one step ahead, right but not necessarily so & happy birthday.

​State of mind today – not quite sound and steady, too focused still on my phobia (bordering on panicky or even a form of psychosis) of I.T. and all of its tendrils. And yet I am still here, at the battlefield, nerves frayed, trapped in my bunker. This, my friends, is the way to madness.

I am, as I have admitted, a bit xenophobic. Especially when it comes to the French. Yet I can still rise above my unhealthy prejudices and give praise when the jolly foreigner deserves to be praised. France Galop – they will be so relieved – have earned my praise for their ‘Chevaux dans le Ville’, which, I believe, translates as ‘Horses in the City’ a festival that will take place at the Place de la Concorde in Paris on Sept 5th and 6th. 
It is a celebration of the racehorse and forms the central rallying point in a campaign to persuade Parisians to visit one of the capitol’s racecourses and to parade before their very eyes the undeniable beauty of the racehorse. When I read the headline in today’s Racing Post, my mind went straight to the hideous concept of street racing. Thankfully, this event is more of a pageant, with a replica parade ring in which retrained ex-racehorses will strut their stuff. There will also be a ticketing booth where people can purchase what you would expect from a ticketing booth for upcoming race-meetings. I hope it is a great success and that the B.H.B. and its marketing division get their asses in gear and come-up with a similar idea. Horses in the Park, perhaps.

In his Friday column in the Racing Post today, Chris Cook pulls no punches in his analysis of Anne Marie Caulfield – a supporter of the ban on betting advertising between the hours of 9 am and 9 pm on all media outlets in Ireland, and only a fool could disagree with him. The stupidity of her argument is highlighted when the ban even extends to the dedicated satellite racing channels. The world has gone mad, with mad people in charge of the madness.
Not that Chris Cook is 100% correct. He is rightly concerned that racing in Ireland will lose sponsorship from the leading bookmakers, let alone the racing channels kept afloat by betting-led commercials, if this ludicrous proposal becomes enshrined in law. Caulfield is belittled by Cook for saying. ‘I do think there are other opportunities and a way forward to be explored’. And there is, you know, a way forward where racing in Ireland and here in Britain could grow rather than shrink if only the great and the good of the sport were to think with radical intent. The solution, I believe, lies in a little thing, the driving force for horse racing in so many other, and more successful, racing jurisdictions, called a Tote Monopoly!

Today is the 36th birthday of Rachael Blackmore. What her plans are for her future is for her to know. I only hope she is not gone from the sport forever. We owe her a debt, and somehow I feel we (that really should be them, whoever ‘them’ happen be) owe her an apology for not recognising her talent until she was as close to thirty as she is now to forty. Because of her the professional female jockey in Ireland is no longer an impossibility and hopefully her legacy will blossom and other females will come to grace the winners’ enclosures around Ireland.
This is a watershed moment for female riders both in Ireland and over here. Blackmore is retired, with only Anna Macguinness appearing to be the only contender for the Blackmore spotlight. Bryony Frost is also lost to us, with no other female rider on the horizon to take up her mantle. And with Elisabeth Gales making a name for herself on the flat at the moment, she will also undoubtedly be lost to the jumping game.
As things stand, Lily Pinchin is now the top female National Hunt jockey in Britain and Ireland. With her medical condition, she is, I suspect, a complex character, not though without personality and certainly not without ability in the saddle. Charlie Longsdon does his best to promote her with rides but for her career and the good of the sport, she needs to be supported by many more trainers.