The turf | 20 June 2019

Boris Johnson, Remainers might like to be reminded, does sometimes change his mind under pressure. Some years ago, as editor of The Spectator, he dropped the then weekly Turf column, as he told me, ‘to provide more room for politics at the front of the magazine’. Fortunately for me, so many readers protested at its absence that he reinstated it, although on a fortnightly basis. That is why sometimes, given the necessary interval between copy submission and publication, there cannot be coverage that might be expected, as with Royal Ascot this week.

At next year’s meeting, one thing will have changed: the newest event on the Royal Ascot card, the Group One Commonwealth Cup for three-year-olds run over six furlongs, staged only for the past five years, will no longer be open to geldings. It is a decision that caused a minor kerfuffle and which might seem at odds with our less discriminatory times. Geldings, after all, are responsible for the bulk of the racing we watch. Last Saturday I went through the 14 races staged at York and Sandown, the two biggest meetings of the day. Of the 186 contestants, 24 were fillies and mares. In York’s 20-runner JCB Handicap, 18 of the 20 runners were geldings. Of the 162 male horses involved across the two cards, no fewer than 127 were geldings, that is to say they had been castrated to reduce testosterone levels. In some cases, this is done to help maintain the quality of the gene pool for breeding purposes; in most cases, though, it is done because geldings are better behaved, easier to handle and less inclined to sit at the back of the class thinking dirty thoughts when their jockeys are calling for concentration.

Some have contested the Ascot ruling.