​My favourite race, at least thus far, is the 2016 Two-Mile Champion Chase. I also believe in this race one of the greatest fetes of training was achieved. I well-up even now when watching the race again on YouTube. Sprinter Sacre rolling back the years to prove that form is temporary while class is permanent. Thank-you, Nicky Henderson, for such a fabulous, memorable day. But the 2016 Two-Mile Champion Chase is not, in my opinion, the greatest race of my lifetime. 
I did not back the winner of the race and by halfway, I had eyes for only one horse and come the elbow I would have sold my soul to have him triumph. Unlike the Two-Mile Champion Chase, the 1973 Grand National is a hard watch and even now my heart calls out for history and the form-book to be wrong.
The 1973 renewal of the Grand National, remember, was to be the last under the managerial control of Mirabel Topham. For £3-million quid, property developer Bill Davies had acquired Aintree, doubtless ambitious to have the sacred ground turned-over to houses on streets and roads named Devon Loch Road, Red Rum Street, Manifesto Drive and Golden Miller Avenue.
38 faced the starter in 1973, 10 more than faced the starter in 1970. So perhaps my critical outpouring at the maximum number of runners being reduced to 34 was misplaced. Perhaps. This renewal of the great race was typical of all Grand Nationals prior to its neutering by the present-day custodians of the race - a smattering of top-class horses, perhaps in decline of former days, and, as should be, the rest being no-hopers in hope of good fortune shining on them. 
Crisp and L’Escargot bore top-weight of 12-stone, with Spanish Steps one-pound lower. I would have backed Spanish Steps as he is my all-time favourite horse, just ahead of Frodon, the last equine love of my life. On 10st 5Ibs lurked Red Rum, trained by a used-car dealer and owned by an octogenarian Liverpool-based former engineer who had built his company up to be a major force in the construction industry in the North-West and who had not previously owned a racehorse. In 1973, Noel Le Mare had two runners, Glenkiln being the forgotten one of the pair.
The race is simply told. Crisp led from the get-go, made a wee error at the first and then preceded, unchecked by Richard Pitman, to demolish all the myths and legends that extoll the big black birch fences as monsters designed crush dreams and to pull horses and jockeys down into the bowels of the earth. Crisp was an equine comet that day, flying around the green swarth of Aintree racecourse with a zesty eagerness rarely seen at Aintree, jumping as if the fences, as so often reported, were nothing more formidable than upturned dandy-brushes. 
As Crisp soared over Bechers for a second-time, Brian Fletcher, already a Grand National winner in 1968, decided it was now or never to start to hunt down the leader. He had made little impression by the Canal Turn or even Valentines and entering the straight with two-fences between Crisp and the most deserved of all victories, the margin between first and second, with the rest trailing by considerable distances, was still twenty-lengths. Crisp jumped the second-last with the same aplomb as the previous 28. Seemingly, his energy reserves were used-up by one more immaculate leap at the last fence and by the time he got to the elbow, where Richard Pitman believes he lost the race by picking up his whip to keep Crisp on a straight course for the winning post, the great Australian chaser was running on fumes and reserves of courage. Red Rum chinned him on the line and a true legend of the sport was born.
On March 31st, 1973, I believe, and will always believe, Crisp came with three-quarters of a length of achieving the impossible. Could any horse give Red Rum 23Ibs at Aintree in a Grand National and beat him. The following season, Red Rum carried 12-stone and beat a double Cheltenham Gold Cup winner by seven-lengths giving him a pound. And, of course, Red Rum went on to win two-more Grand Nationals, the only horse in Aintree history to achieve the fete, and finish second twice. I do not believe even Arkle could have given Red Rum weight and a beating in a Grand National. Everywhere else, yes, but not at Aintree.
Also, Red Rum shattered the course record for the race, as did Crisp, with L’Escargot and Spanish Steps also finishing inside the old course record.
The greatest race, the greatest performance by any horse in my lifetime, four-horses beating the course record, and the birth of horse racing’s greatest equine legend. I rest my case.

​L’Homme Presse will be aimed at the Ryanair Chase at the Cheltenham Festival if ground conditions should be heavy in March. Here is my view on this. If heavy ground detracts from L’Homme Presse’s chance of winning the Gold Cup, surely it will detract from his chance of beating speedier horses over a shorter distance. That is not a question, simply my take on the possibility of trying to replicate what the Skeltons achieved with Protektorat last season. Last year it was a rather poor Ryanair, this year’s renewal promises to be a lot hotter.
Given he did not see a racecourse last season until January, after an injury that had kept him at home for twelve-months, I thought to lead the field into the straight in the Gold Cup last season was a valiant effort. As was his 3rd-place finish in the King George last week. To me, as with Brighterdaysahead being swerved around the Champion Hurdle in order to pick-up a much smaller pot on the same day, owners have a responsibility to the sport to ensure their best horses run in the best races and as such L’Homme Presse should be aimed at the race he has the form to win, and that is not a race over 2mile 4, a distance he has not exactly shined over during his progression from novice chaser to perhaps the top 3-mile chaser in Britain.
I just wish trainers, and in particular owners, stopped trying to be smart and when given the rare opportunity to win a gold medal go for gold.

Sandown is in a ‘reasonable position’ for racing to go ahead on Saturday even though the course is not fleeced all round and the temperature on Friday night going into Saturday morning is forecast to drop to minus-3 and not rising above plus 3 during the day. As with Wincanton faced with a similar battle against the cold, I give neither much hope of going ahead. And anyway, after all the meetings over the holiday period, it would allow all concerned a bit of me-time if there no racing for a few days.

On the subject of the weather. Is it possible that racing taking place when it is foggy or extremely cold is detrimental to the health of the racehorse. Be it man or beast, lungs are quite fragile organs, with racehorses especially prone to lung infections and the breaking blood vessels. Can it really do them any good to be breathing in moist fog or cold air either at sprint distances on the flat or over long distances over jumps especially in those final ‘lung-bursting’ final few furlongs?

John Randall’s round-up of the previous year’s human and equine deaths is always a hard read for me, with perhaps the loss of the racehorses more difficult to swallow than the death of the people who owned, trained or rode them. The death of Istabrag, despite all J.P.’s team did to give him the best possible chance to live long into old age, was a loss to me as difficult to come to terms with as the death of the inestimable Alastair Down. I can promise you this, if I should end-up in the same place as Alastair in the after-life, I will give him a vivid dressing-down for not trying to live as long as possible and to have written his unmissable column for as long as possible.

Musselburgh have been vandalised again. A suitable punishment for mindless destruction should be to reimburse the victims of their crime to the full amount and if it should take the perpetrator their whole life to repay, then so be it, and if it should impact on their future life, so be it. I used to think vandals should be horse-whipped to an inch of their lives or even shot at dawn but I realise now that, even if the crime is deserving of such a draconian punishment, it would be going too far and does nothing to compensate their victims.

Whereas I would like to see the Racing Post publish racecards from the French provinces during our National Hunt season, the editor chooses to give us information on racing in Hong Kong, Bahrain and Dubai, of which I have no interest and am inherently against as a good proportion of the problems in racing in Britain is due to the emergence of racing in these far-flung countries.

​I am of the opinion these days, be it by journalists or enthusiasts, that equine greatness is too hastily, and often wrongly, bestowed on any young horse that either singularly or through the course of a season performs way above expectations. 
Arkle was a slow-burner and with a doubtful pedigree.
He ran 36-times. He won 27.
His longest odds were 20/1 when he won the Bective novice Hurdle at Navan, ridden by Liam McLoughlan. Pat Taaffe first rode Arkle in a race at Naas, a handicap hurdle which he won as the 2/1 favourite, carrying 11st 2Ibs.
The following season Arkle started his trajectory towards becoming the greatest racehorse of all-time by winning two handicap hurdles, the Wee County Hurdle at Dundalk and the President’s Hurdle at Gowran Park. From that day forth he was to be a steeplechaser, putting down a marker by winning the Honeybourne Chase at Cheltenham as the 11/8 favourite. He won his next 4 chases, including the Broadway Novice Chase at the Cheltenham Festival, now the Brown Advisory.
He won neither of the two Bumpers he contested but in 1963 he won a flat race at Navan over 1-mile 6-furlongs, ridden by T.P.Burns. Again, he was favourite.
Of course, he was beaten in the Hennessey Gold Cup by Mill House and Happy Spring, though Pat Taaffe predicted Mill House would never beat him again. Between Newbury and redemption in the Gold Cup, Arkle won the Christmas Chase at Leopardstown on St, Stephen’s Day, the Thyestes and Leopardstown Chase, then run in February. After the Gold Cup, he won the Irish National.
From 1964 onwards Arkle’s career became one of prodigious weight-carrying performances, the likes of which we will never see again, or gallant defeats giving away monstrous amounts of weight to top-class chasers. He won the Hennessey under 12st 7Ibs and in the Massey-Ferguson, with no less than 12st 10Ibs on his back, he finished a close-up 3rd, conceding 32Ibs to the winner, Flying Wild and 28Ibs to Buona Notte. He won the Leopardstown Chase again under 12st 7Ibs and after his second Gold Cup he carted 12st 7Ibs around Sandown to win the Whitbread.
The following season he returned to Sandown to carry 12st 7Ibs, his first race of the season, to win the Gallaher Gold Cup in a time that has not been eclipsed in the years since. Search the race out on YouTube. He simply toyed with Mill House, allowing him to go clear, caught him up, let him go clear again and then went on to win by a fence.
He then won the Hennessey a second time under 12st 7Ibs. He then came to Kempton on Boxing Day to saunter home in the King George. By now, trainers were loathed to run their best chasers against him as no weight concession gave them much hope of beating him.
Arkle carried 12st 7Ib to a third victory in the Leopardstown Chase as prelude to hack round at Cheltenham to win his third Cheltenham Gold Cup.
Of course, the next season was to prove his last and it started with defeat in the Hennessey Gold Cup when he failed by a narrow margin, conceding 35Ibs to the entire field, finishing second to Stalbridge Colonist who later that year was to finish second in the Cheltenham Gold Cup. The ground was heavy and 2-weeks before the race Arkle suffered a cut that kept him off-work for a few-days.
Not that anyone could know it, Arkle’s last victory came at Ascot in the S.G.B. Chase, as always carrying 12st 7Ibs.
His defeat in the King George 13-days later is not worth dwelling on, a broken pedal bone bringing prematurely to an end the career of a horse the likes of which we will never see again.
Pat Taaffe revealed in his far too short yet still wonderful autobiography ‘My Life and Arkle’s’ that he had persuaded the Duchess of Westminster to run Arkle in that season’s Grand National. Would that not have been an occasion for the ages.

The point I am labouring over is this: if your only viewpoint about Arkle is gained from grainy images of him on YouTube winning 2 uncompetitive Cheltenham Gold Cups, - in the first he beat Mill House in his prime – then your viewpoint is leading you up a garden path of ignorance. No horse in the history of National Hunt racing, and I include Golden Miller who won many races giving lumps of weight away but also lost a similar number, achieved what Arkle achieved. When the weights were announced for the Irish Grand National, to be fair to every other horse entered, the handicapper produced two handicaps, one if Arkle was to take part and another if he did not take part. Otherwise, it was a case of Arkle 12st 7Ibs, the rest less than 10-stone. He was beyond handicapping.
In my lifetime only Desert Orchid was regularly asked to shoulder top-weight in handicaps. Yes, Denman won two Hennessey Gold Cups off top-weight but he did not carry 12st 7Ibs, far from it. Kauto Star and Sprinter Sacre are the best chasers I have seen since Arkle, though Sprinter only qualifies during his pomp and splendour years when Barry Geraghty had the pleasure of riding him. Yet neither of them, or Galopin Des Champs, the present prince of steeplechasers, were given the herculean tasks that were central to Arkle’s career.
Finally, Pat Taaffe broke in Mill House when he was with Pat’s brother, Tos, and in his autobiography, he rated Mill House the second-best horse he was associated with during his long career, with Flyingbolt third and Royal Approach fourth. Look-up Flyingbolt, a horse that won the 2-mile Champion Chase, was third in the Champion Hurdle the following day and finished that season winning with ease, under 12st 7Ib, the Irish Grand National. Yet Pat rated Mill House superior to him.
Arkle was the greatest racehorse of all-time.

​For someone born in the 1950’s, the year 2025 was a time so long into the future, even during schooling in the 1960’s, to be considered science fiction; a time only Doctor Who and other fictional entities would ever experience.
And yet here we are in 2025, our freedoms hanging by a thread, the word dystopian no longer used by readers of George Orwell but now known by the majority of the population. We live in a mad, bad and sad world and we must make the best of it until a reformist caped crusader comes to our rescue.

Horse racing is a cause for suffering, alongside the farming community. Our government has a scheme whereby farmers can claim a subsidy of £2,500 a year for three-years to plant barley and allow it to rot in the ground rather than harvest the crop to sell for food for people and straw to use for bedding for their cows. They will also be paid for buying bird-seed and spreading it on the ground. No fertiliser to buy, no diesel for their tractors. Natural extinction of the farming way of life. Our food providers thrown to the wolves to uphold the mantra of net-zero. Do your own research and lick your fingers to feel the way the wind is blowing.
Horse racing and those who either earn their living or pleasure from it are also being slow-boiled. The food horses eat is grown by farmers. Hay, too. And straw is required for bedding. The Gambling Commission, too, is inspired by government to make life as difficult as possible for punters and gamblers, the steadfast sector of our world where much of the sport’s funding is to be gained. Can you imagine the furore if affordability checks were imposed on the buying of alcohol, any product bought on what was once termed as hire purchase or on chocolate, perfume or holidays. Yet without an outcry from our M.P.’s the lives and living of thousands of people involved in the horse racing industry is being allowed to be put in jeopardy on the pretext of protecting the few people addicted to gambling on horse racing. Bingo-sites are rarely mentioned, casinos, too, and the National Lottery seems to have been granted an exemption from the hue and cry. It is all about the natural extinction of betting on horse racing or the natural extinction of horse racing itself.
We must enjoy to the limit what we have, though I am tempted to say what we have left. The thoroughbred industry may have a future in Britain and Ireland as a nursery ground for selling foals and yearlings to race abroad, notably Dubai and Bahrain, but as a spectator sport we will, in perhaps as little as 20-years, be reduced to the match races of the eighteenth-century, and then only as an exhibition, as we have today with re-enactments of jousting tournaments. 
If you take into account how few horses are to be found in novice chases in this country, and I include novice handicaps, and compare the large number of runners in novice chases (and I include Beginners’ chases) in Ireland, it makes one wonder where the handicap chasers of the future will come from. The decline in competitiveness in British jumps racing and the tide of owners choosing to have horses trained in either Ireland or France almost, if you were a conspiracy theorist – a term first coined by the F.B.I. in the wake of the assassination of J.F.K. – could be seen as part of a dastardly scheme to salt the earth of horse racing in this country. Not that the industry has helped itself in allowing so many new all-weather racecourses, the major factor in so few horses coming to National Hunt from flat racing, and to allow global bookmaking giants to have so much clout.
We must love our racehorses while we can and do everything as an industry to cater for their welfare both during their lives in racing stables and when they retire to pastures new. It seems the Labour Party are determined to end drag hunting, so there is another nail in the coffin of the thoroughbred. We must demonstrate to the ignorant few and the majority who care neither one way or the other that we take our responsibilities to the horse, our duty of care, seriously. It should be our prime motivation to raise as much funds as possible to ensure our sincerity is matched by the financial resources so no single former racehorses slips through the net.
With donations of £12 from the sale of every horse sold at public auction going to R.o.R. from January onwards, the arrow is finally pointing in the right direction. That said, people must carry out their own research into the direction of travel assigned to our government and governments around the world by the W.E.F., the W.H.O. and the U.N., and perhaps shadowy elites, some of whom have footholds in our own sport, and discover for themselves the future for farming around the world and the countryside in general.

​Sensational. 
Boo! Boo! Stop taking the piss, Gordon.
The mare was brilliant. Brighterdaysahead was the most impressive hurdler of the entire Festive period. More impressive than Constitution Hill, more impressive than The New Lion. Indeed, on bare form, beating State Man by over 30-lengths must rate higher than Constitution Hill beating Lossiemouth 3-lengths. And to think she will receive 7Ib from Constitution Hill if the Gordon and the O’Leary brothers have the balls, and the welfare of the sport, to reject the spoilsport pursuit of pot-hunting and go for the inconsequential Mares Hurdle.
Look, you will never find me criticising Gordon Elliott. Even in the dark days of his ban from the sport, I was steadfast in my opinion that he was harshly treated. But if he does not champion the pursuit of the Champion Hurdle with Brighterdaysahead when in discussion with the O’Leary brothers, I will be very disappointed with him. There should be no teasing, no having a laugh with the racing public. No last-minute decisions to go one way of the other. We need to know how good Constitution Hill really is. He needs opposition; he needs to be in a race that is not run to suit him. He needs to beat Brighterdaysahead far more than he needs to defeat either State Man or Lossiemouth again.
If the mare does end-up in the Mares Hurdle, the blame should be put squarely at the feet of the Cheltenham executive for allowing it to happen. Grade 1 winners should have to shoulder a 10Ib penalty in the Mares Hurdle. The best must be kettled towards the best races at the Festival. The principle of the Turners Novice Chase should be applied to every race at the Festival. The 2m- 4-furlong novice chase was dispensed with as it reduced the quality and competitiveness of the other two novice championship races. The same principle must be applied to supporting the Champion Hurdle, the 2-mile Champion Chase and the Cheltenham Gold Cup.
Shame on you Gordon, shame on you Michael O’Leary. You took a lesser option last year and got stuffed. If you do so again, I hope you get stuffed again. The honour is going for the Champion Hurdle, win or lose.

In today’s letters column of the Racing Post, Mr. Bradley of North Yorkshire offers his opinion that Constitution Hill won on the bridle at Kempton. Did he not see Nico working hard in the saddle; did he not see Nico pick up his whip? It was a glorious win and I cheered him home the same as anyone else. But it was his least impressive victory of his short, glorious career, especially as Lossiemouth ran with the same lack of spirit as a good too many of the Closutton horses did over the Christmas holiday period.
For a first run for 12-months and after having suffered from colic in the interim, it was a perfectly reasonable effort and if he should run again before the Champion Hurdle, it would be perfectly reasonable to expect him to win with his usual pomp. He did not win at Kempton in the style The New Lion won at Newbury or in glorious isolation as Brighterdaysahead achieved at Leopardstown. It was satisfactory. No more.

The B.H.A. Director of Equine Regulation, Safety and Welfare, James Given, writes in today’s Racing Post that 38% of fatalities on British racecourses are due to falls, and that the introduction of the new padded hurdles has reduced the risk of a fatality by 11%. I am of the opinion that the change from orange to white on the woodwork of steeplechase fences has greatly reduced falls. I was disappointed Mr. Givens did not include any data to prove or disprove my thinking on the matter.

Finally, on the last day of the Leopardstown Christmas meeting, Rachael Blackmore finally got her first winner back since suffering a neck injury from a pretty benign-looking fall at Downpatrick. You see jockeys get buried amongst hooves and yet run back to the weighing room in order to do it all again. Rachael’s fall was somewhat slow-motion, even if the weight of her body was taken by her neck. Obviously, being the warrior she is, she got up that day and walked away, if somewhat gingerly, her many fans sighing with relief that was likely to be fit to ride again the following day. But no, she was on the injured list from September to early December. And it took July Flower to get her back in the winners’ enclosure. She was top of the jockey’s championship at the time of her fall with 23-winners. Her 24th was a long time coming and she now languishes a long way behind Darragh O’Keeffe, who leads the championship at present and who was the main beneficiary of her absence.

​Greatness has been bestowed on Constitution Hill, Sir Gino and Galopin Des Champs over the festive period and in the first two named it is too premature. 
To my mind, Galopin Des Champs is approaching greatness. He is, in my estimation, a better horse than Best Mate, though below Kauto Star and Denman. Arkle is way out of sight of any steeplechaser in the history of the sport you can mention.
I have no doubt, given sporting luck, that Galopin Des Champs will become the next horse to achieve three victories in the Cheltenham Gold Cup. At a time, especially in Ireland, where there are a plethora of high-class or close to high-class chasers around, over a distance of 3-miles + Galopin Des Champs is by far the leader of the pack. The only possible chance of beating him would be to take him on from flag-fall and not to allow him an uncontested lead, which happens too often in Ireland in races that involve Mullins hotpots.
The problem with comparing the great horses of the present-day with those of previous decades is that it is not a case of comparing apples with apples. Because of his superiority, the few condition races around in his time were a cakewalk for Arkle and once he had disposed of Mill House there was not a horse in any kingdom that could even get him off the bridle. Handicaps were more of a struggle for him, though he won more of them than he lost. The horses who did finish in front of him, always receiving weight in the region of between 2 and 3-stone, are better remembered than some Champion Hurdle winners. Today, the top chasers never have to run in handicaps, which is why Desert Orchid and Denman were so special to racegoers. Why horses in the past could carry top weight in handicaps and still win at the Cheltenham Festival, while today’s trainers seem to think of handicaps for their top chasers akin to the actions of kamikaze pilots in the 2nd World War, is beyond me. Are our horses today more brittle and less hardy than the likes of Desert Orchid and all those great chasers that came before him?
A third Gold Cup will put Galopin Des Champs in a club that only allows membership to the superstar horses of the sport. It is a club without Arkle, and I would suggest Golden Miller – 5 Gold Cups and a Grand National allows him a status beyond ordinary greatness – as today’s horses are not as tested as they were. Arkle and Golden Miller are the exemplification of singular greatness and even Galopin will struggle to sit beside them in the history books.
People who declare Constitution Hill the best hurdler of all-time or even one of the all-time greats are doing a major injustice to the champions who have gone before. Apart from horses trained by Willie Mullins, and they rarely have to exert themselves to run-up long sequences of wins, there is not a horse in training, apart from Constitution Hill, to rank within 20Ibs of many, and it is a long list, of the hurdlers that have gone before. From Sir Ken to Istabraq to start with. On my bookshelf I have biographies of Monksfield, Sea Pigeon and Persian War. Then there is, according to some, Night Nurse, the greatest of them all. Bula, Comedy of Errors. Horses that ran against one another, along with horses of the calibre of Bird’s Nest and Dramatist. Horses like Brave Inca and Hardy Eustace who won highly competitive Champion Hurdles.
I am not crabbing Constitution Hill. But so far he has only won one race of note and that was his Champion Hurdle demolition of Jonbon. It can be argued that State Man has won more races of note and he might land another today at Leopardstown. With the standard of hurdler we have at present, I would contend that three Champion Hurdles will not necessarily make Constitution Hill the equal of Sea Pigeon, Night Nurse or Istabraq. In my book, to achieve everlasting greatness, great horses must beat other great horses. It is not Constitution Hill’s fault he is in a league of his own. Neither is it his fault that people who should know better, to create a narrative in an attempt to boost awareness of the sport, use hyperbole when comparison is all that is required.
I laugh when, after one novice chase, people who should know better, Rishi Persad, for one, honour a horse with greatness. Warning, ahorse ran at Leopardstown yesterday who is the poster boy for greatness unachieved, Bob Olinger. That there was Samcro. My Drogo had the world at his hooves, now he is running in point-to-points. Sir Gino was brilliant, yes. Yet Willie Mullins has conceded that Ballyburn is a stayer not a 2-mile horse and if that proves the case, in many ways Sir Gino beat nothing of value at Kempton. Stay grounded, keep your fingers crossed and let history play out. At the moment, Sir Gino has the potential to be very good. That is all. This sport can kick like a mule when focus is lost in a maze of hyperbole.

The best and brightest thing to come from the festive period was the hope instilled in us for the Cheltenham Festival. The tide is turning, folks, and in The Jukebox Man and The New Lion there is renewed hope that two British trainers may yet play starring roles come March.

Today, after announcing his plan to bring forward his retirement, Daryl Jacob will have his last ride as a licenced jockey. He has always been one of my favourite jockeys. A jockey who had no concerns about displaying his love of the horses he rode. A great jockey and without knowing him personally, I suspect a great bloke, too.

​Ruby Walsh was right, was he not? ‘Ballyburn doesn’t look like a 2-miler to me,’ he said, and for once Willie is wrong. Perhaps.
The star of the Christmas holiday period was undoubtedly Sir Gino. 4-year-olds are not designed to thrash horses with the greatest potential for greatness in Ireland or Britain on debut over fences in a Grade 1. Yet that is unquestionably what Sir Gino achieved. And it was a cake-walk; victory with ears cocked. Not 100% flawless on the jumping front but 9/10 with a sprinkling of stardust, all the same.
And another feather in the cap of Nicky Henderson; another reason why people should stop insulting the man with their less than worthwhile criticisms. The man is a flipping genius and we need to appreciate him while we have him amongst us. As Nico said after Constitution Hill. ‘I am lucky to work for him.’ As Nicky Henderson is lucky to have someone of Nico’s talent and dedication as his stable jockey. 
As for Ballyburn? Who knows. Doubtless Willie Mullins will pull a rabbit out of the hat twixt now and Cheltenham. Also, the Closutton horses are not pulling down trees at the moment. As with Lossiemouth, it might just have been an off-day for Ballyburn due to a small bug affecting the stable.

Galopin Des Champs versus Fact To File is the last of our festive match-ups and I believe it will take a performance akin to last year’s Savills Chase for Galopin to keep Fact To File from becoming odds-on for this season’s Cheltenham Gold Cup. On all known Leopardstown form, Galopin should win. In fact, on all known form the trophy should head back to Closutton. But Willie Mullins is struggling for a Graded winner this holiday season and it might be worth betting each-way on one of the few opposing horses not trained at Closutton. Heartwood would be my choice.

When a horse costs a zillion-quid expectations are that it will, at the very least, whizz through its novice campaign and go to Cheltenham favourite for one of novice championship races. Regent’s Stroll cost a zillion-quid, or in excess of £600,000, and yet in today’s Challow Hurdle he is opposed by half-a-dozen young horses, all winners, that did not cost anywhere close to a zillion-quid, though the Tizzard horse fetched £150,000 at auction, which, to me, is a scandalous, ridiculous amount of money to fork-out in search of achieving a dream-come-true. Given the failure rate of horses that cost similar scandalous, ridiculous amounts of money at auction, why do the silly-rich keep signing cheques with 6 and 7 noughts in the pay column? I hope Regent’s Stroll wins but as with Closutton, Ditcheat is very light on winners this Yuletide.

Just to repeat. Joseph O’Brien is some trainer. After Banbridge, the O’Brien trained Solness, at 28/1, took down Gaelic Warrior at Leopardstown. 

The upshot of a poor performing week for the Closutton horses is that Gordon Elliott will enter the New Year with a clear monetary advantage over Willie Mullins. As with Jack Kennedy finally winning a deserved jockeys’ championship last year, surely no one would begrudge Gordon achieving a first trainers’ title this season. It does not need saying that Willie Mullins is far from done and at some point in the near-future Closutton will hit full hurricane force but Gordon Elliott is as shrewd and his personable and he will leave no stone unturned to in his bid for glory. One thing is certain, we will not be seeing any of Gordon’s top horses in Britain until the Cheltenham Festival as every euro in the win column will count in his struggle to see off Willie Mullins.

​We must not get carried away. Constitution Hill was the answer to yesterday’s puzzler of a Christmas Hurdle but it was, I would contend, the hardest race of his life, excepting, perhaps, his point-to-point race. 
Firstly, the horse looked happy, especially down at the start where he gave the impression of being where he wanted to be. Secondly, except for one hurdle when he thought it pertinent to give Nico a wake-up call by taking off from outside the wings, his jumping was as immaculate as we have come to expect. Thirdly, Nico said the horse took a blow between the last two hurdles, so expect vast improvement next time. Next time, I suggest, will be Cheltenham and not Trials Day. What was nice to see was the reception Constitution Hill received from spectators, it was warm and generous and a reminder of what horse racing is truly about – the horses.
I also liked Nico response to Paddy Brennan’s negativity about Constitution Hill and his belief the horse was ‘gone’ and would not beat Lossiemouth either at Kempton or Cheltenham.
Lossiemouth will have another day and I would not right her off. I thought the 7Ib concession and having his first run for 12-months might prove too much for Constitution Hill. I was wrong, happily so.
And I think Burdett Hill should not be written off, either. He is a 4-year-old and horses of that age always struggle when forced by circumstance to take on experienced Grade 1 hurdlers. Yes, it is usually folly to go against any input from Ruby Walsh but I do not think Burdett Road finishing so close to the main two undermines the form necessarily as we might be dealing with a horse sharply on the rise.

Banbridge did what I hoped he would, and Paul Townend rode him slowly-slowly-catchy-monkey as I expected. I did think, as with many others, though, that the French horse was beyond catching as he bounded into the straight. It is hard to imagine a horse capable of winning Grade 1 chases in his homeland over extreme distances could win a 2-Mile Champion Chase but that was what was mooted for Il Est Francois. Ryanair, perhaps, which, I expect would put him in opposition with Banbridge again as I cannot have him as a Gold Cup horse in the year we have Galopin Des Champs and Fact To File.
What has to be said is this: that Joseph O’Brien is some trainer. I joked yesterday that his dad must be green with envy at his son’s achievements. And perhaps Aidan is a little bit as he started as a jumps trainer only to be persuaded away by the lure of Coolmore. Yet his son proves, even with a reduced jumps string, that a trainer can be successful at the top level in both codes. Long may Joseph have a dual-licence.

The Jukebox Man has Gold Cup potential. All he needs is not to suffer ill-luck on the way to 2026. Mind you, the question that should be asked is not how good The Jukebox Man is but how good is Hyland as by determining his ceiling will give as a clue as to how good The Jukebox Man might turn-out to be. Hopefully both horses will run again before March as I am no fan of this ‘keeping a horse fresh nonsense’. Horses are there to run, having them fresh for 3-months entails keeping a lid on their natural exuberance and that, I believe, is chancing to luck every minute of every day leading to the day that determines future.

The three goodies today are Ballyburn versus Sir Gino at Kempton, the Desert Orchid and the Welsh National. Ruby Walsh is seemingly of the opinion that Ballyburn is not a 2-mile horse and if that is correct, with no 20-furlong novice championship chase at the Festival, that will force Willie Mullins into the 3-mile chase. If Ruby’s analysis is correct, Sir Gino is a good thing today.
The Desert Orchid is a better race for being a limited handicap and today’s race looks a cracker. Edwardstown would be the obvious choice if were not for his habit of falling when seemingly travelling well, as he did in the Tingle Creek last time, and he is in touching distance of being considered ‘ageing’. He deserves another a good win but on this occasion I see the race as a dual between two of my favourite jockeys, Charlie Deutch and Bryony Frost. Martator is an improving horse and no one is better at handling horses on the up than Venetia Williams, whereas San Bruit may have reached a peak at Aintree last season when given a ride of grit and determination by a jockey with the skill to get the very best out of good horses. Obviously, I would love to see Bryony prevail in a top-class chase, if only for others to see what the sport in this country is missing, but Venetia’s string are in great form, while several of the Nicholls’ horses are running poorly. Martator is the one.

A Welsh National with the going description soft, good-to-soft in places. And people wring their hands at the warm weather crisis! Only 16-runners, which is disappointing, though 14 have outstanding chances. Dan Skelton had a disappointing time of things yesterday, so perhaps Galia Des Liteaux can put a smile back on his face.

​I am not a bettor. If I could afford to lose, I would bet. I would not, though, ever become a gambler. Gambling is as foolish as messing with rattle snakes. Why risk everything to fate, even when you have taken the luck out of it by studying form to the point when you could make a stage act from the knowledge engrained in your brain? It is you bloody gamblers who gave politicians the excuse to ‘worry’ about gambling addiction and set in train the ‘Grumbling Commission’s’ affordability checks and government oversight into personal financial affairs. Drunks can drink themselves into oblivion but a loyal customer cannot get ten-quid each-way on at 10/1 because he took too much out of the bookmaker’s satchel a few days before!
Just bet. Do not gamble. And bookmakers’, stop getting into bed with the governmental mafia.

I will not be visiting either of our local bookmakers’ today. Nor do I have a betting account. Nor do I have a mobile phone. I do, though, have thoughts on today’s racing at Kempton Park. Let us hope trainers are not scared-off by ‘good’ being in the ground description. Remember, in most trainers’ eyes ‘good’ is the new ‘firm’. As Monty Python might have said. ‘I’d have snatched your arm off for good ground in my day. Used to race on ground as hard as the road back in the good old days before racecourses had irrigation. Clerks used to force their staff to pee on the landing side of obstacles in my grandfather’s day.’ You get my point?
I am sweet on Leave of Absence in the first, though we must hope he leaps mightily but does not bounce as it is his second run after a long leave of absence. You might get 10/1 about him.
I fell in love with The Jukebox Man at Newbury, even though my New Year’s Resolution last year was to never fall in love again. Apparently, he was not 100% fluent over his fences at Newbury. I suspect at one down the back he was so mighty, leaving the ground well before the wings and stretching like a lifeboatsman trying to reach a drowning child to make it safely to the landing side, that his jockey lost consciousness, which accounts for him not being as impressed as I was. I am slightly concerned that he did not run away with the race, with the second, opposing again today, closest at the line. He lost the 3-mile novice at the Cheltenham Festival in the final few yards after leading the field a merry dance and it might be he does not quite see out the 3-miles. But on a day of equine stars, he pretty much stands out to me.
The King George is, thankfully, and for once, highly competitive and I hope the declared eleven all face the starter. It is good ground when all said and done; the sort of ground that does no harm even if some horses can only win when the mud is deep. I am instinctively drawn to Banbridge, ridden today by Paul Townend, an inspired, if logical, booking. He was unlucky in the Hilly Way as he was coming, at least to me, to win his race when jettisoning his jockey at the last. It will be a fast race with the French horse and The Real Whacker to set the tempo and the slowly-slowly-catchy-monkey tactic of coming from behind might be the way to win the race. If the ground were softer, or soft, I would be all over L’Homme Presse with the Venetia Williams team in such vibrant form. But the ground is not soft, it is lovely and good, and I am bold and brave enough to suggest Banbridge to put another gold star on Joseph O’Brien’s c.v. His dad must be green with envy by now.
Kientzheim is a good thing in the fifth race, though I cannot say why. It is just a Nicky Henderson horse, fresh from France, ridden by Nico de Boinville, at Kempton Park. All the ingredients you need not to have to bother with the form book.
And King of the Road for one for the road.

The mixing things up in Ireland with the abandoning of some races and changing dates for others on St. Stephen’s Day has turned the day’s racing into something rather ordinary. We, or at least the Irish, have to wait until Saturday for the fuse to be lit.

​I am one of those miserable sods who rarely wishes anyone on meeting or passing a ‘merry Christmas’. But now with Christianity under attack by the wokish militia and the unelected mouthpieces of the anti-freedom and anti-free speech movement, I am forcing myself to wish all and sundry a merry or happy or peaceful Christmas. As an alcohol-free atheist I should be pleased to see a division of faith belittled and marginalised but I am not. I believe in the sanctity of liberty, freedom and peace for all, with everyone having the right to believe in what they believe in and to live their lives as they see fit. I may believe all religious adherents to be wrong but I accept they believe I am wrong to reject religious faith. Live and let live.
Today is Christmas Day. I dislike Christmas Day. No racing; no Racing Post. I do not care for celebratory events; I crave normality. I find contentment in normality that I have never find at parties or events or in a throng of people.
While children went to bed last night in anticipation of gifts overflowing the following morning, I will go to bed tonight excited by what gifts the racing gods have in store for me at Kempton Park and Leopardstown tomorrow, Boxing Day in Britain, St. Stephen’s Day in the Republic of Ireland. In light of the present destabilising slow creep of religious censure, I would prefer if we dropped the term Boxing Day and went with the more religious overtone of St. Stephen’s Day. Though I would prefer it if the country referred to the day after Christmas Day as ‘King George Day’; would that not be a glory of sporting statement?
If you think me a sad specimen of humanity for finding more joy in a horse race than in Christianity or gift-giving, I ask you think otherwise. Without horse racing, the sacrifice of those who work this day and every day caring for the horse, the owners who dip deep into their bank accounts to give us horses to race, the mental struggle of trainers, the breaking of bones and dreams by jockeys, and everyone who give their time and effort to make sure the daily life of the sport continues in sequence, I would have given up on life a long time ago. I have lived through the golden age of the sport, from the first televised Grand National – this a lie in 1960 I did not even know the sport of horse racing existed – or at least my first Grand National, which I believe was Nicholas Silver, to the heady ding-dongs between Denman and Kauto Star via Persian War, Night Nurse, Sea Pigeon, Spanish Steps, Red Rum, Desert Orchid, through to Frodon, the last equine love of my life. Without horse racing I would have nothing; with horse racing I have everything I wish in life.
Except the money to fully immerse myself in the sport as an owner. Perhaps the Lotto will bring me that joy.
My greatest fear is not the prospect of whatever disease or illness will remove me from the world but that my last years will witness the demise of the sport. I want my ghost to wander the country from racecourse to racecourse, to witness what my corporeal self will miss as my body moulders in the ground. How could the I of me that is left lie still in my shroud if some ethereal part of me could not watch or know the outcome of the Cheltenham Gold Cup or whether the latest ‘could be anything’ horse develops into that rarest of equine superstars, the next Arkle. To me, horse racing represents the great Earthly unknowing. Which horse will win the King George tomorrow? Which trainer will be champion this year? Who will win the Lincolnshire National at Market Rasen tomorrow? Will horse racing ever achieve the knowledgeable governance it deserves? 
I am out-of-kilter today as my life has no routine, no normality. Tomorrow I may achieve my kind of happiness if controversy or tragedy does not attach itself to the sport. I hate that. The death of a horse ruins the day as the intrusion of politics ruins everything for everyone.
I will get through the day as it is the only way of arriving at tomorrow. Merry Christmas to one and all and a damn fine St. Stephen’s Day also.