​One of the great uplifting experiences in life, to my mind, is when you realise the horse you want to win, not necessarily the horse you have selected or backed, has without exception got the opposition off-the-bridle and going nowhere. Horse racing is always capable of kicking you in the nuts, of course, even while you ride that cloud of optimism, but when the evidence of your eyes becomes fact in the form-book, there is little on this earth to beat it.
On Boxing Day the racing gods allowed the romantics among us who have followed the career of Miss Bryony Frost from Pacha du Polder, through Black Corton, to the magical Frodon, a treasured memory. Frost and Frodon are racing’s golden couple and in saying that I must apologise to Tom Marquand and Hollie Doyle who over the summer and beyond have had their privacy invaded through the triumphs and fame of the pretty one in the partnership and who doubtless think themselves to be the golden couple. They are gold-dust, of course, but between them they can only provide the sport with only four legs, two less than the team of Frodon and Frost provide us with.
When John Francome said he thought Frodon the best jumper of a steeplechase fence he had seen in his lifetime he did not have the benefit of the exhibition put on Kempton. Frodon just doesn’t make jumping errors. It is as if as a young horse he attended an equine university that specialised in the art of how to get from a to b as quickly and neatly as Mother Nature will allow and passed out with an Honours Degree First Class. Once more, John Francome was proven correct. Geniuses should always be right, shouldn’t they?
I, on the other hand, a Frodon and Frost fan, was wrong. I didn’t think flat courses these days were in Frodon’s favour. I had pigeon-holed him as a Cheltenham specialist and didn’t give him a prayer in the King George. Although getting this season’s King George all wrong, the result did though prove my case that Frodon is right in the mix for the Cheltenham Gold Cup. Ignore him at your peril.
Frodon is a stayer,which has been my opinion since he won the Ryanair. He would have very nearly won either of the two previous Gold Cups, in my opinion. The ‘experts’ were unimpressed by his demolition job at Kempton, putting forward their analysis that the big battalions failed to perform (without giving a convincing reason why) and come March one or all of them will get their revenge. They, ‘the experts’, were united in their belief that Frodon will not get things his own way in the Gold Cup, that the opposing jockeys will be wise to Frost’s tactics of slowing the pace, stacking them up and them quickening again. It should be asked why Cobden and Twiston-Davies in particular, as they were riding stable companions of the winner, and de Boinville especially, were unaware of the tactics she was to deploy on Boxing Day?
Frodon won the King George, despite giving away a dozen lengths by jumping to his left, because there is not a horse in the Queendom or Ireland that can out-jump him. He gains a length at each fence, a length that Bryony never gives back to the opposition, and his quick precise leaps puts other horses on the back foot. Santini is a good jumper, a horse who always performs with credit around Cheltenham and is many peoples’ idea of a perfect Grand National horse, yet even a horse of his good reputation could not live with Frodon at the obstacles.
Frodon and Frost, god-willing that they are both fit and healthy to take-up the challenge, are my idea of Gold Cup winners because Frodon’s jumping will get most of the field out of their comfort zone. Al Boum Photo is a grand horse but his two Gold Cups were pedestrian affairs and I suspect having to keep in striking distance of Frodon, now that it is proved beyond debate that he is a thorough stayer, will bring about errors, though I hope not a fall.
The 2020 King George may have been Paul Nicholls’ 12th victory in the race but this will perhaps be the first time one of his winners will go to the Gold Cup as a Cheltenham specialist. I hope now the trainer stops underestimating the horse, as I hope the Ditcheat owners start to appreciate the talent that is the jockey. At the red-hot end of big races Frost has proved herself more than capable. She should by now have proved herself a worthy second jockey and not a journeyman picking up the odds and sods, which has become the situation this season.
Finally, it is disturbing to discover, even if the details are not available for scrutiny by the likes of you or me, not that it is any of our business, that Bryony is having difficulties in her private life that is emanating from within the sport. This is reprehensible and offensive to the image and well-being of the sport. I hope this ‘difficulty’ is swiftly concluded and that Bryony can regain the happiness in her life that she so deserves.

​Anyone who believes Luke Harvey is a fool because he sometimes acts the fool is a fool himself. I doubt if women think him a fool; I’m sure women adore him, perhaps some even have him as a screen-saver, which in this technological and hard-to-stomach world is next to being worshiped as a minor-league God.
But behind that lunatic grin there is a fine fellow blessed by a whole load of common-sense, even if does choose to keep it well-hidden most of the time. I am sure those who work alongside him are constantly surprised by his capacity to surprise.
As Tuesday’s guest columnist in the Racing Post, he surprised me with the quiet flow of his narrative, with all the punctuation marks in all the right places, and the common decency he displayed in speaking out in favour of all those people who work in this sport who are offered little help in earning any sort of proper living.
Yes, I would agree with Luke on this subject as I have banged-on about it for more years than I care to be reminded. If you trawl the archive of this untidy website you will undoubtedly find more than one piece of writing where I also make the self-same point. People who dedicate their lives to this sport, especially those who risk physical injury on a daily basis and those who throw good money after bad in the forlorn hope of achieving some level of financial or spiritual reward deserve to be given a helping hand by the administrators of the sport.
As Luke Harvey quite rightly suggested, why can’t there be, for example, a number of races restricted to jockeys who have not ridden a certain number of winners during the previous twelve-months? There could easily be four or five such races up and down the country per week, an initiative that would barely impact on the earnings of those jockeys lucky and talented enough to find themselves at the top echelons of the jockeys championship.
This initiative, if it were implemented, would come at no cost to the industry as these races would not need to be additions to the race programme but merely be adapted from existing races. There does not need to be any fanfare, no season-long series with a grand final and a trophy. Just ordinary races; hurdle races, steeplechases, bumpers, flat races, over every distance on every racecourse.
There would be integrity benefits of such an initiative, too. Jockeys who at present find it tough to impossible to get a foothold on the ladder of success, who cannot earn enough money to pay the mortgage, the rent, the repayments on their car, who in their desire and ambition to race-ride rely on their partners to keep the family ship afloat, would be less likely to fall victim to scurrilous individuals who might want them to throw a race or commit other despicable acts that can only tarnish the image of the sport. People who think themselves unfairly treated will always be the easiest to persuade to villainy. 
In Ireland they occasionally stage a meeting restricted to those who are sometimes termed ‘journeyman jockeys’, a gesture that I am sure is appreciated by the beneficiaries. Jockeys who have ridden a limited number of winners and who normally ride a lot of schooling for various trainers, who drive a million miles in hope of the one good horse that will turn their career around, yet achieve only one or two rides a meeting. Also, such meetings allow trainers to repay a long-owed debt for the many hours of schooling by one of these lesser lights of the weighing room.
For this wonderful sport to continue long into a future that is as we speak being manipulated by unelected faceless people around the world we must display to the public and media a good and honest face, to be seen as charitable and kind to human and equine alike. Treating our workforce, our lifelines, in an equitable manner can only enhance the reputation of the sport. It certainly could not produce the opposite effect, could it?
Trainers and owners, too, need a kind thought here and there. Why shouldn’t there be races restricted to stables of less than twenty or thirty horses? And though many journalists and commentators look down their noses at races restricted to horses with the lowest ratings, it is my contention this criticism is selfish and short-sighted. For someone to keep such low-rated horses in training they are displaying a deep love of their horse and the sport and as such deserve at least our respect, if not a little encouragement to continue to back the sport with their enthusiasm and money.
Instead of the negativity of banning horses with the lowest ratings, as some contend, why not simply drop these horses into a lesser tier of the sport, say thousand-pound stake races, shall we call them. Lesser prize-money but allowing the owners of these horses the chance to win back some of their investment and allow them the opportunity of small-game glory. What I am suggesting is that during a regular race-meeting, perhaps at all-weather tracks, one or two of these ‘thousand-pound stakes races’ be staged. 
If we can have celebrity races, charity races, amateur races and so on, why is it so unfeasible to have races designed purely to give opportunities to those we might refer to as the ‘poorer’ owner, the small-time owner/breeders with dreams, occasionally life-long, of breeding a winner?
I suspect Luke Harvey was a far better jockey than the reputation he fosters and though his idiocy at times may confuse the irregular viewer of televised racing, to my mind he is an asset to the sport and the persona he portrays on screen should not deny him the ear of racing administrators. He talks sense (occasionally) and, to his credit, his good heart is always in plain sight.

​Hyperbole, no doubt; the parochial world of horse racing rarely these days even flutters the mindset of newspaper and media editors, though the 2008 Cheltenham Gold Cup did gain unusually high coverage in the non-racing daily newspapers. Not as much, I grant you, as the 2010 renewal, the race that did not provide the following day’s predicted and perhaps required headlines. But on the front cover of his book ‘Kauto Star & Denman’ Jonathan Powell was happy to allow his editor to emblazon the strap-line ‘The Epic Story of Two Champions Who Set the Racing World on Fire’. And, of course, in our little world, the world populated by horse racing enthusiasts, Kauto Star and Denman did, even they did not set our worlds literally on fire,  pump up our heart-rates and boost our enthusiasm for National Hunt racing to heights that almost reached the heavens.
Jonathan Powell is a favourite writer of mine and I am pleased to have several of his books on my shelves. His books are thoroughly researched though not to the point of a boastfulness of knowledge and his narrative flows with the confidence of a seasoned and rarely rejected author and when he pens a biography of an equine star he treats them with the same respect as when he writes about a jockey or trainer. If anyone reading this is vain enough (or need of a boost to their flagging finances and has a story to interest others) to want his or her biography published, I suggest there is no better writer for the task than J. Powell.
As with all biographies where the subject matter is not deceased, this lovely book is made far from perfect due an end page that is too distant from the natural conclusion of the tale it tells. It draws its last breath on 19th March 2010, the day Paddy Brennan brilliantly stole the Cheltenham Gold Cup from under the noses of an adoring grandstand of Denman and Kauto Star enthusiasts. The cad! You may contend, as no doubt the author will contend, that this book was in response to the hype around their battles in the Cheltenham Gold Cup and that there are other books that detail their full racing careers. But on the cover page, even if Cheltenham was the only racecourse and the Gold Cup the only race the two great horses competed against one another, there is no mention that the backdrop to the book is Cheltenham and the Gold Cup. Denman’s story did virtually end on that fateful day when Nigel Twiston-Davies, as so often happens, had the last laugh. But Kauto Star continued to both ‘set the world on fire’ and draw tears from our hearts by winning yet another King George and a Betfair and in not documenting two of his most heart-warming victories Jonathan Powell left a yawning chasm of invisible text.
You might say, as I do often, that the best written books leave the reader wanting more, as Ruby Walsh achieved with his autobiography – where, Ruby, is the second volume, by the way? Not that I would have wanted the book to travel so far past his retirement that it went into the unedifying chapter of Kauto’s sad demise far from the home and people whose lives he made glorious. That would have made for the saddest of conclusions. Even Denman last breath , though his demise was from more natural causes, did not want to be included in this book. It is simply in documenting the following season, a season when Kauto reigned alone, with Denman retired and Paul Nicholls facing an onslaught of criticism for keeping Kauto in training, we, the readers, knew that after the final full-stop there was so much more that needed to be included for posterity.
Perhaps Powell was being harried by publishers in want of profit, uncaring of what new heights Kauto might reach. Perhaps Powell would have preferred to have stayed publication in case Kauto achieved the nay-on impossible and won back the Gold Cup for a second time, making three in all and equalling Arkle and the other great steeplechasers of years gone by. But the book is what it is, a beautiful portrait of two of the greatest steeplechasers of all-time, but made ever-so-imperfect by the rays of the sun illuminating what is there, not what we all knew was to come to pass. All the same, despite my damning praise, it is a lovingly constructed telling of a story that should never be lost to the passage of time.
Now, if Jonathan wants a challenge, may I suggest he go back to the time when a trainer last had two equally brilliant steeplechasers in his stable and tell the story of how and why they never met on the racecourse. The story of Arkle and Flyingbolt. A story that needs to be written while the likes of Paddy Woods remain alive to ensure the research is accurate.

Incidentally – the spirit of Christmas is meant to be amongst us, isn’t it – there is a story loosely based on truth about Arkle and Flyingbolt in my book ‘Going To The Last’ – Short Stories About Horse Racing. I recommend it, I really do. I doubt if there is another book like it on the market. Only £8.99. Paperback only. Go google it. You’ll find it on Amazon. You can even tell me what you think of its merits, if you like. I have broad shoulders. The Arkle/Flyingbolt story is on page 55. It’s titled ‘Yes, I Fear He Is, I Fear He Is.’ Explanation of the title will be found at the conclusion of the story. In all there are 25 stories, some based on racing fact, some purely imaginary.

​Firstly, let’s hope all ten declared runners stand their ground come Saturday (Boxing Day). If they do all run, this season’s King George should be a better renewal to 2019 when Clan Des Obeaux ran away from a depleted field.
Obviously, with four runners Paul Nicholls has an outstanding chance of winning the race for the zillionth time and he’ll certainly turn-out the favourite. Though Clan Des Obeaux and Cyrname are his main contenders, do not rule out either Real Steel or Frodon, though personally I would not be running the latter as to my mind his prowess is jumping and Cheltenham brings that to the fore. For Frodon to have any chance at Kempton I feel Bryony has to be forceful on him and make it a strong pace, using his jumping to gain ground on his rivals. Remember, when John Francome was asked what horse in his opinion is the best jumper of a fence he has seen, he sided with Frodon, that is some compliment and the Nicholls team should take the hint and use his jumping to put pressure on the rest of the field.
But as much as I love the horse and no matter how beneficial it would be for the sport for Bryony to be the first female jockey to win the race, I do not think an end-to-end gallop suits Frodon. At Cheltenham she can get a breather into him, something very unlikely at Kempton. I do see him as a stayer, though, not a horse with the capability to quicken between the last two fences.
The obvious choice would be between Clan Des Obeaux and Cyrname, though Santini now comes into calculations, especially is the ground is very soft. I was mightily impressed by Cyrname at Wetherby and no one should doubt Nicholl’s ability to have him spot-on at Kempton despite not having run since early October.
Clan Des Obeaux is king around Kempton, whereas at Cheltenham he is constantly underwhelming. I sort of feel the same might end up being said about Cyrname. Of the two, on this occasion, I favour Cyrname, having tipped Clan Des Obeaux last year.
But the horse I most fancy, if he is not blocked by government restrictions from coming over, is Monalee. I thought he was unlucky in the Gold Cup, not that connections made a song and dance about it, when Santini wiped him out at the top of the hill. He finished fourth, running on, which surprised me, beaten by a similar distance to the ground he had to surrender when Nico de Boinville displayed his complete lack of gallantry toward a lady.
It is possible that government restrictions both here and in Ireland might persuade Rachel Blackmore to stay at home, which would be as unfair and annoying as when Shane Cross was denied the opportunity of winning the English St.Leger.
Lostintranslation is difficult to evaluate. Like Santini, he ran an absolute cracker in the Gold Cup and on that form alone he should not be an 8/1 shot. I suspect Robbie Power is right when he says Lostintranslation will be seen to better effect on good ground and as he is unlikely to get anything other than slow ground at Kempton it is hard to see him translating potential into performance. I wish there was a 4-mile championship chase in the calendar as Lostintranslation would be my idea of a good thing. Oh, by the way, there should be a 4-mile championship chase and it would make a brilliant contrast to the Tingle Creek if it replaced the dull and pointless London National.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Saint Calvados out-ran his long odds, or indeed Waiting Patiently, though it is stretching credulity to expect him to win first time out against hard-fit opponents. Even I do not possess the powers of imagination to give Black Op a realistic chance of even reaching a place.
I expect Monalee to win and hope Rachel Blackmore is the one giving the interview to Matt Chapman. I envisage Santini staying on for second, with Cyrname third.
If you think the King George is the race of the holiday period you are overlooking the Saville Chase at Leopardstown. If only half the entered horse line up it will be the best race thus far this season and though A Plus Tard would be an intriguing runner over 3-miles, any one of Acapella Bourgeois, Allaho, Delta Work, Fakir d’Ouderies, Kemboy, Melon, Minella Indo, Presenting Percy, Samcro, The Storyteller and Tornado Flyer, could be victorious. Of course, they all won’t run but all the same it is a race to look forward to.
Also, the Matheson Hurdle on the Tuesday looks a mouth-watering spectacle with Abacadabras, Aspire Tower Saint Roi, Saldier and Sharjah all likely to run.

​There is only one aspect of Barry Geraghty’s autobiography, ‘True Colours’, that I take issue with and that is the cover, a black and white lateral photograph of a muddied Geraghty, with his name picked out in gold. It is a photograph of a professional jockey, the monochrome a contrast to the book’s title. It is an arty design and does not reflect the true colours of the man, a man who is far from being a one-dimensional professional jockey. Of course, if you look at the photograph and jacket design as a work it is clearly of great merit, as any damn fool would agree.
‘True Colours’ is an excellent read, within touching distance of being as good as Ruby Walsh’s autobiography. I suspect the difference in my appreciation of the two books is that Ruby has an edge to his character, he has opinions and he doesn’t have favouritism as to who gets to know about them. Barry Geraghty on the other hand comes across the page as a really nice bloke and nice blokes, as I know to my own detriment, are not by nature as interesting to readers and everyone else as those born edgy and who cultivate edginess as they go about life.
That said, ‘True Colours’ will sit on the shelf next to Ruby’s book, with A.P.’s book on the other side. Which is only as it should be as the three jockeys are all within the width of a cigarette paper as being the best National Hunt jockeys of all time. Barry Geraghty, and perhaps the other two, would have me put Paul Carberry’s book, ‘One Hell of a Ride’ next to them but 1) his book is not in the same league and 2) Paul Carberry is, to my mind, the greatest horseman of my lifetime but not necessarily up with Walsh, McCoy and Geraghty as a jockey. The Carberry’s are, of course, the greatest National Hunt family in Irish history. Or any country’s racing history, I suspect.
There is a deftness of prose in ‘True Colours’ that is not to be found in either Walsh’s autobiography of A.P.’s. And he gets on with the interesting stuff, his career, and does not waste pages on his adolescence. There’s enough to give a good flavour of his roots but not so much as to have the reader skipping chapters to get to the actual riding career. He also does not make a song and dance about meeting Paula, his wife, and conveys all that she means to him in simple sentiments that leave the reader in no doubt that she is the great woman behind the great man.
The first thing you will notice when opening the book is that it is dedicated to his wife and children. That tells you all you need to know about Geraghty the man. He loves his family and they adore him. That was plain to see when his children burst into his trophy room as he was conducting a zoom interview to present him with his Hero award the other night. He thought he was being interviewed about his book. But was he miffed to be interrupted? No. You could see the pleasure it gave him to have his family share in his success.
Barry Geraghty rose in my estimation the day he pulled up Sprinter Sacre at Kempton. I suspect he might have saved Sprinter’s life that day; certainly he gave Nicky Henderson the chance to get the horse eventually back to something like his best during the 2015/16 season; to regain the 2-mile crown. Nico de Boinville may have been the successful jockey that day but Geraghty was instrumental in allowing him the opportunity to ride into the history of the Cheltenham Festival. 
The only part of the book I will give away is this: J.P. McManus phoned Geraghty and told him that a good few of his trainers were complaining that he was too quick in pulling up horses. It was hinted that the retainer might not be renewed the following season, though J.P. said to Geraghty that he should set about proving his doubters wrong, which he did, of course, to great effect. But in his defence Geraghty writes that a jockey has a duty of care to the horses he rides and it was a responsibility he did not take lightly. When I read that, he went up another notch in my estimation. A proper jockey and quite possibly an even better man.
If you don’t get this book this Christmas, I suggest you first scold your family for their negligence and then secondly you go buy the book for yourself. £20 well spent in my opinion.

​I may be teaching my granny how to suck eggs in asking if you realise that the chair at The Chair fence at Aintree was back in olden times used to house a judge whose job was to instruct riders to pull up if the winner had already past the winning post. I am strongly of the opinion it would be a good use of stewards’ time if someone was posted in a similar position for every National Hunt race on every racecourse.
One of the saddest features of racing, at least to my mind, is a horse falling at the last more through fatigue than an inability to jump when clearly out of contention. I suspect last fence/hurdle falls are more prevalent in Irish racing than over here, though as anyone who witnessed the fall that put Gina Andrews in hospital at Cheltenham last week it is not an unknown occurrence on a British racecourse.
If a clear instruction to jockeys to pull-up when a fence or hurdle behind when approaching the final obstacle cannot be instigated, then a steward posted ‘at a distance post’ would be an alternative worth experimenting with. All the steward would need to do is to wave a red flag and blow a whistle to attract the attention of a rider who if he had the welfare of the horse in his mind should present enough of a distraction for him to stop riding.
Jockeys have a duty of care when riding in a race and just trying to finish a race simply to have a nought after a horse’s name rather than a P is to ignore his greatest duty as a licensed jockey. No jockey should be criticised for pulling up a jump too soon, though criticism might be justified when he or she fails to pull up, an inaction that results in both horse and rider sprawled on the ground. If pulling up early is not a duty of care issue, it is very much a health and safety issue.
Much is made of the modern-day prevalence of low sun causing hurdles and fences to be omitted on health and safety grounds. Why does no one raise the issue of needless last obstacle falls, a subject with a far easier solution than combatting low sun?
Incidentally, in case my thoughts on the low sun problem in a recent ‘blog’ are not known to anyone reading this current ‘blog’, the term ‘low sun’ tells you the sun is close to the horizon; I cannot think that some kind of mobile screen or shield cannot be invented to block out the sun’s glare. If mounted on the back of a lorry at this time of year it could travel from meeting to meeting. If successful every racecourse where low sun is a problem might eventually have one – if such a device can be invented.

The very definition of madness is to do the same thing over and over again and to eventually expect a different result. Plunging London into Tier 2 didn’t work, so let’s try Tier 3, which, in effect, is Tier 2 without any sort of hospitality outlet. When Professor Karol Sikora was asked his response to the present plague virus mutating into what conceivably might be a lesser version of itself, he said. “So what?” Because that is what viruses do. It is what it did back in March. This is only pertinent to this site because this draconian response to not very much will doubtless have an effect on racing over the Christmas and New Year period.
At the moment Kempton, which is in Surry not London, even though it is known as a London racecourse, will still be allowed to host a limited number of racegoers on Boxing Day. Not though anyone who lives in London, only people local to Kempton Park. But we are talking marginal distances here between true London and the outskirts of London, which is where Kempton Park is situated. Who knows, old father Thames which passes close to the racecourse (by the by, Kempton Park is the only racecourse mentioned in ‘Three Men In A Boat’. Not that it was a racecourse at the time. I digress, as Jerome would often do) and flows through the centre of London, might it bring a shipment of the virus on to the embankment where Harris and the others had their argument with the riparian custodian? It’s an odd virus; doesn’t pop up the noses of people eating at a pub yet is potentially lethal to people only consuming alcohol. It would only need a sharp breeze to send the virus skittling around the locality, raising the R-number by a fraction high enough to scare the pants of Hannibal Hancock and have him, in our best interests, you must realise, plunging the whole of the South-East into Tier 3. We walk on egg-shells. Soon there will be wagonettes marauding the streets, their steersman shouting ‘bring out your dead, bring out your dead’. You have to laugh, haven’t you?
Wishing you all a Merry ChrisWhittyMas, saviour of humanity (British sector). 

​When one of the I.T.V. team said of Goshen after his disappointing run on Saturday, ‘Let’s hope when they get him home, they find he’s okay’, my immediate reaction was ‘Hell, no, let’s hope they find a problem they can put right!’ In that sense I was pleased to read that the vets diagnosed a fibrillating heart. At least now the Moores have a reason and a plan of action to put the matter right.
Atrial fibrillation, or an irregular heartbeat, was what stymied the brilliance of both Denman and Sprinter Sacre. Can you imagine what they might have achieved if the condition had not waylaid them at the very peak of their racing lives? Arguably, once recovered, both horses went on to achieve their most famous victories, even if they were never so good as they were; Denman winning a second Hennessey and Sprinter Sacre regaining his 2-mile crown, three years after his first. Incidentally, two of the greatest training fetes of my lifetime and deserving of greater recognition if not some sort of tangible accolade.
So, the future may not look quite so bleak for Goshen, not my tip but my certainty for the Champion Hurdle this year. I have no doubt if he recovers in quick order from his weekend blip and ridden as he was in the Triumph and not restrained as he was on Saturday, that the hope remains that he will bring home my prediction, a prediction based on my belief that he is the most exciting young hurdler in many a long year.
In my opinion, the Moores deserve a superstar. Grafters, and the Moore family are as gifted as they are dedicated workaholics, usually only get as their reward with horses who win lots of races at the minor meetings, only rarely visiting the winners’ enclosure at the top meeting. Ryan Moore, obviously, being the exception in the Moore family dynasty. Gary Moore is on record as saying Goshen is the best he has trained, so let’s pray the gods are on his side.
My problem with atrial fibrillation is that I am unsure if it is a condition that is on the increase or whether it is being more regularly diagnosed because of the advancement of veterinary science? When Denman was diagnosed with the condition it was talked about as if it was a serious condition that might finish his career. With Sprinter Sacre, albeit he was treated for the condition differently to Denman, I believe, it took Nicky Henderson the best part of three seasons to get him back to anything close to his imperious best. Yet Paisley Park, who was also diagnosed with the condition after the Stayers Hurdle last season, has seemingly recovered in double quick time, well enough to run an encouraging first race back at Newbury a few weeks ago.
If it is a condition that is on the increase, I would hope studies are being conducted to discover the cause as the top horses disappointing in the top races may only be the tip of a fibrillating iceberg. 
I have long had my suspicions about the constant us of sand canters and gallops and artificial surfaces. Sand in particular can throw-up tiny particles when it becomes dry and there is the potential for horses following closely after one another to inhale these particles. I believe it would be the same potential threat when horses are worked on poorly maintained all-weather surfaces. I believe horses bedded on dusty shavings and sawdust (the clue is in the name) and poor-quality straw will also be subject to inhaling lung irritants.
I realise Goshen’s problem was due to an irregular heartbeat and not poor lung function but the two organs work in harmony and anything affecting one will impose itself on the other, I believe.
There is also the modern trend for working horses on sharp inclines and in deep sand, two wonderful methods for tuning a horse to full fitness but would such strenuous workloads compromise the heart?
In the days before all-weather surfaces becoming the go-to gallops for fitness, horses very often were expected to improve for their first runs of the season and it was considered a fine achievement for a trainer to win a race with a horse having its first run against horses that had run one or more times that season. Nowadays, especially when the top trainers are concerned, it is hardly a consideration when making a selection for a race if a horse is having its first run of the season. I suspect in the days of my youth jockeys took it into consideration when riding a horse first time out that it would not be quite ‘straight’ and would ride accordingly to ensure it was not put under unnecessary pressure. Perhaps stewards, too, also paid heed to the same consideration when assessing whether a horse had been fairly ridden.
I do not hold the view that Epatante is home and hosed for the Champion Hurdle – if only because Nicky Henderson can’t keep on winning the race – and that there are many hurdles around that could be legitimately aimed at the race, with quite a few trained in Ireland alone, most of whom were whooped out-of-sight in the Triumph last season by Goshen.

​Nicky Henderson is a racehorse trainer of outstanding insight into the mind and well-being of the horses put in his charge by owners who expect the highest of equine standards. His record is all the evidence required to prove his credentials. If he can be criticised at all over his withdrawal of Altior from the Tingle Creek this weekend past, it is his comment in the Racing Post on the morning of the race that Altior would definitely run despite his concern about the heavy conditions ‘as it fitted in with his programme and where else is there to run him?’ Or words to that effect.
If he had run Altior and he had run poorly the trainer would be asked to explain and as was the case with Sprinter Sacre, there would an outcry for the horse to be retired as he was obviously a shade of the horse he once was.
The prosecution, of course, say that Henderson is being disingenuous as Altior has won numerous times on soft and in deed heavy ground. The defence will point to the debacle of Ascot and his defeat to Cyrname, a race that bottomed both horses for the remainder of the season. Henderson is haunted by his unprofessional, as he doubtless views it, decision to run Altior when his heart and head demanded otherwise.
Realistically Altior has only one last shot at regaining the 2-mile crown. He is ten, closing in on eleven. Twelve-year-olds do not win Champion 2-mile Chases. It is understandable if Henderson chooses Cheltenham over every race twixt now and then, even if we, the racing public, are gagging to see the great horse run as many times as possible before he goes off to the paddocks for what we hope will prove to be a long and contented retirement.
It is my opinion that Henderson made the correct decision on Saturday and the rest of us will just have to suck it up. The stewards, on the other hand, made a poor decision not to fine Henderson for not running Altior. He was the star act, according to their own description of the ground Henderson did not have a legitimate reason for withdrawing and in not running he disappointed the viewing public. Trainers greatest responsibility is to their horses and as such Henderson behaved appropriately. But in future, say come Kempton the day after Boxing Day, if it should rain through the night, will he withdraw Altior again. You certainly couldn’t back Altior ante-post given the trainer’s stated approval for ‘decent ground’ for the horse to run.
On the general ease in which a horse can be withdrawn on the day of the race something should be done. The 48-hour declaration is a good initiative and should continue in my opinion but it leaves trainers with alternatives in the following days. Although trainers will through up their hands in horror at such a suggestion, I think any horse withdrawn on the morning of a race for any reason other than welfare (injury or illness) should not be allowed to run for five or six days. This rather draconian rule would give trainers pause for thought and put a handbrake on the increasing trend of late withdrawals.
The ‘monster’ that is the Cheltenham Festival, even if it is a rather beautiful monster, is beginning to run out of hand. Dan Skelton is right; the Festival is becoming too dominating, with the rest of the pre-March race-programme becoming devalued as a result. But how can it be remedied without advocating qualifying races throughout the season for the championship races? Should a horse have to run in a Grade 1 during the season before it is eligible for the Festival? That is the only method I can invent to improve the situation, and I do not pretend it is a sure-fire solution to the problem.
The biggest annoyance on Saturday was not the non-appearance of Altior but the recurring health and safety problem of the low sun and the taking out of fences. The Many Clouds Chase at Aintree is the latest in a long list of races rendered a farce because of the natural occurrence at this time of year of a low sun. Is there any thought going on at the B.H.A. as to how to get around this problem? I doubt it. In cricket they use a white screen so that the batsmen can pick up the ball in flight. Could some sort of shade be erected at the end of tracks where the sun is being a nuisance? Or invented. It is a low sun, not a high sun, so any kind of dark shield or shade need not be very tall. It only needs to be stable, transportable and manoeuvrable. And not too heavy, I suspect. We can fly men to the moon, apparently, we can rebuild broken bodies and invent solutions to what for centuries have been insoluble problems. Yet like being unable to cure the common cold, we cannot put sunglasses on a low sun.
Of course, the other alternative would be to schedule race-meetings in December earlier in the day. You know the sun always sets at the same time this time of year, don’t you, B.H.A.?
Having said that, I was disappointed with Frodon. I fancied him for the Gold Cup and Tom Segal had him as his tip for the King George, yet after Saturday, even if you take into account that flat tracks do not play to his strengths and taking out eight fences was definitely against him, he did fade out of contention quite tamely. If he was my horse (if only) I would skip Kempton, go to the Cotswold Chase and then perhaps the Gold Cup. Frodon is a Cheltenham horse, plain and simple.
In the Becher Chase, David Pipe discovered that Ramses De Teillee is not a National horse, which is something Paul Nichols is none the wiser about for Yala Enki who like a thousand horses before him over-jumped and landed on his head at the first fence.
One last thing, Vieux Lion Rouge must be getting close to holding the record for the most Aintree fences jumped. Nine runs, nine completions, including four in the Grand National. A horse that must be a joy to own. A great credit to his trainer. I am a member of the David Pipe Racing Club; one day I hope to go to Pond House to offer him a carrot. The horse, I mean, not David Pipe.

​The Racing Post today (Thursday December 3rd) dedicated 4 and a bit pages to the return of spectators to our racecourses. Good news, of course, though in truth what we are now allowed is less than half-a-dose of the medication needed to secure a cure for our ills.
I believe Tom Kerr and his boys at the Racing Post should remember that the sport’s life-blood was cut-off nine-months ago and the trickle allowed from this day on might be blocked without a day’s notice if the blind and deaf Sage advisors see fit to do so. Remember Doncaster and Warwick and the other false dawns. We, that is the B.H.A. and racing’s industry newspaper, should not be applauding the government for their benevolence in returning to us a small proportion of our civil liberties but intensifying the struggle for our full democratic right to freedom of association.
The return of spectators, even in limited numbers, is a step in the right direction and that must be acknowledged but it should not be seen as a directional arrow that points to a full house come Mid-March. There is the vaccine hurdle for the government to overcome twixt now and Spring with a higher percentage of people than the government accepts bridging the divide of being sceptical about complying with vaccination and those vehemently opposed to it. I am aware that racing-mad people probably are not aware of the World Economic Forum’s ‘Great Reset’, of which our Prime Minister works as Project Manager on their behalf but a visit to their website will inform you that it is a tenet of their plans that attendance at all social gatherings – pubs, restaurants, musical events, football and rugby matches and racecourses – will be subject to people producing some form of Health Passport. It is my contention, given the information I have come across, that ‘normal life’ – remember ‘The New Normal’ – will not resume until the vast majority of the population are vaccinated. Bill Gates has said many times that this ‘Health Emergency’ will last up to eighteen-months, with the caveat that it might be longer if the roll-out of the vaccine was delayed. He should know as he, I believe, wrote the script that government advisors around the world have been working to.
The vaccine heralded as a gift from Santa Claus for the whole world, or at least Great Britain, will not, I have heard, prevent people contracting Covid or the coronavirus as government now refers to the virus, it only controls symptoms. Also, it has not been widely tested, without any sort of peer review or the specifications of the ingredients of the vaccine published for scientists to make valued judgement on. Yet here we have the Racing Post, in accord with all the national newspapers, proclaiming ‘happy days are here again’. I have to make plain, just in case anyone reading this has either not bothered to conduct any independent research or not take my advice to go on on-line to watch any one of Ivor Cummins ‘Viral Updates’, that the average age of mortality due to or more likely with Covid is between 82 years-of-age and 85. Around the world 99% of mortality is with people suffering one or more morbidities. If you or I, and I refer to the young-to-middle-aged and healthy older people, get this virus our survival chances are 97%. 99% for those less than 45-years-of-age. Do these statistics, and I suggest you do your own research to verify my view, suggest we should be vaccinating the world and stopping people attending race-meetings without recourse to restrictions on numbers and the completely unnecessary and scientifically unproven need to wear masks?
So, yes, when Ed Chamberlain gushes adjectives of comfort and joy tomorrow over scenes of muzzled spectators anti-social distancing as they freeze on the stone steps of grandstands, we, or should that be I, should not boo and hiss his obvious pleasure but neither should we applaud or shed a tear. For nine-months we have been used as propaganda by government, as we still are, of course, the exchequer’s need for revenue guaranteeing our place on the top tier of official benevolence. It is well overdue that we were given a little slack (for being good boys and girls) but the B.H.A. and the Racing Post must not accept for one breath that we have of December 3rd 2020 is all we deserve. Because, like the people of Great Britain, we deserve a whole lot more.

​I refer, as if you didn’t know, to Envoi Allen, the latest in a long history of potential superstar steeplechasers, of which Samcro has taken his turn to fail to come up to expectations, as good as he is. For the record, I have few reservations about Envoi Allen. Unbeaten in three disciplines of the sport, proved at Cheltenham last March that he can dig deep to win and as fluid a novice chaser as any before him.
I’m not mad keen about the Marsh Chase at the Festival, if I am honest, as it has made life so much easier for connections to keep the best novices apart. There was a time, a time less complicated, when the speed novices went to the Arkle and the staying-type to the 3-mile novice, the title of which this year escapes me. (How can one of the major races of the season not have a proper history-defining title? As it is with so many races at the Festival these days). It is my contention that the 2½-mile Marsh Chase is for novices lacking the speed for the Arkle and the stamina of the 3-mile novice chase. It is an in-between distance that in the past was not given any great credence. But the Marsh is where Envoi Allen is ultimately heading and if he eats the Cheltenham fences – we already know he has a liking for Prestbury – as he did at Down Royal and Punchestown (or was it Fairyhouse?), he will scoot up and be made ante-post favourite for next season’s Cheltenham Gold Cup. Doubtless we will have to wait until next season to find out if he will actually benefit for a step up in trip but that only builds the anticipation and gives journalists something to write about.
Of course, what Gordon Elliott is interested in at the moment is educating his latest superstar, to get him to Cheltenham suitably experienced to continue his rise to the heavenly stars of the steeplechasing legends.
Nicky Henderson is on the same mission with Shishkin, though all roads for him to lead to the Arkle and ultimately the 2-mile Champion Chase. As with Envoi Allen, Shishkin was massively impressive on his first start over fences, looking unbeatable at even this early stage of his new career. Neither Shishkin nor Envoi Allen will be truly tested before Cheltenham as rival trainers will do everything in their powers to keep their best novices out of the firing line of their apparent supremacy, hoping one or the other, or both, fail to make their appointment with destiny come March.
Do you think the winner of this Saturday’s Henry VIII at Sandown will at any stage before March take on Shishkin? I am sure Willie Mullins will field something against Envoi Allen when he runs again in the New Year if only to find out how his best novice might fare against him. Which is unfair on the public and even Shishkin and Envoi Allen’s connections as their first truly competitive steeplechase will be around Cheltenham, a course that shows little mercy for reputations.
If all eight entered for the Henry VIII stand their ground it will make for an informative race. Eldorado Allen, Phoenix Way, Allmankind, Ga Law and Hitman might all be capable of giving Shishkin a run for his money, though if he was amongst the entry list for Saturday how many of them would oppose him? For what its worth, I think one of the 4-year-olds will prevail on Saturday, preferring Allmankind.
Incidentally, by chance I watched the 2012 Tingle Creek this morning and though Sprinter Sacre won on the bridle, with Barry Geraghty sitting as still as a statue, a performance that blew us all away on the day, he actually beat nothing of any substance, as the form book will confirm. Of course when he won the 2-mile Champion Chase that season he looked to me like the best 2-mile chaser of my lifetime, beating Sizing Europe by double digit lengths, but it worries me now that his status in the pantheon of 2-mile greats is based on beating mostly second-graders, with the obvious exception of his unforgettable 2016 Champion Chase win, perhaps my favourite race of all time.
And that is I think the point I am making: heaping adjective rich accolades on horses when they have not even reached chasing maturity, as we all already doing with Envoi Allen and Shishkin, as some did with Samcro and a hundred and one others that came before him, is tempting fate to throw a custard pie in our faces. We should enjoy these horses for what they are today and leave judgement on their true merit till after they have retired when we can comb the form book to discover the true merits of those they vanquished.
When Denman won his first Hennessey, I said that I had witnessed the emergence of the new Arkle, when he won the Cheltenham Gold Cup I almost cried in realisation that my earlier forecast had born fruit and then through nobody’s fault fate intervened and, like Flyingbolt in Arkle’s time, it was not to be. This is why I will not be hailing Envoi Allen as the second-coming, while keeping my fingers crossed that he is. Not that he’ll be any kind of rival to Arkle as he will never be rated 3-stone superior to any other horse around and I doubt he’ll win the number of races Kauto Star won or two Hennesseys like Denman. I do pray, though, that fate does not trip him up, as it takes so much delight in doing when a horse gives the impression of being as rare a specimen as a modern-day Arkle.