NO OMBUDSMAN, SCIENCE DATA & STILL ON THE SIDE OF SOUMI.

Look, John and Thady Gosden know their horses far better than I know myself. For someone with my lack of knowledge of the subject to criticise someone of John Gosden's legandary status is tantamount to defamatory comment. I am though only using his or their decision to by-pass the Eclipse with Ombudsman in favour of giving the horse more time to recover from his exertions at Royal Ascot in the Prince of Wales's Stakes to put across a point. It is just that the 'trend' for  connections of the best horses in training to disrespect the semi-classic races like the Eclipse when in the past, perhaps now the distant past, a horse might run in two races at the Royal meeting, even twice in two-days and win both times. What has changed? The breed? The way horses are now trained? Or there are so many top-level races these days in comparison to the past when there was no European Pattern and far less equivalents to Group 1 race, that the world of racing has become their oyster?

As much as one can either envy or criticise Coolmore, 'the lads' respect the great races and do all they can to run their best horses, as they might with Constitution River in the Eclipse. It is what I dislike about the flat, what I cannot get past, the reason by leaps and bounds that I prefer National Hunt, that the breeding side of the industry holds such sway, with the profit and loss ledger more important at times than the actual sport of racing horses against one another in order to sift the less good from the very best. It is why it is not a 'stupid decision' as Andre Fabre has responded to allowing geldings to run in the Arc, but a perfectly acceptable decision based on the concept that racing exists to discover the best in any season. It should not be about making easy passage for breeders and the owners of stallions.

Given he is fit and healthy, eating up and showing his usual zest on the gallops, given the reputation of the Eclipse, Ombudsman should be running at Sandown. The race was originally invented for horses like Ombudsman, for the three-year-old generation to be trialled against the best of the older generation. Of course, if I had my way Ombudsman and his generation would be ruled out of the Eclipse due to it being restricted to three-year-olds, with the race upgraded to classic status. But who is going to be persuaded my radical proposal. I doubt if John Gosden would give either me or my proposal the time of the day. It is why he is a legend of the sport and I am more myth or cock and bull.

When Aidan refers to Ballydoyle as a team he is not exaggerating. Most successful trainers have a good wife behind them, helping to steer a calm ship Yet Aidan's wife, Annemarie, is not only a wealth of horse and racing knowledge, and a rock beside him, she is also a keen-eyed business-woman, with a company, Equimetrics, which produces technical equipment that provides science data on the health and well-being of horses in training, measuring health, including the very earliest stage of a viral infection, performance, recovery, response to work schedules, helping vets with diagnosis and generally taking the guesswork of training. Of course, Aidan uses the devices made by Equimetrics on a daily basis, as do both of Annemarie's sons. It does, though, take the magic out of it, don't you think? And there was I believing that Aidan trained solely through what his eye tells him, that it was all touch and feel, the skill of the master horseman. But then this can only prove that Aidan is modern man, not someone who lives with one foot still in the past.

Christophe Soumillon has his appeal heard today. Seemingly, no one thinks he can win and that he is appealing solely because he can afford to. Yet how can anyone prove team tactics were in play. Did anyone hear that conversation? Let's play devil's advocate. What if Christophe had gone across to the rail and stopped Ryan on Gstaad in his tracks? There would have been uproar from punters and pundits alike. He had raced one off the rail from the start and kept a straight course entering the straight. The look across to Ryan? I would argue, as I hope Christophe argues, that if it had Billy Loughnane coming up the inner, he might has chosen to come across and block his passage. But when he saw it was Ryan, he stayed where he was. In my eyes Ryan bumping and boring into Bow Echo in the first furlong was far more egregious and downright dangerous, not simply race-riding, as some implied, than Christophe holding a straight line. Again, I say, if Coolmore are the owners, Aidan the team manager, Ryan the team captain, why is it that only the midfield general is charged with team tactics?