​Let me start with this, otherwise I might be criticised for the wrong aspect of what I am about to say. Field of Gold is undoubtedly a very good horse, probably the top horse in Europe, possibly the best in the world. What he is not at this moment is a ‘superstar’. Galileo was a superstar stallion but he was not a superstar during his first two covering seasons. He soon gained superstar status and retained it until the day he died. Frankel and Brigadier Gerard were superstars to you and I but were they known by the non-racing public at the time they were in training?
For Ed Chamberlain to get all over-excited and claim Field of Gold to be a superstar in June of his first full season is just challenging fate to put the boot in. He further went on to suggest that people will build a relationship around Field of Gold, something that will be aided by Field of Gold being a grey and people love grey horses. The latter part may well be true, though the only grey to become a superstar in my lifetime was Desert Orchid and he, as with Galileo, remained a superstar until the day of his death, to the point that he appeared in The Times obituary column.
And will Field of Gold still be in training this time next year? Doubtful, I would suggest. Juddmonte kept Frankel in training as a 4-year-old, so the opportunity for Field of Gold to truly obtain the moniker of ‘superstar’ is a possibility but will his owners wish to take the gamble of risking his ‘superstar’ status against next classic generation? They did not with Dancing Brave, remember.
The sort of flat horse the public are more likely to ‘form a relationship around’ is the likes of Rebel’s Romance, Trawlerman and Amiloc, geldings who are going to race beyond their three or four-year-old seasons.
And though both Frankel and Brigadier Gerard were campaigned over 8 and 10-furlongs, though the latter also won the King George & Queen Elisabeth Stakes over 12-furlongs, ask anyone outside of the sport to name an 8 or 10-furlong race in Britain, Ireland or the whole of Europe and the answer would be a shake of the head or at best the question ‘ is the Derby over either of those distances?’
When John Hislop, owner and breeder of Brigadier Gerard, announced his star would run over 12-furlongs, the majority of ‘experts’ thought him a bit mad, believing the risk to reward ratio to be too slim to be worth it. When Charles Engelhard, owner of Nijinsky, told Vincent O’Brien he wanted to try for the Triple Crown, the experts all thought the horse would have too hard a race at Doncaster and put in jeopardy his Arc chances. Perhaps they were right as Nijinsky lost his unbeaten record at Longchamp. Yet Hislop and Englehard chanced their arm, they were brave and were of great service to both the sport and the racing public. Today’s owners are less likely to chance their arm and stick to the safest policy. Juddmonte kept Frankel in training as a 4-year-old, those his season was limited to a mile, except for his easy victory in the International at York over 10-furlongs.
True superstars on the flat, I am suggesting, win Group 1 races over 12-furlongs; they win the Epsom Derby, the King George & Queen Elisabeth Stakes and the Prix de L’arc de Triomphe. The St.James’ Palace and Sussex Stakes just do not cut the mustard when it comes to acquiring ‘superstar’ status’.

On a similar topic. Julian Muscat in the Tuesday column of the Racing Post asserted that ‘breeders avoid 12-furlong stallions like the plague,’ which, if true, is evidence that my belief has credence that breeders are ruining the sport by their excessive policy of breeding for speed not stamina. If this ‘trend’ continues or expands, racecourses can expect to close the majority of their acreage and grow hay or corn as only the straight course will ever be used in the future. All our famous races on the flat are over 12-furlongs or further, as with the Northumberland Plate this Saturday, yet all commercial breeders are interested in are speedy two-year-olds and horses of limited stamina. Breeders are basically one-dimensional, breeding for speed and the meat-men who lurk in the shadows at auction arenas. 

​As with most people, I like Charley Appleby and even though he represents the high table of horse racing, while I usually support the underdogs of the sport, I am pleased when he has a Group 1 winner. So, I was astonished to read in the Racing Post today that he was yesterday fined £750 for sending the wrong horse for a race at Southwell on March 14th. He joins a list of wrongdoers for this offence that not only includes Brien Ellison and Jessie Harrington but also, and more famously, Aidan O’Brien, though his error at Newmarket in the bad old days of government restrictions on our freedom was his representatives mixing-up two horses running in the same race and putting on them both the wrong racecard number but also the wrong jockeys.
Given the success of Charlie Appleby, you would think stable procedure would be watertight, yet somehow the wrong horse was loaded on to the horsebox. It begs the question where was the groom for that horse, the person must likely to have spotted the mistake? I realise the days when a groom would ‘do’ three-horses and would accompany those three-horses when they went to the racecourse. Perhaps these days it is more haphazard, perhaps horses no longer have dedicated grooms, with grooms randomly allotted different grooms on different days.
It does seem an offence of baffling negligence for a trainer to send the wrong horse to the races. Perhaps in March Charlie Appleby was in Dubai and in his absence, it was his staff who cocked-up and in all such manners whether he was at home or not is not an issue as the buck always stops with the trainer. If this was the case, I hope whoever ultimately was responsible for the error repaid Charlie the whole of the £750, though in general, as such mistakes can only be the result of sloppiness in the extreme, I would have thought the fine might have been double or treble the fine on this occasion. It does make you think if a trainer or his representatives can take the wrong horse to the races, what other mistakes are they capable of.
Having always considered Godolphin to be a well-run outfit, it sort of takes the gilt of the gingerbread to discover they are as human as the rest of us.

The road to hell is often paved with good intention, so it is said. Ascot have announced that the Windsor Castle will be run over 6-furlongs from next season, with the sires of runners having either won over 7-furlongs+ as a 2-year-old or over a mile+ as a 3-year-old. When this was announced I was broadly in agreement with the proposal as I believe everything that can be done to encourage the breeding for stamina, should be done. I now accept the argument of Eve Johnson Houghton (she is furious about the change) that the Windsor Castle represent one of the few opportunities at the Royal meeting for trainers like her to have the limelight of a winner. Richard Hughes has also chimed-in to accuse Royal Ascot of basically siding with the leviathans of the sport and allowing them the advantage in yet another Royal Ascot race.
My compromise in all of this would be keep the sire restrictions and 6-furlongs but add a stipulation that no runner should either have cost more than 50,000 guineas at auction or if home-bred must be sired by a stallion standing at no more than £2,500. Or something along those lines.

Scott Burton bemoans in the Tuesday Column of the Racing Post the decline of the Epsom Derby meeting. He makes several ideas that warrant consideration, though as with everyone else he gives no credence to going back to the traditional Derby date of the first Wednesday in June.
The first Wednesday in June was always my primary proposal, if only as an experiment, given the decline of the Derby meeting began with the switch to a Saturday. I am sure over the next few years we are going to see a different sort of Derby meeting and the sooner Jim Allen presents his image of Derby Meetings to come, the more dynamic the discussion on this topic will become.
I remain wedded to the proposal of a Triple Crown series involving the 2,000 Guineas, Derby and Eclipse (restricted to 3-year-olds) with a month between each race, April, May, June, with the race programme altered to accommodate such an arrangement, including moving Royal Ascot into the month of July, first week, perhaps.
How will this arrest declining attendance at Epsom? It probably would not. The solution to that dilemma will be determined by the inventions Jim Allen can put into place as the solution to the Jockey Club’s problem child lies outside of the racing surface. It must become an event worthy of the word ‘carnival’ being attached to the meeting, resembling Royal Ascot but clothed in smart casual.

​Ascot should be proud of their achievements last week. Yes, the weather played a strong hand in the near 5% rise in overall attendance, yet people do not decide on the day whether to attend Royal Ascot. Apparently, it can take a woman as long, if not longer, to plan their outfit as it took John Gosden to get his runners cherry ripe for the week. 
What I do not believe is that the sport should take a deep intake of breath and think all will be a bed of roses from now on in light of the increase in attendance at Royal Ascot, the most unique race-meeting in Europe, if not the world. In the same way as Aintree cannot be considered the equal of say Leicester or Hereford, the success of Royal Ascot is very unlikely to filter down to Redcar, Ripon or Salisbury, with those courses, for example, achieving a similar increase in attendance for every meeting from now until the close of play in late October.
Attendances at Epsom have sunk so low when compared to the good old days that it should be like picking low-hanging fruit for Jim Allen to boost attendance next season. The Cheltenham Festival, too, could easily see an upswing in attendance next season if they lowered the cost of entry and persuaded local hoteliers to stop ripping-off racegoers in need of a bed for the night.
The smaller racecourses that regularly achieve above average attendance and thus are the racecourses for other to learn from are Cartmel and Market Rasen, two country courses that outperform much larger metropolitan racecourses through simply knowing what their supporters expect of them. Newbury may not have directly learned the golden rule from either Cartmel or Market Rasen but it is now taking the same route to success by concentrating their publicity and marketing on the local population and then making race-days more than about the racing. What Ascot achieved last week was for people to enjoy the event even though perhaps a small majority did not watch a single race.
When horse racing first started, away from the match races at Newmarket, the racing was only one aspect of a local festival and that is where racecourses should be looking for an increase in attendances. Create a market place around the racing, have Punch and Judy stalls, ferret racing, a carnival, shopping malls for the members of the family not yet interested in horse racing, welcoming guides.
Royal Ascot is not the template for success for lesser racecourses but it is a good starting place for reinventing the horse racing brand.
Oh, and less race-meetings will ensure competitive racing as the real racing fan should not be overlooked. He or she is the foundation of the sport and we must build upon their shoulders, not take them for granted.

In the ‘Another View’ section of the Racing Post today, Denis Harney is critical of racing pundits for not being more savage in their appraisals of what they might consider blunders by jockeys. Of course, why wouldn’t he as everyone else feels a need to do so, he mentions the ride Kieran Shoemark gave Field of Gold in the 2,000 Guineas. No one mentions Mikhail Barzalona’s ride on Shadow of Light, hitting the front too early on a horse most people thought was a sprinter not a miler. He gets off scot-free while months down the line Shoemark is belittled for being beaten a nose, which suggests he delayed his run by one or two strides.
Jockeys, like you or me in our more sheltered lives, make mistakes from time to time. Do you not think Ryan Moore would like another go on Reaching High, a horse that finished out of the money yet still on the bridle? No, pundits should say it as they see it and racing does not need the equivalent of a Roy Keane. We should all remember that he was regularly sent-off during his days as a footballer and was far from many peoples’ favourite player. Jockeys, like all sports people, get enough abuse from the ignorant few on social media as it is, there is no need for professional journalists and t.v. presenters to weigh in, even if they are better informed. Ruby Walsh gets his punditry in the bulls eye, critical when required, though always with the insight of the true professional, and occasionally ending his thoughts with ‘well, that is my take on it’.

​On what I considered the best of the five-days, trust Luke Harvey to steal the I.T.V. show. There he was doing what he normally does at the start of racing but this time he is in a swimming pool in an adjacent garden, with his top hat on. Apparently only his cameraman knew of his plan. Comic genius.

Lazzat started this strategy of trying to steal the limelight by dumping James Doyle as he waved acknowledgement to the crowd before proceeding to canter off, head held high, down to the back-straight where he pulled-up to stand by the rail to take in the scene across to the Grandstand and all the fun of the fair. I dare say he had never seen anything like it before and was making up his mind whether he wanted to be a part of it. You could almost sense he was just taking it all in, the site of his greatest achievement, which might just be dumping his jockey in front of thousands. He then obviously thought he had better get back to the stables, to stop his people worrying about him, which he proceeded to accomplish at that same leisurely canter, slipping those who tried to spoil his fun, before submitting to the charms of his groom. Of course, the delay he was causing would have been far less if they had allowed Lazzat to continue to find his own way home but by then Lazzat, for the time-being, had become the focal point of the day.
Although James Doyle, when talking to the Queen blamed himself as ‘he should have stayed longer at the pony club’, the blame for the incident was wholly on the negligence of the trainer unfurling the sheet (under the nose of Lazzat) to be placed over all the winners at Royal Ascot this week.

On a day of great moments, Rebel’s Romance charmed everyone, as did William Buick’s reaction to his ‘best friend’s’ win in the Hardwicke, Europe’s richest Group 2, apparently. It is rare these days for a horse to win 18 races on the flat, especially at the highest level and yet there seems no reason why Rebel’s Romance should not add half-a-dozen more to his c.v. given he is such a game and honourable horse and also a gelding.
If more colts were gelded, as with Lazzat and Rebel’s Romance, flat racing would be better served. The flat stars are too much of the shooting star variety, here at the start of the season and gone by the start of the following season. It is time, for the overall good of the sport, for every major race to be opened-up to geldings. If the current generation of 3-year-olds are not good enough to defeat the older, gelded, generation, then we will have a mark of their true ability, which will make it easier to determine the order in the pantheon of great horses.

The reason Ascot can boast of a 5% upswing in attendance at this year’s Royal Ascot is a simple one, a good majority of those who attend are there not so much for the racing but for the social event. That is not a bad thing as it persuades people to think of racecourses as a place of entertainment and fun, and if a small majority become engaged with what goes on between the white rails, that will filter through the sport as a whole. I may rage about the out-of-date dress-code and the fashion aspect of Royal Ascot, and continue to believe the image of Royal Ascot is a poor look for the sport in need of attracting the attention of younger people, yet Royal Ascot remains as relevant today as in days gone-by.

Back to the dress-code. I believe wearing socks with sandals is abhorrent and people who commit this horror should be placed in the village stocks and left there. Men who wear shoes without socks, though a fashion crime of less abhorrence than sock-wearing sandal wearers, should not be subject to inspection from the dress-code wardens at Royal Ascot. Would someone get thrown-out if they walked about bare-foot, something I like to do outside on occasion (and always at home)? Would a Masai warrior be refused admission due to not wearing shoes or boots? Is underwear obligatory? Live and let live. Not ‘wear socks or be considered a social pariah’. Really, and we want to encourage young people to come racing!

Saturday, for me, allowed Royal Ascot 2025 to become one of the best Royal Ascots of recent years, though I do have a poor memory, remember. Field of Gold looks a horse of great potential but the three horses who impressed me the most were Trinity College (not sure why, he just looked a horse on the rise), Trawlerman, perhaps the ride of the week, and Rebel’s Romance, a true exhibit of what a racehorse should be.

​As I admitted recently, I am prone to xenophobia at times. I am not someone who can easily embrace the ‘hands across the sea’ mentality. I am English and, in all matters, especially when it comes to sporting events, I want us to defeat the foreign invaders. 
When it comes to the flat, I appreciate that if it were not for foreign investment and interest the sport would be so much poorer we would lag even further behind other racing jurisdictions and might be considered no more than a point-to-point set-up by comparison. It has ever been so, it seems, our reliance on foreign investment. In the 1930’s it was India that provided the sport with mega-rich men with the ambition to win our classics. In the sixties, seventies and eighties, it was American owners who paid out big at the sales or brought-over their home-breds. Mill Reef was owned by an Amercian, as was Nijinsky, as were many of Vincent O’Briens good horses.
The Americans obviously share a language with us and the majority of the names they gave their horses were easy on the English tongue. And that is the rub, at least with me. I do not blame our owners from the Arabic world, they want to name their horses in their own language, with words and phrases that are familiar to them and their families. It is the B.H.A. I blame for not insisting that the names of horses should be easy of the English tongue.
Entered today at Haydock and Lingfield are two horses named Aeih and Aajej. I could list a good few more that test the linguistic skills of dumbass racing fans like myself. Over jumps I have an issue with French names, especially the mangling of English words with French and cannot understand why horses imported from France cannot have their names translated into English before running in this country. Obviously, I would not expect this for horses trained in France that run in this country.
On the flat it is Arabic names that perplex. The word Aeih may translate into something quite beautiful in English. On the other hand it might be Arabic slang for something that if done in public would frighten the horses and cause maiden aunts to faint in horror. Do the B.H.A. get out the Arabic/English dictionary to ensure every name is respectable? Perhaps not; a few years ago the name Senip was registered, only for it to be changed when people complained it spelt penis backwards.
This, and the re-use of famous names from the past, irk me and when the name Spanish Steps was used by Coolmore a decade or so ago it inflicted grievous harm on me and set me on course for trying to do something about it. Fortunately, a lot of other people were aggrieved by the reuse of Spanish Steps and for a short while it became an issue, though not enough for us to march on B.H.A. headquarters to lay siege to the building.
Which is why when I started this website, I included a dedicated page that any owner can access to find a name they might take a fancy to. All for free, though I ask for a donation of £25 to any equine charity of their choice. I do not guarantee that every name on the ever-expanding list (I will be stopping soon as I must fend-off this obsession) will be accepted by the B.H.A., though I do my level best to ensure I do not replicate the name of a famous horse of the past and to keep within the 18-character restriction.

Gary Carroll won the Coronation Stakes yesterday on Cercene, the gloss though was taken off his success when it was announced he had broken the whip-rules, though not to the extent that Cercene will be disqualified. I am in no way being critical on a personal level to Carroll as I saw nothing untoward in his ride. He will undoubtedly receive a suspension of his licence come the whip review committee’s findings on Tuesday, possibly as much as 14-days and a large fine. But is this not a team game, owner, trainer, jockey, staff, the team on the racecourse and the team at home. In this instance Gary Carroll committed a professional foul. His ride was unprofessional. The team around him are accepting of his rule-breaking. To my eyes when a jockey breaks the whip rules, his or her lack of professionalism should be shared by the team as a whole. It is the only way we will ever break the cycle of winning at all costs, not that I believe for one moment that Carroll is guilty of ‘winning at all costs’. Megan Jordan was guilty of breaking the whip rules and the whole team received the sanction of losing the race. Did she use her whip twice more than Carroll? It is a slippery pole of an issue but to me if the rule is seven strikes and no more, more should not be sliced-up into portions. One more should equal disqualification, perhaps from first to second, perhaps from first to last. But the jockey who loses without breaking the rules should be rewarded and the one who broke the rules should suffer the consequences.

​The temperature was rising towards 30-degrees at Ascot yesterday, yet the dress code was kept in force. Personally, I do not think sweat and style make for a good look and what the Ascot authorities do not take into account when imposing the rule that men must not take-off their jackets is that different people react differently to temperature. I cannot take a temperature above 20-degrees without going weak at the knees. Upwards of 30-degrees is a killer to me. Luckily, I live in a house where the living room is always in the shade in summer, even when the yard (or garden) is in receipt of the worst of the sunshine.
I am fully aware that some people, perhaps even the majority, rise to the sun in worship of it, but others may wilt and are made unwell by it, and one day someone will faint and on the way to the ground bang their head and die as a result of the injury, with the dress code an overwhelming factor in the death. Dress code in this day and age is plain wrong. We live, as far as the Labour Party and the outside influence that is its lord and master, in a democratic country and no one should impose on a man whether he wears a jacket, morning suit or top hat at an outside event in high summer. Smart casual is a statement for freedom of style and expression and that is as far as I will tolerate mandatory dress codes. I live in Devon and that is as close as I ever want to be to the sweat and style of Royal Ascot.
Except for the actual racing, I do not believe Royal Ascot is a good image to portray in the bid to encourage people to go racing as it is so far from reality as to make what goes on in the stands seem a pageant of days gone-by or a carnival of the haves mixing with have-nots pretending for the day to be one of the haves.
I am not a communist, I promise. I just believe wholeheartedly with people having freedom of thought, word, expression and choice of clothes.

I have mixed feelings about Amo. Instinctively I react negatively towards those like Amo and Wathnan who buy success, the latter with greater success than the former. Amo, at least, have bought yearlings, even if they have spent ridiculous sums of money to buy pedigrees associated with big race success in the past. Wathnan simply benefit from the work of others, buying older horses with form rather than taking their turn with fate by splashing their cash at the yearling sales.
That said, I hope Amo get a winner this week. A lot of people now lean on Amo for their salaries and if Kia loses interest due to a lack of big-race winners those people will be out-of-work and that would make for a poor image for any other crazily rich man tempted to get involved in the sport.

Mrs. Jane McGivern, owner of the stallion Golden Horn, is such a brilliant saleswoman. Her joy at the success of others is infectious, as her dance around the parade ring as Trawlerman was winning the Ascot Gold Cup clearly demonstrated. She obviously adores Golden Horn and is proud as a peacock to stand him as a stallion at her stud primarily as a National Hunt stallion, though, as yesterday with Trawlerman, he is also becoming an influence for stamina on the flat. When she talks about Golden Horn she sparkles with admiration for him. Breeders would be fools not to use him.

Watching the 20 and 30-runner handicaps at Ascot and then thinking back and comparing the much smaller fields at the Cheltenham National Hunt Festival, I cannot help but wonder if it should be staged earlier in the season, say November when the virtually the full gamut of National Hunt horses would be available to oversubscribe every single race. It is not as if there is a lack of big festival meetings in the spring in both this country and Ireland. Radical idea, I agree, but having Royal Ascot early in the season, with some horses having their first runs of the season, seems to work, so why should the Cheltenham Festival not flourish if staged earlier in the season rather than towards the back end?

​At just shy of £600,000, the Prince of Wales’s Stakes is the richest race at Royal Ascot. In recent years it has acquired a boost in prize-money, if not a boost in the standard and quantity of runners. I would argue yesterday’s race was hardly value for money. I am not knocking the winner as I thought him the most impressive winner of the meeting so far. Yes, slightly more impressive than Field of Gold, who might no not be the best horse in Europe after-all. I would suggest, even if it is fair repost to say that every race will wander in quality from year to year, that for £600,000 first prize money you would have thought every top or thought-to-be class 10-furlong horse would be in the line-up.
Given the now accepted need to put greater emphasis on stamina over speed, I would have thought the extra funding for the Prince of Wales’s Stakes would be of more use to the industry if it had gone to the Hardwicke Stakes, which as it is at present only a Group 2 maybe does not qualify for the value boost, and even if it should in future be worth the same amount to the winner as the Prince of Wales’s Stakes would not necessarily guarantee it favour with the European Pattern Committee that rubber-stamps such upgrades. But the Hardwicke is where I would have preferred the money to have gone, then we would have a middle-distance triple crown of the Coronation Cup, Hardwicke, King George & Queen Elisabeth Stakes.
There is another race at Royal Ascot far more worthy of being the most valuable and I will come to that in a moment.

But first I want to ask if anyone remembers Economics and the hyperbole that surrounded him the last season? As is usually the case when a young horse impresses early in its 3-year-old career, the racing media went a bit balmy, suggesting the idea that this horse was truly the second-coming of Pegasus and if not Pegasus, then Eclipse.
As a born cynic, I was not at any stage last season as impressed as everyone else and was not in the least surprised when he crashed and burned in the Champion Stakes, even if the soft ground was against him. He has not run since, though if injury had not intervened, he would have contested the Prince of Wales’ s Stakes yesterday. To me, he looks one of those horses who is stalked by the fate of ‘if it can go wrong, it will go wrong’. That said, I hope it stops going wrong long enough for William Haggas to get him back to the racecourse, if only to give some opposition to John Gosden in all the 10-furlong Group 1’s this season.
Oh, there is a very good reason why Ombudsman might swerve both the Eclipse and the Juddmonte International and that is Godolphin has Ruling Court lined-up for both those races, and Juddmonte will be very keen to preserve Field of Gold’s image of supremacy, especially in a race they sponsor. It is all about the stallion barn, remember, when it comes to the flat. Even Coolmore seem to have adopted a policy this season of keeping their very best horses apart, perhaps for the same reason. It is only about the sport for a short while for the big breeders, with priority given to where the real money can be made, and that is not between the white rails but back at the stud farm.

The race at Royal Ascot with the longest history and for the greatest amount of time during that history, the greatest prestige, is the Ascot Gold Cup and for that reason alone it should be the most valuable race of the week.
For breeders to take the concept of stamina above speed with serious intent, the long-distance races must be greater valued than they have become. Once upon a time, and the hackneyed expression is relevant here as we are quickly accelerating from those halcyon, almost mythical days, when stamina was worshiped and sprint races were almost an irrelevance, Derby winners gained in prestige if they went on to win the Ascot Gold Cup as 4-year-olds. 
Ascot and the sport in general are doing the thoroughbred breed a disservice by allowing the Gold Cup to drift into the waters of novelty, a more valuable yet only a smidgen more prestigious than the Queen Alexandria Stakes, a race that only remains as a part of the Royal meeting due to public protest. If a 10-furlong race can be valued at £600,000, surely a race with a history as glorious as the Ascot Gold Cup should be valued at a £1-million. 

​During the course of I.T.V.’s coverage of Royal Ascot yesterday I learned that Ascot are to donate £5,000 to R.o.R. for every winner Ryan Moore rides at the five-days of the meeting. Obviously, I now hope Ryan has up to ten winners this week. I would like to think, though it cannot be so as I do not have the influence, my constant moaning that the sport does not do enough to support the work of R.o.R. is beginning to find traction. What is needed, though, is not what amounts to private donations to R.o.R. but a big public display of support in the shape of either a charity meeting similar to Cancer Day at York or a whole week of racing where every winning owner, trainer and jockey is asked to donate 5 or 10% of their winnings to the charity. Our public image amongst those outside of the sport is that we do not care about what happens to racehorses once their careers are over. We need to change that perception and change it quickly.

I.T.V. was poor yesterday and I take no pleasure saying it. From missing the first furlong of the King Charles the Third Stakes, to placing more emphasis on pointless Matt Chapman interviews with trainers and owners who have more pressing issues to think about, rather than seeing as many horses as possible in the parade ring, to the inane questioning of winning jockeys by Rishi Persad and the easily forgettable (and the director I believe did forget) chat with the school children as the King and Queen rode by in the royal procession, again by Rishi Persad, to – well it was just not very good. They were trying to get a quart into a pint pot, rather than concentrating on the racing. But that is Royal Ascot, I suppose.

As predicted, Miss Megan Jordan has lost all that champagne she won at York last Saturday, which now goes to Betty Smith. The whip review committee counted up to ten uses of the whip and found Miss Jordan guilty as charged. It seems, though, according to the report in today’s Racing Post, that she did not receive any form of suspension, which I find surprising, if unfair to all the other jockeys who have fell foul to the whip rules and were punished with a suspension of their licence.

Race-planning, if it exists at all, can be laughable at times. Tomorrow there are three races for amateur riders, one at Chelmsford, a Fegentri (world championship series for amateurs, would you believe) over 10-furlongs, a similar race at Lingfield over the same distance and one for female amateurs over 12-furlongs at Ripon. All a bit different when it comes to the jockeys able to ride in these races, yet all over a middle-distance.

David Jennings was wrong about Enfjaar, he was no certainty as it turned out but he was right about Field of Gold being the best horse in Europe right now. I would not, though, being both a cynic and a pessimist, go as far as to exclaim his performance was ‘extraordinary’, as many did, as horses can win by similar distances and yet never again perform to that standard of achievement. Great horses must perform to a high standard consistently before ‘extraordinary’ becomes an unarguable adjective to use to define them. As always, John Gosden summed-up the performance to near-perfection, ‘wonderful to behold’, which it was. To me, the performance was impressive, with no hard-luck stories in behind. Now let us see how he gets on against the older milers as I suspect Rosallion will prove a harder nut to crack than the horses he beat yesterday.
Yesterday’s best result was American Affair as it proved beyond all doubt that Jim Goldie is as good a trainer as any of the big Newmarket of Lambourn trainers. It was also refreshing to have a small owner/breeder who refuses to sell her horse for mega-bucks, as is the trend nowadays.
My favourite ‘small-time’ breeder is Philipa Cooper who breeds good old-fashioned stayers and when she sells one on to help pay covering fees of top stallions she must use to get good staying types, it is a clause that after the horse finishes his racing career it must be returned to her so she can look after it in retirement. An ethic that should be encouraged and rewarded. I hope Sweet William wins her the Ascot Gold Cup.

​It took me by surprise to learn in today’s Racing Post that Ryan Moore is only eleventh on the all-time list for career winners. At the moment, Edward Hide is in tenth place retiring with a total of 2,593 winners. If, and that is a very small if, Ryan should ride four-winners this week at Royal Ascot he will move into tenth-place.
Given, and I doubt many will agree with me, that I hold Ryan Moore in such esteem that I would place him top of the all the flat jockeys who have ridden in my lifetime, above Lester Piggott, and certainly above Pat Eddery and Steve Cauthen. Up till two-years ago I struggled to decide which of Moore and Dettori would top my list, going from one to the other before deciding that Moore’s consistency warranted him being given the accolade, not that Moore would care a jot either way. He just gets on with the job. There is nothing fancy about Moore. He is Mr. Sensible. I only wish the public could see the real Ryan Moore, the man outside of the jockey. A great wit, apparently and, according to Matt Chapman, an even better husband and father than he is a jockey.
I appreciate Lester’s genius in the saddle and that, as with the always underappreciated Kieran Fallon, he seemed to form better relationships with horses than humans. I find it hard to overlook his reliance, on many occasions, on the whip and his ‘win at all costs’ riding, certainly in his early career, and would only place him third in my personal all-time list behind Moore and Dettori.
It will be interesting to see on retirement where Moore finishes in the all-time list. Given he is not necessarily a seven-meetings a week rider, perhaps ninth or tenth might be the limit of his achievement in the saddle. Though as John Randall, the Racing Post’s resident historian, will attest, there is a vast difference between quality and quantity, and Ryan Moore is definitely all about quality.

I like David Jennings. He is a man not afraid to stick his neck out and is never dissuaded from going bold even after the humiliation of being very wrong indeed. Today, at Royal Ascot, the horse David Jennings believes is the best flat horse in all of Europe runs in the St James’ Palace and I hope for his sake the beast wins and wins decisively. Field of Gold carries the weight of David Jenning’s hopes, as does the impossibly spelt and must be harder to pronounce Enfjaar in the Wolferton, a certainty, apparently. 
Jennings, if you remember, could not see past The Lion In Winter for the Derby and could not understand why Ryan Moore should overlook him for Delacroix.
That said, Jennings is a far better tipster than I shall ever be, though I suspect he takes the tipping lark no more seriously than I do. As a writer, Jennings is quality, even when he is supplying his editor with quantity..

Referencing the above. The question is do I only want Reaching High to win the Ascot Stakes as he is owned by the King and Queen or do I really fancy him? The dam famously won the Ascot Gold Cup for our late Queen, so there should be no question that the 2-miles 4 is right up his street, and he is to be ridden by Ryan Moore, so no worries there. It would be nice, though, would it not for there to be a royal winner on the opening day of Royal Ascot. And you could add to the form equation that Reaching High is trained by Willie Mullins, always a tip in itself when it comes to long-distance handicaps at Royal Ascot. Only that the Closutton maestro also runs Poniros, the 100/1 winner of the Triumph Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival. Yet Mullins has put Ryan Moore on the royal runner, or is that because Ryan Moore was always the late Queen’s favourite jockey and that royalty must have, when available, the crème de la crème?

Talk about last-minute panic. I read today that the Irish Racehorse Trainers Association has written to trainers to warn them that officialdom is about to descend upon them to inspect their horsewalkers to determine if they are complaint with E.U. regulations on machinery. If they do not have the specified mark of authenticity trainers are advised to stop using them and contact the manufacturers. I laughed at this recommendation, as if a trainers could do without their horsewalkers, and at the height of the flat season! Horsewalkers are indispensable these days. Horses are warmed-up before cantering on them and cooled down after cantering. A horse’s only exercise on some days might be an hour on the horsewalker.
Back in the day, when horsewalkers first came on the market, many trainers were vocal in their condemnation of them, thinking those that used them were lazy and trying to save money by employing less staff because of them. Now, no trainer would start training without one and all the big yards would have two, three or four of them. Different times; different values.

​When the concept of Premier Racing was rolled-out, one of the guiding principals was to protect our top races and top meetings from the overkill of other meetings staged on the same day. It is why there are only ever 3 afternoon meetings on a Saturday, with all other meetings that day starting no earlier than 4-30, though morning meetings were suggested, an experiment that has seemingly died an early death.
So why are there, for example, 4 other meetings scheduled for the first 4-days of the Royal meeting, with 6 on Saturday? I agree that jockeys, trainers and owners who do not ordinarily operate at the Royal Ascot level of the sport deserve to be rewarded every bit as much as those who dine at the top table, and I am the first to preach fairness to all and champion the way the Irish legislate periods when the top jockeys are forced to take a holiday. But Royal Ascot is, whether I agree with its pre-eminence or not, the crème-de-la crème of European racing and yet the Billy Bunter approach to race-planning determines that Stratford, Thirsk, Beverley and Southwell should also race on Tuesday. Stratford as a jumping meeting I have no cause to complain about. Yet Beverley and Thirsk are in the same county (?); surely just one of these courses should have been permitted to stage a meeting on this day.
If I had my way – if only – I would only allow one jumps meeting and one other turf flat meeting on all 5-days of the Royal meeting, one in the afternoon and the other in the evening. Royal Ascot should be a staging post in the season; five-days when the racing programme is demonstrably different to all other five-day periods during the season. The eyes of the punters should be directed at Royal Ascot, with as few distractions as possible.

Lee Mottershead, in his column in the Racing Post today – you must read it for yourselves, even if it is chilling read – gives his readers a new name to fear, a man, with influence on government if not actual power, who might go down in history alongside the destroyer of our railways branch-lines, Lord Beeching. The Treasury’s head of excise < definition – to remove by cutting it out, to remove or delete > Yes, I know in this instant excise applies to tax, yet didn’t Beeching cut out and remove thousands of miles of railway track, denuding villages and small towns of their railway connection to the big cities?
His name is Aveek Bhattacharya and he once tweeted ‘In the U.K. we don’t just tolerate the cruelty of horseracing, we impose a tax to keep subsidising it.’
The man is both wrong and ignorant, and he might be big enough to rise above his prejudice and just concentrate on doing his job. Yet the Government’s proposal to harmonise gambling tax so that all sectors are taxed to the same level – no one seems to suggest the harmonisation will be downward rather than upward – already is threat enough to cause sleepless nights for anyone who treasures our sport, who believes to have man and horse working in harmony is a wondrous thing, a clear demonstration of man caring for the welfare of another sentient being.
Surely, this week better than any other, we, as a sport, should not be concentrating on the swank of the rich and the elite at Ascot but on the daily kindness of the human to the horse. This week the major bookmakers are donating their profits from the Brittania Stakes to six small charities. A good look, yes. But not one penny of that largesse is going to an equine charity. York raised funds for Cancer Charities on Saturday. Why not do the same for R.o.R. Later in the season on Ebor Day, every horse in the Ebor will be raising money for local charities, why not this year include equine and animal charities. Racing people are animal lovers. There should be a campaign to inform this truth to the likes of the Treasury’s head of excise and those who stand beside him on this subject.