today's horse racing news round-up.

​My thoughts on the Benoit de la Sayette positive cocaine test will come across as unkind and unfair. But there comes a point when someone has to say enough is enough and draw a line in the sand. I have no doubt the young man is not a ‘wrong-un’ and that his inevitable 6-month suspension from the sport will be a huge wake-up call to him. Also, because of his extreme youth and extraordinary ability in the saddle, his absence during the major part of the present season will not cast a long shadow over his subsequent career. 
John Gosden, as he chose to do with Rab Havlin and more famously when Frankie Dettori suffered a similar ban from the sport, will support de la Sayette and offer him good counsel and guidance. Gosden is a wise and fair-minded employer and the very fact that de la Sayette is his first apprentice since 1992 tells you all you need to know about how he rates the young man as a jockey. But not only has de la Sayette failed a cocaine test, he lied to everyone involved, including Gosden and his own family and I find it difficult to accept that he has not taken cocaine in the past 3-months as the hair test that proved his undoing is used in courts to prove habitual use. To my mind, it might do the young man more long-term good if Gosden sacked him, even if that will ensure that in time another trainer received the benefit of the young man’s great talent. After all, once de la Sayette has made good on his great ability and proved the stability of his character he can always re-employ him, no doubt as his retained jockey after Dettori has hung-up his boots.

The death of Lorna Brooke is a notification to every one of us on the risks jockeys take in the course of their employment. I did not know Lorna and until her tragic death knew very little about her. I did take notice when she rode as I tend to try to keep track on how all female riders get on in races. It is a habit I became slave to since the very dawning of females being allowed to compete in the sport. Her mother’s horses were not of the highest calibre yet they all seemed to jump well and were placed in races in which they could pick up prize money. They did not go pot-hunting and never over-faced their horses. I say ‘they’ as Lorna and her mother were very much a team.
Lorna Brooke was the sort of amateur jockey that will be hard to replace. She was, to use a term that has gone out-of-fashion, a ‘Corinthian’, a rider from a bygone age, someone who rode in steeplechases for no other reason than she loved her horses and loved the sport, with winning just an added bonus. There is a poorly-founded belief amongst some that the wheel of the sport is turned by those jockeys who regularly win the big races and who win championship titles. They do not. They benefit from the turn of the wheel. It is the likes of Lorna Brooke who turn the wheel; if it were not for those, who to be blunt, only for the most part make up the numbers there would be no turn-of-the-wheel, indeed very little sport at all.
The great sadness for me is that it is only in death do we get to know the jockeys who lose their lives for our entertainment, only in death do we appreciate their contribution to the sport. When Harry Skelton is deservedly crowned champion jockey on Saturday there will a feature on him in the Racing Post either the day after or at some point during the following week. Appropriate, yes, but don’t we know all there is to know about Harry? Wouldn’t it be of greater interest to read a feature on a jockey, or indeed trainer, we, the racing enthusiasts, know very little about?
On final point on this subject: there will be a race named in honour of Lorna Brooke at one of the racecourses close to where she lived, that is inevitable. I think such races should be held in perpetuity and not for a short period of time. Lorna gave her life for the sport; she should never be forgotten by this generation and the generations to come should ask ‘who was this Lorna Brooke’?

Surprised close to amazed that Jack Kennedy keeps the ride on Minella Indo at Punchestown next week. I dare say it is the decision of the owner and his way of thanking Kennedy for delivering him a Gold Cup but Blackmore is the stable’s number one and is striving to become the sport’s first female champion jockey and she has regularly ridden the horse and won at Cheltenham on him.
But then she might yet get the ride on Envoi Allen at the expense of Kennedy if Davy Russell fails to get back for next week. What will my thoughts be then?