​Why does the B.H.A. need both a chief executive and a ‘chair,’ which I suppose to mean a ‘chairman’? Given that doubtless neither position requires a 5-day week, could one person do both jobs, if only to save on money?
I will now quote from the notice advertising for applicants for the position of chief executive: The appointee will therefore be a proven senior leader, with experience in leading complex stakeholder environments with the ability to influence external stakeholders, such as government, while representing the B.H.A. in a consumer-facing environment.
At no point does it ask for anyone applying for the position to have an interest in the sport the successful applicant will be required to lead for the foreseeable future. Yes, there is also no governmental requirement for the Archbishop of Canterbury to believe in God, even though his duties are doubtless every bit as complex due to God being Canterbury’s major stakeholder.
What is galling is that already people with an interest in the sport and who put their name forward for the post have been told they will not be considered, which is pretty maddening as amongst these people were former politicians who would know there way around the corridors of power at Westminster.
And is anyone within the racing industry advising the B.H.A. on suitable applicants? Of course not. They are paying a large sum of money to the MRS Group, an executive search firm.
To me, a man born optimistic though through experience is now a dedicated cynic, this is like appointing a vegetarian as agriculture minister or employing a plumber to rewire your house. Is it any wonder the sport is in the state it is? Thumps forehead with palm of the hand and moves on. 
The straight-talking Davy Russell, as guest columnist in today’s Racing Post, is calling for better prize-money in Ireland, citing the rising cost of everything as a very real threat to the sport’s survival. He is right, of course, and though he hints at drastic measures as potential for solving the crisis he just cannot say the obvious – every other country funds prize-money through a form of tote monopoly, and if not that old concept, then certainly through betting as a whole. 
What cannot be defended is the rise and rise of the cost of horses at auction and the cost of stallion fees. When winners of a 4-year-old maiden point-to-point constantly go through the ring for £400,000 it is always going to be an uphill struggle for anyone paying money that is somewhere between fancy and extortionate to make a profit out of ownership. This where the madness lies, where once upon a time an owner would kiss what was paid goodbye and hope for his horse to pay its way through the season. Thoroughbreds are now seen as an investment and not a sporting pursuit.
To continue with critical thinking. Setbacks, slight injury and ‘he’ll need a bit of time’ – what is being said here by trainers and owners and why keep the extent of an injury secret to only those with a need to know? Oh, I think punters and enthusiastic supporters of the sport should be included in that list of ‘need to know’, don’t you? If it is a bruised fetlock, tell us. Most of us know a fetlock from a cannon bone. Most of all, educate us, give us a true insight into one of the great setbacks in owning and training horses. I do not ask for the current weight of your horse or if it bolted on the gallop or knocked over its bucket of water. But you could at least put flesh to that annoying telling us nothing word – setback.
Good news is that my favourite jockey has just ridden her fiftieth winner of the year. With even greater support than she already receives, a golden run of form by uncle David’s horses and the luck of staying injury free through till the end of the year, she might even make 100-winners, which would represent a superb achievement for someone who only turned professional in 2021 when for reasons with no scientific basis amateurs were not allowed to ride during the nonsense of covid.
Jo Mason, if you had not worked-out her identity.

​You may not agree with the opinion of others but you should at least agree with me that everyone should be encouraged to air publicly their opinions. Personally, I loath and detest any form of censorship and believe a healthy society is gained from openness, honesty and truth. Naively, I realise, I believe that truth should be mandated by law, with barefaced lies made a criminal offence. But there you are, an honest opinion that the majority, no doubt, will ridicule. 
So, when Aidan O’Brien, for example, tells us the reason Auguste Rodin ran so poorly again at Ascot was the cut-up ground he raced-on and that contrary to the official ground description, the ground was good-to-soft, an opinion that ran contrary to the times of races recorded on the day and that no one else, seemingly, backed his opinion, we should, at least, listen to his honest assessment and applaud him for his honestly-held opinion.
Given his lofty position as the greatest of all-time, Aidan could give forth his opinions on every debate and dispute involving the sport. But that is not the man he his. He lives and breathes Ballymore and Coolmore and would doubtless go more than the extra mile to support the people who work for him and who employ him. Sometimes, of course, like the rest of us, mere mortals, he can be wrong in his opinion, as I believe he was in defending yet another blow-out by Auguste Rodin. Unlike you or me, Aidan has proved time and again when he is slagged-off by the media, he proves his doubters wrong, as he has done with Auguste Rodin on several occasions already. Come the Japan Cup, who would back against him?
One argument held against Auguste Rodin by the majority of the racing press I would also argue against is that the horse does not truly stay 12-furlongs. It boils my brain when a horse gets beat a short-head in a first try over 12-furlongs and the jockey, trainer and press jump to the conclusion that the horse did not quite stay and forever more is campaigned over 10-furlongs. If this theory carries any substance than we may suppose that every horse beaten over 12-furlongs does not stay, which would be nonsense, of course. Sometimes it is just a case of the better horse on the day that wins. Form is always subject to being turned-around. I dare say it happens every day in every grade of race.
Auguste Rodin, to carry on using him as an example, has won over the distance, beating a horse in the Epsom Derby who if he had the benefit of a previous run that season might have prevailed – and, yes, I think those who say King of Steel is a 10-furlong horse are being just plain silly, basing the assumption on one race – which is proof that he is as much a 12-furlong horse as he is 10-furlong horse. He has after all been beaten over both distances. That said, by the time he is retired he may have proved 10-furlongs was his best distance. That, though, does not prove he did not quite stay 12-furlongs.
Anyone reading this may disagree with my thoughts on the issue. I accept that. I also accept that time might prove me wrong. I will, not, though, accept that an arbitrarily applied rating for the horse over either distance proves anything other than a theoretical point.
There is a growing opinion by the ignorant public that discredits Kieran Shoemark. He is a wholly likeable young man who has overcome troubles and addictions to become John & Thady Gosden’s main jockey this season, taking over from someone who was irreplaceable, at a time when the stable has very few star horses, with the ones who are Group 1 performers ridden by jockeys retained by their owners. Kieran Shoemark will come good at the same time as the Gosden horses come good and who knows, there might be half-a-dozen star two-year-olds waiting to come out over the next few weeks. Shoemark deserves to be given the time to prove himself worthy of John and Thady Gosden’s support, as Frankie was given the time to prove he was good as he always was when John Gosden invited him back to be stable jockey after all his travails. That is my opinion, anyway. You might disagree. I just hope you will admit to being wrong when Shoemark makes his mark on the Group 1 races and most importantly the Classics.
The death of Istabraq last week was cutting. J.P. had given him such a long and lovely retirement, hosting a reception in May on the birthday of the great horse. There will be void at Martinstown that will never be filled no matter how many Grand Nationals and Gold Cups are won in the future sporting the iconic green and gold silks.
Remarkably, despite a hundred Group 1 winners and all the classics he has won, Istabraq remains the only true champion to be trained by Aidan O’Brien. And if you disagree with that opinion, you are in dispute with racing’s top historian John Randall. His opinion is based on statistics, an accreditation I somewhat despise as I believe true greatness is based on what the heart and the eyes tell you. And who will contest the opinion that if it were not for foot and mouth, Istabraq would have died as the only horse to have won four Champion Hurdles.
Rest in Peace, Istabraq. I doubt there will ever be another like you.

​On reflection, I believe Goodwood is the best flat racing festival. It has top-quality races, some with iconic names like the Sussex Stakes and the Goodwood Cup, mind-bursting tricky handicaps over varying distances and races that are nurseries for the immature and developing horse. But most of all it is the racecourse itself and the wonderful countryside in which it resides, enhancing rather than distracting from neither nature nor the farmed landscape. It is a racecourse that tests both the equine and human participants, where jeopardy can still exist in spades and where the weather can play a good or nasty turn. Goodwood is premier racing at its best and demonstrates that glorious racing does not necessarily need every race to be a Group race, where competitiveness can be organic, without any need for it to be plumped and fluffed-up. If only Galway and Goodwood could follow each other in the calendar rather be in opposition to one another.
Jack Berry is a force of nature and while he is still with, for all he has selflessly done for the sport, the B.H.A. and the sport in general should recognise his worth with something like a ‘Jack Berry Day’, a day when the sport goes all out to raise funds and awareness of the charities the great man supports almost on a daily basis. Just an idea that I hope someone will pick-up and carry forward.
It seems I am not the only one who believes stamina should be encouraged when it comes to both the breeding industry and the race programme, with little vocal support for the Irish Derby to be reduced in distance, I am glad to report. In today’s Racing Post, there is a letter suggesting races at 12-furlongs and above should be more generously rewarded with prize-money than races over shorter distances. I agree, especially when it comes to the historic races like the Ascot, Goodwood and Doncaster Cups, perhaps making them into Blue Riband events, a stayers’ triple crown. If more is not done to encourage British and Irish breeders to focus bringing to market yearlings and foals with stamina laced throughout their pedigree and not with more than one thought on the foreign market, in time the thoroughbred will have one purpose and one purpose only, speed, speed, speed, with the lesser horses without a second life outside of racing. Not only are the Group 3 and top handicappers now out of reach of National Hunt trainers when it comes to Horses In Training Sales, but a whole lot of the horses that make-up the catalogues are of no use to them as the majority are sprint-bred and have no future as hurdlers. And what good is a horse programmed from its first day in a racing stable to go flat out for 5-furlongs to someone looking for a hunter, eventer or show-jumper?
The survival of our sport is not dependent on the number of people who attend the flat-festivals through the summer but on those who support their local racecourses and it is there where we might attract new advocates and supporters. While the racecourses that stage the major meetings bemoan crowd sizes in comparison to what they used to be, smaller tracks like Ludlow, Perth and Cartmel are doing well, which begs the question, why? Personally I would rather have 10,000 people spending a pleasant day at the racecourses like the above-mention, that 30,000 going home from a festival critical of the amenities, prices and lack of space they had to endure.
The concept of premier racing does contain, I now believe, a germ of a good idea that at present is being drowned-out by its hostage-takers determining that the sport can be grown from the top down, whereas all good things grow organically from the bottom up.
At Goodwood, for instance, this Saturday, the Stewards’ Cup should have been ring-fenced within a golden hour in which it was the only race run in Britain so that all eyes were on one race. It should be the same for one race every Saturday, with something similar, though perhaps the protective window might be shorter, every day of the week. Yes, thereby shining a spotlight on the likes of Fontwell and Redcar, with one race per day worth at least £20,000. 
There is no need for Goodwood, for example, to be framed as a ‘premier day’ as it has been that for decades. Individual races are what is needed to be ‘premiered’ not whole meetings.

​Ryan Moore rode a treble at Goodwood yesterday. For him, it was just another day at the office. He might be forty now but as Aidan O’Brien said of him, he only gets better at his job. To me, not that Ryan would care a jot or a fig if someone told him, he is the best jockey of my life-time and my life-time took in everyone else’s G.O.A.T., Lester Piggott, as well as the likes of Pat Eddery, Steve Cauthen, the much under-rated Willie Carson and the incomparable Frankie Dettori. Yesterday he coaxed an immature Jan Brueghel to success in the Gordon Stakes, rode a sublime front-running race to win the Nassua Stakes on Opera Singer and then took a maiden on Dreamy, to give O’Brien a treble also. The best of the best, and that can as easily apply to the modest Aiden as to the taciturn but sometimes witty Ryan Moore. ‘No, I wasn’t pestered for the lead,’ he told journalists after winning the Nassau. ‘but I am being pestered now.’ Perhaps he had a plane to catch as he is riding at Saratoga the next few days.
Syd Hosie no longer has a training licence and Tony Charlton has been granted a temporary licence to train from Hosie’s stables in Dorset. That is all the B.H.A. is prepared to say on the matter. The public need to be told more as speculation will be rife on social media and if Hosie is guilty of any crime or breaking the terms of his licence, or whatever, he will be talked about as guilty even if he is proved innocent and his reputation will be sullied forever. We need to know, so, please B.H.A., release at least the outline of whatever enquiries you are engaged upon.
The Magnolia Cup is an invention worthy of its inclusion within the framework of Glorious Goodwood as it raises funds for various female charities as well as raising awareness of those charities. Yesterday one of the runners slipped on the way to the start, its rider having to be taken to hospital. These things happen with horses and not only on the racecourse; I just wonder if Goodwood is too idiosyncratic for this type of charity race.
As I expected, Ray Dawson and ex-trainer Henry Spiller came out with their reputations intact after the B.H.A.’s ‘Enough Already’ enquiry which found that owners, confusingly father and son, Royston Barney and Royston Cooper, had instructed Dawson to stop their horse Enough Already from winning at Yarmouth and when he won threatened both him and Henry Spiller with violent consequences. What I want to say is this: Barney and Cooper are obviously undesirable people and the sport is well rid of them. But, and this a very shaky ‘But’, they might be excluded from owning racehorses for life or twenty-years. The length of their ban is not important. My point is this: when jockeys do wrong, they are offered help, be it substance abuse, drugs or drink. When owners breach regulations is there any traction in the idea of warning them off temporarily, with remedial help offered by way of B.H.A. funded courses in an attempt to get them to see the error of their ways. Perhaps not the right approach with Cooper and Barney but in some instances, it might be worth a trial of some sort. The sport needs all the owners it can get, after all. Usually, warnings-off are as a consequence of betting breaches. It does not follow that because someone loves a punt they do not love the sport. That is my point in a nutshell.
Galway – what a mad Festival. 7-days of eclectic brilliance. I believe if Epsom want to return the Derby to its former glory, Galway is the blueprint. Though not 7-days. 4 at most. With some sort of Derby each day. Epsom is, after all, the home of the Derby.
The Irish regulators refused to allow Petrol Head, trained by Katy Brown, to take part in the Galway Hurdle yesterday as a hair sample taken after it won at Bellewstown had traces of clenbuterol, a banned substance found in products for respiratory conditions. Petrol Head was formally trained by Ronan McNally who is currently serving a 12-year ban for various misdemeanours. Again, no information from the regulators is forthcoming. As in Britain, as in Ireland. In shadows there can be menace.

​Firstly, yesterday I posted an idea for centralising prize-money, where the number of races and meetings was determined by how much money was in the pot. The hazy concept of the idea that sponsorship money should go into a central pot, with the race the sponsor is associated with still carrying its name, and the prize-money for that race becoming what the sport can afford. I forget to take into account entry fees, which obviously would plump-up prize-money from the central pot. It remains, I suspect, an idea with severe limitations, though I remain convinced someone with a functioning brain could mould it into a concept worth consideration.
As I get older the dumber and more cynical I become. I thought the deal promised in the small-print at the outset of life was that the older you become the wiser you become. (Shrugs shoulders and soldiers on).
I am not always fair when it comes to the B.H.A., my thoughts tainted by my belief that the sport should be captained by someone with a life-long knowledge of both racing and horses, not by someone from the corporate world looking for a good little earner for 3-days work every week. So, in small recompense I now wish to praise the B.H.B.
At least I wish to say a ‘jolly well done’ to James Givens, formerly a successful trainer, who is now director of equine regulation, safety and welfare at the B.H.A., a role he is fully qualified for as he is also a qualified vet. Too often, and this criticism must be levied at not those who twiddled their thumbs at the B.H.A. for quite a long time, though for centuries the Jockey Club, when they ruled over the sport, swept equine fatalities under the carpet as if were the sport’s dirty secret. Now, no doubt driven by James Givens, there is transparency with the subject, with an on-going research study funded by the Racing Foundation, and to taken on and funded by the B.H.A. as a necessary undertaking, cataloguing every fatality and sending out questionnaires to all relevant parties to understand the whys and wherefores of every racecourse death, even if the death occurs days after the race. The project is backed by the Royal Veterinary College’s department of epidemiology.
The aim of this study is to find answers to why horses suffer fatalities during a race and if there is a common denominator to find a solution. Equine fatalities are one of the major reasons why people are put-off attending race meetings and if the work undertaken by James Givens can reduce the percentage of tragedies on racecourse that tenuous ‘social licence’ may be easier to achieve in the future.
Yes, I believe there are people in the corridors of power at the B.H.A. who are doing fine work on behalf of the sport.
Back on track. The B.H.A. have just announced two new appointments, and here I must ask if this is money well spent. Some, I am sure, will say these are vital appointments. I will take some convincing. There is to be a head of environmental sustainability. Why? Does the sport have a need for someone to go on a tour of British racecourses advising on how to collect rainwater from rooves and how to recycle paper cups? Would a newsletter achieve the same aim for far less expense? I will not name the person who has achieved this leg up in her career and I wish her well. To quote (poorly) Sheldon from ‘The Big Bang Theory’, ‘I recognise the work engineers do, I just do not understand why they do it.’
Climate change is a ruse, by the way. Hot, cold and rainy weather used to be called weather when I was growing up, when temperature gages used by scientists were based in open countryside, not at airports, car parks and on the side of buildings. Do not start me off. Just leave it alone. C.O 2 in the atmosphere is lower than fifty-years ago and so on and so on.
Also, there is now a head of social impact, suggesting he heads-up a large team, doesn’t it? Social impact! What does that mean, anyway?

​In today’s Racing Post, the main feature is an interview with David Menuisier, the Frenchman who has made England his home.
Although no anglophile, I like Menuisier. He has opinions and is not afraid to air them. I suppose it is good for him, not that he has reason to care one way or the other, that I tend to agree with him.
In the short-term, measures need to be put in place to ensure the long-term survival of the sport in both Great Britain and Ireland. Prize-money in both countries is rubbish, though in Ireland, due to not racing every day, the sport remains highly competitive, though perhaps not so much at the highest level. It is unhealthy, I believe, and distracting, to have races worth upwards of 1-million pounds for the major races while there are races at other meetings on the same day worth less than £3,000 to the winner. In stringent times we need to encourage people to buy thoroughbreds to race, to keep trainers afloat and to provide work for the dedicated staff the trainers employ.
I have an idea in my head, doubtless impractical, though similar to a proposal the B.H.A. were learning towards a while back, where all prize-money is pooled and doled out accordingly for every race run throughout the calendar year. Though this was the last year Qipco sponsor the King George & Queen Elisabeth Stakes, I will use their name as an example. If my idea were to succeed, the King George & Queen Elisabeth would still bear the Qipco name as sponsor, though the money they put up would go into a general pot along with all other sponsorship money, from local sponsorship at, say Brighton, Redcar or Market Rasen, with the B.H.A. then allocating prize-money for every race of the year. The Derby might still be worth what it was this year as there must be exceptions, as it would be for the Grand National and other blue plaque races. The number of meetings and races would be determined by how much money is in the pot, with every race subject to a minimum value to the winner of say £5,000, with a maximum value of listed and Group races of, say £100,000, with exceptions, though only the truly major races. The same would apply to jumps races. And the Qipco name would appear throughout the year on every racecourse. Bang for their buck, some might say.
As with all my ideas, this one isn’t fully thought out, though I hope the general impression is there for one far cleverer than I am to make a workable blueprint from it.
That said, David Menuisier made a valid suggestion that has common-sense written all over it. There should be a cap on how many horses any one trainer can have. This one radical proposal would, I am quite certain, increase competitiveness, especially at the top level, as there would be a larger pool of trainers wanting to be involved in the bigger races.
The great knock-on effect of a cap on the number of horses in any one stable is that the staff laid off by one trainer would soon find employment elsewhere in the industry as most of the trainers outside of the top twenty or so have trouble finding enough staff of the right outlook and dedication. 
To me, short-term at least, a cap would be a win-win for the sport, even if the top trainers would suffer a hit to their own earnings. It may be unfair to a degree to some but in levelling the playing field, the sport would be overall healthier, and in time, who knows, when the economy is stronger and the sport back on its feet, the caps could be increased.
David Menuisier is a man to be listened to and, as a trainer, to be followed as incrementally he is making his mark on British racing.

​Brighton is one of the British racecourses I have never visited, and, as I am in what used to be referred to as ‘my dotage,’ I doubt if I ever will. For some unfathomable reason, without ever setting foot in Sussex, let alone Brighton, I have a fondness for the place. I also have a fondness for David Ashforth, who I am pleased to see is writing for The Racing Post once more. I suspect Mr. Ashforth has a fondness for Brighton, too, as he does all worse-for-wear racecourses, I, again, suspect.
Mr. Ashforth, as with many of his colleagues at the T.R.P., can always be relied upon to knock racecourses with no greater ambition than to cater for class 5 & 6 racehorses, which I find annoying. What they should be knocking is the poor levels of prize-money on offer for lower-banded races as in most endeavours promotion and stability is usually achieved from the ground up and not the opposite way as the B.H.A. seem to prefer. I also object to this grade of racehorse being described as ‘bad’ or worse still, as one leading pundit said, ‘rubbish.’ 
If the B.H.A. were to suddenly ban racecourses from staging Class 5 & 6 races, what would happen to that grade of horse? There is no form of point-to-point race meetings for them to fall into and they would not be wanted for export to other racing jurisdictions. The meat market is where they would end up and what a poor look that would give the sport. Instead of being critical of the likes of Brighton for staging Class 5 & 6 races, there needs to be a push to get the B.H.A. to press racecourses to increase the value of these races by a thousand-pound or so. Indeed, as I have called-for in the past, there should be an aspiration for every meeting to have at least one race worth ten-thousand-pound to the winner. Small steps towards less embarrassing prize-money.

There is also a moan today about the sorry state of sprinters in Ireland, with most of the Group and top handicaps being won by British-trained horses. Sob! Sob! was my reaction. Heavens to Betsy, try being a British trainer of jumpers and watching the Irish hoards coming here time and time again and gobbling up most of our prize-money. So be it. Suck it up. It will do the whole of Ireland good to feel just a smidgen of the great pain Britain has suffered for a decade. You in Ireland have Willie Mullins and Aidan O’Brien. By heavens, do you want the whole of the cake all of the time?

Charlotte Jones has just become the latest female jockey to ride out her claim. It is a fine achievement for any young jockey, be them male or female, to ride the requisite 75-winners that reduces them from 3-Ib claimer to fully-fledged professional. The sad aspect for such a fine rider as Charlotte is that all of those 75-winners were from the stable of Jimmy Moffat. Of course, her dilemma is that if she spread her wings a little in an effort to achieve outside rides, she might then not be as available to ride for the man to whom she owes her career. I would advise her, if she does not already have one, to get herself an agent and, if she does not already, ride out once a week for one of the north’s leading stables to demonstrate to them how capable she is. She cannot moan about not being booked for outside rides if she stops herself from doing the hard yards of promoting herself. In my opinion, she is as good as any male professional and it would be unfair if she failed this season to get legged-up on winners for trainers other than the excellent Jimmy Moffat, a trainer who also deserves greater recognition for his talents.

Where has summer gone. Already we are approaching the King George & Queen Elizabeth Stakes – I somehow wish they would shorten the title to the Queen Elizabeth the 2nd Stakes, she deserves the honour, don’t you think? – Glorious Goodwood and the Galway Festival, with York’s Dante meeting on the horizon. Also, today, first news of Constitution Hill in T.R.P. He is hail and hearty, apparently, with Nicky Henderson reporting that he has never seen him looking better. In little over 4-months the big news story will be his reappearance in the Fighting Fifth. Soon be Christmas now!

​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.