"I do"

We had a very pleasant trip to the races yesterday. I was hoping that Anis would run a bit better than she did (she finished last) but I wasn't too disappointed by the result as expectations weren't huge and she did only finish just behind a lovely (but badly behaved) horse called Playground (who is pictured walking along behind Anis in the parade ring) who is owned by the Queen who possesses a lovely pedigree, being by Montjeu from the good mare Phantom Gold. Facing a small field of young horses with pedigrees such as that - and such as that owned by the runner-up Mataaleb, who is a Dalakhani half-brother to the Dubai World Cup winner and very good (but now deceased) stallion Almutawakel - one can't expect too much. Furthermore, apart from galloping too slowly, Anis did everything right, being very composed both before and after the race; and she seems today to have taken the race very well. She's been so fragile in the past, hence her being so lightly-raced, but the evidence of yesterday appears to be that she's now ready to withstand regular racing. So we'll now just enjoy racing her and hope that we can place her to advantage at some point in the future. She'll certainly be able eventually to face considerably weaker fields than the one she faced yesterday, and under considerably more favourable conditions, so it is not unreasonable to remain optimistic. Certainly she looked the part in the parade ring - even if this photograph of her and Iva isn't entirely representative as it makes her look the biggest horse in the world, which she isn't.

It was an interesting day of racing all round yesterday - and a good one for one of my favourite stallions, Sulamani. He had a winner at Leicester, Exemplary, and he also had one of my favourite horses, Dazinski, win for him at Ripon in what the Racing Post tells me was the style of a legitimate Chester Cup contender. I was at Yarmouth a couple of years ago on the day when Dazinski became the first winner sired by Sulamani and I've always enjoyed following his progress since then - both on the racecourse and on the Heath, under his regular rider Steve Avery, Mark Tompkins' assistant who is pictured on him a few weeks ago (about to dismount - don't worry, he doesn't generally sit on a horse in quite such an unorthodox position!). Among the other victories which I was pleased to note yesterday was the win at Punchestown of Cuan Na Grai, one of the horses featured in the excellent documentary on Paul Nolan's stable which was shown in Britain just before the Cheltenham Festival. He seemed a lovely horse who kept being unlucky, so it's really nice to see that he has now won a novices' chase at a big meeting for his connections. The trainer can use part of his percentage to pay the fine which he had picked up earlier in the meeting, a fine (for scratching another of the programme's featured horses, Joncol, an hour and a half before he was due to run, once it had become plain that the track had become firmer than would be suitable for the horse) which has to go down in the annals as one of the most unjust ever levied. It's not often that one can say this, but that really would never happen here!

On the subject of racing's administration, I note that it now appears to have become compulsory for jockeys to be described by their christian name, or nickname if they have one, rather than by their initial. This (presumably RFC-inspired) convention has recently snuck in: I have recently noticed changes to the descriptions of those who, when christian names were being used on a voluntary basis, preferred to be known under the traditional system, for example our W. T. Kennedy, or N. Callan or L. Dettori. The only exception appears to be A. P. McCoy, but I suppose that a jockey can have a right of veto when he has ridden as many winners as McCoy has done (although L. Dettori's change to Frankie Dettori would appear to contradict this). It is an odd one, though, because we seem to be using nicknames, rather than christian names, in some cases: hence we have Frankie Dettori, rather than Lanfranco, and Richie Mullen (pictured here in John Fretwell's lime green colours, a few seconds after winning the two-year-old maiden at Leicester yesterday on Drawing Board) rather than Richard. I'm rather discomfitted now to discover that W. T. Kennedy, whom I have always called William, is now Will, and the whole thing has left me to ponder how this would have gone down a few years ago. Very few people could either spell or pronounce Myrrdin (probably including me), so how would Taffy Thomas have been described? And what about Kipper Lynch? If someone gone into the weighing room and called for John, Kipper definitely wouldn't have realised that he was the one being sought. And if J. D. Smith (pictured here in Michael Stoute's string a couple of weeks ago) were still race-riding, would we be hit with the surprise of discovering that his name is Joseph? And what about Adrian Nicholls, who had previously ridden as Adrian T. Nicholls, on the basis that he (apparently) is generally called Trotter (but wasn't allowed to ride under a nickname) but who now has been re-registered as Adrian, a name by which apparently he is rarely addressed? Call me a stick-in-the-mud if you like, but it was so much simpler when they were merely known as V. Ordinary and F. Hopeless!

Tomorrow we are off to Wolverhampton where Batgirl will have her obligatory third maiden run before being allowed to contest handicaps. I don't think that I will be breaking any inside information rules by saying that, with a 109-rated horse in the field (yes - that isn't a misprint: there is indeed a horse in Britain who has run often enough to qualify for a handicap rating - this horse has actually run five times - and who has shown form that equates to a mark of 109, and yet who has managed to avoid ever winning a race) I am not expecting her to win. But she's a nice filly, she's got to run somewhere and someone has to run against this hotpot, so let's hope that she can run a nice race tomorrow and we can then work out what to do with her thereafter. It would be a truly memorable event were she able to turn over the favourite - but even were that to happen, I think that this weekend would still be best remembered as the one on which Australia's most eligible bachelor relinquished his title. Yes, the redoutable Richard Sims said "I do" around 3.30 yesterday afternoon in the church in Mansfield in Victoria's High Country - and, on behalf of Richard's many friends in the UK, I'd like to wish him and Ellie (pictured together early last year, in the company of Richard's brother Robert, centre, and of Michael Tidmarsh, left) every happiness together. I'm told that it was a lovely occasion (one which I was very sorry to miss) and I truly hope that that happy day has set the tone of their future.