Apparently, on social media there has been a hoo-ha regarding the treble achieved by Dan Skelton at Newcastle last Tuesday. I do not associate myself with social media platforms, so I am unaware of the degree of hostility, though reading David Jenning's column in the Racing Post today, it is obvious that Dan upset the fragrant petals who if life had treated them differently would have taken holy orders, by not informing them personally of the gamble his owners were trying to accomplish. It is described as a 'monster gamble'. Dan, as fine a fellow as you are likely to ever meet, has not come across to me as someone who would have the balls to be first out-of-the-trenches and think it hardly likely he risked more than a fiver on the three horses involved, none of which on paper looked bankers. As I have said in the past, part of...

Writing in the Racing Post today, Sam Hendry makes the point that whether you are a flat, jumps or point-to-point, enthusiast, we should all agree that we are all one sport. Granted, Hendry was making the wish that horses should be more regularly campaigned as both hurdlers and flat performers, citing, obviously, the success of Constitution Hill winning on the all-weather recently.  I am an advocate of horses being able to swap between National Hunt and Point-to-Points, abling trainers to give a horse lacking confidence the easier option of racing against horses of a lesser ability and for connections of promising young point-to-pointers and hunter chasers to try their luck against the professionals without having to forfeit their right to return to pointing during that season. Cross-overs can occur at the start and end of a National Hunt season, with trainers looking for a pipe-opener to put an edge on fitness...

As of now, Chelmsford City is no more. It still exists, Iran has not blast it off the face of the Earth and no stray U.S. missile has found its way to Essex as of today. No, the existence of Chelmsford City as a licensed racecourse is in jeopardy due to the actions of the B.H.A.  As much as I take joy in the loss of an all-weather racecourse, there are many things in this subject to question the B.H.A. about. Why leave the decision to take away the licence to hold race-meetings after declarations for their fixture today and more importantly their meeting on Saturday which had enhanced prize-money on offer? And why offer no explanation for why the B.H.A. has taken the action it has? Trainers, quite rightly, are up in arms about the situation, with Eve Johnson Houghton in particular extremely belligerent in her response to the situation....

In the course of my labours yesterday, an idea came to me. It is not an idea I have any major faith in, though within the construct of the idea there is, I believe, a kernal of ingenuity that a man or woman of greater intellect may be able to develop into a thing of respectability. I was thinking of nothing much when Constitution Hill came into my thoughts. Then Invades, the company that brings coach-loads of students to sporting events, and the buzz that the great horse created when he ran at Southwell. My thoughts then shifted to the hated, by me, concept of team racing, as if horse racing should adopt the key elements of Formula 1. Then I found myself wondering if horse racing, turf flat, could incorporate a genuine team event within an ordinary day's racing. Then my mind lingered on football's champions league, though the female...

The hole that appeared towards the final race of Trials Day at Cheltenham back in January has come back to haunt clerk of the course John Pullin. The hole vexed Lydia Hislop to the point she was quite nasty to Pullin in an interview as dusk fell that evening. Now, I suspect, it will not only be Lydia proving discourteous to Pullin, after the press release announcing that the final 3-days of the Cheltenham season are to be axed in favour of sorting out the drains in the home straight. Yesterday's press release came as a shock to all those trainers who intended to have runners at the 2-day meeting in April, and no doubt that shock was amplified by amateur riders and point-to-point enthusiasts hoping to enjoy, perhaps, a first competitive visit to the home of National Hunt racing. In the latter case, the May meeting has been transferred to...

I am no fan of all-weather tracks, I should have made that pretty clear by now. I appreciate the importance they have in keeping the show on the road during spells of snow, flood and biting frosts but do we not have enough of them already.  I fear the sport is slowing being walked into a U.S. attitude to the ground horses must race on, with very soon a dirt track added to the roster, as well as several new synthetic-surfaced racecourses. So no one will be surprised if I shed no tears if Chelmsford City should not survive the latest crisis to invade the calm of the only all-weather racecourse to install an adjacent turf course, its only claim for it to have greater priority for survival over Britain's other dull-as-ditch-water all-weather racecourses. The racecourse might have closed, if only temporarily, last week if the B.H.A. had not granted it...

I have long argued that our sport is very much a working-class sport underpinned by the wealthy and the mega-wealthy. Stable staff are obviously working class even if members of that staff were born to rich parents and were educated at Radley or Eton. To get anywhere in racing it is a requirement that you must work as hard as everyone else on the team and be twice as dedicated. Jockeys, too, work their asses off, working seven-days-a-week either riding out for a trainer or (and) on the racecourse. In fact, all sectors of the racing industry, including farriers, racecourse staff and bookmakers, are all working class irrespective of how large their financial assets are. Trainers, too, even if they served in the armed forces or came out of universities with degrees, or if set-up by a wealthy parent, cannot get by with a superiority complex. Trainers are out of bed...

I dislike the compounding of words to create a name for a racehorse. But today in the 1.30 at Uttoxeter there is a horse called All One Word. I like the name, don't get me wrong. Yet surely given all one word comprises only one word, should the owners not have considered naming the horse Alloneword? You do not get it so much these days but not long ago the days leading up to the Lincoln meeting comprised a lot of moaning that the flat always started with a whimper; it also went out with a whimper.  The latter is natural and could only be avoided if 'Champions Day' were to be the final fixture of the season. There is no reason, though, why the turf flat season should not begin with a little flag waving and several trumpeters. Flat connoisseurs have waited through a long winter for this day, so...

The names given to thoroughbred racehorses sometimes taxes me. I do not believe a serious sport such as horse racing should allow owners to give our beautiful partners names that ring with ridicule or silly humour. And when I see a name of a former popular or great horse replicated on a racecard, I am, at best, annoyed. Racehorses should be respected and honoured from conception to the grave, and this right should begin with its name. In his column in the Racing Post today, Chris Cook rambles around the name Sexy, a name given to a well-bred two-year old owned by Amo Racing. Sexy is related to Chaldean, in my eyes a fairly ordinary winner of the 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket. Although not a name I would ever give to a horse - if only - it is far from being the worst name ever given to a racehorse. Chris...

In today's Racing Post, the paper's Irish editor, Richard Forristal, asks if horse racing should be concerned by both the Welsh and Scottish parliaments ban on greyhound racing. And the answer is a resounding yes. If you do not know the how and why the Welsh government have banned greyhound racing, I advise you to read Forristal's article as the how was not so much based on the issue of greyhound racing but on political expediency. Greyhound racing's fate is due to historical intransigence by those involved in the sport. There were just too many scandalous news stories in the News of the World and similar national newspapers regarding cruelty, the 'dumping' of dead or unwanted greyhounds, the need for outside charities to step in to find homes for retired greyhounds, that sort of thing. Horse racing is not immune to the same criticisms. I was horrified to read that the...

It seems a long period of time since Trials Day at Cheltenham, the day Sir Gino fractured his pelvis in the Bula Hurdle or whatever it is titled these days. The initial prognosis was that the fractured pelvis would heal and he would return to action the following season. Alas, it was not to be. The superbug type of infection that had laid Sir Gino low the previous season, and which he was lucky to survive, returned during his latest spell in the 'horse hospital' and after a long struggle to defeat this infection, the vets treating him were left with no option but to euthanise that most handsome of horses. We all die sometime and as you get older, as I do daily - yes, no matter your age we 'all get older on a daily basis, but believe me, when you pass six score years the downward spiral in...

The National Trainers Federation have a plan, or perhaps it is a suggestion, which, perhaps, the B.H.A. and its stakeholders will take into consideration when next they declare their latest cunning plans for the sport. Of course, I am in favour of the proposals of the N.T.F.'s proposals as they chime to a great extent with the bell I have tolled over the past few years, which is heartening for me as I am fixed to the belief that the few who read my ramblings must think me extraordinarily naive for someone of my age. The N.T.F. suggest that race-planning should be organised around a bottom-up strategy rather than the elitist position of top-down. This suggestion makes so much sense that it beggar's belief that the people at the top cannot see its merits. There are far more lower-grade horses in training than graded horses and for growing the sport this...

In Ireland, the flat turf season began the day after the Cheltenham Festival came to its mighty conclusion. Aidan O'Brien dipped his toe into the water at Leopardstown, though he waited for Naas yesterday before he started to make a splash. Already he is voicing possible classic trials for horses that we heard very little about last season. It is the flat on repeat; the same old, the same old. For me, someone for whom the flat's existence is just to fill in the time while the jumpers take their rest through the summer and autumn, the start of the flat is an impudence, an intrusion, bullying its way into the headlines long before the National Hunt season has drawn to a close, before the once most popular and greatest horse race in the world is run. Although the Aintree National is rarely run before Easter, before the Irish equivalent at...

Although it is a significant landmark to achieve £4-million+ in prize-money, and the first National Hunt trainer to do so, I hope it is not a sign that Dan Skelton will go on to become as dominant in Britain as Willie Mullins in Ireland. This is nothing to do with the man himself; he is a credit to the sport, but if it becomes a case of Skelton always first, the rest nowhere, the sport becomes predictable and that would be unhelpful in rebuiding its popularity. We need each season to begin with uncertainty as to who will win the major races and which trainer will emerge with the champion's trophy come late April. Although I was unhappy last season that Dan was mugged by Willie Mullins when it seemed going into Aintree that he was home and hosed, the manic surge from unlikely to all-out winner by Mullins made it...

On this website there is a list of possible names owners might want to avail themselves of if they are having difficulty naming a horse. It is a long list, now in alphabetical order, but it is no longer an ever-extending list, partly because I have forgotten the instructions I was given on how to upload to the page. But that is good, even if I continue to scribble potential names on to bits of paper and the back of my note-book, as what was originally simply a point-proving exercise had become an obsession, which remains an obsession, though no longer in the public domain. I was annoyed by someone - his name was Khan - at the B.H.A. claiming it was difficult to name a horse without occasionally resorting to famous names of the past. I disagreed, pointing out the large number of languages in the world, with famous names...

Sometimes I stumble across evidence to suggest that I might actually know what I am talking about, odd as that may seem to anyone who does me the honour of reading me more than once. When the talk about Constitution Hill was all about the group races he could run in, I was of the opinion that the ambition, until proven inadequate, should be to target the heritage handicaps, with the Ebor as the ultimate target. It seems my thoughts on the matter have somehow travelled east towards Seven Barrows, with Constitution Hill's next appearance on the flat slated for another novice race at Kempton next week. Though the John Porter at Newbury remains on the radar, it seems Nicky Henderson is taking the more cautious approach of seeking a handicap mark for the former hurdler, which will make it easier for him to find suitable future targets, especially in the...

As is now tradition, the equine Closutton Cheltenham heroes paraded along Leighlinbridge high street yesterday. Gaelic Warrior seemed to be on his best behaviour, although Il Etait Temps and Lossiemouth were reported as lapping up all the attention that went their way. As reported in the Racing Post today, Willie Mullins also lapped-up the attention, signing his autograph for anyone who asked and posing for selfies. Heroes should always be granted ceremony and be recipients of civic pride, though with no ill-will extended to Willie Mullins and his staff, I must admit to sort of praying that there will be no repeat after the Aintree National. Surely it must be someone else's turn to taste the glory of blue riband success. That success, I hope, will go to Dan Skelton this time around with the mare Panic Attack. If she gets in - she needs eight to come out, though in...

It does not take a great man or greater woman to realise that there are just too many race meetings per year in Britain. I am neither a great man nor an even greater woman, so you will not be surprised to hear that I believe there is a compromise to be found between the stubbornness of the racecourses in wanting as many race-meetings as they can get and the less selfish majority who witness on a daily basis that comeptitiveness is being affected by too many race-meetings. When I was a much younger individual, growing up in Bristol, a city without a racecourse, a typical racecard comprised six-races, except when races were divided. I vaguely recall a race-meeting at Hereford that had 12 or 14-races due to the novice hurdle being vastly over-subscribed. But mainly it was six-races. Of course, there was no all-weather racing back then; the main cause,...

The era of the super-stable is nothing to be excited about. Elitism is the death-knell of competition. It is all very well, and perhaps acceptable in certain cases, to elevate someone into the realm of 'genius', but who is to say if others had the same ammunition to fire they too would be equally successful. Yes, the likes of Aidan O'Brien and Willie Mullins started their careers on the lower rungs of the ladder and only moved forever upwards due to hard work, ability and dedication, but there must have been an element of luck on the upward trajectory, luck that the present-day journeyman trainers never get to enjoy. O'Brien has the good fortune to be backed by the Coolmore 'boys'; Mullins had the good fortune to come across Rich Ricci, for example. I am no socialist, believe me, and would jump for joy if Britain's Labour government were to mysteriously...

The Skeltons, and that includes Harry and Dad, I suspect, are pondering on whether to go chasing with The New Lion next season or go down the Stayers Hurdle route. What I admire in Dan Skelton, besides his optimistic approach to life, is that he has no problem in saying 'I was wrong' or that one of his horses is not exactly what he expected them to be. He honestly thought The New Lion was a Champion Hurdle horse and when the form book told he was wrong, he accepts the fact and goes to plan b or c and always with a smile on his face. The new plan for The New Lion is a hurdle race at Aintree either over 2-mile 4 or perhaps even 3-miles somewhere else.  The New Lion could be brilliant over fences, his class should assure that. Yet his hurdling technique would be a worry,...