​It would be stretching the truth to claim Bjorn Nielsen stoked a hornet’s nest when he lamented breeders neglect of stamina in the modern-day breeding of the thoroughbred. Speed, speed and more speed is the mantra of so many of the top studs around the world these days. In the U.S. any race over further than 1-mile 1-furlong is a stamina-stretcher. When there was a stayers race at the Breeders Cup it was run over 1-mile 5, an almost unheard-of distance over the water and most other racing countries, it has to be said. Britain and Ireland alone keep the faith when it comes to races over a long distance of ground. Bjorn Nielsen made a sensible observation; it will though go unheeded.
Peter Scargill (couldn’t be any relation to Arthur could he) in today’s Racing Post laid out his plan to incentivise breeders to look beyond breeding early two-year-olds and milers. His ideas make good sense: median auction races for horses costing less than 15,000 Guineas and the offspring of stallions that won beyond 1-mile 2; and the idea I liked best, a 1-mile 4 race for 3-year-olds, similar to the Weatherby Super Sprint, for horses that cost less than 50,000 at auction and by stallions that won over a qualifying distance. I would also suggest more, far more, maiden races for 3-year-olds over distances beyond 1-mile 4.
Such ideas should be trialled, although I think the solution needs to be more radical.
Anyone (God bless you) who has read these vanity blogs on more than a couple of occasions will be familiar with my far-out suggestion of removing the St.Leger from classic status and reviving the grand old race by elevating it so that it becomes the most valuable horse race in Britain. My idea is to retain the distance of the race, change the conditions to 3-year-olds and upwards and to bring it forward in the calendar by a week or two so that it becomes a valid alternative to the Arc. As a Group 1 race over 1-mile 6 it would be unique in the world of racing.
It only makes sense to recognise where the world of breeding is at present, even though what I am to suggest seems to go against the construct of incentivising breeders to breed for stamina: restrict the Eclipse Stakes to 3-year-olds and upgrade it to the final classic of the season.
I would also pitch for a triple crown for stayers, with the Ascot Gold Cup as the obvious centrepiece and boosting prize money to close to a million quid as is feasible. The Goodwood Cup would be an obvious choice as the second leg of the triple crown, again with a boost to prize money, with my new St.Leger as the final race in the stayers triple crown. I have, I admit, in the past advocated the Prix du Cadran as part of my triple crown, but now that I think about it the St.Leger is far more sensible suggestion.
People with little or no knowledge of the history of flat racing in this country might be surprised to discover that it once was expected that a Derby winner would be targeted the following season at the Ascot Gold Cup, it was the Arc or King George of the time, and that time spanned over a hundred-years. It is only comparatively recently that breeders and owners started to look down their noses at staying contests.
Let’s be honest: sprint-bred horses are, figuratively, the throwaway packages of the racing world. The smaller breeding enterprises breed for speed because it is easily the quickest way to make a profit. If a precocious two-year-old wins a couple of races early in the season, the mare that produced it rises in value as does the next offspring she produces. Again, let’s be honest: all Gold Cup winners of the past forty or fifty years were failures at shorter distances. Yes, Levmoss won the Arc after winning the Gold Cup but that was in 1969 – do the math. And Ardross narrowly failed to win the Arc the year after. But the point remains undented – when breeders sit down to research which stallion to send to which mare, they never think to be breeding an Ascot Gold Cup winner. Breeding an Ascot Gold winner would be deemed a positive negative.
If breeders continue to think short-term and only look for speed in their breeding, the result will be horses who do not even have the stamina for five-furlongs, let alone 2-miles further. And God-only knows, we don’t want to go down the road of 4-furlong races for two-year-olds.

​Doesn’t feel like Derby week, does it? When the day comes, without spectators and owners where will the buzz of the occasion come from? Not even the always over-ebullient, cheer-leading par-excellence that is Ed Chamberlain will be able to crank the handle to generate the thrust required to spark the engine of anticipation into anything approaching full-throttle. Sport without spectators is very similar to shoes without socks or sandals with socks – just wrong in every conceivable way.
For government to think owners are not key participants in our sport shows how little they know about our sport. For the B.H.A. to accept the government’s view is – well, I’ll confine myself to ‘disappointing’. Yes, from Wednesday, as a trial, at a single meeting, owners will be allowed to attend the races where they have a horse running, though it appears they’ll be corralled into an area set aside for them and them only. Why they are not to be allowed into the paddock to speak, socially-distanced, of course, to their trainer and jockey is beyond comprehension. If it was not for the betting duty, would we be racing? The coaching staff of football teams are allowed to be pitch-side, yet owners are to be kept separate from the people they employ to train and ride their horses. As senseless as passengers on buses forced to wear masks but not the bus-drivers.
One sensible reversal of the ‘protocols’ is allowing jockeys to ride in races without the mask covering their faces. I am sure feedback from jockeys was responsible for this turnaround. Eventually, especially with National Hunt starting again this week, the health of a jockey would have been compromised due to rebreathing the carbon dioxide exhaled from the lungs but captured by the mask. Masks, I reiterate, compromise both the health and immune system of the wearer. Do your research.
To the Epsom Derby. It was expected though disappointing for Tom Marquand to be jocked-off English King in favour of Frankie Dettori. The courteous and diplomatic manner in which Marquand took the disappointment is a lesson to us all. I don’t expect him to win the Derby this week but I hope he does.
English King was impressive at Lingfield. Anyone who has backed him or intend to back him are assured of a good run for their money. I didn’t think any horse that ran at Royal Ascot was a better prospect at Epsom than Ed Walker’s colt. In fact, I would argue, apart from this weekend’s Irish Derby, the form of which could yet turn-out to be nothing out of the ordinary, his Lingfield form stands proud of the others.
Except for one horse, a horse from Ballydoyle, unfortunately. I say unfortunately only because it would be uplifting for the sport for a lesser light in the training or owning ranks to win. Pyledriver for William Muir, for instance. I know the O’Brien horses can improve in leaps and bounds from one race to the next but I cannot think why any of those who finished behind Pyledriver at Ascot should reverse the form. Kameko is obviously the true class of the race but I am not convinced he’ll either handle the hill or stay the distance with any gusto.
It’s hard to imagine Santiago backing up his Irish Derby win after only 6-days recuperation. But he’s trained by a ruddy genius, so never say never.
It will be interesting which of his runners O’Brien puts Ryan Moore on. I suspect it will be between Russian Emperor, Santiago, Mogul and Vatican City. Has any jockey had so many options going into a Derby? The way things are stacking up, Ballydoyle could have up to ten runners this Saturday if a few of the Irish Derby runners join those already slated for Epsom.
I was really taken by Vatican City in the Irish 2,000 Guineas and in my eyes was the unluckiest horse in a messy race and lost far more ground and came from a more unpromising position than Siskin, the winner. I thought after the Curragh that Vatican City would be the best of the Ballydoyle 3-year-old crop this season and if he was certain to stay the Derby trip, I would be strongly supporting his chances.
The thing is this, I always pay very little notice to form and go with my gut instinct, only this time around I thought both after Lingfield and the Curragh that I had seen the Derby winner. I think it is between English King and Vatican City and if I wandered into the betting shop on Saturday by accident, to hide my embarrassment I would, simply because of the longer odds, make out a betting slip with Vatican City’s name on it.
As I predicted after the 1,000 Guineas, Love will win the Oaks.

​Peter Walwyn, who trained at Seven Barrows before Nicky Henderson and is known as one of the great flat trainers, had his winner at Worcester with Don Verde in a hurdle race, ridden by John Lawrence or Lord Oaksey as he is best remembered. Indeed, that season he trained the winners of 4 races, 3 over hurdles and one steeplechase. In fact, by his retirement in 1999 he amassed 31 National Hunt winners, the last of which, a steeplechase, in 1994. A small number, of course, when compared against his 1,783 on the flat, yet far more than I would have credited him with, if asked.
For no good reason I was not a great follower of the Peter Walwyn stable. When Duncan Keith was his stable jockey and Be Hopeful was a stalwart of the stable, I was probably pleased when he had a winner but much of that was due to him having a stable jockey whose surname was the same as my Christian name. I went off him due to a story I was told that in all honesty might have been plain unjust to his character. I was told that his cousin Fulke Walwyn gave him Mill House to look after and hunt in his retirement and upon visiting the great horse he was furious about the condition he found him in. There were heated words between the two, I was told and a coldness between them thereafter.
This incident does not appear ‘Handy All The Way’, Peter Walwyn’s autobiography. Of course, this could be evidence of the story having some volition or grain of truth about it, as with William Shakspar’s will (that, apparently, is the correct spelling of ‘The Bard’s’ name) declaring nothing to suggest he was the author of the portfolio attributed to him.
I hope the Mill House story is untrue as I found his autobiography as interesting a book on a training career as I have read in quite a while. He doesn’t bore the reader with long chapters on his childhood and does not dwell on his great achievements. He might have gone on and on about Grundy but one fairly short chapter suffices. But what I admire Walwyn for is that he names names. He does not leave a blank space when he is criticising someone. He did not like, for instance, Willie Carson; in fact, he was top of his list of four who he cared nothing for. Owners who caused trouble are named: Roger Hue-Williams ‘could be troublesome at times’, asking to see the horses in their stable but arriving very late. He also had very few good words to say about the Wildensteins, describing the horses sent to him, including the previous year’s St.Leger winner Crow, as ‘a motley collection of well-bred animals’. Crow, he described, as ‘looking very miserable and lean’.
It should be said he admired many more people who he worked with than he disliked. His staff came in for plenty of praise and all you need to know about a trainer is the length of service his employee give them and with Walwyn the majority stayed for twenty years or more. Bad people do not keep staff long in racing, believe me.
Half the book wanders from his years as a racehorse trainer. There are chapters about jockeys, Pat Eddery was held in high esteem, trainers, viruses, vets and vaccines, stable staff and stable craft, Lambourn, country sports, his views at odds with my own, and the future of racing. This was a book that taught me stuff I didn’t know and I enjoy having my ignorance straightened out.
When you read the chapter on Lambourn and what he did for the village even when in retirement, it is difficult to imagine how the place has survived without the input of his ideas and his energy to get things done.
Although he considered Henry Cecil wrong in his opinion, I was heartened to read that Cecil was in favour of the Derby being run after Royal Ascot, as it will be this year, as it is a hobby-horse of mine and if someone of Henry Cecil’s reputation thought it right, then I can’t be the fool some might think me. Walwyn wrote in the year 2000 that the next few years would be crucial for the sport, a sentiment that seems even more pertinent in 2020.
 

​I thought the elongated Royal Ascot was a thorough success. The right type of races was chosen and positioned in the right places in the running order. Congratulations to all concerned. Though why this particular phoenix could be plucked from the ashes of a calendar mangled by government intervention and the Grand National was cast adrift as it were in some way akin to poison ivy is beyond my comprehension. The 2020 F.A. Cup Final will be played outside of the 2019/20 season, yet the most popular race in the British racing calendar, the race that attracts the biggest t.v. audience, that brings in the greatest amount of revenue to the sport, cannot. It rankles. It will always rankle. The flat, you see, it seems, most always taken precedence.
But to return to the subject at hand. I see no reason why Royal Ascot next year could not be the same as this year. The same races in the same order on the same date. I truly believe Royal Ascot should come before the Derby, with the Guineas meeting 2 or 3-weeks before Ascot. I realise to achieve this there needs to be a root and branch transformation of the racing calendar. But if the unnecessary confusion of the past few months has proved, anything can be achieved if the B.H.A. and its stakeholders are chased hard enough.
All the middle-distance races for three-year-olds last week, including the handicaps, took on a whole new purpose this year, with every one of them producing horses with genuine chances at Epsom. The Ribblesdale and alike are normally consolation races for either the beaten horses from Epsom or those not entered in the race as yearlings. Lee Mottershead in todays Racing Post is of the opinion that with the Eclipse this season run the day after the Derby and confined to older horses it becomes just a rerun of the Prince of Wales’ Stakes. I wouldn’t that was actually a bad thing. Of course, if I had my way the Eclipse would become a 3-year-old only race and be the final classic of the season. Lee Mottershead also quite rightly wrote today that this year’s Derby is more intriguing than in previous years’ as until six-days before the race every 3-year-old colt in Europe is eligible to be entered and wished this could be the case every year from now on. He also posed the question as to how to make good the short-fall in prize money due to having no forfeit stages.
At the moment it costs just under £600 to enter a horse for the Derby as a yearling, that is, most likely, before the horse has even seen a saddle. This tradition is so evidently stupid that no comment needs to be passed. Of course, a horse can be supplemented for the race, a quite recent development, but as Lee Mottershead pointed out, how many owners can afford to shell-out £85,000 for the privilege of having a crack at Epsom glory? The problem of maintaining prize money at the inflated levels proposed – next year the race is meant to achieve 1.5-million in prize money – is only solved at present due to the high number of horses entered for £600 as yearling. In future I suggest a one-off entry fee of £10,000, which were there twenty runners would raise £200,000, more or less what is achieved through the entry of yearlings.
But I meander, again. Royal Ascot as a five-day event, with eight races on four-days and seven on the fifth day, garners no criticism. Not even from me. Yet whenever the topic of a 5-day Cheltenham Festival is raised the debate can get as fiery as a lightning strike. ‘The quality would diminish’, they say. ‘There’s nowhere near enough classy horses to fill a five-day Festival’. Yes, it is much earlier in the season, yet Royal Ascot achieved both large fields and a high number of classy horses and that was without too many coming over from Ireland and nearly none from France.
I personally think a ‘Heath’ type day is the solution, at least at first, to test the waters, if you like. But as was proved last week, if the right type of races are selected, races that are competitive handicaps, that bring revenue to the betting shops and the sport, then it is worth giving 5-days a punt. You have to remember, and this is lost on the majority, it seems, the Cheltenham Festival is not only a sporting occasion but it plays a pivotal part in the economy of Gloucestershire and the town of Cheltenham in particular. It is one of the reasons the Grand National should be run during the year of 2020. Why it is vital to have spectators at the festival meetings. It’s not only about us, you know.

​I thought I would give Royal Ascot a miss this year. Several reasons why: Royal Ascot without a royal presence or royal procession breaches the trades description act, first comes to mind. It is like an Ant & Dec’s summer spectacular without the Geordie double act in attendance. And I never thought I would ever say it but Royal Ascot without the clothes horsing, the tedium of the glamour, hats that in the truest of senses do not qualify as hats, the always annoying fashion experts, the antiquated Ascot dress code that is so unfair on the male gender, and the quaffing for the sake of the ‘handover’ of the latest cocktail abomination, is, god-darn it, the very essence of what the Royal meeting is about.
I was also intending to give it a miss this year because of the government’s choreographing of the image of fear they continue to need to peddle, that Covid-19 remains the greatest risk to public health since the Great Plague of London, when in reality we are all beginning to realise that it is nothing of the kind.
But the weather is appalling this week and I found the diary bereft of any alternatives. So my hand was forced.
Jockeys are athletes, they should not be wearing masks. Martin Dwyer looked positively faint on the podium after winning on Pyledriver. I fear a National Hunt jockey will keel over after pushing and scrubbing a recalcitrant chaser for 3-miles. But enough said.
As I have said many times before, Royal Ascot before the Derby makes perfectly good sense. Having the Derby in July gives the flat a pivotal point in time, as does having only one entry stage six days before the race. The Derby this year will be a much more interesting race because of the decision to knock on the head the original entry stages, with Pyledriver and Highland Chief to name but two colts who went into Royal Ascot as unlikely Derby horses but who are now interesting possible runners. Guineas beginning of May, Royal Ascot first or second week in June, Derby and Oaks in July. There is a nice rhythm to the spacing, at least to my mind. The Coronation Cup could remain at Epsom as a standalone major race on the first Saturday in June or last Saturday in May.
Stradivarius, of course, will be the highlight of the week. What is a little bit sad about Stradivarius, as it is with all great staying horses, is that seemingly to prove themselves in the category reserved for the likes of Frankel, Brigadier Gerard and Ribot, he must be aimed at the Arc. The shame is that there is no other staying race in the calendar anywhere in the world to match the Ascot Gold Cup. The obvious race to enhance in prestige is the Prix Du Cadran or, and this is a hobby horse of mine, declassify the St.Leger as a classic and enhance its prestige by making it the most valuable race run in Britain and Ireland, opening it up, obviously, to older horses. Incidentally, the other part of this eccentricity is to upgrade the Eclipse into the final classic of the season and excluding older horses from running in it.
I have to agree with Richard Hoiles’ comment that the acceleration Stradivarius produced at the two-furlong marker when passing Nayef Road was on a par to anything Frankel produced. If the opposition in the 2020 Gold Cup was of a higher standard, I would be inclined to say it was a performance similar to several of Frankel’s best efforts, especially when winning the Juddmonte at York. To quicken as he did at the pointy end of a marathon test on soft ground was something to behold.
I somehow doubt we shall see him attempt the 4-timer. He was embarrassingly colty in the preliminaries yesterday and though he conducted himself in exemplary fashion once jocked-up, there comes a time, to quote Aidan O’Brien, when he must pass on his genes to the next generation. You can be darn sure that if he were to win the Arc the covering sheds will be his next destination.
It will be a sad day for Frankie come October if he has to chose between Enable and Stradivarius, won’t it? It is almost cruel of John Gosden to ask him to make the choice.
Normally a winner for a female jockey at the Royal meeting would be the stand-out moment, yet Stradivarius outshone even the always sunny Hayley Turner. Not that it is anything other than a delight to witness her winning a big race. She is a wonderful asset to the sport and I only wish trainers and owners would use her more often, especially in the big handicaps. Let’s hope one of the other girls manage a winner this week, then female jockeys winning at the Royal meeting will stop being uncommon and will become unworthy of reference to gender.
I am an ardent, at least when it is convenient to me, traditionalist. But I did not sing with the choir when it was petitioned to keep the Queen Alexandria Stakes as a Royal Ascot race. It is always by far and away the poorest quality race at a meeting that prides itself on the quality of horse on show. I would argue that the Ascot Stakes and, though less so, the Gold Cup, would be enhanced by the removal of the Queen Alexandria.
Having said that, I would fight tooth and nail to preserve the race. I would transfer the race to King George and Queen Elizabeth day, keeping the distance as it is, increasing the prize money and tinkering with the conditions to encourage a big field of runners to enhance its appeal as a betting medium. King George day could do with a bit of oomph applied to it, especially as these days when the French seem to ignore it and the Epsom Derby winner goes elsewhere.
 

​I know this is Royal Ascot week, a strange and very unroyal race-meeting in 2020, I am sure you will agree, without pomp, carriage rides or clothes-horse glamour, so it cannot seem too obtuse if I mark this gold-standard landmark of the flat season by posting a piece about the Epsom Derby.
Not this year’s Epsom Derby obviously, (which will be won by Vatican City if he runs, if ‘the boys’ believe he has half a hope of staying the trip. In fact, I know everyone was raving about Siskin after the Irish 2,000 Guineas but if the two were to meet again, even over a mile, I would side with Vatican City. He was, I argue, the most interfered with by Seamie Heffernam’s dreadful riding – was he not banned at all! – and made up more ground in the final furlong than Siskin. I rest my case).
I have just finished reading Bill Curling’s excellent biography of Arthur Budgett, the only man in racing’s modern history to breed, own and train two Derby winners. There is no such wonder as an unputdownable racing book. There are many excellent books on racing subjects that I would like to take to the grave with me but no standalone tome of sheer brilliance. For information purposes only, my five personal favourite racing books are, in no particular order, Ruby Walsh’s autobiography, R.C. Lyle’s book on Brown Jack, Dorothy Ours book about Battleship, ‘A Long Time Gone’ by Chris Pitt and for personal reasons ‘My Friend Spanish Steps’ by Michael Tanner. But I digress.
We must begin with Windmill Girl, dam of 2 Derby winners. As a yearling she was intended for the Newmarket October sales but a few days before she came in from the field with a swelling inside her off-fore. It was intended to put, what for the time, a hefty reserve of 6,000 Guineas on her. In the end she went to the December sales, with a reserve of 5,000 Guineas. Although a good looking, easy moving, yearling no one was prepared to take a chance on that slight swelling on her off-fore and she returned to Arthur Budgett’s stud at Kirtlington to be broken and put into training.
Arthur Budgett had originally bought her as a foal for 1,000 Guineas! She was bought with no greater ambition in mind than to run with the only filly-foal bred that year at the Kirtlington Stud. The second ambition was to sell her as a yearling. To remind you, she bred two Derby winners, Blakeney and Morston.
The reason, I think, I enjoyed Bill Curling’s book so much is that the story it tells is based upon the formative years of my fascination with the sport, when the flat meant as much to me as National Hunt. Budgett’s first good horse, Commisar was before my time, but Derring-Do, Crisp and Even, Huntercombe, Alderney and especially Petty Officer I remember as keenly as Casanova recalled past lovers. And there were others, Polish Warrior, Bugle Boy, Chinwag, Prominent, and Random Shot, the Ascot Gold Cup winner.
And in the period of the middle sixties through to when Budgett retired in 1975 the sport was blessed with a huge number of small breeders and with far fewer mega-breeders, as we do now. It is an aspect of the sport that the B.H.A., to my mind, ignores. For the sport to be fully healthy it needs the smaller studs to have greater access to the top stallions and for there to be greater incentive for people to breed racehorses. Races restricted to owner/breeders of less than five mares would perhaps give some sort of impetus for people to go into thoroughbred breeding. Small-time breeders, along with stock bred at his own stud at Kirtlington, were the bedrock of Budgett’s stable.
And Budgett was a proper racing man, with the same principles as John Hislop, in that racehorses are bred to race, and owners should seek out their limitations, not to featherbedded so as to preserve their value as breeding stock. Blakeney stayed in training as a 4-year-old and ran in the Ascot Gold Cup, finishing second to Precipice Wood. He then finished second again in the King George & Queen Elizabeth, beating Hogarth, the Italian Derby winner, Crepellana, French Oaks winner, Karabas, Washington International winner, and Caliban, trained by Noel Murless. Well, Blakeney beat that lot, unfortunately there was a beast of horse who was in his regal prime at the time called Nijinsky in the race. Not that Nijinsky actually needed to race as he won in a common canter. (Look the race up and discover what ‘common canter’ looks like).
Morston was one of those horses that could have been anything. Budgett thought him the best he ever trained. Tom Dowdeswell who rode him in all his work and who previously in his career had ridden Windsor Lad, Tulyar and Blakeney in their work, was convinced Morston would complete his career unbeaten, which in fact he did as he ruptured a tendon while being prepared for the St.Leger and did not see a racecourse after Epsom.
As I said previously, it was my favourite era of flat racing when Budgett was at his training prime. I never thought I would ever witness a greater flat horse than Nijinsky, though now I dismiss him because he never raced as a 4-year-old. So many of the big races retained titles that weaved their way back into racing history and the Derby, in Morston’s year, had 26-runners all owned by different people and in the main trained by different trainers. Even Vincent O’Brien would only aim one horse at the Derby. And there were owner/breeder/trainers about, as it always was until comparatively recently.
It’s sad in a way that Arthur Budgett’s achievement in breeding, training and owning two Derby winners is not commemorated in some form. I think he is deserving of the honour.
 

​There is a spat going on at the moment between The Horseman’s Group and the Racecourse Association over prize money distribution. This is not the first time the two stakeholders have fallen out over prize money and doubtless it will not be the last. It is all about, apparently, not that the semantics of the argument mean a lot to me, the unilateral decision by the Racecourse Association to cease racecourse executive contributions to prize money, which according to the Horseman’s Group is ‘unlawful and anti-competitive behaviour’.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the spat, the situation at present was caused wholly by the imposition, which may yet be declared ‘unlawful’ in the courts, of the ‘state of emergency’ and the Lockdown that will undoubtedly wreak havoc with lives for many years to come. At this most testing time for society since the outbreak of the 2nd World War, it is beholden on racing’s ‘stakeholders’ to work together to limit the damage to the industry, not to take to ‘handbags at dawn’. Our present system of government has overtones of the Kremlin about it, with the ruling bodies of sport desperate to be seen as ‘towing the line’ so as not to upset the overlords who possess the unprecedented powers to bankrupt any sport to stray from the ‘official narrative’. This is why the vast open spaces of Newmarket last week was reminiscent of a timorous bank robbers get together.
What I find petty about this present dispute between the Horseman’s Group and the Racecourse Association is the aura of the inevitable that suggests that what we have is the only method available to us for funding our sport. Let’s not get twitchy about it, prize-money is key to maintaining and building the sport. Although our sport bridges the divide in the social classes and provides any man or woman from the council housing estate opportunity to work for or alongside the richest people in the world, without those with the money to invest in bloodstock, who quite reasonably expect to at the very least break even each season, our sport will have no long-term future. Just imagine the hole that would be left if Sheikh Mohammed and his family decided to sell their horses, studs and racing stables? I would argue that the sport is more in need of minimum prize levels to be 5-times higher than at present than to have 1-million-pound plus races but we do require prize money at a level that gives all owners a hope of limiting their losses.
The present system does not achieve that aim. It never has, and quite likely never will. The answer to the equation, and it is the elephant in the room every single time the subject is debated, is what used to be described as a Tote monopoly, where all profits from betting is returned to the sport.
This maverick idea is the business plan for every other country except Ireland and Great Britain. We dig our heels in and shed bucket-loads of expletives and tears whenever the Tote monopoly thing is aired. How could we survive without the betting jungle, the opposition cry in unison? There would be no atmosphere without the betting ring. And so on and so on.
The present ‘oh so brilliant system’ for funding horse racing relies on monies coming from here and there, media rights, television deals and so on and so on. Bits here, bits from there. And this money would, I hope, still be available if a betting monopoly was created to fund the sport. Let’s face the cold facts: betting shops are in decline, government saw to that, and there are less and less bookmakers trading at racecourses. Now is the time to make that big leap of faith and at the very least conduct a table-top exercise (similar to Event 201 financed by Bill Gates last October – Google Event 201 – the scales will fall from your eyes) to establish the pitfalls and rewards of a betting monopoly. I have always argued that betting companies no longer rely on horse racing for its profits as sports betting in general is now big business for them. William Hill, Ladbrokes, Betfair, etc, would not be put out of business, they might even prosper.
Talking of ‘putting out of business’, as chilling as the phrase bandied about by government ministers is, the Orwellian term, ‘The New Normal’, it is nothing, as far as I am concerned, as the suggestion, usually said or reported as if it is inevitable, that ‘not everyone or everything in racing’ will survive this period inflicted on us by the Bill Gates sponsored Global Health Emergency. Surely, we should be horrified by the thought that more of our precious country racecourses might not reopen? Shouldn’t we start a fund or a crowdfunding page to help those jockeys, trainers and racecourse staff who might not survive this undemocratic laceration to their finances? All Together! It is more akin to only the strong will survive.
 

​Firstly, and please forgive me but this subject continues to rattle my cage with a ferocity like no other during my lifetime. If there is integrity in social distancing, why the need for masks, and if there is integrity in wearing masks, why the need for social distancing? A beautiful sport twisted into a public service spectacle by a government desperate to have on televised view an image to reinforce its message of fear of a virus on the wane, a virus that world data confirms is no worse than any other flu outbreak that has gone before it. I apologise if you have had a loved-one die during this ‘state of emergency’, though in your heart of hearts you will know that someone with a serious illness would similarly have had their condition worsened by any strain of flu. Worldwide, Covid-19 has killed on its own a very very small majority of people. I disagree with the racing media when they claim horse racing has shown the way forward for other sports. We have done the government’s work; we have kow-towed, curtsied to their fear-mongering and jumped through a hundred hoops for the privilege of being allowed to work and entertain the public.
While I am on a moan. The Irish, it seems, have plans to reschedule the 2020 Irish Grand National, as well as many of the races that should have been the high-point of the Punchestown Festival. Whereas, the B.H.A. just could not be bothered to reschedule the Aintree Grand National.
Anyway, they did bother to get the Guineas run, as well as Royal Ascot, though without either the Royal element or the glamour, as well as the Epsom classics. So, we know when push comes to shove where their priorities lie, don’t we?
The more the public get to know Oisin Murphy the more there is to like about him, and the image of Sheikh Fahad sat on the floor in the living room of his Newmarket home his arms aloft while his wife jumped for joy was both charming and a snapshot into a world where Sheikhs do not sit on thrones of gold or Chippendale chairs but also on the ground like you or me. Prince Fahad is centred, grounded, though living amongst horses has a tendency to do that any man or woman, wealthy or poor. Horses are levellers of human dispositions.
Kameko is a high-class horse and a good winner of a good 2,000 Guineas. Whether he is a Derby horse is another matter. Oisin seemed to think he was a 1-mile and a ¼ horse but then it is said a colt does not have to stay 1-mile and 4 to win a Derby. With the Irish Derby run this year before Epsom and, I think I read this right, the Eclipse restricted this year to 4-year-olds and up, Kameko’s connections might be forced toward Epsom. And it might prove a weak year. We just have no way of knowing at the moment, do we?
The horse I took out of the 2,000 Guineas as far as Epsom is concerned was Military March, a horse bred for further than a mile. Usually, at least it is said, the 2,000 Guineas is the best Derby trial (in the past it was described as the last two-year-old race of the previous season) though this year, with the race calendar upside down and a bit all over the place, you just wouldn’t know. With no Dante meeting this year – that is right, isn’t it? – something over the next couple of weeks, possibly at less than royal Royal Ascot, must appear as a likely Derby winner. Coolmore must have a dozen colts waiting in the wings to show their mettle and John Gosden surely must have a Derby horse or two up his sleeve. I must admit I was also taken with English King at Lingfield and I have no doubt if one of the leading stables had him, he would be half the odds he is. It would be good for the sport if he won for Ed Walker, an up and coming trainer. Flat racing could do with a bit of a shake-up. But as things stand, I think Military March is the value bet for Epsom. It would be nice if Godolphin stayed loyal to Hector Crouch but its skinny odds that Sheikh Mohammed will insist that James Doyle is in the saddle come Derby Day.
Love will win the Oaks. No discussion required.
I would like to think in appreciation of racing upholding without question the official narrative that owners will be allowed to attend race-meetings by the time of the Epsom Derby. This would be another ‘baby-step’ forward, another ‘baby-step’ toward allowing spectators to also attend. Of course, whether the B.H.A. or government could insist the Queen or members of other foreign Royal families wear face-masks and social distance might be a matter of great delicacy.
With the B.H.A. only allowing senior jockeys to ride at the moment, it is giving greater opportunity to the more famous of the female jockeys, not that Hollie Doyle requires such assistance as at present her form suggests a crack at the champion jockeys title is not out of the question. It is especially pleasing to see, at least to me as I think last season her ability was being allowed to go waste, Josephine Gordon being given greater opportunities and to see her taking full advantage. Long may it continue.

​The Moores, Taaffes, Walshes, Baldings, Carberrys etc are regularly cited when journalists trot out the names of famous racing dynasties; the Tinklers less so, which is an oversight in need of rectification.
I am also guilty of overlooking the contribution to racing provided by the Tinklers during the last forty or so years. Of course, as a family there is an absence of big gold trophies on the mantlepiece, no Grand National success, no Derby or Ascot Gold Cup. Yet as a family collective they are a success story born out of virtually nothing but grit and determination. Colin senior, Marie, Colin junior, Nigel, Kim, Andrew and a few lesser known Tinklers that perhaps I have overlooked.
I have always admired Nigel Tinkler as a trainer and I am of the opinion his success rate should be rewarded by one of the major owners sending him a decently-bred horse or two. Nigel also gives opportunities to female riders, more so than many of his training colleagues. But this article is not about Nigel but his father Colin as I have just finished reading his autobiography ‘A Furlong To Go’.
This book is an entertaining read, as Colin Tinkler wanted it to be. He never set out for the book to win awards, I’m sure. The book has its faults, especially during the chapter ‘The Foal Business’ where someone skimped on the proofreading – an arduous task for a writer who by the time of the final proofing is heartily sick of looking at ‘this child that he has risen from the very depths of his soul’. I know, I’ve been there. – where pages, 369, 370, 371 and 372 are in the wrong order, rendering the narrative a bit of a puzzle.
And those numbers demonstrate the main fault of the book as at 479 pages - including the full record of the Full Circle syndicate winners – it is too long, in desperate need, as I am on occasion, of a good editor. Two of the chapters run to 66 pages, another to 50. An editor would have mentioned this over-run and the book would have benefited.
It is, though, I stress, far from the worst book in my racing library. Colin Tinkler was born in 1926, which is a date that to his grandkids must seem like a million-years-ago. He began the introduction of the book ‘I’m Colin Howson Tinkler, the senior member of the Tinkler Racing Clan’, and though the narrative meanders through his life, what comes through to the reader is his pride in his family and the dynasty that he started with his ex-wife Marie, the first really seriously-talented female flat jockey.
I thought for a while, not really knowing anything about the Tinklers, that the book would be actually come across as a love-song to Marie, the love of his life, and I was genuinely surprised when he announced that the marriage eventually failed and they separated and finally divorced. He said it was amicable, which I am sure it was, though I suspect Marie would have given a different account of the whys and wherefores than the one Colin provided. It is a pity, given her importance to the development of the female jockeys movement, if I can call it a movement, that Marie did not also pen an autobiography. Not to dish whatever dirt there was to dish on her former husband but on being a woman in what was at the time she was riding a very male dominated sport.
When I write my opinions on the books of others, I try not to give away too much of the ‘story-line’. I rarely read the introduction to any book and never what is written on the inside cover. I want the story to unfold from chapter to chapter and as I knew very little about the Tinklers before reading Colin’s autobiography there was always an element of ‘what comes next’ and I would like anyone who tracks down a copy of the book to follow the same path. On the final page, before the appendices noting the history of winners for Full Circle, his innovative and successful syndicate, he begins the final paragraph with ‘Sadly, all good things come to an end, nothing lasts forever. One day there will be no tomorrows for me …’ He died aged 87 or 89 according to which obituary you read and whether his ashes were scattered to the winds, as he suggested in that final paragraph, I do not know. I suspect his last wish at his last breath was the hope that in death he would be reunited with Marie, though whether she would have wanted that or not only her family might know.
I am unable to conclude from the book if I would have approved of him in life, or at least that side of him that was a gambler, though, proving he really did not know when to stop writing, in a conclusion following the final paragraph he wrote ‘I thank you for taking the time and having the patience to read what I have written, I hope you have found it of interest and amusing. Glory to be, a writer who thanked his readers. A breath of fresh literary air. And yes, Colin, ‘A Furlong To Go’ was of interest and in part it was amusing.

​To begin with an example of the bleedin’ obvious: jockeys and trainers would be as nameless and unfulfilled as you or anyone without the horses that come into their lives. And, of course, the insignificant yet precious ponies that started them on the road to glory, and for the less celebrated disappointment and heartache.
I am surrounded, as I write at my desk, by biographies and autobiographies of trainers, jockeys and men and women made known to a wider circle of people than their close friends and family, the history of whom began in the majority of instances with a pony. And not always an amenable pony. John Lawrence, or Lord Oaksey as he became, even named his autobiography after his first pony ‘Mince Pie For Starters’. Mince Pie was a Welsh pony and in his autobiography there is a photograph of young Lawrence flying through the air after his mount had refused at a fence during a Tetbury Hunt cross-country event. It is an embarrassment that every famous jockey can relate to, no doubt.
Ruby Walsh, who I consider the greatest jockey of my lifetime, began with a ‘stubborn yoke’ called Pebbles who wouldn’t jump a twig, apparently, soon to be replaced by ‘Flash’, a flaxen legend of a pony that went on to teach all the Walsh children to ride. I wonder if Pebbles would have defeated the grown-up more experienced Ruby as he did when the great man was seven-years old? Incidentally I am still waiting in anticipation of the second volume of Ruby’s biography.
I often wonder what fate befell all those first winners that jockeys celebrate in their autobiographies. It is hypothetical, I know, and jockeys of the calibre of Richard Dunwoody, for instance, would not have needed the guiding hand of fate to have succeeded in his career, but would it have taken him longer to establish himself if were to have been unseated from Game Trust in a hunter chase at Cheltenham rather than winning?
The house where John Lennon was born, no doubt has a blue plaque above the door. Perhaps it is the same for the house where A.P. McCoy lived his formative years. I sometimes think, as impossible as it would be to achieve, that the horses who provided champion jockeys with their first winner should be rewarded with a marked grave and united with the name of the jockey who in time brought them fame by a stone engraved with a date and the name of the significant racecourse. Fanciful, I know. Game Trust, I would contend, was as pivotal and important to Dunwoody’s career as Desert Orchid or Remittance Man, even if in his autobiography ‘Obsessed’ he is only written about on one page.
If this idea seems too ‘Black Beauty’ to be take seriously, I remind the reader that horse racing lies on the margins of sport, even if it is one of the founding pillars of sport in this country and that we need to endear ourselves to those I dub ‘the ignorant public’, people whose view of horse racing is based wholly around use of the whip and a perceived love of money and winning at all costs.
Every book in my racing library is crammed full of the names of horses that a jockey has won on or someone has trained to win a race, each name a cobblestone on a highway to fame and glory; a name either easily recalled or referenced in the form book to steer the reader from first ride or runner to end of career. It can be no other way and I am not trying to be critical for the sake of argument. But each and every one of these horses was flesh and blood, sentient creatures that we may love dearly as a breed and to the initiated as individuals, but which can be treated coldly and with little compassion when hard business decisions must be made.
Our love can be conditional at times. The two-year-olds lacking promise are sold on at the end of the season; the handicap chaser marketed as a ‘good schoolmaster’ when he is either too high in the handicap or too slow to win under rules. No one should expect a jockey to monitor the lives of the horses they are booked to ride. They do their job, care for the horse as best as is possible during the minutes of competition, pat its neck on unsaddling and continue their arduous life with the next ride and the one after that.
Where am I going with this rambling narrative?  We, as a sport, as a collective, every one of use from B.H.A. executive down the pay scale, need, or perhaps that should be ‘have a duty’, to convince and persuade the ‘ignorant public’ that the horse is not a tool of the trade but the very heartbeat of the sport. As with any sport, not every equine athlete, as it is with the human element, can be feted, their names fit to live forever in the history of the sport. No one should suggest otherwise.
What I propose, and this is no more ghoulish, mawkish or sugarily romantic, than a village war memorial or wall of remembrance, is a memorial to both the equine fallen and the equine victorious, without one there cannot be the other. A garden of remembrance at one of the major racecourses, I suggest, maintained to a standard befitting the admittance of the public, with a wall bearing the name of a racehorse that achieved something remarkable inscribed on every brick. And I would include in that number the name of every pony that helped a famous jockey on his or her path to fame as well as that jockey’s first career winner.
Chris Pitt wrote one of the best book about horse racing the title of which sits well with the subject matter of this article – ‘Go Down To The Beaten’. It is about  jockeys and horses who didn’t win the Grand National and in its many chapters, finishing with A.P. McCoy actually winning the race, it exemplifies to the reader that winning is not everything, at least not around Aintree, and that the horse can be heroic and heralded long after the event without finishing at the sharp-end of the race. Aintree, too, should have a memorial to the equine athletes who either shone without winning around its mighty course or who sadly paid the ultimate price.
As far as it is humanly possible, racehorses who fate decreed to be stepping stones in the career path of the famous shouldn’t be mere names in biography but given a fitting memorial for their efforts in service to us.