Many worry these days about the quality of British racing. Racecards are stuffed with low-rated handicaps for poor-quality animals simply to keep the betting-office tills churning. But the quality of the men and women steering them from the saddle has never been higher. You could not expect to see a better example of riding from
Half an hour before it might have been Armageddon. The sky was black as pitch and the rain was bucketing down, not the happiest sound in a yard which two years ago was flooded out. But as an athletic bunch of horses jingled round the copper beech in Harry Dunlop’s trotting circle the atmosphere was
Newmarket trainer William Haggas should be one of racing’s ambassadors to the world. Win or lose he communicates pleasure. Take Triple Aspect’s victory at Sandown on Saturday in the Agfa Listed sprint. ‘He’s a really scrubby little thing and he moved to post like a goat,’ declared the candid trainer. ‘But he’s really genuine and
The poet says you are nearer God’s heart in a garden than anywhere on earth. Goodwood on a summer day with sun gleaming off chestnut flanks, Jamie Spencer and George Baker swooping sweetly and just enough breeze to ruffle the mini skirts does it even better. Admittedly, the Almighty let me down on Saturday when
Mother of Parliaments? More like the Ugly Sister of Parliaments these days. But without an expenses system like a roulette wheel permanently fixed to pay up, how can the rest of us find the money to have our moats cleared and our helipad hedges trimmed? As usual the Twelve to Follow relies on a scientific
There are trainers who greet winners by noisily embracing their owners, planting smackers on everything in sight from the horse to the clerk of the course and suddenly becoming voluble blood brothers with racing writers they have previously shunned like slugs in their lettuce. And then there is John Oxx, the Irish maestro from whom
If she was human Rainbow View would be a stroppy teenager, chucking down her school satchel and heading straight out to the sort of club you wouldn’t want your daughter in. One word from a parent and she would do the other thing. Threaten a smacked bottom and she’d be off to the child protection
There is nothing quite like Aintree’s Ladies Day on Grand National Friday when the girls emerge from local tanning salons, whatever the weather, in roaming she-packs of wispy chiffon. No opportunity to add an extra bow or ra-ra flounce is neglected. Only the shy ones stop at bottom-hugging red satin and six-inch glitter heels. For
East Ilsley is the ideal English village, with a pub, a church and a village duckpond, where moorhens pick their spinsterly way across the mud fringes. Blackbirds trill a welcome from the mellow brick walls. Round the corner, past the allotments is Summerdown Stables, where a feisty two-year-old colt is banging hell out of the
The Wagnerian tenor Lauritz Melchior was supposed to conclude an operatic scene one night by leaping upon a mechanical swan gliding across the stage. Unfortunately the appointed swan arrived, and departed, before he had concluded the key aria. More than a little miffed by the failings of the production team, Melchior turned to the audience
I like the sound of the restaurant that has apparently opened in a former bank with a banner urging ‘Put your mouth where your money was’. Actually, after Kempton on Saturday, there is a little more of it than there usually is. Money, that is. I cannot recall the last time I had five winners
There is no certainty today. For years we humble wage-earners were told that City bankers were sage repositories of special expertise who could be entrusted with that little that is left when the taxman and the bookies have finished with us. In reality, it turns out, they were greedy spivs who knew no more about
Racing isn’t just about speed and style. Sometimes it is all about sheer guts. On trials day at Cheltenham, with the tacky ground sucking the life out of every leg, with every extra pound on a horse’s back feeling double on the lung-busting uphill drive to the post, courage mattered. It was one of those
One of my favourite spectator sports is sitting, glass in hand, watching Mrs Oakley in the kitchen. There will be a stock reducing here, a pan with a few chopped leeks and onions there. A pinch of this, a sprinkle of that. A handful of coriander and a scrinch of lemon, a shlurp of rather
When, back in the mists of history, I proposed to Mrs Oakley (in the rather naff Caribbean cocktail bar of what seemed at the time to be a fashionable London venue patronised by a set we could not afford to join) I prefaced my question with a long preview about the perils of marrying a
The clatter of hooves in the stable yard, the smell of the work riders’ bacon butties drifting in the air. Warmly wrapped trainers and bloodstock agents scratching at their catalogues. Horses breezing in pairs down the Kempton straight in the misty early morning. When CNN sent me out last Friday to see what effect the
Eat your heart out, Stubbs. Wrong century, Sir Alfred Munnings. After Nicky Henderson’s Jack the Giant had won the Carey Group Handicap Steeplechase at Ascot last Saturday and stood in the winner’s enclosure quietly steaming with that unmistakeable gleam of achievement in his eye, his proud trainer revelled in his commanding physicality. ‘Isn’t he just
‘Look here, Sunshine,’ I remember Eric Morecambe responding to a raised eyebrow from André Previn about the comedian’s musical efforts. ‘I am playing the right notes, just maybe not in the right order.’ My tipping goes like that too. For the previous Flat season I suggested that William Haggas’s Conquest might ‘pop up at a
Last year’s Flat jockeys’ championship was a classic, an intriguing all-out battle to the last week of the season, with Seb Sanders and Jamie Spencer sharing the title. So it was in 1987 when Pat Eddery and Steve Cauthen slugged each other into total exhaustion as Cauthen won 197–195. This year the title has long
Was that the chairman of Coutts I saw emptying his pockets of wads of twenties round the Ascot betting ring on Saturday? Was that the CEO of HBOS in front of me in the Tote queue investing exclusively on 100–1 shots? Illusions, of course. It must have been the unaccustomed glare of sunshine which greeted