ONLY TWO-DAYS A WEEK, DO NOT GET ME STARTED, AMO JOCKEY MERRY-GO-ROUND & EDWARDSTONE.

It is easy to criticise the B.H.A., and boy do they give people ample reason to throw brickbats at them, but on this occasion I believe they have done good. I suspect the interview stage of the process was just a blind as they had already chosen who was going to succeed Lord Allen, though on first inspection I think, and hope, they could not have appointed a better Chair than Simon Cox. My only criticisms are that he is only expected to work two-days a week, when the uphill task before him could easily require eight-days a week, and that he will not officially take up the job until October. Hopefully in the intervening 9-weeks he will have laid the foundation for a flying start to finding solutions for racing's many problems.

Well, Craig Thake, writing the Another View column in The Racing Post today, had no need to get me started as the repeated names of famous racehorses appearing on present-day race-cards gets my goat like no other subject. Indeed, having so much angst stored in my brain on this topic neccesitated me starting this website. Letters on the laziness of people to come-up with original names for their horses published in The Racing Post gained no traction, though many people added their names to my cry of despair when Coolmore named a horse Spanish Steps, one of our sport's most fondly remembered steeplechasers, as I was to discover. No topic puublished on this site gained so much correspondence, all of it in agreement with my sentiments.

Craig Thake, god bless him for restarting the conversation, was only referring to the protected names list provided by the International Federation of Horseracing Authorities, not the B.H.A. protected list, so no horse in this country can be registered as Tiger Roll, Silver Buck or Flyingbolt, though these names, and as no chase or hurdle races appears on the I.F.H.A's list of races that protects the names of winners from ever being registed again, can be registered in such countries such as Hong Kong or Brasil, and, in theory, may appear on a racecard in this country.

There are many hundreds of languages used on this planet, with as many dialects, with a million assortments of letters used to name a horse - Ajoma, LinLin, Vassity, Qwert, made-up words on the spot, as example - in any spoken language. Also, if someone in India, Italy or Hong Kong was desperate to name a horse Dawn Run or Flyingbolt all they have to do is translate the name into their own language. Anyway, Craig Thake restarted my anguish engine and if I go on I am likely to burst a blood vessel. Names are memories.

A few weeks ago, I suggested that David Egan must be regretting hitching his career to the Amo Racing debt-high wagon. For once, without knowing the whole story, I seem to have hit the nail on the head. According to a story in The Racing Post today, Egan is to return to being a freelance, though he will still ride for Amo when Amo's trainers think him the best fit for any particular horse. Egan is too good a rider to have his career stalled by being contracted to an owner, who despite the many millions of pounds he has thrown at the job, has yet to rise from the planteau or going nowhere fast. Amo was never a baby; it has had no long learning arc. It has been boom or bust from the outset, though I suppose it is doing well to be at a station somewhere between the boom and the bust. As has been Kia's form since setting up Amo Racing, it is the jockey who is always considered the weak link, even Rossa Ryan, an Arc-winning jockey since being jettisoned by Kia and one of the three jockeys presently going blow for blow in the Jockeys Championship.

Edwardstone has been retired. The owners and Alan King have taken the decision as every time he were to run this season the terror of something bad happening to him would negate all of the fun of seeing him in action. It is always a wise decision to pull-up a fence too early rather than a fence too late and his connections should be applauded for their decision. Edwardstone's connections are now searching for someone to retrain him in a different equine discipline. Crossed-fingers he enjoys a long and happy active life and that we see him occasionally in a parade of great horses of the past.