​Only 5 British-trained horses entered for this season’s Cheltenham Gold Cup can be registered as between an all-time low for the sport in Britain and immensely disappointing for all concerned. Neither Paul Nicholls nor Nicky Henderson can muster an entry between them, with only Dan Skelton and Venetia Williams supplying the home team with a credible chance of one of the five making the frame, with, I suspect, third or fourth the best we can expect. As much as I have championed Ahoy Senor in the past, he looks light of former years, years when he came up short when tried in the highest grade. The Real Whacker is not Gold Cup class, even if I could make a case for him as a Grand National horse. Royale Pagaille, a titan around Haydock, is another who has failed time and again at Cheltenham. Some experts had Grey Dawning down as a possible Gold Cup winner at the start of the season, though I have not shared their confidence and I witnessed nothing at either Haydock of Kempton to change my pessimistic view of him as a true Gold Cup contender.
So that leaves us with L’Homme Presse. Remember, off a far from advantageous training schedule for Cheltenham last season, he led the field into the home straight before being swallowed up by Galopin Des Champs and Gerri Colombe. He ran well on his comeback in the King George and though I suspect he is not a true stayer – the stable has Djelo for the Ryanair, who I fancy for the race – and it might be tempting to have thought of the lesser race for him, he is our only hope of getting amongst the Irish, even if, barring calamity, Galopin is a good thing to join the greats by winning three consecutive Gold Cups.
Although the reason for so small a number of British-trained horses entered is plain for all to see – there just is not the pool of horses of Gold Cup class trained in Britain – it might look short-sighted if anything, God forbid, should happen to prevent Galopin Des Champs from running. Did the Bradstocks not teach anyone a lesson when Coneygree proved them right and everyone else wrong? They gave it a go, so why is, for example, our top staying novice, The Jukebox Man, not entered? There are only 19-entered, with the French horse more likely to go for the Ryanair or 2-mile Champion Chase and Willie Mullins will not run all of his in the race. There might be only 8 or 9-runners. Cheaper to enter from the start than to supplement six-days before the race.

There will be no jumps action again this Saturday. Nobody’s fault, just winter squeezing our sensitive parts. At the moment, both all-weather meetings are scheduled for outside of the protected I.T.V. air-space. I am no fan of all-weather racing but it was initiated for days like we can expect on Saturday with snow, frost or waterlogging likely to claim both Warwick and Kempton. Both Newcastle and Wolverhampton must be moved forward to facilitate the I.T.V. seven and to give Ed Chamberlain, though more likely his understudy Oli Bell, something to do on Saturday.

On YouTube you will find a video of Peter Easterby guiding a journalist – his name will not come to me – around what is now his son Tim’s yard and taking him to see the resting place of two undisputable legends of the sport, Night Nurse and Sea Pigeon. The fenced-off square of a paddock is overgrown with a tree but there is a plague recording the main triumphs of the two. And if that small bit of Yorkshire was not sacred enough, Peter’s wife had asked for her ashes to be spread on top of the two graves.
In an interview with Alastiar Down, Peter Easterby was quoted as saying, approximately. ‘They had great lives and because of them so did we.’
If only we could see the likes of Night Nurse and Sea Pigeon again. They won 72-races between them. On the flat, over hurdles and over fences. Truly great horses, truly great days.

​As someone who is granted the privilege of haunting the letters column of the Racing Post, I am invariably envious of someone who has a letter published that encapsulates my own thoughts on a topic, even if, as on this occasion, the composition is neater and more insightful than I am capable of producing with any regularity.
Mr. A.C. Hopkins of Steventon, North Ayrshire, is as peeved as I am seemingly that experts who should know better continually express the thought that Constitution Hill is perhaps the greatest hurdler of all-time after a single Champion Hurdle success and after only 9-runs. Like Mr. Hopkins, I believe Constitution Hill is an exceptional hurdler but we will only be able to gauge his position in the pantheon if come March he is taken on by not only the present champion, State Man, but also both Lossiemouth and Brighterdaysahead. Successive ‘walks in the park’ are no matrix for attributing greatness when those that came before had to stick out their heads and battle against horses of far more ability than the majority of Constitution Hill’s victims up until this point in his career.
Mr.Hopkins quietly rightly cast his mind, and hopefully the curiosity of the Racing Post’s younger members of staff, to the halcyon days of hurdling, the days of Bula, Night Nurse and Sea Pigeon, though, to me, that golden age began in 1968 with Persian War, with an interim of Comedy of Errors and Lanzarote.
As with Sea The Stars, though the comparison is unfair, Constitution Hill has thus far enjoyed the success-story of a meteor shower, whereas the three horses Mr.Hopkins highlighted, Bula, Night Nurse and Sea Pigeon were not only dual purpose, the latter being as good a handicap stayer on the flat as we have ever seen, the other two as chasers later in their careers. As Mr.Hopkins reminded people, Bula finished his career with 34-wins, Night Nurse with 35 and Sea Pigeon with 37. Even Monksfield won 19-races flat and jumps. It is likely that Constitution Hill will not even finish his career with 35 races under his belt, let alone 35 wins.
As with Mr.Hopkins, I am not dissing Constitution Hill, even if I predict he might have his work cut-out to concede 7Ibs to Brighterdayshead in the  Champion Hurdle come March. I am criticising journalists and presenters who should know better than to repeat hyperbole for no other reason than to propagate a narrative that might, just might, engage the outside sporting public. Apart from the probability that Constitution Hill should improve mightily for his run on Boxing Day, and Nicky Henderson’s record for pulling the phoenix out of the fire, I saw nothing at Kempton that suggested he was a good thing to beat Lossiemouth at Cheltenham, let alone storm home to the same effect as he did as a novice, which may yet prove as singular a day as when Master Minded scorched the Earth in the Champion 2-Mile Chase.
Anyway, my congratulations must go to Mr. Hopkins for bringing a large dose of sanity to the debate.

No doubt the scenario for this weekend is that neither Warwick nor Kempton will be fit to stage racing on Saturday, though by Sunday the situation may have reversed itself. This is why I advocate during the months of January and February that the big weekend fixtures should be two-day affairs, Saturday and Sunday. Yes, it is more than a possibility than both days may be defeated by the weather but a Saturday/Sunday fixture would provide a safety-net to ensure an important race is staged. The Warwick Classic is unlikely to be transferred to another course if Warwick is abandoned this Saturday and though if staged on the Sunday it will be unlikely that I.T.V. will be able to televise the meeting, at least the Warwick faithful will get to see the race, Warwick will get their big pay-day and trainers and jockeys will have something to do on the day. As will bettors and gamblers.

The Racing Post are currently running a series featuring the thoughts of racegoers on how happy or otherwise they are when attending a race-meeting. So far, all-weather fixture at Lingfield has featured, with the more elderly racegoers pleased with their experience, while today a Salisbury evening fixture with music after racing was the focus. This meeting targeted younger racegoers and the reaction to their evening were mixed with some there solely for the music after racing, while others were there to enjoy the racing and the music.
Where I agreed with the thoughts of one young man was that racing needs to cater for the age in which we all live. The various enclosures on racecourses came into being at a time when criminality was rife, with pick-pockets and card-sharps attending the races with one object in mind, to fleece the lords and ladies of their money, pocket-watches and anything else they could get their grubby hands on. That age no longer exists and I believe a racecourse should be one large space where everyone can mingle, with racegoers allowed everywhere except where only horses and their attendants can go.

​I learned today from Tom Ellis’s Editor’s Choice piece which us Ultimate Members receive in our inbox, that the period between Boxing Day and New Year’s Day is now referred to as Twixmas. I like it and hope the term will receive both public and official recognition.
Of course, there is now a call to make use of this long period of holiday-time to help boost attendance at racecourse by somehow improving the fare on offer and interconnecting one day and one meeting in a chain of festive happiness. 
Unfortunately, as with many of my own ideas for revival and survival, the truth is stark – there just are not enough top-class or even horses for the races we already have during the Twixmas period, to have anything other than ‘ordinary fare’, outside of Kempton and Chepstow, of course, and would require money the sport does not have and someone with a magic wand to produce out of the ether a hundred racehorses idly standing by for a suitable race to come their way.
I would go as far as to say unless we let go half-a-dozen meetings before the Twixmas holiday, and perhaps a similar number in the first weeks of the New Year, there is hardly enough horses in training to make competitive the festive race-meetings we already have. At the moment, sadly, less would be more, rather than ‘if more is good for you, even more must be better’.

Another nail in racing’s coffin – wish I could stop being so pessimistic – is the news that we will not be seeing a jockey wearing the black colours and silver D Y on a racecourse anytime soon. Darren Yates will be leaving the sport when all his horses are sold, the departure, I believe, has started with the sell of The New Lion to J.P. McManus. 
How many more long-standing owners will have to hang-up their racing colours before the lethargic B.H.A. start listening to the reasons put forward by people like Darren Yates for abandoning the sport. If a large number of owners are unhappy, the sport is in dire trouble.
Think about this: what happens when J.P. McManus is no longer around to prop-up the sport in Britain and Ireland? Yes, I dare say his family will continue to have horses in training but no offence intended, will any one of them be a replica of J.P. himself? It is imperative the B.H.A. engage with racehorse owners and bring about change as a result. If owners do not feel respected when at a race-meeting, the sport can only suffer.
As is usually the case when J.P. buys a horse, The New Lion will stay with the Skeltons’. They, though, are not winners in this matter as they may have kept the most promising horse they have ever had but they have lost an owner, as has the sport.

Ascot have plumped-up the prize money for the King George and Queen Elizabeth Stakes – why not shorten it to the Queen Elizabeth Stakes? – and will refund all entry fees to the owners of the horses that run on the day. A good move, I dare say, though that comes to £18,000 per runner, would any owner with a horse good enough to run in a Group 1 feel the loss of 18-grand and would it make the difference between running at Ascot or going for a softer target elsewhere? I doubt it. Pot-hunting is endemic in British racing, I am afraid, and not only at the Cheltenham Festival. In this one regard, owners have become spoilt.
Ascot have also taken the bold move to have four of the races at Royal Ascot become 6-day entry, rather than early entry, the Prince of Wales Stakes amongst them. Early entry is an anachronism, both a vestige of days long gone and a money-gathering exercise on behalf of the racecourse. The important races need the best horses turning-up on the day, not just those entered months, and sometimes months and months, before the day of the actual race. 
To take the K.G. & Q.E. for example. To run in that race, from initial entry fees to the final fee to run in the race, costs an owner £18,000. Why not scratch all but one of the entry stages and charge an owner £20,000 to stay in the race at the five-day declaration stage. Why must owners be forced to waste large sums of money through the season having horses entered for races, especially two-year-old races, on the off-chance they might be a) in form when the race finally comes around b) sound and healthy or c) proven good enough? 
Cut financial waste and give owners one less reason for leaving the sport. 

​No terrestrial racing on a Saturday was always more than a possibility in the months between December and March and yet the B.H.A. could not make a provision for such an outcome in their premiership racing concept. People who believe in the warm weather crisis, of course, also believe in fairies and gold at the end of every rainbow and I suspect everyone who works for the B.H.A. also believes in the power of crossing ones fingers and hoping for the best.
All-weather racing was initiated on the pretence of providing racing with a safety-net for when turf racing is postponed due to waterlogging, frost and natural disaster. To my mind, a large slice of racing’s problems can be placed at the foot of the decision to allow all-weather tracks to multiply and yet with hardly a day without an all-weather meeting, on a day when they would have saved the day, they were out-of-reach due to mishandling of the situation by the B.H.A. Bloody Hopeless Administration.
The concept of ‘premier racing’ is deeply flawed. There is a grain of both good intentions and good ideas within it but as it stands it must be abandoned with immediate effect. Richard Hoiles has it right, as I did once I realised how premier racing would best work. It is individual premier races that need to be ring-fenced, not whole meetings. Premier Racing is about creating have and have-nots, with the likes of Chester marginalised while the likes of Ascot are placed on a pedestal. 
If Sandown had gone ahead, the Veterans’ Chase, as the main race of the day, should have been given a half-hour window, fifteen-minutes before the race and fifteen after, when no other race in the country could be run and, as Richard Hoiles suggested, the race included in racecards at every other meeting racing on the same day, with big screens showing the races for racegoers in all parts of the country to enjoy. Come Cheltenham in March and Aintree in April, two races could be given ring-fence protection, thus bringing the Cheltenham Festival and the National meeting to other racecourses in operation on the same day. In this way ‘premier racing’ would require virtually no budget, which is what it has at the moment.

As a rider, he is the most successful amateur for many a long year. As a writer, he is par excellence, if you pardon my French. He may have suffered a ‘par’ day at Leopardstown on successive days but as readers we never suffer a par round when reading his account of any racing topic. Two talents, while I have none. Life is not fair. But then I should have read the small print on my birth certificate.

Look, it was my fault. I take partial responsibility for the Racing Post mangling my latest letter to appear in the letters’ column. I attempted to make a point about two different topics and though my ire about Gordon Elliott and the O’Leary brothers disrespecting the Champion Hurdle by continuing with talk about the Mares Hurdle for Brighterdaysahead, they sliced and diced my point of view on the confusing and ever-changing titles of races. Where I wrote – why not The Grand National presented to you by Randox Health – purveyors of (whatever strap line they wanted), they went with why not the registered title the Grand National.
Lesson learnt.

Today’s feature in the Racing Post is Sara Bradstock and a good piece it was. Lewis Porteous would have phrased that so more adroitly but then he is a professional and I am tired and old and on this particular morning – it is presently 7.04 am (I sat behind my laptop at 5.15 am) and keep losing my train of thought.
Sara Bradstock is everything that is good about this sport. Only three wheels on her wagon yet she keeps moving along regardless of all the vicissitudes life puts in front of her. To be factual, she has six horses in training including Mr. Vango who I hope will win her the Warwick Classic on Saturday if the weather allows her the opportunity.
You would have thought that as the daughter of the The Noble Lord and having trained, alongside her late husband Mark, the winners of the Cheltenham Gold Cup, the Hennessey and the Whitbread, there would be owners lining-up to have horses with her. If I got lucky, I know she would be high on my list of possible trainers.

​My favourite race, at least thus far, is the 2016 Two-Mile Champion Chase. I also believe in this race one of the greatest fetes of training was achieved. I well-up even now when watching the race again on YouTube. Sprinter Sacre rolling back the years to prove that form is temporary while class is permanent. Thank-you, Nicky Henderson, for such a fabulous, memorable day. But the 2016 Two-Mile Champion Chase is not, in my opinion, the greatest race of my lifetime. 
I did not back the winner of the race and by halfway, I had eyes for only one horse and come the elbow I would have sold my soul to have him triumph. Unlike the Two-Mile Champion Chase, the 1973 Grand National is a hard watch and even now my heart calls out for history and the form-book to be wrong.
The 1973 renewal of the Grand National, remember, was to be the last under the managerial control of Mirabel Topham. For £3-million quid, property developer Bill Davies had acquired Aintree, doubtless ambitious to have the sacred ground turned-over to houses on streets and roads named Devon Loch Road, Red Rum Street, Manifesto Drive and Golden Miller Avenue.
38 faced the starter in 1973, 10 more than faced the starter in 1970. So perhaps my critical outpouring at the maximum number of runners being reduced to 34 was misplaced. Perhaps. This renewal of the great race was typical of all Grand Nationals prior to its neutering by the present-day custodians of the race - a smattering of top-class horses, perhaps in decline of former days, and, as should be, the rest being no-hopers in hope of good fortune shining on them. 
Crisp and L’Escargot bore top-weight of 12-stone, with Spanish Steps one-pound lower. I would have backed Spanish Steps as he is my all-time favourite horse, just ahead of Frodon, the last equine love of my life. On 10st 5Ibs lurked Red Rum, trained by a used-car dealer and owned by an octogenarian Liverpool-based former engineer who had built his company up to be a major force in the construction industry in the North-West and who had not previously owned a racehorse. In 1973, Noel Le Mare had two runners, Glenkiln being the forgotten one of the pair.
The race is simply told. Crisp led from the get-go, made a wee error at the first and then preceded, unchecked by Richard Pitman, to demolish all the myths and legends that extoll the big black birch fences as monsters designed crush dreams and to pull horses and jockeys down into the bowels of the earth. Crisp was an equine comet that day, flying around the green swarth of Aintree racecourse with a zesty eagerness rarely seen at Aintree, jumping as if the fences, as so often reported, were nothing more formidable than upturned dandy-brushes. 
As Crisp soared over Bechers for a second-time, Brian Fletcher, already a Grand National winner in 1968, decided it was now or never to start to hunt down the leader. He had made little impression by the Canal Turn or even Valentines and entering the straight with two-fences between Crisp and the most deserved of all victories, the margin between first and second, with the rest trailing by considerable distances, was still twenty-lengths. Crisp jumped the second-last with the same aplomb as the previous 28. Seemingly, his energy reserves were used-up by one more immaculate leap at the last fence and by the time he got to the elbow, where Richard Pitman believes he lost the race by picking up his whip to keep Crisp on a straight course for the winning post, the great Australian chaser was running on fumes and reserves of courage. Red Rum chinned him on the line and a true legend of the sport was born.
On March 31st, 1973, I believe, and will always believe, Crisp came with three-quarters of a length of achieving the impossible. Could any horse give Red Rum 23Ibs at Aintree in a Grand National and beat him. The following season, Red Rum carried 12-stone and beat a double Cheltenham Gold Cup winner by seven-lengths giving him a pound. And, of course, Red Rum went on to win two-more Grand Nationals, the only horse in Aintree history to achieve the fete, and finish second twice. I do not believe even Arkle could have given Red Rum weight and a beating in a Grand National. Everywhere else, yes, but not at Aintree.
Also, Red Rum shattered the course record for the race, as did Crisp, with L’Escargot and Spanish Steps also finishing inside the old course record.
The greatest race, the greatest performance by any horse in my lifetime, four-horses beating the course record, and the birth of horse racing’s greatest equine legend. I rest my case.

​L’Homme Presse will be aimed at the Ryanair Chase at the Cheltenham Festival if ground conditions should be heavy in March. Here is my view on this. If heavy ground detracts from L’Homme Presse’s chance of winning the Gold Cup, surely it will detract from his chance of beating speedier horses over a shorter distance. That is not a question, simply my take on the possibility of trying to replicate what the Skeltons achieved with Protektorat last season. Last year it was a rather poor Ryanair, this year’s renewal promises to be a lot hotter.
Given he did not see a racecourse last season until January, after an injury that had kept him at home for twelve-months, I thought to lead the field into the straight in the Gold Cup last season was a valiant effort. As was his 3rd-place finish in the King George last week. To me, as with Brighterdaysahead being swerved around the Champion Hurdle in order to pick-up a much smaller pot on the same day, owners have a responsibility to the sport to ensure their best horses run in the best races and as such L’Homme Presse should be aimed at the race he has the form to win, and that is not a race over 2mile 4, a distance he has not exactly shined over during his progression from novice chaser to perhaps the top 3-mile chaser in Britain.
I just wish trainers, and in particular owners, stopped trying to be smart and when given the rare opportunity to win a gold medal go for gold.

Sandown is in a ‘reasonable position’ for racing to go ahead on Saturday even though the course is not fleeced all round and the temperature on Friday night going into Saturday morning is forecast to drop to minus-3 and not rising above plus 3 during the day. As with Wincanton faced with a similar battle against the cold, I give neither much hope of going ahead. And anyway, after all the meetings over the holiday period, it would allow all concerned a bit of me-time if there no racing for a few days.

On the subject of the weather. Is it possible that racing taking place when it is foggy or extremely cold is detrimental to the health of the racehorse. Be it man or beast, lungs are quite fragile organs, with racehorses especially prone to lung infections and the breaking blood vessels. Can it really do them any good to be breathing in moist fog or cold air either at sprint distances on the flat or over long distances over jumps especially in those final ‘lung-bursting’ final few furlongs?

John Randall’s round-up of the previous year’s human and equine deaths is always a hard read for me, with perhaps the loss of the racehorses more difficult to swallow than the death of the people who owned, trained or rode them. The death of Istabrag, despite all J.P.’s team did to give him the best possible chance to live long into old age, was a loss to me as difficult to come to terms with as the death of the inestimable Alastair Down. I can promise you this, if I should end-up in the same place as Alastair in the after-life, I will give him a vivid dressing-down for not trying to live as long as possible and to have written his unmissable column for as long as possible.

Musselburgh have been vandalised again. A suitable punishment for mindless destruction should be to reimburse the victims of their crime to the full amount and if it should take the perpetrator their whole life to repay, then so be it, and if it should impact on their future life, so be it. I used to think vandals should be horse-whipped to an inch of their lives or even shot at dawn but I realise now that, even if the crime is deserving of such a draconian punishment, it would be going too far and does nothing to compensate their victims.

Whereas I would like to see the Racing Post publish racecards from the French provinces during our National Hunt season, the editor chooses to give us information on racing in Hong Kong, Bahrain and Dubai, of which I have no interest and am inherently against as a good proportion of the problems in racing in Britain is due to the emergence of racing in these far-flung countries.

​I am of the opinion these days, be it by journalists or enthusiasts, that equine greatness is too hastily, and often wrongly, bestowed on any young horse that either singularly or through the course of a season performs way above expectations. 
Arkle was a slow-burner and with a doubtful pedigree.
He ran 36-times. He won 27.
His longest odds were 20/1 when he won the Bective novice Hurdle at Navan, ridden by Liam McLoughlan. Pat Taaffe first rode Arkle in a race at Naas, a handicap hurdle which he won as the 2/1 favourite, carrying 11st 2Ibs.
The following season Arkle started his trajectory towards becoming the greatest racehorse of all-time by winning two handicap hurdles, the Wee County Hurdle at Dundalk and the President’s Hurdle at Gowran Park. From that day forth he was to be a steeplechaser, putting down a marker by winning the Honeybourne Chase at Cheltenham as the 11/8 favourite. He won his next 4 chases, including the Broadway Novice Chase at the Cheltenham Festival, now the Brown Advisory.
He won neither of the two Bumpers he contested but in 1963 he won a flat race at Navan over 1-mile 6-furlongs, ridden by T.P.Burns. Again, he was favourite.
Of course, he was beaten in the Hennessey Gold Cup by Mill House and Happy Spring, though Pat Taaffe predicted Mill House would never beat him again. Between Newbury and redemption in the Gold Cup, Arkle won the Christmas Chase at Leopardstown on St, Stephen’s Day, the Thyestes and Leopardstown Chase, then run in February. After the Gold Cup, he won the Irish National.
From 1964 onwards Arkle’s career became one of prodigious weight-carrying performances, the likes of which we will never see again, or gallant defeats giving away monstrous amounts of weight to top-class chasers. He won the Hennessey under 12st 7Ibs and in the Massey-Ferguson, with no less than 12st 10Ibs on his back, he finished a close-up 3rd, conceding 32Ibs to the winner, Flying Wild and 28Ibs to Buona Notte. He won the Leopardstown Chase again under 12st 7Ibs and after his second Gold Cup he carted 12st 7Ibs around Sandown to win the Whitbread.
The following season he returned to Sandown to carry 12st 7Ibs, his first race of the season, to win the Gallaher Gold Cup in a time that has not been eclipsed in the years since. Search the race out on YouTube. He simply toyed with Mill House, allowing him to go clear, caught him up, let him go clear again and then went on to win by a fence.
He then won the Hennessey a second time under 12st 7Ibs. He then came to Kempton on Boxing Day to saunter home in the King George. By now, trainers were loathed to run their best chasers against him as no weight concession gave them much hope of beating him.
Arkle carried 12st 7Ib to a third victory in the Leopardstown Chase as prelude to hack round at Cheltenham to win his third Cheltenham Gold Cup.
Of course, the next season was to prove his last and it started with defeat in the Hennessey Gold Cup when he failed by a narrow margin, conceding 35Ibs to the entire field, finishing second to Stalbridge Colonist who later that year was to finish second in the Cheltenham Gold Cup. The ground was heavy and 2-weeks before the race Arkle suffered a cut that kept him off-work for a few-days.
Not that anyone could know it, Arkle’s last victory came at Ascot in the S.G.B. Chase, as always carrying 12st 7Ibs.
His defeat in the King George 13-days later is not worth dwelling on, a broken pedal bone bringing prematurely to an end the career of a horse the likes of which we will never see again.
Pat Taaffe revealed in his far too short yet still wonderful autobiography ‘My Life and Arkle’s’ that he had persuaded the Duchess of Westminster to run Arkle in that season’s Grand National. Would that not have been an occasion for the ages.

The point I am labouring over is this: if your only viewpoint about Arkle is gained from grainy images of him on YouTube winning 2 uncompetitive Cheltenham Gold Cups, - in the first he beat Mill House in his prime – then your viewpoint is leading you up a garden path of ignorance. No horse in the history of National Hunt racing, and I include Golden Miller who won many races giving lumps of weight away but also lost a similar number, achieved what Arkle achieved. When the weights were announced for the Irish Grand National, to be fair to every other horse entered, the handicapper produced two handicaps, one if Arkle was to take part and another if he did not take part. Otherwise, it was a case of Arkle 12st 7Ibs, the rest less than 10-stone. He was beyond handicapping.
In my lifetime only Desert Orchid was regularly asked to shoulder top-weight in handicaps. Yes, Denman won two Hennessey Gold Cups off top-weight but he did not carry 12st 7Ibs, far from it. Kauto Star and Sprinter Sacre are the best chasers I have seen since Arkle, though Sprinter only qualifies during his pomp and splendour years when Barry Geraghty had the pleasure of riding him. Yet neither of them, or Galopin Des Champs, the present prince of steeplechasers, were given the herculean tasks that were central to Arkle’s career.
Finally, Pat Taaffe broke in Mill House when he was with Pat’s brother, Tos, and in his autobiography, he rated Mill House the second-best horse he was associated with during his long career, with Flyingbolt third and Royal Approach fourth. Look-up Flyingbolt, a horse that won the 2-mile Champion Chase, was third in the Champion Hurdle the following day and finished that season winning with ease, under 12st 7Ib, the Irish Grand National. Yet Pat rated Mill House superior to him.
Arkle was the greatest racehorse of all-time.

​For someone born in the 1950’s, the year 2025 was a time so long into the future, even during schooling in the 1960’s, to be considered science fiction; a time only Doctor Who and other fictional entities would ever experience.
And yet here we are in 2025, our freedoms hanging by a thread, the word dystopian no longer used by readers of George Orwell but now known by the majority of the population. We live in a mad, bad and sad world and we must make the best of it until a reformist caped crusader comes to our rescue.

Horse racing is a cause for suffering, alongside the farming community. Our government has a scheme whereby farmers can claim a subsidy of £2,500 a year for three-years to plant barley and allow it to rot in the ground rather than harvest the crop to sell for food for people and straw to use for bedding for their cows. They will also be paid for buying bird-seed and spreading it on the ground. No fertiliser to buy, no diesel for their tractors. Natural extinction of the farming way of life. Our food providers thrown to the wolves to uphold the mantra of net-zero. Do your own research and lick your fingers to feel the way the wind is blowing.
Horse racing and those who either earn their living or pleasure from it are also being slow-boiled. The food horses eat is grown by farmers. Hay, too. And straw is required for bedding. The Gambling Commission, too, is inspired by government to make life as difficult as possible for punters and gamblers, the steadfast sector of our world where much of the sport’s funding is to be gained. Can you imagine the furore if affordability checks were imposed on the buying of alcohol, any product bought on what was once termed as hire purchase or on chocolate, perfume or holidays. Yet without an outcry from our M.P.’s the lives and living of thousands of people involved in the horse racing industry is being allowed to be put in jeopardy on the pretext of protecting the few people addicted to gambling on horse racing. Bingo-sites are rarely mentioned, casinos, too, and the National Lottery seems to have been granted an exemption from the hue and cry. It is all about the natural extinction of betting on horse racing or the natural extinction of horse racing itself.
We must enjoy to the limit what we have, though I am tempted to say what we have left. The thoroughbred industry may have a future in Britain and Ireland as a nursery ground for selling foals and yearlings to race abroad, notably Dubai and Bahrain, but as a spectator sport we will, in perhaps as little as 20-years, be reduced to the match races of the eighteenth-century, and then only as an exhibition, as we have today with re-enactments of jousting tournaments. 
If you take into account how few horses are to be found in novice chases in this country, and I include novice handicaps, and compare the large number of runners in novice chases (and I include Beginners’ chases) in Ireland, it makes one wonder where the handicap chasers of the future will come from. The decline in competitiveness in British jumps racing and the tide of owners choosing to have horses trained in either Ireland or France almost, if you were a conspiracy theorist – a term first coined by the F.B.I. in the wake of the assassination of J.F.K. – could be seen as part of a dastardly scheme to salt the earth of horse racing in this country. Not that the industry has helped itself in allowing so many new all-weather racecourses, the major factor in so few horses coming to National Hunt from flat racing, and to allow global bookmaking giants to have so much clout.
We must love our racehorses while we can and do everything as an industry to cater for their welfare both during their lives in racing stables and when they retire to pastures new. It seems the Labour Party are determined to end drag hunting, so there is another nail in the coffin of the thoroughbred. We must demonstrate to the ignorant few and the majority who care neither one way or the other that we take our responsibilities to the horse, our duty of care, seriously. It should be our prime motivation to raise as much funds as possible to ensure our sincerity is matched by the financial resources so no single former racehorses slips through the net.
With donations of £12 from the sale of every horse sold at public auction going to R.o.R. from January onwards, the arrow is finally pointing in the right direction. That said, people must carry out their own research into the direction of travel assigned to our government and governments around the world by the W.E.F., the W.H.O. and the U.N., and perhaps shadowy elites, some of whom have footholds in our own sport, and discover for themselves the future for farming around the world and the countryside in general.

​Sensational. 
Boo! Boo! Stop taking the piss, Gordon.
The mare was brilliant. Brighterdaysahead was the most impressive hurdler of the entire Festive period. More impressive than Constitution Hill, more impressive than The New Lion. Indeed, on bare form, beating State Man by over 30-lengths must rate higher than Constitution Hill beating Lossiemouth 3-lengths. And to think she will receive 7Ib from Constitution Hill if the Gordon and the O’Leary brothers have the balls, and the welfare of the sport, to reject the spoilsport pursuit of pot-hunting and go for the inconsequential Mares Hurdle.
Look, you will never find me criticising Gordon Elliott. Even in the dark days of his ban from the sport, I was steadfast in my opinion that he was harshly treated. But if he does not champion the pursuit of the Champion Hurdle with Brighterdaysahead when in discussion with the O’Leary brothers, I will be very disappointed with him. There should be no teasing, no having a laugh with the racing public. No last-minute decisions to go one way of the other. We need to know how good Constitution Hill really is. He needs opposition; he needs to be in a race that is not run to suit him. He needs to beat Brighterdaysahead far more than he needs to defeat either State Man or Lossiemouth again.
If the mare does end-up in the Mares Hurdle, the blame should be put squarely at the feet of the Cheltenham executive for allowing it to happen. Grade 1 winners should have to shoulder a 10Ib penalty in the Mares Hurdle. The best must be kettled towards the best races at the Festival. The principle of the Turners Novice Chase should be applied to every race at the Festival. The 2m- 4-furlong novice chase was dispensed with as it reduced the quality and competitiveness of the other two novice championship races. The same principle must be applied to supporting the Champion Hurdle, the 2-mile Champion Chase and the Cheltenham Gold Cup.
Shame on you Gordon, shame on you Michael O’Leary. You took a lesser option last year and got stuffed. If you do so again, I hope you get stuffed again. The honour is going for the Champion Hurdle, win or lose.

In today’s letters column of the Racing Post, Mr. Bradley of North Yorkshire offers his opinion that Constitution Hill won on the bridle at Kempton. Did he not see Nico working hard in the saddle; did he not see Nico pick up his whip? It was a glorious win and I cheered him home the same as anyone else. But it was his least impressive victory of his short, glorious career, especially as Lossiemouth ran with the same lack of spirit as a good too many of the Closutton horses did over the Christmas holiday period.
For a first run for 12-months and after having suffered from colic in the interim, it was a perfectly reasonable effort and if he should run again before the Champion Hurdle, it would be perfectly reasonable to expect him to win with his usual pomp. He did not win at Kempton in the style The New Lion won at Newbury or in glorious isolation as Brighterdaysahead achieved at Leopardstown. It was satisfactory. No more.

The B.H.A. Director of Equine Regulation, Safety and Welfare, James Given, writes in today’s Racing Post that 38% of fatalities on British racecourses are due to falls, and that the introduction of the new padded hurdles has reduced the risk of a fatality by 11%. I am of the opinion that the change from orange to white on the woodwork of steeplechase fences has greatly reduced falls. I was disappointed Mr. Givens did not include any data to prove or disprove my thinking on the matter.

Finally, on the last day of the Leopardstown Christmas meeting, Rachael Blackmore finally got her first winner back since suffering a neck injury from a pretty benign-looking fall at Downpatrick. You see jockeys get buried amongst hooves and yet run back to the weighing room in order to do it all again. Rachael’s fall was somewhat slow-motion, even if the weight of her body was taken by her neck. Obviously, being the warrior she is, she got up that day and walked away, if somewhat gingerly, her many fans sighing with relief that was likely to be fit to ride again the following day. But no, she was on the injured list from September to early December. And it took July Flower to get her back in the winners’ enclosure. She was top of the jockey’s championship at the time of her fall with 23-winners. Her 24th was a long time coming and she now languishes a long way behind Darragh O’Keeffe, who leads the championship at present and who was the main beneficiary of her absence.

​Greatness has been bestowed on Constitution Hill, Sir Gino and Galopin Des Champs over the festive period and in the first two named it is too premature. 
To my mind, Galopin Des Champs is approaching greatness. He is, in my estimation, a better horse than Best Mate, though below Kauto Star and Denman. Arkle is way out of sight of any steeplechaser in the history of the sport you can mention.
I have no doubt, given sporting luck, that Galopin Des Champs will become the next horse to achieve three victories in the Cheltenham Gold Cup. At a time, especially in Ireland, where there are a plethora of high-class or close to high-class chasers around, over a distance of 3-miles + Galopin Des Champs is by far the leader of the pack. The only possible chance of beating him would be to take him on from flag-fall and not to allow him an uncontested lead, which happens too often in Ireland in races that involve Mullins hotpots.
The problem with comparing the great horses of the present-day with those of previous decades is that it is not a case of comparing apples with apples. Because of his superiority, the few condition races around in his time were a cakewalk for Arkle and once he had disposed of Mill House there was not a horse in any kingdom that could even get him off the bridle. Handicaps were more of a struggle for him, though he won more of them than he lost. The horses who did finish in front of him, always receiving weight in the region of between 2 and 3-stone, are better remembered than some Champion Hurdle winners. Today, the top chasers never have to run in handicaps, which is why Desert Orchid and Denman were so special to racegoers. Why horses in the past could carry top weight in handicaps and still win at the Cheltenham Festival, while today’s trainers seem to think of handicaps for their top chasers akin to the actions of kamikaze pilots in the 2nd World War, is beyond me. Are our horses today more brittle and less hardy than the likes of Desert Orchid and all those great chasers that came before him?
A third Gold Cup will put Galopin Des Champs in a club that only allows membership to the superstar horses of the sport. It is a club without Arkle, and I would suggest Golden Miller – 5 Gold Cups and a Grand National allows him a status beyond ordinary greatness – as today’s horses are not as tested as they were. Arkle and Golden Miller are the exemplification of singular greatness and even Galopin will struggle to sit beside them in the history books.
People who declare Constitution Hill the best hurdler of all-time or even one of the all-time greats are doing a major injustice to the champions who have gone before. Apart from horses trained by Willie Mullins, and they rarely have to exert themselves to run-up long sequences of wins, there is not a horse in training, apart from Constitution Hill, to rank within 20Ibs of many, and it is a long list, of the hurdlers that have gone before. From Sir Ken to Istabraq to start with. On my bookshelf I have biographies of Monksfield, Sea Pigeon and Persian War. Then there is, according to some, Night Nurse, the greatest of them all. Bula, Comedy of Errors. Horses that ran against one another, along with horses of the calibre of Bird’s Nest and Dramatist. Horses like Brave Inca and Hardy Eustace who won highly competitive Champion Hurdles.
I am not crabbing Constitution Hill. But so far he has only won one race of note and that was his Champion Hurdle demolition of Jonbon. It can be argued that State Man has won more races of note and he might land another today at Leopardstown. With the standard of hurdler we have at present, I would contend that three Champion Hurdles will not necessarily make Constitution Hill the equal of Sea Pigeon, Night Nurse or Istabraq. In my book, to achieve everlasting greatness, great horses must beat other great horses. It is not Constitution Hill’s fault he is in a league of his own. Neither is it his fault that people who should know better, to create a narrative in an attempt to boost awareness of the sport, use hyperbole when comparison is all that is required.
I laugh when, after one novice chase, people who should know better, Rishi Persad, for one, honour a horse with greatness. Warning, ahorse ran at Leopardstown yesterday who is the poster boy for greatness unachieved, Bob Olinger. That there was Samcro. My Drogo had the world at his hooves, now he is running in point-to-points. Sir Gino was brilliant, yes. Yet Willie Mullins has conceded that Ballyburn is a stayer not a 2-mile horse and if that proves the case, in many ways Sir Gino beat nothing of value at Kempton. Stay grounded, keep your fingers crossed and let history play out. At the moment, Sir Gino has the potential to be very good. That is all. This sport can kick like a mule when focus is lost in a maze of hyperbole.

The best and brightest thing to come from the festive period was the hope instilled in us for the Cheltenham Festival. The tide is turning, folks, and in The Jukebox Man and The New Lion there is renewed hope that two British trainers may yet play starring roles come March.

Today, after announcing his plan to bring forward his retirement, Daryl Jacob will have his last ride as a licenced jockey. He has always been one of my favourite jockeys. A jockey who had no concerns about displaying his love of the horses he rode. A great jockey and without knowing him personally, I suspect a great bloke, too.