I was once at a racing dinner in York where a distinguished clergyman in attendance was invited to say grace. ‘I won’t, if you don’t mind,’ he told our hosts. ‘I would rather not draw the Almighty’s attention to my presence here.’ There is a slight whiff of rascality about the racing scene which deters
Racing’s New Year began well with the award of OBEs to both Nicky Henderson and Paul Nicholls, showing that they do get some things right at No. 10 and the palace. It would have been monstrous for either of our two best jumps trainers to have been left out when the other was honoured. We
The master plan in acquiring our flatcoat retriever puppy Damson was that as folk no longer with full-time jobs we would invest our time in producing a perfectly trained dog. On New Year’s Day the growing gap between intention and reality was acknowledged. Damson is affectionate, fun and beautiful — frequently admired by passing strangers.
Storm clouds may be rumbling over racing’s future financing in terms of gambling legislation but 2019 offered no shortage of happy memories. The emergence of the once-bumptious Oisin Murphy as a modest, articulate and thoughtful champion jockey. The pulsating battle between two previous winners in this year’s King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes when
Whatever the outcome of the election on 12 December, it is unlikely to bring joy to the racing community. Conservatives and Labour are planning to review or replace the Gambling Act and they won’t be doing so intending to increase the amounts trousered by the bookmakers. Sadly, the way things have long been organised means
I can only be sorry for the 67,496,581 citizens of the UK who were not at Cheltenham last Saturday. For the 33,591 of us who were there, it could not have been a more heart-warming, thrilling and character-filled way of escaping from the insulting knavery of election politics and the sourness of the weather that
Never mind Keats’s mists and mellow fruitfulness, or even that glorious autumnal odour of wet dog — a regular accompaniment to my life thanks to our flatcoat retriever puppy’s arrival. The best thing about autumn is the return of the jumping scene proper with the big yards finally taking the rugs off their hotshot hurdlers
In the second race of a heart-stirring Qipco Champions Day at Ascot the unthink-able happened: on Britain’s favourite stayer Stradivarius, winner of his previous ten races, the King of Ascot Frankie Dettori got beaten. In fact, in going down by just a nose to Aidan O’Brien’s St Leger winner Kew Gardens on heavy ground that
Two hours after showing her father, the Marquess of Anglesey, the wedding dress in which she was to marry the country squire Henry Chaplin, Lady Florence Paget took a carriage to Marshall & Snelgrove’s department store. Leaving by a side entrance, she was escorted to St George’s Church in Hanover Square where she married Harry
With shorter days and leaves falling, I begin to itch for the more sporting, less obviously commercial world of jump racing. But Newbury’s classy card last Saturday, sponsored for the 24th year by Dubai Duty Free, proved the perfect reminder that the Flat too can provide character, good humour and success for the small battalions.
President Harry Truman once observed: ‘If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.’ Boris Johnson, as Prime Minister in the unfriendliest era British politics has known, and his girlfriend Carrie Symonds have taken on a Jack Russell puppy called Dilyn. They and I are therefore among the 24 per cent of UK citizens
Sorry is allegedly the hardest word to say — so Carolyn Harris, chair of the all-party parliamentary group studying gambling-related harm, scored a significant success recently by extracting apologies from a number of leading gambling-industry executives about the damage caused by their business. Representatives from Paddy Power Betfair, William Hill, Sky Bet and bet365 agreed
Carried away on a day at the races a successful businessman bid for and bought a horse from a seller. ‘What do I do now?’ he asked a trainer friend. ‘Find the lad who brought him here, slip him 20 quid and ask him to tell you everything he can about the animal.’ The crinkly
Before this year’s Shergar Cup meeting all I had seen of Australian flat jockey Mark Zahra was a memorably painful picture of him at Flemington racecourse on Melbourne Cup day some years ago, his red and white colours almost obliterated beneath the half-tonne bulk of War Story, an accident in which he could well have
It is stupid to become attached to inanimate objects but when modern technology finally forced me to ditch the Olivetti Lettera 32 mobile typewriter which had taken me round the world as a correspondent I truly felt the pangs of parting. In the same way I have been resisting Mrs Oakley’s insistence, repeated with increasing
Newmarket’s wisest trainer, Sir Mark Prescott, once noted: ‘The greyhound is propelled through the pain barrier by its desire to sink its teeth into the tantalising white bunny tail ahead of it. Humans are driven through it by the desire for riches and stardom. But what’s in it for the racehorse?’ His words came to
When Hayley Turner was made, she wasn’t just given a competitive spirit, a sensitive pair of hands and excellent balance. Somebody screwed her head on the right way too. Profiled by the Racing Post after becoming the first woman to ride a Royal Ascot winner for 32 years on Thanks Be, she was embarrassed to
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
There is a danger that memories of the 2019 Epsom Derby will be swamped by statistics. By training his seventh Derby winner in Anthony Van Dyck, the self-effacing Aidan O’Brien equalled the totals set by Robert Robson, John Porter and Fred Darling between 1793 and 1941. The first of Aidan’s Derby successes, Galileo in 2001,
