​L’Homme Presse. Next question.
Occcasionally, very occasionally, difficult to win major races have an obvious looking winner in waiting. In my opinion, this year’s renewal of the King George VI Chase is such a race. Originally, as I did not think L’Homme Presse would run, I was convinced Frodon, especially at 16/1 and bigger, was the bet of the race, which he might still be, as an each-way chance. And as much as I would love Frodon to win his second King George, and again he is dismissed as an unlikely winner by the ‘experts’, logic tells me he will be unable to run the legs off the only horse in the race that might conceivably go on to win a Cheltenham Gold Cup. This is very much a case of my head over-ruling my heart.
L’Homme Presse might be inconvenienced by the tight track and soft/heavy is very different ground at Kempton than it would be at Newbury or Cheltenham, for instance. Since it became an ‘all-weather’ track, with all the additional drainage involved, the ground may not be compatible to the day I walked the track (the year Desert Orchid won his first King George, if you need to know) when there was not so much divots as hock-deep holes down the back stretch. But all that aside, L’Homme Presse is far and away the most likely of the field to go on the ground and possess the stamina and class required to win the second most prodigious steeplechase in the British racing calendar.
Although Bravemansgame has won on soft ground at Kempton, the Kauto Star last season was far from a competitive affair, with Ahoy Senor looking ill-at-ease on such a tight circuit. And remember, Paul Nicholls withdraw Bravemansgame from his intended Cheltenham Festival race last season citing the soft ground as being unsuitable. There remains the possibility that he may take the same decision on Boxing Day.
Ahoy Senor is destined to win a big race, though his only win on soft ground was a maiden hurdle at Ayr. He will come good but it will be on a more galloping track like Cheltenham or Newbury. I wouldn’t rule him out as a Gold Cup horse, I do though rule him out as a King George winner. I would rather have seen him in the Welsh National. Remember Carvill’s Hill?
In the King George you should never rule out a horse trained by a Tizzard. Eldorado Allen could easily run into a place but it’s a stretch to think he has the class of his mighty predecessors, the late lamented Cue Card and Thistlecrack.
It has to be admitted that Envoi Allen has an impressive number of 1’s to his name, 15 if I still possess the ability to count passed 14. He has won on all types of ground and over every distance between 2-miles and 3. Although at times he does not look a natural jumper of steeplechase fences, he has only fallen once, the day his aura of invisibility hit the deck at Cheltenham. He is as equally easy to dismiss as it is to envisage him becoming a Gold Cup contender by winning a King George. Rachel Blackmore could not possibly add a King George to her amazingly impressive C.V., could she?
Let’s get one thing clear about Frodon. Contrary to what his trainer says about him, Frodon has won three times on heavy ground and has prevailed a further six-time when the word ‘soft’ has appeared in the ground description. Good ground is not the most important ingredient for him. He has also won 3-times around Kempton. And he is a much better stayer than he was once considered. He is not out of the reckoning this year, though at 10 his best days surely must be behind him. He remains though the best value in the race and predict he will follow L’Homme Presse home.
Hitman is the joker in the pack. He has never run over 3-miles, so nobody can say with certainty he will not stay. He has, though, won 3 of his 4 races on soft ground and won readily over 2-miles 5 at Haydock. I suspect Harry Cobden may have chosen poorly once more.
Millers Bank. Never say never, though I choose to on this occasion.
Royale Pagaille is trained by Venetia Williams, so anything is possible especially when the ground is anywhere close to boggy. Of the entire field, Royale Pagaille is the only one at his very best on soft-to-heavy ground and his trainer is adept at getting a horse fit to win first time out at the highest level and has winning form at Kempton, albeit a handicap where he was thrown in at the weights. He is not the class of his stable companion, though, is he?
L'Homme Presse will win, with Frodon and Eldorado Allen to follow him home.
Goshen will win the Long Walk. That’s my heart talking again, though no one could argue that the ground combined with the track will suit him better than any of his rivals.
I’m prepared to give Thyme Hill another chance in the Kauto Star and though I cannot see her winning, I do think Epatante will finish closer to Constitution Hill in the Christmas Hurdle than she did in the Fighting Fifth.
And a long shot for a later race – Arizona Cardinal in the 3. 05.

​I am not, I admit, the most charitable of people. I should donate more to the rehabilitation of racehorses charities and to the Injured Jockeys Fund. As is said, every little helps, and perhaps giving more should become my New Year’s Resolution. In fact, yes, I will donate more and more often to the animal charities of my choice. Yes, definitely. My Christmas resolution for the coming year.
What I would really like to do, and this, because of the long-odds against it ever becoming a reality, is more of a dream than an aspiration or ambition, would be to donate the largest proportion of any mega winnings from a Euro Lottery Draw to horse racing. I’m talking about the winning numbers that amount to one-hundred-million and upwards. You know, amounts that are obscene when others win them but might be not quite enough if you win yourself.
I would have horses in training, of course. Mainly jumpers but a few for the flat as well, though because of my age and my concern for how they would be looked-after after my death, I would limit my excess and put in place a trust fund for their after-racing lives. My main contribution to the sport, if the B.H.A. and racecourses allowed my indulgence and did not put obstacles and objections in my path, would be to raise the lowest levels of prize money on a day-to-day level.
I do have two pet projects I would insist on adding to the race calendar and would guarantee funding for three-years, hoping that during this period the races would prove their attraction to the public and trainers so that further sponsorship might be easily found in later years. The first of the omissions from the race calendar, as I believe, is a Ladies Race with a value of a £200,000 to the winner, making it the most valuable race of its kind in the world, run over a mile-and-a-quarter, restricted to professional female jockeys.
Of course, such a race is not as necessary as it was when I first thought of the idea but still worth pursuing as it will become the race all professional female jockeys around the world will want to win as, even now, the odds are stacked against the female jockeys winning or even featuring in, any of the classic races in any of the recognised racing jurisdictions.  A ‘Ladies Race’ worth six-figures to the winner, will allow female jockeys the opportunity to get on a far higher class of horse than, outside of Holly Doyle, is ever likely to come their way.
I dare say there are rules and regulations that will make bringing such a race to reality an uphill task, after-all, I am not suggesting a ‘Ladies Race’ should be either listed or Group class and definitely not a handicap but a weight-for-age conditions race on one of the less high-profile Saturdays during the summer months. I am though a stubborn man and will make it a non-negotiable condition of my largess that such a race comes speedily to fruition in the form I have outlined.
My second pet-project, and also its implementation will be conditional upon my grand gesture being honoured, is a 4-mile Champion Chase. I have long-argued that it is perverse, that a sport that has as its core steeplechases over what we term marathon distances, yet does not have a championship race over a similar distance. The National Hunt season has at the top of its sporting pyramid the Grand National, with the Welsh, Scottish and Irish versions centrepieces of the calendar in those countries, added to which both the British and Irish race programme has in its jewelled crown county and regional ‘Nationals’. It is absurd the 4-mile chaser does not have a championship race to align it with the 2-mile chaser, the 2-mile and 3-mile hurdler and the slightly less prestigious 2-and-a-half-mile chaser.
If the B.H.A. were to defer to my bounteous stipulations, I would then hand over a cheque for one-million-quid to improve levels of prize-money at the very bottom end of the racing pyramid. You cannot, as seems to be the thinking at the B.H.A., grow the sport organically from the top downwards. For good, sustained growth, the plant must have solid foundations, a healthy root structure. The one-horse owner, the small family partnership, the small breeder, are being left for dead, considered inconsequential to the survival of the sport, at least in Britain. There is an elitist leaning towards a ‘Premiership’ of racing, with little or no concern for the country racecourse, the small trainer/owner/breeder, historically the bedrock of the sport. I dream of righting the terrible wrong.
I am no mathematician; I have little idea how far a hundred-million will stretch and for how many years. Yet my dream should be the mirrored aspiration of racing’s movers and shakers, not the invention of more and more valuable races that only stretches to breaking point the quality of horses eligible for such races, rendering such races as uncompetitive and merely trials for races in the future . At the very least, the B.H.A. should have the aspiration for every meeting to have a highlighted race. It need only be worth ten or twelve grand but every card should have a main race of the day.
My dream is to raise the poorest level of prize money by four to five-thousand pounds. That’s all. If I ever won one-hundred-and-sixty-million pound that is what I would do with the money. I would try to save my sport. Oh, a more obtuse condition I would impose on the B.H.A. – I would insist on hand and heels racecourse trials to be implemented for professional jockeys, as some apprentice races are presently restricted. Just for the data and input it would provide as that too might help our sport to survive for another fifty-years.

​There is no getting away from it, with no amount of ‘no one man is bigger than the sport’ chanted against the tide of praise that can put the enormity of his decision to retire into any sort of context – flat racing, after one final season, is to lose its one and only superstar. The 2023 British flat season will be defined in racing history as the year of Frankie Dettori, and for that to be the case he will not even have to ride a classic winner or any of the major Group 1 races. Frankie Dettori is all set to leave the building. His shadow, though, will linger at all the racecourses he lit up throughout his stellar career.
Whether he is the greatest of the great flat jockeys is a matter of conjecture and personal choice. For many years I have dithered between Frankie being the best and Ryan Moore. In pure jockeyship skills there is not an atom between them, though if a gun were to be put to my head I would have to side with Moore as he is undoubtedly the more consistent of the two. Ryan Moore is bombproof, while Frankie can be rattled on occasions. Royal Ascot 2022 being a prime example.
In popularity amongst the public and, I would hazard a guess, his weighing room colleagues, Frankie wins hands down. The two are two sides of the same coin, one flamboyant and charismatic, the other dour and retrospective. Though, from what we are told, in private their roles as happy-go-lucky and straight-faced can be reversed. Ryan, it is said, has a great sense of humour. I wish he would go public with it, if only to confuse his interviewers. 
When submitting my thoughts to the B.H.A.’s whip steering group, I gave as evidence for my belief that ‘one hit and that’s it’ should be the way forward, the ride Frankie gave Enable when she out-battled Crystal Ocean in the King George & Queen Elisabeth at Ascot. As beautiful a ride as can be imagined, a prime example for all apprentices to try to emulate. One tap with the stick and then balanced harmony with his mount all the way to the finishing post.
There will never be another Frankie Dettori. We will only truly appreciate his contribution to the sport in 2024.

And now, more quietly than the extrovert Frankie, Davy Russell has hung up his saddle, winning on his final ride at Thurles, choosing a country course to announce his retirement, again in contrast to Frankie who intends to have his last British ride on Champions Day at Ascot in October 2023.
As with Frankie, Davy Russell lost none of his guile, skill or courage as he aged. At 43, at least to these tired eyes, he was as good in the saddle as he was twenty-years earlier in his career. In fact, given experience is never wasted on the older man, I suspect he may have been a better, more rounded jockey, as, perhaps, he was as a human being.
With Russell now gone from the Irish weighing room, the last of the brilliant cavaliers has ridden into history. Carberry, Walsh, Geraghty, Power, McCoy. The young lads following on have a gaping canvas to fill.
Russell’s greatest ride? Lord Windermere in the Cheltenham Gold Cup. The horse had no right to win jumping’s Blue Riband, yet somehow Russell conjured a stone of improvement in him, a horse that never before or after had the light of greatness upon him.
Finally, I will indulge myself with a poke at the trainer I hold in the highest of regards. Gordon Elliott recently claimed that Irish horses were better because their trainers did not ‘duck and dive’ like English trainers were in the habit of doing, with good horses, often from the same yard, taking each other on throughout the season. Paul Nicholl’s for one was not amused. Yet Gordon, with more than one Gold Cup horse in his stable, chooses not to send a horse over for the King George on Boxing Day. As it is with Willie Mullins, a man with twice the number of potential Gold Cup horses. And there is Paul Nicholl’s running all three of his potential Gold Cup horses.

​Henry de Bromhead’s statement that he might target Honeysuckle at the Mares Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival is a body blow for the sport. He has not positively said that the mare will not run in the Champion Hurdle but the implication is that he is seriously considering ducking the mouth-watering dual with Constitution Hill we were so keenly anticipating.
What is most frustrating about this bombshell is that the trainer, though disappointed the mare lost her unbeaten record, was encouraged by her performance, believing, as I do, that she may have run better in defeat in this season’s Hattons Grace than in any of her previous three victories in the race. If that is the case, and there is nothing deep-seatedly amiss with the mare, the indication must be that Honeysuckle is at the very least as good as ever, and will make a great leap-forward in fitness come the Irish Champion Hurdle in early February, or perhaps even a smidgen better than seasons past.
As I have said dozens of times, the owners and trainers of the top horses, flat and N.H., have a responsibility to the sport that feeds them and pouring cold water on all our expectations represents a disregard for the racing public and the sport.
The problem here, of course, is that damned Mares Hurdle. When the debate of the five-day Festival raged, the chief reason put forward by its detractors was the dumbing down on the spectacle of the best horses running against each other as owners and trainers sought to find easier opportunities of having a winner at the Festival. And, of course, the Cheltenham executive encourage the behaviour by allowing the best horses to run in lesser races. The conditions of the Mares Hurdle should exclude horses of Honeysuckle’s rating from running in the race, so to take away the temptation of pot-hunting by trainers and owners.
All we can hope is that Honeysuckle routs the opposition in the Irish Champion Hurdle and thereby forcing her connections to stick with plan A. She is the only horse capable of beating Constitution Hill or at the very least making a race of it with him. Without her, Constitution Hill will start a 1 to 4 on chance, making the race one of the most uncompetitive in its history.

Racing politics is very similar, it seems, to what comes out of Whitehall. The case for Friday/Saturday meetings in winter to change to Saturday/Sunday is logical and, to my thinking, unarguable. Those in the racing media who slanted the story by saying a) that a meeting set for the Friday should not be sacrificed for the sake of the Saturday or b) that the Saturday card might have needed to be abandoned even if the Friday had been sacrificed, were guilty of sleight-of-hand journalism. The point Richard Hoiles made, and one that I fully endorse, is that Saturday is by far the more important day’s racing to the sport than either a Friday or Sunday and that corporate business should not come before what is best for the sport itself. For the long-term good of the sport, we need young people attending race-meetings and that is more likely on the Sunday than a school day like a Friday. There is so much backward thinking holding the sport to ransom, so much holding tight to the strings of what’s gone before and ignoring what works in the sport’s favour in other countries, that it is almost as if certain people would rather go down with the ship than change course and set sail for new horizons.
And nothing exemplifies leadership-by-chance leadership than the fiasco that is going to be the new whip guide-lines. Why the jockeys have left it so late to air their grievances on the matter is a question only they can answer. And why the P.J.A., of course, were so in favour of the new guidelines when they were first announced is another question in need of an answer. Why the B.H.A. thought it sensible to have the bedding-in period so close to the Cheltenham Festival is an example of the sort of ignorant decision-making that holds the sport to ridicule. Of course, now the jockeys have shown their hand, the guide-lines will be put on the back-burner until the summer, of that I am certain.
I never expected my suggestion of ‘one hit and that’s it’ to be adopted, though in time it will become an option, but I did hope that whatever the options were they would all be trialled for set periods, as would happen in any scientific trial. Then, everyone would know which set of guide-lines worked best for the majority.
Another question in need of an answer is how much weight did Tom Scudamore and P.J. McDonald’s opinions carry on the Steering Committee. Not much, I would guess.

​There was, at least for me, a great sadness to the defeat of Honeysuckle in the Hatton’s Grace at Fairyhouse on Sunday as she not only lost a race she had won in the three previous seasons but she lost her chance to become the holder of the longest sequence of victories and taken the records of Big Bucks and Altior.
Yet, and this says a whole load about the competitiveness of racing in Ireland compared to Great Britain, this year’s renewal of the Hatton’s Grace was almost certainly stronger than the previous three and Honeysuckle might, just, have a run a better race first time out than in any of her victories in the race.
She is getting older and as any trainer will tell you, as racehorses age the more work it can take to get them to peak fitness. I doubt if she has ever been 100% straight for her first race of the season, with Henry de Bromhead’s horses always better for a run under their belts. And, apparently, the de Bromhead string are operating to only a 7% strike rate at present, which suggests he is yet to strike form. History tells us that when his horses start winning, they are a formidable force.
Unlike his main rivals in Ireland, Gordon Elliott and Willie Mullins, de Bromhead is more akin to the trainers of another age who used the racecourse to put an edge on their horses, with a promising run thought more important than a first-time-out success. Where Henry de Bromhead is similar to Willie Mullins is that he tends to allow himself to be hostage to repetition, what worked last season and season before always being the preferred option. If this remains the policy for Honeysuckle, we will not see her again until the Dublin Racing Festival in February and her connections, and us, will have this season’s Hatton’s Grace hanging over our thoughts for the next two-months. Henry de Bromhead knows Honeysuckle far better than any of us, of course, but I would be inclined to get her out over the Christmas period, if only to confirm she remains capable of winning a third Champion Hurdle in March, and in case she now needs an extra race to ensure 100% fitness come her dust-up with Constitution Hill.

The best winner over the weekend, excepting Facile Vega (why do Irish jockeys allow the Mullins hotpots uncontested leads?) was Edwardstone in the Tingle Creek. There was something imperious in his victory, looking to be going the easiest as far out as the Railway fences and brushing aside the opposition with the verve of a potential champion. I thought, in winning the Arkle last season, he was the best of a poorish bunch of 2-mile novice chasers; I was wrong. On his Tingle Creek showing, there is no way I can see Energumene beating him in March at Cheltenham.
As for Shishkin? Although all last season I was of the opinion he wanted further than 2-miles, after all he outstayed Energumene to win at Ascot, I cannot believe his, for him, poor effort in the Tingle Creek was due to having lost all his speed and become a 3-mile chaser since last March. Though having no knowledge of the ‘bone condition’ that struck him down last season, I am swayed to think the repercussions of the condition was the main cause of his laboured performance and that, sadly, we may have seen the best of him and that it is the downward curve to retirement for him. But then we all said the same of Sprinter Sacre and we will never forget the miracle Nicky Henderson pulled off with him.

I will finish with an old chestnut of mine. A few years ago, I wrote to the clerk of the course at Sandown and suggested that a long distance staying (Championship) race was missing from the National Hunt programme and that such a race would make startling contrast to the Tingle Creek. I added that I thought a run-of-the-mill regional ‘National’ was no attraction for a Grade 1 racecourse, when a conditions chase for staying chasers would be. In reply, I was told Sandown had ‘plans’ for the London National.
National Hunt is founded on staying chases, with the season still highlighted by such races. What there isn’t though is a championship race for such horses.