​B.H.A. we have a problem. Any chance you can get it sorted?
Staging the Ascot Chase and the Betfair Chase on the same day, when both races attract a similar type of horse, is worse than ridiculous, it is stupidly ridiculous. And don’t say, with premierisation this will not happen in the future, because it will as the B.H.A., racing’s governing body, cannot see the wood for the trees.
Shishkin and Bravemansgame are the two top 3-mile chasers in beleaguered Britain at this moment in time, each trained by our top two National Hunt trainers. It should be a clash to savour, though we cannot be sure it will happen until 24-hours before either the Ascot Chase or the Betfair is due to be run. Shishkin is entered in both races. If the ground is heavy at Haydock, he will be re-routed to Ascot, even if the ground is similar in Berkshire. Haydock heavy can resemble ground conditions at the Battle of the Somme and Nicky Henderson will not subject Shishkin to that sort of test, not first time out, if ever. In conjunction with my own thoughts, Henderson is not a fan of the Betfair. With the King George on the horizon, neither will Paul Nicholls want to run Bravemansgame under such stamina-sapping conditions. The fact that Nicholls has instructed Harry Cobden to ride at Ascot, leaving Daryl Jacob to pick up the potentially spare ride on Bravemansgame, tells you all you need to know about the lack of certainty of his horse setting-out for Lancashire pre-dawn on Saturday morning.
For the sake of competitive racing, one of these two races should either be staged later in the season or one of them should have its conditions altered so that it becomes a race for second-season chasers.
As anyone with any interest in my thoughts on the subject, will know it is pretty easy to guess which of the two I would ditch in a heartbeat. The Betfair Chase was inaugurated to establish a 3-mile Triple Crown, with a huge bonus for the owner of any horse to win all three races. The bonus is long gone and the use of the term ‘the first leg of the Triple Crown’ has long past into history. It is has become an unnecessary race. The Irish virtually boycott the race, with even Henry de Bromhead, who it could be argued has three top-class 3-mile chasers in his stable, giving it no thought this season.
The Ascot Chase, on the other hand, can attract middle-distance horses as well as 3-mile chasers and does not subtract from the quality of horse in the upcoming Coral Gold Cup at Newbury. Protektorat, you see, might be aimed at that race if there were no Betfair Chase to gobble-up.
The Betfair might have a place in the calendar if the conditions were restricted to second-season chasers, horses that had not won a chase prior to the previous season. It might even tempt Willie Mullins to enter a horse as he starts every season with half-a-dozen potentially top-class, second-season 3-mile chasers. Wishful thinking, I know, as it’s the maestro’s policy not to bring any of his good horse to Britain before the New Year, finding it easy to forego even the King George on St. Stephen’s Day. There is also a place in the calendar, I believe, for a top-class 2-mile handicap chase as a supporting race at Haydock. 2-mile handicap chasers are woefully neglected in this country, I suggest. I would prefer one of the two early big Cheltenham middle-distance chases to be changed to 2-miles.
It’s a good bet that if the ground is heavy at Haydock, neither Shishkin nor Bravemansgame will run, though we might see the former at Ascot. I hope we do, as I am looking forward to Shishkin setting out on a season which will lead him to Gold Cup glory.

​Harry Cobden for champion jockey is beginning to seem a better bet than it appeared back in the summer when he announced ‘he was going for it’. Inch by inch he is clawing back the huge advantage Sean Bowen won for himself during the summer and though 30 behind looks a large deficit, especially when all jockeys are just one ride away from injury, with the backing of Paul Nicholls and the network of support he has achieved through his hard work early in the season, Cobden could yet defeat my prophesy that he is the Adrian Maguire of the present band of jockeys – the best jockey never to be champion.
Stage Star was very impressive, I thought, in the Paddy Power Gold Cup, jumping for fun and running straight and true, the last fence blunder apart, to the line. Paul Nicholls’ problem this season, if the weather intervenes significantly, will be keeping his Grade 1 chasers apart. Keeping Stage Star to the intermediate distance is a sensible plan with the Ryanair as the target at the Festival, but what if something, God forbid, goes awry with Bravemansgame? Wouldn’t it be good policy to see if Stage Star might possibly be a good understudy for the Gold Cup? It is the only mistake Nicky Henderson makes, in my opinion, sticking blindly to Plan A, without giving himself immediate other options. Find out if a horse stays further earlier rather later, then you have data to go beside experience of the eye and natural equine instinct. But who am I to give advice to trainers who forever more will be regarded as legends of our sport!
The horse that really took my eye – Stage Star merely confirmed himself as the top-class horse we already knew he was – was Burdett Road, who found plenty up the Cheltenham hill and won going away from, if not proven graded juvenile hurdlers, a field of winners already this season. At last, I would suggest, Messrs Mullins & Elliott have a British-trained juvenile hurdler to fear.
The aspect of I.T.V.’s coverage yesterday that took my eye was the professionalism of Ruby Walsh. Seeing his friend and colleague, the so-called hard man A.P.McCoy, about to emotionally break-down during his reflection on his visit in the week to Graham Lee in his capacity as friend and President of the Jockeys Association, he stepped-in, took up the reins of the interview/conversation, allowing A.P. a moment to compose himself. Despite his attempts to appear cold and stoic in front of the cameras, A.P. is a wonderful human-being, a model for all of us on how to conduct ourselves in times of trouble and dire consequence. Ruby, too, is a brilliant man. We should be proud of them both.
As an aside from the present Cheltenham meeting and looking towards the Festival in March, I keep hearing jockeys and trainers say that a certain horse is better suited to the old course at Cheltenham rather than the new course and vice-versa. If the Gold Cup, Champion Hurdle or any of the championship races were run at Newbury, Ascot or Sandown, for instance, my point would be invalid as they have only one National Hunt course. Cheltenham, though, has two, not including the cross-country course. Since the construction of the new course, how many top-class chasers and hurdlers have had their chances of winning the big races compromised because the Gold Cup and Champion Hurdle are run on the same course every year? Why is their no debate on the idea of starting the meeting on the new course one year and the old course the following year. Alternating so as to spread the advantage and disadvantages.
The old course may be to Galopin Du Champs advantage, the new course to Bravemansgame’s advantage. Or vice-versa. Or, at least when it comes to last year’s one-two, the result would stay the same whichever of the two courses were used. I like fairness and believe, though I accept that a horse with a predilection for one or other of the courses might be injured the year his or her preference is used, we would achieve a better understanding of the merits of horses if the big races swapped courses every other year.
Just a thought to inspire debate.

​Back in the day when health & safety was just a namby-pamby notion – incidentally, the word ‘namby-pamby’ came from the mind of a ‘hack writer’ Henry Carey as a derogatory nick-name for the poet Ambrose Philips, noted for writing ‘adulatory odds addressed to the young children of wealthy parents’. He also used the term ‘pilly-piss’ to insult Philips. Thankfully the latter did not root itself in the language. I digress. – in wait of its moment in history, when racing people wanted to be entertained, the weather had to be more than a few degrees below freezing to curtail their sport.
I remember reading in a racing book (cannot locate the source) that in around the 1920’s, if I recall, Catterick races looked in jeopardy due to frost until someone with a propensity for lateral thinking asked a local farmer to herd his flock of sheep around the course several times. The warmth of the sheep and the action of their hooves on the grass and soil took out the frost and allowed racing to commence. I dare say the ground was gluey and slimy but heigh-ho, they raced and a good time was had by all.
Not a viable option in this day and age, of course. But when racing is in jeopardy due to frost in only some parts of the course and the general temperature in above freezing, I am always left frustrated when the meeting is cancelled. Surely it is not beyond the wit and wisdom of an agricultural machinery company to invent a mobile directed heating device to remove frost in a similar manner as can be achieved by pouring warm water on frozen ground. During the season, meetings will be cancelled due to parts of a racecourse in the line of shadow being still frozen while the rest of the course is raceable. It is maddening to clerks-of-courses and everyone else: surely a solution is only a lateral thought away.
Low sun is more of a baffler as it does fall into the clutches of health & safety officers or jockeys to give them their correct job title. I am not mocking jockeys for wanting fences taken out due to low sun. As drivers, we all know what it is like when the sun lies low in a cloudless sky. There is one particular lane around where I live which I have learned to avoid when the sun is low in the sky as it removes visibility by 100% in places and it is a nightmare of real possibility to run-down dog-walkers or a child who daily walked that lane to catch the school bus.
Low sun holds the very real threat to the well-being of horse and rider.
I have two possible solutions, both costly, I suspect, and perhaps unworkable. Here goes.
In an age of transportable or mobile fences, is it possible to reconfigure racecourses to race the opposite way to normal when low sun has command of the situation. If Aintree, for example, were subject to a weather forecast that had a 60% or more chance of low sun the following day, if they could race right-handed instead of left-handed, would that prove a solution? Starts would have to be flexible, the winning post, too, not to mention the problem of patrol cameras and the photo-finish camera. Not an easy-fix but worth debate, I suggest. Obviously, the problem may be transferred to the back-stretch, rather than the home-straight, but the configuration of the course may make the problem less of a problem. It is a suggestion and it might work for some courses but not others.
My second suggestion is more feasible, though more expensive to implement, I fear. In cricket, side-screens are used so that batsman can see the flight of the ball. I propose something similar for racecourses. What is needed to be known is the exact angle between the eyes of horse and jockey and the position of the sun on the horizon. We are talking low sun, so perhaps no more than 30% of angle. If a number of upright slotted posts were erected in the line of sight, black screens could be pulled into position, either electronically or by brute strength, to the exact position to block out the glare of the sun. My idea is basic and naïve, though I am certain an engineer using sensors and modern gadgetry could perfect the principle and make it easily workable. Man has walked on the moon and sent craft to Mars and beyond. Surely, we can block out the sun once in a while!

​If asked to put forward one aspect of the racing industry the sport can be justly proud of, and there are many candidates, I would suggest the Injured Jockeys Fund. There really should be one-day in the racing calendar dedicated to the charity, with race-meetings staged mainly for the purpose of raising awareness to the casual racegoer of the services and support the I.J.F. provides to our leading human players and to raise funds so the charity will always be there.
The terrible injury sustained by Graham Lee at Newcastle last week, an unstable fracture to the neck, brought home, at least to me, that the I.J.F. is the most vital cog in the ever-turning wheel of the sport. ‘The Injured Jockeys Fund will look after his needs to assist him in his recovery and predicament for as long as it takes. Whatever help he and his family needs, we will be there to provide it.’
Read that statement. No ifs, buts, maybes, we will do what we can. Not even a promise. But a declaration of intent. The Injured Jockeys Fund cannot wave a magic wand and repair Graham to the man prior to his fall but they will move heaven and earth to give him as good a life as humanly possible now and when he finally leaves hospitable and must learn to live a life that will doubtless be the opposite to the life he has lived his whole adult life.
Graham is a jockey. His first response will be ‘when can I get out of bed’. ‘When will I be riding again.’ If ever in the same position, I would wither and wish death as my saviour. I am weak. Jockeys are strong.
The Injured Jockeys Fund’s mission statement is to care-for the general wellbeing of their members, to provide medical support, help with financial needs and mental wellbeing and to help and assist not only current jockeys but former jockeys as well. They now have 3 full-time rehabilitation centres, Jack Berry House that serves norther-based jockeys, Oaksey House in Lambourn and Peter O’Sullevan House in Newmarket. They have also just opened a Taunton South-West Hub to lessen journey times for injured jockeys based in that part of the country.
The Injured Jockeys Fund do not sit on their hands, satisfied the job is well-done. ‘The I.J.F. provides robust, science-based, data-informed approach to rehabilitation assessment of injuries and recovery, standardised across all I.J.F. sites. An evidence-informed, criteria-based approach to the rehabilitation and return to racing of jockey-athletes and the wider racing community’. No jockey is allowed to return to racing after injury unless he or she can pass muster in muscular capacity, maximal force expression, muscular power and energy system fitness. If the injury came with concussion, there is a mandatory period of suspension, if unconscious for more than 3-seconds after a fall, the are suspended for 21-days and then must pass a concussion test. Compare that with football, rugby or any contact sport, where players return to the pitch heavily bandaged after undergoing an examination no more exhausting than ‘can you count to ten’ and ‘what is your mother’s name’, or something along those lines. In racing, jockeys are not treated as a commodity, a pawn on the battlefield. 
All sports could learn a great deal from the Injured Jockeys Fund. Just recently there was a conference where all the equestrian disciplines came together to ‘learn best-practice and how to discharge their duty of care’ from the I.J.F.
The sport needs to stop organising charity days for cancer research and other good causes and look to supporting in every way possible the I.J.F. and equine charities.
To learn more about the work of the I.J.F. I suggest visiting their website and advise you to buy a copy of Sean Magee’s excellent book celebrating fifty-years of the charity. The Book was published in 2013. Every contribution to the fund’s coffers helps. A little of the £20 purchase price will help Graham Lee in his recovery and future life.

​Frodon will attempt to win Wincanton’s Badger Beer Chase for the second time tomorrow. He is not only my favourite horse in training, and has been for the best part of 5-years – when did he win that handicap chase at Cheltenham, when Ruby Walsh paid Bryony the ultimate compliment – he is my second favourite horse of my lifetime, with only Spanish Steps above him in my heart, though I may have to reassess my order of affection if Frodon should defy all that is against him tomorrow.
He has to carry 12-stone tomorrow, on soft ground, giving weight to a better-class field that he faced 12-months ago. He will give 100% as always and we can be certain that Bryony will look after him when chance of victory slips away. I love him dearly but I cannot see him winning as there are at least 7 horses in the race superior to those that took part last year.
Though I would never tip or bet against Frodon as I could never be disloyal to him, I think Ashtown Lad is well-treated at the weights for a horse who won the Becher Chase last season, stays well, likes soft-ground and is young enough to have improved from last season.
Also, Paul Nicholl’s runs Threeunderthrufive, the favourite at the moment, though it can be expected that Frodon’s loyal West-Country fans will bet him into favouritism, and is a horse the trainer continues to believe has a big race in him in.
The Big Breakaway was considered a Gold Cup horse by the Tizzards until his form proved otherwise and I had enough faith in his ability to back him each-way in the Grand National last season. He is too good a horse to be receiving so much weight from Frodon.
Blackjack Magic, Certainly Red, Ballygriffin Cottage and Sam Brown are others in the race, I fear.
Why do I admire Frodon so much? It is not because I believe he is the best chaser I have had the pleasure of watching during my life. Even when he was in his pomp, he was not the best chaser in training. He is not a Denman and certainly not a Kauto Star. He is though the equal of Spanish Steps, not that ability has anything to do with how the heart feels about a horse, friend, family member or woman.
Anyone reading this who believes horse racing should be banned or who believes horses run and jump only because ‘we’ force them to do so, should go argue the point with Frodon. They should spend a day shadowing him. In fact, ‘Animal Rising’ activists and those who sympathise with their cause would learn a great deal by spending a day with Frodon.
As Paul Nicholls stated only recently, now aged 11 rising 12, Frodon has the same level of enthusiasm for the life he leads as he had when he was a young horse. He is described by his down-to-earth trainer as ‘naughty and mischievous’ and I have read that when the string is being boring and quiet, Frodon has the habit of throwing in a buck and a squeal just to liven-up proceedings, receiving loving rebukes by the riders of the other horses sent sideways and upwards, and he continues to bowl up that famous Ditcheat hill and school with the flamboyance that is his trademark.
I will not mind if Frodon does not win tomorrow. I expect him to run a good, honest race and that win or lose the crowd will show their appreciation for the joy he has given us over the years. What I want more than anything is that he finishes the race sound and happy and sooner rather than later he will be retired and has the good fortune to enjoy a happy retirement. How he will be amused without steeplechase fences, though, is a problem in need of a thoughtful answer.
One final wish I have. If anyone knows Bryony – in fact I may pen a letter to her via Ditcheat –ask her to consider writing a book about her association with Frodon, along the lines of Pat Taaffe’s ‘My Life and Arkle’s’. She is an intelligent girl, so she’ll be up to the task, and who would be better positioned to tell his story?

​I have ideas all the time. I am, if nothing else, an ideas man. How to proceed with my ideas, though, is another matter. I have no influence in the sport and I am without the connections required to be taken seriously. Yet an idea, however inspired or inventive, is a dead duck if it remains unaired, unconsidered by those who might be give it wings.
My idea is this: a challenge to the leading flat trainers to buy a yearling for under 5,000 guineas with all prize-money split between an equine charity and the Injured Jockeys Fund, the horse to be sold at public auction at the end-of-the-season, with the sell-price split between the trainer (his or her training fees for the period of the challenge) and the surplus split between the two charities.
My reasoning is thus: the top flat trainers, and I would hope the likes of Coolmore, Godolphin, the Gosdens, William Haggas and similar top-ten trainers would embrace the challenge, only train blue-blooded home-breds or horses sold for six-figures or more at auction. It would be interesting to see how they would cope with a cheaply-bought yearling that would almost certainly have issues be overcome for it to be successful on the racecourse and whether being trained alongside classic and Group horses could substantially improve its prospects.
Also, if a good number of trainers would embrace the challenge, it would generate interest and provide a sideline narrative throughout the season. Trainers are by nature a competitive breed and they all will want to earn the greatest amount of prize-money with their cheap buy. Would it not be intriguing if Aidan O’Brien and Godolphin were locked in battle not at Royal Ascot, Goodwood or a classic but in trying to win more low-grade handicaps so they can ‘get one over’ their friendly if closest rivals?
Also, the challenge would be about raising funds for important charities to the sport, linking the horse and jockey in charitable endeavour. A dull Monday might be given a more intriguing narrative if one or more of the trainers’ taking part had runners in a low-grade handicap at Redcar, Chepstow or Southwell.
The top-end of the sport can be too serious at times, the intensity of trying to win the major races masking the friendliness of the rivalry, with the value of their horses and the ‘investment’ of fabulously wealthy foreign owners presenting an image to outsiders of the sport being a bean-feast for the few. This challenge would add an air of difference and because of the charities at its sporting core, mainstream media might be tempted or persuaded to switch its cameras in the sport’s direction.
I had it in mind to approach the Racing Channel with the idea but if I decide to take it further, I think the Racing Post might be the direction to go in. Not as a contribution to the letters’ column, which is my usual method of trying to have my opinions aired publicly, but as an e-mail to Tom Kerr, the editor. I’ll doubtless be ignored. Tom Kerr is yet to respond to any of the e-mails addressed to him personally. But all I can do is try and if my first approach gets a big fat zero, I’ll pen a letter to the writers’ column. Failing that I’ll try the Racing Channel. There is the grain of a good idea here; I just hope someone of influence recognises its potential.

​I shall start my review of Paul Donnelley’s latest book ‘Firsts, Lasts & Onlys’ by addressing a mistake he made on page 209. I admit, I make too many mistakes and I beat myself up for it. The difference, though, between my glaring faux pas and that of, in this instance, Paul Donnelley, is he is a professional, sales from his books pay his mortgage and as more people will read his work, he will be far more scrutinised than I shall ever achieve. I do not receive revenue for my contributions to the subject matter and I do not have the guidance and help of an editor or proof reader. The error committed by Donnelley is, I believe, both minor and yet worthy to be confronted. 
In discussing Harry Ormesher, ‘the only Page 3 photographer to breed a Derby winner’, he mistakenly claims that Blakeney, the Epsom Derby winner in 1969, sire of the dam of Sir Percy (bred by Ormesher) was named after Sir Percy Blakeney, the hero of Baroness Orczy’s 1905 novel ‘The Scarlet Pimpernel’. Perhaps the author was displaying his literary knowledge – I could not have named the author of ‘the Scarlet Pimpernel’ or its central character – but Blakeney, as was Morston, Arthur Budgett’s other home-bred Derby winner, named after a village in Norfolk.
Having got that off my chest, I can praise this very useful reference book. Firstly, and all important for sales, it has a pleasant appearance and is tactile to handle. It is also pocket-sized, not that I would carry it around in a pocket as I wouldn’t want to curl the edges of the cover page. It is perhaps more a book to be gift-wrapped and presented to a friend or family member with a casual interest in horse racing, rather than it is a book to be read by someone with an intimate knowledge of the sport, as it is page-to-page filled with interesting facts, which you would expect from the title. ‘A truly wonderful collection of Horse Racing Trivia’, as is claimed on the front cover.
Paul Donnelley, I suggest, is not himself a racing man as he has an almost O.C.D. fascination with the times horses achieved in winning races, a topic that is not given too much coverage in the aftermath of a race unless a course record was achieved. He also repeatedly made reference to how many horses died in Grand Nationals, which grated on me more than a little bit. I wouldn’t expect the author to champion the race but as the remit of the book was firsts, lasts and onlys, surely only the first horse to die in a Grand National should have been worthy of mention.
Paul Donnelley did recognise that Mary Francis was more responsible for her husband’s Dick Francis thrillers than the ex-jockey whose fame as an author far exceeded his fame as the rider of Devon Loch and that Dick wanted his wife’s name to be on the front cover beside his own. Kudos.
He also states that Moifaa, the New Zealand-bred winner of the 1904 Grand National did not survive a shipwreck. Buy the book for explanation.
And finally, some of the racing phraseology used by Donnelley – ‘awarded champion jockey’, rather than won the title, got on my wick - is that of someone with only a passing knowledge of the sport and he might have done well to have had someone with horse racing in their veins to proof-read the manuscript before publication. Though, on reflection, perhaps it was more honest of the author to allow his readers to know the limit of his racing knowledge, after all, authors who write about murder do not necessarily need to have committed murder to pen a good read.  
On This Day:
In 1877, the dynasty of the Aga Khan’s stud and racing organisation was created by the birth of Sir Aga Sultan Muham Shah, the 3rd Aga Khan.
In 1895, Pebbles won her final race, the Breeders’ Cup Turf at Aqueduct. She liked a pint of Guiness in her feed every day, apparently.
In 1989, former Royal trainer, Dick Hern was voted Man of the Year by the Royal Association for Disability and Rehabilitation. 
In 1991 Arazi claimed everlasting fame by winning the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile by 4-lengths, with ease, a most unlikely outcome at every other stage of the race bar the final furlong.

​The flat season in Britain resembles, figuratively speaking, an expensive dress shirt when it first comes out of the washing machine. You can feel the quality of the fabric, even when it is crinkled, if not a mite deformed. But once dried and ironed it returns to its neat, showy best.
There is so much quality in the British racing calendar that it is done no justice by the almost apologetic way it opens each spring and by the ragged manner of its conclusion. Tomorrow is the beginning of November, the traditional start of the core National Hunt season, yet we still have flat fixtures mingling with both jump racing and the all-weather, with abandonments to flat meetings a common occurrence through the latter days of October and the early knockings of November.
Why couldn’t the flat season have ended last Saturday with the final Group 1 of the season, the Futurity at Doncaster? Why not run the November Handicap – yes, it was still October but what is in a name these days – alongside the Futurity to make it a more interesting card? Why must the flat season be dragged out to the point when it seems flat fixtures are just a road block put in place to deny National Hunt the limelight of television exposure?
It is the same with the all-weather. Though a traditionalist at heart, I have come to accept that all-weather fixtures play a significant part in the structure and financing of British racing. I dislike the slow creep towards giving all-weather more and more listed and minor Group races as all-weather tracks were instigated to prop-up betting revenue during those months of the year when National Hunt fixtures in particular were most likely to succumb to the weather. I see no point to the Winter Derby and believe all-weather finals day is a waste of precious resources and takes focus away from National Hunt at a time when the season is building to its glorious climax.
If I held any influence in the sport, I would make the all-weather a season within itself, separate from the flat season, with its own jockeys’ and trainers’ championship, with wins and prize-money not included in the various turf championships. I would have no problem with one all-weather fixture a day but only rarely more than one. And I would have a month in the summer without any all-weather fixtures to give the all-weather season a beginning and an end, with perhaps one valuable fixture on the last day for presentation of all the various championship trophies.
Neat, clean and defined edges to the seasons. Not messy as the flat turf season has become and removing the obscurity of beginnings and ends.
I would like to see the Grand National run earlier in the calendar, not as late as April 15th as it was last season, with Doncaster’s Lincoln meeting (see what I mean about what’s in a name? Lincoln is in Lincolnshire, not Yorkshire.) opening up with a bang, not as a whimper as has become the situation since the Lincoln lost all its prestige when it was inexorably linked with the Grand National as part of the Spring Double.
The Grand National should be staged on the Saturday before the start of the flat season, with the National season ending at Aintree. It’s all about peaks and valleys and at the moment both the flat and National Hunt seasons end either at the bottom of the valley or a distance from the peak. The F.A. Cup culminates at Wembley, not at Watford. The Wimbledon finals culminates on the Centre Court, not on Court 14. 
I have laid out my ideas for the Lincoln meeting many times before. In essence I propose the Lincoln would regain its notoriety in the sport, plus attract outside attention, if it were to be as it used to be, a 40-runner race started behind a barrier, to mimic the way the Grand National still holds elements of its history and to give flat jockeys a taste of what it was like for their forebears when there were no starting stalls. I would also have 5 or 6 other valuable handicaps on the card and design an I.T.V. 7 type bet around the day with a guaranteed first-prize of half-a-million quid in an attempt to focus the eye of the public on our sport for at least a day.
To wrap-up: the National Hunt season should start a week after the Grand National, with a month’s break in June or July, and should end on the day the Grand National is run. The flat should begin one-week after the Grand National and start with a bang and not a whimper and finish with the Futurity and the November Handicap run on the same day. The all-weather should be an 11-month season with a break in May or June, culminating with presentation of the various championship trophies, with no winners achieved during the season included in the actual jockeys’ and trainers’ championships.
Neat, clean and precise, with no messy edges. I rest my case.

​Be honest; do you think the Grand National is suffering death by a thousand cuts? Sadly, that is my opinion and I am beginning to believe it would be grace-saving if Aintree and the B.H.A. simply announced the date when the last-ever Grand National will be run as it would be more dignified if the sport itself buried its jewel in the crown in the annals of sporting history rather than allow its ignorant detractors achieve its ghastly ambitions. 
What Aintree, Suleka Varma, the Jockey Club and the B.H.A. do not comprehend due to their impulsive need to protect not a race but its cash-cow, is that every change to the race they implement, every time the distance is altered, the number of runners reduced, the threshold rating raised or the fences lowered or moved, they are empowering protestors to protest longer, harder, to up the ante and cry crocodile tears down more lenses of more cameras. And after the Jockey Club’s success in the courts to ensure the Epsom Derby was run without incident, it will annually cost the Jockey Club a similar amount of money to achieve an uneventful running of the Grand National.
When you have both the moral right and the law of the land on your side, you stand firm and link arms, you do not run for cover, hold long meetings in order come up with a plan that on the surface does not look like a white flag or a white feather.
What is much more to be feared, now that Aintree intend to respond year-on-year to any of the many eventualities that might occur during the race, is that come the next equine death, the next pile-up caused by a loose horse or a horse refusing, they will be obligated to make more changes, if only cosmetic and unlikely to put right what was the latest thing to go wrong and look bad in front of the camera. It is death by a thousand cuts. It is the sport kicking itself in the ball-sacks yet again. Ginger McCain and Red Rum must be turning somersaults in their graves at the adulteration of the race they lived-for!

The current whip rule is yet another example of the sport’s administrators slapping themselves on the back for a ‘job well-done’ while ignoring the obvious criticism that banning jockeys wholesale after a big meeting only achieves the populace idea that jockeys must be carpet-beaters and animal abusers. The problem now, as I see it, is the topping-up procedure. It doesn’t matter what went before Ascot’s Champions Day, the trivial violations of the whip rules perpetrated by Frankie Dettori, his sixteen-day ban is evidence to our distractors that the sport turns a blind eye to their perceived view that horse racing’s only use of the horse is for monetary gain and jockeys are allowed to get away with ‘animal abuse’ to achieve the greatest profit.
If Group 1 races are to be treated differently to all other races, jockeys who exceed the maximum number strokes of the whip or if they use the whip incorrectly, bans imposed should apply only to Group 1 races, including the classics. If jockeys were to be banned from riding in the next six Group 1’s or ten or sixteen, the loss of earnings and kudos would be more keenly felt. The only other option is to disqualify the horse so that the owner and trainer also feel the pain. The issue of the whip, as with the Grand National, is causing death by a thousand cuts. I remain convinced the only solution to the problem of public perception is to reduce the whip to ‘one hit and that’s it’ or to remove its use altogether. At present, all we are achieving is nothing at all, just as it was before the whip was seen as any sort of a problem.
And to circle back to the Grand National, one change Aintree could have implemented that would have gained approval from our distractors, would be to stop jockeys using their whip after the last fence. Very few horses run on strongly after the last fence, with most running on empty. The unedifying sight of a jockey using the whip to urge on a very tired horse is grist to the mill of those with the ambition to see evil where is evil is not present and does little inspire the rational observer to fall in love with the sport.

One final comment: in time, given he continues to smile and stays away from alcohol, drugs, the wrong food and naughty women, the jockey the public will next adore, if not in the same ebullient way as Frankie, is Billy Loughnane. One of the leading trainers, perhaps John and Thady Gosden or Michael Stoute, should snap him up as in the next two or three-years he is going to take William Buick’s championship title away from him. Perhaps next year! He is of that calibre.

​In this pathetically woke world created for us by who knows whom or for what devilish purpose, I might be guilty of hate speech for what I am about to point out. One short aside, the word ‘hate’ has now been redefined to mean anything your enemies want it to mean. Soon ‘I hate sugar in my tea’ will be considered ‘hate speech’ against those who prefer to take their tea sugared. Rant over.
I promise you, I am not xenophobic in any way and I am not envious of those who have greater wealth than I have. I pity those who have less but have no beef with those who have made a better stab at life than I have achieved. Yet a quick look at the leading owners on the flat in the Racing Post yesterday told a stark narrative of the sport in this country. What success British racing achieves both here and overseas is due in no small part to foreign owners and their blue-blooded studs.
Godolphin, Shadwell, Amo, Juddmonte, Coolmore, Sheikh Mohammed Obaid, Coolmore, King Power, Coolmore, Coolmore, Wathnam, Marc Chan, Yeguada Centurion, KHK Racing, Qatar Racing, Sheikh Juma Dalnook and the HRH the Aga Khan all appear in the owners table top twenty. The only owners left out of that table are Cheveley Park, Fitri Hay and the Hughes/Rawlings/Shaunessey partnership that own Shaquille.
Coolmore, the real largest earners in Britian this season, appear in the list three-times as their horses are registered in different combinations of Tabor, Smith, Magnier, Westerburg and Brant. All the above, of course, employ British people, with many of their studs located in this country and they should be both thanked and congratulated for racing their bloodstock in this country and for the success they achieve. Without them, British flat racing would be in far more perilous state than it finds itself at the present moment.
I cannot claim that it was never like this in the past. Flat racing in Great Britain has always relied on overseas investment in the sport. At present, and for a good few years, that investment is coming form the Arab States, in times gone by it was U.S. patrons and before that members of the Indian royal families and its aristocracy. British racing still holds great prestige and influence around the world, its history, perhaps, envied by the countries who can provide greater prize-money but who cannot trace their history back beyond the 1900’s at best.
We no longer have the likes of Lord Derby or Lord Roseberry playing pivotal roles in the sport now occupied by the ruling dynasties of the Desert kingdoms. That is neither bad nor wonderful but it is a trend that seemingly will not be reversed in my lifetime. Is there anyone born and bred in this country planting the seeds that in time may fruit and establish a British owner at the top of the owners’ tree or least competing with owners born and bred overseas?
I am not xenophobic. It would just be nice to witness a British-bred, Brirish-owned Epsom Derby winner once in a while. The days of Morston and Blakeney seem so long ago their Derbies might have been filmed in Black and White.

On this day, October 25th:
In 1881 the U.S. bred Foxhall completed the Autumn double, the Cambridgeshire and Cesarewitch, ridden on each occasion by Jack Watts.
In 1949, the man who invented the Totalisator, died in a plane crash in Maryland.
In 1967 the last race-meeting look place at Le Tremblay. It is now an airport.
In 1992, a celebration of the life of Prince Monolulu took place at the pub bearing his name in Maple Street, London. He was Abysssinian by birth and was best known for his cry ‘I gotta horse’ at the Epsom Derby.