admire Aidan O’Brien but his ability to answer a question at length without actually giving away anything definitive is as subtly devious as Penn and Teller or any politician. To the question of where Hunting Horn would go next he suggested he might stay at 10-furlongs, go up in trip, run in the Irish Derby, be kept for the St.Leger or given a break. And the interviewer seemed to think he had achieved a scoop! If only Aidan had suggested he might be trained for the Triumph Hurdle or the Newmarket Town Plate!
Royal Ascot is excellence in abundance. It is not the Olympics of racing, as Frankie keeps referring to it. The Olympics is every four years. Royal Ascot is an annual event. Anyway, Royal Ascot is better than the Olympics. It has both silly and beautiful clothes and a pageant, though I dare say pedants will claim the Olympic opening ceremony is a pageant. It is, though, slowly but surely, becoming something akin to a world championship on turf, with top-class horses now coming from America and Australia to add flavour, interest and well-deserved compliments for a job well-done.
 
 

​In the era of racing that I have the habit of referring to as ‘the golden age’ the sport was well-endowed with owner/breeders, people with large estates and pedigrees, equine and human, going back, in some cases, centuries. I would like to think, and my belief is only evidenced by what I read in racing books of yesteryear with references of famous old horses living out his or her life at the place of their birth, that such rewards for outstanding service was the norm and not an irregular occurrence. I remain naïve in my old age, wishing every equine stalwart of the sport to be cared-for long after their final race.
In our era there are far fewer of this class of owner, with the majority of horses owned by syndicates or wealthy men and women with no solid connection to horses other than the honour of owning them. This in itself is not a problem, except that the non-breeding owner, as a rule, does not have the luxury of being able to give a retirement home to their old horses, with that responsibility falling, I suspect, to the trainer.
I am not suggesting that in any way this represents a problem in need of a solution. It may not be a problem. I hope not, anyway. Yet in a society that leans ever more heavily on the leisure industry, horse racing may be missing a trick by not having a centre where the retired heroes of the racecourse can be seen by the public.
At the Irish National Stud, the public can see in retirement Moscow Flyer, Beef or Salmon, Hardy Eustace, Hurricane Fly, Kicking King and Rite of Passage. I also believe Vintage Crop and Danoli are either there or were there. The Irish National Stud also has a stunning Japanese Garden that attracts non-racing people by the thousands every year. There is also a racing museum that houses the skeleton of Arkle, something that I wish was in the ground and not in a cabinet to be gawked at. The image of his body being so coarsely interred with I find distasteful. He is and was Arkle, after all.
The Irish National Stud is the model that I believe should be copied by British racing. A centre for retired heroes of the turf, ‘living legends’ as they are referred to in Ireland, where the public can come and see them at rest and play rather than straining every sinew on the racecourse, and an attraction that will bring the non-racing public to rub shoulders with those whose primary concern of the day is to see legendary horses. Such an environment would be the perfect setting to educate the public on what horse racing achieves and what it offers. I say this far too often, perhaps, and my defence is that because I live outside of racing I integrate with people either ignorant of racing or with a perception that is based on the lies of Animal Aid and other similar organisations, but racing is seen by many as being a sport that uses horses for its own entertainment, a sport without pity, with the whip used as a punishment by jockeys with no other thought than winning, in an industry built around the addiction of gambling. It is an image that is a million miles wide of the truth.
The likes of Sprinter Sacre and Cue Card will always be cared-for in their retirement years but what an attraction they would be if horses of their esteem, and others, Big Orange comes to mind, if they spent their summers at such a centre. Some horses could live there all the year round, of course, with the ‘stars’ coming for a change of scenery, to greet again their adoring public. It is also important, I believe, for people to realise that horses age, as we do, and any medical issues they contract are addressed.
How much would such an establishment cost to buy and run? Who knows. But if racing can lavish prize money of six and seven figure on a selection of races each year, surely, given the good publicity such an attraction must bring to the sport, any amount of money would be well-spent.
To clarify: I am suggesting a national retirement park for racehorses, a museum of racing and a garden on the lines of the Japanese Garden that wows visitors to the Irish National Stud, open to the paying public. Where it should be situated is another question that is not easily answered. My first reaction is not Newmarket as for most of the country it is too far away. Somewhere in the Midlands, perhaps. Though location would be dealt with by opportunity to purchase the right property at the right price. But location, price and opportunity are the semantics of the idea. What is required is for the powers-that-be to grasp the nettle and put the idea into motion, no doubt to form a committee and to seek expert advice. And, of course, we need the people lucky enough to own the ‘living legends’ to allow them to spend their summers in the glare of public adoration for the benefit of the sport.
 
 

​I have no fondness for America in general and their horse racing in particular. I dislike the dirt-tracks they race on. I dislike the regular use of Lasix and other drugs. I dislike the preference for speed over stamina. I dislike the almost mandatory use of blinkers and I am unsporting enough to dislike them coming over here and winning at Royal Ascot. So you can understand why it grates on me to have to admit to my ignorance in being unaware how much they improved the care of racehorses in this country, and how a class of Americans changed the way jockeys in this country, and doubtless the world, rode.
Up to, perhaps, the start of the 2nd World War, horses were invariably stabled behind closed doors, with no fresh air for ventilation. Also, they would be exercised, even on the gallops, in heavy clothing, trainers believing sweating to be good for them. Such arrangements made for bad tempered horses, even savage ones. We have to thank the ‘invasion’ of American trainers such as Wishard, Joyner and especially Huggins, who trained a large string owned by a Mr.Lorillard and who won the Derby in 1879 with Iroquois, for this improvement in animal care. The Americans looked on traditional British stabling with bemusement and despair and immediately dispensed with the full stable door, replacing them with what we term ‘the stable door’, leaving the top half always open.
In his book ‘Men and Horses I Have Known’, George Lambton wrote that it was a common sight on Newmarket Heath to see loose horses running amok, and if two ‘savage’ horses came together people might witness something akin to a dual to the death. He wrote of two such horses who ran themselves to exhaustion across the Heath, fighting whenever one or the other stopped. By the time Lambton started training he reported that because of the husbandry the Americans brought with them such frightening scenes were unknown.
The American jockey Tod Sloan was the revolutionary who changed riding styles forever in this country. His ‘monkey-up-a-stick’ style was scorned when it was first witnessed by racegoers and even George Lambton thought it bizarre. I suppose when you are brought up with the upright position in the saddle and long leathers, the seat adopted by all horseman, any new ‘fad’ will be considered laughable. Lambton soon learned his lesson and when his stable jockey Fred Rickaby replied to the question ‘what do you think of Sloan?’, he said with all honesty. ‘If I were an owner I should not run a horse unless Sloan rode it,’ the die was cast. In time, when Rickaby retired, Lambton employed the American Danny Maher as his stable jockey.
The ‘monkey-up-a-stick’ style came from what the Americans termed ‘up-country’ race meetings where horses were often ridden on the track by, and this is a term Lambton used’ ‘nigger boys’ who could not afford a saddle and rode with just a strip of blanket over their mount’s backs, holding on to the mane for balance. Huggins used to send horses to these ‘up country’ meetings and would buy any horse that beat his runners believing he was sure to improve them with better food and training. It was when ‘a darkie’ insisted he go with one of these horses that he bought and he saw for himself how much better they would perform in a gallop with ‘the darkie’ on top than one of his regular riders that Huggins recognised he had found a way of gaining an edge over his rivals.
What the Americans also brought to this country was something altogether more unsavoury – doping. In Lambton’s time it was not illegal to dope a horse, which is rather surprising, although it was frowned upon, especially by those trainers regularly beaten by those who did to resort to doping. Cocaine was the dope of choice, used as a liquid. The American trainer Wishard was the chief doper and won the Royal Hunt Cup and Stewards Cup with a horse called Royal Flush who improved leaps and bounds once he had got to work on him.
Apparently, you could always tell a horse that had been doped because it would sweat profusely and would be as mad as an ox for hours or perhaps days after a race. What was interesting is that cocaine only really helped a moderate horse, as when used on a really good horse it would be so lit up it would burn itself out long before the finish, but the moderate horse would be given the energy and fight that without the dope it generally lacked.
To prove to the stewards that doping was taking place and was detrimental to racing, and to get them to do something to stop it, he doped several horses of his own, informing the stewards and allowing them to monitor the improvement dope brought to horses he couldn’t ordinarily win with. So, if we remember George Lambton for nothing else, he should be remembered for his insightful role in the instigation of the doping rules.
When, and I doubt if it is ‘if’, Wesley Ward has his customary winner at Royal Ascot this week, I shall have to praise the achievement as for one thing is for sure, his horses will win on merit, not win on dope.

​To those with a racing library no introduction is necessary as to the book I am currently reading. ‘Men & Horses I Have Known’ by The Hon. George Lambton was first published in 1928 by Thornton Butterworth. My edition is more recent, being published in 1963 by J.A. Allen. I suspect a first edition of the original publication in good condition would be worth a considerable amount of money. More than I could afford, anyway.
I am halfway through the book and the Honourable George Lambton is yet to write about his career as a trainer, concentrating on his years as a National Hunt jockey. It is difficult to distinguish through his writing whether he was a professional jockey or an enthusiastic amateur. I think the lines were blurred back in the period from 1880 through to the start of the 1st World War. His distinctive voice, though, comes across the ages remarkedly lucidly, and there is no doubt that if the Grand National escaped him, he won many of the top races of his time and rode for many of the most distinguished owners and trainers.
I will convey what I have learned about horse racing at the time Lambton was a jockey from one sample chapter.
He begins chapter 13 talking about Savoyard, a horse he described as being very unlucky, as with better luck he might have won at least one Grand National if not two or three. He also described him as ‘a lengthy chestnut of great quality, with a mouth like silk, and a perfect angel in character’. He jumped the fiercely unforgiving National fences ‘to perfection’, yet fate contrived to trip him up on more than one occasion. In 1886 he fell at the last hurdle – the race in those days finished with 2 hurdles – as he was challenging the eventual winner, Old Joe. Oddly, though I dare say, accurately, Lambton writes that as he jumped the last hurdle on Redpath, he thought both Savoyard and his jockey Kirby had perished. I say oddly as the record books show Redpath as being pulled up. As it happened neither jockey nor horse were fatally injured, though Kirby was crippled for life.
In 1888 Lambton rode Savoyard in the National – the first year the race was run over the present configuration – and was thinking himself the winner when, he confesses, he made the rookie mistake at the last fence to steady his horse to make certain of jumping it safely, caught the top of the fence and toppled over. The following year, with the connections extremely hopeful of making good the bad luck of the previous year, Savoyard was knocked over at the second fence. Interestingly, and in complete opposition to what would be allowed today, Ringlet, a seven-year-old mare, who finished fourth in 1888, was brought out the following day in the Champion Chase, started favourite, mainly due to her owner betting big on her, and finished second, beaten a length.
What is starkly clear when reading this book, and others of the period, is the truth of the saying ‘The past is a different country’. In 1888 Lambton won two legs of what he describes as the ‘good treble’; the National being the one to escape him. In the race he refers to as ‘The National Hunt’, a 4-mile chase run at Sandown, the horse he rode, with great misgivings, was a 4-year-old with only one hurdle race experience prior to the ‘National Hunt’, in which he carried 10st 10lbs and was equipped with a long-cheeked double bridle. He won in what Lambton described as a hack canter. Later that year he won the third leg of this ‘good treble’, the Paris Steeplechase, on Parasang, the subject of a large gamble by ‘the confederates’ that owned him.
In this period horse racing was still very much a sport of the aristocracy, of which Lambton was a member, his father being Lord Durham. Not that Lambton comes across as anything other than a dedicated horseman and racing enthusiast. In his day it was common for a horse, a very good horse, to run on consecutive days or for classic winners to run in handicaps, with the Cambridgeshire and City and Suburban races of great prestige and value.
In his day horses, as with jockeys, trainers and owners, travelled to race meetings by train. Quite casually he writes about private conversations with legends like Fred Archer, Roddy Owen, Bay Middleton, Arthur Yates, Mat Dawson, John Porter and horses with the pedigree of Ormonde, Diadem and Persimmon. Racing was populated by a succession of colourful characters, many of whom were kept financially afloat by the ‘help’ of moneylenders, many of whom ended up bankrupt or worse by being unable to right their accounts with bookmakers.
Surprisingly, given the huge debate nowadays about inadequate prize money, £1,000 races were not unknown to Lambton, and not only the classics. It is a shame that the level of prize money could not be maintained down the decades. Yet though the differences between then and now loom large from the page, the striking similarity is the fascination with the sport by all walks of society. The past may definitely be a different country but the flowers and fauna remain as true today as when the jockeys wore spurs and members of the aristocracy were of no consequence if they did not admit to at least a passing knowledge of the thoroughbred racehorse.
 
 

​The central pivot of my life at present is promoting, in the small ways at my disposal, my paperback and e-book versions of ‘Going To The Last’, a collection of horse racing related short stories. > Click over thataway for more details. >
At this point, I suspect, I am expected to claim that ‘Going To The Last’ was a labour of love that brought joy to my heart on every occasion I sat behind the keyboard. Alas, such a claim would be over-egging the pudding. What is true is that for fifty years horse racing has been the great love of my life, but as any writer great, good or of moderate ability will confirm – writing is hard, especially fiction. At times it can be real fingers whittled down to the bone and nose to the grindstone stuff. And what makes the fictionalising of racing ever more difficult is that even when done well racing fiction cannot match the drama of any race on any day of the week.
I must confess I am not a fan of the Dick Francis type thriller and I positively despise the bodice-ripping epics of ex-jockeys turned authors. Although every ex-jockey has the right to earn a living post retirement I do feel the responsibility to portray racing in a positive manner remains even when they can no longer be admitted to the weighing room. Being both a purist and a puritan at heart I set out to portray racing in an authentic, though not necessarily squeaky-clean, light, reflecting my admiration for both the jockey and the horse. I confess in the collection there is a parody of the racing thriller in, ‘As Unbelievable as a Thriller’, and in ‘The Fairisle Mystery’ the story centres around an official enquiry into a doping scandal, but in the main the hero or heroine of my stories is the sport of horse racing itself.
When I started writing horse racing short stories I believed I was filling a gap in the market. Indeed, even furnishing the literary world with a new genre. But no. The gap I perceived, if it exists, is no more than a slither and my standard of writing, perhaps, is too flimsy, lacking the intellectual muscle-power, to elbow my way in on the market. Was I downhearted? A tad, yes. Ploughing on, I decided, going against all evidence, to target mainstream fiction magazines, thinking that if I could influence the non-racing readership that the sport portrayed by the racing thriller and the bodice-ripper was not a fair representation of the sport. I was, and hopefully remain, a crusader for the good name of horse racing.
The problem the powers-that-be of racing face, as I do myself, is that well-meaning campaigns to tickle the fancy of the ordinary public to go racing is undermined by the limited amount of media outlets prepared to give racing a voice. The Racing Post has brilliant columnists, but they preach to the converted, you and I, when to gain even an inch of headway in the promotion of the sport their fine words need to be read by a completely different readership. I may sell a copy or two of my book, but it will be racing people who read me, and I doubt if I will change a single heart or mind, even though that is essentially what my aim is to do.
As I have already said, I am a purist at heart and cannot truthfully lavish praise on ‘Going To The Last’; that must be left to the reader, if he or she so chooses. What I will claim on behalf of my book is that whether the reader finds it good, bad or plain dull, at its heart is love and respect for the sport. As a crusader for the good name of the sport, which we all should be, it is beholding on me to implore you to pay either the £1.99 for the e-book or £8.99 for the paperback (go for the paperback, it’s lovelier and you can’t wrap an e-book) to discover for yourself whether I achieve my aim. Or you could buy a copy as a present for a family member or perhaps even someone you don’t like as a subtle way of ‘getting even’. Though quite a few of the stories are, even if I say so myself, quite good. I am especially fond of a ‘A Grey Day’, ‘Sentiment of Fools’ and ‘Mrs. Underwood’s Pony’.
To any of you who part with your hard-earned cash to purchase my book, I thank you. I may have a shallow heart, yet I still thank you from the very bottom of it.
 

​All my adult life I had waited, and in truth continue to wait, for the next Arkle. I was too young, a mere reluctant schoolchild, to appreciate the equine god who ruled this magical sport back when I could only view his brilliance on a black and white television. Arkle was Irish and Mill House British – how wrong I was even on that account – and ‘Himself’ kept proving himself superior by ever increasing distances. I was a Mill House supporter and my hero kept getting beaten by the ‘foreign invader’ and it was hard to take. I dare say in those days I was even an Arkle hater. I didn’t appreciate the significance of the weight Arkle carried, and the burden, which might be considered cruel by today’s namby-pamby way of looking at life, of giving away herculean amounts of weight to horses that in another era would be rated Gold Cup class. To my shame, Arkle was long dead by the time I fully appreciated that I would never see his likes again.
Then Denman appeared. I knew he was an exceptional prospect by the way he won the staying novice chase at Cheltenham but when after winning his first Hennessey Paul Nichols was heard to say ‘He’ll be some horse when I get him fit’ I became a firm believer that the new Arkle had arrived.
I believe now, during the time between winning the Hennessey and the Cheltenham Gold Cup, that Denman was the best steeplechaser since Arkle. Ratings may suggest otherwise but I had no doubt then and as I have none now that during that time frame no horse, before or after Arkle, would have beaten Denman over 3-miles at any course resembling Cheltenham or Newbury and he remains the only steeplechaser who I ever considered to be in with a chance of taking Arkle’s crown.
Of course, in placing such a mantle of greatness upon Denman’s head it may appear that I am trying to diminish his friend and rival Kauto Star. I am not. Kauto is the second-best steeplechaser of my lifetime, his record of achievements and his longevity make it impossible for anyone to deny him his lofty position in the National Hunt pantheon. But Kauto never once took Denman apart as Arkle did to the mighty Mill House, the best horse Fulke Walwyn ever trained. Kauto could not, indeed was never asked to give massive amounts of weight away in races with the kudos of the Hennessey. Denman did so not once but twice, and at Cheltenham, except on one occasion, he was always Kauto’s master.
Unless Paul Nicholls tells me different, I will go to my grave believing that Denman was robbed of the accolade of becoming the best steeplechaser of all-time or at the very least of being second only to Arkle through ill-health. As was proved recently with Sprinter Sacre, heart problems diminish performance. After looking light of former years Sprinter could only return to former glories on one memorable occasion, as Denman also manged to do. Indeed, on both occasions, Sprinter regaining the 2-mile crown and Denman his second Hennessey, the two horses put up arguably the best performances of their lives.
Although the heart problem that came about because of his ‘gallop them into submission’ way he won his Gold Cup robbed him and us of potentially three more Gold Cups – argue with me if you will but even if he hadn’t improved with age and stayed at the same level of performance, can anyone believe he would not have beaten Kauto the following year, and Imperial Commander the year after. I don’t believe even the youthful Long Run would have beaten him – the greatness of Denman was transferred to his trainer as in getting him back to even a shadow of his former self he almost achieved the unbelievable. If there was an award for training performance of the year, as there is ‘ride of the year’ and ‘trainer of the year’, Nicholls would have won it simply for getting Denman back in good enough order to chase home Kauto.
I hoped that Denman and Kauto would end their days together as Night Nurse and Sea Pigeon did. Sadly, that was not to be. Perhaps it is possible for Cheltenham or Newbury to erect a statue to them both, perhaps at play as captured for posterity by Ed Whitaker of the Racing Post. I have the photograph adjacent to my desk. When I get my opportunity to go on Desert Island Disc that is what my luxury will be. Two equine gods at play, as I hope they are again.
As Steve Dennis achieved in the Racing Post with his word picture of Kauto up in horse heaven waiting for his old friend to join him, that photograph will conjure memories greater than any treasure. Tears, too. And joy. Because that was Denman, a total joy. But then he never bit me!

​Let me make something clear from the outset – I am totally opposed to the killing and abuse of animals in the name of sport and recreation. Indeed, the waste of animal life in a time when there is great strain upon nature shows Mankind in the poorest of lights. The number of dead hedgehogs on the roads this spring is truly appalling and I cannot believe there is not a simple way of reducing the carnage. If the country can afford to build ever more by-passes and new roads for the convenience of its people surely it cannot be beyond the intelligence of scientists and engineers to build into the enterprise some form of safety feature for wildlife whose historic passage across the countryside is made hazardous through our neglect of their need to survive.
So why, as an animal-lover, am I still in favour of the pursuit known as fox-hunting?
When I was younger I was opposed to fox-hunting, and remain opposed if the killing of foxes remains the sole aim of those who ride to hounds. I believe hunts should be used by government as the eyes and ears of the countryside, reporting on the state of habitat required to sustain a healthy population of foxes and associated wildlife. But hunts should not have carte-blanche to indiscriminately kill foxes as suits their need for entertainment.
My support for the pursuit of fox-hunting is based on two aspects often ignored by either side of the debate. We have a tradition of horsemanship in this country which we will be diminished if people are banned from meeting-up to ride to hounds. The great riders of every era have learned and honed their skills in the ‘hunting arena’. There is simply no substitute for riding across the countryside in the company of like-minded people for learning how to ride to a high skill level. Jockeys, three-day event riders, show jumpers, even dressage riders gain experience as young people riding to hounds that is invaluable to them later in life in the competitive arena. If hunts cannot understand the responsibility they have to help produce the equine sportsman of the future they have no right to exist. If they believe their existence is only justified if they are killing foxes then someone needs to explain to them that we now live in a different world to 1868 or even 1968. Hunts need to adapt and not just pay lip-service to the present laws on hunting, however poor that law maybe. The pursuit of hunting should exist for the entertainment of those who ride to hounds, the people whose employment is linked directly to the pursuit of hunting, and for the health and survival of the horses and hounds that are essential to the pursuit of hunting. If hunts need to become drag-hunts to gain public approval then let it be so. There is so much more to this issue than the killing of foxes and the protection of farm-stock.
Greater, though, than the need for hunts to help raise the next generation of horseman, is the life the pursuit of hunting gives to retired competition horses, especially the racehorse. If a Labour Government were to be as irresponsible as to ban hunting outright – the Conservatives, also, should not be thinking of repealing the present law but strengthening it – a huge number of horses would cease to have a purpose. There is an animal rights issue in the banning of hunting that is constantly ignored. Horse and Hound should have similar rights to survival as the fox.
It is not only the retired horse that is advantaged by the pursuit of hunting. As any rider will tell you, the hunting field is essential for the education of young horses. No discipline of equestrianism is better suited to the development of the horse as the hunting field. I have known young horses that at home are nothing short of delinquents become as focused as school swats when confronted by a hundred other horses and the widespread countryside. A young horse, if well-ridden, will learn (hopefully) to stand, to move off in as poised a fashion as can be expected, to canter with other horses and to jump whatever sort of fence that is encountered. It learns how to control its excitement.
If the pursuit of hunting should ever be banned it will signal the end of riding across country except where bridle-paths remain open. Many jobs would also be lost, with farriers, veterinary practices and livery stables badly affected. But it is the overall welfare of the horse that affects my position on this controversial issue. The retired racehorse in particular is best suited to a life as a hunter. Recently the Racing Post featured a week of horse welfare articles focusing on the work being done by various rehoming and rehabilitation organisations to retrain racehorses for an active life outside of the racecourse and though it is wonderful to learn of an ex-racehorse living a contented life as an eventer, show-jumper or dressage horse, the natural home, at least for the majority, is in the hunting field.
Hunting people must accept a more publicly acceptable approach to the pursuit of hunting as their recreation is absolutely essential in continuing the ancient tradition of producing great horseman who bring honour and medals to our country, the education of young horses who go on to race, event and show-jump and gives ex-racehorses in particular the expectation of a long and active life.
 
 
 

​Though as I write it may be unheralded, racing history, I believe, has been made in Ireland. To my knowledge, and please correct me if I am wrong, a woman has never led a jockeys’ championship, either flat or jumping, at any point in a season in either this country or Ireland. That has changed. At the beginning of play today Rachael Blackmore leads the Irish National Hunt Championship by two. In a sport that until comparatively recently was male dominated this is an achievement that should not go unreported.
It is early days, of course, and I am not suggesting that come the end of the season she will remain in pole position. That is unlikely, especially when Paul Townsend and Ruby Walsh are back riding, though she might have a sizable lead over them when they do return. And, of course, once Gordon Elliot is revving on full power both Jack Kennedy and Davy Russell will have a say in matters. Yet Blackmore does ride, surprisingly more so at the big meetings than the ordinary fare, for nearly all of the top stables in Ireland, the notable exception being Jessie Harrington, though as all her main rivals for the title also ride for all the top stables this alone will diminish her chances.
Females riding winners is no longer big news, either here or in Ireland. In fact, females riding winners are more often than not ignored in the Racing Post’s accounts of the day’s racing. And even though the Post has been rather busy lately, what with the Epsom Derby and its lesser French equivalent, it is surprising that they are yet to mention a news story that is unique in its achievement. Let’s hope they notice before David Mullins rides a treble and puts a dent in the story!
The reason Blackmore regularly rides for such luminaries as Willie Mullins, Gordon Elliot, Henry de Bromhead and Mouse Morris, and others, is because, as Mullins said after she won a big handicap hurdle for him at the Punchestown Festival, ‘she is not a good female jockey but a good jockey’. I would go as far as to say she is the best female professional jockey yet seen, and that goes for flat and jumps.
What is remarkable, and testament to how life and situations can change so quickly, is that not two seasons ago very few people outside of their families would have heard of Rachael Blackmore or Bryony Frost and yet they have quickly established themselves as two of the brightest stars of the sport. It might not be over-egging the pudding to suggest that they might be the star turns we need to attract the eye of the public and media to our sport.

​As someone with a preference for National Hunt it will not come as a surprise that I was left feeling slightly underwhelmed by both the Oaks and Epsom Derby. Only time will tell how good a classic winner Forever Together and Masar will be and I certainly would not be ruling out the possibility that Saxon Warrior will turn out the best of the three-your-olds this season, though I suspect this year’s classic crop is far from vintage.
What must be said, though, is that no one should begrudge Sheikh Mohammed and his Godolphin team a Derby in any colour of silks. He may be the ruler of a country and as rich as any man can aspire to be but that in no way lessens his generosity to a sport he clearly loves. Without Sheikh Mohammed and his family, the sport of flat racing would be greatly lessened and not only because no man digs deeper into his pockets where racing charities are involved. He is doubtless too modest to appreciate such a gesture but whenever he steps onto a racecourse he should be greeted with a round of three cheers and a rendition of ‘he’s a jolly good fellow’.
What is worrying about the classic races at the moment is that if Coolmore were not around the number of runners might be embarrassingly small. I realise other horses might have run if Coolmore were not represented but alarm bells should ring when five out of the nine runners in the Oaks come from one stable and five out of twelve in the Derby. The media and jockeys and trainers cannot keep describing the Derby as ‘the greatest race in the world’ when slowly but surely it is becoming both less competitive and ever-more elitist.
I am not suggesting it would be healthier for the Epsom classics if there were so many runners entered at the four-day stage that lesser horses must be balloted out but when there is a situation where most of the top trainers do not have a runner in either race and it is becoming increasingly rare to have a French raider, then perhaps the two races are on a slippery slope. For it to be ‘the greatest race’ shouldn’t it grip the imagination of owners and trainers around the world; shouldn’t it attract runners from America, Europe or Australia?
I am also of the impression that it does not help the promotion of the race when the I.T.V. team tell its audience in May, as they chorused this year, that the Derby will be a one-horse race and no other trainer need to bother taking the favourite on. Over-selling is as bad for the sport as under-selling. I can crow on this aspect as I did not think that Saxon Warrior would win. After York I thought Roaring Lion would most likely win, though come the day my allegiance had changed to Dee Ex Bee.
Some of the National daily papers published Derby sweepstake supplements, though I suspect they only do so from habit as I cannot believe offices up and down the country engage with the race, not as they do for the Grand National. We cannot keep kidding ourselves that the Epsom Derby is ‘the greatest race in the world’. It isn’t; the Arc, Melbourne Cup, Kentucky Derby and Breeders Cup races overhaul it year by year.
The Derby was a triumph this year for Godolphin but a disaster for Coolmore as not one of their five runners came out of it with enhanced stallion prospects and Saxon Warrior was no doubt devalued by only finishing fourth. There will always be a commercial angle to the Epsom Derby but that should never be allowed to supersede the event as a sporting spectacle. The Derby is losing its competitive edge, even though it is no doubt a hard race to win. But look back through the decades and you will see a different race altogether to the race we have now. This year two members of one family had the first and second, Qatar had the third and the empire of Coolmore the fourth. This is why I say the race has become elitist. It is rare these days for the ordinary owner to even have a runner in the race, and when an event becomes dominated by the wealthiest of the wealthy the common man will feel distanced from it, as it is with such sports as the Admirals Cup and Polo.
How the Derby can be revamped so that it is truly ‘the greatest race in the world’ I don’t know. What I do know is that outside of the betting shops down where I live not many people were aware that last Saturday was Derby Day. It was not so back in the day when the Derby was without doubt the greatest race in the world.
Let’s stop kidding ourselves: the Grand National is a mile and a half more popular with the public than the Derby and that is the truth of the situation.