​One aspect of the bloated race-programme that receives little attention is the lack of variety these days. Racecourses seem more disposed to amateur races on the flat than staging a race that adds variety or originality to a race day. Here’s one idea: the male population in particular is getting weightier. Back in the day of Charlie Elliott and Joe Childs boys entered racing stables aged about fourteen weighing as little as 4st and not many lbs and by the time they had the chance to prove themselves as apprentice jockeys many of them were not much heavier. Say what you will but malnutrition has its advantages. Nowadays kids are well-fed from the breast onwards and if handicaps were weighted as they were in Ellioot’s and Childs’ day top jockeys like James Doyle and Adam Kirby would still be mucking out stables. Over the past couple of decades, the minimum weight in handicaps has risen in tune with the extra pounds jockeys were weighing. 7st 7lbs, apprentice claiming and doing 7, is a thing long in the past. Rightly so.
But when changes take place there are always sufferers. In this instance, those jockeys who amazingly can still ride at eight-stone or less are discriminated against. If you look back at Jimmy Quinn’s early career, he won many of the top handicaps, now he barely gets a look-in. With so many competent female jockeys now riding, which, perhaps was not the situation when Quinn was the jockey of favour by the top trainers for lowly-weighted handicappers at Royal Ascot and beyond, there is an argument for establishing ‘low weight’ races, as, I believe, are staged in the U.S.
As with many of the suggestions I put forward, as with winner-restricted races for professional jockeys, as they have established successfully in Ireland, low weight races would require no additional funding. When I say low weight, I mean top-weight would be somewhere around 8st 5. Perhaps a pound or two higher. With a bottom weight of 7st 7, as in the days of yore. Not a step backwards but a levelling of the playing field. Giving all jockeys an opportunity to increase their income a faction. I know Holly Doyle could ride in such races and she hardly needs a boost of income but in principle its an idea worth debating.
June is as good time to talk about the National Hunt season as any month, I’m sure you agree. The National Hunt season used to work fine before the introduction of summer jumping. The 3-month break between the end of one season and the start of the next was for me interminable but when the entries for the first meetings of the season at Newton Abbot and Market Rasen were published in the Sporting Life it was reason for the heart to sing with joy. Small fields back then, becoming smaller as the firm ground took its toll on horses bones and tendons but it was still jumping and it meant the  Gold Cup and Champion Hurdle horses would be off grass and back in training.
I was in favour of the introduction of summer jumping. Trainers and jockeys were denied an income by the summer’s break and some horses needed top of the ground for it to be worthwhile keeping them in training. I am still in favour of summer jumping, though less would definitely be more rewarding for all concerned. Personally, I think an autumn break of 5 or 6-weeks would better suit all concerned.
Racecourses like Worcester, Stratford and Newton Abbot can produce perfectly safe ground through the months of May, June and July, and it would be unfair in the extreme if the B.H.A. reduced their chances of an annual profit by returning to a lengthy summer break. After much thought – no, really. This issue has caused me a great deal of thought toing and froing – I believe the core National Hunt season should be between the third week of September to the end of May, with the season continuing until mid-August when the champion jockey, trainer, owner, etc would be crowned.
Yes! Yes! Yes! I hear you. The final meeting, as is, at Sandown works so well why advocate change? I would answer, why should one-meeting scupper innovation that might be in the best interests of the sport. The B.H.A. could sanction a non-flat racing Sunday for ‘Finals Day’; with the summer racecourses taking it in turn stage the last meeting of the season - Newton Abbot, Market Rasen, Perth, Worcester, Perth. To my way of thinking, a rural racecourse would be a more appropriate venue to crown champions than a metropolitan racecourse as the sport was originated when two people bet each other they could gallop between two steeples faster than the other.
I have always been of the opinion that both the flat and N.H. seasons require both a root and branch overhaul and a good deal of blue sky thinking. Let’s get the party started! Or a debate.

​Perhaps it is because I am of an age when if life had panned-out differently I would be a grandfather, but I am becoming more and more a supporter and follower of females in sport than, as was the case for most of my life, my own gender. Over the last ten or twelve-years I have grown to enjoy the woman’s side of football over the men’s game, to the point now when if I watch the men’s game it is far more likely to be ‘The Big Match Revisited’ than ‘Match of the Day’ or an England international. For instance, I did not watch a single game during last year’s World Cup won by Argentina. I lost faith in the England men’s team when they lost that semi-final to Croatia.
Amazingly, considering my 100% allegiance to horse racing, my favourite ever sporting moment is no longer Red Rum’s third Grand National win, Desert Orchid’s Gold Cup or Sprinter Sacre winning the 2016 Champion 2-mile Chase but England winning the European Championship at Wembley last summer. I think Ella Toone’s opening goal will remain forever my favourite goal. It was a beautiful sporting occasion, with an atmosphere that transported me back many decades to when football was sheer sport, played by people who play the game not for what they can get out of it but out of passion and privilege for being able to play the game. I only have to hear ‘Sweet Caroline’ on the radio for the emotion of the occasion to flood back.
On the flip side is this, and I am sure female jockeys get this crap all the time. Any comment I post on a female football website or even Sky News, will receive replies from bigots informing me that men are better at football than women, using profanities and insults that would shame their grannies. And if you remind them that they are comparing apples with pears and that a top woman’s team would also always likely beat a good under sixteen boys team, you either receive silence or more abuse. I have no problem with people airing their differing opinions but couldn’t tech companies at least insist on basic good manners from the users of their social media outlets?
I’m old enough to remember when ‘jockettes’, as they were first labelled, were such a novelty that the first female restricted horse race created headlines on all national news broadcasts. If they only knew then what we know now, eh!
Yesterday I watched Nick Luck interview Joanne Mason, the female, who along with Saffie Osborne, I believe possesses the necessary riding talent to be riding good horses at all the top meetings. A great interviewer and a lovely interviewee. The door of opportunity, of course, is now ajar for femal jockeys, which was never likely to be the situation thirty-years ago, and all Joanne, Saffie and others require is for, as in the days of ‘manners maketh the man’ a gentleman trainer (or owner or fellow female trainer) to open the door wide and to guide them into the parade rings on the biggest of days.
Hayley Turner, riding as good as ever at the advanced age of forty as when in her prime, is a wonderful ambassador for the sport in general and Holly Doyle continues to raise the bar ever higher for those of her sex who presently ride in her wake. Yet the job is not yet done. I hope in the last year’s of my lifetime to witness a female jockey win the Epsom Derby or at least an English classic. It is on the horizon, that’s for sure. As is an England football team winning a World Cup.
Yet in Ireland, there is no female jockey within hailing distance of Rachel Blackmore, though her standing in the sport has allowed a few females to turn professional, with only Siobhan Routledge riding winners with any consistency on the flat. Britain leads the way when it comes to female participation in day-to-day horse racing.
Why is this topic important? Because half the population of the world is female and for horse racing to survive when statistics suggest a large decline in public interest in the sport over the past decade, we must establish the narrative that we are an all-inclusive, equal opportunity, sport. We need female jockeys riding regularly in the top races and we need females attending race-meetings not as clothes-horses but as genuine horse racing fans.
As when Merriel Tuffnel won the first all-female jockeys race at Kempton, the sport should be looking for a similar headline grabbing event. Which is why I proposed (to silence) the B.H.A. should establish the most valuable professional female rider restricted flat race in the world. A race professional female jockeys all around the world would have at the top of their wish-list. A race, at least in its inaugural year, that would receive the novelty mention on at least some national news broadcasts.
I would also like to see ‘low weight’ races established, where the weights favour lighter jockeys over the top jockeys who ordinarily struggle to do much below 8st 7Ibs. ‘Low weight races’ would not, of course, be restricted to females but would give the light male jockeys greater opportunities as at present, as weights rise to conform to the increasing body-weight of males in the population, are being penalised. 
The B.H.A. are standing still on this aspect of promoting the sport, whereas the F.A. have their shoulder to the wheel in their efforts to increase female participation in football at all levels. Yes, the B.H.A. have, perhaps, more important matters to attend to at present and finances in the sport are tight. Yet, I would suggest, one of the listed or Group 3 race they propose to axe next season could be given a new lease of life by being transformed into the richest female-jockey restricted race in the world. It’s all a matter of looking outside the box.

​You might think Julian Bedford, the complier of ‘The Racing Man’s Bedside Books’ took the easy route to publication by collating the work of famous others. Not so. Most works of fiction, anyway, based in the world of horse racing are, on average, not very good. I have contributed to the lack-lustre genre myself. ‘Going To The Last’, a collection of horse racing short stories, by K.D.Knight. Competitively priced. 
Bad form, I know, plugging one’s own efforts while providing a critique of someone’s better quality book, yet it’s a cut-throat world and Mr. Bedford would do the same for me, and as no one visits this site on a regular basis, who is to know?
Julian Bedford’s book is not new, though my copy is pristine, and was published in 2004. Two writers at the opposite end of the literary spectrum feature several times, the legendary Jeffrey Bernard and the esteemed Damon Runyon. No compendium of racing fiction can ever be published without contributions from the work of Runyon; he made his fortune writing about down-at-heel characters that inhabited U.S. racetracks. I am surprised Coolmore is yet to name one of their blue-bloods in his honour.
The book is a mingling of works of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. The poetry provided by dignitaries of the genre of no less esteem than John Betjeman, Siegfried Sassoon and Adam Lindsay-Gordon. Betjeman’s poem is a eulogy to Upper Lambourne, a surprise to me if not to the better educated amongst you.
What makes this a book a must-have for anyone interested in horse racing, and for the same reason would make a good gift for anyone who has expressed a growing interest in the sport, is the broad sweep of equine topics to be found. The first story, appropriately, is a letter, written in 1703, from one brother to another on the proposed sea-trip of the now famous Darley Arabian, the forefather of the pedigrees of so many top-class horses around the world.
To be found in the ‘Bedside Book’ are excerpts from the Timeform Annual, on St.Paddy, Anthony Trollope (his understanding of the sport caught me by surprise), racing luminaries from long ago such as Marcus Marsh, George Lambton, the Earl of Roseberry and, again surprisingly, Benjamin Disraeli and racing men better known to the present-day reader, John Hislop, obviously writing about Brigadier Gerard, the peerless David Ashforth, Jack Leach and Hugh McIlvanney.
More unexpected contributions are from Philip Larkin, Robert Morley, Evelyn Waugh and Daniel Defoe.
A similar book today, if the works of Runyon and alike were precluded, would be more difficult to collate as horses in general and horse racing in particular rarely cross paths with modern living. Celebrities may be seen at Royal Ascot or Goodwood but they are not there for the racing. They are there to be seen, to be seen with the ‘right people’ and on many occasions are invited to the racecourse by either the racecourse marketing arm or by a racing-orientated friend and are not there through a love of the sport. Perhaps that has always been true.
Even in the 60’s the connection between horse racing and the public was a secure link back into the history of a country when Parliament recessed so politicians could attend the Epsom Derby, when Prime Ministers not only owned racehorses in training but large studs, also. To own a racehorse was to display your association with the social elite. How times change!
Today, it is not even a debate on whether the sport will ever again return to its halcyon days but one of ‘will the sport survive for many more years’. Damon Runyon, George Lambton or Jeffrey Bernard would never have believed the present-day narrative of Animal Rights Activists or that the sport had anything but a never-ending future of glory and controversy. Horse racing was a sport of great hope for every sector of society. For the wealthy owner the hope of celebrating a Derby winner was on the same level as the hope of the punter to one day to win big and alter his social status from working to middle-class. Racing people live on hope. Hope is the driving force for stable staff to ride out in the rain and cold, for trainers setting off on along journey to the races, the punter to study form, for breeders to keep investing in stallion fees and hope is very much on the minds of those people financially fortunate to be able to own a racehorse.
It is important that books similar to Julian Bedford’s ‘Bedtime Book’ continue to be published as the stories, whether pure fiction or based in truth and reality, document the days when horse racing was both relevant and inspirational, without any stigma attached. On the reverse side of the coin, a modern-day version of this book would be unlikely to have contributions from supporters of the sport from the world of literature or from the world of politics or indeed any prime minister since Sir Winston Churchill.

​The ‘From Birth to Death’ welfare approach by the B.H.A. is by far their most praiseworthy strategy thus far. It is unarguable, though slightly regrettable that it came about from the point of view of defending the sport rather than having been in place for a hundred-years. Personally, I would like the B.H.A. to go one step further and have ‘The Horse Comes First’ as the number 1 statute of the sport, with no present or future rule or regulation instigated that might impinge in any shape or form on the governing aspiration of ‘the horse comes first’.
I have no capacity for remembering dates and sometimes even which decade something occurred and I rely on words or phrases along the lines ‘back along’ or ‘a while back’ when referring to annoyances and races from the past. Anyway, there was a time, not so long ago, when different factions of the sport, journalists, handicappers, bookmakers and punters, campaigned for all horses to be ridden out to the finishing post, irrespective of how tired they might be or there likely finishing position. The argument was that horses could be given ‘easy rides’ and in that event the true ability of horses was being hidden from the punter and handicapper, in particular. It truly was a case of ‘sod the horse’, the punter comes first and let’s make the handicappers job easier for them. I was aroused from my lethargy to put pen to paper and write to either the Sporting Life or Racing Post to point out the arrant nonsense being argued and the perception it would transmit to our baying detractors. Again, I am not sure of which decade I am referring to. But a dire proposal to shoot ourselves in the foot!
I will not reference Irish racing as there is one appalling case of a trainer being found guilty twice for animal cruelty who was not sentenced to either a life-ban or to be hung, drawn and quartered, that continues to boil my blood and thus far, although verging on lenient on the rare occasion such cases come before them, the B.H.A. have not let someone off with what I would consider ‘a charitable sentence’.
The problem with commenting on any case when ignorant of all the relevant facts is that you have no first-hand knowledge of the people at the sharp end of the charges against them and sentiment can guide your thoughts to make a claim that can verge from unfair to downright wrong. So, what I say now, is opinion based on the reporting of the case in the Racing Post.
Lee James has received a 3-year-ban from holding a licence to train racehorses by the B.H.A. for ‘not fulfilling his duty of care’ to a horse in his charge, Iconic Figure. He was given two 15-month bans for breaching the ‘duty to promote the welfare of horses’ and a further six-months for ‘failing to act on veterinary advice’. I might have accepted the punishment if the 3-years punishment began on the day he was found guilty. But the sentence was backdated to the day he was first charged with the offence and as a result he can reapply for his licence in November 2024. This is a charitable sentence and in no way does it signal the message to the public other licenced individuals that there is no defence when it comes to neglect and cruelty. 
In cases where a licenced individual is found guilty of neglect or cruelty to a horse in their care they should also be further charged with bringing the sport into disrepute and given a life-ban from the sport. Zero tolerance, as it should be for doping a horse to win or stopping it from winning. It may sound twee and juvenile, but horses truly are our future. If we do not place their welfare before all other considerations our detractors could easily win over the middle-ground public and horse racing in this country will be go the same way as racing in Singapore that is to end in 2024 due the government taking back the land on which Kranji racecourse is constructed. A chilling story in itself.
Individuals found guilty of neglect or cruelty should be classed as pariahs. That said, and in the present financial plight that governs all-things this is doubtful not feasible, a fund should be established, in cases of urgency, to be assessable by anyone licenced by the B.H.A. if they are unable to afford the veterinary intervention required to save the life of a horse. A dream scenario, I agree, but an aspiration that should be debated if not adopted. Nothing should be too much or too expensive if ‘the horse truly comes first’. I would argue that a fund of half-a-million quid could annually be raised if a small percentage was shaved off the prize-funds of all races worth six-figures or more. Without the aspiration, there can be no ambition to enhance horse welfare within the racing industry.
Finally, where is Iconic Figure now? Has he recovered from the regime of malnourishment imposed on him? Is he leading an active life? It seems, from third-party viewing, that the victim has been misplaced in the telling of this regrettable news story.

​There is more to take from the shake-up at the Professional Jockeys Association than simply the change in the lead characters. To me, it is blueprint for how the board at the British Horseracing Authority should be comprised.
The complaint many of the jockeys cited against its former Head Man, Ian Mahon, former professional footballer, was his ‘absenteeism’ when it came to talking with the membership over important changes to the rules of racing that impacted on jockeys and that he didn’t ‘speak the language’ of the sport, that he was an outsider who needed a translator to better understand the subtle and sometimes complex nuances of the sport.
The term ‘speaking the language’ resonated with me. If you, as with myself, have ‘spoke the language’ for most of your lives, talking with someone with a burgeoning interest in the sport, or someone you meet socially and has asked what your interest in life is, it can be similar to speaking with someone from another country. And you, of course, can come across as if you have a very broad regional accent that mangles the English language. Even the word ‘furlong’ can need explanation.
This, in a nutshell, is my problem with how the B.H.A. is set-up. I am in no way critical of Julie Harrington or any of her predecessors and horse racing is both a sport and an industry, which makes it very different to other sport’s management authorities. And that is the point, the nub of my argument. I dare say Julie Harrington has learned a good deal of the horse racing ‘language’, yet she is more than halfway through her tenure at the B.H.A. How much of her time at the helm of the sport was she ‘catching-up’, in need of a ‘translator’?
The new ‘board’ at the P.J.A., fronted until a permanent successor to Ian Mahon can be appointed, by Dale Gibson, former jockey and someone who, seemingly, has the support of the membership. Why not appoint him on a permanent basis? Experience, speaks the language, up-to-speed with past issues! Henry Brooke, Neil Callan, Tom Marquand, Andrew Mullen, Jonjo O’Neill and Tabatha Worsley make-up a diverse and vastly experienced committee, alongside David Bass and Nick Attenborough, who has great experience within the sport as he has worked at Great British Racing, the British Racing School and Sandown Park.
Whether as a committee they will always sing from the same hymn-sheet will be discovered sometime in the near-future, I imagine. Initially, though, they will reform the association into a shape that best suits the needs of their colleagues. Although the main gripe, as I understand it, with jockeys had with Ian Mahon, Jon Holmes, etc, was their views on the whip and the closure of racecourse saunas were either ignored or circumvented. The tears in the fabric of the association were stimulated, though, by what will become known as ‘the infamous abuse case of Frost v Dunne’; a sorry tale that damaged the reputation of both the P.J.A. and the sport.
Looking in from the outside it was apparent the P.J.A. had an issue with this case and that ‘issue’ was more important to them than defending one of their members who was being intimidated by a senior member of the weighing-room. All that was needed for the situation to be prevented from becoming a story for the national newspapers to get their teeth into was for the P.J.A., and not necessarily the pen-pushing executive members, though certainly David Bass, to have taken Dunne to one side and told him he would be thrown out of the P.J.A. if he didn’t change his attitude towards another member of the association. Even if Dunne was correct in his criticism of Frost, a problem no one else had ever highlighted, he was wrong to think he was the one who could remedy the situation.
I believe Dunne’s problem was brought about by jealousy. I would hope the new ‘board’ would be quicker to snip such buds of potential embarrassment for the sport with more immediacy when and if they occur in the future. Jockeys work with danger every day of their working lives, as fanatics of the sport we owe them big-time and I, personally, am in awe of their bravery and skills. 
Robbie Dunne let down the P.J.A., the sport and fans of the sport, yet, seemingly, the P.J.A. wanted, in the first instance, to protect him and suggested his victim should keep quiet. I may be wrong in that summary, but it is the view I gained from reading newspaper reports on the issue. I would hope the new broom at the P.J.A. sweeps clean the past mistakes and they represent fairly and with integrity every single one of their members and without favouritism. 
I would also hope when it next comes to appointing the next person to head-up the B.H.A. is that the new incumbent can ‘speak the language’ from day one of his or her occupancy of the position. 

​I suppose the sport won the ‘battle of Epsom Downs’, though it might be described as a pyric victory; a victory for the iron-fist of a court injunction. The precedent of having to go to the High Court to ensure a sporting event takes place without interruption by people protesting an issue for the purpose of gaining publicity and news coverage is a precipice of unimaginable financial cost. Lawful, peaceful protest, must not be lost in a country of true democracy, yet the activists of Stop Oil and Animal Rising could easily become the excuse for governments around the world to ban all forms of protest. In their ignorance, Animal Rising may well be facilitating ‘the need for an act of parliament’.
The sight of armed police at a British racecourse was quite chilling. Epsom Derby Day is usually a pretty picture of British people at play, a throwback to the time when the Derby stopped, if not a nation, at least, the capital city of that nation. Indeed, Epsom on Derby Day always used to remind me of the origins of the sport when horse racing truly did mingle with ‘all the fun of the fair’ on important festival days in local calendars. Yesterday’s scene was far removed from a ‘pretty picture’ with security fencing, men and women in high-vis tabards and a regiment of police on high alert for anyone wearing a pink t-shirt. The triumph in Ed Chamberlain’s voice came across as hollow as a brandy snap where I was lounging. 
I remain convinced that if I.T.V. gave Animal Rising a ten-minute platform to air their aims, the public would see through them. Viewers watching I.T.V. will contain a high number with a dog or dogs at their feet, cats on many laps and parrots and cockatoos making themselves known in the background. Veganism verges on the evil, when taken to the extreme views of Animal Rising. In truth, it is not people who must rethink their association with animals but society rethinking their association with extremists intent on pressurising government into actions that benefit no one and, in this instance, will make extinct not only the thoroughbred racehorse but all varieties of cats and dogs. If veganism was natural, our ancestors would have been purely fruit-eaters and lions, tigers and crocodiles would be seen in petting zoos alongside rabbits and goats. I, by the way, eat very little meat and our oven would be mystified to have beef, lamb or pork to cook.

The Derby itself was interesting, wasn’t it? I am still to be convinced that Auguste Rodin is a world-beater, though his victory should be taken on-board by trainers too quick to rule out Derby bids just because their ‘big hope’ runs below expectation in a trial. It should be remembered, albeit his legendary status is beyond dispute, that Aidan is not always right when he ‘bigs’ up a Ballydoyle horse. Australia comes to mind, and though Auguste Rodin is now a Derby winner, I wouldn’t go mad on him coming out of Epsom as the best horse in the race as King of Steel looked positively burly in the parade ring and if Kevin Stott could ride his race again, he would, I suspect, hold on to him a little longer as he gave Ryan Moore the perfect lead into the final furlong. There is only natural improvement to come from Auguste Rodin, whereas King of Steel has both natural improvement and an improvement in fitness as a benefit over the next few months. Roger Varian is a stellar trainer but no one, I would contend, could get a 17-hand, 3-year-old colt, absolutely spot-on to the extent it could win a Derby. He might was, perhaps, 95% ready but not the 100% of Auguste Rodin.
Isn’t it time British trainers studied Aidan’s way with his horses? He doesn’t mind them being beaten if they come out of their races in better shape and having learned from the experience. His horses run and run. He achieves long seasons with his 3-year-olds especially as he doesn’t overtrain them early in the season and allows for natural progression. Yes, he has a battalion of purple-bred horses at his disposal, yet, even at Ballydoyle, the percentage of Group 1 horses is quite small. Look at a ‘Horses in Training’ from past years and you’ll see names of horses that are unfamiliar, that never came close to achieving a place in peoples’ memories. The man truly is a walking legend.
The other horse to take out of the Derby this year might be Artistic Star who stayed on like a top stayer for the future. When, and if, White Birch matures, he could improve leaps and bounds as at the moment he leaves his potential entangled with his unstable behaviour.
A very interesting Derby spoiled by the long anticipation of ignorant and selfish protest. It could have been worse, though, couldn’t it?

​The Epsom Derby is 1-mile & 4-furlongs long. Alas, the story of Derby Day 2023 will take far longer to tell. 
It is a mad world when in order to do all that is possible to stage a legal event, land owners must fork-out five or six-figure sums of money to seek a court injunction against people who by simply stepping onto your land are breaking the law. Animal Rising have publicly informed the authorities of their intention to break the law today. The threat has been communicated on social media and carried by national newspapers. Yet nothing, seemingly, can be done in anticipation of the threat until the perpetrators have committed the unlawful act. As things stand, given the large acreage of Epsom Downs is common land and the softly-softly approach of the police, I cannot see how there will not be disruption to the Derby, can you?
I think the tactics of the police would be markedly different if the threat was against government property or a direct threat against the King’s property. I am afraid the truth is, as proved by the softly-softly approach to ‘Stop Oil’ protests – you need to drive an electric car for 100,000 miles, by the way, to get it to net zero given they are built using power from nuclear power-stations – out-of-control protests will be used by our government in the near future to cut a swathe through our freedom to protest peacefully or otherwise about anything. It is good publicity for their future aims to allow people in pink shirts to be seen on prime-time television climbing security fencing, fighting the police and disrupting public life.
That said. 
The B.H.A. made the wrong call in deciding to run the Derby at 1.30. They have known since before the disruption to the Grand National that Epsom, too, would be targeted by Animal Rising and yet put the financial gain of the World Pool before the safety of horses, jockeys and members of the public. The discretionary move, at least this time around, would have been to stage the race during the F.A. Cup Final, with a replay of the race shown either at half-time at Wembley or after the game, denying the protestors the limelight of a maximum amount of exposure to the maximum number of viewers.
By the by. I wouldn’t at all be surprised if the F.A.Cup Final is not interrupted through invasion by Stop Oil or Animal Rising protestors. 
It is time to stand firm. I hope Ed Chamberlain informs I.T.V. viewers of the large number of people employed directly or indirectly by the horse racing industry. Horse racing is a diverse society. It is not an entertainment for the mega-rich. It is not an upper-class sport. Horse racing is very much a working-class sport. Flat jockeys in particular tend to originate from working-class families, though more and more it seems our leading jockeys are sons of former jockeys. I doubt if anyone in the country, working in any industry, works a similar number of hours per week that a leading or workaday jockey must do.
But this issue is not about jockeys or owners but the equine stars of the show. I once had a letter published in either the Sporting Life or the Racing Post – I have a copy somewhere but you know time and bother – suggesting that the first rule of the sport should be the horse comes first. This was at a time when handicappers were campaigning to have all horses ridden out to the winning post irrespective if they were likely to be in the money or tailed-off. No one, seemingly, supported me as no letters for or against were later published.
All through the whip debate, there seemed little support for banning use of the whip altogether. Yet this is issue is the stick our objectors use to beat us with most frequently. Frankie Dettori is rightly spoken-of as one the world’s great jockeys. As is Ryan Moore. Yet both use their whips sparingly. It is body-strength and horsemanship that wins the day with both of them. Yet the sport decides to go with six aesthetically-pleasing strikes.
Charlotte Jones received a 12-ban at Cartmel for mistaking the winning post. Pat Cosgrave got a 28-day ban for stopping riding before the winning line and being pipped at the post. Yet jockeys still receive shorter bans for a whip offence. Right or wrong, the issue is how the public view the discrepancy. This is about the public licence to continue as a sport.
I have absolutely no doubt that racehorses are the best cared-for animals in this country. I cannot comment with honesty on the situation in other countries. Can the sport do more? Of course, it can, yet, criminally, we are always on the backfoot, playing catch-up. Horses will die on racecourses, on the gallops, while turned-out at grass and sometimes even in the comparative safety of their stable. Yet I know that as soon as a horse requires the attention of a vet all that can possibly be done to heal the injury or cure the illness is done promptly without recourse to thoughts of cost. 
There is so much cruelty and neglect in this world, yet Animal Rising choose to protest against an industry that puts an animal on a pedestal, that when reading the result of a race it is the name of the horse that comes first, not the jockey, trainer or owner.
Excepting our late Queen and Winston Churchill, racehorse owners of sound repute, there are more statues of horses in this country than there are of jockeys, trainers or owners. Animal Rising believe large areas of this country should be rewilded so that horses can run free where we can go to enjoy them. Of course, many will die in agony of broken legs, illness and the cold British climate, though, of course, rangers could be employed to monitor the thousands of equines patriated to wild, uncaring nature. Animal Rising, no doubt, also believe in fairies and unicorns.
Epsom today will be a battleground of ideology. The protestors will largely be young, no doubt the same people who take part in Stop Oil protests; people who ignore the 33 dire warnings by climate scientists since 1958 claiming the Arctic will be free of ice by 2000 or famine will ravish the Earth by 2005 and so on and on. What every claim of catastrophe has in common is that they have proved to be wrong. 
Animal Rising are not opposed to horse racing per se, they are using our sport and threatening the employment of many thousands of people to publicise their belief that the connection between animals and humans should be terminated. No domestic pets is also their goal.
We live in a government directed world of wokism, where people are allowed to believe that if they object to anything, they have the right to protest against it and strive to have it banished from society. I object to Animal Rising. Perhaps I should glue myself to one of its activists or invade a members’ garden or disrupt one of their gatherings by fair means or foul. 

​I refer to the Epsom Derby, of course. Those with encyclopaedic memories or form books extending back to the beginning of Timeform and beyond, will doubtless raise a persuasive argument against me. Until then I will claim that the years between 1968 and 1972 sparkled so brightly that even someone with as poor a memory as myself can recall their glory. (clearing throat) With the aid of Stewart Peters book ‘Derby Days’.
I was going to extend ‘the golden period’ to 1967, the first Derby I can recall watching on t.v. As a schoolboy, I remember running home from school – 3-miles from home – to watch Arkle in Cheltenham Gold Cups but not to watch a Derby. I was thirteen in 1967 and I suspect I was canny enough by then to fake illness on big race days that fell midweek.
Royal Palace won in 1967, ridden by Aussie jockey George Moore and trained by Noel Murless. To this callow youth he looked a real stunner, a horse for the age, though history perhaps records him as not in the highest of echelons as apart from the second and third, Ribocco and Dart Board, the beaten horses did not amount to much.
1968, of course, was the year of Sir Ivor. Don’t ask me why, as I am a shy cinema goer, but I never truly appreciated Sir Ivor’s turn of foot until I watched a film of this race in a cinema in Newmarket. Sandy Barclay, a teenager at the time, was in tears after the race as he thought he was a certain winner of the race on Connaught right up to the shadow of the winning post only for Lester to sweep by, the horse doing the proverbial handstands and Lester calculating that year’s tax returns.
Sir Ivor looked a world-beater that day and was always Lester’s answer when asked the best horse he ever rode, though he occasionally, I believe, prefaced his reply with, ‘on his day’. Sir Ivor was beaten in his next four races, including the Irish Derby, without the aid of Lester, and the Arc, with the aid of Lester. He did finish his career winning the Washington International, after which Lester’s riding tactics were derided by U.S. racing commentators. As always, Lester had the last laugh. After trying to avoid the press mob, when finally cornered and asked ‘when did you think you had the race won’, Lester replied, ‘about two-weeks ago’. 
The second, third and fourth, were horses of reasonable ability, Connaught, Mount Athos and Remand, but, other than Sir Ivor, it was not a vintage Derby. But Derby’s rarely are. 
1969 was a strange year in comparison to the golden years before and after. 26-ran that year and was won by a horse having only its second run of its life, Blakeney. I doubt you could have produced a poorer bunch of Derby runners as those that Blakeney beat, though, of course, in 1973, during the same period of racing history, Arthur Budget trained the 1973 Derby winner, a half-brother to his 1969 winner, Morston, also only having his second racecourse experience. So, for that fact alone, perhaps my golden period should extend to 1973.
The golden treasure came in 1970. The first flat horse to blow me away. Nijinsky. I even had a painting of him for a Christmas present, such was my esteem. Only eleven faced the starter in 1970, such was the pre-eminence of Vincent O’Brien’s champion. He won, beating perhaps less quality opposition than Sir Ivor, with the sort of contemptuous ease that only a Lester Piggott ridden horse could achieve.
Nijinsky went on to win the Irish Derby and won the King George & Queen Elisabeth at Ascot in the most-commonest of canters you’ll ever witness in a Group 1 from what was described as ‘a star-studded field’ that included Blakeney. And, let it be said, Nijinsky is the last horse to win the British Triple Crown of 2,000 Guineas, Derby and St.Leger, and I doubt I’ll live to see another colt achieve the same. His defeat in the Arc broke my heart. Lester may have cocked-up his legendary waiting tactics that day but they had worked to perfection in every other race Nijinsky contested. If his owner was not dying of cancer Nijinsky would have remained in training as a four-year-old and what epics of racing history that might have provided.
The most under-rated horse of my lifetime achieved glory in 1971. Whenever wet-behind-the-ears racing commentators list the great flat horses, the name of Mill Reef is usually omitted. His defeat to Brigadier Gerard in the 2,000 Guineas determines my belief that the latter is the greatest flat horse of my lifetime as no other contender for the title beat a horse as good as Mill Reef. 
Mill Reef was a good winner of a Derby field that comprised 21-runners. It was an okay field quality-wise, though no Derby is ever jam-packed with quality. I would say that Epsom did not see Mill Reef at his finest. He was better when winning the Eclipse, absolutely flawless in winning the King George at Ascot and better still when triumphing in the Arc.
If fate had been kinder, in 1971 we might have had a King George and Arc contested by both Nijinsky and Mill Reef and in 1972 we could have had a King George rematch between Mill Reef and Brigadier Gerard. I have to admit these three horses are my favourite flat horses of all-time.
I include 1972 in my golden period as the winner was Roberto, no doubt a brilliant horse on his day, though far too inconsistent to be considered as anywhere close to the equal of Nijinsky, Sir Ivor, Mill Reef or even Brigadier Gerard, even though Roberto achieved the shock of generations when he beat a slightly under-par Brigadier Gerard in the Benson & Hedges at York. And, at Epsom, he beat a future Arc winner in Rheingold, though little else of Group 1 quality.
I very much doubt if the 2023 Epsom Derby winner will be of the quality to list alongside the equine gods of 1968, 1970 and 1971. This years victor will go down (I hope not, though I fear) as the winner of the delayed, possibly postponed, year of the Animal Rising Epsom Derby. First horse racing, then 3-day Eventing, Show Jumping, dressage, and then no horses at all, an entire species wiped-out by people who believe they care more than anyone else! Then, no cats, no dogs. No pet rabbits. No parrots. Humans separated from animals.

​Racehorse trainers get better at their job through experience. Sometimes, especially when youthful, trainers can get lucky and have a horse of immense ability in their yard and yet after that horse has retired to either the stallion barn or the breeding paddocks, life is never as sweet again.
It has to be remembered that Willie Mullins was no kid-wonder. He didn’t receive his trainers’ licence on a Monday and proceed to set the turf firmament alight by the end of the first week of his new career. Willie toiled at the wheel for many a year before his star began to seen as relevant and perhaps enduring. I bet any money Willie Mullins made a pocketful of mistakes in his early years. I bet he would confess to running horses in the wrong races, at the wrong tracks, ridden by the wrong jockeys and said wrong words to owners. If Willie Mullins is a god of this sport, he has to be a very human sort of god, a delegator god, a god with a well-trained and experienced eye. Mind you, gods, true gods, gods deserving of a capital G, must work out their far-reaching plans on instinct alone. No committee meetings or blueprints. And from what I read about the man, the genius, suggests to me that he asks, he listens, deliberates, observes, leaves the definite till the last moment, changes his mind and then delivers the correct decision. I suspect his decisions surprise even the closest of his staff. It wouldn’t surprise me if sometimes he surprises himself. 
Fate can work in someone’s favour, also. If Michael O’Leary had not taken away the sixty-plus horses Mullins trained for him over a dispute about training fees, would Closutton be the invincible force today that it has become? Mullins was one of the leading trainers in Britain and Ireland at the time but he wasn’t the dominant force he is now. Mullins turned a career set-back into an opportunity to seek out new owners and to take his business to the mind-blowing level he is presently achieving.
I believe we should think of Willie Mullins in terms of a coach, not a team bus, but someone in the mould of Linford Christie, a trainer of athletes. Top athletes, I believe, attempt to take their achievements to new levels by transferring their training programmes to athletic coaches who already train elite athletes. Linford Christie specialises in sprinters. Aston Moore long and triple jumpers. Athletes improve when they train alongside athletes better than themselves.
Horses very rarely improve when sold out of Willie Mullins care, not because he has got the best out of them already, though that might be the case, but because on the gallops and schooling grounds of Closutton there are not one or two or five or six brilliant chasers and hurdlers but tens of dozens of superior equine athletes, all of them ridden at exercise by some of the top riders in Ireland. I doubt if there is any hiding place on the gallops for the horse of less than Grade 1 ability. And on the ground, there is Willie Mullins guiding, advising, marking in his mind’s eye for later reference details lesser humans would miss.
Also, and this point should not be glossed over, Willie Mullins games the play in Ireland with the spirit of a general in the field of battle. And if he misses a detail now and then, it is doubtless picked up by his son or David Casey or Ruby Walsh. 
If the Irish race-programme was similar to the programme British trainers must work with, his numbers would likely be less impressive. He has Grade 2 horses in abundance, horses that would be handicapped out of winning if they were trained over here yet the Irish calendar has conditions races in abundance throughout the year. Horses that would have to shoulder 12-stone and more in handicaps, jump around the lesser tracks with less weight, sometimes on even terms with opponents, some times giving away 7 or 10Ibs to horses that if it were a handicap would be receiving 2-stone.
If those same conditions chases and hurdles were transferred to these shores, especially through the summer, believe me, Nicky Henderson, Paul Nicholls and Dan Skelton would lap them up. In fact, why don’t British trainers consider giving Willie a run for his money by taking him on with their own badly-handicapped chasers and hurdlers? The place money alone would pay for the journey across the water even if they couldn’t lower the Mullins colours on every occasion.
If the British race-programme was not so afflicted by the over-arching wish for larger field sizes and greater competitiveness, perhaps the top owners presently flocking to Mullins and his Irish rivals might decide to stay here if there were races for the type of horse that Willie keeps especially for those not-so-hard-to-win conditions chases and hurdles.
The way to stop one-trainer dominance is not to limit the number of horses any one trainer can run in any one race but to limit the number of horses any one trainer can have in his or her stable. Of course, if Willie was limited to 100-horses, for example, or 150, he would set-up a satellite yard and put his son Patrick in charge. Yet a limit on numbers would force owners to look elsewhere and top staff would by necessity be dispersed to trainers who presently desperately need top-quality staff and prize-money would be spread around to a better extent than now. Willie would still dominate but hopefully not to the detriment of either those following in his wake or the sport as a whole.
Willie Mullins has the horse numbers, the horse quality, staff of equine Mensa ability and skill and expertise accrued through the experience of success and failure to rank him a genius of his profession. But that does not necessarily equate to him being better at his job than any other trainer in Ireland or Britain. And the wheel will turn. As it has always turned down the centuries of this sport.

​When first proposed, I hated the concept of preferential treatment for the premier racecourses over their smaller counterparts. That I have come around to the idea is not because I have taken a walk on the dark side and am indoctrinated into a belief system that requires smaller racecourses to go to the wall. I continue to believe that our sport can only survive if local people have local racecourses to attend. In time, I believe, it will become difficult for ordinary people to travel long distances from their homes as individual ownership of cars will become a thing of the past. But that is a topic for a different kind of forum.
To my mind, if the concept of the ‘Saturday Afternoon Window’ is to be the blueprint upon which to build a thriving racing industry, to allow the major races the full spotlight of media and public observation, surely that spotlight should be focused on one meeting, not three, as proposed. Next Saturday is a poor example but I will use the Epsom Derby to make my point. Only Epsom and the Derby matter next Saturday. All other meetings are irrelevant, in the same way that the F.A. Cup Final will be the only football match played on the day that the eyes of the nation will be focused on.
That said, I wish people would desist in associating horse racing with how other sports conduct themselves. There is no comparison between horse racing and Formula I or football or tennis. It is why horse racing should be governed by people steeped in the history of the sport and not by executives from other sporting organisation. Horses are not machines, which is why fireworks and marching bands are a definite no-no on British racecourses. Horses are sentient beings; those who govern the sport must have the knowledge that the first rule is that horses are the first rule of thought when proposing new rules.
My major criticism of the proposed changes to the fixture lists is that everyone, seemingly, is catered for except the people who work at the cliff-face, the stable staff and trainers. Morning meetings will disrupt stable routines, for horses travelling long or longish distances it will mean more overnight stays for staff and horses and more evening meetings will cause staff to work longer hours more often. For staff retention, the concept proposed might be a deal breaker. It doesn’t matter if staff are paid large bonuses for working unsocial hours if they are too tired to care for the horses in their charge. Has any consideration been given to the mental health of stable staff? I doubt it.
Improving the quality of Sunday racing will be made easier to achieve by these plans if, and this is not actually mentioned thus far, the smaller racecourses are given priority, with the likes of Musselburgh, Thirsk, Chester and Hamilton prioritised on the Sabbath. If the likes of Ascot, Goodwood, Cheltenham, for example, are allocated Sunday afternoon slots, then an opportunity to breath life into all realms of the sport will be lost and the B.H.A. will be seen as disingenuous. And they do not need 6 experimental Sunday evening fixtures as the ‘Sunday Series’ already fulfils that role.
It is all very well the B.H.A. preaching that the core product, the bread-and -butter days, are to be protected but unless they commit to aspirations of enhanced prize-money for the lowest rated races, then disingenuous will be the correct adjective to describe their objectives.
Cutting the fixture list is obviously a step in the right direction. In my opinion there should be far fewer all-weather meetings through the summer as the original concept behind all-weather tracks was that they were to be a safety-net for betting revenue when turf meetings have be cancelled due to rain, snow, frost, etc.
The aspect of the B.H.A.’s announcement that ‘got my goat’ was not any of the above but what they left in the pending tray. Days with no flat racing during the summer to allow jockeys, staff, etc, an easy day. Brilliant idea. Should have been adopted years ago. On certain days, only race-meetings in the north or the south. Sensible and forward-thinking. Extending the break between one jumps season the next. No-brainer. Adopt now, along with fewer summer jumps meetings to improve field-sizes. As in Ireland, ‘rider restricted’ meetings for jockeys who have rode fewer than a set number of winners in a six or twelve-month period. A small adjustment that would make a major difference in the income potential of so many people. I would also suggest restricted races for trainers who have trained a similar lower number of winners in a similar period.
The sport must be seen to helping all sectors as the B.H.A. will be helping no one if it thinks it can grow the sport from the top while ignoring the reliability of the sport’s foundations. If these proposals do not allow Newton Abbot, Taunton or Salisbury to grow alongside Ascot, Newmarket and Newbury, the B.H.A. will have failed and the sport will surely continue to wither. 
I award the B.H.A. 6/10 for being proactive for once in its lifetime.