Pinchin, Djelo, Nicholls, Mr. Mrs. Maine, Twiston-Davies & Hong Kong.

​Lily Pinchin, currently the leading female National Hunt jockey in Britain, has gone public on suffering from Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, otherwise known as A.D.H.D. A brave move, admitting to a mental disorder (is that right?) for someone who earns her living in a job where frailty of any type might be considered reason enough for an owner or trainer to seek blame for a disappointing result.
I hoped Lily would have progressed further in her career after riding out her claim in pretty-quick time for a female. She has always looked tidy on a horse and I have never seen her out-ridden in a finish by a male rival. That said, I have seen very little of her this season as she rarely rides in races that are televised, my main source of information these days.
I hope the film about her career and how she copes with A.D.H.D. reaches a wide audience, not only to promote awareness of the condition but also to give her career a timely boost.

Djelo was both a good winner of the Denman Chase and the right horse to win the race, given he represented youth in a field of seniority. When he won the Peterborough Chase, I had him down as the Ryanair winner, confidence that plummeted when he was put firmly in his place at Windsor by Protektorat. I am not a supporter of Fact To File for the Ryanair, mainly because I think he will still run in the Gold Cup but also as I see him as a horse that will find 2-mile 4 too short and 3-mile 2-furlongs too far. To me, he is a King George horse, as is Djelo.

The saddest aspect of this season so far is the continuing dip in form of the Paul Nicholl’s stable. Irish Hill did manage to win at Warwick yesterday but other than that I saw little to cheer about. Hitman and Bravemansgame ran okay in a race that should have been within their scope to win, and a horse that cost a bundle of money, Histrionic, ran third in an ordinary novice hurdle at Uttoxeter, ridden, I am pleased to say, by Bryony Frost on short jolly from France.
Given Nicholls bounce-back-ability, I had sure this season will not prove a case of how the mighty have fallen, and having written this, he will no doubt come away from Exeter this afternoon with three-winners and a smile on his face. I just want normal service to return, as I dare say does he.

In a letter published in the letters’ column of the Racing Post, Heather and James Maine of Kingston Common Farm put up a strident defence of the P.R.A.’s battle to improve the state of British racing and to achieve increased prize-money from our racecourses. Although everything expressed in their letter cannot be argued against as it is not asking too much to expect racecourses to return a third of their profit to prize-money, and perhaps the Thoroughbred Group do have weak-knees when it comes to negotiating with racecourses. But they are wrong in expecting trainers to be paid to be interviewed by broadcasters. Alan King has annulled his membership of the P.R.A. because of this and I hope others will also consider their position. That said, at least Peter Savill and the P.R.A. are attempting to find solution to the problems all of racing are afflicted by, which is more than can be said for the B.H.A.

Today’s feature interview in the Racing Post is Sam Twiston-Davies, and as with any interview with Sam, the interview becomes as much about his family as Sam himself.  I did not learn anything I either did not know about Sam or could guess about the Twiston-Davies family dynamic – is Sam and Nicola Currie an item, of instance? – but as always Sam is entertaining and honest. 
And you can tell something about Sam’s old man when Sam casually mentioned that Baby Run, Sam’s first Cheltenham winner, and Hello Bud, and I dare say dozens of other old horses that have served the Twiston-Davies family well down the years, are living happily at Grange Farm, still cared-for as the heroes they are, and that the death of Bindaree, aged 30, cut Nigel deeply, the horse that Sam says, gave the Twiston-Davies boys their careers.
The Twiston-Davies’s are good people, though I am still to forgive Nigel for beating Denman and Kauto Star in a Gold Cup billed as a match-up between the two from Ditcheat.

I wish the Racing post would stop including racecards from Sha Tin and Happy Valley and replace them, especially through the winter months, with racing from the provinces in France. Half the horses trained in Britain and Ireland come from the French regions, not to mention the British jockeys and trainers now resident in France, which makes French racing of more general interest to readers than racing from the exotic climes of Hong Kong.