The turf
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…
What makes a champion jockey
Write a few books and you have to listen politely at parties as people who have never opened yours tell…
Everyone is talking about the little girl from Devon
If there hasn’t yet been a hurricane called Bryony there should be. The impact of Bryony Frost, just 22, this…
Why I’ll chain myself to an earthmover at Kempton Park
I have never been one for system betting but one little piece of guidance returns to my mind at the…
Robin Oakley: Why Jeremy Clarkson should stick to cars
Jeremy Clarkson wrote recently about a day at Newbury. He declared: ‘Claiming that horses are different is like saying ants…
Robin Oakley: Let’s hear it for the girls
It has been a good year for the girls. The filly Enable was the horse of the year, winning not…
The dark side of horse racing
Spotting Mark Grant’s name on an Ascot racecard, I remembered a dashing young mop-haired rider I first encountered some years…
My hot tips for the jump season
Richard Johnson may already have 100 winners in the bag, and Paul Nicholls may already have banked £750,000 worth of…
The founding father of bookmaking
Imagine Ryan Moore getting caught on the line by a rival’s late spurt at the end of a Newmarket race…
The turf
Racing’s finances depend on as many people as possible betting, so it seemed a touch ironic that Responsible Gambling Awareness…
The turf
The mission was simple: take a load of garden refuse to the council dump and be back in time to…
The turf
Racing is an expensive sport to stage. Courses and grandstands have to be maintained, health and safety regulations have to…
The turf
Racing moves off the back pages only when its opponents have bad news to gloat over. Two examples lately have…
The turf
I guess his mother may have called him Patrick, or even, when he was in trouble, ‘Patrick Joseph’, but in…
The turf
‘Racing isn’t a team sport,’ the diehards used to tell us about the Shergar Cup, Ascot’s annual contest for three-rider…
The turf
Khalid Abdullah, John Gosden and Frankie Dettori — owner, trainer and jockey — already figured among the great names of…
The turf
A woman I once encountered at the dining table whose prime years were clearly behind her described herself as ‘approaching…
The turf
Having spent three quarters of my life covering politics and the other quarter following racing, I am often asked what…
The turf
Back on the political beat with CNN for the general election, I was reminded how politics is now dominated by…