​At Uttoxeter this week there are 258 entries over seven-races. This is a positive statistic, obviously, and flies in the face of the majority view of racing journalists who rather summer jumping did not exist. I for one support the need for summer jumping, though I wish there were fewer meetings. Although the high number of runners this summer may be a result of the wet winter and spring, I fear there will there be a knock-on effect come late autumn going into the start of the main season. The hue and cry last season was in complaint of the general lack of competitiveness, especially at the major meetings, with low numbers of runners and too many odds-on favourites. It may just be that those racecourses who choose to race during the summer may be made more profitable by doing so, the cost to the sport in general may prove to be too high. Also, there are now too many, in my opinion, valuable prizes to be won between May and August, and this too might well be having a detrimental effect on field-sizes in the winter months. If there were no summer jumping, the horses presently racing would be available for October onwards. 

Full Gallop: Part 2. More of the same; a reprise of the jumping season just gone. Glossy, if still watchable, more like a televised version of an equine Hello magazine pull-out, with too much emphasis on prize money on offer as if the jockeys themselves are in line for the six-figure pay-outs. The overall impression this cynically-minded soul receives from the program is too much emphasis on the winning mentality of jockeys and far too little emotional attachment to the horse.

The dumbest idea I have seen in print must be David Carr’s desire to see horse racing in the Olympics. Too many reasons why it is unnecessary, not feasible, with no chance of even being suggested to the Olympic Committee, to waste any more time over it. End of.

Trainers giving ‘bollackings’ to jockeys, and no doubt their staff, seems to both acceptable and at times a source of amusement. Wrong, it is uncivilised and no substitute for balanced debate. Trainers must make mistakes all the time – one trainer stated he regularly makes a dozen mistakes by breakfast – yet who bawls them out? We all make mistakes, those who deserve ‘bollackings’ are those who deliberately chose to do wrong. Honest mistakes, freely admitted, are a way of life and trainers who shout before they think should learn to rein it in as harmony will always beat discord. And anyway, horses do better in a harmonious atmosphere.

There are many aspects of this sport that its participants can be proud to be associated with. The rehabilitation centres that mend and repair our jockeys; the aspiration for care of horses from birth to death, even if it needs to be better funded; but most of all the British Racing School and the Northern Horseracing College, the former at Newmarket, the latter at Doncaster. You only realise how fortunate and blessed we are when you discover that Australia does not have the equivalent of either a racing school for young riders to hone their skills before entering a racing stable, nor does it have a thriving pony racing circuit. Prize-money may be an embarrassment in this country, yet we do a whole lot more than even the richest of racing countries can achieve, even when they benefit from a more forward-thinking governance. 

​The Saturday after ‘Super Saturday’ always has the feel of after the Lord’s Mayor Show about it. After watching highly competitive racing from both Market Rasen and Newbury the idea came to me that the day might in future be celebrated as ‘Ordinary Fare Day,’ a day to celebrate the lower echelon of the sport, with every race on the day restricted to horses below top-grade handicappers, with one meeting designated a jockey-restricted meeting. Mad idea? Perhaps. It ties in, though, with my belief that every owner, trainer, jockey, horse, etc should be given every opportunity to be successful, if only for one day.
On that theme, inclusivity. There is no one sector of the sport that is more important than the other. Yes, without the owner, there is no employment for trainer, jockey, staff and no outlet for breeders. But without jockeys there is no one to ride the horses. Without stable staff there is no one to care for the horses. Without trainers, owners would have to do all the work themselves. Without farriers, horses would have to run without shoes. Without racecourses …. So on and so on.
In my perfect world the sport could do without, and be better for it, bookmakers and tipsters and the major racecourse owners who, to my mind, pick the pockets of the sport while trying to come across as benefactors. Ideally, in my perfect world, there would be a Tote-type monopoly and all racecourses would be independently owned. It is what it is, though. For the sport to thrive and survive all sectors must be considered indispensable, their voices heard, their problems solved. Arc, for instance, are not as important as they think they are, yet as owners of a great portion of our racecourses they must be made happy while at the same time being put in their place, which is as one evenly sliced part of the racing pie.
Increased prize money for owners. Lower entrance prices for spectators. Greater opportunities for jockeys and trainers alike, especially those who work at the lower grades of the sport, if only for the sake of the sport’s integrity, though I would like to think to allow them the opportunity to earn a higher salary. Less working hours and better pay for stable staff. A better funded after racing programme for those horses leaving the racing world, which is getting better, though I feel more should be done within the sport to raise the funds needed to meet the aspiration of ‘from birth to death.’
Less argument and more conciliation. The Sport First, should be the over-arching motto.

There is, 21/7/24, a really nice feature on trainer Brian Ellison in today’s Racing Post. What I liked most about the feature were the photographs. A wide-angled view of the obviously well-maintained turn-out paddocks at Spring Cottage Stables was one of those photographs where there was more to see the more you looked at it, and what I though unusual for a trainer’s feature, three photographs of the trainer in family-friendly intimate poses with his wife. A wife, incidentally, who once wrote to the Queen to suggest she might like to support northern racing by sending a horse to her husband to train. If we want to sell this sport to an apathetic public, for them to engage with jockeys and trainers, they need to step out of the shadows and show the viewer, reader and observer, snippets about their lives outside of the ‘day job.’  If the public are to ever take them to their hearts, they need to know them, to witness aspects of their lives and personality, that they can equate to, to recognises similarities between them and us.
Brian Ellison comes across as straight-as-a-die, the sort of trainer anyone tempted to get into racing should get in touch with.

No one, I notice, is suggesting the distance of the Irish Oaks should be shortened. That is odd, considering the hue and cry from some factions within Irish racing who believe the Irish Derby is a dead thing that can only be revived by reducing the race to 10-furlongs, a distance that is not a Derby distance. Yet as day follows night, shouldn’t those same people be arguing the Irish Oaks also be shortened to 10-furlongs, to keep it and the two main Irish classics in line with French racing? Yesterday’s Irish Oaks looked a fine race to me, with a competitive field and a good deserving winner. It might be an idea, before the loud minority voices get their way, to try running the Irish Derby on the same card as the Oaks. It would, at least, be run on a day when British racing is very ordinary for a Saturday.

​‘Champions: Full Gallop’ is the B.H.A.’s and horse racing in general’s great white hope of boosting the popularity of the sport amongst those who thus far have lived their lives as non-horse racing supporters. Yes, I was a bit disappointment.
The problem with the first episode of the programme was I could not view it through the eyes of someone who knew little about the sport. It was, to me, the same as when I re-read a Raymond Chandler novel. I still enjoy Chandler’s writing style. I still like the character of Philip Marlowe and I still hear Humphrey Bogart narrating the dialogue. And though I have a poor memory, which allows my brain to play guessing games with the plot development, as the book closes in on its climax, I know how the storyline will reach its conclusion. Once seen, one cannot unsee. But then the series is not arrowed towards the likes of me.
Perhaps I am being ungenerous. The production values are A.1. and for the viewer with no knowledge of the human players, the horses or the result, it came across as highly watchable. But did you not feel that you had seen it all before. Even the footage of Frodon leaving Ditcheat for the last time and arriving at Jimmy Frost’s stables was similar to the film published on YouTube last spring.
And that leads me to Bryony Frost. Yes, I am a big and its doubtful I will ever have a bad word to say about her, so perhaps I am biased. But if your nan watched ‘Full Gallop’ who would she pick out as the person of most interest, the person who stepped through the screen and showed the sport in the sort of light the B.H.A., for instance, would approve of? When Bryony spoke about her old pal Frodon, she spoke from the heart, not from ego, her bank balance or any excellence she had performed on him. It was ‘an honour’ to be responsible for his well-being now he was retired. He never let her down. And the girl who looked after him down the years at Ditcheat saying he would never be replaced at Ditcheat. It came from the heart, unscripted, without a glance at the camera or seeking the light of publicity.
Harry Cobden is a fine jockey, blessed with a smooth West Country accent; a credit to the sport. Yet in this first episode I did not witness ‘Hollywood Harry’ as was highlighted in the Racing Post’s write-up of the programme. Indeed, what I wanted to see more of was Nico de Boinville at home with his children, the little girl hoisted on to that big grey horse. Hopefully as we go from episode to episode, we will get more insight into the private lives of the jockeys involved in the series. To engage fully, for viewers to want to invest their time and imagination, we need to be given exclusivity, not the sort of material served-up on a regular basis by I.T.V.. But again, the programme is not aimed in my direction. I just do not think it will, for example, escalate my other half’s passing interest in the sport.
That said, they could not have started with a better race than the King George as it had drama, a characterful winner and the retirement of one the great equine stars of the past twenty-years.
But let’s be clear: Bryony on her own, being herself, could sell this sport to people. She is a nice person, modest, I should think, and would give my praise no credence. Yet every time I hear her speak, I cannot help thinking that the sport has not only let her down but gave away a great opportunity to have a Frankie Dettori of the National Hunt game. Someone who quite naturally connects with people. And if you disbelieve me, go back to her reaction to winning the Ryanair Chase. Gold-dust + class.

​The only problem I can see with ‘Super Saturday’ is that it is a little bit too super. Would ‘Super Saturday’ fail if there were one less meeting? Would it, really? Why should eight-meetings be more ‘supery’ than seven? 
Why would Chester want to be part of the day rather than switch their meeting to the following Saturday when the day is as far from being super as can be imagined. Come on Chester, stop moaning about poor attendance and just move to the following Saturday. Small problem, easily solved.
That said, for premier racing to succeed it has to be seen to be fair to all, so for the B.H.A. to expect Chester to like it or lump it, to put up with having their attendance cut by half through being forced to begin racing at a start time that is neither late afternoon nor early evening, is unacceptable. Favouring Ascot, Newmarket and York is a poke in the eye to one of our countries best run racecourses, as iconic as anywhere in the world and a candidate for being one of the oldest racecourses in the world. Chester achieves a fine mix of modernity and old world charm and should be applauded and celebrated, not made to feel second-class.
The coming weekend is highlighted by a 2-year-old sales race at Newbury and a competitive summer jumping card at Market Rasen. Chester will fit nicely in the spot between the two.
The great win for Super Saturday is that it allows opportunities for riders to get on horses and to ride for trainers that would not normally come their way. For that reason, if no other, is why Super Saturday should be championed.
I always thought the Commonwealth Cup to be quite an innocent sort of race. It never crossed my mind it would generate controversy and become a source of such hot debate. Matt Chapman has never liked the race, believing it detracts from the 5-furlong all-aged sprint – is it still the Golden Jubilee? – it used to be the King’s Stand – and what is now the King Charles the 3rd Stakes, which used to be the Cork and Orrery – that’s what I dislike, changing the bloody names of races on a regular basis. Would King Charles care if whatever the race was called before he ascended to the throne was named after him or not? I would not think so, though as he now owns Ascot racecourse, he might have demanded his new title to be honoured just to let everyone know of his elevation to the very summit of British society.
Where was I? The Commonwealth Cup. Why not just appease everyone, and before the European Pattern Committee stick their noses in, and demote it to a Group 2 and wait for it to become a race so jammed-packed with quality there will be a roar from journalists to have it reverted to Group 1 status? It is just a dash up the straight, for pities sake, and has provided exciting finishes since its inception, which, if I recall correctly, was heralded with joy and satisfaction. I would like to bet if the Commonwealth Cup was given a life-span of another twenty-years, the record books would show that it has as many top-quality winners as any of the longer established Group I’s at Royal Ascot. I would suggest giving the race more time to develop or failing that, just quietly downgrade it to Group 2. No one during the race will notice any difference.
Soon to our t.v. screens will be the latest great white hope for improving the sport’s reputation ‘Champions: Full Gallop’, horse racing’s answer to all the other sporting docuseries that have achieved for the sports involved. I am not sure what they have achieved. I dipped in and out of the British Grand Prix the other Sunday and found it as boring as a drunken wake. Unless it pours with rain, Formula 1 is just cars at spedd circulating in random formation, rather like watching cctv footage of the M.1.. The mystery of tiddlywinks would be more compelling viewing.
So let us hope that Nico de Boinville and Nicky Henderson et al intrigue the viewers to the point where a good majority of them go to bed saying it might be fun to go racing one day. Let us all cross our fingers while falling to our knees in prayer. Perhaps, our salvation, at last!

​I am no fan of racing fiction based on skullduggery as it gives the reader, most of whom have no real interest in horse racing, the idea that the sport is inherently corrupt, which it is not. For those looking for racing fiction that celebrates rather than denigrates the sport, I do have on offer a collection of horse racing short stories, ‘Going To The Last’, all written a long-time ago and which you can purchase, if you glance to your right and up a bit, for a favourable price. I am not recommending you buy a copy and I am certainly not going to regale you with a sales pitch that might suggest your life will greatly improved by simply having the title on your bookshelf. All I am pointing out is that it is available. And in buying a copy you will have a rare book to add to all your populist titles. I will add that I am old; I could yet become homeless and destitute. The writers of the books you already have in your library are rich, while I am not. Is that fair? They are almost to a man or woman talented. Is that fair?
Chris Cook – he is talented - this week in his mid-week column in the Racing Post made much of Cartmel marketing the 50th anniversary, or was it the 40th? It is hard to believe it would be 50-years ago. Surely not? – Good God, I have just looked it up and it is the 50th anniversary, August 26th, 1974!
Anyway, horse racing writer of the year, Chris Cook was metaphorically shaking his finger at the good people of Cartmel for promoting their fixture on August 26th as a celebration of the Gay Future coup 50-years to the day. I began to read his piece slightly shaking my head at Chris Cook, not because I have a liking for successful skullduggery but because I have a soft spot for Cartmel, the most beautiful setting for a race meeting in the whole of the Union. If not the world. Knocks Happy Valley, Melbourne, Sha Tin, Longchamp and Saratoga into a cocked hat, whatever a cocked hat might be.
Yet, Chris Cook was right in his condemnation of successful and unsuccessful betting coups. They are a stain on the reputation of the sport and should not be celebrated as a win for the little man over corporate business. It is a fraudulent activity and wastes a lot of time for a lot of people. I did send an e-mail to the Racing Post reminding them the Cartmel coup should be given as the only example of fraud in the history of the sport and though that particular coup went astray, Barney Curley should not be lionised for the successful coups he masterminded. Fraud is fraud, even if the only misdemeanour carried out by Curley was taking the only phone-box at Bellewstown racecourse hostage to prevent bookmakers cutting their substantial losses if, as he did, Yellow Sam won the amateur riders’ race. In Curley’s case, at least in this instance, it was an honest gamble conducted in rather an ungentlemanly manner. Curley had no liking for bookmakers and choose to publicise his view of them in the only way that would hurt them most, through their pockets.
If anyone wants to know the a-to-z of the Bellowstown coup, there is no better way than through Nick Townsend’s book ‘The Sure Thing’, as good a book as you will ever read.
That is the thing about coups and gambles, they make fascinating stories, whether they succeed or fail. The Gay Future coup failed and yet I would suggest it is the most famous coup of them all. In my possession I have at least four books that deal exclusively with the people who set out to make a fortune by bending the rules a tiny bit. The aforementioned Nick Townsend book; ‘Great Racing Gambles & Frauds’ by Richard Onslow, though he only acted as editor and wrote the introduction, some of the contributors being Reg Green, George Ennor, John Tyrrel and Geoffrey Hamlyn. ‘Ringers and Rascals’ by one of my all-time favourite writers, David Ashforth, Paul Mathieu’s wonderful book ‘The Druid’s Lodge Confederacy’, perhaps the greatest example of clever fraudulence in the whole history of British racing.
There will be a gamble on a particular horse today, and when I say today, I do not suggest on this day the 7th of July 2024 a coup will be landed, but any today when someone happen to stumble across this ‘blog’. An owner will be told by his or her trainer that their horse has come on a bundle for its first race and they will back it accordingly, perhaps getting 20/1 and driving the price down to 8/1, with punters then witnessing the tumbling odds and availing themselves of the lesser prices before the horse goes off the 5/2 favourite. ‘Gamble landed,’ the headline will read. But not one that will stay long in the memory. Gambles are good for the sport, at least the honest ones.
I would like to believe the sport is so tightly observed these days by stewards, by bookmakers and the integrity units of the B.H.A. that skullduggery is a thing of the past - especially as Barney Curley is now long gone.

​In today’s Racing Post, David Jennings wrote a piece on the success of Dundalk racecourse, Ireland’s only all-weather track. At least for the moment as Tipperary has promised to go in the same direction and in time, I think they will. Not that David Jennings needed to have travelled to Dundalk, as good a journalist as he is, and I am a big fan of his writing style, as Lisa O’Connor, marketing manager at Dundalk these past five-years, might have conducted her own interview as she extolled the virtues and pleasures to be gained from attending a Dundalk race-meeting. Successful marketing is about believing in your product and boy does Lisa O’Connor believe in her product.
And that is the thing about persuading people who have never attended a race-meeting to give the sport a chance, it is all about belief in the product. Goodwood, it seems, is chasing its tail when it comes to selling tickets for its Glorious meeting, which does not bode well for Goodwood in general, I would have thought. Goodwood, is, by common consent, a glorious racecourse, as long as the infamous mist and sea-fret do not pay a visit.
I would suggest if Goodwood want sell-out crowds for their premier fixture, the work to sell the meeting needs to start at their very first meeting of the season. Have a free draw at every meeting to win two tickets for the Glorious meeting. Extoll the virtues and pleasures of attending Goodwood’s big meeting, as Lisa O’Connor sings the praises of Dundalk. Give away free tickets in the local paper for the minor Goodwood meetings, lay on a free coach service for people of the local area who would like to sample a day at the races for the first time.
Dundalk have no restrictions on where people can go once they have paid their £15 or should that be euros entrance fee. No bowler hatted official  asking to see your badge, preventing you from transferring from one enclosure to another just for the opportunity of a better or different view. The problem with some British racecourses is that they hold on to the snootiness of the outmoded class system. It is just about still acceptable at Royal Ascot, though the required mode of dress for men borders on both inequality, reverse sexism and, in hot weather, downright cruelty. Dundalk is the way forward, not dress codes and adherence to the ‘old ways’ of different enclosures for different classes of racegoer.
If you want better patronage, racecourses cannot do enough to make people welcome; you have to give to receive as a reward. I believe every racecourse should be made to have an ‘open day’ of free entry. It does not need to be first class racing, though it must provide a first-class welcome. Good food, guides to explain the various elements that comprise a day at the races, stalls selling local products, the work of the various equine charities exampled, with a retired racehorse or two for people to pet, meet and greets with trainer and jockeys, entertainment for kids and perhaps some form of after racing entertainment. I would not, though, go as far as clowns as clowns are too scary, though not perhaps for the hardy young.
Further, I would suggest every marketing manager of a British racecourse should visit Dundalk and try to learn from one of the best.
Horse racing is viewed by the public as an elitist sport. I have argued time and again that horse racing is very much a working-class sport. No one works harder than those who work in racing stables, no matter what their differing backgrounds. Jockeys, too, work long hours, with only the select few lucky enough to live in big houses and drive ‘flash’ cars. Trainers also work from dawn to dusk, even if many of them do live in big houses, if above their station and salary in life. Those outside of our sport do not know this. They see Royal Ascot and think it the pinnacle of an elitist sport and not for the likes of them.
The benefit of under eighteens getting in for free is voided if it costs the parents fifty-quid to get in, added to which another fifty-quid must be spent on petrol/diesel/charging to get to the racecourse and another fifty-quid spend money on eating, drinking and perhaps having a small bet.
If you build it, they will come. Yet the crowds will never again be as great as they were before television, before there was so many other sports and entertainments for the public to choose from. A day at the races is to attend an outdoor event; it is a countryside pursuit, even when urban sprawl means the town or city now threateningly surrounds the racecourse. Do not coop people up in enclosures. Allow them the freedom to roam, which will set racing apart from all other non-equine pursuits. Horse racing should resemble the Badminton horse trials, not Centre Court at Wimbledon.

​Thank goodness for climate warming. How cold and miserable would the weather be in this country if the sea was not boiling and the entire planet was not getting warmer by the day? It is a serious question as some climate scientists are predicting the opposite, that we are entering another ice age. I know where my money will going, given a new ice age is the outsider of two by a considerable betting distance at the moment. On Friday evening, July 5th, let us remember, I could have easily justified lighting a fire it was so chilly in the tourist hot spot of North Devon.
The other major debate, of course, now the General Election is behind us at last, is whether City of Troy is a superstar, a horse whose name will warrant mention in the decades to come in the same sentence as Frankel and Brigadier Gerard, the two best flat horses of my lifetime.
As of now, the sensible answer is no, City of Troy is not going to retire as a legend of the sport. What is more time is against him achieving immortality, given, unlike the immortal Frankel and the slowly being forgotten as recency tops historical fact, these days, Brigadier Gerard, City of Troy is unlikely, as he is just too important for Coolmore and the breed, to stay in training as a 4-year-old, with the Breeders’ Cup pencilled in for his final race.
To my mind, winning the Juddmonte at York and the Breeders Cup, on top of his Epsom Derby and Eclipse victories, will fail to elevate him beyond that of the best 3-year-old of his generation, for all he is, to use a Nicky Henderson phrase, ‘a nice person’. A proper dude.
What must be said, as again, recency wins most topics of debates, these days, both Frankel and Brigadier Gerard had to win ugly on occasion, as did City of Troy at Sandown yesterday, though usually on ground far worse than the O’Brien mega-star had to cope with in scrambling home in workmanlike fashion in the Eclipse.
It would be good to be honest, here. City of Troy is the most hyped horse to come out of Ballydoyle since Auguste Rodin. This high-stakes marketing strategy began, I would suggest, with Australia, the first of Aidan’s ‘best I have ever trained’, although on that occasion the great man had to backtrack and place Istabraq above all others. Auguste Rodin, if you recall, was tagged ‘a collector’s item’ and after many false starts is, at last, beginning to live up to the reputation Aidan saddled him with. Talk about selling your onions for top price even before they have poked their bonny heads above ground!
Although Aidan is a genius when it comes to training, his excuses for both defeat and narrow victories are pretty lame. When City of Troy won the Dewhurst on soft ground, Aidan was of the opinion that any distance and any ground would suit City of Troy. Yesterday he struggled to beat an ordinary Group 1 field, receiving 10Ib it must be remembered from the 6-year-old Al Riffa, as he did not handle the turn into the straight - indeed he took a false step – and he hated the ground, ground that was soft, as it was at Newmarket when he won the Dewhurst.
York, of course, might suit him better, though if he can’t handle bends, the Bleeders’ Cup is not going to help Coolmore’s ambition to retire him a super star on a par with Frankel. To my eyes, given his best 2-furlongs at Epsom were the final 2-furlongs, City of Troy needs 12-furlongs to be seen at his best, and doubtless good ground will aid his progression up the ranks. The sport needs a great horse at this time of struggle, sadly it is not going to be City of Troy, no matter how much hype is attached to his name by the trainer and the racing media.

One other moan about trainers. Dermot Weld has just retired his Oaks winner – name I cannot recall – due to a minor injury. Dermot Weld is a great trainer and this is not meant as criticism of him personally but of trainers in general. Too often the racing public are informed that a horse has suffered a ‘slight knock’, a ‘small injury’ and so on. Why can we not be told how the vet is describing the injury? Is a slight tendon strain a minor injury? A suspensory strain, is that marked down as a slight injury? We, the racing enthusiasts, deserve to be told the exact nature of an injury. Saying a ‘slight knock’ can sound as if something is being covered-up and that is not a good look for a sport that should be priding itself on transparency and openness. As the wonderful Sir Mark Prescott once said: my horses are trying 90% of the time to injure themselves, while my staff are 95% of the time aiding and abetting them. Racehorses injure themselves; it is part and parcel of the job. Unlike Sir Mark’s tongue-in-cheek anecdote, the reality is accidents happen. Just say it as it is. Do not say ‘a slight knock,’ ‘a minor injury’.

​The author of ‘Jumping into Jeopardy, Chris Haslam, is a good writer who likes to write. Whereas I am, in all modesty, a poor writer who battles a lazy streak to write. Other than quality, the difference that divides us is that I go for brevity, whilst Mr. Haslam is possessed by an alternate writing brief.
Aside for my biases, this is a good and worthy book. Yes, the opening chapters were, for someone whose life has been steeped in fascination of the sport and its history, a telling of the bleeding obvious, yet once the author got into the meat of his book it became a read worth the purchase price.
Let me illuminate without taking away any of the pleasures of the book if you should wish to buy a copy. In case I forget, you can purchase the book on-line from Borzoi Bookshop in Stow-on-the-Wold. It is, I believe, self-published, the reason it is being overly wordy, a book, like so many self-published efforts, no doubt including my shots across the bow of authorship, in need of an editor and proof-reader. On the final point, this book has very few blemishes on the proof-reading front, which, for a self-published book is highly commendable.
The above paragraph is an example of the journey you can expect on turning the first page of ‘Jumping Into Jeopardy’ – you are never quite sure where the author intends to take you, and for that, I thank him. A non-formulaic book is a joy to read, adding the mystery of a walk in countryside new to the eye. 
So, what is this book all about. It is a wonderful introduction to the world of the National Hunt jockey and to racing in general. There is a chapter on becoming a jockey, the weighing room, injuries, the Injured Jockeys Fund – incidentally 25% of the proceeds of the book will be going to the Racing Welfare Charity – female jockeys, trainers, mental health x 2, deaths, the Emerald Isle, and a lot more besides.
There is also an extensive biography of jockey turned trainer Sam Thomas, a chapter devoted to Tom Scudamore and a chapter titled ‘The Jockey Who Thinks Out Of The Box’, that jockey being the vegan jockey David Bass. There are also quotes and passages from well-known writers on the subject.
As I said, if you have lived your life within the horse racing community or have followed it as a dedicated spectator, much of this book will come across as last week’s news. If you know someone interested in the sport but has no great depth of knowledge on the ins and outs of horse racing, this is most definitely the present to buy. This, to the outsider wishing to look in, is a book of enlightenment.
As someone who would like to campaign to have long books banned, believing no book should be weighty enough to kill someone if it fell off a shelf and landed on someone’s head at 340 words + it is too long, with the last chapter of all the chapters in need of an editor’s pen. Instead of a summary of what went before, the final chapter of this book reads as if the author was too much in love with his subject to let go, to say to himself ‘there, I have written my fill’, to pen that most beautiful of literary phrases – The End.

​When a horse has won over the distance in a fast time, albeit in lesser company, and is then only placed in two Derbies, the whys and wherefores of defeat become a topic of debate. After the Irish Derby on Sunday, David Jennings went out on a wing and gave Racing Post readers the opinion that Ambiente Friendly ‘clearly did not stay.’ The owners, the Gredley family, agree with Jennings, even though they were dogmatic between Epsom and the Curragh, that their horse was a 12-furlong horse, with the Arc at Longchamp as the long-term aim.
Now, let me be clear, David Jennings would be my favourite Racing Post writer if it were not for Patrick Mullins. Mullins is a stealth writer, only contributing to the Racing Post when commissioned by Tom Kerr, the Post’s head man, when he submits memorable articles that live, as the use of memorable suggests, in the mind for weeks and months, sometimes demanding cutting out of the paper so as never to be forgotten. I even read Dave Jennings when he is writing on Irish football and hurling, even when he is playing the part of tipster. Not that I have ever put actual money down on one of his choices. I may be cabbage-looking but not so foolish to bet my money on the advice of someone who is fourth, fifth or sixth pick when his employer is in need of a tipster. He has tipped winners, apparently, but not to the point where he is paraded on the front page as having tipped a long-price winner the previous day.
David Jennings is, though, first choice in the front line when it comes to being a columnist. Admire him enormously as a racing writer, especially when he is writing about National Hunt, his first love, I believe, with words about the flat season a convenient way to help pay the mortgage.
So, as with everyone, though mostly Racing Post journalists, he has a right to his opinion. I would not be penning this nonsense if he had said the truth of the matter, that Ambiente Friendly was simply not good enough, that there were two horses better than him in yesterday’s Irish Derby, as there was one horse too good for him at Epsom. As David Elsworth once rebuked the media after Barnbrook Again had finished second in the King George at Kempton. “If he didn’t stay, he stayed better than the horses he beat.”
This protection of the reputation of a horse needs to be debated. A horse gets beaten a nose and the quote afterwards is nearly always ‘didn’t quite stay.’ Not, as is the truth of the matter, on the day there was a horse just a little bit better. On another day, over the same distance on the same racecourse, the result might be reversed. 
If Ambiente Friendly were to run next in a lesser race over 12-furlongs, would anyone bet on another runner due to the perception of David Jennings that ‘the horse clearly did not stay at both Epsom and the Curragh, though, of course, no one after Epsom offered the perception that the horse was not so much beaten by a superstar but by the distance.
If you argue that at the top level Ambiente Friendly does not get the 12-furlongs then I would offer no debate on the matter, though I would suggest it might be the same over 10-furlongs, that the truth is the horse is a gallant trier but he will always fail at the top-level due to being that little bit below that class.
When it comes to distance, horses are too pigeon-holed these days. In Australia, flat horses will be campaigned over different distances during the season. It also used to be the case with National Hunt horses, especially in Ireland. Flyingbolt went from the Champion 2-mile Chase and the Champion Hurdle to the Irish Grand National under top weight. Ambiente Friendly, in the right races, would no doubt win over any distance from 8-furlongs to 14-furlongs and only time will tell what his optimum distance will be and that, no doubt, if the Gredley family keep him in training, will only be discovered as a four or five-year-old. For now, all I will say is Ambiente Friendly definitely stays 12-furlongs, though he might prove better at 10, though I doubt it, and that he most likely prove to be just short of being a Group 1 horse.

​It is good for the soul, at least, my soul, to discover the ideas I have put forward for the betterment of the sport are slowly gaining traction. Today at Wolverhampton, for instance, though there have been other race-meetings in the same vein, every race is a rider restricted race, for jockeys who have not ridden more than 30-winners during the previous 12-months. I have banged-on about this subject for decades, believing the sport has a moral duty to give all its participants an opportunity to earn a half-decent living, and by allowing jockeys to earn a living wage, the sport is taking forward steps to protect its integrity. An underpaid jockey, with dependents to support, is more easily corrupted than a jockey who can afford to pay the bills and has enough money to support a happy family life. So, that is a pat on the back for me.
I also believe there should be an aspiration for every meeting to have at least one race worth 5-figures to the winner. Having a race worth £10,000 on every card will not in itself provide the answer to owners leaving the sport and our higher-rated horses being sold to race overseas but it would be a step in the right direction, a signal that the sport is trying. I cannot think that racecourses having to stump-up a further £6,000 per card will break the bank. From little acorns great oaks do grow, so it is said.
Of course, the B.H.A. should have greater aspiration than one race per meeting worth £10,000. No race should be run for less than ten-grand to the winner would be a worthier aspiration. But, well, I refer you back to the little acorns. The B.H.A. is of the opinion that it is possible to grow the sport from the top down. Houses are constructed from the foundations up – I rest my case. If the sport declines to the fate of hare-coursing or even greyhound racing, its re-emergence, if that was to happen, would begin, as it was at the very birth of the sport, with country meetings, local sportsman getting together to breath life back into a sport that was once a lynch-pin of British sporting tradition. Read Chris Pitt’s wonderful book ‘A Long Time Gone’ if you want to study the foundations of horse racing, when the sport was a country pursuit and not a billion-pound world-wide industry. I believe Cartmel and Musselburgh will prove the saving fathers of our sport, not Ascot, Goodwood or Sandown.
To return the ‘good old days’ to horse racing the modern requirements of the sporting public should be mixed with what went on when racecourses were crowded and there was no need to ‘sell’ the major races to the media or the public. The B.H.A. want to play too safe, an impossibility when regulating an activity that is by its very nature dangerous. Protecting the welfare of the horse is of vital importance and the sport should be connected from head to toe with equine charities. Horse racing should be the over-arching protector of all horses in this country, with race-meetings staged on a regular basis to raise funds to support the people and charities that provide the necessary safety-nets.
I remain committed to my ‘health and safety’ unfriendly idea to have a 40-runner Lincoln Handicap started from a barrier, a glimpse into how the every day of horse racing was like pre-starting stalls, a concept, by the way, the Jockey Club, the sport’s rulers and regulators prior to the inception of the B.H.B., now the B.H.A., were totally opposed to.
Of course, as we all know, fewer race-meetings, with less races, would go a long way to improving competitiveness in the sport, though I must warn that at present, with only five or six in a race, the owners we still have are earning more prize-money than if we were to have double the number of horses per race. It is an issue that is not a completely black and white picture. Not by a long chalk.
What British sport requires to help it, if that is at all possible, out of the doldrums, is knowledgeable leadership and a regulatory body with teeth that is prepared to bite. We are too bloody polite in racing. The B.H.A. are crap and Julia Harrington has made not one jot of difference. The sport was going down down when she arrived and it remains going down down on her departure. That is not success, with ‘Premier Races’ the biggest red herring since Jesus walked on water, turned water into wine and did that amazing trick when he fed the masses with loathes and fishes. If only he were around today. As things look today, a miracle is the basic requirement for a doable strategy to survival.