When interviewed, I prefer people who express their true opinion over those who say a lot when saying nothing at all. Aidan, of course, is the champion at offering many words during an interview without actually saying anything we did not already know. Yesterday, in the aftermath of his horse Starlust finishing second in the Nunthorpe - in truth Starlust won the race that was going on in Bacio's wake - Ralph Beckett expressed his opinion that the B.H.A. should rethink how they handicap horses coming from the U.S.. At Royal Ascot, Bacio was given what has proved to be a too lenient mark and he strolled home in the Palace of Holyrood House, as he did yesterday in Europe's premier 5-furlong sprint. All Beckett was asking for was that horses coming from abroad without a hadicap mark should have to run first in a British handicap in order to establish...

Billy 'the kid' Loughnane going forward should be referred to as 'Billy the Cool'. His ride yesterday on Libertango was not the ride of a twenty-year-old but the ride of long-established rider of multiple major winners. Poorly drawn, wide of his main adversaries, 'Billy the Cool' took a pull coming out of the stalls, edged his way across the course until he had Dylan Browne McMonagle in his sights and proceeded to plunder the spoils with the authority of a Ryan Moore look-a-like. Great ride; already a great jockey. The Legend of Billy the Cool is already taking shape. Of course, there is only one Ryan Moore. Loughnane may be the future but Moore remains the present. His ride yesterday in the sales race was a masterclass of keep calm, keep winning. Out the back in a twenty-runner field, scrubbing along, looking here, there and everywhere for space to appear, balked...

Tom Marquand has won a St. Leger, now he wants an Arc on his c.v.. That is what I got from his comments after winning the Great Voltigeur yesterday on Maltese Cross. It is not an absurd suggestion that Maltese Cross should go to Longchamp instead of Doncaster, he won well yesterday, making his challenge still on the bridle and then instead of winning by five or more lengths he idled and only exerted himself enough to give the backers of Pierre Bonnard false hope. I am sure if it was left to his trainer, a proud Yorkshireman, I am sure the master of Somerville Lodge would like to go for the St. Leger. And he would be right, I believe. Maltese Cross can only win a classic this season. Next season he could add the Arc to his roster of success. If owners, trainers and jockeys do not lend their...

Finally we have arrived at the top destination for many of the flat season. York, and more precisely the Ebor meeting. And advocates of sexy milers should take note: this meeting is named after a race for stayers. This great love for sprinters, milers and ten-furlong horses is why, in my opinion, the sport is off-kilter; the sport has lost its true course, kicked its history down the street like it is a balloon worth popping and followed the fictitious yellow brick road of the Breeders Cup and U.S. dirt racing. York is a beautiful round course so befitting the running of long-distance races. Our sport will remain in the doldrums until we take stock and appreciate our history and make a point of reversing wayward thoughts that speed is king and return to the thoughts of old, that the highlights of the season were always races won by a combination...

I am not a conspiracy theorist. However, I do like conspiracy theories and mysteries and, yes, that includes U.F.O. and stuff like it, and whether there is life after death. The unknown intrigues me. Now, whether I am peddling a conspiracy theory of my own making when I suggest there is a universal policy of natural existinction for human activities that take place in wide open spaces intended for nature in the future to develop in its own way, only time will tell. Yet, world-wide, fifteen racecourses have closed, including both racecourses in Singapore (?), as well as the famous U.S. racetracks at Aqueduct and Arlington Park. The two racecourses in Singapore (?) closed for different reasons than the other racecourses and may not be included in the figures released by the I.F.H.A. Council on Anti-Illegal Betting and Related Crime. In five-years, closure of racecourses have increased 50% and the I.F.H.A....

If this sport had grasped the nettle forty-fifty-sixty-years ago, would this sport be in the mess it is? I am not anti-bookmaker and do not agree with A Burnham that betting shops are a cauldron of sin and vice. But bookmakers have contributed greatly to the mess. Fixed Odds Terminals are, I believe, the sin and vice that started the downslide. Greed was the driving force for the F.O.T.'s invading the High Street and as they are now feeding the greed of government, bookmakers should be voluntarily removing them from their shops. And the aim of government, alongside banks, post offices, supermarkets and churches, should be to ensure there is one such establishment in every high street, although in the case of betting shops not at least one but only one. In the town in which I reside, we have two remaining betting shops that are side-by-side. One would be enough....

No one moans about the minutia of our sport more than I do. And despite all the consequential problems the sport is plagued by, most of which has hung round the neck of the sport for far too long, it does not mean that the smaller issues need not be addressed. For instance, I believe the names of racehorses matters and that the names of outstanding or even infamous names of the past should not be used in this day and age, especially when the options are wide and various. Around this issue is whether commentators should be taken to account if they mispronounce a name. In today's Racing Post, in the letters colomn, Mr.Hamer of Brighton provides a list of names regularly incorrectly pronounced. I see the matter from both sides, especially as I have a dislike of French, especially the mixing and mangling of English and French in the...

I am forever, it might seem, though not in reality, taking issue with the thoughts of Craig Thake. Recently, we clashed with the verocity of two dancing Morris men with their bells and hankerchiefs over the use of the whip. Today, in the 'Another View' column of The Racing Post, he proposes that due to climate change horse racing should stage less racing on grass during the summer months and far more racing on artificial surfaces. Obviously, with my fear that all-weather will eventually become all-consuming, I take issue with this prospect. Firstly, and for those appalled by what comes next, I suggest a deep dive into climate prediction since the 1940's, predictions for future climate change over the past 70-years have all proved incorrect. A new ice-age has not come upon the planet, Peterborough remains a respectable distance from the sea, with no sea port up for planning consent, and...

The Green Party M.P. Adrian Ramsay, as reproted by Jonathan Harding in the Friday column of The Racing Post, has retweeted his only contribution during the Westminster debate on 'The Future of British Horseracing' where he described racehorses as 'expendable assets' and which 'many of them injured on the track could have been saved but were euthanised for financial reasons'. Although there may be cases when his comment has some validity - as in any walk of life, even amongst politicians, there must be despicable human beings within the racing family - on the whole he could not be further from the truth.  Only in today's Racing Post there is a report on the retirement of Tim Easterby's grand old stayer Art Power. He will spend his retirement at Owenstown Stud in Kildare, the very place where he came into this world. In the main horses are euthanised as a last...

If it were not for the Irish pony racing circuit it is possible that Dylan Browne McMonagle would not be gracing the world's racecourses and neither would Paul Townend and a hundred other jockeys past and present. So it is surprising to learn that Horse Racing Ireland are proving miserly at a time when pony racing is in crisis. Horse Racing Ireland receive 79-million euros from the state, yet they refuse to allocate 150,000 of those euros to ensure the continuence of pony racing. Horse Racing Ireland excuse for not digging deep to keep pony racing alive and well is that it pony racing has no central governing body and in having four regional committees somehow leaves the sport open to corruption, as if the top brass fear unscrupulous members of these four committees, all of whom are volunteers, might be potential embezzlers. At present, pony racing is kept alive by...

The debate is now moot. No longer can anyone suggest that Bow Echo is the next Frankel. The best horse in training, certainly the best 3-year-old, has proven unsound and due to injury he is to be retired. 6-races, 6-wins. The sad aspect of his retirement is that we will never really know how good he could have been. Alas, down the years, it has proved the same with many potentially brilliant flat horses, one injury and retired to the stallion shed to protect their value as stallions. Of course, as it is with colts retired prematurely from the racecourse, we are not given any specifics when it comes to the injury to Bow Echo, though we may speculate it is a tendon injury. He could, no doubt, be returned to active service if it were not for the mega-money he can now earn his connections as he transitions into a...

 I watched again the Sussex Stakes. In my mind, I remembered a different race than the one I watched on replay. In my mind, Bow Echo was an easy winner, his turn of foot devouring the opposition with the ease of Homer Simpson eating free food. Yet a second look determined a change of mind. On reflection, though the class shone through in the final strides, Bow Echo had to strain every sinew (once more) to get to and then defeat Gstaad. The thing that slightly annoys, is people better educated in the history and nuances of our sport are portraying Bow Echo as the inheritor of Frankel's crown as the king of kings. For information purposes only, I rate Brigadier Gerard slightly in front of Frankel. But that is another discussion. In fact, I came away from that second look at the Sussex Stakes with the notion that Bow Echo...

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...

I thoroughly enjoyed the Shergar Cup. I might even have fallen back in love with it . And there certainly was no need for Oli Bell and Kevin Blake to waste air-space defending the event or even belittling it as harmless and a novelty. To start with, five of the six races had ten-runners and due to a late non-runner (why no reserves?) nine in the other race. There have been plenty of meetings during the summer less competitive and with fewer declarations. Anyway, the public gives it endorsement year after year, so who gives a single hoot what the Bells and Blakes of this world have to say. In its 26-years, Ryan Moore has only honoured the Shergar Cup with his presence twice, 20-years apart. Both times he was leading rider and was a member of the winning team. Unlike the other four jockeys who won at Ascot yesterday, he...

Mr. Strong of Andover, in a letter published in today's Racing Post, makes a similar point to what I have been saying for many years, that for our sport to go forward we need to look to the past. Any idiot, including this idiot, realises that we cannot a regular source of competitive racing when the number of racehorses in training is going down while at the same time fixtures are not being cut accordingly.  I have argued recently that if racecourses will not commit to fewer fixtures during these troubled times, the easiest option for the B.H.A., if they have the power to enforce such a proposal, which I doubt, is to return to the days when the majority of meetings were composed of 6-races. Such a measure would cut the number of races per season without the necessity of cutting the number of race-meetings and would improve competitiveness on...

Jockeys receiving bans for interference has risen 36% in the past year. This may be due to greater vigilance by raceday stewards; it may be due to jockeys adopting 'the professional foul' as a method for gaining the upper hand during a race. To my way of thinking, as much as I would like the number of strikes with the whip reduced to one, interference is a far greater crime than overuse of the whip in that interference, moving off a straight line or going for a gap that is not truly a gap, can result in incidents where the lives of fellow jockeys and the horses they ride is put in jeopardy. With the whips presently used by jockeys, overuse, striking a horse beyond the six-strike rule, only looks bad, while being pointless, as Monty Roberts attested to. Jockeys found guilty of gaining an advantage by allowing their mounts drift...

Why jockeys view social media is only for them to answer. They live the hard life anyway, even if a minority of them live a financially rewarding life, so why subject themselves to the foul and inadequate views of punters talking through their empty pockets? So many jockeys have to starve themselves, or at least must keep a close eye on what they eat, in order to ride racehorses for a living. They are not restrained by the eight-hour working day, with their day starting before the cock crows, no doubt riding out two lots before breakfast, even if breakfast is no more than a slice of toast and a cup of black coffee, before a long road trip to whichever racecourse is their destination. Then the long road home, either with a winner or two in the bag or the disappointment of expectation ripped asunder by misfortune or an error...

I realise that tradition, something I defend time and time again, is a determining factor in the dates for the major festival meetings but shouldn't we, in tandem with Ireland, be putting the sport before history during these times of hard knocks? In Britain, as in deed in Ireland, this week it is a quiet period highlighed by the Shergar Cup on Saturday. As much as I used to love the Shergar Cup, even if it still pulls in one of Ascot's largest attendance outside of the Royal Meeting, it is not high on the list of the most important meetings of the year. You see, and this most likely will go down like a sack of spuds dropped on the foot of a much-loved granny by many, I cannot understand the gain in having Galway and Glorious Goodwood taking place at the same time. Surely one or the other could...

I used to look forward to the Shergar Cup meeting. It was, and no longer is, a day when the minnows could take on the world on a level playing field. That for me was the appeal of the Shergar Cup. It was a day when the under-appreciated female jockey had an opportunity to prove their abilities; to achieve, if the draw favoured them, rides from trainers who in a thousand-years would not think to employ them. Jo Mason came to the attention of William Haggas, for instance, and though she has never become a go-to jockey for him, she has ridden winners for him in the time since the Shergar Cup. But that element of the day is no more. It might be as a result of male jockeys being unhappy that females were being given opportunities denied to journeyman male jockeys, though more likely that the top female jockeys...

Let's hope that neither Oisin Murphy, the defending champion, nor Billy Loughnane, the challenger for the title, establish a long lead in the battle for the Jockeys Champion title. It becomes a bore when one man dominates, when the title is all over bar the shouting months before the last day. Not that I will ever accept the last day being Champions Day, an arbitary end that allows a jockey to have won more races between the first day of the turf at Doncaster to the last day at Doncaster and yet not be crowned champion. It is stupid, without sense, common or otherwise, and arranged simply to fit in with a day dubbed 'Champions Day', a day on which should by definition be wall to wall champions but only has two trophies presented. It is what it is, though, and it would add extra pizzazz to the meeting if both...