Heart-warming

It rather goes against the grain to write a chapter prompted by events at the "Hennessy Heritage Festival" at "The Racecourse, Newbury" because I don't think that people should be encouraged to be as taken in by the 21st-century nonsense of 're-branding' as these people have been - and that's leaving aside the debacle of asking racegoers to open up their overcoats on a winter's day to check that they've got the right sort of shirt on underneath.  But, on a cold winter evening on an otherwise downbeat day, I must highlight the great result for Exeter Road today of our neighbouring mad genius 'The Don' Cantillon winning the Listed hurdle with his home-bred one-eyed Old Vic mare As I Am.  That was lovely - as was Jimmy Quinn's son Josh riding his first winner yesterday, the second occasion this month when a local apprentice has got off the mark following Alfie Warwick winning a recent two-year-olds' maiden race at Wolverhampton for his boss Toby Coles on the 33/1 shot Orange Grove, a son of my favourite stallion Hernando.  Results like these warm the cockles of one's heart.

A good morning

November has been a fairly bleak month, notwithstanding that I suppose we've possibly had less rain than we might have done, and it's been less cold than might have been the case.  Those qualifying observations only provide slender comfort, though, and it feels as if we've been in winter for quite a long time already - which is a sobering thought as winter, which I regard as starting on 1st December, hasn't actually started yet.  Anyway, this morning was, relatively speaking, very nice, as we had clear skies from the outset (and, surprisingly for a clear night at the end of November, it wasn't frosty) and when the sun got up things were beautiful.

Conditions were probably at their most splendid second lot when we were up at the Links, which was nice - and it was particularly nice as Sean Boyce and a cameraman were there, filming for an At The Races feature on the National Hunt branch of Newmarket's training set-up.  They had plenty of horses to film as Neil King had plenty up there, we had Douchkirk and Wasabi, Amy Weaver had some and Julia Feilden had some.  (Lucy Wadham, the town's most successful jumps trainer, wasn't schooling any this morning, but Sean was due to film in her yard later on).

Anyway, this should make a lovely feature, as the weather gave them every chance to get some beautiful film clips for it.  I don't know when it'll be on the TV, but we'll keep a look out.  David Crosse rode our two jumpers this morning, which was very good as he's a very good rider indeed.  He's been coming up from Lambourn reasonably often recently and his help is much appreciated.  Frankie (Douchkirk) is a very experienced jumper, but it was particularly good to see Wasabi, a nice but lightly-raced four-year-old stayer whose sire Tiger Hill does very well with his jumpers, fare very well indeed under David's tuition on only her second jumping lesson.  She'd been in the loose school and then had a very small amount of basic ridden jumping on a previous occasion, but this, her second lesson, was a much bigger step forward.  She jumped the baby jumps and then the small hurdles very well.  Hope springs eternal!

One brahma came when Wasabi went over to the (smaller) proper hurdles.  I hadn't anticipated that she'd get this far in this lesson, but she was jumping so well that it made sense, and David was all for it.  I happened to be on Frankie at the time.  He would, of course, have been a perfect mate for a learner over hurdles - but I wouldn't be!  Anyway, Neil King kindly let one of his horses go up the hurdles with her on her first go (and then she went up, very well, on her own) and that got me off the hook.  But the brahma was that I was able to take advantage of one of the very few perks of getting old: I explained to Sean that I wasn't going to ride over hurdles because I'm too old for that nowadays - and then added, chuckling, that I now had that good excuse, whereas a few years ago I'd have had to fall back on the truth, ie that I've never been either good enough or brave enough!

As always happens, predictably the beautiful weather didn't last all day.  When Hugh and I were riding down from Bury Hill midmorning conditions were still splendid (as you can see in the previous paragraph, which shows Shelley Dwyer riding lovely old Mia's Boy) but by late morning, when Indira did some stalls work with Iva (and that was very pleasing because one would never see an unraced two-year-old with better barrier manners) we were already starting to find the skies clouding, so by the afternoon we had reverted to the conditions with which we have been all too familiar recently.

Don't believe what you read

Great excitement, if one regards other people spending a lot of money as exciting.  A Galileo yearling, we're told, fetched 5 million guineas at Tattersalls' October Sale.  And now Chicquita (no, not the famous one, but this year's Irish Oaks winner) has fetched, we're told, 6 million euros at Goffs' November Sale.  Can this be right?  Or, in other words, can both of these statements be right?  No, of course they can't: if one is true, the other is automatically false.

What is the price of something?  Well, it's what the purchaser has to pay for it, of course, isn't it?  And if the price weren't that, then I suppose that one would have to say that it would be what the vendor receives.  (Although I think that, if there is a difference between the two figures - as there is in these cases, the difference being the auction house's commission - then it is, surely, only the vendor who would say that the horse was sold for the lower figure; everyone else would say that the sum for which the horse was sold was the sum which the purchaser paid).  In short, to any objective onlooker, the horse is sold for the sum which the purchaser pays, and the auction house's commission is that sum minus the figure which the vendor receives.

On that basis, the 5 million-guinea yearling was sold for 5 million guineas (ie £5.25 million) because with Tattersalls the figure one bids is the figure one pays, ie that's the total charged, and the 5% commission is taken out of that before the vendor, who receives 95% of the price, is paid.  Seemples.  With Goffs, it is far more complicated - but the gist of it is that if we say that the Tattersalls yearling was sold for 5 million guineas (or £5.25 million) we can't say that Chicquita Mark Two was sold for 6 million euros.

Chicquita Mark Two wasn't sold for 6 million euros: she was sold for 6.3 million euros, because Goffs have a misleading (well, it's not misleading if you read the small print, as all good insurance companies say) policy in that what you bid is not what you pay: the total you pay is 106% of the figure you bid.  Just to complicate matters further, what the vendor receives is neither the figure that the buyer has bid nor the figure that the buyer has paid: the vendor receives 98.5% of the figure which the buyer has bid, which is 92.924528% of what the buyer has paid.  (And it's the same for Doncaster, although there the sales are in pounds rather than euros - and to think that the Racing Post campaigned for the abolition of selling in guineas in favour of selling in pounds, or euros, on the basis that it would be less complicated!)

(And a further proviso one should add is that I would imagine that, in Chicquita's case, those commission figures would not be correct: although I'm sure that the purchaser would have paid 6.3 million euros, I would be very surprised if Paul Makin hadn't managed to negotiate a better deal with Goffs than the standard one which would have seen the sales company receiving 7.075472% commission.  With the collection of horses he was offering, he would have been in a very strong position to suggest his own terms, because both principal sales houses, ie Goffs and Tattersalls, would surely have been prepared to bend over backwards to get the job of handling the dispersal.)

So that's that: tonight's food for thought, which can be summed up by observing that the reports of these two transactions, when read together, confirm the Boomtown Rats' old exhortation, "Don't believe what you
read".

As regards the pictures,while it was a big week for Paul Makin and Goffs, it was also a big week for Alamshar as I started lighting a fire in the evenings; and it was a big week for So Much Water as she as ridden for the first time (and, of course, she had to tell Big Bwuvver Roy about it).  And a standard week for Russian,Link, ie the usual roll in the shavings after work.

The elephant in Sponsorgate's room

Have you been following the Sponsorgate thing?  It's been easy enough to notice because firstly the seemingly-easily-riled Ralph Topping, who is regularly quoted in the Racing Post explaining why he isn't happy about something, was given plenty of column inches at the start of the week to air his grievances; then Julian Muscat filled his column on the subject yesterday; and then Simon Bazalgette was given space in today's edition to try to pour oil onto the troubled waters.  The problem was that an employee of Jockey Club Racecourses had supposedly told Topping, formerly a bigwig in William Hill's firm, that it would be preferable if the Betfair Chase, the William Hill King George VI Steeplechase and the Betfred Cheltenham Gold Cup were all to share the same sponsor - and if that sponsor was not a bookie.  Of course, if the man did say this to Topping, he needs to become less blunt - but, of course, the elephant in the room is that what he was right.  He just shouldn't have said it.

It's wrong to overlook the fact that merely because something is true does not necessarily mean that it can be said.  This is one of those cases - just like the fact that someone has aged and put on weight since you last saw them doesn't alter the fact that it's not a good idea to tell them so.  Basically, this all goes back to the basis of the creation of the British Champions Series - and I think that we're in danger of forgetting why that was created.  So this seems a suitable moment to remind ourselves.

Racing's problem is that the marketing men who control the big budgets of the multi-national corporations appear not to regard racing as suitable for sponsorship.  God knows why, because racing is a very popular sport, and appeals to large amounts of people right across the social spectrum.  Always has done and, God willing, always will.  However, while the terms 'upper-, middle- and working-class' don't really apply any more because the two ends of the spectrum are both relatively thinly populated nowadays (which is why all mainstream political parties tend to have very similar ideologies, because there's no future in appealing to any group other than the 90% of the population who fall in the middle), racing has always supposedly appealed more to the people at the two ends of the social spectrum than to those in the middle.

I am aware that that previous paragraph is guilty of containing some terrible generalisations, but that's the point - so are the marketing men, who reckon they'll appeal to Mr Average much more effectively by throwing umpteen millions at soccer, rugby, cricket, tennis, golf, athletics or Formula One than at racing.  The man in the Chelsea wine bar and his counterpart on the Clapham omnibus will both be wooed, apparently, if the corporation has its name attached to any of those other sports, but not if it has its name attached to racing.  Strange and untrue, of course - but the marketing men, the men who matter, believe that it's true.

Hence the creation of the British Champion Series.  This was to be racing's Premier League, Olympics, 20/20 series, Grand Prix, Open, Wimbledon, or Six Nations.  Racing's problem was that we could get sponsorship from within (bookmakers, studs, companies owned or run by racing enthusiasts) but we couldn't get any significant sponsorship from detached large-scale commercial entities.  If we did, we wouldn't need to worry about exactly what or wasn't being genereated by the levy, offshore bookmakers, betting exhanges, media rights deals, blah, blah, blah.

Hence the creation of the British Champions' Series, a gimmick to enable racing to shake off its traditionalist image and appeal to the 21st masses, just as other sports had re-invented themselves.  (Their theory, not mine).  The aim was that we'd have the Microsoft British Champions' Series, or Apple ..., or American Express ..., or Mercedes ..., or Nokia ..., or HSBC ..., or ... .  And, once the first big fish had been landed - as one doesn't have to be particularly intelligent to forge a successful career in marketing, and so the marketeers behave like sheep - then the others would line up to 'get a piece of the action' (as they'd probably say).  All these tens of millions of pounds would be flooding in, and racing's otherwise-insoluble financial crisis would be a thing of the past.  Seemples!

Of course, it didn't work.  The marketing guru hired to land the big fish, Karl Oliver, achieved nothing.  Fortunately David Redvers came to the rescue by suggesting to his patron Sheikh Fahad al Thani that sponsoring the series would be a good (and enjoyable) thing to do, and this excellent man very, very kindly came to British racing's rescue, through his QIPCO business.  Which is wonderful, and why I'm always delighted to see Sheikh Fahad enjoy the success which he deserves.  But the line that it's a commercial sponsorship is, sadly, putting an unrealistically brave face on it: it isn't, and the QIPCO British Champions' Series is another example of one of racing's wealthy benefactors kindly keeping the show on the road from within, which certainly wasnt the original aim.

There are/were probably two other opportunities to open the floodgates of commercial sponsorship, ie the Derby and the Grand National.  The Derby has never been any more successful than the British Champions' Series - the Vodafone Derby, the Ever Ready Derby and the Investec Derby have come about because of the passion of, respectively, Sir Ernest Harrison, Sir Gordon White and Bernard Kantor, the latter being a man as deserving of our good will as is Sheikh Fahad al Thani - but the Grand National has at times broken the mould: Colt Cars, News Of The World and John Smith spring straight to mind.  Sadly, although it has broken through, it's always done so without inspiring others to follow suit.  And now I suspect that there is more benevolence than objectivity in its forthcoming Crabbie's sponsorship.

Anyway, thanks to the dominance of the Maktoums, Flat racing has gone out of vogue and National Hunt racing has come into fashion, as your average millionaire has realised that he has a chance of making a consistent impression at the highest levels over jumps, but none whatsoever on the Flat.  The Cheltenham Festival is the new Royal Ascot - and the season already has its "narrative" (ie 362 days of build-up and then four days of racing, as RUK, the Racing Post and C4 would have us believe).  Hence, if we could package this narrative, we'd have a solid-gold marketing opportunity.  (See, I told you it was easy: I'm picking up the lingo in one session, much easier than Latin).  Oh, but hang on: we've already packaged it.  Handicaps have gone out of fashion over jumps as they have done on the Flat now that there is a plethora of valuable weight-for-age or set-weights-with-penalties races, so the Hennessy is no longer the big race of the autumn, having been superceded by the new Betfair Chase at weight-for-age.  Then there's the King George VI Steeplechase in the winter, and the Cheltenham Gold Cup in the spring.  Bingo!  All on  Jockey Club racecourses, so that makes things even easier.  Now, get me the email address for General Motors' marketing department ...

Of course it would be better if this three-race series was sponsored externally (ie not by bookmakers or companies controlled by racing enthusiasts, such as William Blenkiron of Middle Park Stud or Colonel Bill Whitbread, two of racing's great benefactors who instituted ground-breaking sponsorships) just as it would be better if the British Champions' Series was; or the Derby, or the Grand National.  But until the creators of our brave new world actually do what they are meant to do (ie attract Ben, and then be seen to have attracted Ben, rather than merely antagonise Brian to no purpose - again, their phraseology, not mine) that, sadly, isn't an option.  Until such time as it is, the patronage of the few patrons which racing does have is even more valued than it would be if we had other options (and any patronage will always be valued, however many other options we have).  And only a fool would tell our patrons otherwise.

Today's illustrations (seven pictures of Wasabi and Hugh taken on Bury Hill around 10.15 am, and one of Stan in the yard an hour or so later ) make the day seem more clement than it was.

Comme il faut

Here's a nice story.  Well, I think it's nice.  Yesterday Hugh and I headed towards Bury Hill, as our horses often do.  There were some horses jumping off on the canter while we were 300m or so away from it, but I didn't pay much attention and we were too far away to see whose they were.  By the time we set off, no other horse was in sight.  (You can see the first couple of furlongs, but after that the canter is out of sight, over the brow of the first hill).  I set off in front on Russian Link, doing a routine canter.  We went past the exit on the first bend just before halfway of this 10-furlong canter, noticing that some of James Fanshawe's horses were walking away from the canter, having got off at that exit.

I wasn't looking where I was going, but that's fine: if you're looking down at the horse's neck, which is the most comfortable way of riding, you can still see a short way in front of you, and on an AW canter there's no scope for getting lost.  Coming round the last bend, I looked up - and was stunned to see two of Jane Cecil's horses hack-cantering at trotting speed about 100m ahead of me.  What the f***?  Where the h:*** had they sprung from?  Obviously I was closing fast, but Russian Link's an easy ride, as is Hugh's mount Saleal, and it was no problem to pull up to a walk before we ran into the back of them.  And they, in turn, walked off the canter, which was kind.  We eventually set off at a trot again past them, and then cantered slowly the last 300m up to the top.

The Heath rules are fairly straightforward: if your horses are going faster than a routine canter, it's your responsibility to ensure that you allow any horses in front of you enough space so that you don't run up behind or past them; if your horses are going slower than a routine canter, it's your responsibility to ensure that any horses coming up behind you are forewarned of your slowness before they jump off, so that they know to give you plenty of space and don't get their exercise messed up.  (Or if your horses get on halfway, as I think that these horses had, it's your responsibility to make sure that you don't thus impede any horses who have got on at the start).  It was no big deal, though.  Shane Featherstonehaugh, on the feisty-looking filly at the back, apologised to us, I apologised to them, and as you'd hope between civilized people, it was all very jovial and life went on happily.

Anyway, what was nice was that later in the morning Hugh and I were riding down the Moulton Road when a car pulled over and a man got out.  It was George Scott, who started out round the corner from here with Mark Tompkins, then worked for Michael Bell, then went to America, and who has now succeeded Michael Marshall as the Warren Place assistant.  Anyway, George came over and apologised for their two horses having got in our way, saying that it had been Joyeuse's first canter for a while, that she was very fresh and feisty, and that they'd just been giving her a really quiet exercise; and that he was sorry if we had been inconvenienced.

Wasn't that impressive?  It had been no skin off our noses at all, and I wouldn't have expected George to apologise even if we'd bumped into him, because there was nothing to apologise for; so for him to go out of his way to do so was remarkable.  Furthermore, their filly is Frankel's half-sister, one of the best two-year-old fillies in the country, trained in the best stable in the country and owned by one of the most respected owners; and ours are two unremarkable horses from an insignificant stable.  George's courtesy was remarkably impressive.  Courtesy was always Henry's hallmark, and the upshot of all this was that it was lovely to be reminded that, with decent people like Shane and George in key positions, the stable ought to be in safe hands as Jane heads towards her first new season in charge.

So that was nice, as was yesterday's weather, as you can see.  (You can see Shane and Joyeuse in the first paragraph - at Lingfield in May, when the filly made a winning debut - and then yesterday's nice weather in the next four).  And what was also nice yesterday was the discovery that Fen Flyer's rating has increased by 67% because of last week's run at Kempton.  You might wonder why this is good news; but when a horse is rated 30, you're naturally keen for his rating to rise.  This 20lb increase is the highest any horse whom I have trained has risen for one run, but not the greatest percentage increase: Quakeress' rating doubled (from 15 to 30) for her win in a seller at Wolverhampton in January 2001 under an apprentice called Jamie Spencer.  So that was good for Fen Flyer - and yesterday was good too for his jockey Paddy Aspell (pictured here on him on the Al Bahathri last month) as he rode a winner at Southwell for Phil McEntee, his first winner since moving south to Newmarket a couple of months ago.

Satisfying

We had two winners in August (although if you read the Form Book you'd think we only had one because, while Gift Of Silence's win at Yarmouth is included, Take Me There's Town Plate success isn't) but since then we've hardly had a horse run well, never mind win.  Ethics Girl ran OK at Bath in September, notwithstanding the fact that she finished maybe eighth, but that's about it.  So that barren patch made Fen Flyer's third place on a clear autumn evening at Kempton yesterday even better, and it was good enough anyway.

Fen Flyer was previously trained by one of the best trainers in Britain, Chris Dwyer, but his form for Chris was very poor, simply because Chris had him as a two-year-old and spring three-year-old, when he wasn't ready for racing, physically or mentally.  He ended up rated 30, and being something of a problem child.  The upshot was that, as he had become a bad box-walker, the decision was taken that he would come to somewhere where the horses spend plenty of time outdoors, so he came here - and as he'd had a year out of training in the interim and had matured a lot in that time, we had a decent chance of finding him a much better horse.

It could not, though, of course be guaranteed that he would indeed improve.  He'd been doing everything right at home - but then that possibly wouldn't mean anything, especially with his workmate Russian Link seemingly being unable to keep up in a poor 11-furlong maiden on Monday, which seemingly suggested that he'd be completely unable to cope in a 7-furlong race yesterday (although, as we are so often reminded, home work is only a very, very rough guide to how they'll run on the course, if taken merely at face value).  As, indeed, did his rating of 30.  As it turned out, though, he did himself proud
.

He did everything right on raceday, travelling down well, not box-walking in the stable-yard, keeping his cool in the parade ring, cantering down to the start relaxedly, behaving at the start - and running well to finish third.  And the icing on the cake was that he was completely unstressed afterwards, and seems to have come out of the race very well.  So that was lovely.  Even if one were accustomed to having horses run well it would have been a very, very pleasing day; but we aren't, so it was extra-good.

What was also good about our trip to Kempton last night was that we were the first race (4.20, just before dusk) and then the second race winner was trained by our neighbour Mark Tompkins.  This was great.  Mark is in the same boat that we're in, having had a very quiet season, so it was great to see him win a two-year-old maiden with a staying-bred Beat Hollow filly.  And he'd had a two-year-old run second in a maiden race the previous day too.  So that's nice - and another of our neighbours, Willie Musson, is in great form, having had four winners in the past couple of weeks, while Charlie McBride had a winner earlier this week, and Don Cantillon took two horses to Wincanton on Saturday and both ran very well to be placed.  So that's all good
.

And what was particularly nice today was that Toby Coles, who isn't exactly in our little corner but who is not far away in the Fordham Road and definitely qualifies as a member of our gang, trained a 33/1 two-year-old winner, the first winner for his young apprentice Alfie Warwick.  Toby too has endured a very quiet season, so that was great to see.  On which subject, I should credit him with brahma of the day yesterday.  He'd hosted a lovely dinner party on Saturday night in honour of his girl-friend Rolline's birthday, stipulating that one should come in fancy dress, inspired by "What I always wanted to be".

It was easy for me as I just wore normal clothes (jeans, shirt) and then donned an Akubra, being either the Man From Snowy River or his mentor, Clancy of the Overflow.  (And if you don't know them, read A. B. 'Banjo' Paterson's poems 'Clancy of the Overflow' and 'The Man From Snowy River' - and for light relief see if you can find the modern skit 'Nancy of the Overtime' - and I have to admit that I fall well, well short of Clancy's description, "And Clancy of the Overflow came down to lend a hand / No better horseman ever held the reins / And never horse could throw him while the saddle girth held tight / He'd learned to ride while droving on the plains").

Anyway, I'd assumed that Toby, as an Old Harrovian, would just wear and Old Etonian tie, but he surprised me by dressing (very authentically and with typical panache) as Sir Walter Raleigh.  Anyway, word had later reached me that after I'd gone home on Saturday, several of the party had gone to de Niro's, the infamous 'night club'.  When I saw Toby last night, I hit him with, "I hear that you ended up in de Niro's on Saturday night.  Please, please, please tell me that you were still Sir Walter Raleigh when you did".  To which Toby came up with the excellent reply, "I might be mad, but I'm not stupid"!  Good one.

First three photographs taken at Kempton last night.  The remainder taken today (Friday).

Clutching at straws

Sunday was a really lovely day and today has been quite nice too, albeit that it rained all night and didn't stop until after first lot this morning.  However, just to illustrate the vagaries of this weird climate in which we live nowadays, yesterday was a shocker.  All the while I was driving, I was driving through rain - but happily it only drizzled intermittently while I was at Kempton.  Which was good as Russian Link's run wasn't particularly satisfactory.  She ran in the 4.20 and I was thinking that it was nice to race at Kempton in the winter season in daylight, and it was still semi-daylight for her race.

However, that's about the best one can say about it from our point of view.  Eleven furlongs with a small field (six) of largely moderate horses - and she seemed unable to go the pace at any stage.  She took forever to muster speed, and then was struggling shortly afterwards anyway.  She was under pressure the last seven furlongs - but, weirdly, didn't get tired, and ran on strongly after the line. And hardly blew at all afterwards.  Were she a debutante, it would be easy to understand; but it was her fifth run, so she should know a bit about what is required.  Still, it was a good trial for races about three times the length.  And she enjoyed herself and behaved impeccably throughout, so maybe all is not lost.  Town Plate 2017, perhaps!

AW winter season ahead

We haven't had a runner for three or four weeks, so it'll be good to head off to Kempton tomorrow with Russian Link, our first runner of the new AW winter season (which begins tomorrow).  She's eligible for handicaps and is rated 60, but I'm running her in a (median auction) maiden race, which tells you that it's a weak maiden.  There are six runners and it would be disappointing if she doesn't make the frame - the only drawback, of course, being that she looks very unlikely to win, the favourite being predicted to go off at 1/6.  But she'll give it her best shot, and she's well and happy, as you can see here (today).

As you can see from today's photographs, it's been a lovely day.  Fairly cold obviously (but that's what one would expect in the second week of November) but brilliantly sunny.  Not a cloud in the sky at the outset - and, remarkably, it stayed that way all day long, which was really lovely; and doubly so because we've had a week or more in which one band of rain has followed another.  It's been grim - but today was lovely and, while I think that we might get some rain tomorrow, the rest of the week is forecast to be largely dry, which will be a big help.

So we might be rained on at Kempton, but largely we can look forward to the week (and later in the week to running Fen Flyer, whose ears you can see in a few photographs in today's chapter, all taken today).  On the subject of Kempton, it's worth mentioning that, as far as I can see, the levels of prize money offered over the winter at that course, owned by Jockey Club Racecourses, is exactly the same as that on offer at the ARC tracks, which is remarkable as ARC is constantly reviled for its poor prize money.

ARC's prize money is indeed poor, very poor in fact, but it's perhaps worth pointing out that Jockey Club Racecourses appear to offer exactly the same levels (or less, when one bears in mind that Southwell sometimes makes its races slightly more valuable than the norm, presumably because the track, because of its appalling surface, often struggles for runners).  On which subject, it possibly behoves me to make a few comments on the issue of racing on Good Friday.  Basically, I'm surprised that this created the stink that it did.  From the point of view of running a stable, Sunday racing is a far greater inconvenience than racing on weekday Bank Holidays.  As far as I can see, racing on Good Friday is much less of a problem for anyone running a stable than racing on (Easter) Sunday.

Theologically, I think that the same observations apply.  Is racing on the day on which our Lord was crucified any more offensive than racing on the day on which he was resurrected?  I can't see that it is - and, again, we already race on Easter Sunday, without the chattering classes getting too upset about things.  In fact, I'd suggest that, theologically, racing on Good Friday is less of a problem than racing on Easter Sunday.  And, of course, it's worth remembering that any trainer who wishes not to run horses on a Sunday (or on Good Friday) is at liberty to put his principles into practice, as the late and admirable Mikey Heaton-Ellis proved.

As regards those who say that we shouldn't race on Good Friday because the staff have to have one day off - well, words fail me that anyone could make that observation, other than people who have no idea whatsoever about how training stables work.  Days on which the stable does not have a runner are not days off for the staff (more's the pity, one might say!).  One tries to give staff as much time off as is feasible at weekends, but weekdays, at least, are generally normal working days, whether the stable has a runner or not.  In general, on Bank Holidays I don't have anyone (other than myself) working in the afternoon unless we have a runner, but I'd be surprised if there's a single stable in the land which works on the basis of giving the staff the day off on Good Friday.  Having runners on a Sunday is a massive inconvenience as it does mean at least one person working who would otherwise be off, but racing on Good Friday - well, by comparison it's not an issue at all.

I'm glad that the Lesters have come off the list of factors which might influence whether racing takes place on Good Friday.  The racing will be in the afternoon, not the morning, so if any jockey wishes to go to the Lesters and stay over in Birmingham, then he'll have time to get to the races.  And if he doesn't want to go to the races, well, he doesn't have to.  If he wants to get so drunk that he wouldn't be up to riding again the next afternoon (and it would be disappointing if he did) then again he doesn't have to ride.  Because of injury and suspension, no jockey rides every day of the year, so he has plenty of opportunities to get blind drunk and not ride the next day as it is.

Furthermore, I hope that racing on Good Friday won't be used as an excuse not to hold the Lambourn and Middleham Open Days.  Sunday racing was wrongly used as an excuse to terminate the Newmarket Open Day towards the end of the last century, but happily we've seen the light (2012 and onwards) and realised that stables can open on a raceday without things being a problem.  And the idea of upgrading the winter AW programme, putting on more higher-class and better-funded races through the winter, and then having a very valuable raceday in the spring restricted to horses who have run at least three times on the AW over the winter is a very good idea.  It's good for the winter AW programme, and it's good for the people who have horses good enough to contest such races.

So that's that - and I can't, of course, finish this chapter without pointing out (as you'd probably already noticed) that Barry Geraghty fell of Grandouet at the last fence in the novices' chase at Sandown yesterday because he lost his right stirrup a stride after the fence, an unseating which wouldn't have happened if he'd had his full foot in the stirrup.  And this last photograph was taken up at Tattersalls this afternoon, where the Newmarket British Legion held a very moving Remberance Service at which racing's chaplain Rev. Graham Locking (who nowadays is also chaplain to our branch of the British Legion) gave an excellent sermon.  This town and the racing community in general is blessed to have him.  I've heard a rumour that we're to lose him - let's hope that that's not true.

Tired

I really enjoyed our overnight coverage of Flemington's Melbourne Cup card. Surprisingly, bearing in mind that I'd had a very busy day yesterday, I got through the whole show without getting drowsy or finding time dragging at all.  And that's a great tribute to how good the racing was.  What I didn't enjoy was coming out of the studio at 4.30 am and finding, to my consternation, that once again a lovely (if fairly chilly) day had turned into a stormy night.  It was cold, windy and raining fairly hard.  Things have been a bit of a struggle since then.

I found myself getting very drowsy on the drive home so pulled over for 20 minutes for a nap (or a power nap, as our friend Richard Sims would say - and anyone who has been exposed to Dickie over the years will have been told of the supposedly revivifying effects of the power nap - and I must say that it did me good) which really helped.  Since then it's been hard work, but that's been as much as the horrible weather as my lack of sleep.  I've actually got through the day OK - it's just been that it has remained cold, wet and windy, and such conditions are a struggle at the best of times.

Anyway, this horrible weather is part of the cause of our re-jigged plans which see us with zero, rather than two, runners this week.  It had been the plan to run Frankie (Douchkirk) at Chepstow tomorrow, but he seems to find it easy enough to find excuses to under-perform at the best of times, so running him on/in a quagmire would seem to be asking for a disappointment.  It was already "soft, heavy in places" at declaration time with a forecast for tomorrow of "heavy rain all day, 12 to 15 mm" so I'd say the only chance of their not racing on a quagmire would be if racing were abandoned.  So Frankie can wait awhile - as must Fen Flyer, whom I declared for Lingfield on Thursday but who was one of the six horses declared for the race who were eliminated.  So that leaves us hoping that our next runner will be Russian Link at Kempton on Monday.

Oh yes, the brahma.  After my toe-in-the-iron musings, it was too good to be true that the (very good - Nash Rawiller) jockey of a favourite (this year's Royal Ascot winner Opinion, who is still raced by a Highclere syndicate but who is now trained by Chris Waller, rather than Michael Stoute) should lose a stirrup as his mount jumped awkwardly from the stalls in one of our Flemington races today.  Nash couldn't get the iron back, so kicked his other foot out of the stirrup a furlong or so later, which ended the horse's chances.  The partnership did get round intact, but completely tailed off.  From the point of view of my musings, this debacle could hardly have been better timed!

Photos in this chapter taken this week, reminding me that we have had some better weather, with Frankie in the first two photos, Fen Flyer's ears in the third, and Russian Link in the fourth (and distantly in the third).

Tonight's the night

In theory I should be having a nice quiet day today to keep me fresh for my overnight stint in the At The Races studio for the Melbourne Cup coverage.  That, of course, is not happening - but, then again, if Matt Chapman is on form, I probably won't be required to say very much tonight anyway.  Anyway, I'm sure that I'll get through the night OK - it's just tomorrow (Tuesday) that might be quite a struggle.  It used to be easy when the ATR studio was in London and I could sleep on the train on the way home, but the 70 minutes' drive back from Milton Keynes at dawn after no sleep might be a test - and then the rest of the day will be even more testing.

Anyway, roll on the night.  As things stand, my three against the field look like being Verema, Fiorente and Simenon, with Voleuse De Coeurs and Dandino being the two who might be vying for a position in my final three.  It's going to be very exciting.  And let's hope that it's a lovely sunny day for the 100,000+ racegoers at Flemington, just like today was here (as you can see in these three photographs) which was lovely, as was yesterday - with, unbelievably, about eight hours of steady rain overnight in between times, meaning that the property is saturated once again.

Oh yes, one other thing.  The full foot in the stirrups.  Peter Gunn, probably best remembered as Buzzard's Bay's jockey (although unfortunately not in the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes at Ascot) has pointed out to me that he, too, still rides with his full foot in the iron, so that's another one of us keeping the old standards up on the Heath.  I'd imagine that Smad Place's many backers at Huntingdon yesterday would prefer it if Robert Thornton adopted a similar practice.

Robert gave a classic illustration of the folly of race-riding with one's toes in the irons, falling off Smad Place when well clear at the last fence because his left foot slipped out of the strirrup.  He's a terrific rider and would not have fallen off had he not lost his stirrup - but he did, and so he did.  Which was unfortunate, even if it came with the consolation of providing a timely illustration of my point.  There is, you see, some merit in living in the past.