The turf
Godolphin drug affair
Working partnerships don’t always bring the results expected. I heard lately of a 12-year-old girl encouraged to spend a day on work experience with a relative in the building trade.… Read more
The turf: Robin Oakley tries to reconcile Henry Cecil with his biographer Brough Scott
The trouble with writing about people is their friends. Back when woolly mammoths roamed the earth and I was Crossbencher in the Sunday Express, I wrote admiringly about the burgeoning… Read more
The turf: Robin Oakley’s tips add up to a £300 profit
Talking to a shipboard audience last week about the perils of journalism, I warned that the biggest danger of our trade was making assumptions. I had in mind my favourite… Read more
The Turf: Robin Oakley's Grand National tips
Nothing hurts quite so much as the ones that get away. Unable to be at Cheltenham’s Festival the day the improving Holywell, one of this column’s Twelve to Follow, was… Read more
The Turf: Ladies’ tights in a jockey's pocket
The first time I met the jockey Andrew Thornton, at a hotel dinner, he had a pair of ladies tights sticking out of his pocket. No, he hadn’t just been… Read more
Determined force
Racing for me is all about hope, although the Irish training wizard Mick O’Toole did once declare, ‘Racing is a game of make-believe. If people didn’t have horses they thought… Read more
Profit and loss
In his days as Foreign Secretary Robin Cook once told me that every politician should have a spell as a racing tipster to teach him humility — he tried it… Read more
Sporting greats
I don’t just love jumping horses — I love the folk who train them and ride them and those who watch them doing it, too. Open the sports pages on… Read more
Ten for effort
Punting at Kempton Park in winter I have one basic rule. Take a long hard look at anything Nicky Henderson is running before you consider backing anything else. His record… Read more
Breaking news
It is all about how you impart bad tidings, I suppose, like the wife who told her husband one night, after the first drink: ‘The good news, darling, is that… Read more
National loyalty
‘The Grand National is a great race,’ one of Britain’s most respected racecourse chiefs told me over lunch the other day, ‘but in 2013 we’ll all be watching it from… Read more
Twelve to follow
Few experiences in racing are as guaranteed to cheer you up as a visit to Oliver Sherwood’s lovely yard in Upper Lambourn. Trying vainly to match strides with Oliver back… Read more
Winners and losers
My favourite racecourse-bar story this year involved a towel-clad jockey who had enjoyed his game of golf so much that in the shower room he demonstrated the iron shot that… Read more
The real McCoy
Luminaries interviewed in the Racing Post are often asked to name four people they would most like to have dinner with. Lucky enough to enjoy a pub lunch last week… Read more
Unbeaten Frankel
After Brad Wiggins’s Tour de France victory, Mo Farah’s Olympics successes and Andy Murray’s first Grand Slam title, any other result would have been unthinkable, so praise the Lord that… Read more
Staying on
Remember the one about the husband who goes home and gets clouted with a frying pan by his wife. ‘Hey, what’s that for?’ ‘I found a note in your suit… Read more
Watchability factor
Arriving in Halifax, Nova Scotia the other night to join a cruise ship for after-dinner talks, I found I was sharing my hotel with 250 women, every one of them… Read more
Quality will out
Ronald Reagan once told his staff that they were always to wake him if there was an emergency ‘even if I am in a Cabinet meeting at the time’. All… Read more
Praise indeed
Shortly after he became champion apprentice, when he was launching the next stage of his career from Mick Channon’s stables back in 2001, the lads nicknamed Chris Catlin the ‘Cat’.… Read more
Team spirit
Sometimes it is all about how you look at things, as was made clear to a clean-living accountant who had helped old ladies across the road, given generously to charity… Read more
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