Craig Thake, writing in the Another View column of The Racing Post today, asks an interesting question on the subject of horses and heat, with emphasis on the heatwave of June and perhaps the coming July heatwave, which is suggested to last much longer. Thake writes from the perspective of the punter, believing that knowledge of the temperature of when races were previously run would give the punter an edge, even suggesting the temperature on the day of a horse's last run should be on the racecard alongside the ground conditions. This would be going too far, in my opinion, though it would be reasonable to have all weather conditions in the form guides. Horseman will tell you that some horses hate the wind, no doubt because it plays havoc with their senses, especially hearing. I have heard tales of horses refusing to leave their stables if it is raining or snowing....

It struck me the other day that the tactics used by Ryan Moore at The Curragh in the Irish Derby where not the tactics he told the Epsom stewards he intended to use before Benvenuto Cellini chose the three-legged approach to jumping out of the stalls. Ryan wanted to be prominent at Epsom, whereas at The Curragh he took the opposite approach, settling at the rear and making steady progress in the straight. We all know, of course, due to a lack of common sense on the part of the Epsom stewards, that our eyes deceived us and Benvenuto Cellini never actually took part in the Epsom Derby of 2026 but shouldn't the inquiry be reconvened so that we might be introduced into the whys and wherefores of the differing tactics from Epsom to The Curragh. I hate to think that Ryan told porkies at the inquiry to the Epsom stewards...

I have long wondered if the modern-day gallops used by trainers to bring to fitness the horses under their care could be the cause of the minor viral infections found in the lungs and airways of horses after trachea washes or endoscopic examinations. In general, I believe, all-weather surfaces are not watered and it is a fact that gallops composed of wood-bark, wood-chippings, synthetic surfaces made up of chopped-up rubber or carpet, perhaps even sand, deterorate over time and as each individual part breaks down dust, in one form or another, must be the result. Apart from the lead horse, is it possible that every other horse is liable to be breathing in these microscopic dust particles? I pose the question as I do not believe that in the days when horses were extensively trained on grass there were fewer reports of respiratory conditions being given by trainers for disappointing results....

I am pleased to see that France Galop are sticking to their guns and moving not an inch from their proposal to allow geldings to run in the Arc from next season. Guillaum de Saint-Seine, president of France Galop, has reiterated that there was a majority vote in favour of geldings being allowed into the Arc, though there were a few vociferous opponents. He also said there was popular appeal in favour of geldings from owners, trainers and jockeys. It is, though, not a done deal as the proposal must be accepted by the European Pattern Committee which has amongst its panel, I believe, are thoroughbred breeders who may or may not be influenced in their vote by breeding big hitters who may be friends or clients. I suggest if the European Pattern Committee, who will be under pressure from both camps to vote in accordance with their varying motives, move...

We all suffer from self-interest at times. A universal decision that affects the football team we follow, for example, is never judged by anyone of us in the round, the good it might bring to the majority. It is a personal slight, a rock in the road on our personal journey towards hopeful reflective glory. I, for instance, or indeed you, have no actual financial stake in the decision by France Galop to open the Arc to geldings. The Arc is so far out of our influence it is folly just to give it any thought until the days leading-up to the race itself. What care I if a gelding wins the 2027 Arc. John Magnier senior, though, does have a financial interest in the decision to allow geldings to take part in Europe's most valued and valuable race. He is the business of making stallions, standing them at one of...

It is not generally good, is it, this near total domination by one trainer, one jockey (more or less) and one breeding and racing operation? It is spectacular, of course, unprecedented, almost certainly, yet coming close to turning people away from our sport due to the predictability of what is going to happen. The saving grace, of course, is that Aidan will run 3.4 or 5-horses in a race, all of them with the breeding to suggest winning a Group 1 would be a formality, ensuring there is real competition, even if, as with yesterday's Irish Derby, what we have is two races in one, one involving the Ballydoyle horses and another involving those who dare to take on the Ballydoyle battalion.  For all the faith Ryan Moore has in Benvenuto Cellini, and he was a good winner of the race, I cannot believe he is the best 3-year-old of this...

It has emerged that resting a leg on the ledge in the starting stalls is Benvenuto Cellini's party piece. Yes, it seems he has played the standing on three legs game while waiting for the gates to open ever since he was introduced to starting stalls. 'He has a habit of lifting his hind legs and putting them out. He does it and the lads said he was doing it when they were putting him in at home,' Aidan is quoted in today's Racing Post. So Epsom was not a one-off; so why was this not mentioned at the time and especially during the stewards' enquiry? And it certainly explains why the horse lost very little ground at the start. This revelation just adds another layer to one of the most farcical Epsom Derbys in its long history. So will Ryan Moore's undiminished faith in Benvenuto Cellini be rewarded at The...

I read in the Racing Post today, at least according to David Jennings, that Tom Segal has stated, as I have done on this site, his belief that Joseph O'Brien is going to be as great a trainer as his father. Of course, strictly on the results gained at Royal Ascot, Joseph is two-winners less accomplished than his father but then Joseph is not supported by the might of Coolmore and his five winners were owned by five different owners, which perhaps makes his winning haul that bit more impressive. And Joseph also has to work the handicaps, something his father rarely has to bother with. Just imagine if Ben Jones had ridden a more restrained race on Jordans in the Aintree National back in April and Joseph had an Aintree National on his c.v. along with the two Melbourne Cups, an Irish Derby, an Epsom Oaks and a Doncaster St....

Look, John and Thady Gosden know their horses far better than I know myself. For someone with my lack of knowledge of the subject to criticise someone of John Gosden's legandary status is tantamount to defamatory comment. I am though only using his or their decision to by-pass the Eclipse with Ombudsman in favour of giving the horse more time to recover from his exertions at Royal Ascot in the Prince of Wales's Stakes to put across a point. It is just that the 'trend' for  connections of the best horses in training to disrespect the semi-classic races like the Eclipse when in the past, perhaps now the distant past, a horse might run in two races at the Royal meeting, even twice in two-days and win both times. What has changed? The breed? The way horses are now trained? Or there are so many top-level races these days in comparison...

Note to Richard Forristal of the Racing Post: the sport for all its existence has been called horse racing, not horse breeding. The two may live hand in glove with each other but it should be remembered that without the hand there is no need of the glove. When the Arc was invented, it was needed. There was no King George and Queen Elisabeth Stakes in 1919. Derby winners, French, English or Irish were kettled towards the Cup races, with the Ascot Gold Cup as prestigious in those days as any Derby. Comrade won the inaugural Prix de I'Arc de Triomphe, ridden by Frank Bullock. Incidentally, I have always thought the title of the Ascot race to be too long, too convoluted. Given our late Queen's passion for our sport, would it not be a lasting honour to her for the K.G & Q.E. to be shorted to the Queen Elisabeth...

Geldings will be allowed to run in the Prix de I'Arc de Triomphe from 2027. Hooray! Though no single horse race proclaims a champion, the winner of the Arc is usually considered the most prestigious middle-distance race of the year, with the winner going down in racing history as one of the best of the best. This is a justifiable decision by France Galop even if the purists will claim it as the beginning of the end. Scott Burton in the Racing Post today lays his colours to the mast of the doomy and gloomy, citing you should be careful for you wish for. More geldings means more horses eligible to run in the Arc, which inevitably means some high-class horses will be balloted out. He may be correct, it has happened in the past, but geldings have been balloted out by design throughout the 100+ years of existence of the...

People are small, walking, radiators of heat. The more people clustered in one area, the warmer the air around them will be. This is not science-fact but my belief as to why climate change may or not be occuring. If it is not a main contributing factor, mass population must be having some affect. It will be interesting to see if the mass migration from North Africa causes a lowering of temperatures in those countries. Also, the temperatures given by weather forecasters tend to be highest estimates and as such can be sources of misinformation. Anyway, it is summer in Britain and white-skinned Brits do not do well in the heat. 20-degrees is too much for me; lucky for me, though, is that I live in an old house which remains cool in several of the rooms. In the backyard, though, you could fry eggs on the stone slabs, perhaps. Not...

Outside of the magnificent racing and enduring memories that Royal Ascot provided last week, what I recall is the high number of mentions that Carlisle and Salisbury racecourses received from trainers and pundits. Without being a betting man, I would bet a few pennies that more Ascot two-year-old winners came from races at Carlisle and Salisbury than racecourses more associated with Group1 racing like Newmarket or Newbury. Over jumps, Carlisle is favoured by the top southern stables as a lovely place to start a young chaser, as on the flat Salisbury is seen by flat trainers as a lovely place for a two-year-old to make its debut. Both Brigadier Gerard and Mill Reef won as two-year-olds at Salisbury, for instance. Given their importance to trainers of high-class young horses, perhaps both racecourses should be given a better grade of race and greater exposure on national television. Carlisle recently benefited from having...

It is all very well the King and Queen honouring Brough Scott with a prominent ride in the Royal Procession on the last day of Royal Ascot 2026, yet the question I ask is why Brough is yet to receive a knighthood, if not a lordship? The man is reverred in racing circles; he has worked as hard as anyone to raise funds for both jockey and equine charities and has served the sport in many different capacities, including as a presenter of racing for I.T.V. Someone of influence in our sport should write to the King for an answer to my question. I hope Brough's presence with the King and Queen in the lead carriage yesterday was but a prelude to an even greater privilege in the very near future. These American two-year-old speedsters that Wesley Ward brings over to run at Royal Ascot are too fast for their own...

Opportunity was a good winner, I admit, and it was a fantastic ride by James Macdonald. I know it was a fantastic ride as Maureen Haggas said so. Thankfully, her husband agreed. I would think he normally does. I know I find it easier to agree with a better half as it makes for a more peaceful life. Maureen, though, is also lovely, only a small bit scary and always good value to listen to. All that said, I think William Buick hit the front a furlong too soon and I dare say if he could have another go at it he would it quieter, count to seventeen and then apply the accelerator. To my weary eyes, Warrant Holder looks an Ebor horse. Venetian Star, and yes she is better on ground with ease in it, did not impress me as she impressed the more eduated people at Ascot yesterday. For...

This is why races beyond 2-miles are my favourite races on the flat; this is why breeders should be incentivised to breed for stamina, not speed; this is just why .... Even a sad old cynic like me could not help but be mesmerised by yesterday's Ascot Gold Cup. A magnificent race where the runner-up was as equally cheered as the winner. Scandinavia may ultimately be the classier horse, yet with the Gold Cup being Trawlerman's first race of the season, after being seriously unwell at Easter, nobody can be certain that if the two clash again later in the season, perhaps in the Goodwood Cup, that the result will be the same. Nothing cheers the soul like two valiant and brave horses fighting a duel from three or four-furlongs out, with neither reteating from the battle by an inch. In the final furlong and a half  my thought on who...

In the week of Royal Ascot a horse diagnosed with equine flu might not seem an approrpriate lead story. I contend it is and would argue that it should have been given more prominence in today's Racing Post. This latest reported case is the first to involve a thoroughbred in the care of a licenced trainer and makes the risk of a widespread equine flu epidemnic one step further along the line towards a shut-down. The horse was one of eight transported from the recent Goffs Arkle Sale. The affected horse was delivered, I believe, straight to an isolation stable at Mel and Phil Rowley's yard in Shropshire and has not mingled with other horses. Obviously the connections of the other seven horses that were transported with the affected horse are now on twenty-four watch, hoping their horse has escaped infection. The sport lives in troubled times; what it cannot afford...

It was 1834 when the first St. James's Palace Stakes was run, so long ago that the book documenting the history of Ascot by Sean Magee and Sally Aird fails to record the name of the winner. We do know the horse, jockey, trainer and owner that succeeded in 2026, a year so far into the future in 1834 that absolutely no one alive at the time gave it any consideration. In this day and age we have science fiction, a genre unknown to the population of 1834, whereas we would think of 192-years into the future as a time when science fiction would become science fact, where humans will be slaves to the fetishes of A.I fuelled robots, with Big Brother, compulsory in every room of every dwelling, having the face and voice of Starmer the Invincible. In 1834 they barely had any fiction for entertainment, so were very fortunate...

Queen Anne, to whom the opening race of the Royal meeting is dedicated to, was, at 46, a fat old maid, hardly able to walk. She had endured eighteen pregnacies, many of which ceased with miscarriages and not one of her children who survived until birth lived beyond the age of eleven. She was Queen of all she surveyed, yet, apart from her gluttony, horse racing and hunting, life was hardly worth the effort to her. She ascended the throne aged 41, though she was so prone to gout that she had to be transported down the aisle in Westminster Abbey in a sedan chair. And some say royalty have it easy! Her great grandfather, James the first, rode in races and built a palace in Newmarket, perhaps mainly to be close to his favourite mistress, Nell Gwyn. As Anne is famous for the founding of Ascot racecourse, James elevated Newmarket...

Which British racecourse was the first to stage an evening meeting? And which British racecourse was the first to stage a race restricted to female riders? And which racecourse was the first to allow female to ride against the men? In the 'Another View' column in the Racing Post today, David Carr clearly and inventively demonstrates the uselessness of the B.H.A. in appointing someone to succeed to Lord Allen as its Chair. In fact, any reasonably intelligent dining chair could have acted more swiftly than the B.H.A. Are people finally latching on to the incompetence of the sport's guardian? A Report by New Horizon Economics and Reading University has announced that Ascot racecourse, primarily due to the Royal Meeting, I would suspect, is worth a staggering £264.5-million quid to the British economy. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it all of those who oppose our sport. It is a report...