Jacquard, Dieu Soleil, Broadway Melody. Tishan out of trap 6. Faraway places with strange-sounding names. Sterrebeeke? Work on Monmore Green first, it’s probably closer. Charles Malizia and Arno Rudolf. 1 and 3 in the last at Hackney Wick, gone to … Read More »

Trials Day at Cheltenham on Saturday could have been an opportunity to showcase jump racing at its best, but instead it exposed three of the most troubled and contentious areas of the game. Dan Skelton has made it clear all … Read More »

On hearing a racing journalist say in passing that he started his career as a board boy in a betting shop it brought back memories of my early days in the same role. I actually started as a board boy … Read More »

Enough is enough. Frankly, that phrase is rather too direct and often used by someone worn down by something. Which I’m not, although if I say I’ve been looking at the runners and riders just about every day since Halloween … Read More »

Although I would not suggest Paul Nicholls and I are close buddies, we do go back a long way … to 1995 in fact, when, in his fifth season with a licence, he trained Larry’s Lord, a horse who ran … Read More »

‘They are not long, the days of wine and roses.’ No indeed and we all know what the English poet Ernest Dowson meant when he wrote his poem well over a hundred years ago. Sadly, the line lived on many … Read More »

Hi there, There was plenty of talk in the aftermath of the King George VI Chase about what a great race it was and, as a spectacle, that was the case with the eight-horse field covered by two lengths turning … Read More »

I’ve said before that if I were to single out just one leading principle to making a profit from backing horses it would be to monitor stable form. It’s quite extraordinary how things can go well for one yard and … Read More »

The busy Christmas schedule next week should bring some much needed clarity to the ante-post markets for Cheltenham. The highlight will be the King George VI Chase on Boxing Day, for which Gaelic Warrior and Jango Baie currently head the … Read More »

I readily admit that I go on about this sort of thing quite a lot, but there was an outstanding example of a horse apparently improving dramatically on his previous recent form last Monday at Ayr. King Gris was hammered … Read More »

Ask me about Christmas and I come up with three or four vivid memories  –  not bad when you consider Halloween’s second triumph in the King George VI Chase came 71 years ago. My Aunt Em ferried the bets to … Read More »

Hi there It is said that everybody is entitled to an opinion, but in certain areas of expertise I would suggest that not everybody’s opinion should carry equal weight. For example the majority of media pundits have never ridden a … Read More »