One great fixture just leads to another

We've only just had the Derby, and now it seems that Royal Ascot is almost upon us. Aren't we spoilt? I'm sure that there are often two full weeks between the Derby and Royal Ascot, but this week there is only one (this one). Next year I guess the Derby might be on 1 June, rather than 7 June, so I suppose that that would see the St. James's Palace Stakes run 17 days after the Derby, rather than 10, as is the case this year. It's easy for me to remember that this year's Derby was 7 June, because that was my birthday, which also fell on Derby Day when Kris Kin won and also when Benny The Dip won, with me present on both occasions. And now I've maintained that sequence by seeing New Approach gallop past the post right before my eyes.

As anyone who read the previous chapter will have guessed, I was very pleased to see New Approach win, because I have long thought him a lovely horse. He went up even farther in my estimation with his heroic second in the 2,000 Guineas, which led me to consider that his connections would be insane not to run him in the Derby. I'm glad that they did, although less glad that their decision to do so - or the announcement of their decision to do so, which may or may not be the same thing - was preceded by all the unnecessary confusion. Amazingly, I didn't back New Approach. I'd intended to do so, but I was really taken by Doctor Freemantle in the parade ring and stupidly and disloyally backed him instead as he was at longer odds; New Approach looked very fit and well, but he didn't dominate his rivals in looks in the same way that he had done at Newmarket. I hadn't expected to fancy any of Michael Stoute's horses in advance, but Doctor Freemantle and Tartan Bearer both went hugely up in my esteem as soon as I saw them, while my opinion of Tajaweed went in the other direction. Casual Conquest was the other horse to take the eye, even though this giant still doesn't look the finished article by any means, while Kandahar Run, who was my tip to run badly in a competition which required us to select two to run well and one to run badly, and Curtain Call joined Tajaweed in ruling themselves out of calculations on appearance. Aidan O'Brien's quintet were an odd lot, because they looked lovely horses, but none stood out on appearance (as the likely winner of the 2008 Derby, although some stood out as tremendous dual-purpose prospects). Curtain Call looked fine, as you'd expect from any horse trained by a master trainer, but he's not nearly as imposing a horse as any of the first four home, and there's not much Luca could have done about that: a trainer can only make a horse as good as he can be, rather than make him a different horse. As I hugely admire Luca, I'd have been delighted to have been proved wrong by the horse winning, but at the same time his eclipse saved the feeling of sadness on behalf of his former trainer Jessica Harrington which would inevitably have accompanied the victory. Of course it is a fact of life that horses change stable every day of the week, but it is rather sad that Mrs Harrington has seen Curtain Call moved out of her stable simply because she had done so well with him: if she hadn't trained him as well as she did, I'm sure he would still reside in her yard. It's nobody's fault: certainly not Luca's, who would have been mad not to take the horse when offered him; and one can't blame his owners, because with such high stakes they had to be sure in their subconscious that the horse was in a stable that maximized his chance of Derby glory, even when cold logic said that he wasn't going to improve for going elsewhere. So it's nobody's fault, but is a sad illustration of the fact that it is generally assumed - in the subconscious part, if not the logical part, of most people's brains - that less obvious trainers will not train a horse to realise his full potential, even when common sense suggests that this is not necessarily the case.

Anyway, our trip to the Derby was a lovely birthday treat, and my fourth very memorable outing to one of the world's greatest sporting occasions, my first having been in 1985 when Slip Anchor saluted the judge. There was one little incident this year which made me chuckle. Emma and I secured great viewing points for the parade ring, the race and the unsaddling enclosure by making use of the access to the Queen's Stand which a trainer's badge allows, which was rather fortunate as I was merely wearing a (very smart, if I say so myself) suit, rather than the penguin outfit that is supposedly obligatory in that area of the course on Derby Day. Anyway, we bumped into Larry and Rachel, the latter saying to me, with a completely straight face, when we met, "Hello, John - you look very smart". This struck me as very funny because, even though I do think that I did actually look very smart, I was in fact seriously under-dressed for the location, and just about the only person in the whole stand thus inadequately attired - which made me realise how scruffily I must dress most of the time if Rachel could, completely genuinely, compliment me on my appearance when I was in one sense the worst turned out person in sight!

So that was the Derby, and now Royal Ascot looms. How do I know it looms? Well, it isn't because I'm engaged in putting the finishing touches to the preparations of runners there. We do have three horses currently completing their pre-race preparations, but they are for Yarmouth tomorrow (Filemot) and then both Sandown (Brief Goodbye) and Lingfield (Jill Dawson) on Saturday. We then won't have any runners next week. But I was involved at the periphery of Royal Ascot preparations today, thanks to the kindness of Nick Smith of Ascot racecourse in allowing me to attend the press preview of international contenders, primarily the sprinters, to which Emma had received an invitation. I asked Nick if I could come, my credential of course being that of Winning Post's international correspondent, and he kindly went beyond the call of duty in making me welcome not only at this morning's work-watching and subsequent breakfast-cum-press conference, but also at last night's dinner, which was very good of him. I found myself on a really interesting table last night, sitting between Magnus' trainer Peter Moody (fresh from training Riva San to complete the Queensland Oaks/Derby double) and his very nice strapper who is blessed with the exotic name of Angelica Sunset. Poor girl: she'd drawn very badly, with me on one side of her and Paul Haigh on the other! She and Jayne Ivil, Seachange's strapper who was sitting on Paul's other side, both left quite early as they had very early starts ahead of them, leaving Paul marooned with a typically amusing 'What have I done?' expression on his face.

So the dinner was fun; and this morning was at least as much fun. It was a real treat, leaving the normal routine from 5.30 to 10.00 to be immersed temporarily and peripherally in the upper reaches of the sport: it felt like being on holiday for a few hours! What was particularly good was that events on the July Course ran on a schedule which fitted in with Emma and I hopping across to the other side of the Dyke to watch four of our horses gallop along the Cambridge Road all-weather at around 7.25, which exercise demonstrated that Jill and Brief both appear in good heart ahead of their engagements on Saturday. Of the more famous horses which we saw today, Magnus went off for a swim and Takeover Target, who looks better than I've ever seen him, had a canter up Side Hill all-weather under Dominic Gibson, who it transpires is riding him in the mornings while he is here. We then went to the July Course and saw a lovely grey South African mare trained by Sean Tarry called National Colour gallop up the track under Kevin Shea, followed a few lengths behind by Ted Durcan on Seachange. Both horses looked very well but clearly needed the gallop, as both blew hard and blew up over their loins noticeably afterwards, particularly Seachange. One would have to say that the work of National Colour was the more impressive, but they are both really lovely horses in great shape. Victory for either would give me huge pleasure next week. Shortly afterwards, two of Mike De Kock's horses galloped over a longer distance (at least a mile), with Kevin Shea partnering the Gold Cup hope Thundering Star alongside Archipenko (Trevor Brown), who unsurprisingly travelled significantly the more easily of the pair. I don't think Archipenko runs next week, but he ought to be on track to run very well in the Eclipse. Thundering Star is fit and well, but personally I'd be very surprised if he were good enough to win the Gold Cup. A very special little post-script then happened when I was lucky enough to meet former New Zealand champion jockey Bob Skelton, rider of 1976 Melbourne Cup winner Van Der Hum and currently paying his first visit to the UK, which gave me huge pleasure: I'd have been chuffed to meet him come what may, but meeting him and finding him to be a really lovely man was the icing on the cake. Winning Post readers either will or will not read about the morning, plus see some of Emma's photographs of it, this weekend, in addition to my routine Epsom/Belmont/Chantilly review, depending on availability of space in the paper.

I can't finish my account of the day (which is already too long) without mentioning a rather nasty incident which took place at the press conference, the culprits being John McCririck and a similarly crass and unpleasant Scotch journalist whose name I don't know. Embarrassingly, McCririck, abetted by the Scotch oaf, tried to give Joe Janiak a hard time because of Takeover Target having swabbed positive to a steroid in Hong Kong last year. My own view is that I prefer to see medication used as little as possible in the training of racehorses, but even from this viewpoint it was embarrasing to see this latest ill-informed and bigotted display of xenophobia. Simply, we can debate whether the rules are right or wrong, but as far as the participants are concerned, the situation (in Britain and Ireland, as in Australia and Hong Kong) is that any legal medication which the trainer's vet is allowed to and is happy to prescribe is permissable in training, as long as - if it is one which is proscribed for racing - there is no trace of it in the horse's system on raceday. So here, as elsewhere, all trainers at times use drugs in training which are not allowed on raceday, timing their use so that they should have gone by the time the horse runs. Inevitably, occasionally miscalculations are made, which means that horses sometimes fail drug tests, in every country in the world. It, of course, varies a lot as to how much medication individual trainers use - some use a lot, as the bills to owners in some stables will testify, while I like to use very, very little medication, as the bills to owners in this stable show - but all trainers at times use drugs prohibited for racing. They would be stupid and irresponsible if that were not the case: imagine gelding a horse without sedatives or pain-killers, neither of which are allowed on race-day! Of the drugs on which horses aren't allowed to race, the one I use most often is Dantrium, a muscle-relaxant which reduces the likelihood of horses tying up, sustaining other muscle damage and having imbalances in the muscle enzyme levels in the blood. This, as is the case with all drugs, is used in training to improve the performance of the horse when he does run; that to my mind qualifies it as a performance-enhancing substance, which description one could also give to such everyday items as oats, vitamin supplements and electrolytes, because a horse whose diet includes these foodstuffs will race more successfully than one who eats only as nature intended, ie grass. Anyway, because Joe last year found himself in the same situation formerly occupied by trainers such as Michael Dickinson (Da Hoss), David Elsworth (Cavvies Clown) and Saeed bin Suroor (Noverre) all of whom have had positives to either anabolic or cortico steroids - and don't forget high-profile horses such as Three Valleys and Tillerman failing drug tests for, I think, clenbuterol, another performance-enhancing drug - in having given, on veterinary advice, a drug which isn't allowed on raceday, and then having found it slower to clear the horse's system than expected and thus showing up on raceday. Of course, the other trainers are either British or British-based, so McCririck acts as if nothing happens here - but when Johnny Foreigner shows up on our shores, doing the same thing, he becomes embarrassingly abusive - in exactly the same way as he does with visiting jockeys - in a manner which he would never adopt with the home team. It was sickening and embarrassing, but hopefully it will have been as water off a duck's back to Joe, who would have the presence of mind to know that his persecutor was talking nonsense - whether through malice or ignorance (or more probably both) we'll never know.