​Sheikh Mohammed and his brother Sheikh Hamdan are no spring chickens, you know. Both of them are old enough to draw a pension. Prince Khalid Abdulla is even older. Even J.P. McManus is older than we would like him to be. John Magnier and the boys of Coolmore, too. Yes, there is Qatar Racing and other relative youngsters waiting to assume the mantle of top racing dog held in our time by Coolmore and Godolphin, yet it has to be acknowledged there are indications that the time of the big battalions might soon be coming to an end.
Horse racing has always had wealthy men and women with large stables of racehorses, their own private trainers and retained jockeys; people with the wherewithal to live their lives any damn way they chose to. The earliest power houses of the turf, or power stables, were in the keep of the British aristocracy. Viscount Falmouth, owner of 18 classic winners between 1874 and 1883. The Duke of Westminster, with a slightly measly 11 classic winners, though he did have the good fortune to own Ormonde, one of the first truly dominant horses to leave their mark on the species. Westminster’s reign of supremacy lasted from 1880, the year he first won the Derby (he won 4 Derbies in total) with Bend Or, through to 1906 when Troutbeck won him his third St.Leger.
The Duke of Portland also won 11 classics but over a shorter time period to the Duke of Westminster. In 1888 he won the 2,000 Guineas with Ayrshire and in 1900 he won both the Oaks and St.Leger.
Coincidentally, the Earl of Rosebery also won 11 classics beginning with Ladas in the 1894 2,000 Guineas and finishing in 1924 when Plack won him the 1,000 Guineas.
Throughout these formative years of the turf many tried to influence their way up the society ladder by owning racehorses, with a great many of them stumbling and falling by the wayside. Sir George Chetwynd and the Earls of Durham and Lonsdale being amongst this unfortunate number. And then there were the notoriously eccentric lady owners, the Duchess of Montrose, only her trainer Alec Taylor was allowed in her bedroom, and Dorothy Paget who did not allow any man into her boudoir.
Through the 1920, 30’s and 40’s and into the fifties, the wealth of India sparred with local owners and breeders for dominance, with the Maharajahs of Rajpipla and Baroda especially successful. And, of course, there has always been Aga Khans to the fore both here and in France, as is, thankfully, the situation today.
But where are the modern-day versions of Lords Derby and Howard de Walden? The equivalent, and we should be thankful for them, today is the rise of syndicates and racing clubs. But though they are splendid for the racing of horses, in the main they do not breed racehorses, as has traditionally been the situation with the top owners down the centuries.
I think it often but we will only truly appreciate the Maktoum brothers and the huge contribution they have made to the sport of flat racing, when they are dead and buried. No memorial will ever do justice to their worth to our sport. They will leave a legacy, I have no doubt, and their work will continue in the hands of their descendants, but the record book clearly shows that dynasties fade away into memory, to be replaced for years and years by pale shadows. Will flat racing survive yet another changing of the guard?
In the present economic climate, with government restrictions on society strangling the life out of every sport and pastime, with the hands of ruling bodies tied by propaganda protocols and frustrated by inconsistencies that now amount to the size of small mountains, if a financial route out of the quagmire is not decided upon in short order – it is said that the present state of affairs may still be gripping our throats come the Cheltenham Festival – the sport of flat racing in a season or twos time might resemble the days of the Dukes Westminster and Portland, with only the very richest of people able to hold together a string of racehorses. It might yet be worse, of course, we might revert to the days of match races across Newmarket Heath.
The usually admirable Richard Hoiles, guesting as a columnist for the Racing Post this week, said of the idea of a Tote Monopoly, ‘that it was a ship that had sailed’. Yet he asked readers not to reject his proposals for a financial rescue package out-of-hand but to suggest improvements to his ideas, even though he rejects out-of-hand a funding stream that is responsible for virtually every other racing nation on Earth having better prize money than us.

​I must confess, I have a fondness for Captain Ryan Price, a man, I suggest, more misunderstood than any other racing trainer of the last hundred-years. I never knew him, knew no one who knew him and doubtless would have been frightened of him if I worked for him or had a horse trained by him. But he was hard-done by at times by both racing hierarchy and press and yet he kept on bouncing back just as good at his job as ever.
As many reporters, jockeys and I dare say staff, could testify, he had a good old bark on him when the mood took him. He was no diplomat, that is for sure. Yet behind the gruff, regimental exterior was an animal lover, a trainer who gave his good horses an honourable retirement and whose stable jockeys were as loyal to him as he was to them. Why stewards of the Jockey Club had it in for him is a story largely untold.
I very much doubt if Captain Price was squeaky-clean. You wouldn’t really want him to be. I dare say he ‘fiddled about on occasion with horses in order to hoodwink bookmakers, giving horses ‘educational’ runs as most trainers were prone to do back in the days prior to the phalanx of cameras used today on racecourses. He nursed the horses in his care to give them longevity and he won many a race with ageing horses. He won the 1966 Cesarewitch with the eight-year-old Persian Lancer, five-years after the horse first ran in the race. Captain Price had previously won the Cesarewitch with Utrillo in 1963. If you have John Hughes & Peter Watson’s book ‘My Greatest Training Triumph’ on your bookshelf (a good read, by the way) you will find a photo of Captain Price with Persian Lancer taken sixteen-years after his Cesarewitch triumph.
Of course, the great man, he died in 1986, is really only known today for his association with the early years of the Schweppes Gold Trophy, the big 2-mile handicap hurdle run at Newbury in February. The inaugural running was at Aintree during the Grand National meeting which he won with the novice Rosyth. Nothing controversial that year but the race the following year has become a racing cause celebre.
Rosyth was prone to break blood vessels, which he did in most of his races up to the second running of the Schweppes. He was also a Spring horse, as some horses mysteriously can be. Having run unplaced all season, the Newbury stewards were suspicious that Price had ‘kept’ Rosyth for this one day and asked him to explain the improvement in form. He told them about the breaking blood vessels and how the horse waited for the spring to bloom but the Jockey Club did not believe him and he had his licence removed for 4-months, with no guarantee he would get it back. Josh Gifford also received a similar suspension.
His horses were dispersed to other trainers for the duration, some were never returned to him. Anglo went to Fred Winter, for instance, won the Grand National and stayed with Winter.
Having won the first two Schweppes Trophies, he was in no position to stop someone else winning it in 1965, though Rosyth, trained during Price’s suspension by Tom Masson, proving that the horse was indeed a spring horse, finished second. In 1966 he won it again with Le Vermontois and again in 1967, this time with Hill House, who had finished ‘only’ fourth at Sandown seven-days before. Again, the Newbury stewards were disgruntled with Price, this time, it seemed with greater reason as Hill House failed a dope test, testing positive for the steroid cortisol.
Press and punters, as I recall, labelled Price a ‘wrong ‘un’ and were forced to eat humble pie when after exhaustive examination by Newmarket vets, the whole affair rambled on for six-months, Hill House was found to have a naturally high occurrence of cortisol in his system. In effect, he was doping himself. Price was exonerated of wrong-doing and added to his achievements over jumps, he won the Grand National with Kilmore and the Cheltenham Gold Cup with old-timer What a Myth, by being just as successful on the flat, winning amongst other major races the Oaks and the St.Leger.
Captain Price was a Marmite character; I suspect as many people loved and respected him as did not. But his two stable jockeys when he was a jumps trainer were Fred Winter and Josh Gifford and you would be hard-pushed to find anyone with a harsh word to say about either of them and that tells me that Captain Henry Ryan Price was far more a saint than he ever was a sinner.
In remuneration to his memory, as acceptance that he was wrongly found guilty of not running a horse on its merits by the sport’s then governing body, there should be some kind of memorial to Ryan Price, if only a handicap hurdle at Fontwell or novice chase at Plumpton. 

​I must admit it is rather taxing trying to find real, unalloyed joy in horse racing at the moment. The mask wearing and the anti-social distancing remains as alien to me today as when it was first thrust upon us, and knowing our sport is only allowed as a means of government propaganda displeases me to the point of apoplexy and every aspect of a day’s racing dictated and governed by politicians sworn by oath to an agenda, as if we are suddenly living by North Korean rules, and it makes my heart yearn for the days of liberty and free speech.
If you are fed-up with me going on and on about the plandemic, it is nothing to having no option but to continually comment on it. I just wish it would go away. Back to China, whence it came.
Thank all that is holy for the horses.
What must owners who have splurged £3-million on a yearling, or in the case of the Great Voltigeur two owners, and you are put unceremoniously in your place by an ill-bred horse that should have no pretensions of being a middle-distance horse, let alone a Group 1 or 2 horse? Do you arrange to meet your bloodstock advisors in a dark alley to make plain your misgivings with a well-aimed kick to the groin on ever listening to them? To me, it was an absolute joy to witness Pyledriver winning in the manner of a top-class 3-year-old. By a sprinter out of a not-so-very-good hurdler. If Pyledriver was the central equine character in a Dick Francis novel you would hardly give it any credit.
I am a hopeless romantic. There is very little of the cold-hearted realist in me and my advice to William Muir would be this: if you want to be known as a classic winning trainer when you retire, you have to roll the dice and go for the St.Leger. He may not stay. Coolmore may run three pacemakers to run the stamina out of Pyledriver. But it is doubtless given the size of pond that is your day-to-day bread and butter that you will get a better chance of winning a classic. If he wins, and let’s hope he does, the Arc, the King George and Queen Elisabeth and the Coronation Cup will be waiting for you next season.
And if you go for the Arc, you would be the party-pooper if you beat Enable. Win the St.Leger and you are the popular hero.
A question: if Mogul, Darian and Pyledriver were to go the sales this week, which of them would make the most money. Mogul or Darian because of their top-of-the-range breeding or the humble yet more talented Pyledriver? My money would be on Mogul. Though nowhere near the 3-million Guineas he cost as a yearling.
Another joy of the sport is when a new owner comes into a stable and with his first horse comes up with a cracker, as is the case with Happy Romance. I don’t know her purchase price but she has won two 80-grand races in a row and I would be surprised if she doesn’t win a couple more before the season is out. I will be very surprised if today’s Gimcrack winner impresses me more than Happy Romance. Possibly the best two-year-old I have seen all-season, filly or colt.
How good is Love? After she won the 1,000 Guineas, I predicted in a few words she would win the Oaks. So far, she has won three major races without being challenged, so even if you take the view that neither the two classics nor the Yorkshire Oaks were of the highest quality, you cannot but be impressed by Love.
Do not get carried away by Aidan O’Brien’s ebullience after the race. Although he is not one for hyperbole, it is hard to think that he already rates Love above Found or Magical, to name but two. And we will not know Love’s true mark until she is in a race with horses of a similar or better calibre than her. Do I think she will win the Arc? If the ground came up heavy, which it can do at Longchamp, no, though I doubt if she would run on ground any worse than soft.
And then there is the wonder that is Ghaiyyath. On good ground, would any horse get close to him? Even Enable? Of course, I want Enable to win. Don’t we all? I don’t want to see Frankie in tears. Tears of joy, yes. But not unhappy tears. And for Stradivarius to win he would need a strong gallop, perhaps even stronger than Ghaiyyath will go. How will Love deal with having good horses in front of her going a strong gallop? Even with the 3-year-old fillies allowance I am not convinced she can beat such strong staying older horses and I have yet to mention Mishriff, the French Derby winner, who might prove the fly in the ointment.
Has any jockey in the history of the Arc had three such brilliant horses to choose from, Enable, Stradivarius and Mishriff. Yes, Frankie already knows who his ride will be but in theory he could yet choose one of the other two.
At the moment I am torn between Ghaiyyath and Enable. My head says one, my heart the other. That is another joy of racing. We are always right in our choices until we are proven wrong.

​2,400 people were allowed into the Crucible Theatre last weekend to watch the final of the World Snooker Championship. It was a sight to behold, a glimpse of normality. Not one of them, nor the cameramen, referee or players were wearing masks. Again, a joy to behold. So why is it okay for people to watch snooker in a confined auditorium but not okay for jockeys, trainers and grooms to work on a racecourse, in the great outdoors, without the ugly and completely useless impediment of the mask? I only ask. Perhaps Ed Chamberlain knows the answer.

Last week, the Racing Post did me the service of publishing two letters on the subject of whether a three-year-old should ever be handed the mantle of greatness. My first letter was in response to the opinion of a reader who considered Sea The Stars the greatest racehorse he had seen, better than Frankel in his opinion. Anyone who has read my posts down through what is becoming the years will know I do not believe any racehorse retired after one season is deserving of such honour. A three-year-old that goes to stud after its classic season can not be given any other description than the best of his generation. In Sea The Stars case you can add best by a long way. But that does not justify anyone referring to him as ‘one of the all-time greats’.
But everyone is entitled to their opinion. I hold the opinion that Frankel would undoubtedly have no rival to the greatest crown if he had either remained in training at 5, the age when racehorses are regarded as reaching their prime, or if he had run over what I believe would have proved his optimum distance, 1 ½-miles. The point I was belabouring to make is that it does not encourage owners to keep their best horses in training beyond their 3-year-old careers when people dub 3-year-olds as achieving greatness. We have no way of knowing if Sea The Stars and Nijinsky, to give two examples, would have remained sound if they had stayed in training for another year. Or if they could have given weight and a beating to the succeeding generation of 3-year-olds. For the thoroughbred breed to prosper into the future what is required as stallions is not flash-in-the-pan shooting stars but stallions that proved hardy and sound in wind, limb and heart.

Everyone keeps on complaining about prize-money, don’t they? It was James Toller in the Racing Post today. He was right, by the way, that prize money is not even standing still at the moment but going backwards. But crying over the situation without putting forward solutions is a waste of everyone’s time and energy. It’s a case of, ‘if Deauville can put up fabulous prize-money, why can’t we’? Dah!
The majority of the money bet on horse racing in France goes back to the sport, that is why. It is the same in the U.S., Hong Kong, Australia and every successful racing jurisdiction. It is the only sure-fire method of funding the sport. Every racecourse should have its own Tote, with a National Tote serviced by bookmakers acting as agents. With sports betting such a big part of bookmakers income the betting landscape today is light years different from the days of Woodrow Wyatt. It is a no-brainer and it is time the industry joined hands and finances to make it happen.

Surely if an apprentice jockey claims the wrong riding allowance, especially if the error is made multiple times, incurring penalties for people completely innocent of the error, the B.H.A. should at the very least share the responsibility for the error. It is not as if Jersey is on another continent. George Rooke is a young man making his way in life. Rightly, as the rules of racing were broken, if innocently, he must pay a price and 7-days will not be the breaking of him. But shouldn’t the B.H.A. be subject to some sort of sanction. It is all very well them suggesting they will do something to stop a similar occurrence but wouldn’t an apology to both young Rooke and the sport be appropriate. No matter what, it seems, it is never their fault.

In conclusion, to return to Frankel. If anyone read, what I assume was an extract from a recently published book about Frankel, in the Racing Post in the week, they would have been delighted, as I was, to read about a meeting between Henry Cecil and his ex-assistant Ed Vaughan on the Waterhall gallop on the morning of the day Frankel was to have first race. ‘Do you know,’ Henry said without prompting. ‘I think this horse I run tonight is the best I have.’ He then went on, astonishingly, proving his credentials to be considered one of the greatest trainers in history. ‘I think he’s the best I’ve ever trained.’
Of course, in the post-race interview he was not so predictive. ‘I haven’t really galloped him yet. He could be a nice horse if he goes the right way.’ Incidentally, he won the princely sum of £4,533 that evening at Newmarket.

​“We’ve got the right person, for the right job, at the right time,” says Annamarie Phelps, the B.H.A. chair. Though not wanting to question the Racing Post or the excellent Bill Barber, but I think Ms. Phelps is a chairperson or chairwoman, not a piece of furniture. It must be so demeaning to have worked your way up from the bottom rung to the top only to be thought of as part of the furniture, the chair, when you get there.
As with everyone involved in any sort of way with the sport, I wish the new B.H.A. chief executive every damn bit of luck going. I just hope there is a sport left for her to govern come January 4th 2021.
Unlike her predecessor, Nick Rust, Julie Harrington (good racing name, bodes well, anyway) she has experience of racing on her c.v., albeit in a nice dress and shoes, sort of capacity. I am not convinced being formerly a board member of the B.H.A. cuts much ice in comparison to anyone who for many years had got out of bed pre-dawn to muck out and exercise volatile racehorses, clean tack and put-up with the grumpiness of their employer. To be fair to her, she was also operations director for Uttoxeter racecourse. Her credentials are okay and her presence in the B.H.A. boardroom should be invaluable. I just wish the sport’s head honcho was someone in the mould of John Gosden, Baroness Harding or (some might say God forbid!) Mark Johnston, the trainer not the commentator, with someone of Julie Harrington’s business acumen as a chief advisor. But there you are, it is what it is.
Hugo Palmer described what is expected of Ms Harrington as herculean and with Hercules unavailable due to prior commitments the steering group for finding Nick Rust’s successor plumbed for a lady who for all we know might have hidden superpowers. If she is a miracle-worker it will be a definite help to her over the coming years of head-banging and tears as she tries to unite racing’s stakeholders into a uniform fighting force for the betterment of racing.
Before she begins her new job, I would advise her, when her position as head of British cycling allows her the opportunity, to visit, as an unannounced individual, a few racecourses, pay a visit to a few trainers’ yards (announced as just turning up might be embarrassing for everyone) and to either buy a racehorse outright, if she is not already an owner (the Racing Post did not mention she is an owner) or if her purse is tight to part-own or have shares in a horse. Practical experience of the sport she is to rule over can only be a help on her day in the office. She should also have an informal meeting with Emma Lavelle in her capacity as president of the National Trainers Federation and John Gosden, who for a racehorse trainer is incredibly erudite and downright sensible on all matters horses and horse racing.
Hopefully, though there is no hope of the first (and pray God only) politicised virus being over the hill and far away, even if the virus has died and gone to viral heaven, we might at least have spectators on racecourses, with the muzzling masks and sanitisers despatched to the out-tray of every racecourse chief-executive and clerk of the course.
The first issue she must resolve is the whip issue, either ordering an experimental trail period of hand and heel racing, just to ensure ‘whipless’ racing is practical or to restrict its use to one crack and no more. And then she must bring to the table the idea of a ‘Tote Monopoly’, as that is the only method of funding the sport that will bring about the level of prize-money to ensure the health and wealth of the sport into the long-term future.
All we can do, is wish her more good fortune than she has experience and that in gaining experience she has no need of good fortune in her endeavours to chart her way through the stormy seas of our racing future.

​The differing opinions over appropriate penalties for careless riding offences demonstrate that it is not a black or white issue. To my mind, though, the easiest solution is to agree that every horse race, from Newton Abbot to Perth, from a Monday evening at Wolverhampton to Royal Ascot, is not a solo enterprise but a team effort where all involved win together and lose together.
Brant Dunshea, the B.H.A.’s chief regulatory officer, is, if he will forgive my impertinence, rather naïve when he suggests it is wrong to describe a suspension as nothing more than a ‘holiday’ to a jockey because they are denied income during that period of time. The top jockeys are wealthy men and women nowadays, big savings draw big interest, and though they have expenses we might not appreciate, a two-day suspension when Chelmsford or Redcar would have been their employment destination is not going to bother them a whole lot. And jockeys are brighter than some people credit them, they can juggle an equation involving a possible two-day ban starting in a week equals not riding at Chelmsford and Redcar. You can be sure if the two-day ban starting in a week prevented them from riding at Royal Ascot or any other major meeting, they might be more circumspect when it comes to doing all he can to keep a horse bumping into a rival.
As Ben Curtis was quoted: ‘no jockey sets out to injure a horse or a fellow jockey’. In the same way when we set off in our cars we do not intend to crash into another car or hit a wall with our own car. Sometimes, though, circumstances can allow this to happen to the best of drivers. As Ben Curtis also said: ‘we all make mistakes.’
Ryan Moore is one of the great jockeys of the present era. Coolmore employ him, so they must believe he is the best of a very good group of senior riders at the moment. Yet even he is vulnerable to the odd mistake now and then. I admit I was astonished he kept that race at Glorious Goodwood. It seems, as the rules are written, if you are on the best horse in the race, you can bend the rules to fit your actions. As things stand, as Kevin Blake keeps emphasising, sooner or later a jockey will be seriously injured (or worse) if the fine line between careless and dangerous riding is not defined with a clarity that is clearly understood by all parties before the stewards begin their inquiry.
In fact, the solution to the problem is not defining or rewriting the careless riding rule but to disqualify, even if the first past the post is ten-lengths in front of the second. Yes, there will be protests, especially when the winner wins easily, by punters and effected owners, but it is the only clear-cut way to ensure jockeys only deviant from a straight line when he or she loses control of their horse, if only momentarily, and not when they have made the decision to veer towards the rail or to intimidate rivals. Jockeys do it all the time, allowing their horse to roll into the running rail or deliberately drifting off a true line.
I thought there used to be a rule that jockeys were supposed to keep a straight course for a furlong when leaving the stalls. If that is not the case, there should be such a rule. True in the first furlong, true in the last furlong, should be the motto.
Horse, jockey, trainer, owner, stable staff, are one team, yet at the moment, when a horse behaves erratically, which perhaps is not always the fault of the jockey but could also be a failing of the methods used by trainers to break-in, school and educate the horses in their charge, yet only the jockey suffers as a result of stewards’ inquiries. The 5-day suspension handed out by the Goodwood stewards’ to Ryan Moore might be a nuisance to him but it will not leave a mark on his career or his earning capacity. 
I cannot determine if Ryan Moore was unlucky to get five-days from his ride on Tilsit. I thought at the time that he made a conscious decision to move closer to the other runners, causing Tilsit to become momentarily unbalanced, if not confused (he is an immature horse, remember) so perhaps he did push the first domino and he was culpable for what followed.
Correct me if I am wrong, but when a jockey is suspended for any riding offence, they do not forfeit either their riding fee or percentage of the prize money. So, if the race is a Group I or classic worth, say half-a-million or more to the winner, holding on to their share of the winners’ prize will cover any accompanying suspension.
If I were judge and jury of the Goodwood race, and all similar inquiries, I would have disqualified the winner and placed him third and the jockey would have forfeited his riding fee and percentage of the prize money. The riding offence may have strayed across careless into dangerous (a car out-of-control on the motorway would be considered a dangerous incident even if the driver had suffered a heart attack) but it was not deliberate, which the 5-day ban would suggest to a casual observer.
When you put forward disqualification as the solution to riding offences, the counter-argument runs along the lines of it is unfair to the poor punter and would disadvantage the owner and taint him against owning horses in the future. No one seems to notice that punters who backed the second horse or the horse promoted to first place would be advantaged by disqualification or that the owner of the disqualified horse might actually expect his jockey to bend or break the rules in order to achieve victory. To my mind, the two halves of this argument equal themselves out.

​In the beginning, a hackneyed phrase that no respectable writer, a journalist on the Racing Post, for instance, would ever use as an opening statement, but if it was good enough for the compilers of the Christian Bible it’s good enough for an aging atheist like me. So, in the beginning there was betting, one man proposing that his horse could gallop faster than a friend’s horse and wagering a solid amount of money to cement his conviction. In steeplechasing, anyway, that year was 1752 when Mr. O’Callaghan rode a match against Mr. Edmund Blake across country from Buttevant church to St. Leger church. The winner is unrecorded, as is the amount wagered, though historians to a man always put forward Mr. O’Callaghan and Mr. Blake as the instigators of the sport that became known as National Hunt. And bless their little cotton socks for the blessing they passed on to us all.
Flat racing goes back many a long year before steeplechasing was born, so who struck the first bet against his friend or rival is lost to the mists of time but you can bet your bottom dollar that a wager and a boast were involved.
Apart from the Grand National and if I should go racing, which as I get older and less inclined to travel further than the local shops would be a very rare event indeed, I do not bet. I do though, I admit, chance my arm twice a week on the Lottery, named after, I fool myself into believing, the inaugural winner of the Grand National. If I stopped ‘investing’ £10 per week on a Lottery that in the main generates income for the British government and the Ontario Teachers Retirement Plan (what!) or donating it to ‘good causes’ and redirected that money to my local bookmaker, I suspect, even given my poor record as a tipster, I would be if not exactly up on the exercise I would not be quite so much down on the exercise. At least at my local bookmakers, to go by my recent record on the Grand National, I would have the occasional winner.
To think of horse racing without betting is to think of the U.S. without a president, Lewis Hamilton without virtual signalling or Laurel without Hardy. Although I often think the glove is either a little too tight or too large for the hand, the link has long survived and is integral to the sport’s past, present and future. Certainly, at one point, not too many years ago, the tail was definitely wagging the dog. The influence the bookmaking industry was having on the sport has in recent years been reined in a smidgeon but its grasp though removed from the trouser region remains clutched to the breast pocket.
Both the sport and government require the betting industry to survive and thrive, not that you would think that is the case given the legislation and law Parliament has thrown at bookmakers over the past few years. Why allow gaming machines in betting shops, for instance, and then restrict their appeal and usefulness to customers, betting shops and the racing industry?
To return to ‘the beginning’. Or at least the Edwardian period, the period of racing history when the racecourse journeyed from being a disreputable venue frequented by villains of every hue to, and this in the main was due to the efforts of the admirable Admiral Henry Rous, the sport’s first great and perhaps greatest administrator, a place where high society congregated and some members of the aristocracy wagered away family fortunes as if compelled either by duty or a pact done with the devil. To give but one instance: George Alexander Baird is reported to have gambled away £2-million, which today equates to over £70-million. If Gamblers Anonymous was around in 1775 their advisors would have been dispensing their advice at some very high tables whilst worrying over which spoon to use for the brown Windsor.
In the Edwardian period, the owners of racehorses were divided into two distinct camps. Aristocrats and nobleman who owned horses to win the classics to enhance the reputation of their studs and those, people recently moneyed, who owned horses to hoodwink the handicapper to pull off spectacular gambles. And if all else failed, bribe or blackmail grooms or trainers, both of whom were little more than servants, to nobble a favourite by any means possible, with laming, poisoning and eventually doping all distinctly acceptable.
I am an advocate of a system of funding for horse racing that would depend on racing financing and running its own Tote, with all profit from gambling on the sport going into the sport’s coffers, the same as it is in most other racing jurisdictions. Bookmakers would survive without racing as today horse racing is not their only stream of income, which was the case until comparatively recently. In fact, in my rather naïve conception of things as they could be in the future, bookmakers could become agents of the sport, earning a commission on bets taken on horse racing.
Betting, though, will always be part and parcel of the sport. Realistically, it cannot be any other way.

​Even in times of armed conflict between nations there are winners as well as losers. The losers, of course, are always those at the cliff-face of conflict, soldiers on the front-line, pilots in the sky, sailors on the high seas and civilians on the ground amidst the exploding bombs. But there are always winners, too, usually manufacturers of armaments and those involved in high finance, people who lived in the countryside and bemoaned not being able to go their club in the city or their holiday home in Montserrat. 
This present conflict, Boris’ war or the B.G. s G.H.E., to use code for my overall perspective on what is going on, has forced change upon our sport that, if adhered to into the future, does present great benefits, especially to those on the front-line.
Only allowing jockeys to ride at one meeting per day, something I have advocated several times during the lifespan of this site, is, even if some jockeys see it as a restriction of trade, an innovation that will transform the lives of jockeys and their families. It is also, in a smaller capacity, good for the environment as there will be a few less cars driven at high speed between Sandown and Wolverhampton, Newcastle to Redcar, Chepstow to Salisbury etc.
But the real benefit will be to the health and metal wellbeing of jockeys. In his autobiography Kieran Fallon wrote more than once that his hectic work schedule disallowed any sort of family life and he played very little part in the upbringing of his children. Until the outbreak of this present palaver, this scenario must have played out in the home-life of every married jockey. Not only must the wife, and one should now say husband, worry whether the next phone call is to say their spouse has suffered a serious injury and is in emergency care in some hospital hundreds of miles away but they had little help in the day-to-day care of their children and home, their relationship strung between the necessary requirement of the job paying the bills and quick catch-ups either late at night or early in the morning.
The integrity of the sport, too, benefits from the one meeting per day regulation. When Oisin Murphy, or any top jockey, jumps in his Merc at the end of a day’s racing at Newmarket to speed-off to Chelmsford or Yarmouth, the five or six rides he is booked for denies other jockeys, those closer to the bottom of the ladder than the top, the opportunity to ride a precious  winner and earn a proper living. This present system puts more butter on more bread, minimising his or her need to earn extra money by associating with people wishing to exploit them for inside information.
If the B.H.A. rescind the present rule on one meeting per day they will have done jockeys a disservice similar to removing the ambulances that follow in the wake of every race and will be showing themselves to be indulging in hypocrisy when it comes to the high priority they espouse for the mental well-being of jockeys.
As in war, when the population pray for a conclusion that their eyes cannot substantiate with solid evidence, I fear what is being done to our sport at this present moment is similar to the quiet interludes between air-raids. Although £1-million horse races are on the obscene-side of good health when compared with ordinary living, races to the value to the winner of just over £2,000 is akin to the bombs that fell from the sky but did not ignite – a tragedy just waiting to happen.
I am not one who believe owners have a right to make a profit from owning racehorses but neither am I of the opinion they should throw good money after bad just so that I can enjoy and care-for a sport that has been at the centre of my life for all but six or seven years of my sixty-six and counting. It is utterly wrong to bewail a Derby ‘only’ offering half-a-million to the winner when in general it is hard to find a race worth more than five-grand on any one day of racing. If there is half-a-million quid sloshing around in racing’s coffers it should be spread across the ordinary-day’s fare and not used to bolster the wealth of the super-wealthy, as much as we are beholden to them for the prop they provide for the sport.
I do not suffer from nightmares, though this is daylight nightmare to be lived through, and I cannot help but fear, perhaps even predict, that the glory days are behind us and all the near-future holds for us is a slide toward the post-war years of make-do and mend and hanging on for dear life. Although I am a critic of the B.H.A., even if I am heartened that the next head-honcho, although presently head-honcho of cycling as our present big cheese was previously head of rowing – a theme developing here - has actual working, office-based, of course, experience of horses and racing through  administration of the Northern Racing School, the present dilemma is not of either of their making or choosing. 
In certain ways the B.H.A. have worked wonders to ensure our sport is alive and in some-sort of working order this summer, though in not having the foresight to reschedule the 2020 Grand National for November 2020 to give the finances of the sport a badly needed boost is, in my eyes, unforgivable given they moved most of heaven and a vast majority of the Earth to get the classics and Royal Ascot staged, especially when the government have bound them hand and foot with protocols and propaganda that put the survival of many racecourses in the balance.
With the resumption of ‘project fear’ and local lockdowns imposed simply on the basis of clusters of asymptomatic positive tests for a virus that can only give a healthy person cold or flu-type symptoms, there might not be another Grand National this season or no Ebor or St.Leger meeting, no Arc etc. How much loss can horse racing and its lifeblood owners take before slowly but surely the white flag is hoisted?
All of our biggest and best benefactors are, to be blunt, elderly or soon to enter that state of being, and not all of them have offspring with the same level of commitment to the sport. The history of our sport assures us that there is always someone willing to fill the void of opportunity, be they Indian princes, oil barons, the rulers of Arabia. But these, as we are constantly reminded, are unprecedented times we live in – nothing can be assured.

​Let me make one aspect of this blog/piece crystal clear: I believe I.T.V. have proved the best broadcasters of horse racing the sport has ever enjoyed. I was brought-up on televised horse racing, starting with the exclusivity of the B.B.C. who I thought for a long long time were untouchable when it came to bringing the sport to the public. It has to be said that in the days of World of Sport I.T.V. came up short against the B.B.C.. Then Channel 4 won the contract to broadcast racing and my heart sank, only to rise quite quickly when it became obvious that the B.B.C. had only been going through the motions when it came to broadcasting horse racing. From the first edition of The Morning Show, though, I realised that in I.T.V., this time around, horse racing was safe in their hands. Time has proved, in my estimation, that it is more than just safe but in their keeping the sport could yet blossom.
Indeed, if the B.H.A. and others were to up their game, I believe there is a whole new audience out there for the sport. The sport’s professionals need to come round to the idea of sanitising the sport to a degree and taking bold steps in ways to fund the sport in the near-future. Whether jockeys, trainers, owners alike care for it or not, the whip is a border a lot of people will not cross. The horse is a greatly admired animal and horses doing what they are designed for, running and jumping obstacles at speed, is a spectacle that is as fascinating to the public as it is exciting for racing enthusiasts. But, and this perhaps goes for half the population, the public, the animal caring public, do not like to see brave and gallant horses hit with a whip and no amount of telling them that it doesn’t hurt is going to alter their perception. The rules on the whip must radically change, for the benefit and long-term future of the sport. One hit and one hit only is my solution, after that the determination of the result should be entirely down to the skill and artistry of the jockey and the willingness of the horse. In my opinion, and my opinion of the B.H.A. is not very high, I admit, but the B.H.A. are being ponderous to the point uselessness on this issue.
Also, and this was far more eloquently explained last week in the Racing Post by Khadijah Mellah, someone of greater authority on the subject than I will ever be, that if we want to attract the Muslim community to our racecourses, there must be areas that separate them from those aspects of their religion that are taboo, betting and alcohol. If Leicester racecourse, for instance, asked Khadijah for advice on this matter and implemented changes to make their racecourse more welcoming to Muslim racegoers, isn’t there a good chance attendances might improve?
But the main tenet of this piece is funding. The sport needs to stop fiddle-faddling around and set out a policy that will eventually lead the sport in the direction of self-funding from what used to be termed a Tote Monopoly. Damn racing atmosphere generated by the noise of bookmakers engaging with punters. Better racing should enter a backwater than lose the atmosphere of the betting jungle, eh? 
For better or worse, worse in many many ways, we live in a different age to when racecourses were crowded and people could bet in shillings. Every penny bet on horse racing should be generating income for the sport. Bookmakers will survive without racing, whereas in the days before sports betting they would have gone under. It is time the elephant roared and racing finally noticed its presence in the shadows.
Finally, the sport, I.T.V., should not be crowing about the encouraging upward sweep of racing viewing figures of late. No one can go racing, so those people are watching I.T.V. and the racing channels. People are starved of live sport and those people are watching horse racing. A minority of these people will be attracted to try out a day at the races, another minority will continue to tune-into I.T.V. racing. Another minority might watch the racing when nothing takes their fancy on any other channel. But if we have the return of our freedom and civil liberties (they have been taken from us, remember) in 12-months hence (this state of emergency is for 2-years, I remind you, and could yet be prolonged beyond that period) I bet you I.T.V. viewing figures will power-down to a number similar to that before the imposition of lockdown.
We are not lucky to be racing, as Ed Chamberlain and others continue to tell us. We are racing because of the betting duty that the sport brings to the Exchequer and for the televised opportunity for government propaganda. Yes, that is what the absurd ‘protocols’ on racecourses are about. As sporting arenas go, there cannot be a safer environment than a racecourse, especially huge open spaces like The Curragh and Newmarket. Yet jockeys must wear masks jogging to the start and must mask-up when returning through a sparse assembly of people. And social distancing must also be observed, even though that was unobserved and unmonitored during the F.A. Cup final, when people go to the beach and on Black Lives Matter marches, none of which has or will cause a spike or second wave. Horse racing is being used by government to reinforce the fear and stress of a virus that has said its goodbyes and will doubtless not darken our doors again, though a relative of the coronavirus might as we have seasonal outbreaks of flu virus most winter. The outbreak in 2017/18 was responsible for more flu-related deaths in this country, if you remove the obscene number of deaths in care homes from the official (if dodgy) number of fatalities, than this present and grossly exaggerated ‘health crisis’.
While we are being used and abused in support of the government narrative, our beautiful sport walks a tightrope in the dark towards who knows what future – racing as it is in Italy at the moment?

​One aspect of Kieran Fallon’s life you must always remember and respect is that when it comes to court cases he never loses, ever. Remember the Top Cees incident and his libel case against the Sporting Life for publicly accusing him of stopping Top Cees in the previous race to his win in the Chester Cup. He received an award of £70,000 from the Sporting Life. Lynda Ramsden, Top Cees trainer received £75,000 and her husband Jack £50,000. The judgement against them was the catalyst for the Sporting Life’s demise, no doubt.
The national newspapers seemingly had a vendetta against him. Fallon, they were of the opinion, had to be guilty of something. Remember the ‘fake sheikh’ from the ‘News of the World’. They accused him of having an affair with Henry Cecil’s wife. The upshot of that lurid affair was that the newspaper only claimed Cecil’s wife was having an affair with a ‘top jockey’ but all the same Fallon lost his coveted job as retained jockey at Warren Place over it. The court case in this incident was about Henry refusing to pay Fallon the money due to him in his contract. Again, Fallon won his case.
Then there was the ‘Panorama’ expose ‘The Corruption of Racing’, in which they chose to drag Fallon into. That, eventually, linked into the Ballinger Ridge incident at Lingfield, which ended up with Fallon being arrested along with a whole batch of other jockeys and racing people, which ended at the Old Bailey with Fallon being found not guilty.
It is no wonder, when he admitted to himself that he was drinking too much, he voluntarily admitted himself into the care the Aiseiri, Gaelic for resurrection, an addiction centre run by a nun, for a month, to repair the damage done to his soul.
Oh, before all of the wrangles with the law, he pulled Stuart Webster off his horse at the end of the race to ensure he got a bit of justice for what he deemed dangerous riding. And during the law wrangle years, he suffered what should have been a career-ending fall at Royal Ascot, the piecing back together of the severed nerves in his shoulder considered pioneering and remains in the British Journal of Sports Medicine to this day – Rupture of the axillary (circumflex) nerve and artery in a champion jockey
Yet through all the turmoil, Fallon won Derbies, classics and major races for all the top trainers, Henry Cecil, Michael Stoute and Aidan O’Brien amongst them and was champion jockey five-times. Aidan described him as the greatest rider employed by Coolmore.
Another achievement that Fallon should be recognised for is his autobiography ‘Form’, the best, in my opinion, of its kind by a flat jockey sitting presently on my bookshelves. (The jockey, I should explain, is not sitting on my bookshelf but the book. Yes, poor sentence construction.) Indeed; one of the best racing autobiographies full stop. I urge anyone yet to read it to remedy the omission in double-quick time.
Fallon, the jockey, was pretty useless with people. I am sure he would not argue against such an assertion. He is not alone in being socially awkward. I, too, have the same disability. Yet, surprisingly for someone who was not raised in an equine environment, was, and I dare say remains, happiest around horses. If you want to know the real Kieran Fallon, look to the back cover of his book and the photograph that exemplifies the bond, the rapport, between jockey and horse. Winning was not about him but about them. Or the quote on the same page ‘When I am on a horse, I am happy. I am where I want to be.’ Or the last line of his acknowledgements. And, finally, my heartfelt thanks to each and every horse I’ve ridden. Without those horses, where would I be.
I doubt very much if Fallon was born to be a saint. Very few amongst us are. But after reading both his autobiography and Andrew Longmore’s biography of him, I am of the opinion that more people owe him an apology than he owes anyone. And to intertwine his life as a jockey to a topic of the here and now, the strain inflicted on jockeys by a system that encourages them to drive helter-skelter between two meetings in a day goes a long way to explaining any mental health, drug or alcohol issues to afflict them during their careers. The one-meeting a day rule for jockeys must from now on become sacrosanct. It also allows all jockeys the opportunity to earn a half-decent living from the sport. I am sure Fallon would have made different decisions and reacted in a calmer fashion to the trials and tribulations of his life if it was not expected of him to ride both in the afternoon and evening. No other sportsman would be asked to entertain such a fatiguing regime.
Today, he is undoubtedly the most experienced work-rider in the country and mentor to his son, who surprisingly, if given time to develop his skills, might yet become his proudest achievement in a career of achievement.
Oh, if you read this, Kieran, and you find something you think you have need to consult a solicitor over, remember, I have no money, no reputation worth defending and I write in praise of you the man and your autobiography.