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Mon 5th Jun 2017

History On The Hoof

As well as showing great poise in pulling off a shock Epsom Derby victory, Padraig Beggy was impressive too in acknowledging his success was mostly down to Aidan O'Brien. As racing loyalty goes this was exceptional stuff. And Beggy took his opportunity in such style that there's no slight in pointing out the suspicion that if O'Brien can supply such an unlikely hero with an indelible place in racing history then there really does seem to be no limit to what he can do.

9.10AM
Mon 29th May 2017

Gone Fishing

Actual racing doesn't come much better than the Guineas festival weekend at the Curragh. Three Group 1's including two classics and a handful of other valuable races show off flat racing at its very best. In elite sporting terms if this doesn't float your boat then it's time to go fishing. So how dispiriting is it that HQ's controversial reduced 6,000 capacity didn't come even half way to being threatened on either day. Spin it any way you like but that's lamentable.

9.10AM
Mon 22nd May 2017

Tone Change Needed On Interference Rules

It's four months since the Turf Club introduced its new 'Running and Riding' rules. The impact in terms of making penalties stick has been dramatic. Eight 'Non-Trier' penalties have been handed out. Four were appealed. One was entirely successful and another partially so. Statistically it's hardly earth-shattering stuff which only proves how misleading statistics can be. Because culturally the new rules have been transformative.

9.01AM
Mon 15th May 2017

A Frilly Point To Point

The improvisational skill of those on the ground at the Curragh is to be applauded. To produce the facilities for racing to continue during the €70 million redevelopment of Irish racing's most famous track is no easy feat. That it's not easy to dismiss the suggestion those facilities might be prettier than a lot of what was torn down says much about what the Curragh had turned into. But after such an admirable exhibition of improvisation the obvious question still remains - why is it necessary?

9.13AM
Mon 8th May 2017

Drinking The Churchill 'Kool-Aid'

It's fair to say opinions are divided on Churchill's Guineas success. Either he's the next great or he got lucky. Dismissing as lucky a champion juvenile who proceeds to win the 2,000 Guineas seems very harsh indeed. Neither however can anyone pretend Churchill stunned Newmarket with his flamboyance on Saturday. But maybe showy brilliance is simply not his thing. To use the cliché, maybe he really is one of those horses who only does just enough.

8.42AM
Mon 1st May 2017

Judging A Bookmaker By Its Cover

Perception is a buzzword right now and about time too. Judging a book by its cover might be mistaken but racing's integrity is often as much about how things look as how they actually are. So while jockeys and trainers signing up with bookmakers for their exclusive thoughts might in reality be little more than a nice little sideline earner, and a mostly harmless exercise in advertising baloney, in terms of perception it can look uncomfortably cosy.

9.24AM
Mon 24th Apr 2017

Maths For Dummies

A blizzard of complex stats, tots, trends and percentages will accompany the trainer's championship at Punchestown this week. Gordon Elliott V Willie Mullins is the heavyweight clash which has dominated the 2016-17 campaign and promises to bring a remarkable season to a memorable climax. So facts will be flung and statistics slung. But facts and truth aren't synonymous and the truth is the most significant sum in all this is pretty straightforward.

9.21AM
Mon 17th Apr 2017

Begging The Questions

It's the job of those charged with promotion to promote so it's hard to criticise bigging-up this year's Boylesports Irish Grand National and its new €500,000 pot. Almost doubling the prizemoney was linked to boosting the National's quality and profile. There's no doubt a tagline of the richest jumps race ever run in Ireland is snappy. But quality-wise it's hard not to think the same field would still have turned up for the old money no matter what anyone says.

9.08AM
Mon 10th Apr 2017

How's About The Start?

Perhaps the most admirable element to One For Arthur's Grand National success was the faith shown in jockey Derek Fox by the horse's connections. This was a prime Aintree candidate. Presumably plenty agents for more high-profile riders were offering their services, especially with injury doubts about Fox on the run-up to the race. With so much on the line it would have been easy to look elsewhere. But the 24 year old Sligo man got an opportunity and took it in style.

8.45AM
Mon 3rd Apr 2017

Culture Change

Asking how long culture-change takes is like asking how long is a piece of string. But it's ultimately in everyone's best interest that the culture surrounding racing's 'Non-Trier' regulations changes quickly. Encouragement that the new Rule 212 might provoke that rarest of racing feats - actual change - comes from the voices currently being raised against it. Racing is onto something here. What's required now is perseverance with this badly needed change of regulatory culture.

9.05AM
Mon 27th Mar 2017

To Have And Have Not

The gaping divide between jump racing's haves and have not's won't be filled by fiddly tweaks to the programme book, convoluted handicap conditions, more prizemoney or cosmetic social-media courses. Those spouting 'positive' platitudes will dismiss that as pessimism. It isn't. It's simply an acknowledgement that the gap exists not through misfortune but as a consequence of Irish racing's official policy for over a decade and a half.

8.57AM
Mon 20th Mar 2017

Wrap The Green Flag Round Me Boys

The median between wrapping the green flag round Cheltenham's 19-9 scoreline and Michael O'Leary dismissing the British-Irish bit as a \"f---ing load of nonsense\" is probably the safest point on the festival spectrum. O'Leary has logic on his side. The flag-waving really is an affectation. But it's relatively harmless and provides something other than punting for the public to hang its hat on. And it all means too much to too many for it be just about betting. It's vital though that Irish routs don't become a habit.

8.53AM
Mon 13th Mar 2017

Some Real Cheltenham Rivalry

Cheltenham's Anglo-Irish rivalry carries some edge this week on the back of those 'post-Brexit' spats with the BHA handicapper. However the curio that means Irish racing's most high-profile festival is run in England means flag-waving is mostly an affectation: caring what winner is trained where is a luxury for most punters. What's notable about this festival is how some proper home-grown rivalries are going to be transplanted to Gloucestershire and in all likelihood dominate the week.

8.33AM
Mon 6th Mar 2017

The Diluted Olympics

The hoariest Cheltenham cliché of all is that it's 'Our Olympics.' Except it isn't. Not if you judge it by true 'Fastest, Highest, Longest & Strongest' standards. Because for an ultimate championship event it's remarkable how many questions are likely to be left hanging after next week's action. And they'll hang because the logistics of mounting a four day festival have resulted in a degree of filler which continues to dilute competition.

8.39AM
Mon 27th Feb 2017

Support Your Local Sheriff

It appears there's a new sheriff in town and its name is the new Rule 212. Armed with an amended wording that requires jockeys to be seen to make a reasonable effort, it seems there's a new willingness among officials to actively pursue running-and-riding rules. It's a badly needed development and while many will ultimately judge its seriousness in relation to some of the industry's big-hitters it appears to be a framework within which officials can effectively operate.

9.02AM
Mon 20th Feb 2017

Negotiating The Future

Andy Warhol said every social action is a negotiation but he might have looked at the discussions between the Irish Thoroughbred Breeders Association and the Turf Club as an exercise in social action for its own sake. The point is supposed to be the implementation of an urgently needed drug testing protocol to help protect the credibility of Ireland's bloodstock industry. Except you'd hardly know it.

8.57AM
Mon 13th Feb 2017

What If Punch-Bag wins Gold Cup?

The horse that emerged with the most enhanced reputation from Leopardstown's quadruple- Grade 1 card didn't even run. Any notion Douvan may have been a playground bully in repeatedly beating up Sizing John can be binned with the latter successfully stepped up to three miles in the Irish Gold Cup. Now Sizing John goes for the real thing at Cheltenham. Who knows how much he might improve for further again: and who knows how the Douvan camp will feel if, having taken the prudent two-mile route this season, their former punching-bag actually wins the ultimate prize?

9.04AM
Mon 6th Feb 2017

Cash In Hand - No Questions Asked

Many within racing have been quick to dismiss TD Clare Daly's Dail declarations about the industry containing wholesale illegality as simply a leftie rant by another disaffected Trot. Some of them are probably also bemoaning how difficult it is to get good staff. They seem either unwilling or unable to make the link between that and how much staff get paid and how they're treated. That has got rather lost in all this.

8.32AM
Mon 30th Jan 2017

'Hare' De Bromhead

George Harrison isn't an immediate spot as Henry De Bromhead's doppelganger but it's been forcibly pointed out to me that the media has been so myopic in its John & Paul love-in with Messrs Mullins and Elliott this season that we've overlooked the third virtuoso on Irish racing's magical mystery tour. One respected racing professional, who isn't from Waterford, and insists he barely knows the trainer, seethed indignantly on Sunday : \"He's the real story, how he's stepped it up; but it's just like George in the Beatles, always in the shadows.\"

9.12AM
Mon 23rd Jan 2017

Just Turn Off The Tech

I once made No.51 in someone's online 'C--t of the Year' chart. Louis Walsh was 52. Joe Brolly was only 64 - what ya think of DAT! Did it constitute abuse? Hardly. There are a few within racing who'd have me Top Ten at least. I made the indulgent error of 'googling' myself and found out what some nut with time on his hands thought of me. So there's the tip for the boys and girls of the jockey's room: if you don't want to feel abused, don't go on social media. It's not renowned for kindness.

8.43AM
Mon 16th Jan 2017

An Irish Solution To An Irish Problem

Proof of just how litigious the policing of racing has become is stamped all over the Turf Club's radical new running and riding regulations. They cover a multitude of angles and scenarios to an extent unparalleled anywhere else in the world. The pity is that they have come to be so necessary but kudos to the expertise that's clearly gone into them. The regulations are in place - what counts is how seriously they are enforced. And ultimately the greatest signal of seriousness is likely to be that final fateful step towards professional stewarding.

8.54AM
Mon 9th Jan 2017

One More Thing...

Having finished up last week proclaiming there's nothing more boring than hacks talking hackery the obvious indulgent thing to do this week is talk journalism, or at least the comic-book version that is racing journalism which gets routinely dismissed as a gravy train from which us frauds and fakes trading under the media label loudly slurp while a poor, downtrodden betting public is forced to exist on fresh air and indignation.

9.09AM
Mon 2nd Jan 2017

2017 A Critical Year For Turf Club

The New Year is set to be a critical one for the Turf Club and its future credibility. If 2016 saw focus switching from the beleaguered regulatory body to Horse Racing Ireland then 2017 is likely to see it return to how the racing and bloodstock industries are policed. A number of new initiatives in terms of drug-testing and rule-changes are in the pipeline. But as is often the case with regulation, the key question isn’t rules but how they are enforced.

9.55AM
Sat 24th Dec 2016

Racing's 12 Tales Of Christmas 2016

1: Ride of the Year - Harzand’s Epsom Derby was Pat Smullen’s most important victory of this or any year. But his effort last July when riding Xsquared for more than a circuit of Killarney with the saddle slipping ever further up the horse’s neck was exceptional. Ireland’s champion jockey is renowned for his professionalism: this was proof of his brilliance.

10.44AM
Mon 19th Dec 2016

Quality Racing Actually Matters Sometimes

All eyes can now focus on the upcoming Christmas action — Friday’s unloved Dundalk fixture apart — when tradition has it that even those with no interest in the sport go racing on St Stephens Day. The cartoon is that these once-a-year racegoers cram in to Leopardstown in particular and are barely aware of horses outside. And that may be true. It’s reassuring though how Christmas attendance figures indicate how the quality of the actual racing can matter sometimes.

9.21AM
Mon 12th Dec 2016

We Are Where We Were

We are where we are: a phrase as banal as it is unarguable. But it pretty much sums up where Horse Racing Ireland is right now. Having slalomed its way around public guidelines over Brian Kavanagh’s reappointment as chief executive, become the focus of public criticism over its governance, got dragged before the Oireachtas to explain itself only to display braying unrepentant arrogance in doing so, and manoeuvring with startling expediency throughout, we now appear to be where we are - which is exactly where we were before.

8.52AM
Mon 5th Dec 2016

How To Be Seen

As a rule, problems with rules are to do with enforcement rather than the rules themselves. But Irish racing’s ‘non-trier’ regulations are an exception. They can be both restrictive and too open to interpretation. They also have to be applied in an environment where proving intent up to Burden of Proof ‘M’Lud’ standard is all but impossible. So the rules need a rewrite if stewards are to have any chance and either literally or figuratively they need to include two words - ‘Be Seen.’

9.09AM
Mon 28th Nov 2016

Dare To Think, Dare To Act

I’ve been asked where I stand on the plight of racing’s middle tier and its economic struggle for survival against the industry’s elite players. And the answer is I don’t know where to stand because it’s very complicated. What is noticeable though is how such an otherwise conservative and self-consciously hard-nosed private enterprise sector has suddenly got so welfarist, maybe even, God Forbid, a touch Maoist; who’d have thought?

9.04AM
Mon 21st Nov 2016

Heart Warming

It was freezing cold at Punchestown on Sunday but only a truly cold heart couldn’t respond to the circumstances surrounding First To Boogie’s success. He was a first winner as a trainer for Madeleine Tylicki. She took out a licence in June and for most of the last four weeks she has been at the bedside of her stricken brother Freddie. Racing is famously a magnificent triviality but First To Boogie’s otherwise mundane handicap hurdle success was proof once again how winning and losing remain anything but irrelevant.

8.58AM
Mon 14th Nov 2016

Almanzor The Obvious Choice

Racing’s awards season has began, a big deal in many other racing jurisdictions, but which in this part of the world is generally regarded as the sport’s silly season, a view that won’t have been altered by the decision to make Minding Europe’s Horse of the Year at the Cartier Awards. The task of investing any semblance of relevance or credibility to these things along the lines of America’s Eclipse award won’t have been helped by ignoring the bleedin’ obvious - Almanzor is Europe’s top horse of 2016.

9.00AM
Mon 7th Nov 2016

If You Can't Beat 'Em - Join 'Em

Any lingering hope that racing’s disciplinary process isn’t destined to become a near-automatic exercise in reaching for the most expensive solicitor seems to have vanished since the Turf Club is reaching for its own full-time brief. The position of Head of Legal & Compliance at the integrity body has at least been advertised. But it is a dispiriting sign of how the imposition of even mildly debatable racing penalties has become a fraught juggle with burden of proof. And it isn’t going to stop there.

9.32AM
Mon 31st Oct 2016

Horse & Greyhound & Harness & Flapping Fund

Long ago when the Horse & Greyhound Fund first started I remember pointing out how Irish racing generated about 15 per cent of bookmaker turnover yet, along with the dogs, it got 100 per cent of the tax revenue. Might not other sports have something to say about such a gap, I wondered? And wasn’t the theoretical basis of it all fundamentally, and perhaps dangerously, dependant on political whim?

9.25AM
Mon 24th Oct 2016

Normal Service Will Be Resumed

Racing’s perspective can be remarkably short term so the idea that Willie Mullins might face a struggle to maintain his grip on Ireland’s trainer’s title is gaining quite a bit of traction. And it’s rubbish. Of course Gordon Elliott is banging in the winners, and there’s always the danger of a rogue bug invading any yard. But just because Mullins is relatively quiet right now doesn’t mean normal service won’t be resumed soon - and with a vengeance.

9.19AM
Mon 17th Oct 2016

Same As It Ever Was

Last week I argued racing couldn’t be seen to emerge unscathed from the controversy surrounding Brian Kavanagh’s reappointment as Horse Racing Ireland’s chief executive — WRONG. It was based on an assumption that the Dail’s Agriculture Committee might have more in their armoury than harrumphing — WRONG. And that receiving public money behoves transparency — WRONG. Instead racing has emerged with a few minor reputational scratches but also record funding and everyone still in situ; effectively, an invitation to carry on as normal.

9.21AM
Mon 10th Oct 2016

Time To Go Joe

It’s interesting to ponder just how solo Joe Keeling can have been in his endeavours to get Brian Kavanagh reappointed as chief executive of Horse Racing Ireland. It’s hard to credit the HRI chairman simply got a brainwave and ran with it. Maybe we’ll find out more when he faces the Dail’s Agriculture Committee on Thursday. What’s unarguable in this hive of political activity is that it is Keeling who is firmly in the firing line. So it’s hard not to conclude his credibility as chairman of Irish racing’s ruling body is a busted flush.

9.20AM
Mon 3rd Oct 2016

What Price Genius?

If the 2016 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe wasn’t a vintage renewal, Aidan O’Brien’s achievement in saddling the first three in Europe’s most prestigious all-aged race can be regarded as perhaps the greatest singular result in an epic career which continues to redefine racing’s statistical history. Along with the Derby at Epsom, the Arc defines European racing. Never before has it been so dominated. The likelihood of such a clean-sweep ever occurring again must be as remote as any one trainer having the resources to realistically consider trying.

8.55AM
Mon 26th Sep 2016

Racing's Bread Is Buttered On The Public Side

Racing is famously conservative. Throw in its sequestering instincts and you have a recipe for inertia. Certainly the reflex to keep things ‘in-house’ can make external examination an uncomfortable experience and the political spotlight which promises to shine on racing’s administration this week has the potential to stir things up. The rules of racing may be black and white but the primary rule of politics is that there are no rules, always a recipe for unease.

9.11AM
Mon 19th Sep 2016

Douvan The Sentimental Gold Cup Pick

It isn’t just the Autumn chill that’s making race fans shiver. Listowel traditionally refocuses attention towards the jumps, provoking familiar anticipation about the impeding return of National Hunt racing’s greatest stars. The flat has its qualities but the jumps always trump it for sentiment. And it’s that sentiment which makes the idea of Douvan not being targeted at the Gold Cup this winter so infuriating.

9.04AM
Mon 12th Sep 2016

Flip-Flopping Bullets

As is the way of such things there will be reviews of ‘Longines Irish Champions Weekend’ which will include microscopic examination of the little details we are always assured are vital to the make- up of every major sporting, and indeed corporate, event. No doubt there will be bullet-points aplenty. So while as a rule ‘Top Ten’ presentations really should be bulleted, here are some random shots at the weekend action.

9.25AM
Mon 5th Sep 2016

Hate To Put A Dampener On Things

Racing gets flak for failing to ‘bill’ its biggest races. But the reason is simple — too many variables. For instance if Minding, Harzand, Fascinating Rock, Almanzor, New Bay and Hawkbill do indeed all line up in Saturday’s QIPCO Irish Champion Stakes, then ‘Irish Champions Weekend’ will have Europe’s ‘Race of the Season.’ But hanging the centrepiece to Irish racing’s €4.25 million shop-window on that is to be a hostage to fortune. Variables take over, illness, injury, loss of form and unquestionably the greatest of them all — Ireland’s weather.

9.07AM
Mon 29th Aug 2016

Rouget Raid Will Reward Champions Weekend

Internationalisation has been an ambition for ‘Irish Champions Weekend’ from the start and in the third year of Irish flat racing’s shop-window event it is the unlikely figure of top French trainer Jean-Claude Rouget who promises to deliver that vital element. Rouget’s ambition to run his Prix Du Jockey Club winner Almanzor in the Champion Stakes, and his star fillies Qemah and Ervedya in the Matron, indicate how this €4.5 million concept has already carved out a niche for itself. Reward for Rouget now could significantly reward the event in the long term.

9.18AM
Mon 22nd Aug 2016

Playing Peek-A-Boo

Whatever else can be said about Tony Martin — and it seems many like to say plenty - no one can deny he has stood the test of time. Neither has there ever been doubt about Martin’s resilience or capacity to produce winners. However after a tumultuous year Heartbreak City’s Ebor success might just represent the most satisfying moment of his career. It was certainly timely and in the circumstances Martin could have been forgiven for giving two-fingers to his detractors.

9.12AM
Mon 15th Aug 2016

No Exit For Entry System

Arguing against the economic bottom line is usually an uneconomic use of time and energy so Richard Hannon’s complaint about Ireland’s “farcical” early entry system is likely to wind up lodged in a ‘like it or lump it’ account. Whether it should be is a different matter. The English trainer’s comments about how it is unrealistic to know in April whether or not to enter for the Phoenix Stakes in August reflect the view of many others. But the bottom line is that the Irish system is a cash generator: so good luck changing it.

9.31AM
Mon 8th Aug 2016

Bad Will Beat Worse

The story about that Charles Byrnes treble at Roscommon has contained plenty to get stuck into for the last week even including it seems an interesting insight into racing linguistics. There were those relishing a good old-fashioned betting ‘coup’ while others less impressed employed words like ‘plot’ instead. It all depends on which angle you’re coming from and as with most gambling stories the real angle is whether or not you’ve been in on it.

9.31AM
Mon 1st Aug 2016

Time To Dream It Up Again

To paraphrase Bono racing has to go away and dream its disciplinary process up again because it isn’t working. Pyromaniac’s Galway Hurdle appearance was a slap in the face to the authority of the integrity services here. If the Turf Club was spared the indignity of a horse technically suspended winning Ireland’s richest jumps race it didn’t prevent the ever increasing perception that racing can’t make its penalties stick. And credibility wise, that is unsustainable.

12.52PM
Mon 25th Jul 2016

Will The Empire Strike Back?

For those of us lucky enough to see it an abiding memory of the 2015 Galway festival was the look on Willie Mullins’ face when informed that the leading trainer award isn’t judged on winners alone but a system based on points for first, second and third. It’s what ultimately allowed Dermot Weld secure the prize for a 30th time - by a single point - despite having had five winners in comparison to Mullins’ eight. Weld always looms over the festival but, for many, this week’s major Galway question is will the Rosewell empire strike back?

8.47AM
Mon 18th Jul 2016

Mares Are From Mars

Plenty are ready and willing to squeeze the sexism trigger but Seamus Heffernan’s post Darley Irish Oaks comments after Seventh Heaven surprised some shorter-priced opposition were undeniably interesting - “They’re fillies: some of them turn up on the day and some of them don’t.” It suggests an element of Russian-Roulette when it comes to form which from a punting point of view has obvious implications.

8.47AM
Mon 11th Jul 2016

No One's Bullet Proof

The thing with surveys is that the questions are often as important as the answers. But no matter which way you look at it, the Turf Club’s questionnaire which threw up a result of 49 per cent of surveyed jockeys exhibiting symptoms of depression is startling. That’s twice the national average and almost twice the rate among elite athletes in other sports. So there’s an obvious question here for racing about the demands put on riders and how reasonable or otherwise they are.

8.49AM
Mon 4th Jul 2016

Footfall Freestyle

The Irish Derby’s dramatic attendance dip has produced quite a lot of twisting and turning which ordinarily could be categorised as little more than movement for its own sake. After all, when the real racecourse money is in telly, the gate becomes mostly superfluous. Except there’s €65 million going into redeveloping the Curragh, largely on the ‘Field Of Dreams’ hope that if you build it, they will come. And the evidence rather starkly suggests that they won’t.

9.27AM
Mon 27th Jun 2016

Success Is Slutty

Harzand proved himself a worthy champion by completing the Epsom-Curragh Derby double. There’s nothing flamboyant about him, nothing flash, but after looking Idaho in the eye inside the final furlong Harzand was well on top at the line. This is a colt full of substance and with the priceless ability of being able to rise to the occasion. His partnership with Pat Smullen looks a marriage made in heaven.

9.07AM
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