18th February 2022

A frustrating run of second places, I think we’ve had six in the last week or so. Having said that I wouldn’t swap the second places for the win in The Betfair at Newbury last Saturday. Camembert Electric dug deep to win at Wetherby on Thursday, she is all heart. Roger Rarebit was just found out on the worse of the ground on the inside. He will win his races and a summer will be the making of him, he’s a frame and has some strengthening up to do.

Michael O’Leary had his own agenda regarding Tiger Rolls allocated weight in the Grand National. The handicap system can not be governed around what people believe to be the peoples horse. For someone who claims to know everything about everything he failed miserably to to campaign him in such a manner that would have seen him allocated less weight for the 2022 running. Richard Forristal, the only journalist who’s work is worth reading wrote an excellent piece on O’Leary and his antics. Richie has the right profile to be heading up the Racing Post and is very good at his job. He is the only one who could possibly get anywhere near Alastair Down’s standard of work.

We all have a much better understanding of the Mark Todd incident now, he was not mindlessly beating a horse for the sake of it. The fact he had to reach for a branch suggests he didn’t even have a whip to hand for his clinic. There are kinder methods to get the results he wanted but they don’t always produce the winning one. By all accounts, from someone who was at the clinic, before hitting it with a rather flimsy branch he gave the horse and the rider every chance to go through the water. The branch would only spook it in, it would not have entered the water as a result of pain. It is a storm in a tea cup and I can categorically vouch that any horse or pony without discipline will become incredibly dangerous incredibly quickly.  They look to their leader in the wild, when they misbehave their mothers bite them in their flanks and lashes out in a threatening manner with their hind legs. A horseman has to become that mother figure when training them and using a flimsy branch out of a hedge is no more than impersonating a mother with her hind legs. I have eluded to the fact that many non thoroughbred horses are mistreated and neglected in fields beside motorways up and down the country. That is cruelty and mistreating of horses. Mark Todd has not behaved in a manner that is unacceptable given the circumstances that surround the case.

Adrimel and Scipion head to Haydock tomorrow. To read my thoughts click here.