Enough of these two-year-old babies and equine whippets racing over the length of a few suburban lawns. Not a moment too soon it is time for hardier sorts and for the winter sport, for sturdy mud-stained limbs and exhaled breath hanging in dank November air. First, though, some past business, and I fear that if
I will never agree with the video referee in England’s World Cup final, even if he produces a certificate signed by every member of the Royal College of Opticians. Though the South Africans deserved their victory, for me Mark Cueto’s effort will always be a try. But officials are not always wrong. The Newmarket stewards
He may, unusually, have a Cambridge economics degree but nobody in racing looks the part better than John Gosden. The panama or brown trilby according to the weather. The upright physical presence of a man you could easily imagine as a battalion commander. The crinkle of experience about eyes which have studied the racing scene
‘Any fool can get a horse fit to run,’ I have been told by many a trainer. ‘It’s getting inside their minds that counts.’ Particularly with slow learners. Newbury’s card last Saturday produced plenty of traditional scenes — a Group winner for Barry Hills, the richest handicap of the day falling to Luca Cumani, a
Former US champion jockey Eddie Arcaro has entered the new Oxford Dictionary of Quotations with his comment, ‘When a jockey retires he becomes just another little man.’ Former US champion jockey Eddie Arcaro has entered the new Oxford Dictionary of Quotations with his comment, ‘When a jockey retires he becomes just another little man.’ Nobody
Rider Mick Fitzgerald was asked by his careers master when still at school what he wanted to be. ‘I’ve half a mind to be a jump-jockey,’ he declared. ‘Good,’ replied the laconic pedagogue, ‘because that’s all you’ll need.’ Fitzgerald is actually one of the brightest men in the saddle, but though the thrills of the
It is before 7 a.m. in the office at Lambourn’s Kingsdown Stables It is before 7 a.m. in the office at Lambourn’s Kingsdown Stables. Trainer Jamie Osborne is on his own but brews fresh coffee from a cafetière, served in matching mugs. Jamie, who always had style as well as courage in the saddle, does
The late Jim Callaghan told a few of us one day about life in the House of Lords after being an MP in the Commons. ‘In the Commons you wonder if you’ll survive the next election. In the Lords you wonder if you’ll live until Christmas.’ On his first day in the Lords, the Whip
Keeping thin enough to star in your sixties comes hard, and the recently sadly deceased George Melly once inquired of Mick Jagger why the rock supremo’s face was so lined. ‘Laughter lines,’ replied the Rolling Stone. Keeping thin enough to star in your sixties comes hard, and the recently sadly deceased George Melly once inquired
We had been through so much together. Racing not just on the domestic scene but also in Melbourne, Mauritius and Maisons-Lafitte. Together over 15 years we had been bird-watching in Venezuela, Costa Rica and the Gambia, Madagascar and the Isle of Mull. But at Newmarket last Saturday somebody relieved me of my long-cherished Zeiss binoculars.
Sadly the racing season both for pure-bred Arabians and even for camels was over when I was in Qatar last weekend. But I did discover that Arab mums, like British trainers, tend to wear rose-tinted spectacles. ‘To an Arab mother,’ the Gulf saying goes, ‘every donkey is a gazelle.’ I do rather like, too, the
There is no cannier, or more careful, man in racing than Sheriff Hutton trainer Mick Easterby, 76 this weekend. If he didn’t exist, Yorkshire would have to hew him out of Wensleydale stone. He says he would like to win the Lottery and spend all his days counting, not spending, the money. He collects farms
George Bernard Shaw once asked a female acquaintance on a cruise ship, ‘Will you sleep with me for £10,000?’, and received an affirmative answer. When he followed up by asking her, ‘Would you sleep with me for £10’, the lady took considerable umbrage, demanding furiously, ‘What do you think I am?’ ‘That,’ said the playwright,
Newmarket it isn’t. Forget clipped hedges, purring security gates and decorated dovecotes. At Gary Moore’s yard in Woodingdean there isn’t even a name over the stables the other side of the road from the ten-furlong start on Brighton’s racetrack. I’ve seen grander allotment huts than the cluster of wooden and breezeblock stables stretching down the
There was at least one game girl on the race train back from Newbury on Saturday. ‘You didn’t smell very good on the sofa this morning,’ the carriage heard her tell a potential swain on her mobile. ‘But if you’re up for a celebration tonight then I am, too.’ On the basis of a flat-mate’s
What makes a successful racehorse trainer? Patience and an eye for detail. Man management and a flair for publicity. But the right genes help, too, and there Nick Gifford, the handler of the first-class hurdling prospect Straw Bear, does have an advantage. Son of the former trainer and ex-champion jockey Josh Gifford and of an
A punting friend at Kempton Park told me about the school class last week who were asked to stand up and talk about what their fathers did for a living. The sons of bakers and binmen, stockbrokers and scaffolders all happily recounted their parents’ daily routines. But one little lad at the back refused to
While you don’t have to be a masochist to be a jump jockey it surely helps. You can expect a fall, on average, every 13 rides and it is the only profession in which you are followed round by an ambulance. Self-flagellation, too, seems to be part of the picture. Former champion jockey Richard Dunwoody
When I’m good I’m very good, but when I’m bad I’m better In a Cary Grant film in which she effectively played herself, Mae West declared, ‘When I’m good I’m very good, but when I’m bad I’m better.’ Exotic Dancer, the six-year-old trained by Jonjo O’Neill who runs in the familiar pink silks of Sir
Required by the day job to be in St Andrews on Friday night, reporting the latest example of governmental hope over experience in the Northern Ireland power-sharing talks, I was determined still to make it to Champions’ Day at Newmarket. Sir Percy’s first appearance since the Derby, a cracking contest for the Cesarewitch and the