​The controversy I predicted over the sad death of Celebre D’Allen after his run in the Aintree National has now come to the fore. Obviously, though as someone who steers a clear passage from social media, how would I know, was initiated on X and other gobshite platforms for the ignorant to air their views and has now reached the more refined and reserved pages of the Racing Post.
The facts that have come to light is that the cause of death was not as a direct result of an exercise-associated episode. He had recovered from his exertions and his death was caused by bacterial respiratory infection, which though undetected from blood tests taken post-race, must have been, I imagine, lurking in the shadows, as it is when humans are incubating cold and flu viruses.
Michael Nolan has turned away from social media, not surprisingly, given the apparent abuse directed his way. He is said to be heartbroken by the death of a much-loved member of the Hobbs/White stable. He is also annoyed that people have accused him of something that did not happen, with even Scott Burton’s report on the incident in today’s Racing Post getting the time-frame wrong.
Celebre D’Allen had run a storming race, which should not be forgotten. He was a thirteen-year-old unconsidered outsider who had taken up the running at a stage of the race when only possible eventual winners were around and behind him. Two-out, Nolan thought he might win the Aintree National, a few yards from the fence he could feel the horse emptying. At that point most jockeys would have done what Nolan did, try to coast home as there is prize-money down to tenth-place. He popped the last and pulled-up. If he were not so distraught after the race he would have lodged an appeal against his ten-day ban, a ban that stoked the controversy. Celebre D’Allen did not collapse straightaway but a full 3-minutes afterwards– Nolan’s proximation of the time passed – time for Nolan to run up to where buckets of water were available. The horse was still standing when Nolan emptied the bucket of water over the stricken horse. The horse collapsed shortly afterwards.
Given they should have been aware of the firestorm of abuse and ignorance that would follow issuing Nolan with a ten-day ban, the stewards would have served the race and the sport to better effect if they have referred the matter to the B.H.A. so that all the facts were at hand before judgement was passed down. Instead, they threw Nolan to the wolves.

I am team Skelton. How about you? Skelton is though looking like the lamb in wait of the crocodile. 1/12 on to be champion before Aintree, Skelton is now second-favourite, with Mullins 1/4 on to retain his title.
In my opinion, and I thought this for many years, there should be two titles at stake, one for the most winners during the season and one for the most prize-money won. Doing the double might become a prize bigger than winning either category and become an accolade similar to a football team winning both the Premiership and the F.A. Cup. Mullins would never achieve the double as his form figures this season tells us. 29-winners from 143-runners as of today, with the majority of those 143-runners no doubt bringing home prize-money when beaten by a stable-mate at Cheltenham and Aintree.
Willie Mullins deserves to retain his title but I still want Skelton to hang-on. He has led the field for so long. If Mullins gets his head in front for the first time since he nabbed the lead off Skelton last season, it will be as heart-rendering as when Red Rum collared gallant Crisp yards from the winning post in the 1973 Grand National. Skelton has had more runners this season than Henderson and Nicholls combined, that is some effort, and it deserves its reward. Come on Team Skelton!

In his usual measured and inimitable way, Lee Mottershead has highlighted over the past few days the appalling facilities that jockeys must contend with at most of our racecourses. And if male jockeys have it bad, their female colleagues have it far worse. Jockeys having to use an exercise bike housed next to a row of urinals and female changing facilities the size of cupboards, are just two instances of what Mottershead has exposed.
By the end of 2026 every racecourse was expected to have separate changing facilities for female jockeys. Only fifteen have complied and of that number only York and Newmarket (July course) of our apex racecourses are on the list. Beverley, Brighton, Fakenham, Newton Abbot, Leicester, Musselburgh, Pontefract, Southwell, Stratford, Ripon, Taunton, Warwick and Worcester – take a bow. Applause, please. Not Ascot nor Cheltenham.
2026 has become 2030 as the new deadline, yet Ascot, as an example, boast of throwing hundreds of thousands of pounds to bulkup up prize-money for the Royal meeting.
Now she has retired, though in private she was actively attempting to get things done, Hayley Turner is now happy to have her voice heard on the matter. Hopefully she will continue to bang the drum on behalf of her former colleagues. 
I am always surprised by the cost of building even the smallest facility but if Fakenham can afford separate changing areas for females and males, plus a neutral valet space, how come Ascot, Cheltenham, Aintree and Newbury cannot? Jockeys need to be more pro-active. Perhaps stage a protest during racing. Invite the press or the public to view the spaces in which they, as supreme athletes, must prepare themselves for major aces. Mottershead has prepared the ground, now jockeys and their association must press ahead and start putting the feet of officials to the flame.

​I have already written on my thoughts on amateur riders and since then Patrick Mullins, I believe, has proved my point. Yet the more I consider the debate – it is a debate taking place in my head, not in the pages of the Racing Post – the more the differential between amateur and professional perplexes me. The whole thing with ‘amateur’ is that an amateur was always considered a gentleman, hence he is Mr. Bojangle, for example, whereas the professional was referred to by stewards as, Smith, Jones or Bojangle. John Francome took a stand against being referred to by his surname and would only reply to officialdom if addressed by his first name.
In earlier times, races were restricted to gentleman riders and anyone thought not a gentleman was looked down on. Indeed, if it were ‘proved’ that a winning rider was not considered a gentleman in society, disqualification was the order of the day.
Those days, of course, are, thankfully, long gone. Times change, the definition of ‘gentleman’ is no longer only ‘a man belonging to the landed gentry or nobility’ but also any man who is chivalrous, well-mannered and  honourable. Anyone who took part in sport was barred from earning money from his sporting endeavours. I would suggest that someone riding as an amateur receiving no fee is not in any sense an amateur if he or she earns their living from working at a professional racing stable and working alongside professional jockeys to whom he or she is considered equal in all respects.

At the advent of National Hunt, all jockeys were amateurs. Then the servants of owner/trainers were given the responsibility of riding in steeplechases, which led to some riders proving as capable as the leading amateurs, which eventually led to where we are now, with professional riders outnumbering amateurs on our racecourses.
I doubt if anyone would argue that Patrick Mullins and Derek O’Connor, to name but two of today’s leading amateur riders, are as competent in the saddle as the majority of professionals. In fact, to label either of them ‘amateur riders’ is almost derogatory given their level of professionalism and horsemanship. So why do we define riders as amateurs or professionals? Surely this is out-dated, a throw-back to an age long gone.
Due to the restrictions of his Irish riding licence Patrick Mullins is limited to less than two-dozen rides against professionals in any one season. This to me seems unfair, discriminatory, and perhaps a restraint of trade.
I believe all jockeys should be described under one heading, be that as rider or jockey, with the restrictions on their riding licence determining the type of race they can ride in.
For instance: I would have five categories of riding licence. Category 1 would allow someone to ride only in point-to-points. Category 2 would allow the licence-holder to ride in point-to-points, hunter chases and bumpers. Category 3 would allow the licence-holder to ride in all of the above, plus what are presently known as conditional/opportunity races. Category 4 licence-holders would be allowed to ride in all races outside of the defined National Hunt Championship races and the Aintree National. A Category 5 licence-holder would be able to ride in all races on a racecourse, and in point-to-points, except races restricted to conditional/opportunity riders. 
If this system was in place today, the likes of Patrick Mullins and Derek O’Connor would qualify to be category 5 licence-holders. O’Connor would still be able to ride in point-to-points and Mullins would still be able to ride in bumpers. If bumpers in Ireland were still to remain the domain of ‘amateurs’ or category 2 licence-holders as I would term those riders, perhaps a category 5 licence-holder would not be permitted a fee for riding in such races.
It seems unfair and invidious that ‘amateurs’ can ride in the same races as ‘professionals’, take the same risks, risk the same life-threatening injuries, and can display the same ability in the saddle, yet not receive a fee for their efforts, and in the case of Mullins and O’Connor do not have the benefit of claiming an allowance even though they are ‘amateurs’ in a professional sport.
We have grown-up with the concept of amateurs in our sport. We accept the concept, even though it has grown increasingly absurd to believe our top ‘amateur’ riders are anything but professional. Not that long ago someone working full-time for a trainer, as is the case with Patrick Mullins, would be considered professional and would not have been allowed to purport to be amateur. I would argue that Patrick Mullins is every bit as professional as Paul Townend and Danny Mullins and that he earns his living from working alongside them in a professional sport. The concept of ‘amateur’ should not be redefined but erased. 

​If we lived in a picture-perfect world, all animals would live carefree lives, there would be no predators for them to worry about and every human-being would cheerfully uphold their responsibility to all living creatures.
I believe that in the racing industry, both in racing stables and studs, that in the whole of humanity racing people come closest to upholding the last clause of my opening paragraph. We, as racing people, are not 100% perfect and some of us ignore our responsibilities toward the animals in our charge. They are by far the minority, thou they cast their shadow over all us all.
It both pains me that a racehorse may lose its life while on active duty and yet I also accept that ‘these things happen’, and I believe, or perhaps hope, that the contract between horse and man is kept if in life the deceased horse has been well-cared for and has known the love of humankind.
Celebre D’Allen lost his life three-days after running such a fine and honourable race in the Aintree National. He was thirteen and had not raced since the onset of winter. His death will be controversial, even within the racing family. Michael Nolan was suspended for 10-days for failing to pull-up when, in the view of the stewards, the horse had no more to give. In the view of the stewards, sadly they may have a point, the horse was galloped to death. I hope I am way off the mark with this statement and I certainly hope that if an autopsy is carried out an underlying medical condition will be discovered to explain Celebre D’Allen’s death.
Of course, at the back of my mind, though I hesitate to admit to it, is the suggestion that Aintree did not deserve another equine fatality.

Is Willie Mullins and his all-conquering Closutton stable good or bad for the sport? Firstly, Willie Mullins, and I have never met him or likely will, is by all accounts a gentleman, with no sign of boasting about his extraordinary achievements. Everyone likes him, even those whose great success he is eclipses season after season. And he is no overnight success. He has worked long and hard to get to the summit of the sport. He is a good man and no one should bear him a grudge for being the best there has ever been.
He is where he is because he does everything in the right manner. If a horse needs time, boy does Mullins give them time. And he surrounds himself with expert opinion, even though come the hour he makes his own decisions, very often at the very last minute available to him. And he is right more often than he is wrong. I suspect the genius may not necessarily be the man himself but the team around him.
Although I agree it is up to his rivals to improve their own results in order to bridge the divide between Closutton and themselves, for the good of the sport, at least in the short term, my proposal of limiting any one trainer to a maximum number of horses he or she can train in any one season should be seriously considered. When I first considered this option, I was more thinking of spreading the workforce around so that all trainers had the scope to have a full compliment of experienced staff. If a trainer was forced to reduce his or her numbers down to say 125, a trainer would be forced to lay-off a few members of his or her team, allowing them to be snapped-up by smaller trainers in need of experienced staff. Now I believe it would help spread the good horses and the wealthy owners who can afford those horses to a wider network of trainers.
That said, one can only be awe of the ever-expanding list of achievements attached to the name of Willie Mullins.

Then there is the other great talent bearing the name Mullins, Patrick. The best amateur rider in National Hunt history and, to my mind, a writer to equal the very best the sport has ever known. He is already alongside the likes of Lord Oaksey and Alastair Down as a writer, in Patrick’s case in as few words as is possible, with the fluidity of thought to take the reader straight into the heart of any subject he writes about. Read his piece on how he won the National in today’s Racing Post and tell me my enthusiasm for his writing is misplaced, if you can.
As a rider he is the equal of most of the top professionals and to use the term ‘amateur’ to describe him is almost derogatory. I know he would miss out on all the bumper horses that give him the bulk of his winning total but why not turn professional. Yes, his weight would prevent him from riding in a large number of the day-to-day races but on the other hand why not be paid to ride in races against professionals, especially when he would not be limited to the small number of rides against professionals as he is in Ireland by the terms of his amateur licence.
Anyway, as I wrote yesterday (or was it the day before?) I would do away with the amateur licence and just term everyone who rides over jumps, including point-to-points, as riders.
I wonder if his father will now keep Patrick on Nick Rockett or will Paul Townend pull rank on him? I suspect Nick Rockett might be trained for a crack at the Gold Cup next season, which would leave the door open to keep the partnership intact, and who is to say that Patrick Mullins will not add a Cheltenham Gold Cup to his exemplary c.v.?

​You hear it said that ‘I would not want to be a starter’, giving the impression to the uninitiated that starting a horse race is the equivalent of being a brain surgeon. I imagine being a jockey is far more technical and skilful than lining up horses, waving a flag and pressing the go switch.
And no, I do not think being a jump jockey is harder and more skilful than being a flat jockey. Both have their separate skill-sets and problems to overcome. Jump jockeys obviously get injured more often than flat jockeys, though when the latter are splattered their injuries can be more severe.
I would like to provide statistics on how many flat and jump jockeys have died as a result of injuries sustained on British racecourses during the past fifty-years but when I entered that query into the search engine, the majority of articles were about how many horses have died. Something fishy about that, would you not agree?
In some ways flat jockeys are being tasked, on occasions, to deal with impossible to control situations. In the main, horses that run on the flat, two-year-olds and late maturing three-year-olds, can be too immature and lacking in the necessary strength to run straight for 5-furlongs let alone gallop round a bend and run straight as a gun-barrel in a head-bobbing, whip-wielding finish. To keep a 17-hand three-year-old galloping in a straight line requires strength in the saddle and a longer leg than jockeys ride at these days. How Holly Doyle achieves what she achieves being so slight and short amazes me. Though she is a force of nature and the horses she rides seem to know it.
But to get to my point. Flat jockey Adam Farragher has lost his appeal against a 7-day suspension imposed by the Kempton stewards for failing to ride-out for fourth-place. The stewards believed that Farragher had stopped riding with vigour four-strides from the line. Farragher in his defence said he had not eased-up and that his mount was very tired due to him hanging and pulling hard during the race. He also said that in his previous run he had troubling pulling the horse up at the end of the race and travelled a furlong passed the winning post before he gained control over the horse. He also said, and I thought this could have been verified through either video footage of the race or by someone of authority who was close to the exit shute, that the horse was ‘blowing very hard and looked distressed’.
I am not taking sides. Farragher perhaps infringed the rules on riding out to the line, perhaps there were mitigating circumstances. The point is, if we believe his testimony, that he acted in the best interests of his mount and to avoid a dangerous situation occuring, and it was not as if his actions made the difference between first and second-place, we should applaud his horsemanship not hauling him over the coals. His horse was tired, and after pulling and hanging for the best of seven-furlongs, I suspect Farragher was equally as fatigued and I dare say in his weakened state he was rightly concerned the horse might barge into another horse and perhaps cause a fall or pile-up. It happens, even on the flat.
Contrast the Farragher case with the 10-day suspension given to Michael Nolan after the Grand National for failing to pull-up Celebre D’Allan when the horse was, according to the stewards, in no fit state to continue. Nolan did pull-up the horse after jumping the last fence, hough whether he was instructed to by a vet or steward or he did so of his own volition I cannot say. And the horse was treated by vets on the course, in view of the public – not a good watch for the sport - delaying the start of the next race. Farragher, he believes, acted in the best interests of his horse, whereas Nolan, for whatever reason, did not act in the best interest of his horse. If guilty, Nolan, in my opinion, was perhaps lucky to get away with only a ten-day suspension. Farragher on the other hand, should have been given the benefit of the doubt instead of depriving him of earning a living for a week.
It is all too easy for stewards, and social media bloodhounds, to criticise a jockey for this that and the other, when they have no experience of the job jockeys do day-in, day-out. Let me ask this of the Kempton stewards and those on the disciplinary panel: did any of you contact the trainer of the horse in question to ask after the condition of the horse? What if the horse never runs as well again? What if the horse has a heart condition? What if the horse was in the throes of a medical or physical condition that explained why he hung and pulled that day? If horse welfare is as important as is stressed time and time again, why do the interests of the punter seem so often to come before the possible welfare of the horse?
Jockeys make mistakes, honest mistakes with neither malice or gain involved. Stewards, too, make errors of judgement. We all make mistakes. Yet unless that mistake has legal consequences none of us are hung out to public ridicule as jockeys can be.
Jockeys can lose more than 7-days-worth of pay through suspensions. In the next 7-days Farragher might have sat on a horse that goes on the course of the season to become a ‘superstar’ and it will not be Farragher who will be sharing the glory, it will be, most likely, the recipient of Farragher’s misfortune. Bans can be appropriate, but fines would be a fairer method of applying justice. If it is proved in the coming months that Farragher was correct in what he told the disciplinary panel, his fine can be refunded, his reputation reinstated. 

​The best sight of the weekend was seeing Broadway Boy walking into the horsebox to begin his journey back to the Cotswolds. It was with some relief, I can tell you, when I heard that he had survived his awful fall at Valentines. It is also pleasing to hear that Celebre D’Allen is on the road to recovery, though I wish we could be told exactly what the problem was with the horse.
Although I fully understand why the majority of racing people are content with the changes to the race as no one wants to see horses put into unnecessary danger, though I will never agree that lowering the number of runners makes the race ‘safer’ for horse and jockey, given that anyone who agrees with that progression can only believe that if 34 is safer than 40, then 30 must be safer than 34. I wish that everyone would agree to admitting that the Grand National is no more and that what we have is a replacement race that saves the cash-cow from extinction. Also, during the season there are a multitude of races for the top handicappers. The Grand National used to be a race that gave the not so good handicappers a chance of immortality and it is this aspect that I mainly grieve for.
It was great to see Nick Rockett looking so spritely out in a paddock on Sunday morning. He also looked pleased with himself, and so he should.

In the ‘Another View’ portion of today’s Racing Post, Peter Thomas explains – I hope Matt Chapman reads it – why horses and jockeys who get things wrong, as in falling off at the last or a horse falling when looking like the winner, are not unlucky. They have failed to get the job done, as Constitution Hill has done the last twice. I agree with the wily and wise Peter Thomas. You simply cannot compare the achievements at the moment of Constitution Hill with what Night Nurse, Persian War, Sea Pigeon, Sir Ken or Monksfield accomplished. In time, perhaps. But not now.

Sad to see the retirements of Alan Johns and Nick Scholfield, two fine jockeys and assets of the sport. The former is going into the media industry and the latter is to embark on a training career. The good thing is that both of them will remain in the industry.

This leads me into how the sport needs to promote itself. As someone who is from a working-class background and who lives a long way outside of any of our racing hotspots, with no one in my sphere of influence who cares one jot about the sport, I can assure anyone reading this that the general public’s perception of our sport can be summed-up in two words – Royal Ascot.
The horse racing industry may be underpinned by the wealthy and the fabulously wealthy but at every other level this is a working-class sport as for anyone to be successful at the highest or middle-level they have to work their socks-off. This sport should not be defined by Royal Ascot but by Bangor-on-Dee or Redcar.
Firstly, we must demonstrate how well horses are cared-for in the sport, the retired as well as those who remain in active service. Jockeys must be seen as horse-lovers and horse-carers and we should stop using a mega-horn as if somehow seven-figure purchase prices elevate the sport above all other sports. Money, money ,money, when it is going in the opposite direction to most of humanity, is like Queen Antoinette telling the poor to eat cake if they cannot find any bread to eat.
People like Alan Johns, who already promotes the sport on social media, are key. Positivity, fun, love and care, are what needs to be promoted, not expensive millinery but the horse first, second and last. The horses are both the bread and butter of the sport and its cherished stars. And in this world of hardship for so many, prize-money must be capped so the majority do not get to believe that the big money only goes to the elites. It is all about perception. Royal Ascot does not represent what this sport is all about.

It is also not good on the eye if the sport is dominated by one jockey, one trainer or one owner. After training the first three, plus the fifth and seventh, in the Aintree National, Willie Mullins had a 1, 2, 3, 4. 5, in the Grade 2 novice hurdle at Fairyhouse on Sunday. One can only stand in awe at the achievements of Willie Mullins but for someone on the outside looking in, it is not a good look.

Patrick Mullins is not an amateur in any sense of the word. He is a classy rider, as proved on Saturday, as are so many amateur riders at the moment, especially in Ireland. Is it not time we ditched the amateur category and just differentiate jockeys by the class of riding licence they hold? Some riders might have a licence that restricts them to point-to-points, others a licence which would allow them to also ride in Hunter Chases, bumpers and amateur races, with some having a licence which allowed them to ride in conditional or opportunity races as they are called in Ireland. While the likes of Patrick Mullins and Derek O’Connor, to name but two, would be allowed to ride, and to be paid, to ride alongside professionals, but only when they ride against professionals, their opportunities limited by their weight, their licence would allow them to hop between point-to-points and the professional side of the sport. Obviously, riders who hold a professional licence would also be allowed to ride in point-to-points if they wished.
I cannot see how Mullins and O’Connor can be termed ‘amateur’ when their ability in the saddle makes them the equal of our top professional riders.

​Although I.T.V. cannot really be faulted for their coverage of yesterday’s Aintree National, I did find it wearisome and annoying when they constantly interrupted coverage of the horses in the parade ring and on the way to the start to show glammed-up race-goers, trumpeters (why) bookmakers and pointless interviews with connections. I want to get an understanding of how the horses are taking proceedings, whether a horse is sweating or jig-jogging, the sheen of its coat.
I also dislike the fourth, third, second, procedure that comes before presentation of the trophies to the winning connections. They will be handing out bronze, silver and gold medals soon, just to give the ceremony an air of Olympiana.
If you believe in the warm weather crisis, you will no doubt believe that every Aintree National till the cold weather crisis is announced will be run under clear skies and a sweltering sun. It was warm yesterday, though I doubt the temperature rose above 20-degrees, which is far from hot. I do feel though that the needs of the media are being put before the much- proclaimed welfare of the horses. The ground was safe yesterday, though whether it was good or good-to-soft only the jockeys can say, and no amount of water sprayed on to the track the evening and night before will prevent good-to-soft drying out to good by mid-afternoon, especially if there is the sort of hooley blowing as there was yesterday.
Traditionally, as least when the B.B.C. televised the race, off-time 3 pm and I believe we need to go back to an earlier start time as a precaution against artificially watered ground drying out to the point where there is no soft in the description as the race being run.
The race itself. Unlike last year, the race rode more like a National of old, with the runners spread-out and with a few thrills and spills on the way round. I was concerned after the race for the well-being of Broadway Boy who took a bad fall at Valentines after jumping for fun until that point. Tom Bellamy ended-up in hospital and I feared worse for the horse, believing he had suffered a broken back, which proved not to be the case. He walked into the horse ambulance and I will have my fingers crossed for him until I receive better news than he is being accessed.
I also feared for Kandoo Kid as I thought he was lame when he rose to his feet after falling at the fence before Bechers. It might be he was caught-up in the reins and he did look sound when Harry Cobden led him off the track.
The 13-year-old Celebre D’Allen, off the course since November, ran a stormer, in the front rank between the third and second-last until running out of steam and eventually being pulled-up after the last. He, too, was being assessed by vets on the course, causing the following race to be delayed. He also walked into the horse ambulance. Again, crossed-fingers for his speedy recovery.
The race itself: I was left empty rather than exhilarated at race end. Patrick Mullins winning for his father was a brilliant result and I cannot wait for how Patrick describes his day when he puts pen to paper for the Racing Post tomorrow. The wind, though, was sucked out of my sails by the Closutton domination. Magnificent achievement, obviously, to train the first three home, an achievement never achieved in the 176-year history of the race. But to run six-horses and have five of them finish in the top seven is a clear example of how the democracy of the race is now replaced by the elitism of the super stable.
As with most of the experts, I got most things wrong in my pre-race thoughts on the race. I did get Intense Raffles right as he disliked both the ground and the fences, and after watching his school over a ‘national fence’ on the Curragh, where he jumped high rather than slickly, I was not surprised.
I also suggested that Paul Townend might choose Nick Rockett over I Am Maximus, Nick Rockett being, in my poor summation, the best of the Mullins horses, when in fact he was one of five who were best of the entire field, with one exception, Iroko.
Hyland never got into the race. Hewick gave it a good go and I just had the suspicion that over this extreme trip he might have preferred slightly more cut in the ground if only to have slowed-up the Closutton contingent. Bravemansgame loved the place, only to run out of stamina entering the straight.
Iroko (also Three Card Brag) is obviously the horse to take out of the race when it comes to thinking about next year’s renewal, though the line of travel suggests that tipping any British-trained horse is a waste of energy, as would be any horse not trained by Willie Mullins.
It is said that life is cyclical and what goes around eventually comes around. Personally, I cannot see the Willie Mullins domination of the sport ending any year soon.
Oh, one thought of mine that has proved disappointingly accurate was my warning that Dan Skelton was not necessarily home and hosed for the trainers’ championship. After the National, having won the bulk of the prize-money, Mullins is only a little over £100,000 in arrears and unless Skelton gets himself on the money-train over the next few weeks all the Closutton maestro has to do is win either the Scottish National next weekend or the old Whitbread and the fat lady will be singing arias outside Willie’s bedroom window in a few-weeks time.

​The Top Novice Hurdle, sponsored by Trust-a-Trader, at Aintree yesterday, proved beyond all doubt that the best procedure for starting a horse race is to line-up the horses within whispering distance of the starter. The evidence, my lord, was right there before our very eyes. The jockeys lined-up, the starter whispered ‘now, my sweeties get going ready or not,’ he flicked the switch, the tape went up and the race was off to a fair and just start. No swearing, no complaints.
Compare, my friends, to the start of the Topham.
I rest my case.

You may well be of the opinion that the Mildmay novice Chase – I will not attempt to give it is full title as it the length of this aside – that the race fell apart when Dancing City fell, brought down his stable-mate and brought Handstands to a stand still, and you may not rate Jordans as highly as his connections, but I thought Caldwell Potter was impressive again. At Cheltenham it was his jumping that caught my eye. At Aintree it was his heart. You can add ‘battle’ to his prime attributes of jumping like a bunny and his ability to gallop full-steam-ahead. I love him, and not just because he has proved my judgement worthy. I said from the very start of his chasing career that he was not a 2-miler but a stayer. Whether he is a true Gold Cup horse is open for debate. But if he has a good summer and comes in next autumn a stronger horse and his feet stop giving problems, he might be a King George horse, though I doubt he would have the speed, though the better ground normally found at Kempton on Boxing Day would be right up his street. And Cobden was wrong for a change; Caldwell Potter does have Grade 1 class. He proved that yesterday.
The race may have fallen apart for Jonbon in the Melling, though less so than the Mildmay and if Nicky Henderson has a problem called Constitution Hill, then Willie Mullins has a similar problem with a horse called El Fabiolo. Although the former, I believe, should now go novice chasing, it might do El Fabiolo good, in the short term, to have a spin over hurdles. And with both I would make the running. I also wonder if going 3-miles over fences might help El Fabiolo’s hit or miss jumping style.
As for Jonbon. The King George would be intriguing for him next season, though I cannot believe Nicky Henderson deciding to that route. I would certainly give-up on the 2-mile Champion Chase in favour of the Ryanair next season, especially if Fact To File is given the chance of winning the Gold Cup. I would like to see Jonbon tackle the 3-mile Bowl at Aintree next season. He has his knockers but who would not want to own Jonbon, a horse unbeaten everywhere bar Cheltenham. The facts do not lie. Or is that the camera never lies?

Now, there is a race today that we would like to think will stop the nation. My initial response when the weights for the Aintree National were first announced was that Intense Raffles would likely be the winner. He is reasonably weighted at 10st 10Ibs, jumps well and should almost certainly stay the distance. 
Now, I am much better at sighting the winner of the Aintree National, especially when it was a grander race, than I am at actually winning money at the race. Rule The World was the real sickener. I had the race down to five-horses, with a view to backing four of them. Yes, due to the perfectly reasonable reckoning that horses that have never won a chase do not win around the National fences, I crossed out his name. Seagram was the other non-winner for me. Due on this occasion to work taking longer than anticipated to get finished and given the distance I lived from a betting shop – well, you know the rest.
My reason for stepping away from Intense Raffles is the ground. If you believe he will be equally suited to good ground as he is with soft ground, stay loyal. He may only win once on good ground and today may well be that day. I though will remain with the idea of the miracle of never-has-won-a- national-of-any-sort Nicky Henderson training an Aintree National winner. Hyland to win from Hewick and Bravemansgame. Proper experts try to name the first four home but I find it too exhausting to come up with three from the 34, so I will leave the complication of the fourth one home to everyone else.

This day used to be my ‘holy day’, a day beyond all others. And though I may give the impression my life has been cut in half by the neutering of the race, by removing the romance and sheer derring-do from the race, National Day remains, for me, the best day of the year. It is simply not ‘holy’ in the revered sense anymore. As always, my main hope for the day is that every horse running in the race returns home to its stable. I want that more than visiting the local bookmaker to pick-up whatever small amount I won on the race.

​Apparently, in the aftermath of Constitution Hill starting his sequence of hitting the deck, the great but not the greatest horse was espied by Barry Geraghty jumping one of Cheltenham’s steeplechase fences. Was he making a statement to his trainer that he wanted to try his hooves at the big boy’s game?
Geraghty, in a gesture of wanting to be helpful, suggested to Nicky Henderson that it might help Constitution Hill concentrate his mind more fully on the race at hand if he were to be schooled over fences. It seems since Cheltenham Nicky has tried everything bar schooling the horse over fences, which suggests, given the horse has fallen again in the same way he contrived to get himself on the floor the previous time, that schooling over fences could not possibly make the problem worse even if it does not make things any better.
What I took from the interview with Nicky Henderson after the race yesterday was that Nico de Boinville thought they should proceed with their plan to go to Punchestown ‘as the hurdles over there would suit the horse better than the English versions’. That statement suggests to me that the problem will not be easily solved if the problem is the English-style hurdles. As always, I hesitate to put forward my solution when Nicky Henderson is so often proved right in whatever approach he decides to take to any difficulty, but if I were to be asked my opinion, I would suggest not running at Punchestown in favour of an extensive period of schooling over fences as preparation for a chasing career from next season onwards. The horse was bought as a prospective chaser, Nicky Henderson said after his first win over hurdles that ‘he was a chaser in the making’ and if they opt-out of fences for Constitution Hill now he will never get the chance to attempt to achieve what he was bought to achieve. Yesterday he had what might be described as a thundering fall that might well have killed him. I am not saying that risk will be lessened by going chasing, but once a horse begins to fall on a regular basis, and 2 out of 2 is the making of a regular occurrence, the confidence of the horse will lapse and the confidence of the jockey in the horse will go, too.

Did Richard Hoiles say ‘the next fence is the Chair’ or words to that effect during the Foxhunters? I may have missed him mentioning the approach of the Chair fence as I do not have great powers of concentration. But if he did not, is this another indication that the Aintree fences have lost their identity? Of all of the iconic fences at Aintree, the Chair is the only one I have had any problem with, and that is more in mind with the Foxhunters and the Topham where it comes too early in the race for jockey and horse to have collected themselves into a nice, steady rhythm. The height of the fence is not the problem but the length. Whereas the third fence, Bechers and Valentines are wide enough to accommodate the Charge of the Light Brigade, the Chair is the same height but much narrower, with less space for manoeuvring to find space or the perfect stride. Yesterday only the easily likeable David Maxwell came to grief at the Chair and it is not a rarity these days for every horse, even in the National, to scale its summit without incident.
I just think if commentators are no longer naming the iconic fences in the course of their work it is a clear indication that Aintree has lost its reputation as the hardest test of both steeplechaser and jockey.

The Grand National of my birth was in 1954. Oh, an interesting fact that I hope visitors to this site were, as I was, unaware is that the Mildmay course at Aintree, named after the popular amateur rider Lord Mildmay-White, the man who introduced the Queen Mother to the sport, was first used in December, 1953.
The 1954 renewal of the race was staged on March 27th, 19-days before I came crying and screaming into this world. I no longer cry, though I often scream, especially at starters for the pathetic procedure they employ for starting a horse race.
The race provided Vincent O’Brien with the middle leg of his incomparable record of three straight Grand National victories, started by Early Mist and completed by Quare Times. Royal Tan scrapped home by a neck from Tudor Line. There were 9-finishers.
There were only 29-starters in 1954. 3-fell at the first and another 3 at the second. So much for fewer runners providing a safer race! Worse was to follow. Of the 29 only 25 arrived home afterwards. 3-horses, the favourite Coneyburrow (ridden by Pat Taaffe), Legal Joy and Paris New York suffered fatal injuries from their falls and Dominck’s Bar dropped down dead at some point.
I merely researched the 1954 Grand National as it was the year of my birth. A stab in the dark, if you wish. Yet here, I take no pleasure in reporting on equine deaths, especially at Aintree, is evidence that field size does not have much to do with equine fatality. 4 dead out of field size of 29. Yet in 1929, when no less than 66 faced the starter, they was only 1 fatality and in 1947, when 57 started, there were no fatalities.
Make what you will out that random statistic.

​No doubt over the course of the next three-days at Aintree an I.T.V. presenter will assure viewers how important equine welfare is to the sport. Viewers will be informed of how many vets will be in attendance and how each horse is inspected on the morning to ensure they are fit to compete, sort of implying either that some trainers are prepared to run an unfit horse or some are without the expertise to notice if one of their horses is lame, coughing or under the weather. And then there are the troughs of water and the buckets of water that will be thrown over the winner of the Aintree National, demonstrating the commitment the sport has to horse welfare. It is all done in the best possible taste, though it does beg the question why the procedures at Aintree are not mandatory at every race-meeting.
Incidentally, the throwing of water over a horse’s kidneys and hind quarters is, to my way of thinking, more likely to be detrimental on some occasions to the health of the horse through winter, than beneficial. Chilled kidneys is a very real thing, it is why horses wear quarter-sheets in the parade ring and why Venetia Williams uses that clip-trace on all of her horses.
Anyhow. In today’s Racing Post there is a splendid article by Sally Taylor, head of equine regulation, safety and welfare at the B.H.A. highlighting the breakthroughs in the early discovery of injury and heart conditions with the use of A.I.. Using Swedish software something referred to as SLEIP is used in pre-race trot-ups and is being trialled on every horse due to run at Aintree this week.
Lameness can change from day-to-day, sometimes by the stride or over a long time-period. Using an App on a phone, vets can detect the very earliest stages of lameness, which can prevent a horse suffering injury during a race. The App also records high quality videos, providing slow-motion views of a horse’s gait which can be used for comparison throughout the life of each horse.
Also, Sally Taylor is particularly excited by the Racing Risk Model Project which uses complicated mathematical models to allow vets to understand where the greatest area of risks may be. There are wearable devises that record heart-rate and rhythm, stride length and conduct E.C.G.’s while the horse is being exercised. There is also a project to understand how tendon boots raise the temperature of the horse’s leg and whether they help or hinder the problem of strike injuries.
This is why the Racing Post is such fabulous read. Sally Taylor’s article was directly under a Richard Forristal piece on the trainers’ championship race in Britain. You never know what lies in store for the reader upon turning each page. More of it, I say.

What must it be like to know you are on the verge of being £500,000 better-off? Only Harry Skelton can tell you and he will be too busy over the next few days ensuring he is the beneficiary of the windfall, or should that be Gale Force Ten-fall? I just hope he makes a generous donation to the Injured Jockeys Fund and to an equine rehabilitation centre.

Can Dan repel the Irish man? I am not so sure 1/10 on reflects the absolute certainty others think him to be. Firstly, I believe Nicky Henderson will win his first National on Saturday and that will take a big chunk out of Skelton’s lead of £800,000. He also has Constitution Hill, Jonbon, Jango Baie and Lulamba this week and at least one of them should win, with the others all likely to pick-up a good chunk of prize-money. Without winning the Aintree National I cannot see how Paul Nicholls can claw his way to the top, though I fully expect Caldwell Potter to win the opener today. Then there the cool hand gunslinger who goes by the name of Willie. Not really interested in retaining his title, yet sending more horses to Aintree than any of his rivals. 1.3-million in arrears, yet with 5 horses in the big race, all of which have realistic chances of galloping and jumping their names into Aintree and horseracing history. Win the Aintree National and 1.3-million becomes £800,000 and with a hatful of winners through the week, perhaps, and with Sandown and Ayr to come – well, he did it last year, though if he pulls the rabbit out of the hat this time, the margin of victory will be a lot less than the £300,000 he triumphed by last year.
That said, Dan Skelton only needs to win one of the Grade 1’s this week to make Willie’s task that bit more difficult. There will a mountain of joy from the master of Lodge Farm if either Grey Dawning or Protektorat win this week. With Protektorat the more likely.

​I was never a major supporter of Best Mate. I recognised that he was a top-class racehorse and I admired, though at the same time was frustrated, by the overly-cautious manner in which he was campaigned. Overall, though, the magic was more to do with the love-affair of the two lovable old codgers that trained him and less about the quality of horse he beat in his three Gold-Cups. Of the horses to have won more than one Gold Cup, I would only put Al Boum Photo below him in the list.
My feelings are going in a similar direction with Constitution Hill. I have no doubt he is top-class and he has been trained to perfection by Nicky Henderson. Yet is it appropriate for commentators and journalists to refer to his ‘legacy’ and to place his name alongside horses of the past who ran more often than he has and who won far more races than he is likely to win in his career.
People are hooked to his Supreme win and his single Champion Hurdle success and refuse to access the quality of horse he has subsequently beaten. It is a case of recency bias, with people, even racing journalists, blinkered when it comes to the champions of the golden age of hurdlers back in the late 1970’s though to the middle of the 1980’s.
Istabraq ruled the roost for 4-years and no one could argue that his haul of 3 Champion Hurdle crowns would have been 4 if it were not for the foot and mouth outbreak that denied him his fourth victory. Persian War, Night Nurse, Monksfield and Sea Pigeon (perhaps the greatest dual-purpose horse of my lifetime) achieved far more than Constitution Hill has so far achieved. 
In the next six-weeks we will have a far clearer handle on whether Constitution Hill can lay claims to a ‘legacy’. First, he must dispatch Lossiemouth with the greatest of ease over 2-mile 4-furlongs at Aintree tomorrow and then he must do the same to State Man and Golden Ace at Punchestown. If he fails to live-up to the hype that surrounds him over the next few weeks, it may well be novice chasing for him next season.

For a young man to have achieved so many Grade 1’s victory as Jack Kennedy might suggest he has had all the luck in the world driving him forward. Yet Jack Kennedy has achieved all his Grade 1’s despite the fates doubling down on their ambition to deny him any success. Perhaps even Jack can no longer list the entirety of his injuries, though we know he has broken six legs, which is a fete in itself.
This time around he is being extra cautious and extra sensible and given himself until ‘before Galway’ before coming back after his injury scare caused by State Man’s head coming into contact with his recently, though perhaps not, healed broken leg and his fall from the luckless Corbett’s Cross in the Gold Cup.
Now, nobody should ever say this when Jack is within earshot but whereas we believe that National Hunt jockeys are made of special stuff, perhaps Jack is made from the wrong stuff. Or perhaps it is simply that the gods are jealous of his talent and the success he continues to have despite all their successes with their slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune.

I am not fancying Stumptown, Iroko or I Am Maximus for the Aintree National. The former is an improving horse and he should stay and he will certainly jump but does he have the form in the book to win a competitive and good-quality Aintree National? Although a good jumper of park fences, I have my doubts that Iroko will jump round on Saturday. I also have my doubts about his stamina. Of the three I have mentioned, he is the one who I fear might prove me wrong. I admit that I Am Maximus was a revelation last year and though appreciably wrong 12-months ago, this year the faster ground might contribute to him taking or two by the roots this time around. Personally, I would not be surprised to see Paul Townend’s name against that of Nick Rockett come Saturday.