“Don’t really know whether to congratulate or commiserate. Suppose just bad luck on all concerned to be born same century as L Piggott.” A typically warm response from the late Fred Winter in a sympathetic card to Barry Hills just after Lester and Roberto had inched out Ernie Johnson and Rheingold in the 1972 Epsom Derby. It was the most riveting finish I’ve ever seen, Lester swaying back in the saddle and administering three more rat-a-tat blows like a drummer on speed to force Roberto’s head in front on the line. Not everyone approved. Today’s contentious whip guidelines are often used to su ..read more

Hi there, I’m not sure that the Derby picture is any clearer now, following the weekend trials at Lingfield and Leopardstown, than it was a week ago. Those of us of a certain age like to try to find a Sea Bird, Nijinsky, Mill Reef, Shergar or Sea The Stars, but colts of that calibre are very few and far between and for every one of those we have half-a-dozen Kris Kins, Erhaabs or High-Rises. One measure of the openness of the race is the number of runners Aidan O’Brien fields – a tactic that has served him well in recent years, with Ruler Of The World, Wings of Eagles, Anthony Van Dyck and Ser ..read more

Hi there! I’m pretty sure that the powers that be will have breathed a collective sigh of relief when 21 of the 32 starters in the Grand National came home, with no fallers and just two horses – Mac Tottie and Delta Work – sustaining minor injuries. I still feel that the Grand National should not be the prism through which jump racing is judged by the public at large. For all the modifications it still retains some unique characteristics, but I would sooner the reported millions of people around the world who tune in to watch the race were guided instead towards a midweek meeting in a rural se ..read more

For a while Miss Alligator did her level best to earn a special place in the history books but an honourable sixth in the !949 Musidora Stakes at York was never going to be enough. Three years later she was bought for only 70 guineas at the Dublin Sales by Mr William Kennedy, a farmer based at Downpatrick in Northern Ireland. It therefore came as something of a surprise when she produced Anglo, winner of the Grand National in 1966 and followed up with Red Alligator, successful at Aintree two years later. Even then most of the headlines missed this remarkable achievement, Miss Alligator becomin ..read more

Hi there! As you are well aware the Grand National meeting at Aintree starts on Thursday 11 April and with rain forecast for the first three days of the week the ground is expected to be soft, if not heavy in parts. I was with Nicky Richards on Friday afternoon and he told me that this had been the most sustained spell of wet weather he had ever known, and that was at Greystoke, traditionally one of the wettest places in the UK. The difficulty facing trainers is that they have spring-ground specialists primed to run while their midwinter mud-lovers are ready for a summer break in the paddocks ..read more

Hi there! The Irish domination of our showpiece meeting at Cheltenham is likely to become one of the main topics of conversation again as we approach the Grand National a fortnight on Saturday, with just five of the 34 sure to get into the race trained in Britain. The five, following the decision to save Threeunderthrufive for the Bet365 at Sandown, are Nassalam, Corach Rambler, Eldorado Allen, Latenightpass and Mac Tottie. Last year’s winner Corach Rambler, who ran so well to finish third in the Gold Cup despite racing on unsuitably soft ground, is a general 5/1 favourite, while the next of t ..read more

Hi there, I have to start this piece on a sad note. As some of you may be aware, I was blessed to count Steve Harley as a friend for over forty years, so news of his illness and then death on Sunday came as a great shock. We go back to the early 80s, when he arranged to meet up with me having followed my column in the Sunday Times. Not long afterwards he bought a share in Cloudwalker, a horse that I managed, along with others from the entertainment industry including Mel Smith and Enn Reitel. Steve was down on his luck in those days, but he made a comeback at the Hammersmith Odeon and was stag ..read more

Ask me to name a handful of famous sculptors and until recently I’d probably have fallen about four short. Auguste Rodin rescued me and that was long before the equine version landed last year’s Epsom Derby. Rodin’s most famous work was The Thinker, who won perhaps the most ‘atmospheric’ of Cheltenham Gold Cups in 1987. ‘The snow, the delay, The Thinker’, as I put it when a sequence of Gold Cups was shown on the giant screen in the years that followed. There was snow all across Cleeve Hill and a distinct possibility that racing would be called off in ’87 but the weather relented and Ridley Lam ..read more

Hi there, This week, away from the political scene, the weights for the nine handicaps at Cheltenham are published. As you may know I always like to dig out the plots for these races … Sire Du Berlais was a big one for us when he got up an under an inspired Barry Geraghty to win the 2019 Pertemps Final … and I have a couple that have caught my eye this season. I see that entries for the Derby will also be revealed. This is the one area where trainers are forced to declare their hand. Yes there is the occasional owner-motivated entry, and Aidan O’Brien will be well represented, but frivolous en ..read more

Cambridge came and went too soon. I see that now and foolishly think of going back, even at this late stage, to write a thesis on some aspect of Marcel Proust’s oeuvre that others have missed. Three years half a century ago should have furnished a handful of memories more vivid than Gaykart just pipping Pretty Puffin on a freezing autumn afternoon but there we are. The Newmarket Rowley Mile Course may lack soul (and how) but a winner warms the heart and does rather more for the pocket. I backed a few of Ryan Jarvis’s in those days  –  Glencar and Quy and Gaykart, of course, who comes ..read more