Profit and loss | 14 February 2013

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 for the Glasgow Herald. I am not sure it worked the full miracle in his case, but racing is a true leveller with triumph and disaster as closely interlocked as the English and Irish scrums through their 80 minutes of mud-wrestling last weekend.

On Monday last week, the most exciting hurdler in training, J.P. McManus’s Darlan, trained by Nicky Henderson, came to the final obstacle at Doncaster full of running. One mis-step and the ante-post favourite for the Champion Hurdle went down in a heavy fall, which ended his life and shattered his jockey Tony McCoy. For Nicky and his staff there was the infinite, though not unfamiliar, sadness of returning home with empty tack to focus moist eyes on a vacant  box, the highest of hopes transformed in an instant to sorrowful memory of a horse who had excited all who handled him.