​The temperature was rising towards 30-degrees at Ascot yesterday, yet the dress code was kept in force. Personally, I do not think sweat and style make for a good look and what the Ascot authorities do not take into account when imposing the rule that men must not take-off their jackets is that different people react differently to temperature. I cannot take a temperature above 20-degrees without going weak at the knees. Upwards of 30-degrees is a killer to me. Luckily, I live in a house where the living room is always in the shade in summer, even when the yard (or garden) is in receipt of the worst of the sunshine.
I am fully aware that some people, perhaps even the majority, rise to the sun in worship of it, but others may wilt and are made unwell by it, and one day someone will faint and on the way to the ground bang their head and die as a result of the injury, with the dress code an overwhelming factor in the death. Dress code in this day and age is plain wrong. We live, as far as the Labour Party and the outside influence that is its lord and master, in a democratic country and no one should impose on a man whether he wears a jacket, morning suit or top hat at an outside event in high summer. Smart casual is a statement for freedom of style and expression and that is as far as I will tolerate mandatory dress codes. I live in Devon and that is as close as I ever want to be to the sweat and style of Royal Ascot.
Except for the actual racing, I do not believe Royal Ascot is a good image to portray in the bid to encourage people to go racing as it is so far from reality as to make what goes on in the stands seem a pageant of days gone-by or a carnival of the haves mixing with have-nots pretending for the day to be one of the haves.
I am not a communist, I promise. I just believe wholeheartedly with people having freedom of thought, word, expression and choice of clothes.

I have mixed feelings about Amo. Instinctively I react negatively towards those like Amo and Wathnan who buy success, the latter with greater success than the former. Amo, at least, have bought yearlings, even if they have spent ridiculous sums of money to buy pedigrees associated with big race success in the past. Wathnan simply benefit from the work of others, buying older horses with form rather than taking their turn with fate by splashing their cash at the yearling sales.
That said, I hope Amo get a winner this week. A lot of people now lean on Amo for their salaries and if Kia loses interest due to a lack of big-race winners those people will be out-of-work and that would make for a poor image for any other crazily rich man tempted to get involved in the sport.

Mrs. Jane McGivern, owner of the stallion Golden Horn, is such a brilliant saleswoman. Her joy at the success of others is infectious, as her dance around the parade ring as Trawlerman was winning the Ascot Gold Cup clearly demonstrated. She obviously adores Golden Horn and is proud as a peacock to stand him as a stallion at her stud primarily as a National Hunt stallion, though, as yesterday with Trawlerman, he is also becoming an influence for stamina on the flat. When she talks about Golden Horn she sparkles with admiration for him. Breeders would be fools not to use him.

Watching the 20 and 30-runner handicaps at Ascot and then thinking back and comparing the much smaller fields at the Cheltenham National Hunt Festival, I cannot help but wonder if it should be staged earlier in the season, say November when the virtually the full gamut of National Hunt horses would be available to oversubscribe every single race. It is not as if there is a lack of big festival meetings in the spring in both this country and Ireland. Radical idea, I agree, but having Royal Ascot early in the season, with some horses having their first runs of the season, seems to work, so why should the Cheltenham Festival not flourish if staged earlier in the season rather than towards the back end?

​At just shy of £600,000, the Prince of Wales’s Stakes is the richest race at Royal Ascot. In recent years it has acquired a boost in prize-money, if not a boost in the standard and quantity of runners. I would argue yesterday’s race was hardly value for money. I am not knocking the winner as I thought him the most impressive winner of the meeting so far. Yes, slightly more impressive than Field of Gold, who might no not be the best horse in Europe after-all. I would suggest, even if it is fair repost to say that every race will wander in quality from year to year, that for £600,000 first prize money you would have thought every top or thought-to-be class 10-furlong horse would be in the line-up.
Given the now accepted need to put greater emphasis on stamina over speed, I would have thought the extra funding for the Prince of Wales’s Stakes would be of more use to the industry if it had gone to the Hardwicke Stakes, which as it is at present only a Group 2 maybe does not qualify for the value boost, and even if it should in future be worth the same amount to the winner as the Prince of Wales’s Stakes would not necessarily guarantee it favour with the European Pattern Committee that rubber-stamps such upgrades. But the Hardwicke is where I would have preferred the money to have gone, then we would have a middle-distance triple crown of the Coronation Cup, Hardwicke, King George & Queen Elisabeth Stakes.
There is another race at Royal Ascot far more worthy of being the most valuable and I will come to that in a moment.

But first I want to ask if anyone remembers Economics and the hyperbole that surrounded him the last season? As is usually the case when a young horse impresses early in its 3-year-old career, the racing media went a bit balmy, suggesting the idea that this horse was truly the second-coming of Pegasus and if not Pegasus, then Eclipse.
As a born cynic, I was not at any stage last season as impressed as everyone else and was not in the least surprised when he crashed and burned in the Champion Stakes, even if the soft ground was against him. He has not run since, though if injury had not intervened, he would have contested the Prince of Wales’ s Stakes yesterday. To me, he looks one of those horses who is stalked by the fate of ‘if it can go wrong, it will go wrong’. That said, I hope it stops going wrong long enough for William Haggas to get him back to the racecourse, if only to give some opposition to John Gosden in all the 10-furlong Group 1’s this season.
Oh, there is a very good reason why Ombudsman might swerve both the Eclipse and the Juddmonte International and that is Godolphin has Ruling Court lined-up for both those races, and Juddmonte will be very keen to preserve Field of Gold’s image of supremacy, especially in a race they sponsor. It is all about the stallion barn, remember, when it comes to the flat. Even Coolmore seem to have adopted a policy this season of keeping their very best horses apart, perhaps for the same reason. It is only about the sport for a short while for the big breeders, with priority given to where the real money can be made, and that is not between the white rails but back at the stud farm.

The race at Royal Ascot with the longest history and for the greatest amount of time during that history, the greatest prestige, is the Ascot Gold Cup and for that reason alone it should be the most valuable race of the week.
For breeders to take the concept of stamina above speed with serious intent, the long-distance races must be greater valued than they have become. Once upon a time, and the hackneyed expression is relevant here as we are quickly accelerating from those halcyon, almost mythical days, when stamina was worshiped and sprint races were almost an irrelevance, Derby winners gained in prestige if they went on to win the Ascot Gold Cup as 4-year-olds. 
Ascot and the sport in general are doing the thoroughbred breed a disservice by allowing the Gold Cup to drift into the waters of novelty, a more valuable yet only a smidgen more prestigious than the Queen Alexandria Stakes, a race that only remains as a part of the Royal meeting due to public protest. If a 10-furlong race can be valued at £600,000, surely a race with a history as glorious as the Ascot Gold Cup should be valued at a £1-million. 

​During the course of I.T.V.’s coverage of Royal Ascot yesterday I learned that Ascot are to donate £5,000 to R.o.R. for every winner Ryan Moore rides at the five-days of the meeting. Obviously, I now hope Ryan has up to ten winners this week. I would like to think, though it cannot be so as I do not have the influence, my constant moaning that the sport does not do enough to support the work of R.o.R. is beginning to find traction. What is needed, though, is not what amounts to private donations to R.o.R. but a big public display of support in the shape of either a charity meeting similar to Cancer Day at York or a whole week of racing where every winning owner, trainer and jockey is asked to donate 5 or 10% of their winnings to the charity. Our public image amongst those outside of the sport is that we do not care about what happens to racehorses once their careers are over. We need to change that perception and change it quickly.

I.T.V. was poor yesterday and I take no pleasure saying it. From missing the first furlong of the King Charles the Third Stakes, to placing more emphasis on pointless Matt Chapman interviews with trainers and owners who have more pressing issues to think about, rather than seeing as many horses as possible in the parade ring, to the inane questioning of winning jockeys by Rishi Persad and the easily forgettable (and the director I believe did forget) chat with the school children as the King and Queen rode by in the royal procession, again by Rishi Persad, to – well it was just not very good. They were trying to get a quart into a pint pot, rather than concentrating on the racing. But that is Royal Ascot, I suppose.

As predicted, Miss Megan Jordan has lost all that champagne she won at York last Saturday, which now goes to Betty Smith. The whip review committee counted up to ten uses of the whip and found Miss Jordan guilty as charged. It seems, though, according to the report in today’s Racing Post, that she did not receive any form of suspension, which I find surprising, if unfair to all the other jockeys who have fell foul to the whip rules and were punished with a suspension of their licence.

Race-planning, if it exists at all, can be laughable at times. Tomorrow there are three races for amateur riders, one at Chelmsford, a Fegentri (world championship series for amateurs, would you believe) over 10-furlongs, a similar race at Lingfield over the same distance and one for female amateurs over 12-furlongs at Ripon. All a bit different when it comes to the jockeys able to ride in these races, yet all over a middle-distance.

David Jennings was wrong about Enfjaar, he was no certainty as it turned out but he was right about Field of Gold being the best horse in Europe right now. I would not, though, being both a cynic and a pessimist, go as far as to exclaim his performance was ‘extraordinary’, as many did, as horses can win by similar distances and yet never again perform to that standard of achievement. Great horses must perform to a high standard consistently before ‘extraordinary’ becomes an unarguable adjective to use to define them. As always, John Gosden summed-up the performance to near-perfection, ‘wonderful to behold’, which it was. To me, the performance was impressive, with no hard-luck stories in behind. Now let us see how he gets on against the older milers as I suspect Rosallion will prove a harder nut to crack than the horses he beat yesterday.
Yesterday’s best result was American Affair as it proved beyond all doubt that Jim Goldie is as good a trainer as any of the big Newmarket of Lambourn trainers. It was also refreshing to have a small owner/breeder who refuses to sell her horse for mega-bucks, as is the trend nowadays.
My favourite ‘small-time’ breeder is Philipa Cooper who breeds good old-fashioned stayers and when she sells one on to help pay covering fees of top stallions she must use to get good staying types, it is a clause that after the horse finishes his racing career it must be returned to her so she can look after it in retirement. An ethic that should be encouraged and rewarded. I hope Sweet William wins her the Ascot Gold Cup.

​It took me by surprise to learn in today’s Racing Post that Ryan Moore is only eleventh on the all-time list for career winners. At the moment, Edward Hide is in tenth place retiring with a total of 2,593 winners. If, and that is a very small if, Ryan should ride four-winners this week at Royal Ascot he will move into tenth-place.
Given, and I doubt many will agree with me, that I hold Ryan Moore in such esteem that I would place him top of the all the flat jockeys who have ridden in my lifetime, above Lester Piggott, and certainly above Pat Eddery and Steve Cauthen. Up till two-years ago I struggled to decide which of Moore and Dettori would top my list, going from one to the other before deciding that Moore’s consistency warranted him being given the accolade, not that Moore would care a jot either way. He just gets on with the job. There is nothing fancy about Moore. He is Mr. Sensible. I only wish the public could see the real Ryan Moore, the man outside of the jockey. A great wit, apparently and, according to Matt Chapman, an even better husband and father than he is a jockey.
I appreciate Lester’s genius in the saddle and that, as with the always underappreciated Kieran Fallon, he seemed to form better relationships with horses than humans. I find it hard to overlook his reliance, on many occasions, on the whip and his ‘win at all costs’ riding, certainly in his early career, and would only place him third in my personal all-time list behind Moore and Dettori.
It will be interesting to see on retirement where Moore finishes in the all-time list. Given he is not necessarily a seven-meetings a week rider, perhaps ninth or tenth might be the limit of his achievement in the saddle. Though as John Randall, the Racing Post’s resident historian, will attest, there is a vast difference between quality and quantity, and Ryan Moore is definitely all about quality.

I like David Jennings. He is a man not afraid to stick his neck out and is never dissuaded from going bold even after the humiliation of being very wrong indeed. Today, at Royal Ascot, the horse David Jennings believes is the best flat horse in all of Europe runs in the St James’ Palace and I hope for his sake the beast wins and wins decisively. Field of Gold carries the weight of David Jenning’s hopes, as does the impossibly spelt and must be harder to pronounce Enfjaar in the Wolferton, a certainty, apparently. 
Jennings, if you remember, could not see past The Lion In Winter for the Derby and could not understand why Ryan Moore should overlook him for Delacroix.
That said, Jennings is a far better tipster than I shall ever be, though I suspect he takes the tipping lark no more seriously than I do. As a writer, Jennings is quality, even when he is supplying his editor with quantity..

Referencing the above. The question is do I only want Reaching High to win the Ascot Stakes as he is owned by the King and Queen or do I really fancy him? The dam famously won the Ascot Gold Cup for our late Queen, so there should be no question that the 2-miles 4 is right up his street, and he is to be ridden by Ryan Moore, so no worries there. It would be nice, though, would it not for there to be a royal winner on the opening day of Royal Ascot. And you could add to the form equation that Reaching High is trained by Willie Mullins, always a tip in itself when it comes to long-distance handicaps at Royal Ascot. Only that the Closutton maestro also runs Poniros, the 100/1 winner of the Triumph Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival. Yet Mullins has put Ryan Moore on the royal runner, or is that because Ryan Moore was always the late Queen’s favourite jockey and that royalty must have, when available, the crème de la crème?

Talk about last-minute panic. I read today that the Irish Racehorse Trainers Association has written to trainers to warn them that officialdom is about to descend upon them to inspect their horsewalkers to determine if they are complaint with E.U. regulations on machinery. If they do not have the specified mark of authenticity trainers are advised to stop using them and contact the manufacturers. I laughed at this recommendation, as if a trainers could do without their horsewalkers, and at the height of the flat season! Horsewalkers are indispensable these days. Horses are warmed-up before cantering on them and cooled down after cantering. A horse’s only exercise on some days might be an hour on the horsewalker.
Back in the day, when horsewalkers first came on the market, many trainers were vocal in their condemnation of them, thinking those that used them were lazy and trying to save money by employing less staff because of them. Now, no trainer would start training without one and all the big yards would have two, three or four of them. Different times; different values.

​When the concept of Premier Racing was rolled-out, one of the guiding principals was to protect our top races and top meetings from the overkill of other meetings staged on the same day. It is why there are only ever 3 afternoon meetings on a Saturday, with all other meetings that day starting no earlier than 4-30, though morning meetings were suggested, an experiment that has seemingly died an early death.
So why are there, for example, 4 other meetings scheduled for the first 4-days of the Royal meeting, with 6 on Saturday? I agree that jockeys, trainers and owners who do not ordinarily operate at the Royal Ascot level of the sport deserve to be rewarded every bit as much as those who dine at the top table, and I am the first to preach fairness to all and champion the way the Irish legislate periods when the top jockeys are forced to take a holiday. But Royal Ascot is, whether I agree with its pre-eminence or not, the crème-de-la crème of European racing and yet the Billy Bunter approach to race-planning determines that Stratford, Thirsk, Beverley and Southwell should also race on Tuesday. Stratford as a jumping meeting I have no cause to complain about. Yet Beverley and Thirsk are in the same county (?); surely just one of these courses should have been permitted to stage a meeting on this day.
If I had my way – if only – I would only allow one jumps meeting and one other turf flat meeting on all 5-days of the Royal meeting, one in the afternoon and the other in the evening. Royal Ascot should be a staging post in the season; five-days when the racing programme is demonstrably different to all other five-day periods during the season. The eyes of the punters should be directed at Royal Ascot, with as few distractions as possible.

Lee Mottershead, in his column in the Racing Post today – you must read it for yourselves, even if it is chilling read – gives his readers a new name to fear, a man, with influence on government if not actual power, who might go down in history alongside the destroyer of our railways branch-lines, Lord Beeching. The Treasury’s head of excise < definition – to remove by cutting it out, to remove or delete > Yes, I know in this instant excise applies to tax, yet didn’t Beeching cut out and remove thousands of miles of railway track, denuding villages and small towns of their railway connection to the big cities?
His name is Aveek Bhattacharya and he once tweeted ‘In the U.K. we don’t just tolerate the cruelty of horseracing, we impose a tax to keep subsidising it.’
The man is both wrong and ignorant, and he might be big enough to rise above his prejudice and just concentrate on doing his job. Yet the Government’s proposal to harmonise gambling tax so that all sectors are taxed to the same level – no one seems to suggest the harmonisation will be downward rather than upward – already is threat enough to cause sleepless nights for anyone who treasures our sport, who believes to have man and horse working in harmony is a wondrous thing, a clear demonstration of man caring for the welfare of another sentient being.
Surely, this week better than any other, we, as a sport, should not be concentrating on the swank of the rich and the elite at Ascot but on the daily kindness of the human to the horse. This week the major bookmakers are donating their profits from the Brittania Stakes to six small charities. A good look, yes. But not one penny of that largesse is going to an equine charity. York raised funds for Cancer Charities on Saturday. Why not do the same for R.o.R. Later in the season on Ebor Day, every horse in the Ebor will be raising money for local charities, why not this year include equine and animal charities. Racing people are animal lovers. There should be a campaign to inform this truth to the likes of the Treasury’s head of excise and those who stand beside him on this subject. 

​I would imagine Jo Mason lights-up any room in which she enters. In silks, she is a largely undiscovered talent, even if she is presently challenging Holley Doyle as leading female professional rider. Jo Mason would not be one for blowing her own trumpet, leaving her riding to do all the talking on her behalf.
I, on the other hand, will blow my own trumpet as, unlike Miss Mason, I have no talent to talk on my behalf. I have trumpeted the riding ability of this Yorkshire lass since she won a race at the Shergar Cup meeting for William Haggas and I am astonished she is not in greater demand for the lower weighted runners in the Royal Ascot handicaps this week. For her weight, I doubt if there is any male jockey better than her.
Her winning ride on Hucklesbrook for Roger Teal at York yesterday in the big sprint handicap was a typical no-nonsense ride that is her trademark. She can use the whip all-right but it is a last resort. Finesse and perseverance are her style and I doubt if Hucklesbrook had too hard a race yesterday and actually won quite cosily. Though she will not figure too much in the conversation with Dancing Gemini’s owner as to who will ride the horse in the Queen Anne of Tuesday, I suggest she is now higher-up the pecking order for Roger Teal when it comes to rides on his lesser horses. Mind you, if I owned Dancing Gemini I know who I would be putting-up, even if Oisin Murphy was clamouring for the ride.

As Miss Megan Jordan was pulling-up after being first passed the post in the big ladies amateur race at York on My Dream World, I was telling no one in particular – I was alone, except for one of the cats and she had no interest in anything I was saying – that she was at risk of being disqualified. Which is a pity as she is Dancing Gemini’s work-rider – she works for Roger Teal – and while he is attempting to bring another Group 1 success for Roger Teal, the whip review committee will doubtless have already disqualified My Dream World, how ironic a name, and given Miss Jordan a rather long suspension. For example, if her boyfriend David Probert were to be given, say, a 21-day ban, that would be the period he would be off games. But for an amateur, 21-days represents 21-days in which there are amateur races on a race-card. In effect Miss Jordan might not ride again in public until the autumn at the earliest. And this after demonstrating her survival skills in the saddle when losing both an iron and her whip, miraculously retrieving both without the horse losing its position. Life can be unfair at times.

When I was searching my memory for popular handicappers of the past, and failing miserably – Morris Dancer is another that has come to mind – I should have used Copper Knight as an example from this day and age. Yesterday at Chester he won for the 17th time, running in his 107th race. A true hero of this racing age and a tribute to Tim Easterby and his staff in a week when the greatest Easterby of them all left us for eternal peace. Jo Mason, too, is part of this legendary family.

Royal Ascot next week. The sodding fashion, the high society, the once-a-year racegoer just wanting to be seen amongst the big-money set, the champagne, the stupid morning suits and top-hats, the sweating brows and arm-pits and no doubt the heavy stench of perfume of every hue and aroma, yet some of the most fantastic racing anywhere in the world. What a contrast! What a week to look forward to from my comfortable armchair. No, there is no incentive sweet enough to persuade me to involve myself bodily with Royal Ascot. It is not me and it is not the image we should be giving to the outside world. Everyday horse racing is not pomp and ceremony, haute-couture, silly hats, Pimms, strawberries and money, money, money, but working-class hard work and dedication to the cause. I love Royal Ascot while resenting it with passion at the same time. 

​Commentators on the sport, especially the writers in the Racing Post team, when controversy is hard to find, will often give their take on how National Hunt racing can be fixed, made better by either tweaks here and there or a widescale overhaul of the race programme. I am not saying they are often wrong; many a time they are bang on the money. What surprises me, though, is that no one seems to believe that the flat is also either in need of tinkering with or perhaps given a widescale overhaul.
National Hunt racing has a clear and defined narrative, a winding road that leads to gold and the sort of treasures we ordinary folk can only dream or fantasise about. The dreamed-of destination is the Cheltenham Festival and the Aintree National meeting, and for the Irish Fairyhouse and the Irish National, with the culmination of the whole season at Punchestown. Winter may cause bumps in the road and the lack of suitable novice chases can give the top trainers sleepless nights but on the whole the narrative is compelling. Yes, I forever call for the Betfair Chase to be either discontinued or altered so that it becomes a race for last seasons novices but I would not advocate too much disturbance to the set programme.
The flat on the other hand has no clear and defining narrative. Where does it begin; where does it end; where is the climax to the season? It is a dumb scenario. Because the Guineas are in late April/early May, the classic generation are rushed to fitness, with half the field for both races comprising horses having their first run of the season. Aidan O’Brien has come to the conclusion that the Guineas are an impediment to getting a horse to last the whole season and is beginning to prefer keeping his top 3-year-olds for the French and Irish Guineas.
As a staunch royalist it behoves me to make even the weakest criticism of our king and queen, and certainly not the monarch who went before them. But too much of the flat fixture list is designed around the centuries-old royal summer social merry-go-round of Royal Ascot, Henley, Wimbledon, etc.. It is a frantic gallop from the Guineas Meeting, to Epsom, to Royal Ascot. It is a quarts and pint-pots conundrum. Those with only one morning suit hardly have time to have it dry-cleaned after Epsom and to have the creases razor-sharp for the marathon that is Royal Ascot.
After the Royal meeting, it is one summer festival after another. Too much, I say. And do not suggest the climax to the flat season is Champions Day back at Ascot. Because no it is not. Whether we like it or not, the flat has no climax, and, yes I will say this again, it is utterly ridiculous to crown the champion jockey weeks before the season has ended. Try explaining the rationale for this silliness to someone with only a passing interest in the sport.
I hope if, when and if again, he takes up office, Baron Allen will crack his whip and set in motion a review of the flat narrative. Personally, I would like to see the turf season begin no earlier than the day after the Aintree National, though having said that I am reminded of my support for Dan Skelton’s proposal to stage the Aintree National later in the season, as the last meeting of the season. If that should come about, I would suggest the flat season should start no earlier than the first week in April. I would have no two-yar-old racing until May. I would have the Guineas meeting in mid-May at the earliest, with Royal Ascot before the Derby and Oaks. I would instigate a Triple Crown for sprinters, milers, middle-distance and stayers, and I would delay the Eclipse until a month after the Derby and upgrade it to classic status. It makes more sense in this day age for the Triple Crown to represent the type of horse that is now bred, with a Guineas, Derby, Eclipse, a far more appropriate modern-day Triple Crown than with the St.Leger, a race run 4-months after the second leg of the series. Personally, I would open-up the St.Leger to older horses and have it as the third leg of the middle-distance Triple Crown.
Three Group 1 sprints should be chosen for the sprinters Triple Crown and 3 for the stayers and middle-distance Triple Crowns. This proposal is based on trying to persuade owners to keep their best horses in training as 4-year-olds.
I would also limit the number of Group 1 2-year-old races to one for colts over 6-furlongs and a mile, with the same for the fillies. 
Though I would scrap Champions Day as it makes the summer schedule too top-heavy, if it should remain in the calendar perhaps, though I would not approve, the final leg of a couple of the triple crown races might be staged at the fixture, so at least it might live-up to its title of ‘champions day’.
I would bring the season to a close at Doncaster on the day of the St.Leger, even if that is in November, though I would prefer it to be in October, with the November Handicap re-named the October Handicap, and as close to the last day of October as possible.
If my proposals were adopted, which they will not be, the flat would still be a messy affair, though I would contend that the invention of triple crowns for sprinters, milers, middle-distance and stayers would provide flat racing with an on-going narrative that is something similar to which National Hunt enthusiasts enjoy.

​Chris Cook in his column today is 100% right in his opinion that the Derby is not respected within sport for no other reason than the leadership of racing does not respect it. Since the race was ripped from its traditional place in the racing and sporting calendar, the first Wednesday in June, the Epsom Derby has a wanderer, a vagrant in search of place in time. It must fit in with the needs and wants of other sports. It has lost its place, its history has become meaningless, it must learn to know its place in the sporting hierarchy, and that is no place at all. As Chris Cook writes, any time of day will do. From the lunchtime of Auguste Rodin to the early tea time of whoever won that year. Oh, and England were playing Andorra last Saturday. Andorra was considered more of a catch to I.T.V. than the Epsom Derby! That is what racing is up against.
Chris Cook is right. Though he will not agree with me that the day should be the first Wednesday in June and the time should be thirty-minutes past three. If the Cheltenham and Ascot Gold Cups can be staged on a weekday without any fall in betting revenue, then why can’t the Epsom Derby be staged on a Wednesday?

Mr Jonathan Smith, a retired French teacher from Surbiton, home of the Goods (The Good Life) takes umbrage in a letter to the Racing Post on the mispronunciation of the names of horses blemished by having the French language used to name them. Seemingly, no one, perhaps not even French-speaking Sally-Anne Grassick, pronounce these names correctly and Mr. Smith is unhappy about it. My solution is simple, when horses cross the channel to be trained in Britain and Ireland translate their names into English.

​I am ashamed to say that I was no admirer of Crisp when he came to this country from Australia. I am prone to xenophobia and whatever the sport I am always firmly on the side of English or British participants. For instance, I am always more interested in the first week of Wimbledon than the second and the only finals I have ever watched were those which involved British players.
Crisp’s victory in the 2-mile Champion Chase at Cheltenham I cannot recall as no doubt I was too disappointed he was able to defeat the English contingent. Back then the Irish were small-time players at the National Hunt Festival, though doubtless most of the winning horses were Irish-bred, with a good number of them ridden by jockeys born and raised in Ireland.
I suspect I believed Crisp to be a good horse, though not the great horse he was to become. I get such things wrong ever now. The year before he had gone off favourite for the Cheltenham Gold Cup only to finish fifth behind Glencaraig Lady, Royal Toss, The Dikler and L’Escargot. By nature, Crisp was a front runner and in the Gold Cup he could not dominate and ran a lacklustre race, though at the same time determining how he should be ridden in the Grand National the following season.
So, when he lined-up with 12-stone on his back and with 4-miles and 4-furlongs in front of him, I dismissed his chances from my mind. Not that I considered Red Rum’s chance to be any better. I cannot say with any certainty the horse I backed that day, though as Spanish Steps was in the race and he was and remains one of my favourite horses of all-time, I cannot believe I placed my small bet on any horse but he. 
As I have said many times, I have a poor memory, even for events in the past, though this race, perhaps more than all the thousands of races I have witnessed in the raw or on television (the 2016 Champion 2-mile Chase may be the exception) remains clear in my mind’s eye. I must add, though, that I have stopped watching replays of the race on YouTube as even 52-years later the last 100-yards of the race remain as heartbreaking as anything I have experienced on a racecourse.
I recommend that anyone too young to have watched the race in 1973 should seek it out and enjoy the greatest performance any horse, flat or jumping, has ever produced on a British racecourse, perhaps on any racecourse around the world. From the Chair onwards, I went from disparaging Crisp to worshipping him as a horse from the gods. What he done that day, not that we knew it until four Grand Nationals later, was to very nearly (3/4’s of a length, to be precise) achieve the truly impossible. Arkle could not have achieved what Crisp so nearly achieved that day.
Crisp did not merely just jump the fearsome fences, and back then the fences were still fearsome, he took them on as if they were a mere inconvenience, demolishing in the process history’s perception of Aintree as a test too severe to be ever conquered. To say he jumped from fence to fence would be an under-estimation of the achievement. He gained a length or more on his rivals at every fence. By Bechers second-time around, the cameras could not keep Crisp and his toiling rivals in the same shot. Julian Wilson exclaimed he had never seen a horse so far in front at that point in a Grand National. If Brien Fletcher had waited one moment longer to go in pursuit of Richard Pitman, he would not have won. What is ¾-of a length timewise? Is it even measurable?
And never criticise Pitman’s riding of Crisp, even if he blames himself for the defeat for picking up his whip going to the elbow and allowing the horse to wobble off a true line. On that day, Richard Pitman possibly experienced the greatest ride any jockey has had at Aintree. He knew that to get the best out of Crisp you had to allow him free rein to go his own pace.
And the reasons I voted the 1973 Grand National as the greatest race in the history of the sport were the following. No horse in the history of National Hunt racing would have been able to give Red Rum, the greatest Grand National horse of all-time, 23Ibs and beat him. Not even Arkle or Golden Miller in his heyday, I believe. Also, not only did Red Rum shatter the course record, so did Crisp, and though they were 25-lengths in arrears, both L’Escargot and Spanish Steps were inside the old record time, the third carrying the same weight as Crisp, with Spanish Steps 1-Ib less.
Not surprisingly, Crisp was never the same bull of a horse after his run at Aintree. The 2-miler who so nearly won a Grand National, died peacefully in his stable after a morning out hunting. I believe he made it to 20 years of age and had, I hope, as many years in retirement as he did as a racehorse. Red Rum, being the indomitable force of nature that he was, lived into his thirties.
Wouldn’t the sport be grateful to have two such horses in training now? 

​The County Cricket Ground in Derby used to be known as the Racecourse Ground. The reason is obvious; it is the site of the old Derby racecourse.
Now staged at the Cheltenham Festival, The National Hunt Chase was run at Derby 5-times. In 1887, the race was won by the famed amateur rider Roddy Owen on Monkshood. Owen won the 1892 Grand National on Father O’Flynn and the following day he applied for national service and was posted to the Gold Coast and Egypt. During the Dongola expedition in 1896 he heard that Father O’Flynn had finished second to The Soarer in the Grand National of that year and was reported upon hearing the result to have said. “Damn it! Why wasn’t I there and not on this infernal expedition?” He died four-months later of cholera.
Racing in Derby boomed as the racecourse was situated close to the Midland Railway station which had a horse dock, as did Nottingham Road close by. It was a racecourse in the right place at the right time.
Derby was right-handed and oval, with a wide-open straight mile. The National Hunt course was a system of concentric circles and was not as popular with trainers as the flat course. As was usual in days gone by, it was not an over-used racecourse, with three two-day fixtures over the jumps and four-meetings on the flat, two single day fixtures in the spring and two three-day fixtures in the autumn, with the main meeting being in November, the Peaks of Derbyshire meeting, with the highlight the Derby Cup.
Hackler’s Pride, winner of the 1903 Cambridgeshire, will ever be famous for that victory as it was one of the greatest betting coups ever to be successful on a British racecourse. Hackler’s Pride had made her British racing debut the year earlier at Derby, and here is the point of bringing her to your notice, winning the Chesterfield Nursery, backed from 100/8 to 9/2 she beat a field of 28 by 4-lengths. The race was worth £1.000 to the winner. That is the equivalent of £157,000 in today’s money. Seems absolutely ridiculous, doesn’t it? And I find it hard to believe myself. But that is the amount the calculator answered when I submitted the question.
The best flat horse ever to make an appearance at Derby was The Tetrarch when winning the Champion Breeders Foals Plate.
The best steeplechaser, and the greatest horse ever to run at Derby, was the mighty Golden Miller. In 1935, at odds of 7/100 on, he won the Breadsall Chase and took home for his connections the less impressive sum of £68.
The 1930’s seem as far back in time as the dark ages and it is surprising to see that the Peveril of the Peak Handicap was won that year by Doug Smith on a horse owned by Tom Blackwell, two names that may be unfamiliar to anyone twenty-years younger than my age but two names that were part and parcel of my early years following the sport.
A race at Derby in 1938 should be a lesson to everyone about coming out-of-retirement for one more stab at glory. The owner of the winner of the 1937 Grand National, Hugh Lloyd Thomas, a former successful amateur rider and formerly private secretary to the Prince of Wales, decided, against the best advice of his friends, to come out of retirement, perhaps to ride Royal Mail in that year’s Grand National. He was 50. Sadly, on 22nd February at Derby he had a fall in a Hunters Chase and was killed.
The 2nd World War stopped racing at Derby, as it did for many of our racecourses. At the last National Hunt meeting amongst the winning riders were Fred Rimell and George Owen, both of whom went on to become leading trainers, and the hunter chase winner was ridden by Reg Tweedie who will forever be known as the owner and trainer of Freddie, twice runner-up in the Grand National in the 1960’s.
After the war the Council refused to renew the lease of the ground to the Derby Recreation Company, preferring to enlarge the cricket ground which was inside the old racecourse. The area around the County Cricket Ground as it is now known is still referred to as Racecourse Park.
Derby racecourse has not existed in the whole of my lifetime and until I read Chris Pitts wonderful book ‘A Long Time Gone’ (a book every racing enthusiast should have on their bookshelves) my knowledge of it was zilch, and yet whenever I read a biography of a jockey who once rode there or a great horse that forged its career there, I get sentimental for it and wish it were still a viable racecourse. I get soppy like that, believing racecourses, those green oases of fresh air and green habitats should be preserved, as are cotton mills and stately mansions, especially in urbanised cities like Derby and Birmingham.