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

Hi there! I was going to start this piece with an expression of my disappointment in the aftermath of the weekend’s action at Leopardstown but the news of the tragic death of 25-year-old Keagan Kirkby, who has been part of Paul Nicholls’s team since 2019, in a point-to-point at Charing on Sunday has put everything else into perspective. This is not the first time that Paul Nicholls has experienced tragedy in his yard. On the evening of Thursday, 28th February, 2013, Dominic Baker, the 21-year-old son of his head lad Clifford, was killed in a road accident when travelling back home from work. T ..read more

For quite a long time I couldn’t work out why Charles Benson entered my thoughts as often as he did. He’s been gone for several years and it wasn’t as if we had a great deal in common, though we were both racing journalists who enjoyed a bet. We got along rather well, the Old Etonian socialite who rubbed shoulders with the Aga Khan and Robert Sangster and the son of a quiet Geordie miner who’d have spent his working life down the pit but for his younger brother joining Southampton from Blyth Spartans in 1937. You know most of the rest. Charles, known as ‘Chubby’ by pressroom die-hards who appr ..read more

Hi there! May I start by wishing you all a very healthy and successful 2024. Many people around the world will be keen to see the back of 2023, especially from a political and ecological perspective, but racing – famously described as the ‘great triviality’ by the late Phil Bull – remains an intriguing diversion for those of us fortunate to have it as an interest. It is around now that the bookmakers’ reps start to flap around ante-post quotes for the Cheltenham markets but the days when people tried to build up a portfolio are now long gone. In fact I have not had a serious ante-post bet for ..read more