Horse racing
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…
Why Jeremy Clarkson should stick to cars
Well, I had a very merry Christmas thank you — and I hope you did too — but as usual…
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…
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
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
Having spent three quarters of my life covering politics and the other quarter following racing, I am often asked what…
How to make a mint at the races this summer
It has been a little like scraping from the plate as slowly as possible the last traces of Mrs Oakley’s…
Training the horse from hell
There were moments while reading this sprawling, ambitious novel when I thought I was reading a masterpiece. But at other…
The difference between praying in church and praying at a racecourse
The difference between praying in church and praying at the racecourse, a gnarled old punter once said, is that at…
Dinner with a Grand National winner
Not quite nil humanum a me alienum, but I have always been interested in other people’s trades and worlds. That…
The Grand National a predictable affair? Not a bit of it
With great victories in Flat racing you witness hats-in-the-air exultation. You see the pride of trainers who nurtured the winner…
Cheltenham has no brothels – I wonder why
I shared a taxi from Cheltenham station to the house party in an outlying village with a stripper. Finding a…
My horse's race career hangs by a tendon
‘Racing is 99.9 per cent disappointment,’ said the trainer philosophically, as I sat in the yard sipping coffee, waiting for…
Five little words that signify catastrophe
Darcy trod on a screw. Five little words which, if Darcy was anything other than a thoroughbred horse, might signify…
The second-best jump jockey ever finally gets to finish first
Richard Johnson, possibly the nicest man to occupy a saddle and certainly the most modest, once said of his Irish…
Hot tips for next month’s Cheltenham Festival
Racing Life is all about judgment and I got one thing right at Cheltenham last Saturday after the overnight rain.…
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…
If there were bones sticking out, I’m out — midlife crisis or no midlife crisis
‘This is a two Voltarol day,’ I thought, as I popped another pill and settled into the bath after Darcy’s…
The joys of jump racing
Thank God for jump racing. The Flat has its glitz and speed and glamour, and we could not help but…
