As I have come to expect, and you cannot imagine how much I envy the quality of his writing, Lee Mottershead hits the nail on the head in the debate/dispute over whether geldings should take part in the Prix de I'Arc de Triomphe. The argument used by by Bozo the French tit and his chief supporters at Coolmore that geldings have an advantage over colts is shot to pieces by two vets quoted by Mottershead. Colts have more muscle mass - you only have to compare active stallions to a steeplechaser to understand the truth of that claim - over geldings and muscle mass can ensure more speed. It is true that a colt can improve both in temperament and in form when gelded but that does not equate to evidence that geldings have a distinct advantage over colts. How many former classic hopes that have failed to live-up to expectations...

If I ever read the breeding column of the Racing Post it will be James Thomas's Diary which is usually in the Sunday edition. Thomas is a skilled writer; he makes what can be a boring occupation come across as exciting as a close finish to a Wolverhampton maiden on a cold Saturday night. Close finishes are always intriguing if not damned right exciting whether they are at Wolverhampton, Wetherby or Cork.. He may have relied on hyperbole during the week when the crazy and stupid spilled out into the real world at Tatersalls as the filthy rich displayed their wealth with finger-raising and eyebrow twitching in the battle to win the honour of signing dockets for millions+ amount of guineas. You had to have been there, I suspect, to determine whether ego topped pride in the struggle to the best bred unknowns on the open market. It would be interesting...

Ruby's first piece for The Racing Post is a concise mash-up of all the factual and depressing failures that blight our sport, both sides of the Irish Sea, at the moment. I hope in future articles for The Racing Post that Ruby proposes some solutions for all that ails us, as anyone can tell his or her readers what we already know. Ruby has great observational skills, his analytical reprise of races has taken the craft of the 'expert' in racing to a whole new level. Yet the great racing brain he posssesses should be capable of proposals that might infuse the debate with the fire of exceptional thought that provide the answers that racing desperately needs. Giving readers the equation without providing the answer is something all of us can do; with Ruby I expect more. For instance, not that I boast I have any ready-made answers, I have suggested...

When David Jennings announced he was leaving The Racing Post, I was gutted as he was one of my favourite contributors to the paper. One week on and I sort of feel 'who was David Jennings?' The Racing Post has announced that from tomorrow the legend that is Ruby Walsh will be penning a Saturday article. Unlike with Mr. Jennings, we cannot expect much humour from Ruby Walsh, what we will get though is forthright opinions, scathing opinions and a good dose of common-sense. What the fabled analyst doesn't know about the sport is not worth knowing. One thing is for sure, I will be too scared of catching alight Ruby's choler to be sending in my thoughts on his thoughts to the letters column. I know my place, and it is a long way in arrears of Ruby. People generally love autumn because of the reds and oranges of the...

For anyone who might be wondering if life is really worth the effort, I suggest you do not read today's Racing Post. No matter that the 3-day Chepstow fixture over the coming days heralds the start of the National Hunt season proper, that on Saturday we have both the Dewhurst and the Cesarewitch to look forward to, as well as Champions Day the following Saturday, The Racing Post today is chock-a-block with all of racing's woes.  On the front page there is a story about the closure of betting shops and the loss that brings to local communities. Richard Forristal uses his column to regale his readers with the financial problems of French racing. Dragon Bet, the sponsors of Chepstow's Welsh Racing Festival, believe, no doubt rightly, that due to the structure of media rights payments horse racing 'is in a death spiral'. And what has come out of the Conservative...

The subject of horses' eyes has always intrigued me. Trawlerman's sensitivity to bright sunlight was evidence, in my opinion, that when looking for solutions to a horse losing its form, the eyes can be overlooked. It is the same when a horse starts falling in races after being considered a good jumper. Eye trouble might have been the cause of Constitution Hill's problem, though it was proven not to be as Nicky Henderson had the foresight to have his eyes checked-out. Which brings me to the appeal by the owner of Paddy The Squire to the result of a race at the latest Newbury fixture. Ryan Moore won the race on Balsac, trained by Jane Chapple-Hyam. At or around the furlong pole, Barsac veered away from the rails and 'impeded' Paddy The Squire, ridden by Andrew Mullen. On the day, the stewards saw no reason to reverse the placings which angered...

At the 60th Annual Federation of Horse Racing Authorities get-together yesterday, Princess Zahra Aga Khan spoke with passion about what the racing industry brings to rural communities. It was gladdening to hear someone from elite society speak with her feet firmly on the ground. Yes, she lives a privileged life and had the honour of being able to reference the Arc winning performance of Darys the day before, yet she reminded her influential audience that the perception of the outside world was that the racing industry is all about 'top hats and tails, and hats and heels', when in reality what goes on in the background is a lot of hard graft by a lot of working-class people. If I were to meet Princess Zahra and was able to conduct a conversation with her, the only topic of interest we would have in commom, as far as I could know, would...

'Obliterated', absolutely not Mr. Forristal. 'Great Champion', absolutely, Monsieur Graffard. There was only a smidge over 10-lengths between first and last in the Arc, so Richard Forristal's proclamation that Darys obliterated his rivals yesterday was well over the top. It has be said, though, that in winning two Arcs in succession, Darys has proved himself to be a rare beast, worthy of his trainer's belief that he is a great champion. As you may know I am afflicted with cynocism and I struggle to accept hyperbole when it comes to annoiting racehorses with superlatives such as 'one of the greats'. For Richard Forristal to suggest Darys obliterated the opposition is to put yesterday's performance on a par with Frankel's 2,000-guineas, Nijinsky's King George & Queen Elisabeth victory or even Mill Reef's Arc win. Darys for all his superiority did not win with his head in his chest, he won all-out -...

For the the first time since Ballydoyle got into full swing, Andrew Balding leads in the trainers' title race. Will he stay there, that is the question? I hope so as no one deserves the accolade more than the ever-consistent Balding team. Andrew believes it will be a tall order for him to become champion as he believes Aidan O'Brien will have a stronger team of runners for Champions Day than he will. What has helped him, though, is Scandanavia running at Longchamp yesterday rather than the Long Distance Cup at Ascot. Obviously Aidan will have others waiting in the win for that race, while Balding will perhaps not be represented. The advantage Balding holds over Aidan, as long as he comes out of Ascot in touching distance, is that the trainers' title extends for a full twelve-months and does not end until December 31st. It would be unlikely for Ballydoyle...

Let me tell you a story. Not a fictional story but a true story (cross-fingers). Once upon a time a student studying to become an environmental scientist was having a few qualms about what he was being told. He cared passionately about the state of the planet but was unable to correlate all the data of the time into the sorts of facts that would gain him a straight A or whatever the award is for being very good at university level. Seeking the truth, he decided to e-mail 300+ of the world leading climate scientists to ask them if they believed in the climate change narrative. Of that number less than 90 chose to reply. Of that 90, 95% were in complete agreement with the official climate warming narrative. That is where the 'nearly every climate scientist in the world is certain of climate warming' narrative came from. Of course,...

This is my vanity site, so anyone who visits this site, while acknowledging that they are as entitled to their views as I am, must indulge me when I give prominence to what I believe is important to the sport. I am often, I suspect, awry with some of my judgements and might easily cause offence with my views on matters such as climate change. None of which I will apologise for. The sport of horse racing is pivotal to my well-being, as it has been for the greater part of my life. When still at school, middle-teens, I gave-up playing football for the school as it clashed with the racing on t.v. At that stage I had not even been close-up to any type of horse, let alone patted one on the neck. So forgive me for returning so often to the issues and ideas that I feel are important...

Let's make no bones about it, in Simon Cox we may be about to throw the last dice in our dance with the devil. Too many lower case messiahs have come and gone from the B.H.A. without achieving anything more positive than making themselves more wealthy. At the start of his tenure, I was quite hostile to the appointment of Lord Allen, though I did warm to him a little once he took his seat at the B.H.A. He failed because first and foremost he was a businessman through and through and though horse racing may be an industry, it is also a sport and Lord Allen failed to grasp the concept of a marriage between the two. Although I thought initially there were more experienced people to take the helm at the B.H.A. than Simon Cox, now that I know more about him, that he has hands-on experience of the...

The Gran Premio del Jockey Club at San Siro is to be the next appearance of Constitution Hill. The Group 2 is on October 25th. I do think they have made a bit of a bollocks of this project. The September Stakes was a mistake, I now believe. In achieving a higher handicap mark they made so many otherwise suitable races unavailable to them and now they must chase glory in races that could easily attract either proven Group 1 horses in search of soft ground or a three-year-old that will become a Group 1 horse next season. As always, though, I hope Nicky Henderson once again proves me wrong. I do not concur with the cynics who believe Constitution Hill garners unwarrented attention. He remains the one equine superstar we have in this country and we are likely to only have him for another two-seasons at most. If only we...

At Market Rasen on Saturday, Willie Twiston-Davies vented his spleen on the topic of summer jumping. His view did not exactly mirror my opposition to the current summer jumping programme yet I understood his disquiet. Of course, being a critic of summer jumping has not stopped him and his father having runners over the summer. Indeed, yesterday at Newton Abbot the father/son combo trained two-winners, one ridden by the next jockey sensation Lucas Murphy, son of Timmy. My views on summer jumping tend to change with the wind. As W.T.D. himself hinted at, mentioning Killarney, I would like the summer jumping programme to focus on festival meetings consisting of 3 or 4-days fixtures, a formula that is a great success in Ireland. Where I chop'n'change is when the winter season should end and the summer season begin. I was content with the season ending with the old Whitbread meeting at Sandown...

Of course, Billy Loughnane will not accept he is a certainty to be the new champion jockey. He is too sensible than to assume the crown is his. He might suffer a fall today or tomorrow which puts him on the sidelines until after Champions Day and Oisin could then easily ride the 21-winners (currently) that would allow him to retain his title. But we know, barring unforeseen incidents, that Billy is going to take the crown from Oisin. In today's Racing Post, it is suggested that Loughnane will attempt to better both Sir Gordon Richard's total of 269-wins in a season and the record-breaking 289 of A.P. McCoy's. Of course, we are not talking exactness here. Sir Gordon's haul in 1947 came solely from a turf season of March to November, Loughnane has the advantage of artificial surfaces in January, February, half of March, half of November and December. And...

Occasionally, trainers come along whose training methods change the perception of how other trainers train their horses. These people are usually National Hunt trainers, Michael Dickenson and Martin Pipe come to mind. Yet no flat trainer seems minded to copy the training ethos of Aidan O'Brien, with the possible exception of his sons. 'Win or Learn' is the ethos of the O'Briens, with Aidan of the opinion that when a horse is fit and well the best policy is to keep running them until they tell you enough is enough. No other flat trainer of my lifetime, or as far as I can recall while sat here tip-tapping away, would run their best 2-year-old eight-times and still have one or two targets left to fulfil. If Aidan decides to run Sun Goddess twice more this season, finishing at the Breeders Cup, she will have run 10-times. The majority of top fillies...

No doubt I.T.V. will give prominence to the Cheveley Park and Middle Park Stakes today over the Cambridgeshire, even though the 3-day fixture is titled the Cambridgeshire meeting. To me, even though the former has still got the three most exciting 2-year-old fillies taking part, the two-year-old races are just support races to the main feature, the Cambridgeshire Handicap. Sun Goddess, Libertango and Senorita Bonita may be stars of the present but their real story will not be written until next season when we fill out whether they are merely sprinters or if one of them proves to be classic material. The Cambridgeshire is a now race, the winner no doubt reaching the height of his or her career. Of course, the favourite, Gavriel is being touted as 'a Group horse runing in a handicap' but that is yet to be proved. Many a potential 'group horse running in a handicap'...

Writing in The Racing Post today, Will Aitkenhead, head of Corporate and Industry Affairs for Ascot racecourse, assures readers that technology is a force for good and vitally needed to speed-up the time it takes to decide steward enquiries. He might be right. Personally I prefer the fallability of humans over the fallability of all-thing hi-techy. Stewards' enquiries do need to be speeded-up, that is unarguable. The easiest way to achieve this would be remove jockeys from the process. Not all jockeys are as sportsmanlike as Oisin Murphy and jockeys, in the main, are not fighting on their own behalf but in the best interests of the owner and trainer of the horse involved. It becomes a to and fro, with both jockeys asked their opinion of each others testimony. Yet it is not a trial, merely an enquiry and for those who lose the verdict there is always the possibility...

Love Me Tender is a 4-year-old, trained by Willie Mullins. He trotted up in a maiden hurdle at Listowel yesterday and is already being touted as a likely winner of one the novice hurdles at the Cheltenham Festival. Love Me Tender is a 5-year-old, trained by Willie Mullins for J.P. and runs in the Beginners Chase at Listowel today. Confused? I'm not so much confused as annoyed. The opening paragraph, one would assume, must be factually incorrect, don't you think? I am, after all, someone who cares little for research and study. Yet, the above is perfectly correct. Willie Mullins has under his care two young horses with the same name. It is perfectly feasible, if the 5-year-old does not take to fences, that the two horses with the same name could run in the same race. As proved today, both can run at the same meeting and in the future...

Yesterday, as you all will have noticed, the word 'owner' went missing from the title of the blig-blog. You see, initially I put Sheikh Ahmed bin Rashid Al Maktoum in the title, which of course would have made the title more of a paragraph than a short description of what lay in wait of readers. In reimagining the title is where I erred, only noticing the error when archiving the piece from my g-mail account. I tried to recover the situation but was unable, due to my I.T. ignorance, to gain access. I contacted the overseer of the site and despite his best efforts I could not locate the 'dashboard' - did not know I had one - and in exasperation, mainly of my uselessness in these matters, tried to live with my mistake. As you can imagine, this has proved difficult to achieve. Today we have the centrepiece of Listowel's...