Horse racing
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…
Twelve to follow
It has been a little like scraping from the plate as slowly as possible the last traces of Mrs Oakley’s…
The horse from hell
There were moments while reading this sprawling, ambitious novel when I thought I was reading a masterpiece. But at other…
Sandown thrills
The difference between praying in church and praying at the racecourse, a gnarled old punter once said, is that at…
Riders and diners
Not quite nil humanum a me alienum, but I have always been interested in other people’s trades and worlds. That…
National review
With great victories in Flat racing you witness hats-in-the-air exultation. You see the pride of trainers who nurtured the winner…
Low life
I shared a taxi from Cheltenham station to the house party in an outlying village with a stripper. Finding a…
Real life
‘Racing is 99.9 per cent disappointment,’ said the trainer philosophically, as I sat in the yard sipping coffee, waiting for…
Real life
Darcy trod on a screw. Five little words which, if Darcy was anything other than a thoroughbred horse, might signify…
Nice guys do finish first
Richard Johnson, possibly the nicest man to occupy a saddle and certainly the most modest, once said of his Irish…
Second thoughts
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…
Real life
‘This is a two Voltarol day,’ I thought, as I popped another pill and settled into the bath after Darcy’s…
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…
Whoosh! I was addicted from the first gallop to the heavenly, godlike, immortal speed
The young lad behind the counter of the betting shop looked at me askance. ‘This horse is 200–1.’ ‘Yes. I…
I rode my own racehorse and was changed for ever
‘The last owner who tried to ride his own horse got tanked,’ said the trainer, looking up at me as…
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.…
There will be blood
Siena’s Palio is steeped in violence, bribery and corruption. But it matters to its people more than anything, says Jasper Rees
Stewed Siena
The Indian summer was still fending off the mists and mellow fruitfulness. But the autumn term was about to begin;…
Easy does it
For all their formidable physical presence, racehorses spook easily. A sudden gust of wind flapping a plastic sack, a page…
