​For perhaps the first time in racing history the question ‘Who will be the leading female flat jockey this season? has no obvious answer. In years gone by the answer would be without a doubt Hayley Turner or more recently most definitely Josephine Gordon. Yet it is perfectly possible for neither of them to take the crown this season. While Rachael Blackmore continues to set the pace over the jumps in Ireland, over here, on the flat, at least, the battle is too close to call.
Realistically there are five women who can finish the season as leading female jockey. As of Aug 27th, Hayley Turner and Nicola Currie are tied on 28 winners, with Hollie Doyle hot on their heels with 26. Not out of it are Rachel Richardson and Josephine Gordon on 20.
I hope those with a better understanding of race-riding agree with me but I am convinced Hayley is riding better now than even when she was winning those Group races and writing her name into the annals of racing history. Nicola Currie is chasing the apprentice title, though she is slipping further and further behind Jason Watson and Rossa Ryan who seem to have that skirmish to themselves. She has the benefit of having Richard Hughes in her corner, both for winners and advice. I doubt if Richard Hughes suffers fools gladly and he must rate her as a rider to be continuing to supply her with fancied rides. The problem of course is that he is a fair and just man and has other apprentices in his stable to supply with rides.
If I had to pick one of the five to be champion lady rider this year I would plump for Hollie Doyle who I believe is under rated and should be riding in every big handicap. Archie Watson seems to grow ever more confidant in her abilities as he puts her on a good number of his better two-year-olds, always a sign that a trainer has faith in a rider. She may be tiny but she is a real pocket-rocket in the saddle and with luck and greater experience she can only get better.
At the beginning of the season I doubt if anyone would have given Rachel Richardson a chance in the title race and everyone would have thought Josephine Gordon an absolute shoe-in to not only win the title but to put in a stout effort in the whole damn shooting match that is the jockeys’ championship. Although she is now beginning to get a few winners, overall it hasn’t happened for her this season. She had an injury at a bad time but then so did Hollie Doyle and with Hugo Palmer behind her there may be a host of winners waiting for her between now and seasons end. Personally, I think being attached to a big stable is not really helping her at the moment. She too often finds herself riding one Hugo Palmer horse up north when she might be riding for other trainers at the better meetings. How many winners she has forfeited staying loyal to her boss only she can know and how she squares the circle is for her and her agent to decide, though as things stand Hayley’s prediction that she would be bettering all her achievements in the years to come seems rather wide of the mark.
In finally ridding herself of her claim, Rachel Richardson achieved something of great significance as so few females ride out their claim. Tim Easterby, who I wouldn’t thought is the easiest of task-masters, should be congratulated for supporting Richardson from 7lb claimer to fully fledged professional jockey.
There are more highly talented and motivated apprentices, male and female, riding at the moment than at any time in my love-affair with the sport, with a great number of girls making their names. Not all of them will ride out their claim or make their name as a professional but sooner or later one of their number will get the opportunities required to ride in and win the top-end races that allow the sport to jump from the back pages to the front pages of daily newspapers, which is exactly what horse racing needs right now in order to promote itself to the fifty-per-cent of the world that are female.

​Question 1:  The Royal Jockey from 1947-1964 Harry Carr had his first ever ride at Redcar at the Whit Monday meeting in 1929. What didn’t have with him when he walked into the parade ring?
Question 2: What year was the Royal Meeting held in mid-July, with the King George & Queen Elisabeth Stakes run at the Saturday, the fifth day of the meeting?
Question 3: What extraordinary event happened to the St.Leger winner Alcide six weeks before the 1959 King George & Queen Elisabeth Stakes?
I am currently reading ‘Queen’s Jockey’, the autobiography of Harry Carr, and a jolly good read it is.
 
I am still reeling from the news that Alastair Down is no longer on the staff at the Racing Post and I am beginning to suspect a purge as Nick Godfrey has also recently left and I can’t remember the last Steve Dennis column?
 
I have always fancied being the focus of the Q & A section in Sunday’s Post, so as I shall never be asked:
The advice I would give my ten-year-old self is learn to ride, it will make the rest of your life so much easier.
My earliest racing memory is the opening credits to Grandstand and the black and white shots of Ascot and I believe a horse in the McDonald Buchanen colours coming to win its race.
No one has influenced me, hence the lowliness of my position in life.
What racing does best, though it fails to notice the fact, is that it brings every walk of life together from royalty through every social level. Also, us poor humans put on a pedestal another species. As I say, there are more statues of horses in this country than the people who owned, trained or rode them, except, of course, Her Majesty and Sir Winston.
The one thing I would change about racing would be to stop all this nonsense that is change for the sake of change.
My only ambition is to do good for racing. I owe it my life.
There is no outside of racing.
I wish I had half the genius of Alastair Down.
Films are generally too long for the length of my attention span. But I love ‘Harvey’ with James Stewart and ‘Sunshine on Leith’ because of the music.
Stopped buying music a long time ago. I love Katie Melua, so it might have been her last album.
I don’t really do happy. I’m not sure I have the gene for it.
Never meet your heroes as you soon discover they are just as human and fallible as yourself. But if I had to nominate someone I will go for Hayley Turner so I can kiss her feet and remind her of her honoured place in racing history.
There is not enough space or time to nominate one embarrassing moment as my life seems to have been one prat-fall after another.
When I die I want to have buried with me a copy of ‘Three Men In A Boat’, Pat Taaffe’s autobiography and a copy of The Racing Post, which is, perhaps, the item I treasure the most.
If I have a fault it is an inability to relax. When I have physiotherapy, they find it hard to believe that I am as relaxed as I can be. Again, I seem to be missing the relax gene.
I have been very bad at a whole lot of jobs but I doubt if I have had a bad job.
The funniest thing I have seen on a racecourse, though Alastair surprisingly didn’t see the funny side of it, was the ‘mad, bad, sad’ Grand National won by Red Marauder.
As someone who does not ride I admire every jockey, every member of every racing yard, every trainer and every single horse. I am as jealous as a green emerald of owners. To own a racehorse, how fabulous would that be?
My greatest fear is snakes. What is the point of them? Do they do anything worthwhile for the planet?
My brain has a nickname which unlike most nicknames is highly appropriate. ‘Stupid Brain’.
Social media is the invention of the devil and it will be the largest contributing factor in the destruction of civilisation.
My four ideal guests at a dinner party would be: Alastair Down, Ruby Walsh, Aidan O’Brien and – this fourth guest is trickier than it should be as I am a keen advocate of having the glass ceiling for female riders shattered for the good of the sport’s reputation for diversity. Because the aforementioned are all men I will not choose A.P. or Frankie Dettori or John Gosden and go for Bryony Frost as I reckon I can depend on her to keep the conversation lively leaving me to fill my face while fantasising on other matters.
The answer to Question 1 is whip, as apprentices in Harry Carr’s day where not allowed to carry whips in apprentice races.
Question 2, the answer is 1955. A strike of some sort was the reason. Perhaps running the King G and Queen E at the Royal meeting is not such a bad idea. Perhaps it should be considered.
And Question 3: Dopers wanting to stop Parthia mistook his stable and in the dead of night released Alcide. He was found at 3 in the morning munching grass on railway land next to the main Norwich to Newmarket road.
 
 

​One of the reasons I purchase The Racing Post on a daily basis, even though it should be beyond my budget, is now taken from me. (Sir) Alastair Down is no longer on the pay-roll. His wit, wisdom, in-depth love of the sport, the great alchemy that is his way with our language, will no longer appear on a weekly basis. When I read his short notice of resignation, his farewell to his admiring readers, it was like reading his epitaph. Let’s be honest about it, if he is not going to write for the Racing Post he is, to all extent and purposes, dead to us.
He will, though, it seems be making a phoenix-like comeback in the autumn, writing four pieces a month. Why this period of mourning between now and then it is yet to be announced. The great man has said the parting is amicable, almost ‘serene’.
 I hope he is intends to turn his attention to writing a memoir or a book on one of the great racing subjects, though it might be a book on the 1st or 2nd World War, he does have a fixation for the Somme and iconic fighter planes made out of sail-cloth, wood and held together by string and glue rather than rivets. Perhaps Brough Scott’s wonderful book on Winston Churchill has inspired him to employ a researcher and to come out as a legit biographer. ‘The Life and Times of the Aga Khan’, perhaps. A biography of J.P. McManus? I would buy that. I would buy any book he wrote.
My fear is that this parting is more to do with the Post cutting costs as it tries to edge somewhere close to making profit. A writer of Alastair’s originality and brilliance cannot come cheap, a six-figure annual salary, I would guess. Or perhaps Alastair feels restricted by having his services contracted to one outlet and in his declining years wishes to spread his wings and seek out other avenues for his imaginative prose. Perhaps he will soon be announced as the racing correspondence for The Times or, if the real money is downmarket, The Daily Mail. Freelancing may be the future for all of the staff at The Racing Post, with Alastair’s departure the editor’s way of issuing a shot across the bows, or desks, of his surviving columnists.
Certainly, the always excellent Tom Kerr has to step up to the mark as the paper’s leading columnist. He is a marvellous writer, of the modern kind. His articles are always flawless, though without the idiosyncrasy of Alastair, and he does sort of major in the politics of racing, whereas Alastair is very much at the reporter at the blood and thunder end of the sport.
All of the Post’s writers are excellent in their own way. My criticism has always been the lack of a female voice, an issue that over the past few weeks Bruce Millington has started to address. Perhaps the gap left by Alastair’s departure will be filled by a female columnist. I hope so as I warned Mr.Millington – he didn’t answer my e-mail, he never does – long ago that in this world of equality he would rue having an all-male front-line at the paper.
For whatever reason, going back to Bruce Millington, he did have a minion answer on his behalf an e-mail I sent him asking how the sport could get Alastair a knighthood. The ennobling I have served on him just does not do him justice. I am quite sure Her Majesty reads his column and would not hesitate to sharpen and polish the sword on his behalf. Sir Alastair Down, it has such clear and indefatigable ring to it, doesn’t it?
I have actually spoken with Alastair, though I doubt he will remember. We share nostalgia for names of the past and I have several times asked, pleaded and begged him, or any of his erstwhile colleagues, to back my idea for a cherished list of horses’ names. A wall of honour, if you like. Names that should die with the horses that made their names famous to the sport. Over the years I have had several letters in the racing papers on the subject, The Sporting Life and The Racing Post, and after one such letter, out of the blue one evening, the great man rang me to discuss the matter. He may have been drunk, I don’t’ know. He has suggested once or twice that he enjoys a drink now and again. And when I suggested that the name Rondetto might get re-used any day now he seemed dismayed. As the name has not yet appeared in a race-card he may have had a word in the ear of the suit who manages these things. He is Alastair Down. He must have influence, surely.
I have his number in my phone book, though I haven’t dared ring him. It may be out-of-date. Probably is. But I shall keep it nonetheless as it has his name against it and if I was of a mind to I could prove friendship by asking any naysayer ‘why would I have his personal phone number if we were not the best of buddies?’
Read his prose is the closest I will ever get to being his buddy. Those who are his buddy, are lucky so-and-so’s. They are friends with the greatest writer of racing.
Roll on November.

​Lady jockeys are in a good place at the moment, with the likes of Turner, Gordon, Currie, Richardson, Cox and others making ripples in the ocean swell that is the world of racing. And, of course, with Rachael Blackmore still leading the jump jockeys table in Ireland they are closer than ever to breaking through the glass ceiling that will be the final hurdle in acceptance of them being truly the equal of their male counterparts.
But when do you think this revolution began? It seems like only two yesterday’s ago that Alex Greaves was dead-heating in the Nunthorpe and Charlotte Brew was making waves of controversy by daring to ride in the Grand National. Well, you would be wrong to think the phenomena that is lady jockeys is some sort of overnight sensation.
The surprising fact is that Ladies Opens in point-to-points did not exist before 1965. Up to then females wanting to ride over fences were restricted to certain adjacent races, with even Members races banned to them by certain hunts. In 1974 more races were opened to women, though not maidens. Indeed, the lady riders of today can be thankful for the introduction of the Sex Discrimination Act in 1975 for the slow deterioration of the male bastion that was race-riding.
Not that the Jockey Club welcomed the female jockey with open arms and bouquets of flowers. Not a bit of it. They were shamed into it; forced by the will of Parliament and even then they looked for a loophole that might allow the status quo to continue. They consulted the Equal Opportunities Commission, they considered in minute detail the implications of the Act, they sought further clarification. But their backs were against the wall and unless they complied with the legislation the first bullet would be fired. They capitulated. They had no choice, though they decided the Act also forbade races restricted on the flat to female riders.
The first female to be granted a permit to ride over jumps was Sue Horton, the five-times female champion point-to-point rider. Four of the six original applicants received their permits, with Muriel Naughton and Jane and Diana Thorne also successful. Marie Tinkler, a qualified vet, husband of Colin, mother of two jockeys, winner of lots of point-to-points, show jumping events and the Newmarket Town Plate, was denied a permit to ride. She was 51 and thought too much of a risk. The contrariety of the decision was brought to bare on the Jockey Club when Marie Tinkler went on to become a leading amateur on the flat and her husband’s chief work-rider.
The first female to ride under the rules of National Hunt was Muriel Naughton, riding her own horse Ballycasey at Ayr, three days after receiving her permit. She finished one from last. But the ice was broken and the racing’s waters would never freeze over again.
She rode Ballycasey next time in the Eider Chase, unseating at the 17th fence. Muriel Naughton was the first female to ride in a National Hunt race, the first to suffer a fall and the first to turn professional. There really should be a plaque somewhere to honour her achievements.
As there should for the mighty Thorne twins, daughters of the intrepid John Thorne, he of Spartan Missile fame. Diana Thorne holds the honour of being the first female to win a National Hunt race when beating her father in a photo-finish at Stratford on Ben Ruler. Two weeks later her twin sister Jane won a hunter chase at Warwick on Indian Diva. Later in her career Jane finished second in the Whitbread Gold Cup on Spartan Missile.
The girls riding today in National Hunt, the likes of Bryony Frost, Lizzie Kelly, Page Fuller and others, owe a debt to the likes of the aforementioned, as well as those females now almost forgotten: Gillian Fortescue-Thomas, Nicky Lay, Joan Barrow, Val Greaves (mother of Alex), Ann Harvey, Geraldine Rees, Barbara Oliver, Shelaigh French, Diana Grissell, Rosemary White, Vera Sharpe, and Jenny Stamp who was paralysed in a fall in a point-to-point. And a special mention should go to Anne Alcock, author of ‘They’re Off!’, the story of the first female jump jockeys. You may have to hunt a copy down but it is well worth the time and purchase.
We are entering a period of transition in race-riding. It is inevitable that a female jockey will win one of the prestige races, more likely the Grand National, King George or Cheltenham Gold Cup, rather than a classic race on the flat, and the still prevailing glass ceiling will be cracked if not actually broken. I hope to live to see the day. But the road to creating racing history began way back in 1965, gained speed in 1976 and today with Rachael Blackmore, Lizzie Kelly and Bryony Frost proving beyond a shadow of doubt that the female can be the equal of the male the ‘National Velvet’ moment may just be around the corner.

​Horse racing as we know it is on its last legs. It’s official. The history and tradition of the sport rendered pointless and obscure by a former chairman of a failing English football league club and endorsed by powers-that-be in whose hands we place the dignity and future of our sport. Hail Jeremy Wray! The saviour of our sport!
Let me be plain. There is no requirement for me to pen a balanced piece of writing on this subject or any other.  I am not employed by anyone. I am not a journalist. This website is my plaything. I believe in a fair and open society and in the democratic right to free speech. If I were all-powerful I would erase Jeremy Wray and his damned awful Championship Horse Racing from the racing Earth.
As I have campaigned (modestly, I admit) for hand and heel races for professional riders to be trialled I should be thrilled to see the concept embraced by the powers-that-be. I am not. Trials should be conducted in quiet backwaters not in front of television cameras and with huge prize money on offer, and should not be used to sanitise and bring credence to a flawed concept. As I have written many times, if we are to persuade more people to our sport we must go some way to eliminating aspects they find distasteful. The whip is a prime example of what animal-lovers dislike about our sport. Jeremy Wray has no concern for horse welfare, though, he made that plain when he first introduced chr by declaring the horse should not be the prominent feature of the sport but the jockey. ‘The horse, in many ways, is just the engine a jockey uses’, I think were his words. It certainly was his sentiment.
I suspect Jeremy Wray is yet to be told that horses are not even vaguely similar to motor-bikes or Formula 1 racing cars. Someone should give him a heads-up as reality is going to be a great kick-up the ass when he realises there are no slick or full-wet horseshoes that can be affixed to the feet of a horse.
When this stupid idea was proposed ten or twelve teams were proposed. Now we are down to four, comprising a squad of thirty horses per team, with four jockeys per team. Which means sixteen jockeys will trouser both the riding fee and percentage of prize money, allowing already wealthy jockeys to get richer and the jockeys who would really benefit from this influx of new money will have to spectate as horses they normally ride earn money for the likes of Moore, Buick, Doyle, Spencer, Dettori, etc. The rich get richer when Jeremy Wray is the quick-fix fitter!
I doubt if any of these races will take place at all-weather tracks, which means every race and every meeting will be subject to the variances of the British weather. This year it has been unusually hot, with firm ground prevailing. Next summer it might be a summer of rain. As chr races will be staged at night the ground could very easily be wetter or firmer than when declarations close. Trainers are averse to running a firm ground horse on soft ground, as they are running a soft ground horse on firm. Will there be reserves? Will trainers be fined for taking out a horse because of the ground? Will they be fined for doing so? Will the welfare of the horse take prominence over the expediency of the event?
Formula 1 could not exist without multiple sponsorship or without the financial clout of major car manufacturers. Are we expecting the horse-kingdoms of Dubai and Qatar to underwrite this (mis)adventure? Will bookmakers be allowed to have teams of their own? Will jockeys be expected to ride out to the line on a horse hating the ground or is feared injured or feeling not right in some way? Will jockeys be fined or suspended for not riding out to the line? What will happen to the format if one of the lucky sixteen picks up a ban and is off-games? And Formula 1 is broadcast at weekends, not in the backwater of a minor I.T.V. channel. £4.8million is a beautiful amount of money to be coming to the sport yet sponsors are not fairy-godmothers, they will expect a dividend, they will want a lot of buck for their dough. Will they get it on a Thursday night on Channel invisible? Anyone who is a devotee of the soaps will not change their viewing just to watch something that is hyped as similar to Formula 1 but is actually nothing at all like it. At the end of the day the viewers, be they a racing enthusiast or a newcomer to the sport, will be watching a horse race very similar to any other horse race. And are we expected to believe that spectators will form allegiances to teams or to a certain jockey? People who spectate also bet and they will put their money on the horse they think most likely to win and that will scupper ‘allegiance’ in one foul swoop.
I like and admire John Gosden. I know he has the good of the sport at heart. When he speaks, I listen. In that he is very much like Michael Johnson, one of the great athletes and sporting commentators. When John Gosden says of chr: ‘the most creative and positive racing sponsorship opportunity I have seen’, he may be correct. But it is all pie-in-the-sky. This 4.8 million quid sponsorship is being sanctioned for one small and very wealthy section of the sport. They may say this is for horses below group and listed class and will give the small owner a chance of a big pot but if there is a Team Godolphin they will have a one in four chance of winning every single race in the 48-race series. And, of course, the 120 horses that will make up the four teams will be largely unavailable for races outside of chr. And where will this new concept take the sport? If it is successful, god-forbid, will horse racing become Formula 1 style twenty-four-seven?
I dislike Jeremy Wray, even though I have never met him. I suspect Swindon Town must be better off without him. This is very much his venture. It is all over everything he says to the press. When he says ‘this will be entertainment-focused horseracing’ what he is saying is that other forms of horse racing, horse racing we know and love, lacks entertainment and is past its sell-by date. Chr will not, long-term, help horse racing survive, it will kill it. Formula 1 is a twenty-race series staged around the world. It is not a day-to-day routine. For those who work in horse racing it is not so much a job as life itself and every one of racing’s workforce deserve a slice of the 4.8-million quid, not just the lucky few.
What Jeremy Wray and the powers-that-be propose is like growing trees upside down so people can enjoy the complex root-structure; it is like changing football by doing away with the referee and goalkeepers; it is like making tennis more interesting by having a sloping court. It is change for the sake of change, and I dare say the bank balance of its leading advocate.
If the powers-that-be go ahead with this ludicrous idea I will not be tuning in. Will you?

​It is an odd aspect of Mankind that certain people and events can often, after an unverified length of time, become imbued with a mystique that manifests into the stuff of legend. It is always been so, so it has. The cult of Jesus Christ is the largest and most well-known metamorphosis of a man who through convenience and embellishment of the truth alters in legend from mere mortal who lived and preached a good life to become throughout history a superhuman son of a god with no name. I may have offended a good few people there and will doubtless offend a few more once I get to my point. King Alfred is another character of history who is practically unknown to all but those with either a degree in History or who are dedicated viewers of ‘Horrible Histories’. If you read an account of his life it is clear he was a good and brave ruler. He is known as the father of the English navy, he promoted education, he translated Latin into Anglo-Saxon, he made treaties and repelled invasions. Yet all he is remembered for is burning cakes, of which there is not a shred of proof. I dare say, if we knew the truth of it, much of what we know about historical figures is only hearsay that has travelled down the ages through accounts recorded decades or centuries after everyone involved in those events were dead or simply recorded by word-of-mouth through the repetition of nursery rhymes.
Although there is no debate who the Voice of Racing was, and perhaps remains, I do not believe that Sir Peter O’Sullevan, as great and as good a man as he was, is the greatest commentator to grace our living-rooms.
Now I know in believing what many will consider heresy I offend perhaps the majority of racing enthusiasts but if you are as addicted to YouTube videos of races of the B.B.C. era as I am there can be no argument that Sir Peter was not the faultless commentator as legend will have us believe. He was hesitant at times. Called the wrong horse at times. Called a horse finishing fast when in fact it was easily held by the eventual winner. I suspect he relied heavily on assistants in his commentaries, which possibly accounts for the occasional bouts of hesitancy. He was, without doubt, the doyen of commentators but he is not the best, not by a long chalk.
The living rarely receives the credit deserving to them. A good man has to die before his peers honour him with the praise he should have received when able to appreciate what is his due. To this end I want to lavish praise on Richard Hoiles, Simon Holt, and others too numerous to mention. They are, to a man, quite brilliant. All men, you will doubtless be aware, with not a dulcet female voice to be heard, which in this age of sexual equality is an anomaly that is almost a breach of the Human Rights Act. Even the most sexist of sports, football, has embraced the female both in front of the camera and behind the microphone.
But to return my controversial point of view. Live and without rehearsal, when the unexpected can happen at any stage in a race, our present-day commentators make the complex appear child’s play. No commentator of any other sport is as fluid in their description of what is developing second-by-second in front of them better and with a higher degree of fluency than the racing commentator. What Richard Hoiles achieves when commentating on big-field handicaps is a tour-de-force unmatched in human history.
And as Richard Hoiles is a better commentator than Sir Peter, Channel 4 and I.T.V., especially I.T.V., present racing with a quality and insight far beyond what the B.B.C. ever achieved. Yes, the technology available today for I.T.V. to play with was unheard of during the halcyon days of Sir Peter, Julian Wilson and Jimmy Lindley, but the overall presentation we receive is so much slicker and more informative.
I will not contest that Sir Peter O’Sullevan was a far greater man than any of those who follow in his footsteps. Sir Peter’s love of racing stemmed from a love of horses as his charity work makes clear. The over-worked donkey in a third-world country was as important to him as the latest Derby winner to come out of Ballydoyle. His true legacy will not be his commentaries but the charitable donations to equine charities that his friends are determined to continue in his name. Sir Peter O’Sullevan is, I believe, one of the greatest men to come to prominence through horse racing and if it were not for him perhaps Hoiles, Holt and others would not have been inspired to follow in his footsteps? I just do not believe, as a commentator, he was in the same league as our present-day callers of races.

​Of course, the answer to the question is a resounding no. Or should that be NO! Anyway, in the preamble, which for a reason that escapes me is on the back cover and not where you would expect to find something that comes before the main event, to my collection of horse racing shorts stories ‘Going To The Last’, I suggest ‘No fictional account, and certainly not the tawdry thrillers which constitute the niche genre, can ever come close to replicating the reality of the sport.’ I also suggest, and thankfully one reviewer reprimanded me for my modesty, ‘that my book is a brave but foolhardy attempt to reflect the beautiful truth of a remarkable sport.’ I would like to think no rational man or woman could contradict me. Long experience, though, suggests otherwise.
Having read the autobiography of Dick Francis and enjoyed it, I thought I would risk reading one of his thrillers. I say ‘risk’ as horse racing is closer to my heart than any other aspect of life and I take exception to anyone who plays fast and loose with the reputation of the sport. Alas, although I accept that Francis was a writer of great talent, I found which ever best-seller it happened to be – I have it still, somewhere, yet its title is of so little account to this piece I cannot bring myself to seek it out – was a knife in the back to the good name of the sport. It is no good defending Francis, and others, by saying that the reader is intelligent and will know that the author is using his imagination to produce a work of fiction as the majority of authors write from experience, especially when they have practical experience of the subject matter. Indeed, it is the first bit of advice that budding writers receive from other writers and trade magazines – write about what you know.
This is my concern when ex-jockeys – I will not name them but you know who they are – put their name (I doubt, as with Katie Price, if they actually sit behind a laptop and grind out the 100,000 words or take part in any proof-reading) to the formulaic thriller-cum-bodice-rippers intended to boost their retirement funds. Readers will believe the plots come from real-life experience and no amount of truth will deconstruct the idea that horse racing is inherently bent and populated by jockeys who are easily bribed, by trainers with easy access to drugs that either make horses run faster or slower according to their need and bookmakers who are second cousin to gangland bosses and whore house entrepreneurs.
I am sure there are good novels out there that draw a more enlightened picture of our sport. Quality writers who write about racing as it is and not as they suppose their readers would like it to be. Which, by the way, is how Jilly Cooper writes about the equestrian tribe – jockeys who scintillate, that is to go at it like alley cats into the wee small hours, and stable girls with no shame and the ambition to sin their way to the heavenly life of champagne, fast cars and men whose John Thomas is reminiscent of the tail of a jaguar.
I have heard good things of D.J.Taylor’s ‘Derby Day’ and ‘Harmony’ by William Fain, a writer who committed suicide aged 42. Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a short story, though in his time ‘short’ could be anything up to 15,000 words, ‘The Adventures of Silver Blaze’, though it being Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes skulduggery was very much afoot.
My sketchy research informs me that the majority of novels that use horse racing as a scaffold to build a story around are written by Americans and while they sell in moderately high numbers I hazard to suggest that only Jane Smiley writes with a deep understanding of the horse and the intricacies of racing stateside. Nobody, I believe, has ever written a good novel about National Hunt, though Enid Bagnold won immortality with ‘National Velvet’, and no, Elisabeth Taylor did not win the Grand National as she was disqualified for being a girl. How times change?
I do not expect anyone reading this piece possesses the nerve to shoot me down, although I hope against hope that out in the literary world there is a horse racing novel worth the price of purchase.
If you would like my recommendation of a book that though non-fiction reads very much like a novel, or at least a chronicle of American social life of the time, please give ‘Battleship’ by Dorothy Ours a try. I do not use adjectives of strength very often but I thought at the conclusion of the book that it was ‘a bit of a masterpiece’ or ‘Damn Brilliant’ as I exclaimed when returning the book to the shelf. In fact it sits in the honoured position between Michael Tanner’s book on Spanish Steps and Ivor Herbert’s biography of Red Rum. Only Pat Taaffe’s autobiography ‘My Life and Arkle’s’ is better.
The point I am trying to make, no doubt making a ham-fist of things as usual, is that when authors use horse racing in the plots of their novels they put on the page what they expect is the reader’s idea of what racing is really like. There must be exceptions but to seek them out would send a coach and four through my argument. As a collective, those of us who care for and enjoy the sport for its ethical and aesthetic value must do all we can to change the belief and attitude of those whose only contact with the sport comes through gossip, the media and the written word.
 

​I like the Shergar Cup, and not only because it keeps alive the name of a great horse and the mystery of its sad fate. I have proposed a National Hunt version for the second day of the King George meeting at Kempton over the Christmas period, the Flyingbolt Challenge or Desert Orchid Cup.
The Shergar Cup, now it has proved such a success with the public, if tinkered with or even revolutionised, has the potential to do great things for flat racing. Some people, I know, people who lack my foresight, poo-pooh the event, lamenting the quality of horses participating and the uncompetitiveness nature of some of the races. The number and diversity of the crowd drawn to Ascot for this one-off team championship tells you all you need to know about its popularity and why its detractors are wrong to criticise. The Shergar Cup is a valued variation to the normal racing product as though the races are competitive there is an element of fun contained within the format. And of course, it is fascinating for the casual racegoer and form expert alike to judge the Rest-of-the-World riders against the better-known riders and to see how ‘the girls’ get on against them. It is a day of racing where the class of horse is unimportant as the format allows the owners of moderate horses the opportunity to win a nice pot and at the end of the day it leaves the spectator wanting a seventh or eighth race. Well, it does me.
I am sure there is an expense involved in persuading, if they need persuasion, the foreign riders to come to the party and I am sure there is other expenditure involved. I feel, though, that the six race-card, of which any one jockey can only ride in five races, is limiting and perhaps does not give the foreign riders a true feel for the British racing experience. Countries around the world put on similar events, when the British riders are the exotic species, and I think as the inventor and regulator of this sport we could do the job with a little more pizazz and imagination.
How about a format along these lines? Two races per day throughout the week leading up to the six races at Ascot. This would allow the foreign jockeys to experience the different types of racecourses they would be unused to in their own countries. It would also allow them to pick up spare rides and make connections that might be useful to them in the years ahead. These extra ten races need not have similar prize money to the six races at Ascot, though they would greatly enhance the racing at any of the venues chosen to host the Shergar Cup races and might boost attendance. This format might also allow the team numbers to be upped to four per team, with the top three riders per team taking part on the final day, giving a little extra spice to every race even within each team.
Or: the two races per day as before but contested by three different teams – for example a team of northern-based jockeys, a team of southern-based jockeys and a team of apprentices – with the winning team making up a fifth team at Ascot on the Saturday.
Logistically my idea might be challenging to implement, as I have it in my mind that the twelve or sixteen jockeys involved could be bussed as a group from course to course, with interviews and promotion on local television and radio. The more celebrated jockeys, of course, with commitments to their main employers may not wish to commit to what might be an arduous week during the most arduous part of the season. Yet for someone, say, straining to become champion jockey, it could be seen that to take part in the event gives them the opportunity for guaranteed rides in races that might not be greatly competitive and to get on horses they would not otherwise ride. And again, making new connections.
The Shergar Cup is now proven as a crowd-puller and is an ideal vehicle to take our sport to the people, for the foreign jockeys to promote racing in their own countries, and for the powers-that-be to market and promote horse racing to a wide variety of people. At the moment the Shergar Cup is a one-off event that takes place on a quiet weekend between two big Festivals. With a little imagination and flair, it could be far more than an idiosyncratic filler in the summer flat racing programme.
 
 

​My views on the thorny old issue of prize money will no doubt be controversial and perhaps few will support me in my argument, yet I believe the levels of prize money at the premier flat meetings contribute to sport’s reputation as being elitist and a game for the nobs.
Increased prize money is of course vital if we want to encourage more people to take up ownership of racehorses. It is also vital, perhaps more so, to increase prize money so that trainers, jockeys and stable staff are better remunerated for their supreme efforts. And though all-round prize money is on the up it is more on the up at the premier race meeting than at the bread and butter meetings where an increase might be of greater benefit to the sport. And that is the nub of my concern. It is all very well the powers-that-be claiming an annual increase in prize money of whatever percentage but if the majority of that increase goes into the pot at places like Ascot, Goodwood and York, whereas a much smaller annual increase goes to Chepstow, Yarmouth and Hamilton, it devalues the achievement.
The level of prize money at Goodwood last week verged on the ridiculous. Can anyone put their hand on the heart and say the increase in prize money contributed to better racing, more horses from abroad or an all-round better quality of horse? I dare say winning owners thought the prize money fully justified, yet in the main the big fat cheques went the way of owners for whom six-figure amounts of money can be found stuffed in shoeboxes under the bed.
I am not so naïve as to believe that the ruling families of Dubai and Qatar can race their huge strings of horses simply for the pleasure of seeing their names on race-cards. Their need to balance the books is no different to the owner with one home-bred in training. Through their breeding operations owners such as Sheikh Hamdan and Prince Khalid Abdullah employ many hundreds of people, all of whom expect a pay-cheque at the end of the month. Without such generous and prolific owners’ flat racing would be greatly diminished. Yet they do not operate solely at the premier end of the sport, they too compete for £3,000 at Chepstow, Yarmouth and Hamilton. They too would benefit if no race in Great Britain, jumping or on the flat, could be valued at less than £5,000.
£1-million Sussex Stakes also do nothing to advance the public perception of horse racing as a sport for the working class, which is ridiculous as horse racing is very much a working man’s sport. In stable-yards, on racecourses, in betting shops, the worker bees are perhaps to a man and woman from working-class backgrounds. Most trainers, too. If I were to find the Queen’s Rolls Royce broken down on a B road somewhere and she accepted a lift home we could talk, as equals, almost, about racing until I dropped her outside whatever castle she was staying at.
A £1-million Sussex Stakes will attract the same runners as a £500,000 Sussex Stakes. There is a little matter of value for money and I don’t believe for one moment that a £1-million Sussex Stakes is value for its enhanced prize money. Whereas £1-million spread across all those £3,000 races would most definitely provide value for money.
Although I am fully in favour of giving prominence to the staying races in this country and have long advocated a British international handicap to rival the Melbourne Cup, with the Ebor the obvious race to upgrade, I do not see the value in York and Newmarket going tit for tat to provide a staying race with a £1-million prize pot. The Cesarewitch will, I suspect, become a completely different type of race to the traditional Cesarewitch, with classy three-year-olds laid out for the race and the good old stagers for whom the Cesarewitch is their best chance of winning a valuable pot unable to even get into the race. Money is not always the answer, especially when there is no problem to be solved. How will it benefit the sport if the top breeding operations, Coolmore, Darley etc, regularly farm the top handicaps, which they will if they have £1-million in prize money, as well as the classic races?
I am ignorant of the way the wheels of corporate business works. Or indeed the corporate arm of Middle Eastern countries work. Why is five days on the Sussex Downs worth x-millions to Qatar and yet the flying of its national flag at every race meeting in the country would be not worth bothering about. Has anyone from the B.H.B. gone to the equestrian federations of, Kuwait, Burundi, Malaysia or Liechenstein, for example, and asked what is it worth to have the national flag of their country flying tall and proud at every race-meeting in Britain for a year. £1-million, perhaps?

​One of the banes of life when you have gone out on a limb and independently published a book, especially one with a niche market, is the time, trouble and expense you have to commit to in getting it known by the public. If you are famous, infamous or wealthy enough to have staff do the job for you, it is an easier exercise. If you have an agent and a publisher it is easier still. If you are a nobody crying in the wilderness for attention the task becomes more like a quest, similar to ones the knight’s made to the Holy Land to convert people content with their own religion to a religion that made no sense to them. It is a fair, if facetious, analogy, as I can talk up my collection of horse racing short stories but if my audience have no fascination for the subject matter, or a relative with an interest in racing and an upcoming birthday, they will see no sense in buying the book.
A recent reviewer – hence the title of this piece – expressed the quibble that I should have more belief in my writing ability as on the cover I admit that the book is ‘a foolhardy attempt to reflect the beautiful truth of a remarkable sport’. Although it was kind of Peter Magee to argue my case for me I stand by the assertion that it is almost impossible through the medium of fiction to portray an accurate reflection of the sport. The book was described as ‘anything but foolhardy’, which is kind, yet my aim when I began writing the stories – over twenty years ago – was not to reach the core audience for racing based fiction but to be published in magazines read by people outside of the sport so that in a small way I would be promoting horse racing by displaying to readers that the day-to-day of racing is unrelated to what they might find on the pages of a Dick Francis novel or, God forbid, one of the lesser creations penned by people who really should know better. They know who they are.
If I was not foolhardy, I was naïve in thinking I could invent, or reconfigure, a new literary genre – sporting fiction. Dick Francis and others write thrillers, the horse racing aspect is merely the backdrop for plots that I maintain bring no credit to the sport. I wanted to demonstrate to a sceptical reading public that horse racing is not inherently crooked and that its characters are in the main honest, hard-working and very much like most of us in so much that they have the same worries and aspirations. For most jockeys, and no doubt trainers, life is all about feeding the family and maintaining the mortgage. My hope was that the readership would see racing’s foot soldiers as human beings with a great love of the horse. If I am read by those already involved in the day-to-day care and riding of racehorses I will be preaching to the converted.
But as a writer my greatest want is to be read, which is why I have donated copies to libraries where there are vibrant racing communities. As someone who has followed the sport with the devotion of an aesthetic for over fifty years my real desire would be to help in some small way to promote the sport to a wider audience.
The aspect of Peter Magee’s review that I found most interesting was that out of the twenty-five stories that comprise ‘Going To The Last’ his favourite was ‘The Story of H’ a story I wrote as a children’s story for a competition that emphasised it wanted entries that could be described as ‘unusual from the normal child’s reading’. Peter Magee knew I was writing about Foinavon, the children would not. Perhaps that was my mistake. Suffice to say, Peter’s favourite story is not mine. Though I suspect that is always the way of it, even for the great and the good of literature. In fact along with the two stories that are parodies of the racing novels I so detest, ‘The Story of H’ falls a long way short of my more favoured stories in the collection. The stories I am proudest of writing are ‘Yes I Fear He Is. I Fear He Is.’ And ‘Sentiment of Fools’. The former is a pulling together of stories about Arkle, the latter, well it’s based on a true story that perhaps few will remember.
To be truthful the ego boost came not from the review itself but the summary: Twenty-five well-written stories about the glorious sport from an author who knows what he’s talking about.
The collection comprises twenty-five stories. Horse racing is glorious. I am described as an author, and glory be! I know what I am talking about.
What’s not to like?