​The danger in pouring scorn on well-intentioned incentives is to appear a character as grouchy as the misrepresented Scrooge of Dickens fame. In wishing to honour David Power, founder of the bookmakers Paddy Power, I feel Flutter, which now incorporates Paddy Power within its umbrella of betting interests, could have given the matter more thought. 
Our top National Hunt jockeys are not liable for the poor house. It is reported in the Racing Post that our current champion Harry Cobden earned close to a quarter-of-a-million quid from his percentage of prize-money last season, and that does not take into account his riding fees and endorsements. He did not ask for, and does not financially need, a bonus of half-a-million quid, the prize for winning the David Power Jockeys Cup.
I understand that Flutters’ intention is to bring better public awareness of our leading jockeys but do we have to bribe them with riches beyond their imagination to get them to shake more hands, sign more autographs and pose for more selfies?
I have reflected on this issue since the announcement of this new championship last Friday and decided the huge investment in our sport by Flutter would have achieved greater acceptance by the majority – the jockeys love it, as you would expect. Though only those who might expect to be in the top ten come Aintree in April – if the million-plus allocated to the DPJC had gone in sponsorship of races at the bottom sphere of the sport, with David Power’s name and his achievements in life advertised on a daily basis. My suggestion would have benefitted owners, trainers, staff and jockeys from the top of the table to those whose careers are a journey around the country in second-hand cars rather than luxury cars often driven by a chauffeur. As I have said many times before, everyone who works in our sport deserves the opportunity to earn a fair living.

Derek O’Connor is as good a rider as any professional. He may be 40 now and facing the day when he must call close on his career as the most winning point-to-point rider in Irish history, yet he remains the go-to amateur when it comes to the restricted races at the Cheltenham Festival. I do though ask why connections of Fastorslow could not have a found a professional jockey to stand-in for the injured J.J.Slevin. No disrespect intended to O’Connor but Ireland is not short on good professional riders and the ride on Fastorslow might have given one of them a share of the limelight that would benefit their career trajectory. 

The National Trainers’ Federation have implored the B.H.A. to pull their fingers out and come up with an incentive for owners to have top chasers trained in this country. All they need do is look to Ireland. On most racecards in Ireland, at least the top racecourses, there is a conditions race of one sort or another and plenty of beginners and novice chasers. Willie Mullins does not pull his hair out as he peruses the racing calendar as not only is he not afraid to run two, three or four horses in one race but he also has many opportunities throughout the season to run his best horses. I urge the B.H.A. to listen to Nicky Henderson and stop thinking only of turnover and competitiveness, as important as those issues are.

Freddie Gingell goes from strength to strength. He is in good hands with Paul Nicholls and working alongside Harry Cobden. I just hope people do not fill his ears with suggestions he is the next A.P. McCoy or champion jockey in waiting. He is at present second-jockey to Cobden at Ditcheat, second jockey to the best jockey currently riding in this country. He might hold the position of second-jockey for a long time as I cannot see Cobden going to any other stable in the country, can you? Gingell is good, amazing value for his 3Ib claim but he is still very young and that first bad fall might only be around the corner. There is plenty of time available to him for it all to fall flat. I doubt it will. But let us just allow him to gain all the experience he can and will need to fulfil his undoubted potential.

I will tell you where Flutter’s one-million-quid would have better benefitted the sport – supplying fleece covers to our Northern racecourses. Carlisle is a popular racecourse not only with Northern trainers but those based in the south and Midlands also, yet the fixture today is at the mercy of the weather, as will all its meetings from now to the start of the flat. I do not know the price of fleeces, though I would imagine a million-quid would pay for many miles of the stuff. The name of David Power could be immortalised for many years to come if Carlisle, Kelso and Newcastle, say, were weather-proofed in his name.

​Despite ground concerns and a general smallness in field sizes, the 3-day November meeting was an enjoyable watch, if not overly informative for the major races post-Christmas. Of course, though, it was not a happy 3-days, was it? For 2-days and 4-races it was a small feast of interesting races … Then the spectre we all fear came from our peripheral vision to terrorise our soul. It came without warning; it came without sympathy. And there was I, during the race, thinking how much safer the sport had become due to the implementation of white woodwork on the fences, and I remain of that opinion. You cannot strategize for heart attacks, not with horses or humans. Fit as a flea athletes can be taken down by heart problems and it is the same, sadly, with our equine partners.
It is particularly distressing when you are witness to the spectre’s strike, especially when the spectacle that preceded the macabre event gloriously memorable. It was as massively unfair to the horse and is it was for you and me, and heartbreaking for the girl who looked after him, and a real-time  tragedy for his owners and trainer who literally moments before were celebrating what for them was a dream-like win.
Abuffalosoldier had skipped around Cheltenham with the aplomb of a gazelle on a home run. He pinged every fence as if spring-heeled, defeated the unforgiving hill without his jockey having to ask him for more energy than he was already willingly providing. At journeys end, Sean Bowen dedicated the win to ‘Margaret’, his greatest supporter, who had died the previous night and then spoke effusively about Abuffalosoldier as a possible National horse.
Then the happiness became a horror show.
What made the death of Abuffalosoldier’s demise ever-more heart-wrenching and hard to believe possible was that during the race Bangers and Cash had suffered a similar fate. Luckily for both the squeamish and the hard-bitten, the medical incident happened just as the camera panned towards the leaders and I only caught a brief glimpse of whatever was occurring. The odds of two horses dying in one race of similar, if not the same, fatal affliction must be long-odds against. One finished the race, the other only completed half the race and yet both perished. I hope there is no causal link and cannot imagine there can be. Both, I hope, will be subject to an autopsy and that the findings will be published in quick order.
I realise we live a stupidly woke world that I hope will come to end very soon, and I am in no way criticising I.T.V. or the ever-excellent Ed Chamberlain, but I wish the ‘very best veterinary care spiel’ could be excluded at such times, as to my ears, it comes across as counterfeit sincerity, as in ‘we did all we could’, which does not need saying. It was clear to all that the horse had suffered a heart attack and that is what the viewer should have been told in the immediate aftermath.
If the day could not plummet any further in despondency, in the very next race Napper Tandy fell at a hurdle and suffered a fatal injury. The bone he broke also should have been conveyed to viewers, whether it be neck, shoulder or leg. We are a fact-based sport and we should be treated as the adults we are.
One final point, I would be interested to know how many fatalities occur in France over their version of a ‘hurdle’, as they are static, unlike the British and Irish hurdle that has the propensity to swing if a horse should clip the top of them. I believe the reputation French horses have for being better jumpers of an obstacle is due to the type they learn to jump when young, younger than British and Irish trainers would ever dream of schooling young horses. It is a hobby-horse of mine, asking a horse to jump an obstacle that can be moving as no other equine disciple would think to do so.

People, as with horses, can be out-of-form for no particular reason. Harry Derham, as an example, whose horses have been winning here, there and everywhere up to know, suffered to see two of his stable stars run quite deplorable over the weekend. The much touted and expensive to purchase Imagine ran a stinker in the Paddy Power and the naughty-boy that is Teddy Blue was equally bad in the Greatwood. Next time either of them run, either might be win and Harry will be, perhaps, unable to offer a reason why.
I am out-of-form at the moment, unable to form coherent sentences or transfer my thoughts to page with any degree of softness or readability. Thankfully, I have no editor to chuck my ‘copy’ back at me, with ‘must better write’ in red pen to subtly inform me that I might only be keeping the seat warm for someone who can ‘better write’.

​Gordon Elliott has eleven of the twenty runners in today’s Troytown Chase at Navan. Gavin Cromwell saddles four and Henry de Bromhead two. One of Ireland’s most prestigious handicap chases dominated by three of the top four stables in Ireland. Is that good for the sport? Is it a sign of the times? Is it a warning of dire consequence to come?
Where horse racing once held a definite advantage over most other sports is that it could often offer the sporting public a surprise package in the major races, as when Grittar won the Grand National, ridden by an ageing amateur and trained by the two-horse stable of owner/trainer Frank Coton. Or when Coneygree, ridden by a claiming jockey and trained by the Bradstocks, a family operation of less twenty-horses, won the Cheltenham Gold Cup. The claimer went on, of course, be one of the best horseman/jockeys of his generation, Nico de Boinville.
On Saturday, at Cheltenham, and, yes, it was an interesting and exciting day of racing, the meeting was dominated by the top stables in the country. They may be excellent ambassadors for the sport, but Skelton and Nicholls taking it in turns to win the major races is not necessarily good news for the sport. If Sheila Lewis had won the Paddy Power with Straw Fan Jack it would have made a better headline than Paul Nicholls winning it yet again.
At some point in the F.A. Cup this season a minnow will cause an upset by beating a top-tier side. It happens once-a-year but as with Maidstone United last season, they are not going to progress to the latter stages of the tournament. 
A 200/1 winner at Kelso or Fakenham, though, can breakthrough the racing enclosure and become general sporting news; the rank no-hoper defying form and odds to write its own bit of history in a sport with hundreds-of-years-worth of history. Of course, as with Maidstone United, none of these shock winners go one to achieve anything further of note but our sport can not only a newsworthy shock on a Monday but provide equine romance at its very summit.
Remember Norton’s Coin, the 100/1 winner of a Cheltenham Gold Cup that seemed destined to be Desert Orchid’s second victory in the race. The horse was trained by owner/farmer Sirrell Griffiths of Rwyth Farm, Nantgaredig, Carmarthen, Dyfed – yes, I looked it up – as far from the realms of sporting glamour as anyone could get. The old horse still resides there, under the front lawn, where, perhaps, Sirrell and his wife might want their bones laid. He shocked the racing and sporting world that day, defeating the nation’s favourite horse of all-time, yet no one said a word against him. The farmer from Wales had conquered the sporting world and he was revered and respected from that day forth.
I suspect it is circumstance brought about vested interest that is killing the romance. I do not apportion blame on those who presently dominate the sport. I dislike the manner in which, in Ireland, the famous four conducted themselves when the I.H.R.B. brought in sixty races restricted to trainers outside of the top four in hope of levelling the playing field by a degree or two and to keep as many trainers as possible from going broke. But the sport is suffering by the choice of owners to only patronise the select few trainers. Football has gone the same way, with the top few clubs signing the best young talent and leaving smaller clubs with inflated bank balances but a poverty of top-class players.
It is not like the Aintree National is there to supply a dose of romance once in a while, and when Aintree becomes the preserve of the top stables in Britain and Ireland, with exotic runners from the U.S. and France as likely as a permit trainer ever winning the race again, you know a shop window for the sport has been boarded-up. One of my heart-felt reasons for why I believe the changes to the race are not in the sport’s best interests.

​A thousand-years later and the winner of the 2024 Cesarewitch is finally declared and this time it is Alphonse Le Grand. The wheel turns and turns again and we are back where we started. How embarrassing! What a cock-up!
It has now been decided under appeal that the Whip Review Committee was wrong, undermining the whole whip review policy and that Jamie Powell, although he intended to strike his mount ten-times, four over the legal limit, the final strike, the one that should and did and then didn’t get the horse disqualified, was accidental as he missed where he intended to hit the horse and by chance brushed the skin of the horse in another part of its body altogether. It is not complicated at all, if you have all the angles covered.
If the Newmarket stewards had disqualified Alphonse Le Grand on the day of the race, connections could have fought their case on the Tuesday and perhaps, possibly, though perhaps not, won their appeal. Though then the connections of Manxman might have appealed and it would still have taken a thousand-years to know the winner.
Bollocks, do you not agree?
Perhaps a better way to have found the legitimate winner would to have had a run-off on the Tuesday, the two horses and jockeys taking part in a duel on the Heath as in the dark yet less complicated days of yore.
The only answer to stop this sort of affairs ever happening again in a major race is for there to be automatic disqualification when a jockey goes one stroke above the permitted six. If six is the golden number, any number of strokes above that will come with disqualification and disqualification on the day. Sean ‘the flat’ Bowen stayed within the whip rules, Jamie Powell did not. Which of those two jockeys deserves to have a Cesarewitch winner on their c.v.? Powell now must serve a 20-day ban for going over the permitted number of strokes by 3 and must pay a fine that is pretty hefty for an apprentice who until the Cesarewitch had all but been forgotten about.

In France, on Arc day, they had what was termed ‘the Arc Promise’ when connections of winning horses at the two-day meeting were asked or expected to donate a percentage of their winnings to Au-Dela Des Pistes, the French programme for the retraining of racehorses and those who simply deserve a long and happy retirement. They have the same ‘promise’ at the two-day Grand Steeple-Chase de Paris meeting. This one gesture this year contributed 15% of the total revenue for Au-Dela Des Pistes.
Why can France have such a scheme in place and yet our B.H.A. cannot set in motion a similar scheme in Britain?

A similar thought. There is to be, starting today at Cheltenham, the David Power Jockeys Cup, a championship for jockeys comprising every race televised by I.T.V. up until the second-day of the Grand National meeting. Quite why it does not incorporate National day itself is not explained. There is a staggering 1.5-million quid to be dolled out to the top ten jockeys, with money also going to the trainers of their winners and stable staff. Given the importance of horse welfare to the ‘social licence’, could they not have taken a leaf out of the French book and asked for a promised percentage from all participants to go towards the funding of aftercare and retraining of racehorses? Is it too much to ask owners, trainers and jockeys to contribute to the funding of such vital equine charities? If 1% of that 1.5-million were to be presented to R.o.R. or any of our worthy equine charities it would represent not only a noble gesture but would go a long way to secure the funding required to keep these charities going.

​Firstly, I want to be helpful. Secondly, I wanted to raise funds for equine charities by suggesting any owner using a name from my ever-expanding list of possible names should donate £25 to an equine charity of their choice. Thirdly, I want to encourage owners to give their horses half-decent names as horse racing is a serious business with no need for frivolity. 
Of course, as an owner of a horse in training he or she or ‘they’ when it comes to partnerships and syndicates have an absolute right to name a horse as suits them, if for no other reason than they are spending a huge amount of their hard-earned cash on the sport both you and I love. But do you really think Hashehadhisoatsyet is either a suitable or nice name for one of the Creator’s noblest of creatures?
To the horse, no name a human gives it will be regarded as appropriate, at least we should assume that is the case. It is possible that animals have no need for individual names and can engage with one another by means we, poor humans that we are, could never understand. We might simply give each horse a registration number, yet choose to give them names that reflect the names of their parents or village, town or monument important to their owner or simply use random letters to make a word that is pronounceable if nonsensical. And my preference may be alien to someone else.
The names of racehorses, to me, if no one else, is important, and anyway, no Derby winner has ever had a damn silly name and that should be enough reason for owners to give serious thought when they are applying for a name with Wetherbys.
What annoys me most is when the name of a famous horse from the past is reused. I hate this. Classic winners and other major race winners have their names die with them, as does Grand National, Gold Cup and Champion Hurdle winners. But not so Hennessey or Royal Ascot winners, for example. I have asked without success for a cherished list of names be endorsed by the B.H.A. to add to the names that are already given preserved status.
Horses with French or Arabic names annoy me, especially when English and French words are mashed together as in Illegal D’Ainey or Impact Du Bonheur. Then there are all the French names with the name of the breeders’ stud – Du Berlais, De Vassy, De Grugy, D’Oudairies and so on. As an ignoramus when it comes to understanding foreign languages and with a poor memory to boot, it makes trying to remember the names of winners of top races from the past almost impossible for me.
Then there are the Arabic names. Yes, Shadwell and Godolphin are to be thanked and honoured for their mighty contribution to British and Irish horse racing and I do not wish for one moment for them to be anything other than successful – but this is Britain, not their homeland. In Saudi or the other Gulf States, Arabic names would be appropriate but over here those same names are tongue-twisters. We do not need to know how Emmaadd translates but we should at least be able to pronounce the word. Hosaamn, Muqinal, and Elnajmm likewise.
I have just remembered, Rwenearlytheredad is another type of name I loathe. Embarrassingly for me, our greatest patron J.P. McManus is the worst perpetrator of the compound name that must be picked apart to be able to say the word correctly. 
The English language is vast, ever-expanding and with a rich history of words left in the wake of passing centuries. I would be the last to boast that all the names of my list would be acceptable. I would though be embarrassed if I have put up the name of a former famous horse, though I am pretty sure you would find the name Collector’s Item on the list and when my eye eventually falls upon it, it will be deleted.
Because of the similarity of so many of the names of horses imported from France, I would like to have those names translated to English, especially if those horses are yet to see a racecourse. But then perhaps this is just me being xenophobic equine-style. I just wish racehorses would be given nice, sensible names and not be the butt of some in-joke by a human with no imagination or respect for the racehorse.

​I am no fan of the B.H.A. or the muddled way British racing is governed. So, it should come as no surprise to anyone that I am bewildered that yet again the B.H.A. has looked outside of the sport for its chairman. At least the previous incumbent, or present incumbent as he is until his successor takes possession of his desk, Joe Saumaraz Smith had previous involvement with the sport. The new-to-be chairman, the Labour peer Lord Charles Allen, has as much cliff-face experience of horse racing as Ray Allen and his sidekick Lord Charles. You might want to Google that last side-swipe at the B.H.A.
What might prove beneficial to the sport in the appointment of Lord Charles Allen is that one of his many executive positions during his ‘stellar business career’ was as chief executive at the I.T.V. who holds the contract to televise British horse racing for the next few years. I am sure Ed Chamberlain will be championing Lord Allen over the coming few weeks. And, of course, as a Labour peer he might have influence with the government if the sport should need to defend itself in the face of governmental meddling.
What bemuses me is that anyone of influence should think that a sport as nuanced as horse racing would benefit from a part-time chairman with no hands-on experience of horses or the mechanics of the sport itself and will need at least six-months to a year to get a grip on the technicalities of a sport with 200-years of history. Would he know that there is a racecourse in Norfolk or that the Midlands National in run at Uttoxeter or that five-furlongs is the minimum distance for a flat race? And that is without having a clue about the more momentous issues within the sport that he will be expected to deal with.
At a moment in the history of the sport where the future is looking hazy at best, is it beneficial to have for the ‘bedding-in period’ someone in charge of the wheelhouse with limited knowledge of the history of the sport, the perilous position it presently finds itself and how to steer the mighty ship to the calmer waters of self-sustainability? As an advisor to a chairperson of the B.H.A. with experience of the sport, Lord Charles Allen or someone with his business record would be invaluable and doubtless worth his six-figure salary, and that is the way round it should be – the business expert advising the racing person. Unfortunately for the first six-months of his tenure, Lord Allen will be asking ‘why’ far more often than he will be making decisions. 

The Breeders’ Cup, apparently, is the exemplar of how a major race-meeting should be advertised and marketed. Personally, I think it is an overblown bun-fight for racing’s international elite, with the undertone as an exercise in making and selling potential stallions. The majority of the races are run on dirt, a surface alien to all European horses, always on left-handed tracks that are as flat as a pancake, which gives the Americans a big advantage. To Americans looking-in, it is right-up there with pumpkin pie as being quintessentially home-bred.
Selling the Breeders’ Cup to U.S. sports fans is easy-peasy compared to selling the Epsom Derby to people over here. The Breeders’ Cup is glitz and glamour, with eye-watering prize-money that would no doubt solve the homeless crisis in several American cities.
Perhaps the Epsom Derby, a race in decline, no matter that it remains the Holy Grail for British trainers and jockeys, would benefit from a televised draw for stalls and more exposure in the weeks before the actual race. But our big meetings, at least on the flat, are more social events for the well-heeled than considered a major sporting event, which, by the way, was exactly the same back in both the early and heydays of the sport. To the majority of viewers, whether the Derby favourite was drawn 1 or 10 would matter not a jot to anyone, unless they have had backed it ante-post, of course.
If Epsom and the B.H.A. want to resurrect the Derby, it needs to return to its traditional first Wednesday in June, with the Oaks and the Coronation Cup either on the same card or run on the Saturday if the bookmakers need to be appeased. 
The Breeders’ Cup comes at the end of the European season, whereas the Derby is run in the first few months of the season and comprises a field of horses with hardly any exposure to the racing public let alone the wider sporting viewer. You cannot sell something on the basis of what has come before; you cannot apply glitz and glamour to something that does not shine and there is very little shine to the Epsom Derby anymore as it is no longer the be and be all of the sport. In many ways, Epsom is outshined by Royal Ascot and all the summer festivals that come after it.
We should stop envying what other countries have and we do not and simply enjoy what we have and hope our enthusiasm will spread to others.

​Not all proposals have legs, including mine own. And while some proposals leap from the page as unconsidered common-sense, others might only have a grain of possibility about them.
In today’s Racing Post, Jonny Pearson makes the argument that British racing should copy the success of the Melbourne Cup and inject our racing programme with some Group 1 handicaps. Firstly, I am grateful for Jonny Pearson bringing to my attention that the Melbourne Cup is a Group 1. In my ignorance this fact had escaped me all these years. Secondly, and this applies also to our Little National at Aintree, why does Australia’s most famous and prestigious race need any classification other than its title? The Melbourne Cup is the Melbourne Cup – it is one of the world’s greatest, if not greatest, flat races. It is Australia’s equivalent to Aintree’s ‘Little’ National. 
The proposal, though, is worthy of debate, with York’s Ebor the most obvious candidate for Group 1 status. I am of the opinion that none of our traditional Group 1’s are in need of being turned into Group 1 handicaps, and cannot imagine a race like the Ebor would be improved by being upgraded to Group 1 class.
Where the idea has genuine possibilities, in my estimation, is lower down the echelon of higher-grade races. To me, there are far too many listed races, all for the purpose of giving as much black type to as many fillies and mares as the stud-book will sustain. It is nonsense to me that the value of a filly or mare rises substantially if it should have finished fourth of five in a listed race on the all-weather. Although, through the season, many of these races can be competitive, as they are seen as easy stepping-stones to future glory by our leading stables, often they are uncompetitive due to one horse dominating the market. Here is where I would start having Group status handicaps. Group 3, obviously.
In fact, I would like to designate all Group 3 races as limited handicaps, thus allowing badly-handicapped horses the opportunity of winning races again and, again, hopefully, stopping what is usual for Group 3’s, one horse dominated races. Unlike National Hunt trainers, I believe their leading flat contemporaries, as they have access to blue-blooded home-bred colts and fillies, can have an easy time of it with so many listed and Group 2 and 3 races that are in the calendar with them especially in mind.
Let us start by transforming half the listed races in the calendar into handicaps and all of the Group 3’s into valuable limited handicaps. Leave the Group 2’s alone and perhaps consider having a single Group 1 handicap, whether that be a new race, one of the ‘lesser’ traditional Group 1’s or to upgrade one of the present prestige handicaps, the Ebor being the most obvious candidate.

Due to a toothache that is not a toothache until, without warning or due to any interference on my part, becomes a raging bull of a pain, I allowed myself to indulge in YouTube videos featuring the irreplaceable Alastair Down, many of which were uploaded by the Racing Post. In one video, he took the viewer, after giving away his address, on his traditional car journey to Cheltenham racecourse. Unscripted, with only a cameraman for company, he took us to Stow-on-the-Wold, over the high plains of the Cotswold, to Winchcombe and Postlip, allowing us an insight into his encyclopaedic knowledge of wars 1 and 2, local knowledge – ‘slaughter’, as in Lower and Higher, apparently is an old English word for ‘very muddy’ – and a reminder of who Kim Muir was and why he is honoured with having a race named after him at the Cheltenham Festival. He also stopped off at the Old Plough at Ford to give it a plug as the most popular drinking establishment during his beloved Cheltenham Festival. It was a small tour-de-force that only someone of Alastair’s calibre could achieve.
I expect Cheltenham have it in hand, but I hope Alastair is the next of racing’s dignitaries to have the National Hunt Chase named in his honour.

​Mister McGoldrick, named after the heart surgeon who helped save his owner’s life, and won at long odds at the Cheltenham Festival, died this summer aged 27. He was very much a northern equine hero, trained for most of his career by Sue Smith, and as ‘a mark of respect to him’ and to remind their patrons of all he achieved, especially as an ambassador for the ‘New Beginnings’ equine charity, Wetherby have named a new bar in his honour, ‘McGoldrick’s’. This is exactly what I like to see – horses being respected, even when they have passed from our lives. I hope anyone attending a meeting at Wetherby will patronise ‘McGoldrick’s’ and raise a glass in memory of the old horse.

The ground at Bangor on Wednesday is described as soft, good-to-soft in places. No doubt there will be a healthy number of runners in each race. Trainers have been salivating in wait of ground described as ‘soft’ for many weeks and like an oasis in a desert they have their wish.
Now, and here I must criticise the B.H.A. Not for the prevailing weather but for failing to be proactive and asking Bangor to shoehorn a novice chase open to geldings into their programme of races. Not just as a kindness to Nicky Henderson who will soon be seen on a racecourse donning a wig, given the amount of hair-pulling he has indulged in lately. Which is a shame as he must be the only male trainer in the country with a more flourishing head of hair than his stable jockey.
Given the long-term weather forecast last week, with no appreciable amount of rain on the charts, the B.H.A. could have approached Bangor, inquired about the state of the ground and upon hearing the word ‘soft’ suggested the inclusion of a novice chase over 2-mile 4. If a whole meeting can be organised overnight when frost or snow knocks out meeting after meeting, inserting one race into a meeting should be easy-peasy. All that was required was foresight, something those working at the B.H.A. sadly lack.

The Chelmsford voided race was yet another example of what can go wrong will eventually go wrong. I believe it is has never happened before on a British racecourse, though as a tractor was central to the close-to-catastrophe, someone might have posed the question ‘what do we do if the stalls cannot be removed from the track due to a mechanical issue?’
Of course, when would be the appropriate moment to sound the alarm if the stalls remained on the track during a race? There needs to be a protocol in place. The race could be at the halfway point before the stalls are removed. I am sure the alarm should be sounded once the horses reach the halfway point, not before. And that is what I believe should be the protocol. The starter should be able to activate a siren situated on the back straight, accompanied by flashing red lights, to warn the jockeys that they must ease-up as there is an obstruction on the racecourse. In fact, the starter could void a race in this way for any circumstance that might lead to catastrophe – looses horses proceeding in the wrong direction, as one example.
I hope the inquiry does not seek to apportion blame. This was a one-in-a-thousand incident and all is required is for a protocol to be put in place should something similar happen in the future. On this occasion, the starter should be praised for running down the course with a flag to warn the jockeys they needed to pull-up. It was his actions that saved the day every bit as much as the skill of the jockeys.

​Two weeks ago, the ex George Boughey trained Via Sistina won the Cox Plate, perhaps Australia’s most famous and prestigious race after the Melbourne Cup, in a track record time, with some informed commentators describing her victory as better than any of Winx’s multiple wins in the race. If she were trained in this country or Ireland, with the exception of Aidan O’Brien, she would not be seen on a racecourse again for a month or even longer. Yet yesterday she ran in another Group 1 and won just as impressively as in winning the Cox Plate. She is now expected to be named the world’s best horse when the international ratings are published. Food for thought!
Now you may say that in Australia, as with most overseas countries, less travelling is involved for horses, but that is not true on this occasion. I confess I do not know in which state Via Sistina is trained – yes, I could look it up but it has little bearing on the point I am about to make – but I do know the Cox Plate is not at Melbourne, so travelling was required in order to win both races.
Very few young trainers take out a licence without gaining experience as pupil or assistant at stables across the world. Yet when it comes to training horses under their care, they seem to stick with traditional philosophies of how to train. The horse that won the Melbourne Cup last season, What A Fight, is it, ran over 10-furlongs yesterday. Australian owners will purchase horses from Britain and Ireland that were considered 10-furlong horses with the Melbourne Cup in mind, yet when trained in Britain and Ireland those horses would have, in the main, never been tried over a distance ground beyond what their breeding suggested would be their best trip. More food for thought!
Aidan O’Brien is considered to be the greatest trainer of racehorses of modern times. His record suggests he has no peers in the history of flat racing full stop. His horses are trained seven-day-a-week, with no easy day as is the norm in most other stables. He sticks avidly to routine, with the same riders on the same horses, with each day very much the same as the day before. He is open about his training methods, with many present-day trainers having either worked under him or have visited Ballydoyle ‘for the experience of being there’. Yet how many stables operate in a similar manner to Aidan? He is the most admired trainer of my lifetime, if not of all-time, yet his philosophy is not routinely imitated.
Aidan will run a near top-class two-year-old ten-times and still get improvement as the season nears its conclusion. He will run more than one horse in a race, without fear of ruining the reputation of the horses who do not win. It is a selective policy, yes, but would either Gosden or Balding do the same?
Economics is not a good example as he was a late developing colt, but would Aidan have put the horse on hold between the Dante and late Autumn? I suspect not as he believes horses develop better through being raced. I tend to think trainers should be looking to copy Aidan’s methods, to proceed with caution to educate and physical develop, to accumulate data, such as ground preference. When push came to shove on Champions’ Day, Economics crashed and burned, perhaps due to the ground. William Haggis is a brilliant trainer and I would not doubt him for one moment, and his decision to miss the Derby was unquestionably correct, yet I suspect Aidan would have had Economics at Royal Ascot, if only for the experience.
If Via Sistina can win two Group 1’s in two-weeks, it should be within the capabilities of most thoroughbreds, if only connections would be as bold as their Australian counterparts.

If Doncaster cannot protect the reputation and heritage of the November Handicap, and the Lincoln, for that matter, by ensuring prize-money is the equal to all the other heritage handicaps, the race should be taken away from them and given to another northern racecourse. York, I would suggest.

I saw only decent ground at Exeter, as with Wincanton and Aintree yesterday and all three racecourses deserved more competitive fields. Ffos Las today has ground conditions described as good-to-soft ground and has many more potentially top-flight young horses running there than the three aforementioned racecourses put together. Nicky Henderson is prepared to run two of his nicest youngsters at his beloved Kempton on ground described as good, yet had nothing at Exeter and Wincanton on similar ground. We have cold weather on its way, with possible frost and snow in places but no significant amounts of rain. So, the situation is not going to improve any day soon. Clerks of the Courses will come to the rescue by watering profusely; so, when the rains do come, trainers had better not be critical of their decision-making when little rainfall in the weeks ahead turns ground conditions soft-to-heavy.

​Fate, of course, might determine the most talented in any sport are denied the recognition their ability seemed to afford them. Yet as mere mortals there is nothing we can do to mitigate against the wishes of the unseen gods of fate. Harry Cobden is first jockey to Paul Nicholls and our current champion jockey for no other reason than fate has not interfered with his ascent to where he now sits. He is the best we have but that does not illuminate falls that injury and put him on the sidelines. He is gifted but more importantly he is industrious and committed to being the best he can be.
Others are not so fortunate and must work at the coalface of the sport for limited rewards and limited opportunity. These men and women, under both codes of the sport, the journeyman/women of our sport, labour just as hard as those at the higher echelons, ride out for more stables, drive just as many miles and fail to finish in more races than, say, Harry Cobden who may appear for one ride, win and then be driven home by his chauffeur satisfied with his day.
During my perusal of the letters I have been fortunate to have published in the Racing Post over the past 20-years, many of my observations and ideas revolved around fairness to all, equine and human. To my mind, in a sport where integrity is vital to the ‘social licence’, where stewards are always on the lookout for jockeys giving horses an ‘easy’ ride, and are of a sceptical mindset whenever a gamble, honest or dodgy, is landed, the sport might do itself a service if it did all it could to ensure every jockey, trainer and owner, were allowed the opportunity to earn a decent reward at the job.
It is why I was aggrieved when the fabulous four in Ireland, Messrs Mullins, Elliott, Cromwell and De Bromhead, threatened legal action when it was proposed to safeguard sixty-races a season for the sole benefit of all the other trainers in Ireland who did not win 50-races the previous season. I am, as a rule, highly critical of the Irish authorities, but on this occasion I thought them, if not ahead of the curve, ahead of the B.H.A.. A trainer who can afford to pay his bills, put food on the table for his family, must be less likely to be persuaded to break the rules of racing. They should not be given five-course meals and champagne but these hard-working trainers deserve a fair opportunity to at least have the resources to pay their staff and have a little left over to have butter on their bread. Whether the ‘fabulous four’ are close to being millionaires I do not care to know but for them to behave like elites and to demand the ‘little people’ should be forced to exist on the scraps from their table was, and remains, sickening.
Jockeys, too, would be less likely to be persuaded to break the rules if they were provided with greater opportunity to impress their skills upon owners, trainers and the public. I suggested a small number of races per week could be restricted to jockeys who had ridden less than (any number you care to suggest). Perhaps one race in the north, one in the Midlands, one in the south, per week. It would hardly make a dent in the earnings of the top jockeys if they could not ride in three-races per week or somewhere close to 140-races per year.
Owners, too, could be better accommodated if races could occasionally be restricted to horses that had not won a race in an eighteen-month period or even races restricted to the very worst rated. Critics of such schemes seem to forget the worst rated horses help to fund the wages of those who look after them. Lose those horses from the sport and their owners may not replace them.
For the sport to thrive and survive everyone presently involved in the sport should be looked after by those who govern the sport. The B.H.A. are misguided in their elitist approach to the sport, with resources given over to the Ascots and Yorks, with less resources provided for the racecourses that are the very bedrock of the sport. Fakenham and Ripon are as important to our sport as Cheltenham and Goodwood.
When a trainer is forced by financial necessity to exit the sport, we lose talent, knowledge and most importantly, an employer. When a jockey is forced to move abroad to find greater opportunity, the sport loses skill, dedication and an employee. The B.H.A. should think about this and be pro-active in giving everyone presently employed in the sport a sporting chance of making a living from something that is not mere sport but a life choice.