People are small, walking, radiators of heat. The more people clustered in one area, the warmer the air around them will be. This is not science-fact but my belief as to why climate change may or not be occuring. If it is not a main contributing factor, mass population must be having some affect. It will be interesting to see if the mass migration from North Africa causes a lowering of temperatures in those countries. Also, the temperatures given by weather forecasters tend to be highest estimates and as such can be sources of misinformation. Anyway, it is summer in Britain and white-skinned Brits do not do well in the heat. 20-degrees is too much for me; lucky for me, though, is that I live in an old house which remains cool in several of the rooms. In the backyard, though, you could fry eggs on the stone slabs, perhaps. Not...

Outside of the magnificent racing and enduring memories that Royal Ascot provided last week, what I recall is the high number of mentions that Carlisle and Salisbury racecourses received from trainers and pundits. Without being a betting man, I would bet a few pennies that more Ascot two-year-old winners came from races at Carlisle and Salisbury than racecourses more associated with Group1 racing like Newmarket or Newbury. Over jumps, Carlisle is favoured by the top southern stables as a lovely place to start a young chaser, as on the flat Salisbury is seen by flat trainers as a lovely place for a two-year-old to make its debut. Both Brigadier Gerard and Mill Reef won as two-year-olds at Salisbury, for instance. Given their importance to trainers of high-class young horses, perhaps both racecourses should be given a better grade of race and greater exposure on national television. Carlisle recently benefited from having...

It is all very well the King and Queen honouring Brough Scott with a prominent ride in the Royal Procession on the last day of Royal Ascot 2026, yet the question I ask is why Brough is yet to receive a knighthood, if not a lordship? The man is reverred in racing circles; he has worked as hard as anyone to raise funds for both jockey and equine charities and has served the sport in many different capacities, including as a presenter of racing for I.T.V. Someone of influence in our sport should write to the King for an answer to my question. I hope Brough's presence with the King and Queen in the lead carriage yesterday was but a prelude to an even greater privilege in the very near future. These American two-year-old speedsters that Wesley Ward brings over to run at Royal Ascot are too fast for their own...

Opportunity was a good winner, I admit, and it was a fantastic ride by James Macdonald. I know it was a fantastic ride as Maureen Haggas said so. Thankfully, her husband agreed. I would think he normally does. I know I find it easier to agree with a better half as it makes for a more peaceful life. Maureen, though, is also lovely, only a small bit scary and always good value to listen to. All that said, I think William Buick hit the front a furlong too soon and I dare say if he could have another go at it he would it quieter, count to seventeen and then apply the accelerator. To my weary eyes, Warrant Holder looks an Ebor horse. Venetian Star, and yes she is better on ground with ease in it, did not impress me as she impressed the more eduated people at Ascot yesterday. For...

This is why races beyond 2-miles are my favourite races on the flat; this is why breeders should be incentivised to breed for stamina, not speed; this is just why .... Even a sad old cynic like me could not help but be mesmerised by yesterday's Ascot Gold Cup. A magnificent race where the runner-up was as equally cheered as the winner. Scandinavia may ultimately be the classier horse, yet with the Gold Cup being Trawlerman's first race of the season, after being seriously unwell at Easter, nobody can be certain that if the two clash again later in the season, perhaps in the Goodwood Cup, that the result will be the same. Nothing cheers the soul like two valiant and brave horses fighting a duel from three or four-furlongs out, with neither reteating from the battle by an inch. In the final furlong and a half  my thought on who...

In the week of Royal Ascot a horse diagnosed with equine flu might not seem an approrpriate lead story. I contend it is and would argue that it should have been given more prominence in today's Racing Post. This latest reported case is the first to involve a thoroughbred in the care of a licenced trainer and makes the risk of a widespread equine flu epidemnic one step further along the line towards a shut-down. The horse was one of eight transported from the recent Goffs Arkle Sale. The affected horse was delivered, I believe, straight to an isolation stable at Mel and Phil Rowley's yard in Shropshire and has not mingled with other horses. Obviously the connections of the other seven horses that were transported with the affected horse are now on twenty-four watch, hoping their horse has escaped infection. The sport lives in troubled times; what it cannot afford...

It was 1834 when the first St. James's Palace Stakes was run, so long ago that the book documenting the history of Ascot by Sean Magee and Sally Aird fails to record the name of the winner. We do know the horse, jockey, trainer and owner that succeeded in 2026, a year so far into the future in 1834 that absolutely no one alive at the time gave it any consideration. In this day and age we have science fiction, a genre unknown to the population of 1834, whereas we would think of 192-years into the future as a time when science fiction would become science fact, where humans will be slaves to the fetishes of A.I fuelled robots, with Big Brother, compulsory in every room of every dwelling, having the face and voice of Starmer the Invincible. In 1834 they barely had any fiction for entertainment, so were very fortunate...

Queen Anne, to whom the opening race of the Royal meeting is dedicated to, was, at 46, a fat old maid, hardly able to walk. She had endured eighteen pregnacies, many of which ceased with miscarriages and not one of her children who survived until birth lived beyond the age of eleven. She was Queen of all she surveyed, yet, apart from her gluttony, horse racing and hunting, life was hardly worth the effort to her. She ascended the throne aged 41, though she was so prone to gout that she had to be transported down the aisle in Westminster Abbey in a sedan chair. And some say royalty have it easy! Her great grandfather, James the first, rode in races and built a palace in Newmarket, perhaps mainly to be close to his favourite mistress, Nell Gwyn. As Anne is famous for the founding of Ascot racecourse, James elevated Newmarket...

Which British racecourse was the first to stage an evening meeting? And which British racecourse was the first to stage a race restricted to female riders? And which racecourse was the first to allow female to ride against the men? In the 'Another View' column in the Racing Post today, David Carr clearly and inventively demonstrates the uselessness of the B.H.A. in appointing someone to succeed to Lord Allen as its Chair. In fact, any reasonably intelligent dining chair could have acted more swiftly than the B.H.A. Are people finally latching on to the incompetence of the sport's guardian? A Report by New Horizon Economics and Reading University has announced that Ascot racecourse, primarily due to the Royal Meeting, I would suspect, is worth a staggering £264.5-million quid to the British economy. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it all of those who oppose our sport. It is a report...

If you were to ask me to draw a list of names as possible candidates for the post of Chair of the B.H.A. John Gosden would be the first name I would write down. He claims to be in no rush to hand over the reins of Clarehaven to his son Thady just yet, which is a shame as in three or more years he might think himself too old to replace whoever receives the poison challice of Chair this time around. When it comes to the B.H.A., of course, this time around may well be a period of months or even half a year. Why they thought it an investment to spend no doubt six-figures on engaging a firm of headhunters to locate suitable candidates for interview when two prominent and experienced men have already put up their hands for the position is for the B.H.A. to explain. To me,...

In his column in The Racing Post today, David Jennings summed-up the Rule 6 controversy with 'where common sense is declared a non-runner.' Never in my overly long life have I witnessed an issue where the argument was so one-sided. Nobody in the whole of racing is siding with the B.H.A. Peter Scargill did suggest in a Racing Post podcast that given the wording of Rule 6 the Epsom stewards had no alternative but to declare Benvenuto Cellini a non-runner, though even he thought the rule stupid and at the very least needed revising. Everyone else suggests the rule should be consigned to history as soon as possible. My one thought on how the B.H.A. may save face is to restrict Rule 6 to races that are included in the World Pool, integration with the World Pool, and the money British racing receives from being a part of it, being the...

Yarmouth yesterday, the 5 03 race. Wrist Art, ridden by Christian Howarth, reared in stalls prior to start, got foreleg over the next stall, unseated rider as stalls opened. Deemed a runner. Enough said, I am sure you agree. An on-course bookmaker, Spencer by name, in a letter published in today's Racing Post, suggests, quite possibly in light of the chaos caused by the application of rule 6 last Saturday, that pay-outs should be delayed for one race, and not, as now, once the weighed-in announcement was relayed over the tannoy, in order for the consequences of stewards' enquiries to be accounted for. Sensible suggestion,  as long as bookies do not do a runner straight after the last race leaving winning punters high and dry. Mr. Astin of Broadhempston, in a letter published in today's Racing Post, for me, makes a less sensible suggestion regarding multiple runners from one stable. In...

I never took to the Aiden O'Brien trained The Lion In Winter, but that does not mean I am not saddened to discover that he has suffered a catastrophic injury on the gallops resulting in him being euthanised. He was never going to be as good as his trainer made him out to be in his classic year, as seemingly will be the case with Albert Einstein, though I suspect he was one of those horses who did not have a distance he could excel at, stamina but not speed to be a 7-furlong/10-furlong horse and the speed but not the stamina for 12-furlongs plus. But no horse deserves to die at 4, especially when they are healthy and yet to reach their prime. The Haydock hole situation continues to result in meetings transferred to other courses. Nottingham have inherited two days and Newmarket one, the Old Newton Cup meeting, with...

Life can be unfair, if not perverse. Even the highly successful and the mega wealthy can be visited by the cruel hand of fate. Ask Pierre-Charles Boudot, once the poster boy of French racing, 3-times French champion jockey and the winner of the Prix de l'Arc de Triomph in 2019. 5-years ago he was charged with two rapes and at the request or demand of the French Interior Ministry, France Galop suspended his licence to ride. Now, after 5-years in the wilderness, 5-years in which, I guess, he pleaded his innocence, he has been exornerated and the charges against him have been dropped. Next week he is expected to have his riding licence returned to him. I expect France Galop will be relieved to return Boudot's licence; it was not their decision to consider Boudot guilty even before he had the opportunity to prove himself innocent. France Galop had no alternative...

The B.H.A. are standing their ground. They fight alone,doubling down, their only comrades the faraway stewards of such places as Australia and Hong Kong. Rule (h) 6 seems to be the hill on which the B.H.A. want to fight their illogical fight with those on whose standard bears the legend Common Sense is an Undeniable Truth. As Mr. Monger of Hertford points out in a letter published today in The Racing Post, if the B.H.A. were to be consisted in their thinking, how many horses at the Cheltenham Festival last season should have been declared non-runners due to being left standing as the tapes went up? Jockeys who, as with Ryan Moore, had to change from from plan A to a makeshift plan they may have considered beforehand but had rejected as unlikely to suit their horse. I suspect the answer would be in the dozens. Rule (H) 6 is a...

The B.H.A. are standing their ground on the controversial decision by the Epsom stewards to declare Benvenuto Cellini a non-runner in the Derby due to the horse playing silly buggers in the stalls. Public opinion is seemingly to a man against them. Who will win? Will the B.H.A. sees sense and ignore the ways of the East where punters are first, last and central to the sport? Or will, as unfashionable as it has become under a Labour government, democracy win the day? I do not remember the ins and outs of the Harry Angel incident, though I think it resembled Saturday's incident. The other incident of renown when two of the stalls were slow to open in the Dash a few years ago was clearly a mechnical issue and resulted in two horses losing all hope of winning. In the latter incident it was obviously correct to declare the horses...

Apparently, someone in London found a container recently in which were a few old coins and a hand-written note saying the money was winnings from backing Santa Claus in the 1964 Derby and advising the finder of the container to back Christmas Day in a future Derby. A prank, no doubt. But a story that will always be associated with Ronan Whelan's day in the limelight of an extremely inclement day. The weather, especially in Britain, is a great sporting leveller and we will not know until further into the season whether the best horse won or simply the horse that coped best with the underfoot conditions prevailed. What is for certain is that Christmas Day now joins Santa Claus as one of the most inappropriately named winners of the Epsom Derby. Whether he joins the Coolmore roster of stallions as a straight-to-jumps stallion will be determined by how Christmas Day...

In his banter with David Jennings in the Racing Post this morning, Johnney Dineen suggests, as his gripe of the week, that the Epsom Derby should be further holed below the water-line by excluding outsiders as the Epsom Derby 'should be a quality-based event and not cater for mediocrity.' He is wrong. There is no place in our sport for elitism and that is exactly what J.D. is batting for in wanting to exclude everyone bar the very top echelon from dreaming of winning the Blue Riband of our sport. He may have a point in wanting the best horses to have no excuse for not winning, for wanting every horse to have a fair shot at glory but who is to say, for example, that Benvenuto Cellini will not fall and splutter down the hill and then run wide round Tattenham Corner or that Item will not roll around on...

Yesterday when relaying my views on how the Epsom Derby will go on Saturday, I admitted to not having outsider Rebel Rocker in my memory box.Today, though, though not due to extensive research but simply by reading today's copy of The Racing Post, I am fully acquainted with his thus far short career. He won a Kempton Park maiden back in November and was second to Saxon Street in Epsom's Blue Riband Derby Trial. What I did not know, and should have known, is that he is a home-bred and his owner/breeder, Jennifer Dorey, lives locally to where I live. Imagine a home-bred, the only mare the breeder has, winning the Derby and who is regularly ridden out by former champion jumps jockey A.P.McCoy. That is the sort of story the Epsom Derby needs and deserves. If only. If only. If looking for a strand of hope it can be found...

If you believe what is said by the majority of the racing media, coupled with the current state of the betting market, Benvenuto Cellini is a sure thing to win the 2026 running of the Epsom Derby. Yet when I look at the 14-declared runners, I see a very open, competitive race, made even more intriguing by the inclement weather and the prospect of soft under foot conditions. After all the recognised trials were run, I formed the conclusion that Item had won the most competitive race and I believe him to be the best horse in the race, not Benvenuto Cellini. Of course, at this stage in their mental and physical development 3-year-old colts can be expected to change from geese into swans and if you take that into consideration you might as well throw away the form book and go for what your eyes will tell as the Derby...