The turf
My miraculous winning streak
Last Saturday morning, Mo Gawdat, former chief business officer at Google, was on the radio explaining his algorithm for happiness,…
In defence of the Cheltenham Festival
‘Deer-stalking would be a very fine sport,’ W.S. Gilbert once observed, ‘if the deer had guns too.’ We who love…
Racing in 2018 gave us plenty to celebrate
I don’t know who coined the old racing saying ‘The only person who remembers who came second is the guy…
‘Concussion doesn’t count’: memories of a racing dynasty
The Scudamores are one of the bedrock families of jump racing. After being shot down and spending two years as…
How 250 cows may have changed the course of racing
It may yet turn out that the most significant development in racing this year was the sale of some 250…
My hot tips for the coming season
Trainer Dan Skelton and his jockey brother Harry have 100 winners on the board already but for most of us…
Why racing will miss Luca Cumani
Fairy tales can happen. On Sunday the filly God Given won Italy’s only Group One race of the season, the…
The dirtiest racehorse names
Watching whip-thin jockey George Baker, just short of six feet, greeting his mounts used to make me think of the…
A no-deal Brexit could cripple horse-racing
Racing is full of risk-takers, not least those who fork out hefty sums to buy yearlings or unraced two-year-olds. Back…
The joy of a rainy Newbury
Mill Reef, who won the Derby, the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, the Eclipse and the King George by far…
Always trying: Britain’s most successful – and argumentative – trainer
An American trainer was once asked to name the greatest quality of the legendary jockey Willie Shoemaker. He replied: ‘The…
Why Goodwood is the toughest course for jockeys
Having spent most of my life among politicians I guess I have become unaccustomed to candour. The only example I…
Racing for the app generation
Making racing profitable depends on getting information at the right time. In the Stewards’ Cup at Goodwood two Saturdays ago…
The man who rode 2,300 winners
On a foggy November day in 1965 the young son of a Barbadian police chief was one of six contestants…
The man who rode 2,300 winners
For Coleridge, ‘…the light which experience gives is a lantern on the stern, which shines only on the waves behind…
The happiest Royal Ascot in memory
Let’s get the crowing over first. The returns from our Twelve to Follow over jumps last season were somewhere well…
How to handle fickle racehorse owners
On the famed Whitsbury gallops, as corn buntings and stonechats fluttered from the fence posts, a dozen of Marcus Tregoning’s…
The thoroughbred exists because of a piece of wood: the winning post of the Epsom Derby
In the previous 17 runnings of the Derby this century no fewer than nine had been won by horses trained…
My hot tips for the Flat season to come
In his days as a novice jockey in the West Country, Bob Davies, who was to ride more than 900…
There is no escaping the O’Brien factor
I suppose, given the income and the opportunity to indulge, you could eventually tire of even Meursault, Mauritius and Mrs…
The Grand National proved the naysayers wrong – again
When the photo finish confirmed that Tiger Roll and Davy Russell had held on to win the Grand National by…
I have to concentrate pretty hard on the Flat when the Grand National hasn’t even been run
William Haggas’s Addeybb heralded the opening of the Flat season by winning the Lincoln Handicap on 24 March but I…
It was ladies first at Cheltenham
At soggy Newbury last Saturday racegoers were still reliving memories of an epic Cheltenham Festival. ‘Were you there for that…
Do horses really need solariums and therapeutic rugs?
In the days when it was fashionable to mock the IQ of an American President who had taken the showbiz…
How do you solve a problem like fixed odds betting terminals?
You can tell by the tone of the jokes how most occupations are regarded and we’ve all heard the traditional…
