​The Affordability Check saga has raged now for something like far too long, with the same defence seemingly brushed aside with aplomb by the bad guys at the Gambling/Grumbling Commission. Yet today, in the letters’ column of the Racing Post, a letter from an Italian racing journalist, Carlo Zuccoli of Como, might have given racing’s generals a new combative weapon to trump government’s wish to control betting and racing, which is in-line with their aspiration to control everything and everyone.
As I have said, there is a gulf of difference between a bettor and a gambler. Yet Carlo Zuccoli has cut through that simplistic differential by defining the bettor as an investor, in-line with those who ‘bet’ far more substantial amounts of money on the stock exchanges. I hope, in time, that for his insightful contribution to this endless saga of control over freedom, Carlo will get to be carried shoulder-high, the Italian flag draped around his shoulders, from Newmarket to Epsom, from Epsom to Cheltenham, which will be enough heavy-lifting for all concerned. New light was needed to be shone on this subject and I will have my fingers-crossed for as long as it takes in hope messrs Ellis and Barber, Tom and Bill, to give their stamp of approval to this, crossed-fingers, remember, genius thread of hope.
In Italy, apparently, bookmakers are forbidden to promote their prices on any event, sporting or otherwise. As in Italy, as in Ireland, as, any day soon, in Britain, I suspect.

As someone who refuses to get involved in the warm weather crisis, knowing after research that it is as fictional as covid was the killer decease of allmankind, I rarely applaud the woke-sayers who stand in-line with all this ‘the seas are boiling’ claptrap. Yet I do applaud Jockey Club Estates initiative in restyling Newmarket Heath in replica of Chantilly by planting miles upon miles hedging plants and thousand upon thousand of saplings. The Heath may be the oldest training centre in the whole wide world (guess work) but it is also a habitat, the likes of which are becoming rarer all around the whole wide world. Newmarket Heath, as well as the other broad and windy sweeps of greenery across the country that provide trainers with the land to train their horses, as well as all racecourses, especially those that are now encircled by urban development, provide green lungs for both racing people and others and are in need of protection from the advances of the concrete jungle.

Aidan O’Brien is the greatest record-breaker of the 21st Century. Who could argue against such predictability? I have always wondered that should ‘the lads’ have a moment of gay abandon and buy a two or three-year-old out of a seller, whether Aidan could improve it up to heritage handicap standard? Perhaps Matt Chapman could suggest it to one of the ‘lads’ the next time he assails one of them in the winners’ enclosure at Newmarket, Epsom or Ascot.

Lorcan Williams is in the dog-house, and I suspect, given Paul Nicholl’s has publicly expressed his anger with him, that he would not find shelter on a stormy Ditcheat night even in a kennel, due to his ‘lack of professionalism’ in going three, possibly four, over the proscribed limit of seven-strokes at Newbury yesterday. What a woeful waste of an opportunity with both Harry Cobden and Freddie Gingell being injured at the moment. Given he is a longstanding professional who should know better, I suspect Williams might be in for a period of inactivity far longer than Paul Nicholl’s has predicted. I know it is something Nicholls and the majority of his colleagues will whinge over but disqualification should be mandatory for even one strike over the seven. It is the only way to limit use of the whip, the main reason people are put off our sport. The greatest priority for our sport at this time in its history is protection of the horse both as a partner on the racecourse and with aftercare when retired. The whip is an aid, not an accelerator pedal. The horse is flesh and blood, sentient like you or me, and very much unlike a motor-bike or motor-car.

If I could have one wish for 2025 – and this will change and change about, I have no doubt – is that the race programme becomes more flexible, with conditions for races more imaginative, with slightly less emphasis on betting turnover and allow for greater emphasis than now on trainers to find better opportunities to run their horses in the sort of races that will benefit the development of the younger horses. I would go with on a six-race card, five being for the ‘industry’ and the sixth being for the ‘sport’. I rest my case.

​Before writing this, I should, and I might, correct my mistake in yesterday’s blog, a mistake I repeated and no doubt repeated, though hopefully not again. I apologise to the connections, and to the horse, though he will not turn a hair as he is doubtless called something different by his handlers, for naming Crambo, Crampo. A man with little brain and even less memory really should not go public with his thoughts without the aid and safety-net of an editor.

Infuriated once again by journalists praising owners of potentially great horses who cowardly act in support of their bank balance rather than for the good of the sport. In his appraisal of the best 25 flat horses of the last 25-years, Julian Muscat said this of Sea The Stars, rated second in his list, begrudgingly, I got the feeling, behind the only horse who could have come top, Frankel – ‘set the standard by which any other horse aspiring to greatness must attain’.
Julian Muscat’s standard for applying ‘greatness’ to a horse must be far lower than the standard I apply. But first, Sea The Stars achieved a string of Group 1 wins that few in the entire history of the sport will ever achieve. But as John Randall would say, quantity is not the same as quality’. For 7-months, Sea The Stars was, undoubtedly, the best flat horse on the planet. In comparison, Frankel was the best flat horse on the planet for 24-months. For all he was a star both on the racecourse and by name, Sea The Stars was a hither-he-goes shooting star, while Frankel was as reliable as the planet Venus.
If journalists continue to apply greatness to horses retired to stud after only one completed season on the racecourse, a shooting star of 7-months, for example, they praise cowardice on behalf of connections, of personal wealth over what is good for the sport. We all know the ceiling reached by Frankel, though I personally longed to see him run over 12-furlongs, as he was campaigned without fear of exposing any weakness he might have. We will never know the ceiling Sea The Stars might have reached as his connections in exporting him off to stud, never rolled the dice and asked him to put his reputation on the line by attempting to give weight to the following season’s 3-year-old classic and Group 1 winners.

A while back, I wrote my thoughts – I do not review books – on David Owen’s ‘No Snail’, his book on the life of L’Escargot. Recently the author got in touch with me to explain the difficulties he was confronted with in writing the book. People who should have had a lot to say about the horse choose not to cooperate and other holes in the road that made his life more difficult than it should have been.
He was polite with his explanation when he could have been critical of me. As I replied, and as I doubtless wrote at the time – and, yes, I should re-read my thoughts after first reading the book but, as well as needing an editor, I need a secretary to make sense of my lazy and inexpert filing system. Yes, I cannot find my copy as I cannot remember how it was titled and there are over 1,400 documents in my document file – I was dizzy with expectation of the book. Firstly, I enjoyed, and recommend, David Owen’s book on Foinavon, and, secondly, I believe history is not being kindly written to L’Escargot as he is part of a small club of horses having won two Cheltenham Gold Cups and a Grand National, achieving the high honour of beating Red Rum in his own backyard in the race that will forever be thought-of as owned by the McCain’s greatest of horses.
And, I believe, it was the pricking of my aspirations for the book that might have resulted in being critical of ‘No Snail’. I might also have been down in the dumps at the time – I often am. So, I am giving the book a second chance. I have reached the point where L’Escargot is becoming a steeplechaser rather than a hurdler.
If you have not read ‘No Snail’, go find a copy and if you must, connect with this site to give me your appraisal of it. And if you have not yet read ‘Foinavon’, read it after you have read ‘No Snail’, as I think I would have been far less damning if I did not have the Foinavon book to compare it with.

​The term ‘he likes to be fresh’, so loved in previous seasons by Dan Skelton, still regularly used by Paul Nicholls and now taken-up by Fergal O.Brien about Crampo who is due to run at Ascot this weekend, I have to come to abhor. What does it mean? Has Crampo whispered the advice in O’Brien’s ear? Or is the trainer simply grasping at the standalone fact that Crampo won first-time out last season and performed poorly in all subsequent runs? If Crampo does not win on Saturday, is this a clear message it is not worth supporting him for the rest of the season as his longest rest will have been between his last run last season and his first this season? Tell me the name of a horse that only ran once every six-months and won every time? Because is a horse truly ‘likes to be fresh’ it would only run once in a long while and Crampo, for example, will be running between now and Cheltenham if he gets stuffed on Saturday and if does go to Cheltenham without a run since Ascot this weekend, if ‘he likes to be fresh’ proves to be correct, he will only ever run twice a season.
‘He likes to be fresh’ proved very wide of the mark with Protektorat and is more often wrong when Paul Nicholl’s uses the term to exude his confidence in his own ability to get ‘one ready first-time out’.
The other phrase that jockeys and trainers trot out to explain an unexpected reverse is ‘there was not enough pace in the race’, when the obvious ploy to counteract a slow pace was to inject speed into the race by making a forward move. If you could not win due to the slow pace, how could a jockey make things worse for his horse by going forward and injecting the necessary pace himself?
Also annoying, though there are mitigating circumstances, many of which we are not privy to be told about, is ‘there are no races for these horses’, especially, Mr.Henderson, when beginners and novice chases come around and you do not have a runner and do take advantage of these ‘hens’ teeth of a race’ by running more than one horse. Mullins will run four in a beginners’ chase without turning a hair, so will Elliott.

When will racing people, especially journalists, wake-up to the bleeding obvious that restrictions imposed on punters by a) the gambling companies or b) the Gambling Commission or c) the government, is all about control. Whichever way this evil nonsense plays-out, gambling will not be an act of free-will on behalf of the punters but at the consent of a governing authority. As with privately owned cars, natural extinction of the racing industry is being brought about by small increments. The frog has no idea it is about to be boiled alive!

Returning to trainers and the work of journalists. A large number of pages in the Racing Post is given over to the thoughtful genius of its form experts, and to what trainers have to say about their runners in the spotlighted races of the day. We hear little from Tom Segal or Paul Kealy, for instance, on the reasons their tips and naps went down the toilet the previous day. Nor are trainers asked the following day why the horses they ran in the spotlighted races did not perform to the standard they expected. As someone who is not a bettor, as a rule I skip over the tipping pages, though I might be persuaded not to if the previous day’s tips were not already in the bin and explanation or excuse were to be written so the dedicated punter had informed information to chew on. Negative data is still data, after-all.

​In today’s Racing Post, the grandee of racing journalists, the always reliable and informative Peter Thomas, was tasked with coming up with the best 25 National Hunt horses since the year 2,000. It was not an arduous task, I should imagine; rather akin to shooting fish in a barrel. Once he had decided to cull any horse to have won big races prior to 2,000, as with Hurricane Fly, it was simply a case of assigning numbers 1 through 5 and the rest could be assembled in any order. Who could say with any conviction whether Thistlecrack should be rated higher than Imperial Commander or Big Buck’s higher than Kicking King?
Obviously Kauto Star is number 1, in my eyes he would rank number 2 of my lifetime given a c.v. that even Arkle would envy. If it were not for the barren years when his heart weakened, my all-time number 2 would be Sprinter Sacre, mainly for the Barry Geraghty days when he was simply sublime but also for his always under-appreciated second-coming in 2016 when he retook his 2-mile crown beating the following season’s Ryanair winner, Champion 2-mile chase winner, as well as 2 previous winners of the Champion 2-mile chase.
Peter Thomas places Denman 3rd and that is to be respected. As with Sprinter, in his pomp Denman was the second-coming but, again as with Sprinter, heart problems stymied his career, as injury stymied Arkle’s. In my opinion, Peter Thomas’s opinion cannot be objected to.
One day I will explain to any young person, anyone under 50, why Arkle was by far the greatest racehorse of all-time and why his stable companion Flyingbolt might even be considered the second-best.

Patrick Mullins is riding in the first race at Catterick tomorrow, an amateur riders’ handicap chase, for Ryan Potter. Last week he rode a winner for Neal Mulholland and got a few winners on the board during the summer. Is he attempting to add a British amateur title to his multitude of Irish equivalents? Given all the juicy odds-on chances he rides for his father in Bumper races on home soil it might be considered a risk chancing his arm on quite ordinary horses trained over here.

A good time was had by all at Windsor yesterday, it seems. I must admit it was a joy to see jumping at Windsor again and hope it continues long into the future.
Wetherby have a few flat fixtures nowadays, as Windsor intend to have 3 or 4 jump meetings a year. It begs the question why other tracks that at the moment are either all-flat or all-jumps, do not make a similar leap. Worcester used to have flat meetings which were discontinued as they were not well attended by the public. Yet given they forfeit any number of meetings per year due to flooding from the nearby River Severn, could they not consider holding a few flat meetings or even mixed cards? Nottingham, too, used to stage National Hunt and stopped due to losing too many meetings due to waterlogging. But could they not stage mixed cards through the summer or even the odd jumps only fixture. Clerks of the courses need to look outside of the box they are restrained by. Flat races and hurdle races are held at the same meeting in Ireland, so why not in Britain? Windsor achieved their third-best crowd of the year yesterday when ordinarily the racecourse would be making no money throughout the winter.

After three-months absence through injury, today heralds the return of Rachel Blackmore. Naas is the place, I think, and her Supreme winner from last season Slade Steel is her first ride back. As modest as she is, she is box office and the only sadness is that no other female jumps jockey is anywhere close to being in her slipstream. In Ireland, she remains unique and that is not good for the sport. In Britain, we have a dozen female jockeys who ride regularly, even if none of them are anywhere close to achieving the success enjoyed by Bryony Frost. And by God, is she missed in this particular quarter of racing’s backwater!

​A little prematurely, perhaps, the main feature in today’s Racing Post concentrates of the views of 4 prominent racing folk on how the sport has changed in the last 25-years.
Firstly, it is mad to be reminded that 25-years have passed in what in reflection feels like no more than the wink of an eye. I suspect time passes more quickly for the old due to failing memory. Certainly, I can remember the Red Rum era in the mid-seventies with more ease than what happened in 2,000 or even the past few years. In fact, though I may not be able to remember facts like who won the 2023 2,000 Guineas, instinct insists that the main element of the past 25-years has been decline brought about by poor decision making by those paid large salaries to take care of the sport.
Too many all-weather tracks are, I believe, a leading contender for blame in the decline of competitive field sizes and the decision by the B.H.A. to pump money into the already big money races at the expense of the daily fare that is the bedrock of the sport, has led to inflated prices paid for yearlings and store horses. In all walks of life, I believe, you build from the ground up, not the reverse.
All that was needed from all-weather tracks was to fill in during those periods when the weather prevented turf racing. Two tracks, one in the north, one in the south, was all that was needed. Instead, all-weather tracks now operate 12-months of the year, even in high summer, with graded races included, a diversion that does nothing to boost attendance or promote the sport.
The sport has lost its way, perhaps in some way due to the ease in which the ignorant few can air their views within the media, with less people willing or able to afford to own a racehorse outright, with the sport now more than propped-up by syndicates and exploited by those with the wealth to own large strings of horses.
It will sound xenophobic, or to use the buzz word ‘racist’, to admit that the sport relies to a dangerous degree on staff from overseas, mainly Asia and the sub-continent, with fewer and fewer natives coming into the sport at the ground level. Good initiatives are out there to reverse this state of affairs and I hope young people can be persuaded to live the healthy life offered by working in racing stables.
In the past 25-years, people working at the cliff-face of the sport have been let-down by those running nearly every aspect of the sport. This must change and the change, I believe, must come from within. At the moment, the B.H.A. is struggling to find a replacement for Julia Harrington; why is it not possible for a council of representatives be formed from within the working ranks to search for and then recommend someone to run the sport as head of the B.H.A.? That would be the seed-change for a fresh new start to the next 25-years. Revolution or evolution from within.

I am not one for reading bloodstock reports, though I do enjoy James Thomas and his updates from his world in Sunday’s Racing Post.

Charlie Deutsch had to lose weight to ride Gemirande to victory in the December Gold Cup yesterday. His entire diet, including fluids I would hope, for the previous 3-days amounted to an apple, banana and a piece of salmon when he arrived at the course. Bonkers, yet heroic. Deutsch is a greatly under-rated jockey, perhaps one of the best over a fence. Venetia is lucky to have him as her stable jockey and Deutsch, as doubtless he would admit, is very fortunate that Venetia has never lost faith in him as both a man and a jockey.

The sadness of the weekend is that the career of Chianto Classico hangs in the balance, though not his life, thankfully. Kim Bailey is pessimistic that the horse can come back from slipping a tendon off a hock, though I believe it is not unheard-of. The name of the horse slips my memory but I am sure a good horse back in the day did return to the racecourse after suffering a similar injury. Chianti Classico is only seven rising eight, he has time on his side and has a good team around him to help him on his way to either a second way of life or, crossed-fingers, a return to the racecourse. In the past week Kim Bailey had talked about his star horse as both an Aintree National horse and a contender for the Gold Cup. That is how easily the glass and the dream can slip from one’s grasp. 

​In his column in the Racing Post today, the ever-excellent David Jennings makes a plea for racecourses to make a day at the races less boring. I now make the plea for a racecourse either in Ireland or Britain to give him the opportunity to prove his point by appointing him for a day to the position of director of operations, to lay on the sort of ‘never-boring day’ he believes the public expect from a day at the races.
I am not mocking him; he makes a sound argument for jazzing things up. He might find the challenge being one of balance, of not alienating the enthusiasts who attend for the betting and the thrill of the sport, while at the same time engaging attendees who resent paying good money for long periods of idleness and boring nothingness. 
High quality playgrounds for kids would be a great entry point. Get youngsters having fun while slowly bewitching them with the spectacle and excitement of horse and jockeys doing battle on the other side of the rails. Children, as the idle might say, are our future. They are not, of course. Adults are the future; adults must build a world that is all we, the elderly, the middle-aged and the youngsters, want it to be.
Music, yes, at the right moments. Experts corralled into a corner giving forth expert advice to those who want insights into what is to unfold through the day, a definite maybe. In fact, I applaud all the ideas for a less boring day put forward by David Jennings, including pony races, though, I suspect, he might want to put aside his ‘never again 30-minutes between races’ if he wants the ponies to entertain the public. Pony races are still races and require all the same formalities as the big horse races.
I truly would like to have David given the opportunity to put his ideas into practise and to discover how much it costs to host a day when the fun never stops.

In Ireland, at this time of year especially, the most interesting race at a meeting is usually the novice or beginners’ chase. These races nearly always attract a full field, even with Willie Mullins running two or three horses, all with graded form to their names. Today Asian Master, Majborough and Tullyhill all contest a beginners’ chase, yet the programme in Ireland does not allow other trainers go elsewhere with their lesser blooded horses. Novice handicaps are as rare as hens’ teeth in Ireland, yet in Britain they are the preferred option as, though I doubt the data would confirm this idea, they are a better betting medium.
Yesterday at Cheltenham, a prominent owner of Nicky Henderson’s bemoaned the lack of opportunities in this country for novice chasers, with her horse, having won a novice chase last time out, having to return to hurdles in order to get a run. It ran poorly; perhaps confused why after learning the craft of jumping the big-boy larger obstacles only to be returned to the smaller kind as if he had done something wrong the last time, even when winning.
Why would one of Ireland’s major owners, who can have their young horses trained by Mullins, Elliott, Cromwell or de Bromhead, where opportunities are easily found, send a similar horse to Nicholls, Henderson, Skelton or any of the Williams’, where novice chases are frowned upon. In the corporate world, or at  least outside of the racing world, there is something called the ‘Peter Principle’, where someone in an organisation is promoted to a position beyond his capabilities and remains there to make a bollocks of things for everyone else and who must navigate away around their ‘Peter’ just to get their job done with efficiency. It is the same at the B.H.A.. Someone thought novice handicaps were the way forward and he or she have not got the balls to admit they were wrong. It needs sorting and it needs sorting now. Oh, and sorry Nicky, but you have to get into the habit of doing what Willie does and run more than one horse in a novice chase when one pops up on your radar.

The Cross-Country races at Cheltenham are becoming favourites of mine when once I thought them rather needless. In fact, I would like another racecourse to invest in a cross-country course as they make a good substitute race for those horses who would in better days be considered ‘National horses’. As handicaps, these races give opportunities unfound anywhere else, and to those, including the letter writer in today’s Racing Post who believes the Festival ruined by the Glenfarclas being a handicap, a better opportunity at the Festival for older, former top-class horses, would be either a conditions veterans’ race or, as I have proposed a thousand times, a 4-mile Champion Chase. As things stand, the Aintree National is now restricted to top-rated horses and is no longer a true Grand National, rather than Red Rum-type ‘National horses’. To have the Cross-Country Chase as a conditions race is to remove another opportunity from the grand types who yesterday fought out a stirring finish to the Glenfarclas.

​‘We see so many yearlings sold for seven-figure sums of money, plus six-figure sums for National Hunt stores and ‘winners of one point-to-point’, and I cannot see that anyone might object to one or two-per-cent of that money going to a fund for the aftercare of retired racehorses. Surely as an industry, a small percentage of all sales of racehorses, including those privately brought, cannot be argued against when that money would do so much good for the sport as a whole. There is no greater priority for racing in Britain and Ireland than to generously fund the likes of Retraining of Racehorses (RoR) and Treo Eile.’
The above is the majority of a letter I wrote that was published in the letters column of the Racing Post a few weeks ago. Yesterday it was reported in the Racing Post that Tattersalls, Goffs and Thorough Bid had agreed to contribute £6 to RoR for every horse they sell, plus a contribution of £3 from each vendor and purchaser, thus £12 per horse sold by the three aforementioned auction houses.
Firstly, a huge round of applause to Tattersalls, Goffs and Thorough Bid for the speediness of their response to my letter. Look, as no one to my knowledge has proposed such an idea in the past, I am taking the credit for floating this proposal. No need for a round of applause as I have not contributed a penny towards the aftercare of racehorses, though if I am responsible for the three auction houses implementing ‘my proposal’, it is possible the first aspect of my life I can be proud of achieving.
Horse racing is blighted in Britain by each and every one of its stakeholders believing they are pivotal to the survival of the sport, when in fact if there were no thoroughbred horses, or indeed the people who own the studs and broodmares, we would have no sport. People forget, especially C.E.O.’s, that the sport is called horse-racing and the horse should be given priority in all regards within the racing industry.
Horses, on occasions, percentage-wise less and less, thank heavens, die or suffer serious injury in pursuit of our entertainment. It is the responsibility of all sectors of the sport to ensure funding is freely and generously available for their care after racing as well as veterinary research into all forms of injury, decease and illness never lacking the finance in finding cures that would help all breeds of horses all around the world.
Horse racing is a monied sport. Our leading owners, on both flat and National Hunt, are very wealthy people. I do not understand why bookmakers are not arm-twisted into donating a small fraction of their profits to an equine charity; the same with racecourses, media outlets that have contracts to televise British horse racing, and owners who win races with six-figure first-prize money mandated or volunteering 1% of their windfall.
It would display leadership if when asked how they would spend their half-a-million if they should win the David Power Jockeys Cup, messrs Cobden, Skelton or de Boinville, the most likely winners of the trophy, I believe, would think first of the horses who have propelled them to glory and mega-wealth by pledging a proportion of their half-million to the RoR or any of the equine charities in dire need of funds.
No other gesture anyone might think of would improve the standing of horse racing with the public – remember the ‘social licence’ – than for the message to be broadcast far and wide that the sport as a collective is busting a gut to ensure the funds are in place for every retired racehorse to have the opportunity of a lifetime of care, be that a quiet life in a paddock or trained for another equine discipline.
In this matter, the sport requires the sort of active leadership it has always lacked and which, regrettably, remains lacking.

​I may be in a minority of one but I like Matt Chapman, occasionally. What is irritating about him, speaking as one of the few who champion his cause, is that he is such a fine interviewer, and now podcast presenter, ‘Unbridled’, alongside Paddy Brennan, is his teenage-like necessity to always have the last word on any discussion. He may be a great authority on the subject being debated but that is no excuse for talking over people, interjecting when an opinion is expressed that he does not share and, as I have already said, always wanting the last word.
I could cite so many of his interviews that show Chapman at his very best, both as a t.v. presenter and, surprisingly, as a good human being, teasing out answers that enlighten but do not embarrass the interviewee, that counteract his frightful antics when in conversation with his I.T.V. colleagues. Of course, his employers must ask him to ‘liven things up’, as John McCririck was tasked to do when Channel 4 held the terrestrial rights to British horse racing. But as with MrCririck, much missed by so many, though not by me, he has a tendency to edge into juvenile extemporizing when he possesses the intellect and knowledge to drive debates forward, especially by allowing his colleagues to talk without interruption. 
Matt Chapman is good at what he does but he is so much more than a clown, and I.T.V. have Luke Harvey to fulfil that nuanced role, after-all. Yes, Chapman has an ego and yes, his antics may at times be cover for an intruder complex. But it is time in his career to take a breath and appreciate he is safe in the environment in which he works. If only he could be more consistently the best of the bunch and rid himself of the need to be always right. No one is always right when it comes to horse racing, as Ruby Walsh will freely admit to and he has no need, or desire, to prove himself the best. He just is.

Where Chapman is often wrong, as on Sunday, is not being able to recognise the achievement of a horse winning after a long absence. Energumene was having his first run for two-seasons. If he had finished second in the Hilly Way, which was still a possibility before Banbridge unshipped his jockey, it would still have been a meritorious comeback. I believe/cross hope Jonbon will win the Champion Chase at the Festival this season, yet it cannot be denied that the Hilly Way over the weekend was a far stronger contest than the Tingle Creek. It should not be, of course, given the Tingle Creek is a Grade 1 only lacking in stature over the 2-mile trip to the Champion Chase itself. And it was Energumene’s first run back, whereas Jonbon would be 100% fit at this stage of the season. I was impressed by Energumene. He looked wonderful and gave the impression in the winners’ enclosure that he had enjoyed his day out. That he will be eleven come March is no reason to doubt the capability of the horse to win back his crown. He has a good rest since when he was the Champion two-miler and that might stand him in good stead come March. All we need now is for Gaelic Warrior to prove himself top-class over the distance and for El Fabiolo to prove his trainer wrong by not wanting to go up in trip and we have the making for a Champion Chase for all the ages, as people now say with frequency even though it does not really add anything to the anticipation or state which ages, future ages, for instance, when even greater Champion Chases might be run. We anticipate greatly.

Not to have single-sex changing facilities on every racecourse is unforgiveable given how to boast about the sport being gender equal. Money may be tight, with prize-money given priority, yet Flutter has found a million-quid or more to share out between our top National Hunt jockeys. A million-quid, I suspect, would build four or five changing rooms, so why not approach the big gambling organisations to fund the building of ladies changing rooms, with the facility named in honour of the bookmaker whose largess has paid for it?
Or approach the major breeding operations and name the facility in perpetuity in their honour. The Juddmonte Building, for instance. The Dalham Hall Complex. Just an idea that could possibly add to the twelve racecourse who have provided our female jockeys with safeguarded changing facilities and can hold their heads high.

​Storm Darragh battered Aintree into submission yesterday, resulting in the abandonment of the Becher Chase meeting. In years past, having the Becher Chase taken from me would put a dark marker over the day, but on this occasion ‘was I bothered’? No. Before the Grand Sefton was moved forward in the season, the Becher used to be our first look at the Aintree fences since the previous season’s Grand National and it was the race I most looked forward to before Christmas. It was a race to spot a potential ‘National horse’; one to follow through the season and to back for the big race. Not anymore, sadly. Chianti Classico would have been of interest yesterday, though I was concerned a slog through heavy ground might take the edge off him for the rest of the season. Kim Bailey deserves another big race success before he had hands the reins to his loyal second-in-command Mat Nicholls, and in Chianti Classico he has such an opportunity. But with the neutering of the fences on the National course and the want of the Aintree executive to have ‘Gold Cup’ type horses running in their ‘Little National’, rather than true ‘National types’, the Becher Chase has been rendered irrelevant, and with small double-digit numbers each renewal, it has also lost its competitiveness. So, no, I was not bothered it was abandoned and hope it is not shoe-horned into its next meeting.

Jonbon is good. How anyone can knock a horse that has won 16 out of 19 is beyond me, with one of those defeats coming over hurdles to his lauded stable-mate Constitution Hill and the other when the excellent James Bowen could not get the hang of him at Cheltenham last year when Nico was injured. Though whether Jonbon can be mentioned in the same sentence as Sprinter Sacre and Altior, at least as how things stand at present, I am not so sure. The aforementioned pair both won Champion Chases and Jonbon must do the same this season to work his way up to the heights of Sprinter Sacre, Altior and I would suggest Remittance Man, who also won Champion Chases. And, of course, there were two Sprinter Sacres; the one Barry Geraghty had the pleasure of riding, the one who I believe was the best chaser since Arkle, and the one Nico had the pleasure of riding, the one who illness laid low for two-years and yet rose from the near-dead to win a very competitive second Champion Chase, my favourite race from any Cheltenham Festival. In Jonbon’s favour for legendary status is that if he were to add the Champion Chase to his already impressive c.v., he will most likely have to beat a better cluster of horses than either of Nicky Henderson’s more illustrious former champions needed to defeat. Personally, I believe this is going to be Jonbon’s year.

With Aintree’s abandonment, I.T.V. had a discussion with Nevin Truesdale about the Gambling Commission and all the vital nonsense it is involved in. This subject is out of the scope of my natural orbit but I will tell you something, the elephant in the room, if you like, that goes unmentioned by any of the great minds who talk and write about the Gambling Commission and the pressure on punters to provide financially sensitive and private documents in order to bet small or large.
In the same way farmers, especially the smaller farmers who produce meat, are being kettled into a position of unviability, the mandate of the W.E.F.’s ‘Great Reset’ involves removing all activities from the countryside as its long-term plan is to return farmland to the wild. Hence, long-term there will be no place for racecourses and what is behind, not so much the dictates of the Gambling Commission as they are simply conduits for plans that come from way above its pay-grade, the government’s prompting, is to undermine betting and gambling so that people move away from it organically so that horse racing becomes financially unviable and what it is seen as a natural extinction.

Davy Russell has a book out, just in time for Christmas. It is an autobiography, though as it is ghost-written by Donn Maclean, it is to my eyes half autobiography and half biography. Also, in today’s Racing Post, Davy does not sell it very well as he admits to not wanting ‘to annoy anyone’ and has left out what insiders of the publishing game would call ‘mud on the page’, the stuff that sticks in the minds of readers. A man who never shied away from controversy and doing things his way, now shy of telling his adoring fans the tit-bits they might long to know about.
Anyway, if that was Davy’s decision and not Maclean’s we will have to live with it as Donn Maclean will have to if he fought to get Davy Russell to spill beans and muddy some of the pages.
Will I buy the book. Obviously. It will be this year’s Christmas present to myself. I have Francome’s book, and Ruby’s, and A.P.’s, and Dunwoody and Scudamore’s book, and Geraghty’s – Francome’s and Ruby’s are treasures, by the way, and not to have Davy’s would be as stupid as owning five volumes of a medical encyclopaedia A through to T and refusing to buy the volume through to Z.

​It bothers me that, at least to either my memory or knowledge, that there is not a race staged at Aintree to honour the name of the founder of the racecourse, William Lynn. Not only did he ‘invent’ the race that came to be known as the Grand National’ but he also gave the world of hare coursing the Waterloo Cup, named after the public house where he was landlord. He gave the sport of National Hunt racing something far more important than Captain Martin Becher whose immortality is constructed around diving into a water-filled ditch to save himself from the hooves of his competitors. Becher’s greater act of bravery on the day was emerging from the ditch to catch his mount, Conrad, to remount and set off in pursuit of further glory, which he failed to achieve by falling once again at the next ditch. 
Captain Becher was the most celebrated cross-country rider of his day, yet the once most fearsome obstacle in the world is so-called for an act of self-preservation. Also, a fact omitted when the story of how the sixth-fence in the Grand National was come to be called ‘Becher’s Brook is that Captain Becher never again rode in the race. Now might be the time to change both the name of the fence, given it is stripped both of its notoriety and its famous brook, and the name of today’s feature race to better fit the history of the racecourse. William Lynn, perhaps.
I do not claim the National fences have become ordinary, though if you look back to the days when the steeplechase fences on the Mildmay course were miniature versions of the big black fences of the National course itself, you might achieve some perspective on why the great race has become a shadow of its former self.
The Mildmay course was altered to become similar to the fences at every other British racecourse as the ‘strangeness’ of the Mildmay fences stopped trainers from sending their better horses to Aintree and in order to increase the status of the 3-day Grand National meeting the decision was taken to remove the birch from the fence-tops. That decision was no doubt sensible; most decisions taken by the Aintree executive since that day have been regressive, to the point where the National – I refuse to use the word ‘Grand’ in its title – has become a) a woke parody of what the race used to be about, and b) a pile-up waiting to happen.
Why b? Reflect on last year’s race, which was, I admit, a fine spectacle, so many horses packed close to one another, jumping in unison, almost. Yet what if one of the leaders had refused or skewed left or right? What if a loose horse was running with the pack and decided to do a Popham Down. Look back at the 1967 race. The reason the pile-up involved all the field, bar one, of course, is because unusually a large majority of the runners who had lined-up were still in the race. The 1967 race might not have been a mirror-image of the 2014 race but it was similar enough to make my fears impactful. 
Also, in lowering the height of the fences and seeking to increase the quality of the horses taking part, as well as removing ‘the fear factor’, the race will only get faster; it is speed that kills. One year we will get good-to-firm ground, at least by the time the race is run, and then the clerk-of-the-course will need to erect ‘Speed Kills’ signs all around the course.
The first ‘Grand Liverpool Steeplechase – it did not become The Grand National until 1847 – was run on Tuesday 26th February 1839. It was for ‘gentleman riders’; four-miles across country. No rider to open a gate or ride through a gateway or more than 100-yards along any road, footpath or driftway. It was a cross-country race. It was a test of horsemanship and while one must accept that times and mores have changed since 1839 and some of the fences back then would have frightened even A.P. McCoy, I would have preferred it if instead of mutilating the Grand National to make it a National to pacify the ignorant woke who are impossible to satisfy as long as horse-racing exists, I would have preferred the race to have gone back to its roots and become a cross-country race with a slight fear-factor.
The Becher, when it was restored to the calendar, was supposed to perform the function of a significant Grand National trial, yet only 12 will face the starter today if the weather allows and only a couple of them have any chance of achieving a high enough rating come April to get the opportunity to run in the race. In its self-seeking efforts to preserve its ‘cash-cow’, the Aintree executive have rendered a dozen races during the season muffled and void as far as being trials for the race formerly known as the greatest horserace in the world.
I remain aghast and bereft at what has been allowed to be done to the race that on first seeing become love at first sight. Worst of all, in ceding control of the race to the woke-anti’s, Aintree have put the whole sport under even greater scrutiny, its future as unsecured as the firing of the first bullet in a war between right and wrong.