the day after saturday.

​My other half – yes, there is one (just) – does not understand, as far as she understands the nuances of the sport, handicap races. It is, to her mind, unfair that one horse gets more weight to carry than all the rest. I’ve tried to explain that a handicap, in theory, gives every horse an equal chance of winning. She isn’t convinced. 
She doesn’t often watch horse racing, though I have moved her opinion from ‘against’ to ‘pro’, though she leaves the room if it looks like a horse has suffered a life-threatening injury. The day last season when Trueshan won the Northumberland Plate under a weight burden that even I thought was an unnecessary undertaking, I think she actually realised the significance of the achievement and why horses are allotted different weights to carry according to their proven ability.
The Ayr Gold Cup yesterday (24/09/23) alerted me to the idea that come the blue skies of premierisation of racing next season, a major or extremely valuable handicap should be staged each Saturday. Outside of the classics, punters, I believe, are more drawn to big handicaps than they are to Group, listed or condition races through the flat season. From a betting turnover perspective, handicaps should be given greater priority than invention or continuance of races staged for the benefit of those yards that house Group-type horses. In fact, I would applaud the B.H.A., where trainers would boo, if many of the listed and Group 3 races I in the calendar were to become limited handicaps, if only to supply the sport with races that might encourage owners to keep horses rather than sell them abroad. Just a thought. Though it would be strangled at birth by the European Pattern Committee that exists to assist the elite of the sport to furnish their houses with gold.
On a similar note, if my idea of ‘Triple Crowns’ for all the major distances were to be taken forward and staged, when possible, on a Saturday, a strong narrative, with some coming to a conclusion on ‘Champions’ Day’, would be established. Triple Crown sprints, Mile, 10 and 12-furlong and long-distance Triple Crowns, with perhaps Triple Crown races for 2-year-old colts and fillies. Let’s face it, we are never going to witness the classic Triple Crown achieved for many a long year, are we? Oh, while we are the subject: Nijinsky was not the last Triple Crown winner; that accolade belongs to Oh So Sharp, 1,000 Guines, Oaks and St. Leger. It is remarkable how often she is overlooked come Doncaster in September.
On a sad note. The most over-rated chaser of my lifetime, Cyrname, has died in retirement of a heart attack, I believe. He was still not yet a teenager and deserved a long and happy retirement. Perhaps the reason for his loss of form was an undiagnosed, and undiagnosable, heart problem. 
On a happier note, at least for me, Frodon, who I nearly voted for in the Racing Post’s poll for the racing public’s all-time favourite horse, remains in training, no doubt still causing mayhem when the mood takes him, and is to be aimed at a second Badgers Beer Chase at Wincanton. Not long to wait now! Paul Nicholls may be a brilliant trainer of racehorses but he is, I believe, as canny as he is brilliant and I suspect he ran Frodon in races last season that he couldn’t win to allow his mark to slip to where he would be eligible for the Wincanton race again. If he should win, it might be the perfect time to retire him, not that Frodon will thank his connections as from what I understand of the horse he enjoys being an active racehorse, something some people outside of the sport could never understand. 
One final point which is unnecessary to make, no doubt, but what a force of nature Holly Doyle has become. Her two winners at Ayr were prime examples of her strength in a finish and her race-craft but was proven nearly to the enth degree by her ride in the Ayr Gold Cup. Last at the furlong pole, yet fourth, beaten a whisker, at the line. Yes, she didn’t win and it might be said that if she had moved ten-yards earlier, though, I suspect, the horse wasn’t having it until that stage, she might have prevailed. We will never know either way other than Holly telling us. Anyway, she is a diamond and she should be booked to ride in every major race.
On this day: in 1837 George Fordham was born. He rode 16-classic winners during his career. He weighed, remarkably, only 3st 10oz when he won the 1852 Cambridgeshire on Little David and which he was awarded a Bible and a gold-mounted whip.
In 1951, on this day, the luckiest of men, Richard Burridge was born. To part-own Desert Orchid must be the most wonderful gift anyone was ever given.