The turf

My hot tips for the Flat season to come

26 May 2018 9:00 am

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

12 May 2018 9:00 am

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

28 April 2018 9:00 am

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

14 April 2018 9:00 am

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

31 March 2018 9:00 am

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?

17 March 2018 9:00 am

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?

3 March 2018 9:00 am

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

17 February 2018 9:00 am

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

3 February 2018 9:00 am

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

20 January 2018 9:00 am

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

6 January 2018 9:00 am

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

16 December 2017 9:00 am

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

9 December 2017 9:00 am

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

25 November 2017 9:00 am

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

11 November 2017 9:00 am

Imagine Ryan Moore getting caught on the line by a rival’s late spurt at the end of a Newmarket race…

The turf

28 October 2017 9:00 am

Racing’s finances depend on as many people as possible betting, so it seemed a touch ironic that Responsible Gambling Awareness…

The turf

14 October 2017 9:00 am

The mission was simple: take a load of garden refuse to the council dump and be back in time to…

The turf

30 September 2017 9:00 am

Racing is an expensive sport to stage. Courses and grandstands have to be maintained, health and safety regulations have to…

The turf

16 September 2017 9:00 am

Racing moves off the back pages only when its opponents have bad news to gloat over. Two examples lately have…

The turf

2 September 2017 9:00 am

I guess his mother may have called him Patrick, or even, when he was in trouble, ‘Patrick Joseph’, but in…

The turf

19 August 2017 9:00 am

‘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

5 August 2017 9:00 am

Khalid Abdullah, John Gosden and Frankie Dettori — owner, trainer and jockey — already figured among the great names of…

The turf

22 July 2017 9:00 am

A woman I once encountered at the dining table whose prime years were clearly behind her described herself as ‘approaching…

The turf

8 July 2017 9:00 am

Having spent three quarters of my life covering politics and the other quarter following racing, I am often asked what…

The turf

24 June 2017 9:00 am

Back on the political beat with CNN for the general election, I was reminded how politics is now dominated by…