​How jockeys do it is beyond me. Ryan Moore recently rode at Sandown on the Friday, America on the Saturday and France on the Sunday. James Doyle just nipped over to Australia in a similar way to you or I taking a weekend break in the Cotswolds. The lifestyle of the top jockeys would send me insane. Far from scooting all around the country on a daily basis I crave the life of the hermit. But then I am anti-social by nature with a dislike for even travelling as far as Barnstaple, less than ten miles up the road. I certainly will not be signing up with Elon Musk to travel to Mars, though the Doyler might, as long as there is a guarantee to have him back in time for first lot Monday morning.
To my surprise the international jockey is not a new or even recently new phenomenon. Rae Johnstone, who rode from the 1920’s to the middle of the 1950’s, was perhaps the pace-setter when it came to riding here, there and everywhere. Though I doubt back home in Australia where he started out as a star apprentice anyone thought his career would see him ride 30 classic winners in Europe, including 3 Epsom Derby winners amongst his 12 British classic successes. Not bad for a jockey who was based in France for the majority of his career and who courted disfavour from the racing authorities virtually from the get-go.
From the very beginning of his career Johnstone had a gambling addiction. It was something he admitted to his autobiography – ghost written by none other than Peter O’Sullevan, and considered at the time as ‘the best ghosting job there ever was’. It is no exaggeration to suggest he was troublesome to the stewards in Australia. He was once banned for several months for ‘gaining access to his earnings’, money that was protected from apprentices until they became fully-fledged jockeys. Later on, he received a 2-year suspension for ‘conspiring to lose a race’, something he vehemently contested. Perhaps the stewards knew of his excessive gambling on races that he rode in and races he did not ride in. He would win money, run it up and consequently lose it all, as addicts tend to do. By the time he left for Europe, even though he could be considered successful in his home country, he was practically broke.
And he never grew any wiser, as he continued to bet in France and in England, only breaking the vicious cycle when he married his second wife.
I suspect Johnstone was a prickly character as though he rode for all of the top stables in France, and for a short while for Lord Glanely in England, he never stayed more than a few seasons with anyone, though years after he would ride for the same people. Several times in his autobiography he seemed to admit to ‘agreeing to disagree’ with trainers and owners alike, he even repeatedly told Marcel Boussac, for whom he won the Epsom Derby on Galcador, that his horses were being over-trained, even though there were trained as Boussac wanted them to be trained.
After winning the 2,000 Guineas on Columbo for Lord Glanely, Johnstone’s tactics in the Derby on the same horse were widely criticised by the racing press and by Lord Glanely himself and very soon afterwards Johnstone returned to France to freelance.
To see him riding on old Pathe News film-reels it is hard to claim Johnstone as a stylist. In his time jockeys just rode differently to their colleagues of today. Even Lester Piggott, who for a while, surprisingly, was a contemporary of Johnstone’s, did not look like the Piggott of legend. Johnstone had a preference for sitting out the back and coming through beaten horses, hence the title of this piece, and unless an owner urged to him to placed if he could not win, he was extremely reluctant to use his whip on obviously beaten horses, which gave rise to the popular opinion that he was not always trying his best. Yet he rode over 2,000 winners during his career in 9 different countries, rode 30 classic winners, won the Arc twice and was champion jockey in France on 3 occasions.
Reading about him he comes across as someone who perhaps never felt a true fit for whatever society in which he lived. Although he tried to hide his antecedence, he was of Aborigine descent and perhaps in Australia he was always fighting against the stigma of the times. In France he was an Australian taking rides from French jockeys. In England he was a French-based jockey coming over and taking rides from English jockeys. And in his day, especially the years after the 2nd World War, French trainers would come over with unraced two-year-olds to land a gamble in a Newmarket seller. And he seemed to court danger. He did so in his career by betting and even in his private life, even up to his death in 1964, he had a mistress and a wife, with his estate shared between the two. Perhaps at the end he had found his niche by becoming far more French than Australian. He was certainly a man prone to the pitfalls of life, losing in the casinos, to bookmakers, and even during the war he was interned by the Italians and after his release having to start from scratch again.
To know whether he would be popular with racegoers today is hard to assess. But what you can say in his favour is that he was a friend of Peter O’Sullevan, which is a bit like being approved-of by racing royalty.

​The oddness about me, or one of the oddnesses, is if I had a hundred-quid on a horse involved in a photo-finish with a 100/1 outsider trained by an eccentric who rarely has a winner, I would not be overly-disappointed to lose my money. I am, I suppose, too romantically inclined for my own good.
Not that either part of the fantasy is likely to come true as I am by nature far too parsimonious to wager such a huge amount of money on a horse race and there are, unfortunately, no eccentrics in racing these days. Not dyed-in-the-wool individualists with no concept of the normal, anyway. Oh, I do not label Sir Mark Prescott as eccentric as he is a trainer who knows the time of the day. Indeed, I would go as far to say that Sir Mark is one of racing’s all-time great characters and the day he turns up his toes racing will gain a grave worth visiting but will suffer a loss as earth-shattering as the injury that brought about the retirement of Arkle.
Two names from my youth that regularly flicker across my memory, and who I dare say Sir Mark could give chapter and verse about, are John Meacock and Peter Poston, especially the latter as there are many houses named Homefield, the name of one of his better horses.
If I recall correctly John Meacock served in the army out in the Middle-East and may have had the rank of major or captain. He named his horses after short passages to be found in the works of Shakespeare, translating the Bard’s great prose into Persian, as if doing him a favour, as any dedicated eccentric would do. It is widely believed that winners were as rare as hen’s teeth, yet Meacock did train the occasionally winner, though his horses seemed to do a little better once they were sold into the stables of more orthodox trainers.
His best horse, though ‘best’ perhaps should be qualified as ‘least worst’, was Qualibashi who won him several races. Strangely, and for someone with as poor a memory as mine it is difficult to know why, the horse of Meacock’s that remains most vivid is Asad-ul-Mulk, a horse that I believe did not win a race and was rarely ever placed.
I am ashamed to say I know little else about John Meacock’s racing career, except that he also wrote excruciating poetry and owned a travel agency. I wish I knew more but then perhaps there is little else to learn about him. I suspect his training methods were as eccentric as he was and as I cannot recall his horses looking in sparkling condition I suspect his stable husbandry was not of the highest quality. My abiding memory of him is that he believed in tilting at windmills and I especially remember his runners at Royal Ascot finishing a long-way last. I just wish there were a few John Meacock’s around today to give flat racing a soupçon of romance and interesting post-race interviews.
Peter Poston was an eccentric of a different hue to John Meacock. There was method to Poston’s individual take on horse racing. He trained first at Newmarket and latterly at Ingatestone in Essex yet campaigned his horses almost exclusively in the North of England and Scotland. Like Meacock, it is wrong to assume he never trained winners. He did, a good few, and for someone who always paid rock-bottom prices for his horses you could almost praise him for the moderate success he did enjoy.
In Poston’s day there was a scheme where trainers were encouraged to take their horses far afield and it was this travelling allowance where Poston made the sport pay. The allowance, £20 per horse, was not enough at the time to make it profitable to send one horse, say, to Lanark or Hamilton, though six horses did make it pay. Indeed, Poston believed in the Race and Rest method of training, somewhat like Mark Johnstone, and he rented a yard near Lanark racecourse and would ship six horses at a time up there to race at more than one meeting, while another horse box would bring home those in need of rest.
In his way Poston was quite ingenious. He bought cheap, knew full well that he was buying horses with imperfect conformations and to compensate he fed them good grub, used good tack and turned them out on good grass. Poston worked to a plan, so perhaps that made him less of an eccentric than Meacock, but it was a plan individual to himself and given that I cannot recall either Meacock or Poston being in any kind of trouble with the Jockey Club it can be argued the sport was not diminished by their presence.
I suspect in this day and age neither would be granted a licence to train, which would be a pity as high levels of orthodoxy can lead to events becoming ‘the same old story’. It is those people who think outside of the box who innovate, invent and propel the sport forward.
 

​Because no one else will, of course.
In today’s Racing Post (Sept 8th) Jack Berry, one of horse racing’s greatest treasures, wrote in his guest article that there should be races restricted to both trainers and jockeys with less than a certain number of winners in a set period. This idea has been mooted by several other people in recent times, (and here is where I blow my trumpet) though I have championed this idea for many years. Many, many years. The powers-that-be, though, the people who know best, the rulers of our sport, continually pour cold water on an idea that, at worst, cannot do any harm to the integrity of the sport. The reverse is the case, as showing benevolence to the under-privileged or the under-achiever can only show horse racing and its administrators in a positive light. This is not hand-outs; it is opportunity.
My continuing criticism of our sport, and this perhaps applies more to the flat than the jumps, is that every innovation only benefits those at the top end of the sport; the people less in need of a helping hand.
I am convinced that the powers-that-be believe that stables with less horses and less winners than the larger, more fortunate, stables are the seedbeds of corruption and to make their integrity units more effective they would like to see every ‘small’ trainer go to the wall. Indeed, if I were a conspiracy theorist, which in some respects I am, I would suggest ignoring the plight of the down-trodden to be the first step in restricting the sport to those at the top end of the sport’s pyramid. In effect, returning the sport to the days when horse racing was entertainment solely for the ruling classes and the aristocracy.
What harm could possibly come from staging one or two races a week restricted to jockeys who have not ridden, for example purposes only, twenty winners in the previous twelve months or for trainers who have not trained a similar amount in the same time frame? All it amounts to is offering a helping hand to hard-working, conscientious people who doubtless struggle to pay their bills on time.
In the Question & Answer feature in Sunday’s Racing Post the question is posed What Does Racing Do Best? I would answer it brings together, virtually as equals, every level of society from working class to monarchy. In our sport, the Head of State competes on equal terms. She receives, and does not ask for, any favours. And in the winners’ enclosure she (figuratively) brushes shoulders with a groom who might hail from the lowliest of backgrounds. This mingling of the social classes is an element of the sport the powers-that-be should be proud to proclaim. The rulers of empires who own racehorses ride on the shoulders of the working classes. It is a hand-in-glove relationship that has two-way benefits.
Framing races as Jack Berry suggests is no different to restricting races to female jockeys in order to give them greater opportunities. Why amateurs are given a plethora of races on the flat but the journeyman jockey must sit and suffer is beyond any rational explanation?
 
My other major grouse concerning the flat is the weights two-year-olds are set to carry in nurseries and other races. If ‘Children Are Our Future’, then two-year-olds should be the future for flat racing, yet in many regards they are considered ‘throwaways’, easily replaced, especially at this time of year with all the yearling sales. For example: at Lingfield today in the 1.30, a 0-70 handicap, Capla Gilda is set to carry 9st 9lbs, 9lbs more than a four-year-old in a novice stakes at 3.00, and 3lb more than a three-year-old in the 3.30, a 71-85 banded handicap. In the 1.30 there are three other horses set to carry more than 9st 3lbs, none of which have won a race.
At Kempton in the 6.30, a 0-60 nursery, the top-weight, a maiden, is also set to carry 9st 9lbs, with the next in the weights 9st 8lbs, then three on 9st 7lbs, none of which has won a race. In what is in effect an all-age maiden at 7.30 a five-year-old is only expected to carry 9st 8lbs.
Classic colts in the Derby are only expected to carry 9st and against older horses are given a weight allowance.
There is no point countering with Capla Gilda carries 9st 9lbs because his form warrants such a weight as my argument is that he remains a two-year-old, the youngest age in which a thoroughbred can be raced anywhere in the world. He is a comparative baby; his future should be in front of him. He is still growing; his bones are still maturing. I would argue the sport is not taking appropriate care of him, that the sport cares not a fig for his well-being or his future. 9st should be the absolute limit for any two-year-old to carry. There may be implications connected to the weight of jockeys if this principle was adhered to but it is my opinion that the horse should have first consideration.
 

​This is my favourite part of the flat season. Not because the first fall of leaves herald the beginning of the end of the flat season. Not that the flat season ever truly ends. There is no full-stop to the British flat season. No definitive underlining. There is not even a pause. Any self-respecting analysis would surmise that the day the champion jockey is awarded his trophy would represent the final day of the season. But no. That would be too simple. Traditionally the season ended at Doncaster with the November Handicap. But no. That is only the end of the turf season and the start of the all-weather season, though that in reality is twenty-four-seven. The champion jockey is not even necessarily the jockey who rides the most winners during the turf season or even in the calendar year. No, the flat simply never ends, with one season running seamlessly into the next, as hitched as links in a chain.
This is my favourite time of the flat year because by and large, with the monstrous exception of the puffed-up and phony Champions Day, the big races are the races of British racing history. The St.Leger, the Cambridgeshire, the Cesarewitch, the November Handicap, the Middle Park. Once upon a time you could have included the Newbury and Liverpool Autumn Cups.
I have reservations about the status and value of the St.Leger. I am a died-in-the-wool traditionalist but though the last of the classics has revived in recent years it remains, to my mind, the poor relation, with its position in the calendar set so far away from the other four classic races it seems almost an outcast. I have made the suggestion that the Eclipse should be restricted to three-year-olds and upgraded to classic status, with the St.Leger reinvented as Britain’s most valuable horse race, an all-age rival to both the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe  and Melbourne Cup. But that is a debate for another day.
I steer clear of involving myself in dispensing tips, and with good reason, but I thought earlier in the season that Southern France looked a typical Coolmore late bloomer, the sort to come out and win the St.Leger. Kew Gardens, to me, looks a little on the weak side and may prove to be a superior four-year-old than a three-year-old. I wouldn’t give up on him, though I wouldn’t follow him over a cliff between now and next summer.
The Cambridgeshire is my favourite mile handicap of the season. I know for certain it is just everyone’s favourite one-mile, one-furlong race. I just hope they do not do to the Cambridgeshire what they have done to the Cesarewitch and make it a race for the elite and kill outright all of its centuries of romance. Tales of gamble won and lost, the great horses who have either won the race on the path to greater glories or won it simply because it was a race great horses ran in. It can be won by a plunged-on 2/1 favourite or a 100/1 outsider. If I had my way I would promote the two big Newmarket autumn handicaps as it was in their hey-day – the Autumn Double.
Instead of throwing a million-quid at the stayers’ race, and ruining the race in the process, throw the million-quid to any trainer/stable that can win both races, with bonuses for jockeys and with a big prize for any punter who can find the first three in each race. Or at least a super-bet that combines both races.
As he normally is, Matt Chapman is right in his tirade at the reframing of the conditions of the Cesarewitch. I have long said we need in this country a race to rival the Melbourne Cup and while that race remains a handicap the Ebor would be the race to promote, though in time my new St.Leger would be my preferred option.
I am all for encouraging breeders to breed staying horses. The preference for sprinters and milers does nothing this side of the pond for the welfare of horses. What use is a sprinter after its racing days are over? A stayer has many more options open to them, even if it is only as a hack. But what this sport also needs is more owners, preferably owning home-bred horses and races like the Cesarewitch give the one-horse syndicate or owner a realistic opportunity to win a big pot and become part of British racing history. This realistic opportunity is now to be taken away and given on a plate, a golden plate, to Coolmore, Godolphin, Juddmonte or any organisation with a huge string of horses. This is not criticism of the aforementioned. Flat racing owes them a great debt. But their season will never revolve around winning a back-end handicap and their joy will be small in comparison to an owner of one horse, and as Matt Chapman rightly said, from next season the race will have six Coolmore horses, six Godolphin horses and so on and so on. If you change the whole ethos of a race you should change its name too. Since the Grand National was altered the romance, if not the drama, has gone from the race. Little-by-little this is happening with all major races and racing is the poorer for it. Horse racing should be all-inclusive and what is happening with increasing regularity is that the rich are consuming the less rich and the sport is being governed for their protection, to the detriment of everyone else.

​When I pop my clogs, I would like my obituary to feature prominently the impressive size of my library of racing books. I have 104 at present, so I have few cheques books still to empty to achieve my last-minute life’s ambition. Good news for Browzers Equestrian bookshop in Whitchurch. I prefer old books as they talk to me about a time in racing before I came into contact with the sport and consequently I learn stuff that would not ordinarily come to my attention.
At present I am reading a book that I have had in my possession for many years without reading, ‘Passports To Life’, the autobiography of Harry Llewellyn, a man more famous for his exploits with Foxhunter, a famous show-jumper of the 1950’s, though he also rode successfully as an amateur jockey for many years before the 2nd World War. I dare say as Llewellyn progresses in life the book will not be so racing orientated, though up to Chapter 7 it is a book that keeps on giving.
In the year 1937 he rode at Colwall, Tenby, indeed the final meeting at Tenby, Cardiff and Manchester. But the thrust of Chapter 7 is about Aintree and Ego, a horse part-owned by his father, who he rode in consecutive Grand Nationals. To return to Tenby a moment, Harry Llewellyn recalls that the Welsh town, though it could no longer boast a racecourse, was responsible for the three Anthony brothers, Ivor, Owen and Jack and also Bill and Fred Rees, and the ‘Oyster Maid Affair’ an infamous betting coup that went wrong at Tenby.
In Chapter 6 Llewellyn wrote about coming second on Ego at Aintree to Reynoldstown and Fulke Walwyn when the reins snapped on Davy Jones and he ran out at the last fence with the great race at his mercy, with Llewellyn thinking himself equally as unlucky as Lord Mildmay as he had been brought to a standstill at Valentine’s when close enough to the leaders to think winning remained a possibility.
The following season, to give Ego every chance of going one better, he was sent to a professional trainer, Frank Hartigan at Weyhill, who, apparently, spent the first part of the morning in bed, catching up on paperwork and occasionally looking out the window to watch his horses at work. Hartigan’s method of training was different to what Llewellyn and Ego were used to as he never worked his horses over long distances, preferring to sprint them three or four furlongs.
Llewellyn and Ego began their Grand National preparation in the Valentine’s Steeplechase and the jockey reports how eerie Aintree is when there are no spectators out in the country, describing the experience as more like a quiet day’s hunting than a serious horse race. Ego finished second to Drinmore Lad, ridden by Evan Williams and owned by Paul Mellon, who Llewellyn had advised when the man who in later life would own one of the great unsung greats of flat racing, Mill Reef, rode at the Chiddingfold Farmers point-to-point, ‘tying his cap and practically dressing him’.
At the time Llewellyn was working full-time in the coal industry, becoming joint owner of both the Rhigos Colliery and a coal exporting firm in Cardiff Docks. He was twelve stone in the summer and had to reduce his weight to 10st 4lbs to ride Ego in the 1937 Grand National and was still trying to lose a pound or two the night before the race by running 3-miles dressed in an airman’s suit, with many layers of wool underneath. Some elements of the sport never change.
Ego was no long-shot. In fact, overnight he was favourite, though displaced on the day by Golden Miller, and Hartigan’s training regime had made him a sharper animal to ride and unlike the previous year Llewellyn was able to keep him up with the leaders and was just behind Golden Miller when the great horse gave yet another indication to his connections of his dislike of Aintree by hanging to the left at the fence after Valentines and unshipping his jockey. At the last open ditch Ego was pulling double and Llewellyn was convinced he had the race in the bag. But this was when Aintree was red in tooth and claw, as can be attested by only 7 horses finishing, with one of those being remounted. At the second-last a loose horse cannoned into Ego just as he was about to jump, causing him to lose his hind legs on landing and slide along the ground with a good amount of spruce between his ears and the jockey. Of course, that was his race run, though he plugged on to finish fourth to Royal Mail, half-brother to the winner of the previous two years, Reynoldstown.
Preparation for a third crack at the race began in the Valentines Chase where he unsuccessfully tried to give a stone to the subsequent Cheltenham Gold Cup winner Brendon’s Cottage, though again demonstrating his proficiency over the big black fences. Unfortunately, Ego and Llewellyn were to be denied another appearance at Aintree as the old horse suffered a heart attack after finishing a 4-mile chase at Gatwick. The post-mortem revealed Ego had a heart nine times larger than normal.
Jockeys in Llewellyn’s time were a mixture of professional and sporting amateur and depending on which accounts you read they either mixed affably or acrimoniously, though as many of the amateurs owned the horses they rode the sport gained immeasurably by the presence. It was though altogether a different era. People like Llewellyn were horseman who rode hunting, show-jumping and what has become known as eventing, though few were involved in heavy industry as Llewellyn was day-to-day. The sporting amateurs were, if not stylish, good yeoman horseman, many of whom went on to serve, and perish, in the 2nd World War. Llewellyn, thankfully, survived. Tis a shame the likes of him have since all but died out.

​How to increase racing’s popularity? How to entice more people to tune into I.T.V.’s The Morning Show? How to attract a greater diversity of owners into the sport? According to Julian Wray, of course, the sport is run-down, banal and living in the past, with the answer to all racing’s problems a phoney-baloney concept that will give the impression to any new customers that racing is awash with prize money and multi-billionaire owners. I disagree with his pessimism. Horse racing is vibrant, exciting, a mystery to be solved on a daily basis. As Gerald Mosse recently said in an interview in The Racing Post, in comparison to France, British racecourses have a buzz about them.
By the way, and I apologise for harping on about CHR, to promote his idea Julian Wray or someone will have to go on television and radio and explain to people what is wrong with racing and why it needs CHR to save the sport. That will go down well, won’t it?
Back to my point. I.T.V. regularly run competitions with the winners receiving a large cash reward and an all-expenses paid trip to one of the world’s iconic horseraces. This is all fine and dandy but I believe they are going about the promotional side of their obligations the wrong way. For free, I offer this, my latest good idea.
We need to look outside the narrow parameters of ‘The Morning Show’ viewership and extend the search for better terrestrial viewing figures, larger racecourse attendances and more racehorse ownership, to other I.T.V. programmes such as ‘This Morning’, ‘Loose Women’ and even ‘Britain’s Got Talent’, as well as general advertising, all of which will link-in to I.T.V. racing and specifically ‘The Morning Show’.
Four times a year, I suggest, the first prize in a competition should be free ownership of a racehorse, with all the added attractions and interest that comes with owning a racehorse, and with the added bonus of the horse being sold after twelve months and the lucky prize winner able to scoop the sales price. There could be other competitions where the prize might be ownership of a horse in a big race like the Grand National, the Lincoln or Royal Hunt Cup, or shares in a horse for a set time period. The quarterly competition could feature in I.T.V. programmes through the week, though to enter viewers would have to tune in to ‘The Morning Show’.
Although every winner of a racehorse will not remain a racehorse owner after the twelve months of the competition prize, if one in four each year continue to own or have shares in racehorses into the future, the sport can only benefit.
Sending a lucky winner to the Melbourne Cup does not benefit the sport. My idea, if the sport could finance it, will, if nothing else, give people perhaps outside of the general run of things an insight into the mysterious world of horse racing. And who would supply these horses? Trainers. I doubt if there are many trainers who do not have horses in need of owners and syndicates in need of members.
If horse racing has a problem it is not at the top end of the sport but down amongst its foundation. Every ‘good’ idea and innovation is concerned with bettering prize money at a level most owners cannot even aspire to, with nobody, seemingly, wanting to engage with the nitty-gritty problem of attracting new people into ownership. My idea goes a small way to doing just that. If the idea is put into practise it might also help trainers shift a few horses, clear a few debts and gain a new owner.