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…
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…
Forget temples and tea – Sri Lanka is all about its birds
Standing in sweaty silence for an hour on a precipitous sliver of muddy footpath above a waterfall may not be…
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…
