​I continue to lobby Tom Kerr, editor of the Racing Post, to strap on a pair, to use a euphemism or should that be a colloquialism (?), and stop merely reporting what is going on and lead the assault that might, just might, change hearts and minds in government to allowing our racecourses their inherent right to admit the public to watch the entertainment they continue, and at great expense, to provide. As the industry paper, I would argue, the editor, and staff, of The Racing Post has a duty to do all in its power, limited as that might be in times of a state of emergency, to have the sport treated fairly and proportionately by what is an overbearing government. We raced, if in a limited capacity, through two world wars, yet a virus no more destructive than seasonal influenza continues to have turnstiles shut and atmosphere shackled.
It is a wholly ridiculous and confusing state of affairs when West Ham supporters were denied any opportunity to watch their team play in the open air of the London City Stadium yet could watch the match indoors at a cinema.
In yesterday’s paper, it was reported that officials at Cheltenham intend to invite M.P.’s to their November meeting to allow them to experience for themselves all the protocols put in place to provide a safe environment for spectators, albeit a less than capacity total of spectators. The M.P.’s, I suspect, if they bother to attend, will have a pleasant time, but it will not make one jot of difference to the situation as it is not in the gift of parliament to makes wishes come true. I doubt if even Joker Johnson or Hannibal Hancock have the power to grant Cheltenham and racing its dream come true. For Half-Witty and Unbalanced Valance to come out of this debacle with a shred of dignity (unlikely) they have to stick like limpets to their science-defying strategy, even if that entails every business closing, every football club and racecourse lining up for the bankruptcy courts and the population thinned-out due to premature death from heart disease, cancer, kidney failure and who knows what other illnesses that might be treatable if only Covid was not the only illness on their minds.
No one should accept, as seems to be the drift at the moment, the Cheltenham Festival and the Grand National run behind closed doors. We need to fight for spectators; we need stamp our feet and cry out our eyes for the right for spectators; we should use the science to fight our cause; we should start petitions, we should pair-up with other sporting organisations in the courts of law to fight for our right to have spectators attend racecourses and other sporting arenas. Never mind financial compensation from government to save our racecourses; that is allowing a corrupt or corrupted government peddling a corrupt narrative based on corrupted science to have its wicked way over us.
Down here in Devon we barely had a first wave, let alone a second. I would have thought Exeter, high up as it is on a windy hill, would be as safe a location for a gathering of people as anywhere in the country. Has the B.H.A. advanced the idea to government to stage a trial at Exeter? Not a trial such as Warwick and Doncaster were permitted, or not only as those racecourses were allowed, but as a tracing experiment, to see if anyone attending the meeting acquires the virus or if they pass it on to someone who did not attend. 1,000 people should make for a proper scientific study, I would think.
By the way, as a kind of heads-up, I watched a video the other day posted by a young man who bought a Covid test-kit. He had heard that some of his mates had swabbed a dog and dipped a swab in a puddle, send off the kit, with the result both returned positive. So, he did nothing more than put the swab-stick in the test-tube, broke it in half, as directed, without it touching any part of him, having not swabbed himself, of course, sent it off and two days later was informed he tested positive and would need to quarantine for ten-days. This is what we are up against! This is why positive cases are rising, as directed by Half-Witty and the script he must adhere to.

As anyone who is (highly unlikely) a regular reader of this blog might know, I joined the David Pipe Racing Club a couple months ago, just before the absurd ‘rule of six’ was dreamed-up by the Johnson Gang, the result of which was that David had to withdraw the invitation to the club for a stable visit – great timing, as usual – and I suggest anyone who wishes to make a wee effort to help the sport in its time of need that for a modest fee joining similar racing clubs would be a good example of every little bit helps. Nearer Christmas I may, as a present to myself, join another racing club. Joining racing clubs might become my new hobby. Or at least collecting all the racing club badges might become my hobby. There are more expensive hobbies, I’m sure.
Oh, and the title of this blog: if the state of emergency continues for its full term of two-years, and nothing changes in the interim, no poisonous vaccine (don’t take it or it’ll change your life forever) or opening up of society, there is a danger our sport will return to wealthy people betting on match races across Newmarket Heath.

​Back in the day, they had a very bad habit of giving racehorses cutesy names. This was fine, and remains fine to this day, when the horse is confined to minor races at minor race-meetings but when one such name is given to one of the best, and during her lifetime a mare so popular she received letters addressed to her and poems in her honour, it is less acceptable. For all her extraordinary achievements on the racecourse, Pretty Polly is an unfortunate name, one better suited to a famous parrot of an infamous pirate. But there we have it, she was thusly named and we, or at least I, will have to put up with it.
The great mare was foaled in 1901, in Ireland, at the stud of her owner/breeder Major Eustace Loder. In fact, only last weekend at Leopardstown there was Group 3 two-year-old race named after the major’s stud, Eyrefield.
The information I offer here comes from a book by Michael Tanner (I seem drawn to his work) titled ‘Pretty Polly’, An Edwardian Heroine. So nice to have the word ‘heroine’ used to describe a celebrated female. Words such as actress and heroine are sliding out-of-use due to, I suspect, this bloody awful ‘woke culture’ sane people must endure.
What struck me on reading Michael Tanner’s account of Pretty Polly’s career was how it mirrored, in some respects, the career of Enable 100+ years later. Both, remarkably, were trained at Clarehaven, now the home of John Gosden, though back in Pretty Polly’s day the racing stables of Peter Purcell Gilpin.
The two-year-old careers, though, of two of the greatest mares to grace the turf were wholly different. In fact, as different as chalk and cheese or honesty and government. Enable ran once as a two-year-old, Pretty Polly 9-times. Yes 9-times, winning all 9 races. She began on June 27th at Sandown in The British Dominion 2-year-old Race, over 5-furlongs, worth £915 to the winner. She had shown little on the home gallops and Gilpin thought a race might bring her on. She won by 10-lengths without coming off the bridle or indeed troubling herself too much. In fact, reading about her early career what came to my mind was a sketch by the ‘Two Ronnies’ where Corbett played an enthusiastic badminton player thrashed by a suit-wearing Barker who had never played the game before.
On July 18th the mare ran again at Sandown, The National Breeders Produce Stakes, again over 5-furlongs, worth £4,357 to the winner, no less. Connections of the opposition doubtless thought her debut win was a fluke and she was taken on by 11 rivals. This time she only won by 2-lengths, head-in-her-chest, though, giving weight away all round. Incidentally, the first horse to bear the name Merryman finished behind her, the second Merryman, won the 1960 Grand National.
When she went to Liverpool six-day later the penny had dropped and she was only opposed by a single rival. At 33/1 on, she won again. She went on to win the Champagne Stakes at Doncaster, an Autumn Breeders Foal Plate at Manchester, the Cheveley Park, her first venture over 6-furlongs, in a canter and 2-days later turned out for the Middle Park, winning easily again. 13-days lapsed before she won a match for the Criterion Stakes at Newmarket, before a day later winning the Moulton Stakes back at 5-furlongs without breaking sweat. And so ended the first lesson on how to train a classic-winning filly.
She didn’t run again until the 1,000 guineas which she breezed in a record-breaking time. Given her breeding, there was talk she would be better suited to shorter trips but owners and trainers had pluck in abundance in those days and her next race was the Oaks at Epsom. Only 3 took her on for the first prize of £4,950, winning by 3-lengths and a bad third.
She went back to a mile at Royal Ascot, winning the Coronation Stakes. Back up 4-furlong to win the Nassau at Goodwood. Next she won the St,Leger, completing the fillies Triple Crown and then, at this point modern trainers should be seated or else they might do themselves an injury, two-days later she turned out for the Park Hill – well they were up in Yorkshire, it was a nice day and all that – winning yet again by 3-lengths and a bad third.
Then it all went horribly wrong. And it is here that Enable came into my mind. She was dispatched to Longchamp to run in the Le Prix du Conseil Municipal, over 1-mile 4-furlongs for a winners’ prize of £4,160. She had a terrible sea passage, a train journey to Paris where she was held up numerous times, backed into sidings to allow other trains to pass, not arriving at Longchamp until 10.30 pm. The race was the next day. And it rained. Torrents, like recently, if you recall. The upshot was the great mare was beaten for the first time. The winner Presto II was receiving 9-lbs. Back in Britain the defeat was taken badly; it was if Wellington were belatedly disqualified at Waterloo on some technicality. Yet 2-weeks later out came Pretty Polly to complete her season by winning The Free Handicap over 1-mile 2-furlongs in a common canter.
The following season she won the Coronation Cup, the Champion Stakes, The Limekiln Stakes and the The Jockey Club Cup, having been held up in her work early in the season by a minor injury. Again, as happened to Enable.
As with Enable, she was unexpectedly kept in training as 5-year-old, with the sole objective of winning the Ascot Gold Cup. The season started well; she won the March Stakes at Newmarket in early May at 100/35 on. This was followed by a second win in the Coronation Cup, which brought her nicely to Royal Ascot and like (again) Enable, her career came to a shuddering halt, her defeat brought about the winner’s pacemaker setting a scorching gallop that exposed the stamina limitations of the great mare. Female spectators openly wept, journalists came up with many a reason for the defeat, her trainer, as trainers often do, blamed the jockey.
The mare retired to stud the winner of 24 races and win prize money of £37,297. And though she bred nothing even vaguely of her ability, the Pretty Polly line, especially her daughters, have spawned many brilliant horses down the generations. She is buried at Eyrefield next to Spearmint and Spion Kop, each Epsom Derby winners. Even in death, only the best was good enough for Pretty Polly.

​The only book on my bookshelves dedicated to racing books I have yet to read is David Hunn’s ‘Goodwood’, a volume dedicated to the history of Goodwood, not the racecourse, sadly, though I am sure it will be mentioned, but the house and the grand people to have frequented the estate down through the centuries. I enjoy reading about the history of our country, especially the landed gentry, learning the good and bad deeds they got up to, and I will enjoy David Hunn’s book when I get around to it. As yet the moment has not arrived. Sometime back in July should have been an appropriate occasion. I am, it seems, a man in need of a secretary or some kind of organising system. Perhaps next summer.
But do not despair David Hunn (or his descendants) as I have just finished ‘Epsom Racecourse. Its Story and Its People’, a book that is very much about the establishment of a racecourse, and, if I may add, as a book of its kind it is one of the best. It is a proper historical account of the decades leading to 1973 when the book was published.
Again, as I have commented many times, it is always an omission when racing books about a certain race, like the Champion Hurdle, for example, or in this case the history of a racecourse, are not updated every twenty-years or so. 1973 is a long time ago, and I dare say there are books out there recounting the Derby winners up to recent times but David Hunn’s book is about Epsom, the Downs, the racecourse, the buildings, the people, with very little in the way of the racing, except for a gallop through every Derby up to 1973 in the final chapter. Oh, if you can’t recall, the 1973 Derby was won by Morston, trained by possibly the last of the great owner/breeder/trainers Arthur Budgett and ridden by Edward Hide.
The first Derby in 1780 was won by Diomed, ridden by Sam Arnull. The race in 1781 was won by Young Eclipse, ridden by Hindley. 1782 by Sam Arnull again. 1783 by Hindley. 1784 by John Arnull. 1786 (annoyingly for the point I am making) by J.White. 1787 by Sam Arnull. 1790 by John Arnull. 1796 by John Arnull. 1798 by Sam Arnull. 1799 by John Arnull. 1804 by William Arnull. 1807 by John Arnull. 1812 by William Arnull. 1814 by William Arnull. And never again by an Arnull.
The Arnull family won twelve Derbies between them yet seemingly have no memorial to their achievements. Surely the Arnulls deserve a race, at least, run annually to remind people of their rightful place in the history of the great race? Diomed is so honoured and he only won the Derby once. Oh, perhaps a little known fact, when Diomed won the race the distance was only a mile, so technically he is not a true blue Derby winner.
What I like in a book is to learn a facet of information I have not heard or read before and in 1948 an Australian newspaper owner on holiday in Britain visited Epsom, loved the Downs so much he made a cash offer to buy them, which was rejected. He had grand plans for Epsom, keeping the Derby there, of course, but also running the Grand National there. How he was to achieve this is not, unsurprisingly, explained. Sir James Joynton Smith, for that was his name, had many ideas to improve the sporting Englishman’s lot, including turning Hyde Park into a racecourse. Wouldn’t it be great if he was around today? He might have saved Towcester or Lanark or Stockton or Manchester. Or be Kempton’s saviour!
Epsom is such a unique racecourse – is there anything like it around the world? – that I am straddled between the thought of keeping it solely for the one meeting, the Derby meeting, or using the racecourse more often than it is. I have often considered that no Epsom meeting should pass without some kind of Derby being competed for –Apprentices Derby, Amateurs Derby, Ladies Derby, International Riders Derby, Veterans Derby etc. Epsom is after all the originator of the whole Derby concept. Epsom is the Derby and the Derby is Epsom. And for ever more, we all hope.

​In the Question & Answer column of last Sunday’s (October 11th) Racing Post, John Francome supplied the following answer to ‘How would you go about improving racing’s finances’. “The levy has turned out to be a curse. It’s the equivalent of an allowance for a rich child. It makes you lazy and unambitious. When you know the money is coming in at the end of the month it takes all your drive and ambition away. Racing needs to be out there with its own bookmaking platform earning its own money. I have said it a million times. Racing has the only licence to bake bread but doesn’t have a single baker’s shop. Lazy or what? The best thing this government could do is stop the levy altogether. That way racing would have to get off its fat ass and start making its own money.”
John Francome would be the last to acknowledge his worth, but it is my opinion he is the most listenable person in or around the fringes, as he sadly now appears to be, of the sport. If the Racing Post were to give it some thought they might ask Francome to write a weekly column. His honesty and wit would give the paper a pep it hasn’t had since Alastair Down took semi-retirement, and in saying that I am not one jot being critical of its present staff of columnists all of whom are excellent. But let’s be fair-minded about it; there is only one John Francome. As there is only one Alastair Down.
Go through that quote bit by bit. With more humour than rancour he goes to the very nub of racing’s direst problem. How to fund the sport so that it can compete with France, Hong Kong and virtually every other major racing country. I know, less eloquently I have put forward the same solution but to re-quote the great man “Racing has the only licence to bake bread but doesn’t have a single baker’s shop” he runs a cart and horses through every other solution to the financial dilemma that anyone else has ever suggested. It is ‘our sport’ yet we allow what is now, though in the past bookmakers were independent and in some cases family businesses, global gambling organisations to cream-off a huge slice of revenue from ‘our’ endeavours. It is utter madness.
To the question ‘Who would you love to be for a day?’ he said the prime minister. God, I wish he were in the seat of power. If only Joker Johnson was as incorruptible as John Francome would be, we would all be in a better place right now.
Before I get completely off this subject, I just want to commend the Racing Post for the Sunday editions of the paper. I just wish I had more time to devote to it. Chores, you know, chores. And ladies playing football to a skill level that improves year on year.

We take Paul Nicholls for granted. Eight-winners over the two-days of the Chepstow meeting is just like the good old days for the Master of Ditcheat, not that his halcyon days are too far in the past. Even his so-so seasons would be deemed highly acceptable by the majority of his competitors. I admit his only winner I witnessed was the fabulous looking McFabulous and anyone who wasn’t impressed needs to go a course of wow pills. In what is at present, and going on last season’s 3-mile hurdlers, a weak division, I would have no hesitation in nominating McFabulous as the most likely winner of the uncreatively titled Stayers Hurdle at Cheltenham. You would think the Champion 3-mile Hurdle would have been chosen above the Stayers, wouldn’t you?
But as someone recently said, it’s no big thing to train horses to win races – just feed ‘em well, get ‘em fit and chose the right races. If only the job were that easy. Take Present Man, for instance. I didn’t think we would see him on a racecourse again. His form had tailed-off to the point where he only finished his races infrequently. Pulled-up on his only appearance last season. Yet there he was last week, partnered by his old pal Bryony Frost, winning a competitive veterans race in a head-bob finished, winning by a nose and a nose after being headed between the last two fences. That is where the division is between the good trainer and the brilliant, when they are able to rekindle dying flames, to know instinctively there is a problem with a horse and to sort out the problem and then to get the horse 100% fit to win first time out.
What he achieved with Denman after his heart problems was the stuff of genius. He perhaps wasn’t the horse he was when he won the Gold Cup but he did win a second Hennessey after his heart problems, putting up one of the weight-carrying performances in the history of the race. It’s what Paul Nicholls does and very few could even dream of achieving. 

​I have just finished reading Michael Tanner’s history of the Champion Hurdle ‘From Blaris to Istabraq’, names from which you will easily deduce that this is a book in desperate need of a second volume. Istabraq, dear reader, which hardly seems possible, won his third Champion Hurdle in the year 2000. Of course, if Foot and Mouth had not rose from its murky underworld to decimate farming in 2001, there seems little doubt he would be remembered as the only 4-time winner of the race.
The following is an amble down a distinctly dodgy memory lane, mainly consisting of names, as in my formative years horses were merely that, names. Did I even consider they were flesh and blood? I doubt I even realised back then that they might be injured during a race or worse, of course. I was cognizant about jockeys but I doubt if I could put a name to a single face of a trainer or even realised that trainers existed. And as for owners … But let’s not dwell on the ignorance of youth.
The 1960 winner of the Champion Hurdle was Another Flash, ridden by my boyhood hero, Bobby Beasley, who, as it turned out was both a genius horseman and an alcoholic. At the time, though, he, too, was just a name in the fantasies of boyhood. 1960 is just before my time as a racing fan. I was six in 1960 and six-year-olds know nothing, nothing worth knowing about, anyway. I certainly do not remember anything about my life aged six, or even aged seven. It is almost like I wasn’t really alive back then.
I think I remember Another Flash from when he finished third in 1962, behind Anzio and Quelle Chance. When I was eight and for years after, I was fascinated by grey horses and my sorrow at Bobby Beasley not winning was made up for as Anzio was grey, or roan according to Michael Tanner’s book.
Although in 1963 there were horses down the field that I recall, Stirling, Height O’Fashion (who was once to finish in front of Arkle) Pawnbroker and Moonsun, it was for what they achieved later in life as chasers, I have no recollection of the actual race.
In 64 (when Another Flash was 2nd to Magic Court) the name Kirriemuir entered my world, finishing third, with notable horses of the like of London Gazette, Salmon Spray and Wilhelmina Henrietta down the field. Pat McCarron rode Magic Court, by the way, not that I could claim to know he had won the Champion Hurdle, a man all but only remembered for his association with Freddie, twice 2nd in the Grand National.
Kirriemuir won the race in 65 at 50/1, beating a horse better known as a sire of jumpers, Spartan General, with the Queen Mothers’ Worcran 3rd. I believe Worcran finished his days with one of the army’s horse brigades, doing duty as a drum-horse on changing of the guard. The American horse Exhibit A was down the field that day.
The 1966 renewal saw Salmon Spray beat Sempervivum and the horse I would argue is the greatest horse ever to contest a Champion Hurdle, the immortal (or at least he should be) Flyingbolt, a horse no less a person than Ted Walsh thought superior to Arkle. Pat Taaffe disagreed, believing even Mill House was better than Flyingbolt. Burlington, Robber Baron, Makaldar and Tamerosia were also-rans, as was Spartan General.
Saucy Kit won in 67, beating the Queen Mothers’ Makaldar and Talgo Abbess, a name that completely escapes me, though I remember Beaver, Sir Thopas, Aurelius, Johns-Wort, Rackham, Specify (went on to win the Grand National), Samothraki and New Liskeard. They may have been of little account, yet for some unearthly reason their names continue resonate with me.
1968 and for the following two years the first great Champion Hurdle winner since Sir Ken came on the scenes, Persian War, who coincidentally has a race named after him at Chepstow in two-days ( October 9th ). He beat Chorus and Black Justice in 68, with Inyanga and Commander-in-Chief (not the Derby winner) in arrears. In 69 he beat Drumikill and Privy Seal, with the second-greatest horse to contest a Champion Hurdle amongst the also rans, L’Escargot (Grand National and two-time Gold Cup victor), as well as Into View, Supermaster, Tanlic and England’s Glory. In 1970 the horses that followed Persian War home were Major Rose and another horse of the Queen Mum’s Escalus, with Coral Diver and Normandy following on.
In 71 Persian War lost his crown to Bula, making him the closest any horse has come to being a four-time champion hurdler since the inception of the race in 1927.
As a child, even aged sixteen in 1970, horse racing was a wonderful, mesmeric mystery to me. Back then I could recite Derby winners going back to the last century, something I cannot do today. I struggle to remember last year’s Derby winner, let alone who won in 1934. At no stage did I have visions of being a jockey or even learning to ride. But I always wanted to be a cog in the wheel of the sport. Still do, decades later. Still dream of owning a horse.
My obsession with horse names stems from the sixties. Horses were the heroes of the sport, as they remain, and it pains me to see famous names replicated today, feeling at my heart that the names of fondly-remembered horses drawn from memory should be honoured by having their name die with them and not recirculated as if the English and foreign languages were somehow depleted and possible names not as plentiful as the stars in the universe.
I believe my life-long love of horse racing began not with Arkle or Mill House but with Another Flash, forgotten by many, I suspect, and a horse I know very little about. Strange how life-long obsessions can begin, isn’t it?

​I am the new supremo at the B.H.A ….. Well, no, as you might expect the B.H.A. would never employ someone with a life-long passion for the sport. But indulge me, allow me to let the fantasy rip for a thousand-words or less.
First-off, I would set-up a committee to investigate the possibility of what was once described as a ‘Tote Monopoly’ as a way to fund horse racing. I would like independent bookmakers involved on course, with a fair percentage of their daily profits going into racing’s coffers, perhaps in lieu of a pitch fee. The world over racing is funded through betting and it is ridiculous that in this digital age our clever dicks dismiss the idea out-of-hand, citing the loss of atmosphere that the ‘betting jungle’ creates. I for one would rather have a healthy racing industry than a dead racing industry, and anyway ‘atmosphere’ is created by the emotional highs and lows of spectators, not the tinkling of bookmaker’s satchels.
I would have less race-meetings and more races per meeting. If any good has come to the sport through the government’s health emergency scam it has been the one-jockey-per-meeting and extended cards.
I would stop having two fixtures on any one day within 75-miles of one another. No Southwell in the afternoon and Wolverhampton in the evening, for example.
I would ensure every racecourse has at least one major race a season and one locally important meeting, a festival meeting that celebrates something of local or historical importance to the area. Horse racing needs to reconnect with the local population, as happens in Ireland, especially through the summer and autumn months.
I would bring the Cheltenham Festival forward by a week to ensure a 4-week interval to the Grand National meeting, with the Midlands National run the same day as the Imperial Cup.
I would make the Lincoln a truly unique race in world racing by starting the race by barrier, to return history to the race and the spice of lottery. I would also, flying in the face of safety-limits for one race a year, up the field size to a maximum of forty. This apparent madness would give modern-day riders an idea of what flat racing was like during most of its developing years. It is a sadness to me that the Lincoln has become just another handicap when for most of the sport’s history it was one of the major races in the calendar. If this slightly madcap idea became reality the Lincoln would become special again and the Spring Double something to excite the racing fan throughout the winter.
I would make the Eclipse the final classic of the season and, of course, restrict entries to 3-year-olds. In this modern age a 2,000 Guineas, Derby, Eclipse makes for a more appropriate Triple Crown.
I would make the St. Leger Britain’s richest flat race, a competitor to the Arc. I would keep the distance as it is, open it up to 3-years and upwards and bring it forward in the calendar by 2-weeks. At 1-mile, 6-furlongs it would be unique in world racing. If such a race existed next season it would be an obvious race for Stradivarius, as well as the typical 3-year-old it currently attracts.
The flat jockeys’ titles would be decided on the length of the turf season and not on ‘Champions Day’, a meeting I have no love for. If Qipco were to walk away from it, I believe Ascot would struggle to find a replacement as in essence it is a consolation meeting for horses that have missed their targets through the season.
I would have absolutely nothing to do with ‘team racing’ or ‘street racing’, two bonkers ideas that rip the heart out of the history of the sport.
I would have no 2-year-old races until June and no Group 2-year-old races until September. Two-year-olds should not be treated as commodities, raced too early just to get them on a racecourse to please an owner desperate to get some of his outlay back as quickly as possible. Not to sound too corny but 2-year-olds are the sport’s future; they should not be considered expendable.
I would go 100% at selling the idea of ownership in as many ways as the marketing department could think of, especially the sort of syndicates and ownership clubs they have in Australia, with hundreds of people owning small percentages of one horse. They get it in Australia, though not at the B.H.A., that this sport is a sport of the working-class. If you could get whole factories of working people owning a horse – well, the possibilities are endless. We have to lose the generally held idea that horse racing is a sport of the nobility, a concept that has held us back for decades.
I would refuse to allow any racecourse to close. The racecourses we have left as our heritage; we have to protect them.
I would limit use of the whip to one stroke as I am a great believer in the adage ‘if they won’t go faster for one hit, they won’t go any faster for two’. I also believe horses are at greater danger of injury when they become unbalanced due to jockeys pulling their sticks through to the other hand and if jockeys were forced to keep their mounts balanced less stewards’ inquiries would ensue. 
The above are my ‘hobby-horses’, if you excuse the pun. I am sure readers of this blog would have more constructive changes they would like to see come about.
If I am not to become racing’s supremo, which seems favourite, my number one change would be to have someone in the B.H.A.’s high chair who is 100% passionate about the sport and who has worked in the sport and been involved with horses all their lives. Such a supremo would make more difference, for the better, to this sport than anything other than a proper funding structure.

​I chose not to write a piece about the Arc last week as I couldn’t get my head around the race this season. Firstly. there was the ‘would Love turn-up or not?’ conundrum. Then there was the heavy ground issue. Or would the ground dry to something like decent or would it simply get tacky and holding? Then, just as I was beginning to think Serpentine might set off in front at a reasonable gallop and not be caught, the whole Gain horse feed business came along and muddied the waters still further.
And all the time there was my heart wanting Enable to win and my head reminding me that John Gosden was saying that the ground might ultimately prove her undoing. John Gosden is rarely wrong; all punters should remember that when trying to come to a decision regarding a horse he trains.
In the end, come Sunday morning, I came to the conclusion that Andre Fabre is possibly the smartest cookie in the whole of France and if had plumped for upping Persian King, known for being a miler, to a mile and a half and seemingly having not a care about the ground, it would be foolish to ignore the master and his master plan.
Yes, Andre Fabre does get it wrong once in a while and Sunday was the day. But you have to say that on decent ground Persian King looks well up to winning a Group 1 over 12-furlongs or whatever is the metric equivalent and it would be foolish to neglect him if he should go to the Breeders Cup or Japan.
Look, Frankie has won more Arcs than any jockey has a right to expect and to even suggest criticism of the ride he produced on his ‘queen’, especially coming from a sofa-jockey like me, would be extraordinarily crass. So, all I will say is that I was surprised he did not make the running as he has with her on so many occasions, which as she jumped from the stalls with such alacrity seemed his likely tactic. I was mightily surprised when he reined back and allowed Persian King a soft lead, Boudot setting a pace that was to his benefit and certainly not Frankie’s.
Would it have made any difference to the eventual outcome? We will never know, will we? She didn’t win and we were all as heartbroken as Frankie. Will he ever get over it? Females do that to men, don’t they?
He was noticeably kind on the mare once he knew the race was gone from him, not once picking up his whip or even urging her into greater effort. To the last, Frankie’s only consideration was for Enable. It is a love affair we are unlikely to see again on a racecourse for a long time. I hope Prince Khalid retires her now and is not seduced by the beguiling hope that she might finish her career in the winners’ circle, which she doubtless deserves, by running her in the Champion Stakes or the Breeders Cup Turf. It is the decision Charles Englehard came to with Nijinsky, though he had the excuse that he was dying of cancer and knew he wouldn’t see the likes of Nijinsky again; it didn’t have the required outcome then and perhaps it won’t with Enable and that will only prolong the sadness of not achieving immortality at Longchamp. And without crowds to give her the farewell she has earned, what would be the point?
The other slightly disappointing aspect of Sunday is that the winner, as far as Group I horses are concerned, Sottsass is quite an ordinary winner of the Arc, as was Waldgeist last year. In fact, in amongst the great Arc winners – that’s great Arc winners, not necessarily great horses – the race does fall to ‘ordinary’ horses, Gold River, to denigrate just one.
On any other day in the year at Longchamp a female jockey winning a Group 1 would have captured the headlines, especially when the horse came from a lowly beginning and the jockey and trainer are a couple – the trainer referred to the jockey as ‘his wife’, while the jockey did not refer to him as ‘my husband’, it might something they need to discuss. Of course, our Hayley did it first, an achievement that can never be taken from her, yet in winning the Marcel Boussac, Mlle Jessica Marcialis may have broken through an even more indomitable glass ceiling. Female jockeys in France are virtually never represented in Group races of a lesser kind, let alone races at the highest level. We can only hope Tiger Tanaka trains on into a three-year-old capable of being competitive in the French classics next year. Of course, what with the way of the racing world, by this time next week the filly might be the ownership of Godolphin, Coolmore or someone with the many millions that might tempt the present owner to parting with their prize asset. And the romance will be no more and it might be another fifty years before a female jockey wins a Group 1 in France.

​Anyone who might regularly visit horseracingmatters cannot but be aware that I have very little liking for the B.H.A. as a ruling organisation. They do not lead from the front, are not innovative and go about the business of running the sport as if it is a public limited company. Their many leaders have never given the impression they love the sport, only their salary. After reading today’s Racing Post I feel my stance is, if not vindicated, at least shared by better people than myself.
In what is in effect a resignation letter from the sport of flat racing, Craig Buckingham confirmed he will no longer have runners on the flat in this country, joining an ever-growing list of prominent owners either leaving the sport or reducing the number of horses they have in training. To quote from his letter published in the Post today (01-10-20) ‘Over the last few years, a shambolic and reactive B.H.A., an owners’ federation that does little for owners, and the total lack of respect for owners from many areas of racing, including the ones to whom we pay the bills, has knocked the stuffing out of us and led to this point. In short, we have lost the love.’
How will the B.H.A. react to this further depletion in the owners’ ranks? They will not, no doubt taking the view that it is not their concern. Or not their fault.
Yet also in today’s Post, there is a fascinating article by Scott Burton with Olivier Delloye, the director general of France-Galop. ‘We’re a single point of contact with the state, rather than a multitude of different voices, which simply doesn’t work’. What Delloye is telling us, refreshingly, is that the B.H.A. is not effective at running our sport. France-Galop is comprised of regional and national representatives across trainers, owners and breeders, which ensures, Scott Burton writes, that racing’s diverse interests are all inside the tent.
Contrast and compere the composition of France-Galop with the board members of the B.H.A.
Olivier Delloye is a horseman, with a deep knowledge of the sport built-up through a lifetime of involvement with horses and horse racing. His father was a trainer, his grandfather an owner. As a teenager he rode out for Criquette Head and ‘all my Sundays were spent at Longchamp and all my summers in Deauville’.
Again, compare and contrast his qualifications for running the sport in France with virtually every single incumbent of the high chairs at the B.H.A. since it gained control of the sport from the oft-maligned Jockey Club.
As human beings I dare say the succession of B.H.A.’s chief executives and chairpersons have been good and honourable people and that will include, no doubt, Nick Rust’s successor as supremo, Julie Harrington, but between them their experience of horse racing and horses would not equal the experience of Olivier Delloye. And that is my main criticism of the B.H.A. The top positions are merely a merry-go-round of city business executives taking the big-money positions, doing the least needed to satisfy its board of directors and then moving on to similar roles elsewhere. Job done(ish)
Why does the sport need both a chairperson and a chief executive? What is the advantage in having so many stakeholders, especially when, as now when dynamism is required in the fight for the sport’s survival, they cannot agree that 2 might follow 1? By definition, stakeholders have only one interest at heart, their own and they will fight and stamp their feet in defiance if anything is suggested that does not fit their wants and needs.
When two outstanding figures in our sport, and in time the history of racing, A.P.McCoy and John Francome, give the opinion that the sport needs a single voice at the top of the pyramid, someone who listens, gathers evidence and then takes a decisive decision based on his or her judgement and the advice and experience of others, the sport should listen. The present governance does not work. It is time to try another approach. If A.P., and I am quite certain he would not voice his opinion if the likes of J.P.McManus was against the idea, is in favour of the sport having someone of the calibre of Barry Hearn in the top chair, then it should be debated. And, of course, the very existence of the B.H.A. should be debated.
There are 11 directors of the B.H.A., 8 executives, including Luca Cumani, the sort of person who should be on the board, a chief executive and a chairperson, 21 people who, apart from Luca Cumani, have between them have very little experience of working with racehorses and the people who have the responsibility to care for them. We need change and we need it now.
I am not against the likes of Julie Harrington being employed within the top governance of the sport but she should not be ‘running’ the sport, her work-experience is the city, boardrooms, finance etc. People of her experience should be employed as advisors to whoever is given the job of ‘supremo’. Look how Barry Hearn has transformed the fortunes of darts and reinvigorated snooker. Has he achieved that by being dictatorial or autocratic, his word or no word? I doubt it.
Our system of governance leaves much to be desired, as Olivier Delloye diplomatically said. When Nick Rust put in his letter of resignation, the sport had many months when it could have discussed and debated the issue of whether we want more of the same or does the sport deserve better. Well, does the sport deserve better than the ordinary? Perhaps it could be organised for Nick Rust to leave a month early and monsieur Delloye brought in as a locum so he might provide a report on how he found things worked at the B.H.A. Might make for interesting reading, methinks!