BOOKMAKERS, PACE-MAKERS, ONE TO WATCH, SPRINTERS & BABY-MAKERS.

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. Although I have every sympathy for betting shop workers losing their jobs due to the 'natural extinction policy' of our present government, bookmakers are their own worst enemy and number one contributor to the crisis within the industry and the B.H.A. and its advisors should be researching the possibility of taking the sport towards a single betting operation.

As much as I can think about anything, I have tried to draw the strings of my thoughts together on the subject of pace-makers in horse racing. Pace-makers in hearts are most definitely a good addition to life, whereas in racing, pace-makers are problematic. In so much that jockeys riding pace-makers are in breach of the non-trier rule, there should be no dispute: pace-makers should be banned and when blatantly used their riders should receive a suspension and the trainer a large fine. Also, and I will argue this until the cows come home, pace-makers are badly used in flat races. In athletics, when a runner sets his or her stall out to break a record, national or world, they are never too far behind the designated pace-maker. In racing, the pace-maker can be twenty-lengths in front of  its better-fancied, and trying, stable-mate. Given I had gone to both ends of the spectrum on this subject, it is time for me to choose a side. And I side with banning pace-makers. 

It would not set a precedent if 'ride of the year' in Ireland went to a female jockey this year. A girl whose name escapes me - which proves the trophy had absolutely no impact on her career - won it a couple of season ago. Yesterday, at The Curragh, Orla Tynan gave Liberation Date a ride of near perfection, having gone fast early in the race, when it looked for all worlds that the horse was out of control, she then settled the horse, allowed the pack to close on her coming into the straight, and then without resorting to the whip held all-comers to win, perhaps not cosily, but to win. The horse is large and the girl tiny. She could be, if given the opportunities, Ireland's Hollie Doyle.

When talking about sprinters, why do people allow the world stamina into the conversation? 'He has the stamina for six-furlongs' always sounds absurd to me. Stayers are rarely spoken about as having the speed for 2-miles. Yet a sprinter can have the stamina for 6-furlongs! Surely, the five-furlong horse that gets six is merely maintaining its speed, it is not dipping into its reserves of stamina. Yes, it is only a word and we know what a trainer means by his or her use of 'stamina'. Perhaps I am just being picky, missing the point or just simply wrong to criticise something that I do not understand.

Thanks to Catherine Macrea writing in The Racing Post, I now know (I hope) who the father of Hayley Turner's baby is. You no doubt already know. Perhaps on social media Hayley told all her followers. Not being on any social media platform I am out of the loop and to be honest, although I knew of J.J. Hamblett from reading about him in The Racing Post, I could not for the life of me name any song by Union J.

J.J. is a former jockey, I believe, the son of a jockey and who is presently getting himself fit and race savvy for his return to the racecourse in the Legends race at Doncaster in September. Hayley is training him up and has promised him use of her Group 1 winning saddle. Personally, I would prefer to see Hayley back in the saddle, though as she is a mum now, I will have to accept that is never going to happen.