​Noun. Deliberate, extravagant exaggeration, used for effect, as in, ‘I knew him … He hath borne me on his back a thousand times’. A line written by Edward de Vere in one of his Shakespeare plays.
Everyone uses hyperbole, even in everyday life and in casual conversation, most commonly, I would suggest, in the after-throes of sex, describing a goal that you witness live and your best friend did not or by politicians telling a big fat porky one.
Writers and journalists do it to. Hyperbole is a good friend to the writer in need of making a splash on the page. The Racing Post was guilty of hyperbole on Sunday’s front page – ‘Long Live the King. Derby ace Adayar emulates Galileo with stunning King George success’.
My initial reaction to Adayar at Epsom was positive; he was a good Derby winner and his stable-mate Hurricane Lane has twice boosted the form in winning both the Irish Derby and Grand Prix de Paris. And I was impressed with him on Saturday, though to achieve the accolade the Racing Post has bestowed on him he will have to continue to impress throughout this season and given my determination to downgrade any top three-year-old that does not stay in training, he will have to prove he has the ability to beat the next generation of classic horses, giving them weight, to have the crown of kingship placed against his name.
On Saturday, he received 11lb from Mishriff and beat quite comfortably by close to 2-lengths and received 8lb from the filly Love and beat her by 4-lengths. Broome didn’t run his race due to being slow leaving the stalls and having to be rushed up to lead and Lone Eagle was not in the same form as when only closed down in the last hundred yards of the Irish Derby, though time might prove that Adayar is 10-lengths superior to Hurricane Lane.
Time and future form-books are the only true conveyors of greatness. By the end of the season, it might be proved that Mishriff is far more accomplished at 10-furlongs and that Love returned home with either an injury or an infection brewing. And though the weight-for-age allowance is in place for an unarguable reason, it doesn’t always comply that a three-year-old is weaker or less experienced than an older horse and it certainly does not imply they are inferior in any way. Receiving the weight-for-age allowance, Nijinsky won the King George & Queen Elizabeth in a hack canter from the previous year’s Derby winner Blakeney and yet there is no amount of hindsight to allow anyone to claim that it was only the weight-for-allowance that allowed Nijinsky to win with his head in his chest. Blakeney has gone down in history as a good Derby winner but far from a great one. Nijinsky will always be remembered as a great horse, even if circumstances determined he had no four-year-old career to consolidate his acquired-by-hyperbole greatness.
As aspect of this flat season that is warming the cockles-of-my-heart is seeing flat jockeys exhibit for all to see the joy of victory. As it was with William Buick on Saturday, punching the air three times, his smile as broad as the winning margin, his eyes ablaze with achievement. Perhaps Adayar has a kind of magic about him that sets afire to his rider’s emotions. Adam Kirby allowed the world to see his surprise and joy at winning an Epsom Derby, as did his weighing-room colleagues who en-masse came out to demonstrate their affection and admiration of him. It must not become just theatre but I hope the flat jockeys follow suit when they win the big races. It shows the sport in a good light when truth of emotion is placed on display. There are too many tears in this sport, none of them of the crocodile variety, so bright beaming smiles makes for balance and true perspective.
Also, cockle-warming, at least to me, is that Godolphin are quickly bridging the gap between themselves and Coolmore and I hope, though we are not seeing him in person at the moment, Sheikh Mohammed is enjoying the season to the same extent as his stable jockey and trainer and that his sporting success is allowing him comfort from the travails of family and State.
I have no personal knowledge or connection to Charlie Appleby but he comes across as a good human being who is grounded and appreciative of the opportunity Godolphin presented to him. And he has opened-up Moulton Paddocks and allowed the public a glimpse of what is actually a happy working environment where the horse, seemingly, is treated as a horse and not a commodity to be pampered and wrapped in cotton wool. Well, that’s my interpretation of the glimpses of life that I witness there occasionally.
And for the whole set-up, I hope Adayar does live-up to the hyperbole of the Racing Post and its journalists. He is not, by a long chalk, a king yet, though he is a king in the making.

​The 1981 renewal of Newcastle’s Fighting Fifth Hurdle had among its eight-runners Ekbalco, who won the race under a wonderful ride from David Goulding, Pollardstown, Derring Rose (the old monkey) Gaye Chance, Sea Pigeon (his final race) and Bird’s Nest. The seventies and eighties were truly the golden age of hurdling. As opposed to modern times when Champion Hurdle trial races lack depth, class and competitiveness. Oh, what we give to have the likes of Monksfield, Night Nurse and Sea Pigeon fighting for supremacy this coming season.
In one of Smith brothers autobiographies, it was mentioned that after the war, perhaps to entice runners from ‘up north’, Newmarket staged a Visitors Handicap for horse trained away from headquarters. For no other reason than for the sake of nostalgia and novelty it might be worth Newmarket considering a race with similar conditions.
I have just finished reading ‘When Birmingham Went Racing’ by Chris Pitt and Chas Hammond. Although not to the standard of ‘A Long Time Gone’ or ‘Go Down To The Beaten’, two books by Chris Pitt I could easily have accompany me to the grave, there are some really juicy bits of interesting fact contained within its illuminating pages.
Firstly, you have to address why the country’s second city does not have a racecourse? As Pitt and Hammond’s book make plain, it’s not for the want of trying, with the site at Bromford Bridge, Birmingham’s last crack of establishing a racecourse, a cracking good and fair test by all accounts. The course was closed partly due to flagging attendance numbers and the drive at the time for more housing. Same old, same old, unfortunately. 
If you are asked in a pub quiz where the first race for lady jockeys took place, as long as ‘under Jockey Club rules’ is omitted from the question’, the answer is Small Heath on 30th August 1880, a two-horse affair under the grandiose name of the ‘Stewards’ Stakes’. Little was recorded of the race and nothing at all about the riders and as Small Heath was known for Galloway and Pony racing it is perhaps doubtful if the two runners were thoroughbreds.
The regard for Birmingham as a National Hunt course can only be appreciated when the names of former, present and future Gold Cup, Champion Hurdle and Grand National winners appear in the pages of this book. Coloured School Boy, Russian Hero, Roimond, Finnure, Silver Fame, Knock Hard, Sir Ken, Bandalore, Merry Deal, Saffron Tartan, Eborneezer, Anzio and that is only in the years between the end of the 2nd World War and the early 1960’s.
In the 1950’s Alec Kilpatrick trained a grand old chaser by the name of Workboy. Among his thirteen chase victories were two at Birmingham. It’s what he did next that makes him, I believe, not only a positive example of what thoroughbreds can achieve after racing but very nearly a one-off. Ridden by Brigadier C.H. ‘Monkey’ Blacker (Phillip Blacker’s father?) Workboy became a showjumper and not any old showjumper but he was a member of Britain’s winning Nations Cup team in Madrid in 1959. The combination also represented Britain in Lisbon in 1959 and Rome in 1961. At the International Horse Show at the White City, Workboy won the Imperial Cup and was second in the George V Gold Cup. And who ever thought ex-steeplechasers only had one way of jumping?
How many National Hunt races did Steve Donoghe win during his career? Surprisingly – he made no mention of his ‘National Hunt’ career in his autobiography ‘Just My Story’ – the answer is 1. To win a bet with fellow jockey Snowy Whalley, Donogue persuaded Fred Hunt to allow him to ride Lady Diane in the Sutton Handicap Hurdle at Birmingham on November 26th 1912. And he was quickly fifty-quid the richer. To add merit to the achievement the race was run in a blinding snowstorm. He never chanced his arm over jumps again.
On August 29th, 1950, Edward Hide, aged thirteen, and weighing just over 4-stone, had his first ride aboard Copper Wire at Birmingham in the 2-mile 5-furlong Ward End Handicap. He was as good as runaway with and finished last. But it’s not how you start but how you finish and 2,500 winners later it can be said Hide had a very successful career. Yet how times change? Can you imagine the furore if a lad of thirteen only weighed ‘just over 4-stone’ today?
‘When Birmingham Went Racing’ is a book stuffed with well-researched and highly informative fact and as such it would make a fine contribution to anyone’s library of racing books.

​Firstly, definitions 1a, 1b and 2a, as taken from the Penguin English Dictionary. Panorama – an unobstructed or complete view of a landscape or area – a comprehensive presentation or survey of a series of events – a large pictorial representation encircling a spectator.
Tonight’s edition of Panorama will, sadly, inevitably, fall a long way short of any of above definitions.
If was my intention to simply ignore the topic, to read the fall-out in tomorrow’s Racing Post, safe in the knowledge that as with other tar and feather attempts to discredit the sport that after the hoo-ha has reached a crescendo to soon become yesterday’s news, the sport will return to the back pages to go about its business with little or no scrutiny other than from the pernicious and hypocritical Animal Aid, an organisation that if they get their way we would be banned from keeping domestic pets let alone be allowed to race thoroughbreds.
The sad truth is that if horses did not enter the animal food chain our dogs and cats would have to live a vegetarian lifestyle, a diet they are ill-equipped to survive on. At the back of all sales-rooms, with the possible exception of Newmarket’s big yearling sales in the autumn, you will find shady looking characters with beards and beer-bellies whose only interest in proceedings is with the unfortunate horses that fail to find a buyer and only make ‘meat-money’.
It is rarely the trainer who takes the decision ‘to be rid’ of a clinically unsound in wind or limb horse but the owner and I doubt if any owners will be on screen tonight as it is far easier to slag off the last trainer of any horse in question than seek out the owner consigning the horse.
Having said that, we, the horse racing industry, is easy prey for such muck-raking, especially from an organisation with an agenda to peddle. I have said before, perhaps the last time the sport was forced against the ropes, that British and Irish horse-racing should have its own licenced abattoir. I know the suggestion seems contrary to the narrative of ‘we look after horses from birth to death’ but a B.H.A. licenced abattoir, a facility that only deals with thoroughbred racehorses (If such a restriction made the facility financially viable) would give the sport control over the saddest aspect of the life of (some) racehorses and which is also a very vital aspect of their care.
All my life, I admit, even now at my advanced age, naivety has fogged my vision of the sport. I was shocked to the core when the savage news broke that the 1984 Grand National winner Hallo Dandy, in a very poor state of health, had been discovered basically living on a rubbish site. Carrie Humble took him home, gave him the love, care and affection his Aintree exploits should have been reward and he became the flagship of her thoroughbred retraining charity, one of the first of its kind in this country.
I could not understand how Gordon Richards, his trainer, or his jockey Neale Doughty, had lost track of the horse. I, in my child-like naivety, had not given it any thought that those people who had lived well because of a Grand National winners efforts would not go to see him on a regular basis. That his owner, Mr.R. Shaw, could give the horse to a friend to look after and not make regular visits to ensure he was cared-for properly, I found as unforgivable as the Jockey Club suggesting that once a horse is no longer in a licenced racing yard its welfare had nothing to do with them. An abdication of responsibility, I’m sure you agree.
We are more enlightened these days, with much to be proud about in the after-care of racehorses. But we cannot allow ourselves to be such easy targets for negative comment and unfair scrutiny. If the B.H.A. is sincere in its promise of ‘from birth to death’, they cannot allow former racehorses to meet their unfortunate, but in many cases necessary, end in any old abattoir, in an abattoir completely unconnected to the aspirations of the sport.
Horse Racing is always on the back foot when we are thrust into the dark limelight of unfair criticism. Whether it’s the whip or horse welfare, the ‘shit’ comes our way and all we can do is duck and dive. There is so much the sport can be proud of, yet on a regular basis we have to defend ourselves against the antics of individuals or the malice of reactionary scum-bag organisations with political bias and, in this instance, with no love of horses or any animal. We might like to think ourselves as innocent in this trial by media but if only one horse meets a cruel death at the hands of uncaring slaughterman the sport must shoulder some of the guilt.

​As per usual when a new concept is proposed, controversy follows. I have little idea why the Sky Bet Sunday Series must be staged as a twilight event rather than start and end as would be common for an ordinary Sunday or why no one thought racing staff might not greet the concept with open arms. It should have been obvious where the flaw in the concept lay.
Over 3 consecutive Sundays Sky Bet are sponsoring a day’s ‘quality’ racing with a start time of late afternoon. We are promised good prize money, great racing, with grooms awarded best turned-out prizes of £250 per race. The National Trainers Federation only gave the concept the thumbs up because of the enhanced prize-money, as did the groom’s Union, the National Association of Racing Staff.
Now, there is a bundle of prize-money promised, for that we, especially, owners, should be thankful. £600,000, to be exact, with £200,000 in bonuses at 3 meetings starting with Musselburgh on July 25th, with further fixtures at Haydock on August 8th and Sandown on August 22nd. While this is generous and a seriously needed boost in prize-money, what is not so generous is expecting racing staff to work late into Sunday evening, when the majority will have to report for work before dawn the following morning, with the only incentive on offer the chance to win £250 for best turned-out.
This is the big fail in this experiment. Yes, 18 grooms, I am basing the number on 6-races per meeting, have the opportunity of a £250 bonus for their long day but as anyone who has worked with racehorses will be aware, this is not a game with an even playing field. Some horses hate to have their manes plaited. Some trainers do not like to have the manes of their horses plaited and some, the clever ones who know something about horses, will not trim tails as the longer the tail the less irritated and upset the horse will be by flies. It is why ‘God’ gave horses tails that left to their own devices will grow down to the ground, the longer the reach they have.
The answer is simple. Pinch a £1,000 or even £2,000 from the first prize money and divide it between every groom leading up in each race. A financial incentive, rather like a fee or bonus for working anti-social hours, regardless of best turned-out prizes, to every groom, in the same thought-process that every jockey is paid to ride in a race. It is perhaps an idea that could permeate into every sponsored race run the length and breadth of the country. Dangle a carrot to incentivise every groom to want to go racing on a Sunday evening. Once upon a time £250 would have been seen as doubling a groom’s monthly salary. These days it will hardly stretch to pay the gas bill.
And the B.H.A., which it never is, could have been proactive by only scheduling National Hunt racing on the Mondays following these twilight Sunday meetings. In fact, they could take the strain off flat yards at the busiest times of the year by having a day a week without flat racing. I don’t know whether the B.H.A. ever communicate with its Irish counterparts but if there were to be 2 Irish meetings on a day when there is no flat racing in Britain, plus 2 National Hunt meetings, the betting industry would feel no pain.
To quote the B.H.A. spokesperson in today’s Racing Post, flannelling as per usual. ‘Developing the fixture list is a constant balancing act between delivering revenues for the sport and its participants, while also safeguarding the well-being of our workforce’. As I said, flannelling. The fixture list is allowed to grow like Topsy and as every trainer will tell you is out-of-control and if ‘safeguarding the well-being of our workforce’ had any sincerity about it the fixture list would have breathing spaces as a matter of routine built into it.
This sport needs as a matter of emergency to solve the leakage of staff and to persuade others to enter the industry. Working staff to the point of burn-out is about the worst way to go about it. At the moment it is, as someone looking in sees it, all take and very little give.

​We will never know if Eph Smith would have traded his Epsom Derby success on Blue Peter for his brother Doug’s five jockeys championship or vice versa. Two jockeys who in their time were regarded as top-notch, jockeys who won classics, yet their names and achievements are hard to recall.
Eph, I believe his first name was Eric and I have not read anywhere, including in his autobiography, ‘Riding To Win’ that Eph was short for Ephraim, as might seem logical, began his riding career aged thirteen in 1929 and had ridden 2,313 winners by the time of his retirement in 1965. His brother started his riding career, also aged thirteen, three-years after his brother, though he made a far more impressive early impact on the racecourse.
Even Eph admitted that Doug was the more natural rider of the two, even though they both had the same riding experiences as children. Both hunted, show-jumped and were on the backs of racehorses at an age considered today as reckless. Eph even had a rare breed of equine, a donkey that could jump quite substantial fences.
There is a modern perception that flat jockeys come to racing without any horse-riding experience and learn as they go along. Sometimes that is the case but as Oisin Murphy and Tom Marquand, to name but two, prove, they can be riding over obstacles and in pony races from an early age, their light weight no doubt a great advantage to them. Back in the Smiths’ time it was not uncommon for flat jockeys to take out a jumping licence to keep themselves busy, and to keep their weight in check, during the winter.
As when Lester Piggott was at his zenith, it was a case of if he remained fit and wanted to be champion no other jockey got much of a look-in. It was the same for jump jockeys when A.P. McCoy bestrode the sport with his iron will. In the era in which the Smiths were riding, it was the force of nature that was Gordon Richards who had an iron grip on the jockeys championship. From 1946 to 1953 Doug Smith was runner-up to the great man. In 1947 Doug Smith rode 173 winners, five more than was necessary when he won the championship himself in 1955. Gordon Richards rode 269 winners in 1947, the record that A.P. McCoy finally bettered. How many jockeys have ridden 173 winners in a season and not been champion? Not many, I suspect. And this was an age when there were no evening meetings and jockeys often travelled to race-meetings by train.
Sir Gordon had to retire before Doug Smith could take the crown and then it was injury that took out Richards, and a fall not on the racecourse proper but in the paddock. It would be harsh to claim that Smith’s first championship was gifted to him by the forced absence of Richards as they were involved in a great tussle at the time of his accident and Smith himself had missed a large number of winners due to a fall at Salisbury earlier in the season. And it might be said for the four following years he was champion jockey he was only keeping the crown warm for the emergence of one Lester Piggott. Doug Smith took the crown from one great jockey of the flat only to pass it on to another. In all, Doug was champion five-times and he titled his autobiography, perhaps proving his pride in the accomplishment ‘Five-Times Champion’.
Eph’s career ran in tandem with his brother’s. He won the Derby in 1939 and 2,000 Guineas on Blue Peter and that year also won the Ascot Gold Cup, the St. James’ Palace Stakes, the Cork and Orrery, Bessborough and Eclipse. He continued to ride big race winners throughout his time as a jockey and was a noted big-race rider. In those days, of course, the big handicaps were also collectors items, whereas if a top jockey writing his autobiography today he or she would hardly mention any big handicap success after they lost their claim. Even winning the Wood Ditton in 1956 was considered worthy enough for Eph to include in the list of big race successes.
As their careers mirrored each other, sadly their deaths had a similar look. Doug trained with success after retiring from riding, winning the Epsom Oaks with Sleeping Partner. Yet, for reasons only known to his family, I suspect, drink consumed him and he was an alcoholic when in 1972 he committed suicide in his own swimming pool.
Eph, who was deaf or partially deaf for most of his life, was found dead in a brook outside Newmarket aged 71. The coroner passed a verdict of misadventure.
Between them the two brothers rode 5,424 winners, with Doug contributing 3,111.

​Was there ever a Galileo colt named Galileo Galilei, the full name of the Italian astronomer, mathematician and natural philosopher? If not, there should be, as in their very different worlds, time and species, Galileo the human and Galileo the thoroughbred racehorse, were both revolutionary and without peer in their fields of endeavour.
Galileo Galilei is best known for his run-in with the Catholic Church for daring to suggest the truth of the Copernican system with the Sun at its centre, with the planets, including the Earth, in rotation around it. For his sin, he lived the rest of his life under house arrest. Similarly, though as reward not as punishment, Galileo lived his life after his racecourse exploits, in one place, namely Coolmore.
Both Galileo human and equine etched their names into the history and immortality of their fields and neither will ever be forgotten.
Galileo, the horse, is undoubtedly, in my mind, the greatest thoroughbred in horse racing history, eclipsing even the mighty Eclipse, the horse, born in 1769, claimed by most thoroughbred breeding experts as the most influential stallion in the history of the sport. In Nicholas Clee’s most excellent biography of the legendary horse, the opening paragraph is thus: ‘Go to the races, anywhere in the world, and you’ll be watching horses who are relatives of Eclipse. The vast majority of them are descended from Eclipse’s male line; if you trace back their ancestry through their fathers, their father’s fathers and so on, you come, some twenty generations back, to him. He is the most influential stallion in the history of the Thoroughbred. Two and a half centuries after his imperious, undefeated career, he remains the undisputed paragon of the sport’.
This claim can now be disputed. In time, Galileo will first challenge the status of Eclipse in world breeding history and, ultimately, he will claim his crown. It is as inevitable as one day in the distant future the Earth will be destroyed by the heat of the Sun.
Actually, Galileo has already outshone Eclipse. Eclipse never sired a horse better than himself. Galileo is the sire of Frankel, the son destined to keep the champion sires’ crown in the family – first Sadlers’ Wells, then his son Galileo, then his son Frankel. And already Frankel is breeding Derby winners, even if his father has five to his name, a record, with three generations on the ground to enhance the number.
It is interesting that the very top stallions these days command huge covering fees and can earn their owners far greater wealth than could ever be achieved on the racecourse. No wonder these colts are retired prematurely, as racing enthusiasts would claim. The highest fee earned by Eclipse was fifty-guineas, the equivalent of six-thousand pounds today. No one knows, outside of Coolmore and the breeders with the wherewithal to pay the bill, what the covering fee of Galileo was. Montjeu stood at a fee of £125,000 and his reputation, as high as it was, is only in the foothills of the reputation and record of his father.
As wealthy and overwhelmingly successful as Coolmore are, the sadness around the operation at the moment, and it will not be collective crocodile tears brought on by the knowledge that they have lost their greatest financial asset, will be the realisation that they will never again have on the roster a horse as irreplaceable as Galileo. For all the offspring that he has sired that have gone on to win classics all around the world, colts and fillies that topped the end of season handicaps at all ages and in multiple distance categories, only Juddmonte have bred to Galileo and achieved a racehorse better than the father on the racecourse. Frankel is Galileo’s champion of champions and he will never reside at Coolmore.
Ed Chamberlain, and he is due praise for recognising the significance of the moment, on I.T.V. Racing had the presence of mind to remind viewers that Galileo’s death was a sad and momentous day for the sport and by interspersing its coverage of one of flat racing’s best Saturdays of racing with comments on the great horse’s passing, no one was left in any doubt of Galileo’s place in racing’s equine hierarchy. 
I have no doubt Galileo will not leave Coolmore and that his eternal resting place will be capped by a magnificent statue, even if the eulogy cannot possibly do his greatness true justice.
It was no mere horse that passed out of this world last Saturday but a legend, not a horse of a life-time but a horse for all-time.

​The beauty of having a website that receives very few visitors is that I can put forward radical and sometimes downright dumb ideas and receive little or no pushback or criticism from anyone. Occasionally, as proved by my letter in today’s edition of the Racing Post, if I think my idea worthy of discussion, I will go public with it. The suggestion I am to put forward here, though, will undoubtedly not appear within the pages of a national newspaper for fear of the ridicule that will come my way.
What I am about to propose, more for any discussion it might trigger than as a serious proposal that should be acted upon, is radical, perhaps naïve, with broad strokes of ignorance and veins of hopeless stupidity, tainting the good intention. Without any actual research, calculation of whether the idea is more costly than the present funding model, the idea came to me as an entirety when I read someone say something along the lines of there should be better prize money at the top level of the sport.
This confounded me, as it is the exact opposite approach to the method I would employ to rebuild the sport’s favour with the public. Horse racing in general is both a sport and an industry, with flat racing perhaps more an industry than a sport. Between the wars, for example, although the classics were, as they are nowadays, the domain of the super-rich, it was not unusual for butchers, bakers and any of the self-employed to own a racehorse or two, with farmers and small-holders breeding thoroughbreds to either race or take to the sales. We need to edge back to that sort of scenario. To this end the sport needs to embrace the aspiration that every owner should, if not make a profit from owning a racehorse, should have every opportunity to break-even.
Now remember, I have not committed myself to researching the financial ramifications of what I am about to suggest and there will be exceptions to the basic simplicity of my idea. But as a concept I believe it is a good starting place to begin the debate on how best to fund the sport.
What if every horse race, from selling race to Group 1, had exactly the same first prize money? At the very top end of the sport, the classics, for example, on the flat, the Grand National and the heritage championship races at the Cheltenham Festival, could be exempt from the constraint on prize money. Though I would put a cap on how much extra money would be allowed for such races. 
In a nutshell, my idea is that every race would be worth £30,000 to the winner, with prize money down to sixth place.
For this idea to succeed, as if it possibly could succeed, prize money must be allocated from a central funding mechanism, except where there is  sponsorship, of course.
This is daft, isn’t it? Or is it? If you calculate all the races run in this country, and yes, at every big meeting like Royal Ascot, York, Goodwood, for example, where first prize money is above £30,000, the accumulation of this money would make a large reservoir of funding for the sport. I believe, and correct me if this figure is wrong, but I believe a horse must win between £22 and £25,000 to allow its owner to break even. A first prize of £30,000, would allow a big opportunity for many more owners not to lose money, encouraging the pool of owners presently in the sport to have a second or third horse in training.
But the sport is kept afloat by major players whose ambition is to win Group and classic races, surely these owners will take their horses to countries with larger purses. This is, of course, the folly in this harebrain scheme of mine.
As I have already mentioned, the classics could have enhanced prize money, say up to £100,000, with other inducements and enticements added. If a jewellery company sponsored a classic, as an example, as De Beers once did, a selection of their products might be presented to the winning owners. If it were a champagne house …. Well, you get the picture. Where the big owners loose-out at the top-end they will gain at the lower-end as their lesser horses will have opportunities every time they run to pay for their keep.
As I always say, the Epsom Derby will have the same horses running whether the prize money to the winner was £100,000 or £1-million as the colt first past the line will be worth many millions as a stallion. Then there is the prestige in owning an Epsom Derby winner. What is the value of that accolade? 
If we could persuade a thousand new owners to the sport, intrigued and excited by the percentages being in their favour at actually making racing pay, would that be a good trade-off for the defection of the high-rollers, Coolmore, Juddmonte, Godolphin, etc, packing their bags and making their exit from these shores to centre their equine commercial activities on France or Ireland? That is my hope, anyway, for this fairer playing field. When the figures are loaded into the calculator it might be decided the money simply isn’t available to fund every race to the value of £30,000. Though it would be feasible if it was decided to fund the sport through some kind of ‘Tote Monopoly’. But that is a horse of a different feather.
£1-million races will never be looked upon kindly by the public. Such excessive purses reinforce the general belief that horse racing is the reserve of toffs, the mega-rich, sultans and sheikhs, the new aristocracy, the ruling classes of the world, when in reality it is very much a working-class sport underpinned by the fabulously wealthy. To engage with the public again, to revisit those days when the Epsom Derby held a mystique over the populace, we have to assure them that our sport is a sport for all, and the sporting aspect trumps the industry of the breeding sheds. If we could get close to all races, from sellers to Group races having the same level of prize-money, as ludicrous as that may sound at first hearing, the greater chance emerges for this sport to have a long and successful future as the present model is slowly but surely failing.

​In last Sunday’s Racing Post, Lee Mottershead, a writer not afraid to put his opinions into print, asked whether it would be innovative or stupid to move the date of the Epsom Derby to July, citing the first Saturday of the month as his suggestion for its position in the racing calendar. He sought plenty of opinion from the great and the good of the sport, with opinion divided 60-40, that’s my estimation, in favour keeping the status quo.
To get my twopenny-worth out of the way to start with. I have long held the view that it is absurd to run four of the classics before we have reached mid-summer, only for the fifth of the series to be kept until the fag-end of the summer, as if it is, as it has become, I believe, an after-thought. A classic horse-race should never be a consolation, easy-pickings, an after-thought. I would not abandon the St.Leger, though for my idea of what to do with it I suggest a trawl through the archive of this website, and you will not have to trawl very far. It is a topic I come back to time and again.
Oliver Cole, the young blood in the father and son training partnership, made the very good point that the Cheltenham Festival works so well because it comes as ‘the crescendo of the season’. The flat season is long enough to make it two halves, with the Epsom Derby a fitting finale of the first half.
The main stumbling block for any change in the race programme for any country in Europe is the European Pattern Committee. It is only they who can give a ‘thumbs up’ or a ‘thumbs down’ to such a radical rejig of the of the classic race programme.
My counter to the argument that the European Pattern is sacrosanct as a change in one country can have a detrimental knock-on effect all around Europe is that if the Epsom Derby is the premier flat race in Europe, certainly in the first half of the season as the Arc rather dominates the last knockings of every season, it should be accommodated when there is a possibility of refuelling its status in the world.
I was surprised by how poor Jim McGrath’s take on the debate was, that if you change the timing of the Derby the breeding season would have alter as well. It made no sense, as did his ‘moving the deckchairs in isolation is a stupid idea’. Obviously changing the date of the Derby would entail mixing and matching many other big races between the Guineas meeting and Royal Ascot. And his point that the flat season doesn’t begin with the Brocklesby but with conception and then the development of the horses is vague and non-sensical. If the Brocklesby is the first race of the new season, then the flat season does indeed start with the Brocklesby as only a dozen 2-year-olds take part, whilst the vast majority stay in their stables to await another day.
And who am I to challenge the long experience and wisdom of John Oxx, the trainer of 2 Derby winners, that it is all part of the test of the thoroughbred colt to have a June Derby, as if running immature horses round a switchback racecourse was just the examination required to sort out the men from the boys. Sometimes the best 3-year-old does not show himself until later in the season. Many an outstanding colt was not considered ready for a June Derby. Many are ruined for life by running in the race. I think my counter to Mr.Oxx would simply to point out that there are no certainties in life and a July Derby might just be the most wonderful experiment ever conducted by the B.H.A. We will only know if we try it.
Whether or not the date of the Epsom Derby is ever changed is of less importance than the debate as to whether the first half of the flat season is fit for purpose. When it was proposed that the Grand National fences should be altered and the distance lessened, many were fervent in their opposition to the proposals. Yet come April the anticipation and excitement of the race ensures that the changes are barely mentioned. It was the same when the fifth-day was added to Royal Ascot. Heritage and tradition are beautiful when viewed from down the ages yet if the sport is handcuffed to the past there can be no progress. I suspect that when the use of spurs was outlawed a similar howl of protest was heard.
To my mind, if the Epsom Derby was run in July, then in the main 3-year-olds would keep to their own age group and only take-on the older age bracket through the second-half of the season. This would provide a natural balance: the first half highlighted by the classic races, the second-half highlighted by the coming together of the 3-year-old colts and fillies and their elders.
In comparison to the Derby, the King George and Queen Elizabeth Stakes is a relative interloper on the flat season and in recent years has plateaued, with the Irish Derby becoming more important for the top 3-year-olds to compete in. I think this debate could include the idea of moving the KG & QE Stakes to the Royal Meeting in place of the Hardwicke. This is the sort of possibility that will come from debating this topic.