reflections on thursday.

​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.