Second thoughts
Racing Life is all about judgment and I got one thing right at Cheltenham last Saturday after the overnight rain.…
Small wonder
Cheltenham, Ascot and Sandown Park are wonderful but without the little tracks racing would be lost. It was perishing cold…
North-south divide
The well-bred Sea Pigeon, who had finished seventh in the Derby when trained at Beckhampton by Jeremy Tree, was later…
Pacific Islands: The wildest time
Robin Oakley on what to see in the Galapagos – if you can
Wear The Fox Hat looks innocent enough but try saying it in an Irish accent
President Lyndon B. Johnson’s image never quite recovered in many people’s view from the photograph of him picking up his…
Essential racing books for Christmas
Do horses have souls or a ‘spirit’? When form expert Marten Julian was looking to buy a horse, he asked…
Triumphant Twelve
Three personalities dominated the Flat season: Gosden, Dettori and Golden Horn. Victories for the trio in the Derby, the Irish…
Jumping for joy
Thank God for jump racing. The Flat has its glitz and speed and glamour, and we could not help but…
Be warned: the mighty Air Force Blue blows away all before him
I was both delighted and unsurprised that Denis Healey made it to 98. One day in the 1970s I took…
Fair minded
One of Alan Bennett’s characters once lamented, ‘We tried to set up a small anarchist community …but people wouldn’t obey…
Squeezed middle
It’s a tough old business, this racing. Hayley Turner is the best woman rider we’ve ever seen in this country.…
Absolute beginners
Heaven be praised for the sinner who repenteth, however long it takes. For President George Bush Senior, his occasional meetings…
In the know
Master golfer Gary Player had the perfect retort when a 19th-hole pundit on his fourth G&T declared, ‘It’s all down…
Racing loses its Voice
Reviewing a biography of Arkle, Peter O’Sullevan wrote, ‘He had an obit to die for.’ So did The Voice himself.…
Easy does it
For all their formidable physical presence, racehorses spook easily. A sudden gust of wind flapping a plastic sack, a page…
Dettori’s double
Eclipse was one of the most remarkable racehorses ever. Sired by the then undistinguished Marske, whom mares could visit for…
Simply the best
Nothing pleases the Royal Ascot crowd more than a winner for the meeting’s crucial supporter, the Queen. Imagine, then, the…
Frankie’s back
Nothing has been lost since William Powell Frith painted his Derby Day panorama in 1858: today, instead of the carriages…
Flat pack
Getting to Goodwood last Saturday was an achievement in itself. On the Bank Holiday weekend I calculated a cross-country route…
Ones to watch
Back on political duty with CNN in election week, I came across a dead rat in Downing Street. It had…
The real McCoy
At Sandown Park last Saturday an era ended. Twenty thousand of us turned up to cheer on Tony McCoy as…
No fairy tale ending
It all depends how you like your fairy tales. OK, so we would have loved the retiring Tony ‘AP’ McCoy,…
The price of success
After listening to a violinist’s justification of his playing, Dr Samuel Johnson responded tartly: ‘Difficult do you call it, Sir?…
Going for Gold
Irish racing guru Ted Walsh was asked at the start of Gold Cup day if retiring champion jockey Tony McCoy…
Size matters
‘I don’t want to seem unromantic,’ said Mrs Oakley as St Valentine’s Day approached, ‘but this year please don’t buy…
