​I admit to being initially disappointed that neither of the two most important appointees in racing’s most recent history have no experience, or indeed love, of the sport they are now empowered to rule over. They are both, without a shadow of a doubt, proven winners throughout their careers and have the skills and knowledge to be a safe pair of hands. I would just like to see someone from within the industry, and not necessarily someone currently employed by either the B.H.A. or The Jockey Club, to have worked their way up to one of the highest offices the sport has to offer.
Look, Delia Bushell, the new supremo at The Jockey Club, and Annamarie Phelps, head honcho at the B.H.A. are smart cookies, with a curriculum vitae that fair crackles with evidence of wise decision-making and a methodology for getting stuff done. But have either of them had their toes trodden on by half-a-ton horse or had a silk blouse torn by the playful nip of a testosterone-charged two-year-old colt? Or even had £20 on a ‘good thing’ only to see it beaten a head by a horse ridden by a jockey who broke the whip guidelines? Or even sat on the back of a horse? Is experience of any of that important for steering a multi-million- pound industry to places it might not want to go? Or even to simply keep it afloat in waters it thinks a safe anchorage? Probably not. But it would give the sport, I believe, greater confidence if someone were appointed to these posts whose first utterances to the racing media were not “I’m looking forward to immersing myself fully into the world of racing” as full immersion in the sport would include hoof on foot, teeth ripping blouse, backing certainties that end-up losers and having more than a long-distance acquaintance with the animal at the heart of our sport.
Delia Bushell, who takes over from Simon Bazalgette in September as group chief executive at the Jockey Club has landed the job due to her proven record at Sky and B.T. for acquiring sports rights. For racing her first priority will be selling media rights, a case of poacher turned gamekeeper, perhaps.
A glance at her c.v. suggests she is someone who rarely sticks around for very long in any one job, though that may be par for the course in her line of work. No more than 12-months in her previous job and 3-years before that as managing director for B.T. Sport. In her defence she did last 11-years with Sky in several differing roles.
Annamarie Phelps, since June 1st the chair of the B.H.A. came to horse racing from British Rowing and the British Olympic Association, so in that respect she is at least ‘sporty’, having won gold in the woman’s eights at Atlanta in 1996 and was 3-times a world champion. Whether such sporting prowess is necessarily a good fit for running a sport that relies so heavily on an animal with no association with rule-makers I don’t really know. The proof, I suppose will be in the eating of the pudding she produces. With all the problems she inherited on day one, some of which, the never-ending saga about use of the whip, for instance, have bedevilled the sport for decades, she will have to be a quick learner and a diligent listener.
What is pleasing, for a sport that is both excellent at providing equal opportunities for both sexes and also very slow at giving female jockeys entry into the big league of the sport, is that, as their names suggest, they are both women, and as such might breeze a change of insight into the management and direction of the sport, as their male predecessors never really impressed, although again I am doubtless doing Steve Harmon and Simon Bazalgette a great disservice.
Both these women will be working at what I think of as the boring, though incredibly important, end of the sport. Media rights, broadcasting rights – don’t you dare give this sport over to satellite broadcasters, Miss Bushell – talking about FOBT’s, meeting after meeting, trying to talk sense into politicians etc and so on.
I hope both of them attend race meetings as often as their workload allows and tune into I.T.V.’s excellent coverage of the sport. But most importantly is that they visit racing yards and talk to trainers, jockeys, owners and stable staff, to listen to what they have to say, on how they see the problems that beset them daily and how they feel the future of the sport should be shaped. This is a hands-on sport, a sport of muck and toil, of hope and disaster, of joy and despair. This is, and can only ever be, a sport of blood, sweat and tears, with the horse, every horse, not the B.H.B. or The Jockey Club, as its driving force.
I wish the two women the greatest amount of luck.

​Although it was a mighty battle at Ascot on Saturday between Enable and Crystal Ocean, was I the only one who thought the mare won a shade cosily at the end? Whatever, the real winner on Saturday was the sport of horse racing. A brilliant race, a fair result and the sight of two of the greatest jockeys in the world demonstrating wonderful jockeyship skills. I thought Frankie was absolutely brilliant  and if that ride does not win him a ride of the season award then there is either no justice in the world or we will have witnessed something close to miraculous in the saddle between now and the end of the season, by which I mean November 2nd and Newmarket (if that correct) and not Ascot in October.
Tell me the last time on the flat a jockey won a titanic tussle for a major race, when it was nip and tuck right to the shadow of the winning post, without resorting to the whip? One flick to ask Enable to lengthen and then hands and heels in rhythm with her stride pattern. Masterly. A clear illustration to the dinosaurs who believe horses must be beaten with the whip to generate excitement that finesse and horsemanship makes a more beautiful picture. And James Doyle should not be overlooked. He played his part in a race of excellence, quality and pleasurable, non-controversial, viewing.
As I wrote in a previous piece, if Enable were successful in adding the King George & Queen Elisabeth and the Arc to her already impressive C.V. would she then be afforded the mantle of ‘one of the all-time greats’? It seems to be that this accolade is rarely ascribed to mares. They also rarely are given official ratings that put them on a par with the top colts. If it is because they always receive an allowance for being female so?  If so this is unfair as three-year-old colts receive weight from their elders and yet the likes of Sea The Stars and Dancing Brave receive ratings after winning weight-for-age races that far outnumber any rating Enable is likely to achieve.
Enable is, without doubt, a great racehorse. Yes, nowadays her winning margins are tiny compared to her three-year-old days but if the maxim is true for humans that there is no point getting older if you do not get wiser, then it must also apply to equine athletes. During his stellar career on occasions, usually when the ground was soft, Frankel only got home by the skin of his teeth, beating narrowly horses of lesser ability that the form book and the ratings suggested he should have brushed aside without undue effort. I swear Enable only got down to the urgent stuff on Saturday when it looked to her that Crystal Ocean was serious about finishing in front of her.
Of course, as has recently been proved by Winx in Australia, there is no reason why Enable shouldn’t be kept in training as a six-year-old. I realise Prince Khallid has rewritten his own rule book in keeping Enable in training as long as he has in an attempt to win the unprecedented third Arc, so why not a fourth Arc as Winx was kept in training so she could win a fourth Cox Plate? And wouldn’t that give racing the promotional boost it will need in the new dawn that will be life freed from the thumbscrews of the E.U.?
In fact, was it not refreshing to have so many five-year-olds in the big race on Saturday? The big owner/breeders are without doubt the lifeblood of flat racing but it is beholding on them, in my opinion, to race their best horses for as long as the horses enjoy their racing. If they breed to breed, then the policy of early retirement makes sense. But if they breed to race and to increase the virility of their blood-lines then surely it is incumbent on them to race their top horses to expose their limitations, not to whisk them off to stud to milk them every single million dollars they can get out of them? Three-year-olds that go to stud on the strength of their pedigree, the achievements more of their forebears than themselves, who are retired through injury, will only pass on, if it is the case, their foibles and weaknesses as a racehorse. It is the same with Derby winners that do not win, or even race, after Epsom. We know one of their strengths but we shall never know their limitations until they are passed on in their genes.
I suspect Enable is the greatest race mare since Pretty Polly or Meld. Great race mares rarely breed foals that turn out anywhere near as good as their dams.  So financially it might be worth rolling the dice again next season and seeking that unprecedented third King George & Queen Elisabeth and what would doubtless prove to be an unbeatable for ever more fourth Arc. We can only dream, can’t we?

​John Randall, the racing historian for the Racing Post, claims, quite rightly in my opinion, that quantity and quality are not necessarily bosom buddies. If 3 is the standard upon which all others must be assessed, then Best Mate was the equal of Arkle, at least at Cheltenham in the Gold Cup. An absurd assertion, I know, as virtually no one would place the gallant Best Mate in the top ten steeplechasers of all time, let alone in front of the immortal Arkle. It is the same with Golden Miller, winner of 5 consecutive Gold Cups in the mid-thirties, although at the time no one would have argued the case for any horse being better than The Miller in the whole history of steeplechasing up to the mid-thirties. And perhaps he hung on to the accolade right up to 1963 or 4.
Of course, no horse since has won 5 Gold Cups, consecutively or in broken sequence and he also achieved a remarkable victory in the 1934 Grand National, winning in a course record time on ground described as soft, giving away lumps of weight to most of the top chasers around at the time. It is his Liverpool success that sets him apart, even if in later years the kind and agreeable Miller took great exception to be faced with the big black fences year after year.
Golden Miller is in my mind as I have just finished reading a book written by the man who trained him to 4 of those Cheltenham victories, Basil Briscoe.
I had coveted this book since first becoming aware of its existence but baulked at the £45 price tag and only committed myself to buying it when the vendor kindly reduced the price to £30, the limit my lack of wealth imposes on my desire to acquire an impressive racing library.
Sadly, the book did not live up to my aspirations for it. This can often be the case. As is the opposite. I can buy a book for no other reason than it is there and can keep it unread on the shelf for years in the belief that it will make poor reading, only to be delighted to be proved wrong. ‘Passports to Life’, the autobiography of Harry Llewellyn, is a case in point, though technically it is not 100% a racing book as it takes in his war-time service in the army and his show-jumping career. But a good read, nonetheless. I also had no expectation of liking ‘The Sure Thing’ by Nick Townsend due to my prejudice against the subject matter, Barney Curley. Enjoyed the book immensely and had my opinion of Barney Curley has completely altered.
Anyway, to return to ‘The Life of Golden Miller’. It is poorly written, with many facts oft repeated, the great horse’s greatest victories scantily described and with too many references to the author’s adventures in the hunting field, although the book, in Briscoe’s defence, was written during the war years when life in this country was different to today in more ways than the general lack of tolerance for blood sports than was the case in Briscoe’s day.
During the period from the Gold Cup’s inception in 1924 to the years immediately after the 2nd World War the race was merely viewed as a trial for the Grand National and was not even the most important race run at the National Hunt Festival. It is somewhat of an eye-opener that the race everyone wanted to win outside of the Grand National was the National Hunt Chase, a 4-miler confined to amateur riders and maiden chasers.
In 1932, Golden Miller’s first Gold Cup triumph, only 5 ran and in the 4 subsequent years the field was comprised of horses better known for their exploits at Liverpool and who were for the best part only running in the Gold Cup as part of their preparation for Liverpool. It is against this background that Golden Miller must be judged, even if Arkle, once he had put Mill House in his place, won Gold Cups that were possibly less competitive than any of Golden Miller’s.
Great Horses scare off the best opposition. It is the case today as it was in the decades before. I doubt if any of the great steeplechasers past or present ever beat a horse as good as Mill House, though, a horse who would have had books written about him if Arkle had never been born. His trainer, Fulke Walwyn, a legend amongst trainers, unequivocally answered to the question ‘which was the best horse you ever trained’, and he trained many top-class jumpers during his long career, ‘Mill House. We thought him unbeatable until Arkle proved us wrong.’
In Golden Miller’s day the only race of importance over jumps was the Grand National. There was no Hennessey, King George, Betfair or any of the valuable sponsored chases that first came about when Arkle appeared on the scene, so Golden Miller had no opportunity to make his name anywhere but at Cheltenham and Liverpool. For all that, I think it very hard for anyone to make a case for Golden Miller being a better horse than Arkle or even Kauto Star, though I am quite certain he ranks higher in the pantheon than Best Mate, a winner of three substandard Gold Cups.
One thing I do know, because of him, because he elevated National Hunt to where it remains till this day, Golden Miller should not be allowed to become nothing but a faded memory and the race named after him at Cheltenham’s April meeting should be given greater status than a middle-of-the-road handicap. 

Click hCaptain Sir Cecil Boyd-Rochfort, trainer to the Queen and many members of the aristocracy, began his career in racing as assistant to Atty Persse in 1906 and brought the curtain down in 1968. From his Freemason Lodge stables in Newmarket he trained such horses as Royal Minstrel, Meld, Alcide, Prince Simon, Aureole and Parthia, his only Epsom Derby winner. Mind you, if the Derby kept on escaping his trophy cupboard until 1959, he won plenty of other classic races – the St.Leger, when it was almost as prized as the Derby, 6 times, the 2,000 Guineas once, the 1,000 Guineas 3 times and the Oaks twice. He also landed six Irish classics, the Ascot Gold Cup, during a time when the previous year’s classic horses would stay in training in an effort to boost their stallion potential by adding it to their c.v., 3 times and the Eclipse 4 times. In fact, as a trainer there was practically no major race that escaped his clutches. He was a top-notch trainer in a similar vein to Sir Michael Stoute today.
Most of his career was before my time and when he was training horses like Raise You Ten, Sagacity, Canisbay, Apprentice, Gaulois and Castle Yard, I was not so aware of trainers as I was of the names of horses and the jockeys who rode them. I should imagine I was only becoming aware of trainers and where they trained around the time Boyd-Rochfort retired to allow his young upstart stepson Henry to put one foot on the employment ladder.
It takes a brave or perhaps foolhardy man to marry for the first time at 59, especially to someone as young and attractive as Rohays Cecil, a widowed mother of 4 boys. But that is what Cecil Boyd-Rochfort elected to do in 1944, seemingly to great success.
Stepson Henry’s career as a trainer spanned the entirety, and thankfully, for me anyway, of my love and interest in flat racing and it was only reading Bill Curling’s authoritative biography of Boyd-Rochfort did I appreciate the fact.
For whatever reason you can never forget the names of some horses, even if you cannot recall the races they won. The last good horse Boyd-Rochfort trained was Wolver Hollow, owned by an American (he had many rich American owners during his career) Mrs. Hope Iselin. The horse was anything but easy to train as he hated the new-fangled starting stalls, as did his trainer and was not a good eater, but Boyd-Rochfort had great faith in him and campaigned him in top races from two-years old onwards. He was placed in the Greenham, ran in the 2,000 Guineas and the St.James Palace and was 3rd in the Cambridgeshire. As a four-year-old he won a race in France and was trained again for the Cambridgeshire, finishing 3rd under 54-year-old Scobie Breasley. The owner incidentally was 100 and the trainer 81 years-of-age.
As a five-year-old, trained by first-season trainer and I believe his first-ever winner, Wolver Hollow won the Eclipse and the legend that became Henry Cecil was off and running.
 
Unfortunately I must return to the topic of horses names. I am informed by ‘The Dikler’ in today’s Racing Post that a young horse was recently sold in Ireland that has already been registered with the name Comedy of Errors. Apparently, the name has ‘slipped through the net’. Of course, now the ‘slip-up’ is noticed and made public we can only hope the B.H.A. get off their cushioned asses to ensure the hole in the net is mended and the present owners of this horse are informed that its name must be changed before it sets foot on a racecourse.
For the uninitiated, Comedy of Errors won two Champion Hurdles for Fred Rimell during a period of the sport’s history that is referred to as ‘the golden age of hurdlers’ – Monksfield, Dramatist, Night Nurse Sea Pigeon etc. It is a disgrace that this embargoed name as slipped the net, a disgrace that no one at the B.H.A. recognised the name and its importance to the sport and will go far beyond disgraceful if this name again appears on a race-card.
 
How good is Enable? Turning a blind eye to her official rating, the big race victories she has so far accumulated is becoming very impressive. To the point that if she adds a second King George & Queen Elisabeth and a third Arc, would she not be teetering on becoming one of, if not the greatest, racehorses in flat racing history? If she wins at Ascot, and why shouldn’t she? her rating should go through the roof, not that alone would that qualify her for greatness. But has any other horse in history won two classics, two K G & Q E’s, three Arcs and a Breeders Cup, plus the Eclipse and every other race she will have won come October?
ere to edit.

​I have written on this subject and I apologise for banging on about it, especially as in the present racing climate there are many more important issues that need to be addressed.
There is a page on this site dedicated to possible names owners, if they are experiencing difficulty either having a name accepted by the B.H.A. or even coming up with a name, might choose to take advantage of. I admit that this never-ending list of possible names has become an obsession, with my eye constantly on fixed alert for any word, name or combination of the two that to me seems like a nice name for a racehorse.
Unlike the B.H.A. I believe the naming of racehorses to be of significant importance and not as difficult a task as they would have us believe. The English language alone should be enough to satisfy anyone wishing to name a horse, added to which there is the little matter of all the other languages of the world to use, as well as names that can be made at random –Lessargo, Morargo, Forargo, Bosargo, just off the top of my head, to give such examples.
Amongst embargoed names, horse who have won the classics, the Ascot Gold Cup, Grand National, Cheltenham Gold Cup etc, are the names of horses that have held a memorable place in racing’s history. I have no idea what the criteria might be for defining ‘memorable’, and it is rather shocking to discover that Golden Cygnet died 41 years ago, but if his name is not memorable then not many can be. Vincent O’Brien, no less, described him as the best hurdler he ever saw. Yes, his reign was short as the fates were unkind to him, yet whenever a young horse wins one of the novice hurdles at the Cheltenham Festival, Samcro being the latest, it is compared to Golden Cygnet, for his performance in the Supreme Hurdle is the defining benchmark for any young horse – ‘the best performance at a Cheltenham Festival since Golden Cygnet’, will be heard for many a long year to come.
The ‘suits’ at the B.H.A. just do not get it, do they? Names are important. They are the strands that take us back in time to memories that are fondly held, that remind us of days and moments that can never be forgetten. My angst on this matter was brought to a head when Coolmore were allowed to call a horse Spanish Steps, and they were not the first to do so. If Spanish Steps did not fall into the category of ‘if a horse has clearly crossed the threshold into becoming a household name’ that allowed an embargo to be placed on his name, then tell me of a horse who does? I do not claim to receive hundreds of contacts but over the years the highest single topic is when people discover my blogs about Spanish Steps and my belief that there should be a cherished list of famous names of horses who have, to use B.H.A. speak. ‘crossed the threshold into becoming a household name’, and that is the households of people who hold this sport dear to their heart, not just anybody.
Racehorses deserve our 100% respect. We cannot praise them to the sky when they win, for example as this is relevant to the present debate on this subject, the Portland Handicap (the name Fantasy Believer has been reused, the original having won 17 races, including the before mentioned race), and then dismiss their memory as irrelevant when someone wants to reuse their name. Big race winners should have their names embargoed for fifty years, not twenty or five years after death. The mighty few should never have their name reused. At the moment there is a Manderin running on the flat. Talk about legend. There is an equine legend and nobody has kicked up a fuss about having a mere flat racer bearing his name. It’s nothing short of scandalous.
I have opened today’s Racing Post at random to Ballinrobe and the 8.10. From this race I can come up with the following possible names – One Mile, Formula Memphis, Marlborough Mel, Sound Burn, Noble Minola, Bianca Expression, Vita Copia, Charlie Khudha, and using the names of jockeys in the following race, Seamie Lee, Slattery Ross, Manning Mark, Madden Hayes, Orr Keane. They might make no sense but the names of racehorses rarely make sense. They only have to sound respectful of the beautiful creature who will be referenced by it in their lifetime and hopefully long into the future.
Will we one day seen names such as Freddie, Baulking Green, Flying Ace, and more up to date as they are yet to win one of the selected races that in winning will allow their name to die with them, Frodon, Black Corton, Pacha Du Polder, Top Notch?
It should not be too difficult a task to give a racehorse an original name or at least a name that doesn’t trample over memory or the history of the sport. If you are desperate to name a horse Golden Sygnet, for example, why not translate it into French, Italian or Gaelic. Or any of the languages of the world.
 

​I am pretty fed-up with the prolonged debate, fuelled by self-interest and an inability on the part of others to come to terms with a society that is evolving at a faster rate than at any time in our history, that is the whip. In today’s Racing Post Mark Johnston, a man of great insight and common-sense and someone I only infrequently disagree with, came out fighting in support of the whip and, seemingly, though I’m not 100% certain, the rights of jockey to use it to their heart’s content as long as it gets one of his horses home in front.
Thankfully, I doubt if he reads this website on his weary way home from the races or knows my name. Strangely, though, when he was but a young vet, he came to diagnose a horse, perhaps the best young horse in East Anglia at the time, that was under my care. He had a good reputation even then. His diagnosis was spot on that day, though his analysis of the whip controversy is sadly awry.
He believes that there never was any need to restrict the use of the whip and that is where fundamentally the sport has misled itself. Usually his expertise and training as a vet allows him to spot flaws in the opinions of others and quite often makes a mockery of directives coming from the B.H.A. But on the issue of the whip he is barking up the wrong tree. As he rightly states, the horse has an in-bred flight response. But this is not why we can harness its ability to run and jump. Flight response is a recoil from danger, its only method to flee from predators. If Mark is right, and it is the instinct to flee from perceived danger that allows us to use the horse for our sport, we can only presume it runs and jumps through fear, and if that is true our sport is border-line cruel.
If I thought for one moment that Sprinter Sacre, Kauto Star, Frankel, Enable, Frodon, Tiger Roll etc, raced through fear and fear alone, and not because of the joy of the athlete, that it battled and strove to win in the final lung-busting yards of a race through a camaraderie with the jockey on its back, my love of this sport would diminish.
Mark, you scare a blackbird, or cat, dog, pony or virtually any animal smaller or weaker than a human, and that can include a horse, by clapping your hands. You do not have to beat it with a stick or throw a stone to scare it.
And he is wrong when he claims we will ultimately lose the sport of horse racing if we pander to the demands of the anti-whip lobby. We will ultimately lose our sport if we do not move with the times and display a little humility when dealing with this issue. The argument Mark and others use is doubtless the same as defenders of badger-baiting, hare-coursing and other forms of animal cruelty. Eventually, Mark, and sooner rather than later if Labour win the next General Election, parliament will toughen laws on the treatment of animals and we will be forced by parliamentary decree to stop whipping horses for monetary gain.
Instead of taking the ‘I am a vet, I know better than you’ stance, what Mark, a man of science, after-all, should be championing is a twelve-month study into whether the sport benefits from use of the whip or not. As I have long argued there should be a full season, both on the flat and over jumps, of hands and heels races for professional jockeys. I don’t mean every race should be hands and heels but a graduating increase as the season progresses, including every different category of race. This way not only are jockeys ‘broken in’ to race-riding without resulting to using the whip in a finish, but a clearer understanding of the boons and blessings of ‘non-hitting’ will be established. Some horses will be disadvantaged by jockeys riding with only hands and heels, as will some jockeys, but other horses, horses who presently are disadvantaged through a hatred of the whip, will benefit and improve.
Mark is also wrong to assume that the only people who oppose the whip are the ignorant non-racing public. Many racing enthusiasts would prefer not to see horses beaten with whips, however ineffective as instruments of punishment they may now be. In fact, I would argue that the sport may become more attractive to the ignorant non-racing public if the beating with whips was to be outlawed.
I also remain sceptical as to whether the B.H.A. is up to the task of making a decision on this issue as instead of already consulted with jockeys, trainers, owners and other stakeholders, they are presently ‘putting together an action plan’ rather than conducting a review, ‘looking at every aspect from technical considerations to industry attitudes’. They will be taking their findings to the welfare board in November. More delay. We could have a Labour government by November. Remember Labour have already stated that they want racing to work towards the impossible Nirvana of zero fatalities.
If the B.H.A. are presently looking at every aspect of the whip on what basis have they formulated all their previous rule changes? Guesswork and hope, I can only surmise.
Restrict jockeys to either one or zero strikes of the whip and the problem goes away, though we shall never know for certain unless we give it a studied trial first.

​Sometimes bemoaning is justified. Prize money is always held up as the one aspect of the sport that needs to be improved. And this at a time when £1-million handicaps are about to be initiated.
Anyone researching racing results from ‘bygone days’, the twenties, thirties, forties, ect, will no doubt cast a wry smile at the value of the smallest of races. The novice hurdles, the two-year-old maidens, the selling handicaps, and not only at the country courses. Yet a race valued at £200 in 1937 would in today’s money be worth £13,200-odd to the winner. Would there be any complaints about prize money if the smallest valued races started at £13,000?
Interestingly, the Derby of that year was worth not much over £10,000 to the winner, which in today’s money compares very favourably with what Coolmore picked up this year. £10,000 in 1937 equates to £625,000, or round about, today.
The other big money pots in 1937 were, not surprisingly, the 2,000 Guineas, the St.Leger and the Eclipse, which had a first prize only slightly below the Epsom Derby. The next two most valuable races in the 1937 calendar were the 1,000 Guineas and the Ascot Gold Cup. The next biggest pot will have everyone scratching their heads as it is a race that has disappeared from the race programme. The National Breeders’ Produce Stakes was traditionally run on the Eclipse card at Sandown and was worth in 1937 over £6,000 to the winner. That is £375,000 in today’s money. It would be interesting to know the conditions of the race. Is there a two-year-old race of an equivalent amount to the winner run in Britain today?
As a slight aside: anyone who is a regular visitor to horseracingmatters will be aware that I have advocated for sometime that the Eclipse should be promoted to classic status and be restricted to three-year-olds and the St.Leger demoted from classic status and transformed into the richest race in the country, opened-up to allow older horses to run in it, keeping it at its traditional distance and allowing it to become an alternative to the Arc. In today’s racing world the Eclipse is best suited as a classic, making the Triple Crown a more viable option.
But to return to yesteryear: there is the idea that innovation and new methods are a thing of the modern-day trainer, Martin Pipe, for instance, a man who even now when in retirement remains of the mindset that the job of training horses can always be improved, that horses can always be made happier.
Cecil Boyd-Rochfort, the stepfather of Henry Cecil, was always on the look-out for new and better ways to keep his horses healthy and happy. He placed a high priority of feed and water, watering his horses mainly on rain-water which was stored in tanks at the rear of the stables, with an elaborate filtering system to keep it pure. An obvious route for any trainer to take, if you think about it. Rainwater is free and when given the option a horse will always drink from a pond even if there is piped water at its disposal.
He disliked what was, for the times, the tried and tested physicking as a method of removing worms from the stomach of horses and when he witnessed how the Americans went about the business he began to ‘worm’ his horses in a similar way. He was also one of the first trainers to import his oats from Canada or Australia, examining each load before it was taken from the lorry. He also got Alfalfa hay from California. All this before the outbreak of the 2nd World War.
He was also responsible, when he had his ‘stud manager’s hat on’, for the routine of turning stallions out to grass for a few hours every day to help settle their minds. Perhaps this routine is taken for granted at all studs nowadays but before Boyd-Rochfort came along stallions would spend their day in their stables, without any access to freedom.
I have to say I am nostalgic for the stable husbandry of Boyd-Rochfort’s era, even if it was many year’s before my birth. As someone with both an aversion to uniform and livery I would have objected to the clothes stableman were expected to wear, not to mention to my lifelong dedication to the maxim ‘I shave once a week whether I need to or not’, which would not have worn well with Cecil Boyd-Rochfort or any of his contemporaries.
Horse racing in Boyd-Rochfort’s era had a revered place in British society, with the Epsom Derby of such importance in the calendar that Parliament would close business for the afternoon so that Members with an interest in racing could get to the course in good time.
I doubt if ‘those were the days’ for those participating at the time, as I am inclined to imagine but in recollecting and researching racing’s history, I do get a sense of some kind of magic that over the years has been lost, never to be regained. Which sort of makes me sad.

​Anyone familiar with this site will know I am strongly in favour of taking the sport in the direction of a one hit only or zero hit policy with the whip, and to this effect I advocate, as an experiment or scientific study, a series of hands and heels races for professional jockeys. This experiment could begin quietly with just one restricted race per week in the north of the country and the same in the south. Over the season this could increase to two races a week and upwards and should take in every kind of flat race, including group races and, of course, National Hunt.
For horse racing to have a long-term future its stakeholders must recognise that the world and its views on animal welfare have changed dramatically over the past two decades. The new maximum penalty for animal cruelty is about to increase from six months in prison to five years, and there are people who would find the new maximum too lenient. Myself included. One day someone, perhaps someone from within Animal Aid or the more radical faction of the R.S.P.C.A., no doubt in hope of building public support for their aims, will bring a private prosecution against a jockey found guilty of breaking the B.H.A.’s whip guidelines. We must be proactive on this matter. Not a knee-jerk reaction but a steady canter to the end-goal that might bring this long-running saga (I have read of a trainer writing in the 1970’s who thought the whip a contentious issue) to a conclusion.
It is interesting that trainers who advocate disqualifying a horse if its jockey breaks the whip rules and those who would prefer the jockey be suspended for 3-months or more agree that there is a problem in need of address. Yet the problem is allowed to fester.
The bookmakers are being hypocritical as usual. They say if the former solution is brought to bear punters will suffer. If I backed a runner-up to a horse whose jockey broke the whip rules, I would feel aggrieved. If that horse was disqualified, promoting my horse to first, I would be very happy indeed. The stance bookmakers are taking is ridiculous. Do they want no horse ever to be disqualified? Because that is the only conclusion that can be drawn on their stance. If a jockey loses the weight cloth and weighs in a stone light, do they want him to keep the race just so their winning punters do not feel aggrieved? Or if a jockey allows his horse to drift across the course, barging into other horses, perhaps causing an accident, yet contrives to still win the race, would they want that horse to keep the race in order to placate their punters?
I am also not in favour of the jockey being handed a 3-month suspension as this also affects the trainers and owners he may be contracted to. Also, it will do the image of the sport harm if our detractors can publicly say that one of our leading riders, Dettori, Doyle or Moore, for example, is serving a 3-month suspension from the sport due to breaking the whip rules (or should that be guidelines?).
If a lesser jockey was handed a similar penalty it might even take away his or her career.
The only fair and sensible solution to the on-going debate on use of the whip is to slowly wend our way to a one or zero hit policy. Failing that, if given the choice between disqualification and long-term bans for jockeys I would vote for the former. No one, in life in general or in sport, should gain from breaking the rules. Footballers who dive to cheat the referee into awarding a penalty are labelled ‘cheats’. Athletes who fail drug-tests are known forever as a ‘drug-cheat’. Cricketeers who use their nails or a blade to change the appearance of the ball are ‘cheats. Yet in racing jockeys who ignore the whip rules and make it known that if the reward is great enough, they will continue to do so are never referred to in the same vein. They are not ‘cheats’, they have simply tried the hardest to gain reward for the people who pay their salary and all that follows.
Sadly, for the sport, I do not think the B.H.A. are up to making a decision on this most divisive of issues affecting the image and future of the sport. It is a debate that has been allowed to boil away for decades, with self-interest allowed to undermine common-sense. This is a matter that needs to be resolved not sometime in the future but in the here and now. I suggest my resolution is the right way to go about the business. But for now, disqualification is the best policy. Let’s see if disqualification brings about a change of mindset in jockeys.

​John Day, who trained at Danebury in Hampshire, close to the strangely named and when I lived thereabouts strange purlieus (it was rumoured there was a secret military base cut into one of the hills inside the no-go zone for non-military people and a village called Palestine that on no occasion as we rode through did we see anybody, even though there were cars on driveways and occasionally lights ablaze in the prefab type homes) villages of Over Wallop, Middle Wallop and Nether Wallop, won two races at Royal Ascot with The Hero. But which two races. The answer is a real good quiz question.
Hampshire, at the time, was the equivalent of Newmarket or Lambourn today. You couldn’t go for a ride on your velocipede in the countryside without coming across the strings of one big name trainer or another. The three Powney brothers were based at Durrington, on the edge of Salisbury Plain; Sam Darling was at Beckhampton; Frank Hartigan at Weyhill; Tom Cannon, to name but one, was at Stockbridge and the biggest and best of the lot, Alec Taylor was at Manton. And Atty Persse trained at Park Gate House, Grateley for a time.
In case I forget, The Hero won the Emperor’s Plate, the name given to the Ascot Gold Cup during the years when Emperor Nicholas of Russia honoured the nation with his presence.
 
I have written nothing about the death of John McCririck, the legend of t.v. punditry. Alastair Down wrote, as you would expect from the great man, in the Racing Post, a moving and wholly fitting tribute to his friend and former colleague. He knew both sides of John McCririck, the public image and the real man, the side of his personality McCririck chose to keep close at hand.
And that is my point. I didn’t like the John McCririck who entered my living room through the medium of television. I thought him a boorish oaf. A pantomime, to give the most used description of him, dame in a big hat who portrayed racing in a poor light. For all that he loved the sport.
I am fully prepared to believe there was not a bad bone in his body but what good did it do horse racing to keep his generosity of spirit under a bushel? To promote the sport it is not Marmite we need but a substance everyone can associate with.
From what I’ve read about him from the people who knew him, who benefitted from his friendship and professional criticism, he was a man poorly judged by people like me. He may not have requested a funeral but perhaps a memorial service or monument might be acceptable to him, if only for those people who truly knew him to pay respect to a man who I suspect never craved respect during his lifetime. He was John McCririck. Enough said.
 
The slice cut from the race programme for next year has caused a ripple of debate, some thinking it about time and those, the racecourses, thinking it a restriction to their right to hold meetings as and when they see fit.
To my mind there is a solution to the problem of burn-out amongst jockeys and stable staff. I have written in the past that the summer jumping programme in this country should follow the pattern laid down by the Irish, with three and four-day festival meetings. This would allow jockeys and trainers, if say there was a three-day meeting at Newton Abbot, to stay in the vicinity for the period of the festival. In fact, as they might have done back in the early days of the sport.
The benefits, outside of accommodation expenses (though sharing would cut costs substantially) would be less petrol used and less wear and tear on their cars, they would be seen a boom to the local economy, racing would be seen as caring about pollution and the environment, and there would an element of ‘Holiday’ about the arrangement.
A similar set-up would benefit flat jockeys if instead of one day here and one there, race-meetings were two, three or four-day affairs. This would only truly work, of course, if no other meetings were arranged in close driving distance.
And jockeys would be better rested if they were only allowed to race at more than one meeting a day two or three days a week, allowing the ‘journeyman’ jockeys a fairer share of the available rides. Jockeys especially, but trainers, also, are their worst enemy. Driving up and down motorways and across country as if their very lives depended on it. It’s daft and unnecessary. The race programme is a mess. It needs a radical overall. For everyone’ sake. You can have the same outrageous number of meetings as this year but with modification to the programme the wishes and aims of everyone involved could so easily be attained. 

​Put in front of me a racing autobiography published pre-1970 and in general I am a happy bunny. A similar autobiography written and published in recent times can read with the familiarity of a re-run of last year’s Derby. Yet an autobiography that features the sixties and even the early seventies is a trip down memory lane. Back then I anticipated the start of the flat season as equally as I did the jumps. But back then the landscape of racing was totally different. Although the all-weather racecourses have in some ways benefitted the sport flat racing through the winter months has destroyed the anticipation of its return from hibernation. And back then, as Jack Jarvis’s autobiography ‘They’re Off’ demonstrates, no one stable held dominance as Ballydoyle does now, with no trainer represented by three or more runners in the Derby, for example.
The best horse Jack Jarvis trained was Blue Peter, a name that has always resonated with me, perhaps because it had the same name as the most popular children’s television programme of my formative years. Stable-staff are well-rewarded by their employers these days when the big races come their way and I had always thought that this was not the case in days gone by. But Jack Jarvis, without fanfare or trumpet, proves me in wrong in his book. Not only did he pay for a party for his staff at the White Hart in Newmarket in gratitude for their part in the achievement of his lifetime’s ambition but he also stood the bill for seventy-three people, staff and family, I assume, he sent to Hunstanton for the day. Two celebrations for his staff to match the two he had for himself and friends, plus the bash at the Savoy given by Lord Roseberry, owner and breeder of Blue Peter.
Interestingly, as a further example of how the pattern of racing has changed in the intervening years, after winning the Eclipse, Jarvis trained Blue Peter for the St.Leger in hope of completing the Triple Crown. He rated Blue Peter superior to Bahram, the previous Triple Crown winner and thought his horse a good thing only for Hitler to come along and spoil the fun.
In April the Fifth’s Derby Jarvis ran two horses, ridden by the Wragg brothers, Harry and Sam, finishing third and fourth. Unfortunately, as Jarvis put it, they collided going for the same gap, hindering both their chances. Jarvis said of Harry Wragg, ‘the head waiter’, as he was dubbed, that he was a good jockey but prone to overdo the waiting tactics. I have not before read any criticism of Harry Wragg’s favourite tactic, which is refreshing even if it is only the opinion of one man.
As aspect of the book I found surprising given the time the book was written was his observation that it was becoming ‘virtually impossible’, due to the heavy traffic and drivers showing no consideration for horses, to do any conditioning work on the roads. I had assumed this only became a problem over the last twenty years or so. He also wrote about labour shortages, with not only quantity of labour a problem but also the quality and bemoaned the shorter lengths of time horses were out of their stables compared to his early days as a trainer. Not that he submitted to the new development, keeping his horses out far longer than the modern stable-hand was used to ‘and this does not render my own labour problems any easier’.
It will amuse trainers and owners alike that he had in his possession a letter written during the 1st World War by Lord Harewood stating that conditions the Government were planning to impose on the sport ‘would make owners most reluctant to pay a weekly training fee of 60-shillings and the time will not be far off when training fees will be £20 per week’!
Finally, in this canter through one of the best autobiographies I have read, certainly by a trainer, Jarvis wrote about a horse he trained called Honeyway (horses had real nice names back then, didn’t they?) Though Honeyway failed to win a classic, he made his mark as a sprinter, though as he matured, he found hidden depths of stamina when winning the Champion Stakes over 1-mile 2-furlongs and even over 2-furlongs further at Thirsk. Can you imagine the newly retired (has nothing more to prove, apparently) Blue Point, or any modern-day top sprinter, running in the Champion Stakes? Or even tried at a mile.
When sent to stud Honeyway proved sterile and he went back to Jarvis and won a further three races. They tried him a second time as a stallion but his testicles had still not descended. Somehow, though, he was treated and cured and went on to sire an English and French 1,000 Guineas winner (Honeylight and Dictaway respectively) and Great Nephew who only lost the 2,000 Guineas by a short-head to Kashmir, after an interrupted preparation. Perhaps Godolphin were a bit hasty gelding Barney Roy, a little investigation might have brought to light whatever the treatment was that cured Honeyway of being a rig.