​I use phrases and terms like ‘we live in different times’ too regularly these days. It is as if I am nostalgic for a time, especially in racing, that occurred before I became aware of this magnificent sport. My favourite books are those that inform me about horse racing in the thirties, forties and fifties, which only reinforces the fact that the age of now is as different to the age of then as chalk is to anthracite. At present I am reading Peter O’Sullevan’s autobiography ‘Calling the Horses’ and as you can easily imagine it is a fascinating and authoritative read.
O’Sullevan was a modest man who allowed his readers to believe his successful career was all down to good luck and the charity of friends. This sentiment was quite probably the only rubbish he ever wrote. He was a good and great man, a superb journalist, though in my estimation, even if he remains ‘the voice of racing’, not the finest of commentators.
People of the quality of Peter O’Sullevan never truly die. They make too much a mark in life, leave too big a gap in death for any ordinary mortal to fill. If only it were not so as his wisdom and influence will be sorely missed when Animal Aid and its supporters in the Labour Party make their first offensive in their war to have the honourable sport of horse racing made as extinct as dishonourable pursuits such as badger and bear-baiting.
Living in an age when even the smallest of towns has at least one bookmaker on its High Street, back when Sir Peter began to bet bookmakers were far and few between, with getting a bet on, except on a racecourse, as shady a deal as buying Class A drugs today.
In his autobiography, though this is said with the benefit of hindsight, he wrote some pretty startling and poignant prose. ‘Even so, when it came to the Coventry Stakes on 17th June, ten days after the Normandy Landings …’ is a stark reminder of the times he lived in and that in limited form horse racing continued in this country despite the ravages of war.
The adjective to best describe O’Sullevan, to my limited knowledge of the man, is meticulous. In his autobiography his recall for detail can only be ascribed to meticulous bookkeeping. When he was first appointed to the Press Association his salary was £9 9 shillings a week, plus 17 shillings and sixpence temporary war bonus. He had a record of every bet he struck and he was even able to detail the slow deterioration of Dante’s eyesight and that by the time the St.Leger came around the Derby winner was totally blind.
He was astute enough to realise that at the end of the war French horses would be fitter and their trainers in a better position to have them prepared for the big races and self-funded he would conduct stable tours of the most prominent trainers, reporting back to his readers on horses worth backing for the classics and the Lincoln, a far more prestigious race back then and which the French targeted with the same dedication as if it were a Derby or Guineas.
He recounts a tale that no racing reporter is ever likely to encounter in this technological age. Accompanied by Johnnie de Moraville, he was set to cover Wincanton races on 28th February 1946. It was the duty of Press Association duty reporters to be ‘on site’ by 7 am to telephone London regarding prospects for the day’s racing. This entailed setting off at 4 am on roads ice-bound and covered in snow. The closer they came to Somerset the more abandoned cars they encountered and the less likely it would that racing would take place. After sliding into many ditches, fifteen miles from Wincanton they made the decision to locate a call-box and inform the London office of the grim news. “Wincanton prospects nil. More follows.” He decided that the news he had imparted was too feeble and minutes later made another transfer-call to London updating his report to “Wincanton racing has been abandoned. Quote from the clerk of the course to follow.” In need of a warming brew they continued their journey, stopping seven miles from the course at Mere. Mere was snow-free and there was green grass down in the valley. Their rivals, the chaps who worked for ‘The Tape’ who informed the B.B.C. and other subscribers like prominent owners and trainers, were ahead of them and they hot-footed it to the course expecting to find golden sunlight and skylarks, to be relieved to be informed by one of Neville Crump’s lads that ‘You’d need ten pickaxes to bury your grandmother out there.’ Smart phones and computer technology have taken all the romance and adventure out of life, haven’t they?
Peter O’Sullevan was one of the best of the best. He loved horse racing and horses and no one more deserved to own top-class horses – he owned enough of the lesser kind – which he achieved with Be Friendly and Attivo, two horses you can bet your bottom dollar lived long and happy lives in retirement. He led where other have followed. His halcyon days as a journalist and commentator were conducted in a different age, a better age, perhaps, an age when technological invention in the sport were the patrol camera and starting stalls. Would he approve of how racing is facing its future? He may have been insightful and as a journalist a campaigner for improvement such as the patrol camera and horse welfare but he was not one for rocking the establishment, at least not in public. And as a man who must have raised more money for equine and animal charities than almost anyone before him, I cannot think other than he would be appalled by a so-called animal charity wanting to ban the sport he so loved and the rather feeble way the B.H.B. and racing’s stakeholders are preparing the sport to stave off the biggest threat yet to its future.
 

​I write again on horse welfare, a subject that should be uppermost in the thoughts of racing enthusiasts all around the world, and why it is both an admirable attribute of the sport and a weakness to be exploited by those people and organisations, and ‘Animal Aid’ come readily to mind, that lobby to have us made extinct.
Let me say from the outset that I am someone who is very much on the side of the animal, all animals and not just the racehorse. Yet to protect the racehorse and the sport dedicated to its survival I would fight organisations like ‘Animal Aid’ to the last drop of my blood. If Animal Aid meets its objectives no ridden horse has a future. Animals are mistreated all over the world and yet this pernicious organisation chooses for the purposes of self-publicity to befowl the good name of a sport populated by people dedicated to the care and welfare of animals.
I try to steer clear of politics but it is as apparent as snow on the ground that the British Labour Party has been infiltrated by ideologies that are a danger to democracy and liberty. Why should a political party want to have a sport that employs hundreds of thousands of people regulated by outside influence? The B.H.B. may be a lot of things, yet even I have never had cause to think they do not take horse welfare seriously. In days of old when the Jockey Club ruled the sport it was different. They had the mindset of Victorian aristocracy, with little thought given to how ‘outsiders’ viewed the sport. The Labour Party, if God forbid they came to power in this country, would set a graduating policy of equine fatalities for the sport culminating with the goal of nil fatalities. Nil! It is a target that could not be achieved for children riding Shetland ponies around a field! It is a tiger-trap set for us to stumble into.
We live in changing times. The horse, friend of Man for centuries, is no longer a beast of burden. Indeed, its use to Man has receded to ceremonial purposes only. If Animal Aid get its way the racehorse will become as rare and endangered as the heavy horse, a horse race as much an oddity as a farmer ploughing a field behind a team of Suffolk Punches. The sport, of course, has friends in high places, not only here in Great Britain but all around the world. But that should not encourage complacency. Politics is a highly manipulative business. Votes can be bought and sold. The good and the honest do not easily survive in a parliament constructed with shadow for mortar.
Now is the time for the B.H.B. and racing’s ‘stakeholders’ to get on the front foot. Horse welfare, not what is convenient for the owner, trainer and jockey, must become top priority, not in mere words but in deed and action. If white take-off boards, for instance, are thought to be better seen by horses during a steeplechase rather than orange as is used now, then instead of exhaustive tests on schooling grounds get them on to the racecourse. The same with the new form of hurdles. If they are safer then have them at every racecourse and damn the cost!
And the whip! How long has this debate gone on for? If we keep with the present guidelines, disqualification for exceeding the guidelines should be mandatory. No ifs and buts. Our intent should be demonstrated to the outside world. Hands and Heels races for professional jockeys should be implemented experimentally right away, this winter for flat racing and next summer for jumping. Jockeys must alter their way of riding for the sake of the continuance of our sport. Use of the whip will be banned, if only eventually, through Parliamentary Legislation. It is a foregone conclusion. Let’s get proactive and set a date when the striking of a horse for anything other than correction will be ended.
I am sick to death of hearing jockeys and trainers explaining away use of the whip with ‘its only for encouragement’, ‘its nothing more than a tickling stick’. If a jockey beat his children with this ‘tickling stick’ they would end up in front of a judge and I don’t think a defence of ‘it was only for encouragement’ would prevent a custodial sentence. In the eyes of the public, the eyes of our enemies, a whip has only one purpose. ‘To lash, to flog, to thrash, to beat’. Look the word up in a dictionary.
Our sport suffers from public perception. It is a sport for inherent gamblers. It is a sport that uses horses for monetary gain. It is a sport that abuses horses. It is a sport for the fabulously wealthy. The perception, as we all know, is wrong. It could not be further from the truth. It is a sport that places horses on a pedestal. There are more statues of racehorses in this country than of owners, trainers and jockeys, the Queen and Winston Churchill excepted. The money gambled is only equal to the care, love and concern for the horse and when tragedy occurs the tears are genuine, the tragedy on a whole different scale to the miss of a putt or penalty. And this sport is very much a working-class sport. Stable staff and trainers alike are workers and not nine-to-five workers either, and in the main people who attend race-meetings are working-class, too. Indeed, no sport is as inclusive as horse racing.
It should be enshrined in the rules of racing that the welfare and respect of the horse will always be the first priority and the welfare and respect should extend from birth to death and into memory, with the harshest of penalties for those who fall below the standard of care expected of them. We live in changing times: our future is in our own hands.

​There are large tracts of my life that are unaccountable to me. The missing chapters of my life cause me no great hardship, no emotional turmoil and they even go back as far as my childhood, the best years of your life or so it is claimed. But by and large it is as if my childhood never happened. Yes, I have hazy recollections of certain experiences but no recall of anything leading up to the event or any eventual outcome.
It is the same throughout adulthood, though these later memory-free years could be accounted for due to the number of times I fell from a horse or as in one incident I clearly recall, being kicked in the head by a mare who thought it a giant indignity to have her heels cleaned with a hoof-pick. I was unconscious for a few minutes, I am quite certain, though no one was aware of ‘my little sleep’ in the stable doorway.
Near the end of my ‘career’ with racehorses, a lovely old grey who I was feeding medicine to mixed up in a bran mash inadvertently – he would never have done it on purpose – done a proper job in knocking me out, resulting in an overnight hospital stay. The strange thing was, though I remember absolutely nothing from the moment I pulled the horse out of the field to feed him from a bucket, when I was found slumped over the gate, the grey and all his mates were contentedly grazing in the field with the gate shut tight. If I was not responsible for returning the grey to the field then some heartless bugger did it for me, leaving me to live or die in my own time.
In general, my memory is poor and I possess the ability to make my mind up to do something significant only to forget all about it literally seconds later. I can enter a shop knowing what I need to buy only for the purpose of my visit to go clean from my head only to return when I get home. It’s rather like when your computer freezes. Also, concentration is an issue to the point when it is easy to imagine mites have got into the circuitry of my brain and are slowly but surely short-circuiting my thoughts. On occasion it is as if the mites have taken control of my brain, if only as an experiment, as my thoughts and actions have been totally at odds with one another.
When I was a child I could reel off the past fifty Derby or Grand National winners, whereas now I can barely remember this year’s winner. The problem, if it is a problem and not a direct result of ageing, is that I can watch races on YouTube from the sixties, seventies, eighties and even more recently, without ever being sure of the winner. Topham Chase races I have a particular fondness for. And in the same piece of writing I can spell correctly and incorrectly the same word and I can think of just the right word to use only for it to float away not to return until hours later.
I admit to the diminishing of my mental abilities as in a previous piece of writing, ‘Frost’, I believe it was called as the thrust of the narrative was the remarkable Frost family, I unfairly suggested that Ami Rao’s book ‘Centaur’, written with and about the ex-jump jockey Declan Murphy, was perhaps slightly underwhelming and nowhere nearly as ‘beautifully written and genuinely revealing’ as Clare Balding promised it would be.
I particularly had a moan about the repetition after repetition of Declan reminding readers ‘how brilliant he was in the saddle’ and ‘how no one could tell him how to ride a race’. I had only read the first half a dozen chapters when I wrote ‘Frost’ and in my defence I did say that ‘something would perhaps come about to hit me in the face’ as explanation for what seemed to be indulgent arrogance.
Declan had four years of memory erased by either the fall that ended his career as a jockey or the surgeon’s scalpel that cut into his brain to save his life. When he eventually awoke from his coma in his head he was twelve-years-old and when he finally returned to the reality of his situation the four years previous to that fall at Haydock Park in 1994 were lost, never to be recovered. The best years of his life were only reality to him in photographs, print and film. And the attributes he seemingly paid himself in the book were description of him by other people. I think he had to repeat them to believe them.
Usually with biography or memoir the emphasis for the writer is to persuade the reader to like or feel sympathy for the man or woman who is the subject of the book. The reason, I believe, I struggled throughout the book to ‘like’ Declan Murphy – sympathy was a given from the first word of the first chapter – was because ‘Centaur’ is not a memoir about one man but about a man who the present Declan Murphy does not truly know and who is not a whole personality anyway but fragments of a man, some from his life as Declan Murphy the jump jockey and some from the man the fall forced him to become.
‘Centaur’ is the perfect book for a racing man or woman to give as a present to a book-loving non-racing man or woman as the racing plays second fiddle in an orchestra of insight into the sport, brain injury and how to, and perhaps how not to, recover from such trauma.

​Although there remains a whole lot of flat racing between now and the November Handicap, which makes, of course, a complete mockery of ‘Champions’ Day’ being the ‘finale’ to the season, today might be a good time to access the efforts of the I.T.V. presenters, the public face of British horse racing.
Overall, they are difficult to fault. I.T.V. has proved innovative and enthusiastic, with the prospect of top Irish racing on Sundays to further endear them to us, or at least to me. We all have our favourites, of course. Mine was, and remains when she appears on the programme, Hayley ‘the history-maker’ Turner. And because she is my favourite, I will always score her 10/10. She is attractive, amusing, informative and so damn nice I would vote for her in a general election even if she was standing as a Socialist.
Ed ‘Chuckles’ Chamberlain leads the team, I suspect, with an iron fist encased within a velvet glove. There is no doubting his enthusiasm, and at times knowledge, of the sport and without him I.T.V. racing would be, no doubt, rudderless when it came to dealing with the higher management of I.T.V. who hold the purse strings. He is, though, no Clare Balding. But then who is? At times he is prone to over-egg the pudding and though he has moderated his use of the word ‘monster’, the superlative he prematurely attached to the disappointing Caravaggio, he is yet to distinguish the very good from the very best. He is not alone in that. Great horses, apparently, appear every season on the flat. Enable might be. Cracksman could have. Roaring Lion we will never know. Alpha Centauri, best three-old-filly of the year but only in the very good category, I would estimate. I would give ‘Chuckles’ 8/10
Jason ‘the shark’ Weaver has proved himself the top tipster this season. He is either lucky or brilliant. I have yet to determine which. He is professional and knowledgeable and a safe pair of hands. I find him a bit of a mystery man and would appreciate knowing how much hands-on involvement he has with horses. The Shark would be a 9/10 man if it wasn’t for his repetitive use of ‘prelims’, leaving the uninitiated dangling as to what these mystery ‘prelims’ involve. 8/10.
‘Hardwearing Matt’ is the rough diamond of the pack. You either like him or loath him. There is no ‘oh, he’s okay, I suppose’ about Chapman. I like him, though his lack of professionalism when he talks over his colleagues is easy meat for those who loath him. Often, he is just plain wrong in his views, though to his credit he does acknowledge his shortcomings. He is the ‘enfant terrible’ of the team and because he is expected to be noisy and controversial the line he should not cross is rather hazy. ‘Hardwearing Matt’ is also a 9/10 man.
‘Fragrant’ Francesca Cumani is the brightest flower in the garden. She does, though, have a lot of Australian in her and her constant championing of the Melbourne Cup irks me more than a little. She is commentating on British horse racing, she should be reminded occasionally, and I would hope in compensation she bigs up the Ebor, Cambridgeshire and Grand National when she is in front of Australian television cameras. Other than being too Australian for an English rose with Italian antecedence she is a complete delight. She is another 9/10 performer.
Mick Fitzgerald is under-used, no doubt because he is over-used by his other employers. He does fall into the broadcasting trap of not wanting to criticise, which allows him to come across as a bit ‘wimpy’. But when there is time to fill he is the ace in the pack. 8/10
Luke ‘Mad-Hatter’ Harvey is a gem of a broadcaster. He can execute every aspect of the broadcasting art with bravado bordering on the psychotic. No one in the history of television has looked less at ease in a top hat and tails and yet he treated Royal Ascot no differently than if it were at Worcester on a Wednesday afternoon. As long as he remains sober and on the right side of sane he will always be a 10/10 man.
Sally-Anne Grassick is another who is under-used, especially during I.T.V’s coverage of both Royal Ascot and the Arc. A great substitute to call on, I suspect. Not enough form to give a definitive rating but a potential 9/10.
Rishi Persad has improved leaps and bounds since signing his I.T.V. contract and deserves more terrestrial air-time. Because of his skin-colour and ethnic background he is the right man to promote the sport to a different demographic. Again, he has the potential to be a 9/10 man.
As the pin-up boy of I.T.V. racing Oli ‘Ding Dong’ Bell should be enticing women of his age to the sport in droves. But is he? Dressing like his father can only be a hindrance to his cause. For all that, I like him. I liked him on the first show and like him just the same now. He is, though, a rotten tipster and he should stop embarrassing himself in the twenty-pound challenge. Play to your strengths, Ding Dong, and that is your sweet personality and your willingness to put your credibility at risk with the courage to be spontaneous in front of the camera. 9/10, though with plenty of potential.
I.T.V. racing 10/10. Keep up the good work.

​Look, I know that when it comes to flat racing I am hard to impress, and it is not that I did not enjoy ‘Champions Day’. I did, honestly. Frankie was at his brilliant best, Cracksman showed what the season on the whole has lacked and Sheikh Fahad demonstrated again both what a great bloke he is and huge asset to the sport.
But: finale – ‘the last part, piece, scene, or action in any performance or exhibition, the last piece in a programme, the last movement, the close, end, the final catastrophe’. That is the dictionary definition of ‘finale’. Saturday was not the finale to the 2018 flat season, was it?
Also: the champion jockey was crowned, as was the champion apprentice. Both worthy winners. The champion trainers’ title, though awarded due to John Gosden’s unassailable lead, does not terminate until the final day of the season. The champion female rider was also not awarded on ‘Champions’ Day’. Nor the champion amateur. But most importantly, no racehorse was crowned a champion. And though the Qipco series strings the top flat races together throughout the summer, there was no mention of the various winners or award of prizes during the afternoon. Quite, apart from sponsorship money, obviously, what the Qipco series adds to the season is beyond me?
Today, Monday 22nd October, the flat jockeys are back in action at Pontefract, Windsor and Kempton. Saturday’s racing constituted part of the 2018 season, as does the race meetings today and on into November and the final meeting of the season (turf, obviously) at Doncaster. The success of ‘Champions’ Day’, and one cannot imagine the back-end of the season without it, should not hide the complete nonsense that is the format for the Champion jockeys title. No other sport, I would suggest, even horse racing in other parts of the world, would take the number of winners ridden up to the start of the ‘jockeys’ championship’, disregard all the races in between, and then add the winners after the ‘jockeys’ championship’ trophy has been awarded. It is as convoluted and in need of editing as the previous sentence.
In my opinion, there should be a turf champion, the season taking in all turf races between the first day and last day of the season, and an all-weather champion taking in every race on the all-weather starting in January and finishing in December.
When A.P.McCoy retired and the powers-that-be decided to make a festival of his last day when presenting him with his trophy, it was an eye-opening success, and it seems the memory of it has become the template for ‘Champions’ Day’. But it just does not match the original. The presentation of the trophy is shoehorned into a tight schedule and looks more like a duty to be performed rather than a celebration of a remarkable achievement.
And it is not the finale of the season, not for horses, owners, trainers, stable staff and most of all for the jockeys. Come Monday and it is just another day at the office. One day off and back to the grindstone. If you are going to have a true ‘Champions Day’, one that is true to the definitions of ‘Champion’ and ‘Finale’, then stage it at Doncaster on the last day of the turf season and make it one huge celebration, with the awarding of all the trophies to all of the champions. The north always gets left out when the sport dreams up innovation; the re-routing of Champions’ Day would, if nothing else, right a historical wrong.
On a personal note, I would like the Champion Stakes returned to Newmarket. A straight mile and a quarter race is unique, whereas the same distance at Ascot is just another Group 1 over that distance. I would also get rid of the fillies and mares’ race and replace it with a similar race over a mile and a half for three-year-olds and upwards. I would move the big mile two-year-old race to my new ‘Champions Day’, the old Racing Post, Observer, Timeform Gold Trophy, and instigate a five-furlong championship race. Indeed, I would use the word ‘champion’ in every race title, even if ‘champion’ might be stretching the word definition a wee bit.
There needs to be less emphasis on our top horses going abroad to find the big prizes. Why ship a horse halfway around the world to the Breeders Cup or Melbourne if the money and prestige could be earned here. ‘Champions Day’ could become Europe’s version of the Breeders Cup. Perhaps Doncaster in the mud is not so inviting as Del Mar under a scorching sun and journalists would not relish staying home at the expense of an all-expenses paid jolly to the U.S. but horse racing is our sport, our concept, our gift to the sporting world, so why should we hide our light under a bushel. Doncaster in the mud in November is, I would suggest, a truer reflection of the sport’s history than dirt under a scorching sun in California or Melbourne.
 

​If, as in my dreams, I became horse racing’s supremo I would instigate the following changes.
1. Every British racecourse would annually have the spotlight shone in its direction either with a three-day festival, as is common in Ireland through the summer months, or a valuable race on a Saturday so that it achieves nationwide television access.
Horse racing should be seen as, and run as, a club where every facet of the whole is regarded as vital to the existence of the sport. Racecourses should not allowed be to founder and close. If for no other reason, especially if located in a city or town, racecourses provide society with a green lung, a no-go barrier to urban sprawl. It eats me up to read biographies where jockeys describe a race they rode in at a racecourse that no longer exists. Manchester, Derby, Lincoln, Bogside, Wye, Hurst Park. Too much emphasis is placed in boosting attendance at the top racecourses and not enough thought and effort is put to helping to maintain the racecourses at the outposts of our sport. As I have written before, if we could link a local area to its racecourse via a tradition or festival we might make a step forward in making the sport as popular today and into the future as it was in the past.
Also, I would stop Friday/ Saturday meetings and have them Saturday and Sunday. Too often, especially in winter, the ground is chewed-up on the first day, leaving the second day, the main event, susceptible to abandonment due to frost. Switching to Saturday/Sunday fixtures would also improve the Sunday fare for the punter.
2. A pet subject with me, so I will not expand too much on it, is the way journeyman jockeys are given little opportunity to demonstrate their skills except what they can forge for themselves. I have long argued that it would cost the sport not a single penny to help these men and women who like all of us have bills to pay and food to put into the mouths of their families. Two or three races a week restricted to non-claiming jockeys who have not ridden, as an example, twenty winners during the previous twelve months, is all that it would take to give a helping hand to people the sport can ill afford to lose. These men and women when they stop being jockeys can easily be enticed to leave the industry for a career in the outside world. There is a skills and manpower deficit in this sport and the powers-that-be do damn all to help people who though they may never go on to be a James Doyle or Aidan Coleman possess skills and knowledge that make them invaluable to trainers and the sport.
3. I would do away with the nonsense way the flat jockeys’ championship is decided. Sylvestre de Sousa is a worthy champion but it is highly unlikely that he will ride the highest number of winners in 2018. To arbitrarily pick two dates in the calendar and say the champion will be decided during that period of the season just so a ‘Champions Day’ can be shoehorned into the racing programme is both dumb and unfair. If you sit with your wife in front of the television on Saturday when de Sousa walks out between an avenue of his colleagues to receive his trophy and she asks ‘has he ridden the most winners this season?’, the answer is not as straightforward as Richard Johnson winning the jump jockeys title. It’s convoluted and stupid and flies in the face of the argument that we should be making the sport easier for outsiders to comprehend.
4. To a howl of protest, I would add a fifth day to the Cheltenham Festival. Think about it, for a moment. When the gales hit Cheltenham a few years ago and the Wednesday was abandoned, Cheltenham had no wriggle room. To run the abandoned races meant squeezing them into the final two days. If Cheltenham had a ‘Heath Day’ on the Saturday, as Ascot used to have on the Saturday after the Royal meeting, any lost day could be held over to the Saturday, with that day’s racing either abandoned or transferred to another course. Also, Cheltenham could trial any proposed new race for future Festivals on this fifth day. It would also allow racing’s broadcasters and public to chew over the week’s racing where it should be chewed over, at Cheltenham. Wriggle-room and reflection. Think on it, howlers of protest.
5. I would instigate, as a matter of urgency, a major flat race restricted to professional female jockeys to be run at Goodwood, Newmarket or Newbury with a first prize of over £100,000. There is a glass ceiling in flat racing that has thus far hardly been cracked let alone shattered. A race such as this would at least get female jockeys on a better class of horse than owners and trainers are presently inclined to put them on.
6. Although I accept the changes that were made to the Grand National course have proved to the sport’s advantage, it curls my lip that journalists and television presenters must delve deep to find any grain of ‘romance’ associated with the winner. Higher quality horses do not necessarily equate to a better tale to be told today and in the future. The days of Tipperary Tim, Foinavon, Jay Trump and Ben Nevis and Grittar are gone for good and that is a matter for debate and sadness. The race will never revert to what it once was, so why not a consolation race for horses that do not make the cut run either on the following Sunday or Monday or perhaps the following Saturday? Keeping the joy of the race alive for another seven days. Jockeys could attempt the ‘National Double’.
 

​The 5.00 at York on Friday last was not a handicap. The 5.35 on the same day was a handicap. The weight range in the 5.00 was 10lbs. In the 5.35 it was only 4lbs.  Does a range of 4lbs truly constitute a handicap? In my day a handicap had a broad and sweeping range of weights of perhaps over 2-stone. Great days when due to widespread malnutrition an apprentice would claim 7lb off a horse allotted 7st. In 1943, to take a race at random, at Salisbury, in a five-furlong handicap, two horses were allotted 6st 2lbs and to their disgrace their respective jockeys had to put up 2lb and 4lb overweight. The top weight, ridden by Cliff Richards, brother of Sir Gordon, not the Peter Pan of pop, won the race carrying 8st 13lbs. Burger King, chocolate bars at supermarket checkouts and weak lager have a lot to answer for in our society; big boned jockeys for one.
I am aware that banded races were introduced to encourage more competitive racing, with horses of near-equal merit running against one another, and the 5.35 at York did have a narrow banding, 71-85. It’s just that I would suggest a weight range of 4lbs is more akin to a conditions race than a handicap. One day soon there will be a handicap where all the runners carry the same weight and that, I hope, will be a wake-up call to the powers-that-be to do something about it. A handicap is defined as ‘a contest in which an allowance of time, distance or weight is made to inferior competitors’ and I would argue that a handicap where all the runners carry more or less the same weight is not truly a handicap. In fact, such a race may have to be voided for breaking the definition of what a handicap should be. I would also suggest that a weight range of only 4lbs cannot truly include any runner that can be deemed ‘inferior’.
There was a time when it was a performance of great merit for the top-weight to win a handicap. Yet with banded races it is quite common for the top weight to give away the few pounds difference. In fact, in some cases if a 7lb claimer is employed the top weight can end up the bottom weight.
Mark Johnstone has a valid point about handicaps. It is his view that there are too many of them, with not enough variation in the race programme, though God only knows how many races he would win a season if he could organise the programme to suit his own purposes? So, in order to assist the Master of Middleham break the 300-barrier here are four suggestions to help vary the race programming fare.
How about banded conditions races? For example, and please feel free to apply your own weight range, in a 71-85 band, those rated 81-85 would carry 9st 2lbs, those rated 76-80 would carry 8st 10lbs and those 71-75 8st 4lbs. No penalties, no claiming jockeys.
Maiden handicaps, for horses eligible for a rating.
 Once upon a time in Ireland, due, I believe, to the amount of horses balloted out of races, there were ‘Upside Down Handicaps’ where eliminations would start from the top, allowing those at the bottom of the handicap to get a run. I can hear the howls of protest, the cries of we shouldn’t be prioritising the slowest horses at the expense of Mark Johnstone who doesn’t have slow horses. And I would respond by arguing that this type of horse has an owner who needs to be encouraged to stay in the game, a trainer who can only put bread on the table because of such horses, a groom whose job relies on the aforementioned staying in the game and a jockey with a mortgage to pay. It is the horse and human at the bottom of the racing pyramid that bears the load.
Handicaps without restrictions on ratings but on how many races each horse has won. For example, a handicap for horses who have not won more than three races or a handicap for horses who have won more than three races. Handicaps for horses who have accumulated prize money of over £50,000 or less than £50,000.
Banded races make life so much easier for the poor old handicapper and competitive racing stirs the soul and must excite the newbie to greater effect than a ten-length winner. Though when a Derby is won by ten lengths the excitement goes off the Ed Chamberlain scale for over-egging puddings. I wouldn’t wish to see banded races kicked into touch, I would just like to see more imagination given to the daily race programme.
 

​Due to global inconsistencies regarding to what constitutes a non-runner, the B.H.A. is giving the whole matter a jolly good thinking-about. In Hong Kong, apparently, where the sport is run to appease the voracious betting habits of the locals, incidents such as at Royal Ascot this year would have resulted in Harry Angel being regarded as a non-runner ‘because in order for punters to lose on that horse they had to be in a position to win, but that was not the case’.
Let’s fly for a while with this ‘moral model’ of how this aspect of the sport should be governed. You back a horse in a 3-mile chase and it falls at the first – you were never in a position to win, so you must have your stake returned. You back a horse in a five-furlong sprint and it stands still as the gates open and loses ten-lengths, a bit like Harry Angel. You were never in a position to win, so you must have your stake returned. You back a horse that is subsequently decided by the stewards to have been ‘schooled in public’. You were never in a position to win, so you must have your stake back’. You back a horse in a mile handicap at Kempton and a swan wanders on to the track causing your horse to take avoiding action, resulting in the jockey being unshipped. You were never in a position to win, so you must have your stake returned. If a mare was found to be in season, would this be a case of ‘punters never being in a position to win’?
I could dream up two dozen such scenarios where it could be argued that punters were never in a position to win. Indeed, I dare say between us we could recall two dozen cases where a horse has whipped round at the start, given the other runners the best part of a furlong lead and gone on to win. Would the Hong Kong model only apply to sprints – they basically only have short sprints and long sprints in Hong Kong – or could the B.H.B. fashion a rule to cover every race from a five-furlong sprint to the Grand National.
This debate will take place at the top of a slippery slope and will involve cans of worms and rabbit holes. When Harry Angel flounced about in the stalls at Royal Ascot it was not only the people who punted on the horse who lost out. Owner, trainer, jockey, stable staff etc lost out. Could they be compensated in some way, as they too were in no position to win.
The unfortunate circumstances that befell the Harry Angel camp in the King’s Stand was just one of those things that cannot be legislated against. Once you establish the principle that the punter sits at the top of the pyramid the foundations of the sport are undermined. The punter is one element of a rich and varied sporting tapestry, neither less nor more important than any of the other elements. This reform, or the ‘Harry Angel rule’, as I predict it will become known, of the non-runner rules, which as sure as eggs are eggs will be implemented as the B.H.B. does not have the balls to tell Hong Kong and others that they are misguided in this matter, will cause headaches for the sport for years to come. In this country and Ireland, especially, our sport is far more varied than countries where racecourses are all left-handed, round and where races are run on an artificial surface and are rarely longer than a mile. Barristers will argue long into the night over a strict interpretation of what ‘because in order for punters to lose on that horse they had to be in a position to win’. High Court judges will take as a precedent the incident of Harry Angel ‘when the stalls opened Harry Angel only had three legs on the ground and it could be argued that punters and connections could not win’.
Well, how about a horse that knocks its head on the stall door? The horse that veers sharply left or right as the stalls open? The jockey who is half-asleep when the stall opens? The two-year-old that simply dwells in the stall? The horse that pulls up lame at halfway? The list can go on and on. And I haven’t even got to disqualification on the day or months after the event.
Leave things as they are. Punters know the risks, the pitfalls, the joy of backing a runner-up that gets the race in the stewards’ room. Punting money on the outcome of a horse race is nothing more than a complex game of Snakes and Ladders. Some days you are up, some days you are down. It’s pastime for grown-ups and should be avoided by cry-babies at all cost.

​I am presently reading ‘Centaur’, a book about Declan Murphy, a jockey as famous for nearly dying as for being one of the most naturally gifted jockeys for many a generation. For a book about racing, it is flowery and poetic, with a literary style all of its own. It is not, though, a biography or even an autobiography written in the third person. Officially it is a memoir. As with the subject matter, the writer (Ami Rao) dares to be different and that should always be admired. And I do admire the book. But, and this a really bugging But! The reader is forever told that Declan Murphy was a brilliant jockey. The most gifted horseman ever to live, almost. No one could tell him how to ride a horse, a race. There is a fine line between self-confidence and bragging and the writer, on behalf of her subject, oversteps that line. I am only halfway through the book. I may be missing a point that will rise up and hit me in the face in later chapters. But enough already!
The book I read previous to ‘Centaur’ was the complete opposite. ‘Touched By Frost’, the autobiography of Jimmy Frost, though as he admits to being practically illiterate I suspect the book was wholly written by Lucy Johnson, has no pretentions of being anything other than a bog-standard telling of Jimmy’s career. The style of the book reflects the character of the subject matter. It is straight-as-a-die, matter-of-fact, with no frills.
But what the book does have that makes it as unique as ‘Centaur’, and which is, not glossed over exactly, but given no prominence, is a murder, a particularly gruesome murder, it has to be said. As a trainer, one of Jimmy’s grooms was murdered by someone who was a friend of the Frost family. Obviously, Jimmy would not his want the story of his life or his family defined by this one barbaric incident and perhaps Lucy Johnson honoured his wishes by burying it near the back of the book. Others, though, would have used the gruesome event as ‘mud on the page’, as one prolific author once advised me, a hook to help the publisher sell the book. I would have referenced the incident on the opening page and referred to it, as obliquely as possible, in other chapters, building the readers eagerness to ‘learn all about it’. Of course, I am not right in my opinion. I am neither the subject matter nor the writer. And as the book was published in 2003 my thoughts are worthless.
Of course, in hindsight, the story about the murder is given greater capacity to chill the soul as you know that the murderer is now out of jail. He may even read this piece. The Frosts may even encounter him in their daily lives. Perhaps when, as it is inevitable, Bryony writes her life-story, we might read a different perspective of the event.
Which leads me to Bryony, the only daughter of the Grand National winning jockey. In 2003 she was but a rider of Shetland ponies. Her father could not include her in his life story because for most of it she was not born. Yet her smiling presence is the shadow across the narrative. In fact, I would encourage Jimmy to phone Lucy Johnson and ask about the viability of a second book dealing with his pride at the achievements, if lesser than his own at present, of his children. His daughter is without doubt the most popular jockey riding and to chart her progress through the eyes of her parents would make for a fascinating read.
Along with the remarkable Rachael Blackmore in Ireland, Bryony could put our sport on the front pages of the newspapers. She is a naturally ebullient character and her love and enthusiasm for the sport is a perfect outlet to promote the sport. With the backing of Paul Nicholls and Neil King, she has the opportunity this season to crack the glass ceiling that thus far has stopped female jockeys from competing regularly at the top level of the sport. We, as enthusiasts of the sport, need her, though also other female jockeys, to be riding in the top races. Not on also-rans but horses with obvious chances of winning. I would like her to ride horses like Lil Rockerfella, when Wayne Hutchison is unavailable, and the top horses of Paul Nicholl’s, when Cobden, Bowen and Twiston-Davies are unavailable. And if she is good enough to ride Robert’s Star for the Bradstocks, why would she not be suitable for Coneygree? If the horse gets to Cheltenham this season both de Boinville and Johnson, his regular pilots, will, hopefully, be otherwise engaged.
When Bryony publishes her first book – there will be more than one, believe me – it must not focus on horses she did not ride but be highlighted by big-race winners that helped to change the course of British racing.

​I hope the suggestion that Enable might stay in training as a five-year-old is not a tease. Prince Khalid does not have a reputation for keeping his best horses in training for a prolonged period, and he is not getting any younger and might want to see Enable’s offspring on the racecourse. It is why Nijinsky went to stud at the end of his three-year-old season as his owner Charles Englehard had cancer and wanted to see Nijinsky’s foals before he died. I have often bemoaned the fact that flat racing is organised to benefit the breeding industry to a greater extent than the sport and that the top studs, for whom racing offers huge financial incomes, does not put its back into carrying out its duty to reciprocate. For flat racing to stand a chance of flourishing in a competitive sporting arena the best horses must be kept in training for as long as is feasible. Owners and breeders have a responsibility that in the main they renege on. Horse racing is a sport and the sporting aspect should be given priority over the breeding side of the industry, which is not to suggest that the breeders are not vitally important to the sport, though they are pampered by there being so much emphasis put on run-of-the-mill listed and Group 3 races.
To stay with Enable. She is undoubtedly a great filly and though she was fortunate to receive a better draw than Sea of Class on Sunday this is mitigated by the fact that Enable had a troubled preparation. I believe if Sea of Class had drawn stall six and Enable was able to race throughout the season, as she did last season, the result of this year’s Arc would have been the same, though with three or four lengths between them. As much as I love her joyous way of racing, I do not believe she has yet done enough to enter the pantheon of legendary racehorses. If kept in training, she might. In fact, I would expect her to, but at the moment she is a tad short of the honour. And while I am on the subject, to blow this trumpet once more: enthusiasts of flat racing need to understand the difference between a horse that is the best of his or her generation and a true great such as of Frankel, Brigadier Gerard and Ribot. As good a performance as See The Stars and Dancing Brave put up in winning their Arcs they were receiving weight and because they were not kept in training as four-year-olds there is no way of accessing if they would have been capable of giving weight to the following year’s classic winners. Frankel, Brigadier Gerard and Ribot rose to the challenge, as has Enable.
I found satisfaction, I have to admit, in the French making a such a Horlicks of the ParisLongchamp experience. They gave us a clue as to what was to come by changing the name of the racecourse, as if in prefixing Paris to Longchamp they were removing the confusion as to where in France Longchamp was situated. And as for the supposed home of cuisine running out of food, well that was just beautiful. But to not provide enough toilets, that was embarrassing. And why was there an Arab race before the Arc? I have no problem with the promotion of Arab racing on the biggest stage of all but surely the first or last race would be more fitting. Can you imagine a similar race at Royal Ascot?
Something far more important that is bugging the life out of me is this: the tripartite agreement between Britain, Ireland and France that allows free transportation of horses between these countries. Why should Brexit bring this friendly agreement to an end when to do so would negatively impact as much on Ireland and France as it would Britain? This will be mooted as a huge problem, I predict, right up to the day we leave the E.U. and then, miraculously, it will be solved with use of commonsense and through self-interest. If there is no free movement of horses come this time next year Arc weekend will be a far quieter place as there will be far less horses running and far fewer Brits in attendance.
Finally, diversity. There has been virtually nothing in the racing press on the subject of who will step forward at Ascot next week to claim the champion lady rider prize, even though it remains a closely fought battle. It seems highly likely that Nicola Currie will be champion, a fine achievement for a female apprentice. Horse racing is changing and diversity is slowly emerging but simply claiming that diversity is a high priority and actually coming up with the talent to make it happen will require more than hyperbole. It is surprising, for example, given the large number of Muslim grooms working in yards up and down the country that there are virtually none making a name as a jockey. And although there are now a dozen or more female jockeys regularly riding winners not one of them has had a chance in a Group race this season. Diversity will only be truly achieved when talent meets opportunity. As Rachael Blackmore is proving in Ireland, you do not need a pair of testicles to be a great jockey, though it seems white skin might be a determining factor.