When he was awarded the Cartier award of merit for his lifetime contribution to racing, trainer Barry Hills insisted that racing should continue to be fun, and if that meant a little bit of skulduggery then so what. It drew the biggest applause of the evening.
It has been a bizarre year for the racing community who exist in a strange limbo somewhere between sport and business. The racing itself has been fun. When the young pretender Long Run took on two former Gold Cup winners at Cheltenham and beat both Denman and Kauto Star, the race had everything: power, athleticism, canny professionalism, youthful exuberance and sheer class. In the Flat season to follow we had the mighty Frankel to admire as he extended his unbeaten sequence to nine, including victories in the 2,000 Guineas and the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes at Ascot on the new Champions’ Day.
Racing politics, though, proved even more depressing than the Westminster variety.
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