MOAN NUMBER 456, SELLERS & PALMARES.

'attempts to become the first British-trained winner of the Group 1 since 2022' is an example of the sort of writing that irritates me, up there when I have noticed error and laziness in my own creative efforts. 2022 is only 4-years in the past. Since 2022 there have only been three renewals of this particular race, the name of which eludes me for the moment. It is in the same category as 'creates history', when sporting or racing history would be more accurate. The word history in this instance refers to a time in the long past, 'to be of historic significance, being one of a kind'. You get my drift. The first horse trained in Germany, Italy or Peru to win the Epsom Derby that would be of 'historic significance'. No British-trained horse winning a race for 4-years is of no historic significance at all and was not worth the effort of mentioning. Anyway, on to moan number 457.

What with the drying ground throughout the country and an excess of jumps meetings, field sizes are dwindling down to matches and low-figure numbers. Yesterday, due to a motorway crash, the first race at Hereford resulted in a walkover and due to 'unsuitable ground', the second race was a match. The remaining four-races were contested by 22-horses, meaning only 27-horses contested six-races. No one at this time of the summer jumps programme should expect double-digit numbers in every race. Occasionally that might occur but it is not a normal state of play. I would suggest that more racecourses consider putting on sellers, both hurdles and fences, a type of race, given the standard of horse in training at this time of year, should ensure more runners than a novice chase.

Sellers, both on the flat and over jumps, were staple fare not so long ago and often had the biggest field of the day. Sellers, now, are more of a novelty due, I suspect, to the cost of hiring an auctioneer. Many a good hurdler has come from a flat seller, with Martin Pipe acquiring many a good horse from them, including Make A Stand, a Champion Hurdle winner. A six or seven-runner seller is always going to provide more of a spectacle for racegoers than a 2-horse novice chase and racecourses should return them to the race programme.

I will now quote again from today's Racing Post, this time from the bloodstock section, which I do not usually read, composed by Tom Peacock. 'Frankel gained perhaps the most important entry in his palmares with a first British or Irish sire title.' With you all being better educated than me, which Tom Peacock certainly is, the word 'palmares' went straight over my head and I was forced to reach for my 'Readerd Digest Universal Dictionary', which is a heavy book to be handling when in close proximity to my laptop and surprisingly for a tome that has Universal in its title only has British words and no words that has fallen from the lips of entities from other universes other than our own. To go off on a tangent for a moment, given the high number of orbs, drones and aircraft termed either U.F.O. or U.A.P.'s, none to my knowledge have been sighted over a British racecourse. Anyway, back on topic. Palmares - pertaining to or corresponding to the palm of the hand or an animal's paw. Palmary - worthy of receiving the palm, outstanding, superior or deserving of the palm of victory. Perhaps in the breeding world palmares is as standard as fetlock, monkey or going is to the racecourse. Or perhaps Peacock merely wrinkled out my ignorance for public airing. But, at least, he taught me something useful for me to impress others. Not that I am ever likely to join Frankel with a palm of victory.

More succinctly, Peacock informs the reader, after being informed himself by Juddmonte, that Frankel sired 100 Group 1 or Grade 1 winners in 3,144-days, outstriping his own sire Galileo and both Dubawi and Danehill. Not that he will better Galileo's number of champion sire totals or Galileo's sire Sadlers Wells, a dynasty that began with Northern Dancer. That truly is a blue-blooded family line. King after king after king after king. Not that Frankel has yet to sire a future king himself, with Cracksman his most succesful son seen on a racecourse thus far.