​If I were a child of an alcoholic parent the most important aspect of my life to steer clear of would be alcohol. If only Pat Eddery had the wisdom at any early age to follow my example and lead a life of temperance. In a former life I might have been a Salvation Army drum-beating pamphleteer. ‘Alcohol is the phlegm of Satan’. ‘A cup of tea the nectar from heaven.’ I’m addict, too, it seems.
I must admit I was never a fan of Pat Eddery. I thought his riding style ugly and a reflection of an overly strong will to win at all-costs. I am doubtless wrong in my prejudice as all the great trainers of his time queued up to pay for his services and they would know a whole lot more about jockeyship than I shall know about anything. Vincent O’Brien – the greatest trainer to live and breathe, at least until that other O’Brien came along – thought him good enough to fill Lester Piggott’s boot when the tall man swanned off to ride for a quite good trainer called Cecil in Newmarket, a move I suspect he came to regret. If Lester does regret. Which I doubt as he has no need.
What I didn’t like about Pat Eddery’s riding was the way he bumped the saddle to propel his mount forward. Again, perhaps I am wrong, but I couldn’t help but think that given the thinness of the saddles jockeys use he must have given a lot of horses sore backs. Vincent O’Brien saw nothing wrong in his style of riding, nor did Peter Walwyn or Prince Khalid Abdullah. Or anyone, great or small, perhaps. Just me. But then I didn’t like the way Lester rode either, being unable to forgive the brutality of the ride he gave The Minstrel to beat the artistic and kindly Willie Carson on Hot Grove. Why can’t all flat jockeys ride the Willie Carson way? Or imitate Steve Cauthen or Joe Mercer?
He won everything there was to win, of course, more than once and on many occasion more than three times, including the jockeys’ title when it was a title befitting a champion.
To my surprise, after reading Alan Lee’s splendid biography of Eddery – it is Lee’s first-class prose that make the book so readable – he considered El Gran Senor the best horse he ever rode, a horse, in similarity to Dancing Brave, the horse I thought he would nominate as the best, that is best known for not winning the Epsom Derby. Now, to prove my fallibility once more, in the book Eddery says of El Gran Senor ‘he was a bit like Dancing Brave, in being a smashing little horse who would fly to the front as if the others were standing still, but find nothing extra once he was there’. Damning with faint praise, methinks. In one sentence he is informing us that the best horse he ever rode and the horse so many consider as one of the great racehorses of modern time, wanted nothing more than to chuck the race once in front. Should a horse be termed ‘great’ if it has little relish for the battle? Given this astonishing revelation it is no surprise both horses were not campaigned as 4-year-olds as no doubt both would have become ‘monkeys’ and burst the bubble of their excellence.
Alan Lee’s book was published in1992, before Eddery brought his career to a close. I suspect, like many sportsman before and since, alcohol filled the void created by no longer having the discipline of race-riding in his life. His father was an alcoholic, so perhaps he possessed a disposition to travel the same path. Yet he said in the book that alcohol was responsible for his father’s early death, was that not a warning to him?
What I did like about the Pat Eddery presented in ‘To Be A Champion’ was that he acknowledged the lucky breaks that came his way and when he got the ride on Dancing Brave he thought Greville Starkey was harshly treated as he considered he had ridden the horse in the Derby the same way he himself would have ridden the horse. Whether Starkey felt the warmth of his camaraderie and sympathy was any sort of compensation for being jocked-off the best horse he had ever ridden is not on record, at least as far as I am aware.
But when I think of Pat Eddery it is that bumpity-bump style of riding that comes too readily to mind. Oh, and this may be more relevant as to my prejudice, he beat Bustino and the nice Joe Mercer in the King George and Queen Elisabeth Stakes at Ascot, the greatest flat race of all-time, apparently. Better than this year’s Derby? I think not. But that might also be prejudice.

​This ‘blog’ will defeat my self-imposed limit of 1,000 words. I hope it is worth it.
As it will be approximately a thousand years before the Racing Post ask me to sit their Q & A (actually hell will have frozen over well before my name comes to the top of the list) I thought I would just go ahead and bananas to them.
1) What advice would you give your ten-year-old self?
Do not allow yourself to be scared of anything. Fear corrupts the true self. And, eleven, twelve and thirteen are the worst years in the process of ‘growing up’. Skip them and go straight to fourteen.
2) What is your earliest racing memory?
The opening credits of Grandstand, the racing segment.
3) What’s your biggest ambition in racing?
To be top man at the B.H.A. and to sort out all of racing’s self-inflicted woes. You did ask.
4) What’s been your best moment in racing?
There has been so few it is almost impossible to know where to start. Or stop.
5) If you could play any other sport, which would it be and why?
Woman’s’ football. After I’m long gone it is the sport that will rule the world. And in the next life I’m coming back as a woman. I have seen the future and it doesn’t have testicles.
6) What do you think racing does best?
It is a working-class sport underpinned by the fabulously rich. It is something we should celebrate and would if the latter were not as influential in the sport as they are.
7) Other than better prize-money what is the one thing you would change about racing?
One? That’s tricky. I have a list comprising one-hundred and three different things I would change. Off the top of my head – I would rip up the present racing calendar and start from scratch. It is archaic, too congested and allows Easter to mess-up the time between Cheltenham and Aintree. I would also have Royal Ascot before the Derby, if Her Majesty would agree.
8) Who has been the greatest influence on your career?
What career? But if I had to say a name, I would say Desert Orchid.
9) What’s Your Favourite Film?
Sunshine over Leith. What’s not to like?
10) What’s your favourite alcoholic beverage?
I adore the word beverage but dislike all alcohol. It’s a teetotallers life for me. Which explains so much. So very much.
11) What’s your favourite sitcom?
Big Bang Theory.
12) What have you made of this year’s ‘Love Island’?
Are you serious? ‘Love Island’! It’s on far too late at night for a lark like me.
13) The next question is n/a, so I’ll move swiftly on. Lambourn has a night life? Do the residents know?
14) What’s your favourite meal?
Given that I am unable to eat a man’s size meal anymore, I will have to go for poached egg on toast.
15) When are you happiest?
Happy? What’s that? No, I’ve given it some thought and can’t think of a solitary thing. Oh, I was very happy for a short while when Bryony won the Ryanair and I will be close to ecstasy if the Lionesses win the World Cup. I was happy when we voted to leave the E.U. but the traitorous M.P.s at Westminster have even taken the joy out of that.
16) If you could meet one person, past or present, who would it be?
I would like to meet the people who kidnapped and killed Shergar. I would just like to know.
17) What has been your most embarrassing moment?
Isn’t life one long embarrassment? I have fallen asleep in the dentist chair, several times. I have boarded a train for Bristol only for it to be going to Newcastle. I was asked for my ticket on a London to Bristol train only to remember as the ticket inspector approached that for safe keeping I had put in my lunch box, which I had left on the platform seat as at the last moment I realised I was sitting on the wrong platform and – you know the rest. Must I go on? Referring to Richard Hoiles, in a column I was writing at the time for ‘Racing Ahead’ as Andrew Hoiles and telling everyone that I thought he was the best commentator racing has ever had. Better than even Peter O’Sullevan.
18) How do you relax away from racing?
Relax? What’s that? I am a coiled spring of unintentional inactivity. When examined by a doctor or physio they constantly tell me to ‘relax’ and I tell them ‘for me, this is relaxed’. But if you want a pastime – I harvest wood from the local river. Though as the river is tidal, you have to have one eye on the wet stuff.
19) What is the strangest/funniest thing you have seen on a racecourse?
Personal anecdote, don’t you know. When I was involved in a point-to-point yard we had a horse called Mischievous Jack. He was a tinker and no mistake. On his first run he whipped around at the start, gave the rest a fence start, had almost caught the leaders after 2-mile only to fall. On his second start he fell at the first, jumped off the course and disappeared followed by a huntsman. As we saddled up our next runner, which won by the way (first run for 2 years) an announcement on the Tannoy asked for representative of Mischievous Jack to make their way to the nearest village as the horse was in a man’s garden eating his cabbages. I suggested as he was such a pain-in-the-ass we leave him there and go home to an easier life. After winning his last two races of that season, the second beating the course record, as a five-year-old at Higham in a Men’s Open, he was worth, apparently, a six-figure sum. That was when I was embarrassed.
20) What sort of music are you into?
Love Katie Melua. I I go on Desert Island Discs I shall probably choose eight of her songs. ‘Tiny Alien’ is the one I would save from the waves.
21) What’s your biggest fear?
Snakes. Someone once said that snakes were made of one-per-cent plasticine and ninety-nine per-cent evil. What is the point of them? There isn’t. You can’t even race them. Or cuddle them. And they hate all of mankind, especially babies. Kill everyone and make ladies handbags out of them. I also don’t like sloths. My other half thinks I’m weird because of it.
22) Social media – friend or foe?
I have absolutely nothing to do with it. Don’t have a mobile phone, don’t have any social media accounts. Snakes would love social media. And sloths.
23) Who would be your four ideal dinner party guests?
I have thought about this question a lot. Too long, no doubt, and come up with a good number of lists. I have decided upon these four people. Richard D. Hall, Andrew Johnson, the head of MI5, who ever holds that position when this fantasy comes true, and the head of counter-terrorism. I have my reasons. Food will not be required.
24) Give us one horse to follow for the rest of the season?
Pinatuba.

​Next to the establishments of the British Racing Schools and the Rehabilitation of Retired Racehorses, the best advancement in racing over the past one-hundred-years is the Regional Staff Development Programme coordinated by the Northern Racing College.
It would stagger the Trade Unions and Employers Federation to learn people employed to care for racehorses receive virtually no training outside of what they are either told by their employers or pick-up from experience, which often can be little more than what not to do rather than how to prevent the bad happening in the first place. I know; I’ve been there.
The Northern Racing College now go out to racing stable to assess the skills of stable staff, offering tutorials on how to ride to better effect and by playing back videos of themselves on the gallops, exercises to improve strength and balance and with a little help from the Equicizer that is transported to each yard in the college’s branded horsebox. If young up-and-coming jockeys can advance through the use of riding coaches, why not the staff who must ride horses six or seven-days a week?
I have seen first-hand good honest though perhaps not very able riders, usually girls but not always, turned sour of the job through being used, for want of a better term, as cannon-fodder on the gallops. Trainers may claim to match a horse to the rider but that is not always the case, believe me. These days, I hope, the less talented riders will be found a place on a college course to improve their skills-level and boost their confidence. This initiative is such a no-brainer that it is unbelievable the industry has survived until this technologically advanced century to draw itself away from a methodology that has its roots in an age of steam and coal and a tug of the forelock when encountering the master, or plain old employer in our day and age.
What I find particularly regrettable is that the old-fashioned stable husbandry skills are being lost due to work overload. Once upon a time a ‘lad’ would only be expected to care for one horse if the job was to be done properly. Between the wars two horses was considered the maximum per ‘lad’. Now five, six or seven is the norm. It is no wonder the nuances of stable husbandry are squandered in favour or speed.
I hope the college does not seek only to improve the riding skills of racing staff but set their minds to the all-round skills staff require to care for a racehorse. In most racing yards, for instance, the clipping is usually the preserve of one person in the yard or someone who makes a spare time job of going from yard to yard. If every member of staff was taught how to clip a horse the job would simply become an augmentative element of grooming, as far as grooming still exists today. In many stables clipping is carried out by the head groom, if he or she were to be freed of the task the time saved could be put to more productive use.
To my mind not only should clipping be a discipline of the racing groom but everything from mane-pulling, bandaging, not only for travelling purposes but veterinary care also, as well as basic training on how to spot sore muscles and muscle-wastage, if a horse is favouring a front or back leg (usually determined by shoe-wear). In fact, all aspects of caring for a racehorse should be taught, not merely left for the groom to pick-up through experience. The difference in knowledge between a trainer and head groom is usually quite small, yet it can be large between the head groom and the rest of the staff. This is surely an unwise situation.
What proficiency gives a person is confidence. When someone knows in his or her heart that they are not at a similar level to their colleagues a rot sets in, confidence plummets and the road ‘out-of-the-door’ is hastened.
What trainers are really bad at, in general, and I speak from experience, if somewhat limited, is identifying what each individual staff member is good at. This may seem one of the stupidest things you’ll read for a while but trainers are only interested when interviewing a prospective staff member is whether they can ride. I realise riding is at the core of every racing stable and a trainer must have in his employ a ready number of capable riders as without them his job is impossible to achieve. But if a trainer had a dedicated number of people to muck-out, sweep-up and deal with the menial yet vitally important aspects of the day’s work, it would free-up his skilled riders to concentrate on the work they would rather be doing, exercising and getting fit the horses. Any willing worker can be trained in double-quick time to muck-out etc and it is a job better done when the horse is out at exercise.
I have written before on this subject so will allow anyone interested to search the archive to access my further thoughts on the outdated work practices within the racing industry.
Staff who are valued will stay in the industry. One of the best ways to ensure healthy staff numbers within the industry is to keep on side those who already work in the industry. Training, for the majority, will build not only skill levels but confidence. The work being undertaken by the Northern Racing School is perhaps vital to the health and integrity of the sport as without good staff the racehorse trainer is lost, as is the owner, the breeder, the farrier and so on and so on.