The turf | 4 January 2018

Jeremy Clarkson wrote recently about a day at Newbury. He declared: ‘Claiming that horses are different is like saying ants have recognisable faces. They’re all just milk bottles. Identical.’ He went on to insist that ‘in horse racing there never is any action. It’s just meat running about.’ Pausing only to note that he was ‘taken into the paddock so people could take my picture’, Clarkson added that at summertime racing events such as Royal Ascot or the Melbourne Cup ‘women decide that in order to watch a horse running along they must not wear knickers and should fall over in the paddock every five minutes’.

For the Great Ego provocation is his default mode and self-promotion a religion but I have rarely read anything sillier. For a start, the only woman I have encountered on a racecourse with no knickers on was the one who pulled a pair out of her handbag as I sat beside her. She explained that there was a Tom Jones concert after the racing at which it was traditional for ladies of a certain age to wave their underwear aloft. But on a more serious note what Mr Clarkson totally failed to register was the skill and sheer bravery of what he saw. ‘Courage is the thing,’ said J.M. Barrie. ‘All goes if courage goes.’ And Newbury’s last meeting of the old year on ground heavy enough to suck the soles off your boots proved glorious confirmation of the many-sidedness of courage.

In the Challow Hurdle Adrian Heskin, riding the mud-loving Mulcahys Hill, enterprisingly slipped his field three hurdles out and bounded 15 lengths clear. On the favourite Poetic Rhythm Paddy Brennan had been niggling his mount along the back straight.