j.p., momentum, royal lodge, customer excellence, Rachel king & rishi.

​The phrase ‘we will only appreciate his worth when he is gone’ does not apply to J.P. McManus as everyone of us appreciate his worth to the sport. When he is gone, though, there will be a massive hole in this sport, with an innumerable number of people left without the lifeline that has been his patronage. I am not someone who enjoys dominance by any one jockey, trainer or owner. It was novel when Willie Mullins began his domination of the Festival, now I would give blood to see the spoils shared around this March. Yet, if J.P. won every race at Cheltenham this March I would applaud as loudly as anyone. He deserves every winner that comes his way, now and forever more.

Momentum for Dan Skelton’s call for the sport to come together to help horse racing not only survive its present ‘crisis’ but also to survive into the future is building. The B.H.A.’s acting chief executive Brant Dunshea has added his name in support of Dan’s concerns and proposals. Sadly, as we have come to expect from Jockey Club Estates, owner of Aintree, Cheltenham and Sandown, they have poured cold water on Dan’s suggestion that the season should send at Aintree, with a six-week period between The Festival and the National meeting. Jockey Club Estates are a disgrace to the sport for not even considering a proposal that I am sure will soon garner support from all other corners of horse racing.

Andrew Scott of Chatham, Kent – not the actor of the same name, I dare say – quite rightly, in my opinion, in a letter in today’s Racing Post, criticises the introduction of a £250,000 6-furlong 2-year-old race to the Champion Day meeting, proposing that the Royal Lodge, currently run at Newmarket, though formerly a feature race at Ascot, would have been a more fitting 2-year-old race for Champions Day given the industry incentive for more staying-type horses to be bred. Yet another example of the B.H.A.’s inability to join all the dots together.

What is the point of awarding customer excellence awards to fifteen racecourses if some of those racecourses are locked-out on most occasion from the failing yet accentuated premier programme. Namely, Chester, yet also Chelmsford, Doncaster, Hamilton, Kelso, Market Rasen and Perth. They might all feature once or twice on mainstream t.v.. for example, and though the Premier logo is hardly a badge worth having, they are very often obliged to race outside the ‘protected window’ of mid-afternoon.
On this note, I wonder if racecourses are missing out when forced to stage morning or late afternoon meetings. Why is not possible to run 3-races prior to the first televised premier race, allow their customers to watch the Premier races on a big screen, with other entertainments staged in the interlude, before resuming their own meeting once the televised premier races have finished?

Rachel King, the English-born, Australian jockey, has broken another of the glass ceilings for female jockeys by becoming the first female to win a Group 1 in Japan. A small achievement in the grand scheme of things but a great accolade to put on her c.v., even if, as all successful female jockeys will say, ‘I am a jockey like all the rest, not merely a female jockey.’

I take Rishi Persad for granted. Of course, I loathed him for championing Dancing Brave’s Arc victory as the greatest race in the sport’s history, and just because a cache of ignorant younger racing enthusiasts voted it so, it does not make it so. The 1973 Grand National should have been voted the greatest in the Racing Post poll. But that does not infer I disrespect him as a broadcaster. He is a safe pair of hands with a microphone, which is why he is always fully employed and not only when it comes to horse racing.
In today’s Racing Post, as a promotion and reminder for tonight’s industry awards, he wrote of his childhood days in Trinidad helping-out at his dad’s stud farm. He also expressed his admiration of all stable staff, which he came to fully appreciate when learning to ride for a charity race in which he managed to fall-off. Tonight, from the podium, he will express his thanks for the work that all industry staff undertake.
As I do now. 
As with J.P., without the wonderful people who work in all weathers, as much as on our behalf as to earn a living for themselves, we would all be bereft, and in my case, left hopelessly to drift into the unknown. I might even be forced to interact with other sad members of the Devon human race! God bless all industry workers, which coming from an atheist is hypocritical, even if it does come from the heart.