ANOTHER EXAMPLE, IL EST FRANCAIS & INCENDIARY IS EXACTLY WHAT IS NEEDED AT THIS MOMENT IN OUR HISTORY.

There was another example at Chepstow yesterday of a jockey dropping his whip and yet still able to win the race. Finley Marsh is the latest jockey to provide evidence for my theory that horses do not need to be whipped as encouragement to strain every sinew. Redhot Whisper won by a short-head, so every sinew had need of being strained. I am not always right in my opinion but on this subject time will prove me right.

Dan Skelton's reputation as a man capable of thinking outside of the box has landed him the prize or poison chalice of becoming the latest trainer of Il Est Francais. Richard and Lizzie Kelvin Hughes are not giving up on their wayward star, a direction they had every right to go in due to the lacklustre performances of their ex-French one-time superstar over the last two seasons. He is not the first chaser to descend from potential Gold Cup winner to perhaps a 2-mile champion chaser, to where he is now - handicapper, even if poorly handicapped?

Personally, I would have sent him to Ireland to be trained as throughout the year there are condition chases over varying distance, the sort of uncompetitive races that might relight the flame in Il Est Francais, a horse who looked for all worlds like a horse with the potential to become the next , if not Arkle, then a modern version of Dunkirk or Rose Park or a dark version of Desert Orchid, a zestful front runner that could jump with speed and accuracy.

Another reason I would have chosen a different destination for the horse other than the marvellous Skeltons is that as much as I admire Harry Skelton, as brave and skilful a jockey presently riding, his style of riding may not be the key to unlock the hidden-away brilliance of Il Est Francais, a horse who has made a monkey out pundits and perhaps blunted the confidence of every jockey to have ridden him since his arrival in this country. Is there a jumps version of Jamie Spencer? Apparently the horse has fragile lungs and if that is the problem stopping the horse finishing off his races, then I can see no hope for any trainer to get the best out of the horse. I suspect Dan will get one good win out of him and then the flame will quickly peter out. In racing, and over jumps in particular, they rarely return to when they were superstars and if you can recall My Drogo, Dan could not rekindle the spark in him and the last that was heard of him was in point-to-points. Good luck Dan, is all I can say. Actually, as my brain cranks up a few memories, Harry is not against dropping a horse out, so far out it looks like a non-trier, only for it to run on and snatch victory from the jaws of apparent defeat. Ah, time will tell.

Lee Mottershead, whose brain still works to a high degree of accuracy and who is one of my favourite racing journalists of my lifetime, is keen to defend the R.C.A. against the attack on its integrity by Jim Mullin, C.E.O. of The Jockey Club. Lee believes that an incendiary bomb dropped on the sport is not what the sport requires at the moment. I disagree. A small level of disruption and destruction is exactly what is required for every actor in this racing tragedy of many parts to look beyond their own bias and act in the best interests of the sport.

Our sport suffered from poor governance long before The Jockey Club was stripped of its position as rulers of all they surveyed. The B.H.B. was loudly lauded as the new Jerusalem when it was first given the keys to the kingdom. But soon everyone was on the back of the B.H.B. and from the ashes of its demise the B.H.A. emerged, and, like all that had gone before it, it too became universally considered a mess of nothingness, its four legs of a milking stool never before experienced in the parlour of our sport proving proved ineffectual due to the naivety of those who stuck it altogether in the belief that no one so priviliged would scupper the concept of working together for the greater good. Perhaps to suggest an incendiary is required is inflammatory, though I will suggest a controlled demolition as our first step towards another go at constructing a form of governance that might stand a chance of working to the benefit of the sport, not to the benefit of self-aggrandising individuals unwilling to take their fingers out of both the pie and the petty cash box.