What gets my goat is when commentators and journalists do not bat an eye when talking or writing about the purchase price at auction of a horse. Poker cost Amo Racing 4-million-quid and gives the impression of only being up to winning a selling hurdle at Plumpton and when his name is mentioned commentators have to fight to hide their smirks. What has Poker, trained by a seasoned winner in Karl Burke, no less, has to do with prize-money? If there were a levy on the purchase price of a horse sold at public auction of say 5%, with that 5% going towards prize-money in this country, Poker's 4-million-quid price tag would actually be of benefit to the sport. My maths is pretty pathetic, especially when it comes to percentages, but wouldn't 5% of 4-million be £80,000.  Think of the extra income stream that would provide if a 2%, 3% or 5% levy was introduced on sales prices. Or similarly on stallion fees over, say, £20,000 a cover.

It is my contention that without the hand there would be no need of the glove. The racing of horses came first, breeding came second, with commercial studs third. This is not a chicken and egg scenario. Horse racing came first. The sport has been known as horse racing since the first documented horse race. The big commercial studs around the world, and now the breeze-up merchants and those who buy to sell-on, are spoiling the sport, taking far more than they give back. I am fully aware that when it comes to push that breeders do not always make big bucks with their produce and that sometimes they might lose money on a foal, yearling or three-year-old but how many of these vendors do you see driving a second-hand Mercedes?

Breeders and sellers should have to give back to the sport. In fact if a levy only contributed £10-million a year to prize-money our sport would be in a better place. And if breeders and sellers made a little less annual profit, they might not be able to afford to use the most extravagantly priced stallions, which might drive down stallion fees and might make them more affordable to more breeders and eventually more owners/trainers might be able to raise their hands come sales time.

Having put the King George and Queen Elisabeth in the title yesterday, I then forgot to mention the race in the column, eventually having to insert a quick update. Memory, see, not worth a penny at an auction of body parts. Anyway, the race is headlined in The Racing Post today and it looks a cracker. Whether the £2-million-quid prize fund has anything to do with the shift upwards in quality and field-size is anyone's guess and every horse thus declared seems to be a certain runner, with no ground dependence thus far mentioned. What makes deciding on the winner difficult is that red-hot Joseph does not seemingly have a runner. At least that makes it slightly easier for his father to get back on the Group 1 winning trail. No winner for Ballydoyle over the two-days of the Irish Oaks meeting. A bug, perhaps?

In the 'Another View' column of The Racing Post today, Jonny Pearson begs for more information from trainers regarding horses leaving or joining their stable, horses that are injured or even, I suspect, dead. Punters, seemingly, need to know this. Something to do with 'trackers'? There used to be a scratching list published back in the day of the Sporting Life which stated if a horse was deceased. A return of the scratching list would satisfy one of Pearson's needs. And as for the other information that Pearson believes trainers should be obligated to transfer into the public domain, I would ask him how much spare time does he think trainers have? He suggests that owners of potential stallions would not want the public to know if their potential big-earner at stud is injured, especially if the injury might suggest weakness or might be something his prodigy might inherit. I would suggest, in this instance, this information should be made known as claiming soundness in the stallion blurb is one thing, while the truth might be subject to all that smoke and mirrors conspiracy stuff.