​In his column in the Racing Post today, the ever-excellent David Jennings makes a plea for racecourses to make a day at the races less boring. I now make the plea for a racecourse either in Ireland or Britain to give him the opportunity to prove his point by appointing him for a day to the position of director of operations, to lay on the sort of ‘never-boring day’ he believes the public expect from a day at the races.
I am not mocking him; he makes a sound argument for jazzing things up. He might find the challenge being one of balance, of not alienating the enthusiasts who attend for the betting and the thrill of the sport, while at the same time engaging attendees who resent paying good money for long periods of idleness and boring nothingness. 
High quality playgrounds for kids would be a great entry point. Get youngsters having fun while slowly bewitching them with the spectacle and excitement of horse and jockeys doing battle on the other side of the rails. Children, as the idle might say, are our future. They are not, of course. Adults are the future; adults must build a world that is all we, the elderly, the middle-aged and the youngsters, want it to be.
Music, yes, at the right moments. Experts corralled into a corner giving forth expert advice to those who want insights into what is to unfold through the day, a definite maybe. In fact, I applaud all the ideas for a less boring day put forward by David Jennings, including pony races, though, I suspect, he might want to put aside his ‘never again 30-minutes between races’ if he wants the ponies to entertain the public. Pony races are still races and require all the same formalities as the big horse races.
I truly would like to have David given the opportunity to put his ideas into practise and to discover how much it costs to host a day when the fun never stops.

In Ireland, at this time of year especially, the most interesting race at a meeting is usually the novice or beginners’ chase. These races nearly always attract a full field, even with Willie Mullins running two or three horses, all with graded form to their names. Today Asian Master, Majborough and Tullyhill all contest a beginners’ chase, yet the programme in Ireland does not allow other trainers go elsewhere with their lesser blooded horses. Novice handicaps are as rare as hens’ teeth in Ireland, yet in Britain they are the preferred option as, though I doubt the data would confirm this idea, they are a better betting medium.
Yesterday at Cheltenham, a prominent owner of Nicky Henderson’s bemoaned the lack of opportunities in this country for novice chasers, with her horse, having won a novice chase last time out, having to return to hurdles in order to get a run. It ran poorly; perhaps confused why after learning the craft of jumping the big-boy larger obstacles only to be returned to the smaller kind as if he had done something wrong the last time, even when winning.
Why would one of Ireland’s major owners, who can have their young horses trained by Mullins, Elliott, Cromwell or de Bromhead, where opportunities are easily found, send a similar horse to Nicholls, Henderson, Skelton or any of the Williams’, where novice chases are frowned upon. In the corporate world, or at  least outside of the racing world, there is something called the ‘Peter Principle’, where someone in an organisation is promoted to a position beyond his capabilities and remains there to make a bollocks of things for everyone else and who must navigate away around their ‘Peter’ just to get their job done with efficiency. It is the same at the B.H.A.. Someone thought novice handicaps were the way forward and he or she have not got the balls to admit they were wrong. It needs sorting and it needs sorting now. Oh, and sorry Nicky, but you have to get into the habit of doing what Willie does and run more than one horse in a novice chase when one pops up on your radar.

The Cross-Country races at Cheltenham are becoming favourites of mine when once I thought them rather needless. In fact, I would like another racecourse to invest in a cross-country course as they make a good substitute race for those horses who would in better days be considered ‘National horses’. As handicaps, these races give opportunities unfound anywhere else, and to those, including the letter writer in today’s Racing Post who believes the Festival ruined by the Glenfarclas being a handicap, a better opportunity at the Festival for older, former top-class horses, would be either a conditions veterans’ race or, as I have proposed a thousand times, a 4-mile Champion Chase. As things stand, the Aintree National is now restricted to top-rated horses and is no longer a true Grand National, rather than Red Rum-type ‘National horses’. To have the Cross-Country Chase as a conditions race is to remove another opportunity from the grand types who yesterday fought out a stirring finish to the Glenfarclas.

​‘We see so many yearlings sold for seven-figure sums of money, plus six-figure sums for National Hunt stores and ‘winners of one point-to-point’, and I cannot see that anyone might object to one or two-per-cent of that money going to a fund for the aftercare of retired racehorses. Surely as an industry, a small percentage of all sales of racehorses, including those privately brought, cannot be argued against when that money would do so much good for the sport as a whole. There is no greater priority for racing in Britain and Ireland than to generously fund the likes of Retraining of Racehorses (RoR) and Treo Eile.’
The above is the majority of a letter I wrote that was published in the letters column of the Racing Post a few weeks ago. Yesterday it was reported in the Racing Post that Tattersalls, Goffs and Thorough Bid had agreed to contribute £6 to RoR for every horse they sell, plus a contribution of £3 from each vendor and purchaser, thus £12 per horse sold by the three aforementioned auction houses.
Firstly, a huge round of applause to Tattersalls, Goffs and Thorough Bid for the speediness of their response to my letter. Look, as no one to my knowledge has proposed such an idea in the past, I am taking the credit for floating this proposal. No need for a round of applause as I have not contributed a penny towards the aftercare of racehorses, though if I am responsible for the three auction houses implementing ‘my proposal’, it is possible the first aspect of my life I can be proud of achieving.
Horse racing is blighted in Britain by each and every one of its stakeholders believing they are pivotal to the survival of the sport, when in fact if there were no thoroughbred horses, or indeed the people who own the studs and broodmares, we would have no sport. People forget, especially C.E.O.’s, that the sport is called horse-racing and the horse should be given priority in all regards within the racing industry.
Horses, on occasions, percentage-wise less and less, thank heavens, die or suffer serious injury in pursuit of our entertainment. It is the responsibility of all sectors of the sport to ensure funding is freely and generously available for their care after racing as well as veterinary research into all forms of injury, decease and illness never lacking the finance in finding cures that would help all breeds of horses all around the world.
Horse racing is a monied sport. Our leading owners, on both flat and National Hunt, are very wealthy people. I do not understand why bookmakers are not arm-twisted into donating a small fraction of their profits to an equine charity; the same with racecourses, media outlets that have contracts to televise British horse racing, and owners who win races with six-figure first-prize money mandated or volunteering 1% of their windfall.
It would display leadership if when asked how they would spend their half-a-million if they should win the David Power Jockeys Cup, messrs Cobden, Skelton or de Boinville, the most likely winners of the trophy, I believe, would think first of the horses who have propelled them to glory and mega-wealth by pledging a proportion of their half-million to the RoR or any of the equine charities in dire need of funds.
No other gesture anyone might think of would improve the standing of horse racing with the public – remember the ‘social licence’ – than for the message to be broadcast far and wide that the sport as a collective is busting a gut to ensure the funds are in place for every retired racehorse to have the opportunity of a lifetime of care, be that a quiet life in a paddock or trained for another equine discipline.
In this matter, the sport requires the sort of active leadership it has always lacked and which, regrettably, remains lacking.

​I may be in a minority of one but I like Matt Chapman, occasionally. What is irritating about him, speaking as one of the few who champion his cause, is that he is such a fine interviewer, and now podcast presenter, ‘Unbridled’, alongside Paddy Brennan, is his teenage-like necessity to always have the last word on any discussion. He may be a great authority on the subject being debated but that is no excuse for talking over people, interjecting when an opinion is expressed that he does not share and, as I have already said, always wanting the last word.
I could cite so many of his interviews that show Chapman at his very best, both as a t.v. presenter and, surprisingly, as a good human being, teasing out answers that enlighten but do not embarrass the interviewee, that counteract his frightful antics when in conversation with his I.T.V. colleagues. Of course, his employers must ask him to ‘liven things up’, as John McCririck was tasked to do when Channel 4 held the terrestrial rights to British horse racing. But as with MrCririck, much missed by so many, though not by me, he has a tendency to edge into juvenile extemporizing when he possesses the intellect and knowledge to drive debates forward, especially by allowing his colleagues to talk without interruption. 
Matt Chapman is good at what he does but he is so much more than a clown, and I.T.V. have Luke Harvey to fulfil that nuanced role, after-all. Yes, Chapman has an ego and yes, his antics may at times be cover for an intruder complex. But it is time in his career to take a breath and appreciate he is safe in the environment in which he works. If only he could be more consistently the best of the bunch and rid himself of the need to be always right. No one is always right when it comes to horse racing, as Ruby Walsh will freely admit to and he has no need, or desire, to prove himself the best. He just is.

Where Chapman is often wrong, as on Sunday, is not being able to recognise the achievement of a horse winning after a long absence. Energumene was having his first run for two-seasons. If he had finished second in the Hilly Way, which was still a possibility before Banbridge unshipped his jockey, it would still have been a meritorious comeback. I believe/cross hope Jonbon will win the Champion Chase at the Festival this season, yet it cannot be denied that the Hilly Way over the weekend was a far stronger contest than the Tingle Creek. It should not be, of course, given the Tingle Creek is a Grade 1 only lacking in stature over the 2-mile trip to the Champion Chase itself. And it was Energumene’s first run back, whereas Jonbon would be 100% fit at this stage of the season. I was impressed by Energumene. He looked wonderful and gave the impression in the winners’ enclosure that he had enjoyed his day out. That he will be eleven come March is no reason to doubt the capability of the horse to win back his crown. He has a good rest since when he was the Champion two-miler and that might stand him in good stead come March. All we need now is for Gaelic Warrior to prove himself top-class over the distance and for El Fabiolo to prove his trainer wrong by not wanting to go up in trip and we have the making for a Champion Chase for all the ages, as people now say with frequency even though it does not really add anything to the anticipation or state which ages, future ages, for instance, when even greater Champion Chases might be run. We anticipate greatly.

Not to have single-sex changing facilities on every racecourse is unforgiveable given how to boast about the sport being gender equal. Money may be tight, with prize-money given priority, yet Flutter has found a million-quid or more to share out between our top National Hunt jockeys. A million-quid, I suspect, would build four or five changing rooms, so why not approach the big gambling organisations to fund the building of ladies changing rooms, with the facility named in honour of the bookmaker whose largess has paid for it?
Or approach the major breeding operations and name the facility in perpetuity in their honour. The Juddmonte Building, for instance. The Dalham Hall Complex. Just an idea that could possibly add to the twelve racecourse who have provided our female jockeys with safeguarded changing facilities and can hold their heads high.

​Storm Darragh battered Aintree into submission yesterday, resulting in the abandonment of the Becher Chase meeting. In years past, having the Becher Chase taken from me would put a dark marker over the day, but on this occasion ‘was I bothered’? No. Before the Grand Sefton was moved forward in the season, the Becher used to be our first look at the Aintree fences since the previous season’s Grand National and it was the race I most looked forward to before Christmas. It was a race to spot a potential ‘National horse’; one to follow through the season and to back for the big race. Not anymore, sadly. Chianti Classico would have been of interest yesterday, though I was concerned a slog through heavy ground might take the edge off him for the rest of the season. Kim Bailey deserves another big race success before he had hands the reins to his loyal second-in-command Mat Nicholls, and in Chianti Classico he has such an opportunity. But with the neutering of the fences on the National course and the want of the Aintree executive to have ‘Gold Cup’ type horses running in their ‘Little National’, rather than true ‘National types’, the Becher Chase has been rendered irrelevant, and with small double-digit numbers each renewal, it has also lost its competitiveness. So, no, I was not bothered it was abandoned and hope it is not shoe-horned into its next meeting.

Jonbon is good. How anyone can knock a horse that has won 16 out of 19 is beyond me, with one of those defeats coming over hurdles to his lauded stable-mate Constitution Hill and the other when the excellent James Bowen could not get the hang of him at Cheltenham last year when Nico was injured. Though whether Jonbon can be mentioned in the same sentence as Sprinter Sacre and Altior, at least as how things stand at present, I am not so sure. The aforementioned pair both won Champion Chases and Jonbon must do the same this season to work his way up to the heights of Sprinter Sacre, Altior and I would suggest Remittance Man, who also won Champion Chases. And, of course, there were two Sprinter Sacres; the one Barry Geraghty had the pleasure of riding, the one who I believe was the best chaser since Arkle, and the one Nico had the pleasure of riding, the one who illness laid low for two-years and yet rose from the near-dead to win a very competitive second Champion Chase, my favourite race from any Cheltenham Festival. In Jonbon’s favour for legendary status is that if he were to add the Champion Chase to his already impressive c.v., he will most likely have to beat a better cluster of horses than either of Nicky Henderson’s more illustrious former champions needed to defeat. Personally, I believe this is going to be Jonbon’s year.

With Aintree’s abandonment, I.T.V. had a discussion with Nevin Truesdale about the Gambling Commission and all the vital nonsense it is involved in. This subject is out of the scope of my natural orbit but I will tell you something, the elephant in the room, if you like, that goes unmentioned by any of the great minds who talk and write about the Gambling Commission and the pressure on punters to provide financially sensitive and private documents in order to bet small or large.
In the same way farmers, especially the smaller farmers who produce meat, are being kettled into a position of unviability, the mandate of the W.E.F.’s ‘Great Reset’ involves removing all activities from the countryside as its long-term plan is to return farmland to the wild. Hence, long-term there will be no place for racecourses and what is behind, not so much the dictates of the Gambling Commission as they are simply conduits for plans that come from way above its pay-grade, the government’s prompting, is to undermine betting and gambling so that people move away from it organically so that horse racing becomes financially unviable and what it is seen as a natural extinction.

Davy Russell has a book out, just in time for Christmas. It is an autobiography, though as it is ghost-written by Donn Maclean, it is to my eyes half autobiography and half biography. Also, in today’s Racing Post, Davy does not sell it very well as he admits to not wanting ‘to annoy anyone’ and has left out what insiders of the publishing game would call ‘mud on the page’, the stuff that sticks in the minds of readers. A man who never shied away from controversy and doing things his way, now shy of telling his adoring fans the tit-bits they might long to know about.
Anyway, if that was Davy’s decision and not Maclean’s we will have to live with it as Donn Maclean will have to if he fought to get Davy Russell to spill beans and muddy some of the pages.
Will I buy the book. Obviously. It will be this year’s Christmas present to myself. I have Francome’s book, and Ruby’s, and A.P.’s, and Dunwoody and Scudamore’s book, and Geraghty’s – Francome’s and Ruby’s are treasures, by the way, and not to have Davy’s would be as stupid as owning five volumes of a medical encyclopaedia A through to T and refusing to buy the volume through to Z.

​It bothers me that, at least to either my memory or knowledge, that there is not a race staged at Aintree to honour the name of the founder of the racecourse, William Lynn. Not only did he ‘invent’ the race that came to be known as the Grand National’ but he also gave the world of hare coursing the Waterloo Cup, named after the public house where he was landlord. He gave the sport of National Hunt racing something far more important than Captain Martin Becher whose immortality is constructed around diving into a water-filled ditch to save himself from the hooves of his competitors. Becher’s greater act of bravery on the day was emerging from the ditch to catch his mount, Conrad, to remount and set off in pursuit of further glory, which he failed to achieve by falling once again at the next ditch. 
Captain Becher was the most celebrated cross-country rider of his day, yet the once most fearsome obstacle in the world is so-called for an act of self-preservation. Also, a fact omitted when the story of how the sixth-fence in the Grand National was come to be called ‘Becher’s Brook is that Captain Becher never again rode in the race. Now might be the time to change both the name of the fence, given it is stripped both of its notoriety and its famous brook, and the name of today’s feature race to better fit the history of the racecourse. William Lynn, perhaps.
I do not claim the National fences have become ordinary, though if you look back to the days when the steeplechase fences on the Mildmay course were miniature versions of the big black fences of the National course itself, you might achieve some perspective on why the great race has become a shadow of its former self.
The Mildmay course was altered to become similar to the fences at every other British racecourse as the ‘strangeness’ of the Mildmay fences stopped trainers from sending their better horses to Aintree and in order to increase the status of the 3-day Grand National meeting the decision was taken to remove the birch from the fence-tops. That decision was no doubt sensible; most decisions taken by the Aintree executive since that day have been regressive, to the point where the National – I refuse to use the word ‘Grand’ in its title – has become a) a woke parody of what the race used to be about, and b) a pile-up waiting to happen.
Why b? Reflect on last year’s race, which was, I admit, a fine spectacle, so many horses packed close to one another, jumping in unison, almost. Yet what if one of the leaders had refused or skewed left or right? What if a loose horse was running with the pack and decided to do a Popham Down. Look back at the 1967 race. The reason the pile-up involved all the field, bar one, of course, is because unusually a large majority of the runners who had lined-up were still in the race. The 1967 race might not have been a mirror-image of the 2014 race but it was similar enough to make my fears impactful. 
Also, in lowering the height of the fences and seeking to increase the quality of the horses taking part, as well as removing ‘the fear factor’, the race will only get faster; it is speed that kills. One year we will get good-to-firm ground, at least by the time the race is run, and then the clerk-of-the-course will need to erect ‘Speed Kills’ signs all around the course.
The first ‘Grand Liverpool Steeplechase – it did not become The Grand National until 1847 – was run on Tuesday 26th February 1839. It was for ‘gentleman riders’; four-miles across country. No rider to open a gate or ride through a gateway or more than 100-yards along any road, footpath or driftway. It was a cross-country race. It was a test of horsemanship and while one must accept that times and mores have changed since 1839 and some of the fences back then would have frightened even A.P. McCoy, I would have preferred it if instead of mutilating the Grand National to make it a National to pacify the ignorant woke who are impossible to satisfy as long as horse-racing exists, I would have preferred the race to have gone back to its roots and become a cross-country race with a slight fear-factor.
The Becher, when it was restored to the calendar, was supposed to perform the function of a significant Grand National trial, yet only 12 will face the starter today if the weather allows and only a couple of them have any chance of achieving a high enough rating come April to get the opportunity to run in the race. In its self-seeking efforts to preserve its ‘cash-cow’, the Aintree executive have rendered a dozen races during the season muffled and void as far as being trials for the race formerly known as the greatest horserace in the world.
I remain aghast and bereft at what has been allowed to be done to the race that on first seeing become love at first sight. Worst of all, in ceding control of the race to the woke-anti’s, Aintree have put the whole sport under even greater scrutiny, its future as unsecured as the firing of the first bullet in a war between right and wrong.

​I must admit to skipping the Racing Post’s main story in today’s edition. It was not because I do not appreciate the threat to the sport that the Gambling Commission represents but simply because, without a united, tactical counter-attack, to read what is threatened is depressing. I know, deep in the heart, that what is happening is orchestrated outside of Parliament and that if the sport had embraced a Tote Monopoly instead of walking hand-in-hand with the multi-national bookmaking industry, we might today be on the outside of this blitz on gambling and gambling addiction, as if the two are universally intertwined. If we had a system of gambling similar to our horse racing neighbours and competitors, we would be contributing more money to the Exchequer, enough to ring-fence us from the addictions of casinos, on-line bingo and poker sites and one-armed bandit machines, otherwise known as ‘slots’.
My hope for the future is this: in 5-years, hopefully sooner if Two-Tier and his socialist highway robbers are found guilty of more heinous crimes against the people who voted them into office, the political revolution (evolution?) about to sweep the U.S. and countries such as Italy, France and Germany, will happen here, with Reform becoming the political powerhouse of the country. Like him or misunderstand him, Farage will sweep away all this woke nonsense and put common-sense back on the political and social tables.
We must think short-term; we must plan for the future, and we must stop using the phrase ‘that ship has sailed’ whenever someone advocates a funding stream for racing resembling how France, Hong Kong, Japan or Australia, finance the racing programmes of their countries.

It may have caused controversy when Ireland introduced sixty-races restricted to trainers outside of the top four but I propose the B.H.A. look to a similar idea for this country as a way of helping and preserving the smaller stables who are, I suggest, the bedrock of our sport.
We have already lost, as good as, the permit trainer, the owner, trainer and usually breeder of two or three of the horses he trains himself or herself – the Waley-Cohens, for example, the Frank Coton’s of the past, owner-trainer of Grittar, and the sport cannot afford to allow the smaller yards to go the same way. The battle at the top of the sport between Nicholls, Skelton and Henderson, and the forays of Mullins and Elliott, may add intrigue, headlines and intensity to the sport, yet horse racing came into being and still exists as a country sport and places like Market Rasen, Taunton and Hereford are made more dynamic by the inclusion of the local smaller training establishments. 
The top always needs a bottom for stability, which is why I suggest sixty-races set aside for trainers with no more than thirty-five horses in training should be established simply to give a boost to the owners and staff of licenced trainers who give just as much in effort and dedication as the aforementioned superstar stables.
In today’s Racing Post, Sarah Bradstock is featured – Mr.Vango, her current stable star runs at Sandown on Saturday in race bearing ‘National’ in its title – bemoaning that she is down to just six horses in training and how in caring for her late husband, Mark, her owner-base slipped through her fingers. The Bradstocks, not only because Sarah is Lord Oaksey’s daughter, are the sort of people that bring more to National Hunt racing that they can ever expect to take from the sport. Remember Coneygree winning the Gold Cup and Carruthers the Hennessey; when Mark was alive, they proved they could do the job to the highest efficiency and no doubt Sarah and her offspring can continue the legacy if just one or two new owners offered their support. The sport needs the Bradstocks and others like them to prevent the sport morphing into a Premiership League that will render ‘all the surviving rest’ into non-league status.
Sixty-races, that might all it would take to give the smaller yards a better chance of survival until 2029, the year in which, at the latest, we can vote out the stupidity of woke and net-zero and vote in commonsense and a Britian comes-first political mentality.

​Having championed the writing exploits of the champion amateur rider Patrick Mullins, I bask in reflected glory at his award as racing writer of the year at the Racing Writer and Photographer Awards bash last night. It is his greatest achievement as his father, apart from being his father, had little or nothing to do with his son being lauded above so many wonderful writers employed by the Racing Post. Indeed, the success is greater still when you take into account that though he may be a member of the journalists’ union, he himself is not yet a full-time journalist.
In picking-up the Clive Graham Trophy, his are the last hands to raise it aloft as from next year the award is to be named in honour of the late and irreplaceable Alastair Down, for whom Patrick, if he chose to turn his back on his Closutton inheritance, is warm favourite to step into the great man’s socks, as it is impossible to imagine anyone stepping into the master’s shoes.

In today’s Racing Post, Julian Muscat puts data alongside opinion that the Pattern programme has laid waste to the heritage handicaps over jumps. Although the field size was disappointing for the Coral Gold Cup on Saturday, I think time might tell it was at least an average running of the race, if not slightly better than average. The first three are all young horses with their futures looking bright. The first two are Grand National bound and the third achieved great honour in finishing so close when so far behind entering the straight.
But Muscat is correct, the pattern programme, and I would argue the whole National Hunt season, is in need a tweak here and a radical overhaul elsewhere. Where I might take issue with Julian Muscat about the race at Newbury since the halcyon days when it was ‘The Hennessey’ is that he believes the demise in quality is a direct result of the introduction of the Pattern, where I would suggest it was the introduction of the Betfair Chase at Haydock that hammered extra nails into the body of the race. 
I have always been in favour of downgrading the Betfair to last season’s novices but now I am persuaded by the idea put forward by those advocating that British-trained Gold Cup horses are being asked too severe a question first-time out by running them over 3-miles. So why not trial the Betfair at 2-miles 4. It works for Irish-trained horses and the John Durkan, so let’s copy Ireland.
We clearly need more novice chases at the start of the season. A novice should be redefined, as Ruby Walsh has suggested, by races competed in and not by the calendar. A good horse that wins on its chase debut but suffers an injury preventing it from running until the following season is at a major disadvantage by being forced into open company when clearly it has no more experience of chasing than those running in a novice chase on the same day.
So go read Julian Muscat’s column where he attaches data to an opinion I share. Oh, and I hope someone from the B.H.A. also reads it and shares it amongst his or her colleagues. Someone, I suppose, employed by the B.H.A. must read the Racing Post, even if the decisions and ideas to come out of Portman Square leave the impression only The Times and Daily Mail are ever read.

Lossiemouth being currently favourite for the Champion Hurdle is not a sound defence for the continuation of the Mares Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival, not as it is, anyway. She is a sound defence for the mares’ programme, however. If the Mares Hurdle is to remain at the festival, it should not be allowed to detract from the Champion Hurdle itself. At the moment, the festival is becoming pot-hunting exercise for the major owners, allowing them to use Cheltenham as a route to either Aintree or Punchestown. 
It was an unforgettable occasion when Honeysuckle ended her career by winning the Mares Hurdle, though half the outpouring of love that day was for the de Bromhead family after the tragic loss of their son. But as a former double Champion Hurdle winner Honeysuckle should have run in hurdling’s Blue Riband race. Yes, give connections the option of the Mares’ Hurdle but with a 7 or 10Ib penalty as a Grade 1 winner.
Personally, I would prefer the Mares Hurdle be run at what is called ‘Trials Day’ as the main feature and renamed the Champion Mares Hurdle, then the top mares can go on and run in the actual Champion Hurdle in March.

Finally, with seven-figure purchase prices being paid at the breeding stock sales at the moment, my belief is reinforced that a levy on auction prices is a way to both fund the aftercare of racehorses – why shouldn’t those who bring racehorses into the world pay a share in their aftercare when they are no longer fit to race – and provide prize-money for the buyers of yearlings, horses-in-training, foals and broodmares to help pay the bills and keep the racing show on the road? Caught U Looking made 1.8-million guineas yesterday. Do the math. Would the seller miss 2% of 1.8-million guineas? Would the auction house?

​Although it would be niggly to criticise any element of Newbury’s two-day November meeting, it was put in the shade by the action at Fairyhouse on Saturday and Sunday. The poverty of the Long-Distance Hurdle at Newbury was balanced by a very taking first novice chase by The Jukebox Man, the best horse Ben Jones has ridden and in time The Jukebox Man might become the best British-trained horse we have seen since the heady days of Denman and Kauto Star. Here was a horse who skipped around Newbury with the aplomb and exuberance of a seasoned Gold Cup standard horse and at race end gave the impression of being disappointed to be made to stop. He is certainly my horse to follow this season.
In Ireland, there were many a good horse on show, with very few balloons burst even in defeat. Yesterday’s Drinmore, made unusual by the absence of a runner from Closutton, was a corker of a race, with barely a head and a neck separating the first four, with the fifth only a length or so in behind. If ever a race proved that a single digit number of runners is as capable of providing a spectacle to heighten the senses as a maximum field then this was it. 
Croke Park may have been a surprise winner but he was a deserving winner, making the running and then displaying bags of spirit and stamina to hold on from Heart Wood (not a Gold Cup horse, at this stage of the season), Firefox (not to be written-off) and Gorgeous Tom, a horse in dire need of 3-miles and the one to take out of this race.
On the novice chase front, Caldwell Potter did all that could be expected of him at Carlisle, a racecourse fast becoming the go-to track for trainers’ keen for their star novices to have a fair introduction to fences. He attacked the first fence with the enthusiasm of a chocoholic espying an unguarded chocolate gateaux at his best friends birthday party, and for a brief moment it looked like Harry Cobden was not fully in control of the situation. Of course, the champion jockey was soon very much in control of both the horse and the race and though it would be stretching credulity to say Caldwell Potter won with his head-in-his-chest, he did win without need to go full-throttle. Whether he wins back his purchase price is for the future to decide, but up till now he looks the best horse bought that day at the dispersal sale of some of Gordon Elliott’s most promising young horses.
Of course, the star of the weekend, even usurping Sir Gino, was Lossiemouth. Although she disposed of Tiaheapoo (no doubt a misspelling) with the authority of an Olympic archer hitting the bulls-eye, should she have shortened as favourite for the Champion Hurdle for beating a long-distance Champion hurdler? The Hattons Grace was over 2-mile 4, it can be argued that Teaheapoo needs every inch of 3-miles to be at his best and his stamina was hardly used to the maximum due to the slow pace of the race. And who is to say that the champion 3-miler was not at his best for one reason or another? Lossiemouth is good, better than good, and if she turns up at Kempton on Boxing Day against Constitution Hill all will be revealed if she should be better favoured for the Champion Hurdle than either her stable-mate State Man or either of Nicky Henderson’s two contenders.

The Coral Gold Cup on Saturday was a premier race on a premier day’s racing. How was it dissimilar to last year’s Coral Gold Cup or any day in the fixture’s history? None, I would suggest. Which makes ‘Premier racing’ another of the B.H.A.’s white elephants. With so little money in racing’s coffers, perhaps now is the time for the B.H.A. to drown this particular red herring and convene a conference where everyone with an interest in promoting the sport can come together to offer alternative ideas.

​The Coral Gold Cup, or the old Hennessey as it continues to be called, as people of my age will always refer to it, is not the race it used to be through no fault of anyone in particular. Perhaps the days when the prestige handicaps were over-subscribed, with many a trainer sweating to discover whether their lively outsider has made the cut, are gone, never more to be seen. Thirteen, though, was a disappointing turn-out from a British point-of-view when you consider of the thirteen three were from Ireland and one from France.
That said, Kandoo Kid was an impressive winner and if Paul Nicholl’s were not committed to running the horse in the Grand National, we might be thinking of him as a possible for the Cheltenham Gold Cup. Not that I am suggesting he is that class at the moment yet his new rating will put him close to that of a lively Gold Cup outsider and in the past, winners of the Hennessey were often spoken-of in terms of Cheltenham in March.
It is my problem, of course, wanting to be back to the days when the Hennessey was the bright shining light of pre-Christmas, when every 3-mile chaser from Arkle downwards would be entered, with the majority running in the race. They were the golden days of National Hunt and only comparatively recently did it occur to me that I would never experience such days ever again. Those days were consigned to history when Kauto Star, Big Bucks and Denman departed the stage, and even then, I suspect the ‘golden days’ were only hanging on by their boot-straps.
That said, the first three yesterday were all young progressive horses that with the racing gods on their side will win top-class races for seasons to come.

The star yesterday was, of course, Sir Gino, who passed his jumping examination and sauntered his way into Champion Hurdle contention. Why Mystical Power ran so poorly we will no doubt find out over the next few days and the poverty of his performance removed most of the informative interest from the race. Sir Gino won as he should have given the ratings of the horses that separated the two favourites at the finish and he remains ‘a could be anything category of horse’.
It was a nice win for Nicky Henderson to absorb, though if Sir Gino had not won there would be no decision to be made about how to proceed with him. Now, Nicky, Nico and the Donnelleys have a conundrum to untangle, is it plan A and steeplechasing or plan B and the Champion Hurdle. If my advice was sought, and no one seeks my advice on any matter of importance, I would be swayed by Sir Gino’s age. He will be five come January and he has plenty of time to go chasing and if State Man were to get injured, Joe Donnelly might be pleased to have Sir Gino as super-sub for the Champion Hurdle. That decision, though, would hand the dilemma over to Nico who would then have to choose between Constitution Hill and Sir Gino. At least, hopefully come the Christmas Hurdle and then March, Nico will have to untangle the tangle.

Who is the unluckiest man in horse racing both now and perhaps in history. Yes, it is Jack Kennedy, a man, seemingly, in want of getting into the Guiness Book of World Records for breaking bones, specialising on leg bones. To look at him and to go back through his medical records and all the herculean comebacks he has pulled-off at his young age you might think him a man made of iron. Yet despite his rugged outer appearance, Jack Kennedy is seemingly as fragile as a bone China tea-set. Keep everything crossed for him that this period of time on the sidelines is shorter than when recovering from previously broken legs.

A letter in today’s racing Post was written in support of Karen Wiltshire, the first female jockey to win against her male colleagues. That she suffered bias and mockery back in the seventies should not come as a surprise. The past was a different country, as is said in defence of the mores of past ages. The reason why women did not call-out sexual references and discrimination in previous decades was because at the time it is what they expected, with many giving it back tit-for-tat. Anyone was ripe for ridicule; it was a time when people recognised the difference between a joke and racism or discrimination. The stupidity of woke is far more disruptive to good living than a rude joke or sexual overtones.
Karen Wiltshire was trying to forge a career when the expression ‘if you cannot see it, you cannot be it’ was yet to be heard as a rallying cry. Back when Wiltshire held a jockeys’ licence, Holly Doyle and Rachael Blackmore would have also struggled to get a ride, let alone a winner. If society, as collective wokists, keeps harking back to the mores of different ages, history will have to be rewritten from 1066 onwards. What needs to be written about in the racing pages of today is that forty-years on only two female jockeys finished in the top twenty in the jockeys’ championship in 2024. A massive improvement on ten-years ago but minimal in the overall context of the matter. What peeves me is that Holly Doyle, the most successful female jockey of all-time when it comes to Group 1 success, is yet to ride in a classic. Is that sex discrimination, riding for the wrong trainers or simply bias against female jockeys?

David Jennings in his column in the Racing Post on Saturday made the proposal that appeals should be done away with and that the result on the day, irrespective if the local stewards had changed the finishing places, should stand without recourse to the appeals process. As he rightly said, no other sport changes results days or even weeks after the event and in this highly technical age it should be possible to have all the electronic whistles and bells either on tap at the racecourse or back at Portman Square with adjudicating stewards to make the final decision, as with VAR. I hope David’s colleagues will take-up the cudgels and discuss his idea further. There is little hope the B.H.A. will take the issue on board.

​George Ward started it. He is the villain of this piece. He owned Vistaprint, amongst other companies. He also owned racehorses and as with other successful businessmen with an interest in horse racing, he chose to sponsor races in order to keep his photograph-developing company in the public eye. But Mr. Ward wanted to ‘own’ the races he sponsored, with the company name the sole title in racecards. It was okay, at least with me, when Mackeson, Massey-Ferguson, Hennessey and Whitbread started the rush for companies to sponsor horse racing as the races they injected large amounts of money into barely existed before the day of the sponsor was born. But George Ward demanded control of the race title and since then that is the way it has been. And racing has a more poverty-stricken look and is more confusing because of it.
You see, and, yes, this is another hobby-horse of mine, our sport is multi-faceted, with many nuances for the newcomer to learn and accept before the sport can deliver the satisfaction the true enthusiast derives from the daily game of chance we call horse racing.
Take the big race tomorrow, the Coral Gold Cup. Firstly, the Blue Riband of steeplechasing is the ‘Gold Cup’, the Cheltenham Gold Cup and the centre-piece of Royal Ascot is the ‘Gold Cup’, the Ascot Gold Cup. Yet here we have another Gold Cup. To you and everyone else who diligently follows the sport, there is no confusion. This Gold Cup is to be run in November, so it cannot be either of the other two Gold Cups. But to the newbie or a loved-one, when you excitedly announce that it is Coral Gold Cup day tomorrow, the response I would get, someone who lives in a world far removed from racinghot-spots, is ‘oh, it’s not Cheltenham, is it?’ In the outside world, to those with less than a passing knowledge of our sport, the Gold Cup can only mean one race and it is not a race held in Berkshire in November.
Also, it is not really the Coral Gold Cup, is it? It is the Hennessey or the old Hennessey, as the last big handicap of the season will always be the old Whitbread, no matter how many companies have sponsored the race since the sad day when it stopped being its historic title.
I am in way downplaying the importance of sponsorship in our sport. In fact, the sponsoring of races from the ordinary fare to the Blue Riband races is more than important, it is vital due to the antiquated system we have in Britain for funding the sport.
And, yes, I know the big races have ‘registered names’ but how often do they appear in the race-title, and how quickly is someone corrected by journalist or presenter when the sponsors name is omitted from the ‘registered’ name? Super-quick, I would suggest.
So here is my best suggestion for tidying-up a problem only I seem to believe is a problem. Take tomorrow’s big race, the old Hennessey. Why not this: the Newbury Gold Cup Handicap Chase, presented to you by Coral Bookmakers – followed by whatever slogan they would choose to use. 
The race would have a name that would chime down the ages, the sponsor is seen to be gifting the race to racegoers and they get a description of what, not that this applies to Coral, they manufactured or sell. If Alf Bloggs was sponsoring the race it might say ‘Alf Bloggs’, your High Street Rolls Royce dealership.
Because to be fair, I have little idea what either Turners or Boodles manufacture or sell.
To add weight to my point. At the last Cheltenham Festival, the ‘Turners’ was a novice chase, this year it is a novice hurdle. Would it not be neater if whatever race Turners sponsor this time around became the Spa Hurdle, presented to you by Turners, manufacturers (or purveyors) of ….
Cheltenham then would be consistent down the ages, the Gloucester Hurdle, The Spa Hurdle, the Cirencester Hurdle, the Cheltenham Gold Cup, presented to you by …. Insert name of your choice.
To those of a similar age to myself, would it not be nostalgically nice to have returned to the sport the Gainsborough Chase, the Great Yorkshire, as we did last year, for one year only, I suspect, and the Bula Hurdle?